Perdido Street Station Part 59

The sun was sinking behind the foothills to the west, making them magnificent and portentous. But they could not challenge the chaotic majesty of Perdido Street Station.

Lights flickered on across its vast and untrustworthy topography, and it received the now-glowing trains into its bowels like offerings. The Spike skewered the clouds like a spear held ready, but it was nothing beside the station: a little concrete addendum to that great disreputable leviathan building, wallowing in fat satisfaction in the city-sea.

The cable wound towards it without pause, rising above and falling beneath New Crobuzon's surface in waves.

The west-facing front of Perdido Street Station opened onto BilSantum Plaza. The plaza was thronging and beautiful, with carts and pedestrians circulating constantly around the parkland at its centre. In this lush green, jugglers and magicians and stall-holders kept up raucous chants and sales pitches. The citizenry were blithely careless of the monumental structure that dominated the sky. They only noticed its facade with offhand pleasure when the low sun's rays struck it full on, and its patchwork of architecture glowed like a kaleidoscope: the stucco and painted wood were rose; the bricks went b.l.o.o.d.y; the iron girders were glossy with rich light.

BilSantum Street swept under the huge raised arch that connected the main body of the station to the Spike. Perdido Street Station was not discrete. Its edges were permeable. Spines of low turrets swept off its back and into the city, becoming the roofs of rude and everyday houses. The concrete slabs that scaled it grew squat as they spread out, and were suddenly ugly ca.n.a.l walls. Where the five railway lines unrolled through great arches and pa.s.sed along the roofs, the station's bricks supported and surrounded them, cutting a path over the streets. The architecture oozed out of its bounds.

Perdido Street itself was a long, narrow pa.s.sageway that jutted perpendicularly from BilSantum Street and wound sinuously east towards Gidd. No one knew why it had once been important enough to give the station its name. It was cobbled, and its houses were not squalid, though they were in ill-repair. It might once have described the station's northern boundary, but it had long been overtaken. The storeys and rooms of the station had spread out and rapidly breached the little street.

They had leapt it effortlessly and spread like mould into the roofscape beyond, transforming the terrace at the north of BilSantum Street. In some places Perdido Street was open to the air: elsewhere it was covered for long stretches, with vaulted bricks festooned with gargoyles or lattices of wood and iron. There in the shade from the station's underbelly, Perdido Street was gaslit all the time.

Perdido Street was still residential. Families rose every day beneath that dark architecture sky, walked its winding length to work, pa.s.sing in and out of shadow.

The tramp of heavy boots often sounded from above. The front of the station, and much of its roofscape, was guarded. Private security, foreign soldiers and the militia, some in uniform and some in disguise, patrolled the facade and the mountainous landscape of slate and clay, protecting the banks and stores, the emba.s.sies and the government offices that filled the various floors within. They would tread like explorers along carefully plotted routes through the spires and spiral iron staircases, past dormer windows and through hidden rooftop courtyards, journeying across the lower layers of the station roof, looking down over the plaza and the secret places and the enormous city.

But further to the east, towards the rear of the station, spotted with a hundred trade entrances and minor establishments, the security lapsed and became more haphazard. The towering construction was darker here. When the sun set, it cast its great shadow across a huge swathe of The Crow.

Some way out from the main ma.s.s of the building, between Perdido Street and Gidd Stations, the Dexter Line pa.s.sed through a tangle of old offices that long ago had been ruined by a minor fire.

It had not damaged the structure, but it had been enough to bankrupt the company that had traded within. The charred rooms had long been empty of all but vagrants unperturbed by the smell of carbon, still tenacious after nearly a decade.

After more than two hours of torturously slow motion, Isaac and Yagharek had arrived at this burned sh.e.l.l, and collapsed thankfully within. They released Andrej, retied his hands and feet and gagged him before he woke. Then they ate what little food they had, and sat quietly, and waited.

Although the sky was light, their shelter was in the darkness shed by the station. In a little over an hour twilight would come, with night just behind it.

They talked quietly. Andrej woke and began to make his noises again, casting piteous looks around the room, begging for freedom, but Isaac looked at him with eyes too exhausted and miserable for guilt.

At seven o'clock there was a fumbling noise at the heatblistered door. It was instantly audible above the rattling street sounds of The Crow. Isaac drew his flintlock and motioned Yagharek to silence.

It was Derkhan, exhausted and very dirty, her face smeared with dust and grease. She held her breath as she pa.s.sed through the door and closed it behind her, releasing a sobbing exhalation as she slumped against it. She moved over and gripped Isaac's hand, then Yagharek's. They murmured greetings.

"I think there's someone watching this place," Derkhan said urgently. "He's standing under the tobacconist's awning opposite, in a green cloak. Can't see his face."

Isaac and Yagharek tensed. The garuda slid under the boarded-up window and raised his avian eye quietly to a knothole. He scanned the street across from the ruin.

"There is no one there," he said flatly. Derkhan came over and stared through the hole.

"Maybe he wasn't doing anything," she said eventually. "But I'd feel safer a floor or two up, in case we hear someone come in."

It was much easier to move, now that Isaac could force the crying Andrej at gunpoint without fear of being seen. They made their way up the stairs, leaving footprints in the charcoal surface.

On the top floor the window frames were empty of gla.s.s or wood, and they could look out across the short trek of slates at the staggered monolith of the station. They waited while the sky grew darker. Eventually, in the dim flicker of the orange gasjets, Yagharek clambered from the window and dropped lightly onto the moss-cushioned wall beyond. He stalked the five feet to the unbroken spine of roofs that connected the clutch of buildings to the Dexter Line and to Perdido Street Station. It sat weighty and huge in the west, spotted with irregular cl.u.s.ters of light like an earthbound constellation.

Yagharek was a dim figure in the skyline. He scanned the landscape of chimneys and slanting clay. He was not watched. He turned towards the dark window, indicated the others to follow him.

Andrej was old and stiff, and found it hard to walk along the narrow walkways they forged. He could not jump the five-foot drops that were necessary. Isaac and Derkhan helped him, supporting him or holding him fast with a gentle, macabre a.s.sistance, while the other trained their flintlock at his brain.

They had untied his limbs so he could walk and climb, but they had left the gag in place to stifle his wails and sobs.

Andrej stumbled confused and miserable like some soul in the outlands of h.e.l.l, shuffling nearer and nearer his ineluctable end with agonizing steps.

The four of them walked across the roofworld parallel to the Dexter Line. They were pa.s.sed in both directions by spitting iron trains, wailing and venting great coughs of sooty smoke into the dwindling light. They trooped slowly onwards, towards the station ahead.

It was not long before the nature of their terrain changed. The sharp-angled slates gave way as the ma.s.s of architecture rose around them. They had to use their hands. They made their way through little byways of concrete, surrounded by windowed walls; they ducked under huge portholes and had to scale short ladders that wound between stubby towers. Hidden machinery made the brickwork hum. They were no longer looking ahead to the roof of Perdido Street Station, but up. They had pa.s.sed some nebulous boundary point where the terraced streets ended and the foothills of the station began.

They tried to avoid climbing, creeping around the edges of promontories of brick like jutting teeth and through accidental pa.s.sageways. Isaac began to look around, nervous and fitful. The pavement was invisible behind a low rise of rooftops and chimney-pipes to their right.

"Keep quiet and careful," he whispered. "There might be guards."

From the north-east, a gouged curve in the station's sprawling silhouette was a street approaching them, half covered by the building. Isaac pointed at it.

"There," he whispered. "Perdido Street."

He traced its line with his hand. A short way ahead it intersected with the Cephalic Way, along the length of which they were walking.

"Where they meet," he whispered. "That's our pick-up point. Yag . . . would you go?"

The garuda sped away, making towards the back of a tall building a few yards ahead, where rust-fouled guttering made a slanting ladder to the ground.

Isaac and Derkhan plodded slowly onwards, pushing Andrej gently forward with their guns. When they reached the intersection of the two streets they sat heavily and waited.

Isaac looked up at the sky, where only the high clouds still caught the sun. He looked down, watching Andrej's misery and imploring gaze creasing his old face. From all around the city the night sounds were beginning.

"There's no nightmares yet," murmured Isaac. He looked up at Derkhan, held out his hand as if feeling for rain. "Can't feel anything. They can't be abroad yet."

"Maybe they're licking their wounds," she said cheerlessly. "Maybe they won't come and this-" her eyes flicked up towards Andrej momentarily "-this'll all be useless."

"They'll come," said Isaac. "I promise you that." He would not talk of things going wrong. He would not admit the possibility.

They were silent for a while. Isaac and Derkhan realized simultaneously that they were both watching Andrej. He breathed slowly, his eyes flickering this way and that, his fear become a paralysing backdrop. We could take his gag away, We could take his gag away, thought Isaac, thought Isaac, and he wouldn't scream . . . but then he might speak . . . and he wouldn't scream . . . but then he might speak . . . He left the gag in place. He left the gag in place.

There was a sc.r.a.ping sound near them. With calm speed, Isaac and Derkhan raised their pistols. Yagharek's feathered head emerged from behind the clay, and they lowered their hands. The garuda hauled himself towards them over the cracked extrusion of roof. Draped over his shoulder was a great coil of cable.

Isaac stood to catch him as he staggered towards them.

"You got it!" he hissed. "They were waiting!"

"They were becoming angry," said Yagharek. "They had come up from the sewers an hour or more ago: they were fearful that we had been captured or killed. This is the last of the wire." He dropped the loops to the ground before them. The cable was thinner than many of the other sections, about four inches in cross-section, coated with thin rubber. There were perhaps sixty feet of wire remaining, sprawled in tight spirals by their ankles.

Isaac knelt to examine it. Derkhan, her pistol still trained on the cowering Andrej, squinted at the cable.

"Is it connected?" she asked. "Is it working?"

"I don't know," breathed Isaac. "We won't be able to tell till I link it up, make it a circuit." He hauled the cable up, swung it over his shoulder. "There's not as much as I'd hoped," he said. "We're not going to get very close to the centre of Perdido Street Station." He looked around and pursed his lips. It doesn't matter, It doesn't matter, he thought. he thought. Picking the station was just something to tell the Council, to get out of the dump and away from it before . . . betrayal. Picking the station was just something to tell the Council, to get out of the dump and away from it before . . . betrayal. But he found himself wishing that they But he found himself wishing that they could could plant themselves at the core of the station, as if there was in fact some power inhering in its bricks. plant themselves at the core of the station, as if there was in fact some power inhering in its bricks.

He pointed a little way away to the south-east, up a little slope of steep-sided, flat-topped rooflets. They extended like an exaggerated slate stairwell, overlooked by an enormous flat wall of stained concrete. The little rise of roof hillocks ended about forty feet above them, in what Isaac hoped was a flattened plateau. The huge L-shaped concrete wall continued into the air above it for nearly sixty feet, containing it on two sides.

"There," said Isaac slowly. "That's where we'll go."

CHAPTER F FIFTY.

Halfway up the stepped roofs, Isaac and his companions disturbed someone.

There was a sudden raucous drunken noise. Isaac and Derkhan flurried for their pistols in anxious motion. It was a ragged drunk who leapt up in a shockingly inhuman motion and disappeared at speed down the slope. Strips of torn clothes fluttered behind him.

After that Isaac began to see the denizens of the station's roofscape. Little fires sputtered in secret courtyards, tended by dark and hungry figures. Sleeping men curled in the corners beside old spires. It was an alternative, an attenuated society. Little vagrant hilltribes foraging. A quite different ecology.

Way above the heads of the roof-people, bloated airships ploughed across the sky. Noisy predators. Grubby specks of light and dark, moving edgily in the night's cloud.

To Isaac's relief, the plateau at the top of the hill of layered slate was flat, and about fifteen feet square. Large enough. He wagged his gun, indicating that Andrej should sit, which the old man did, collapsing slowly and precipitously into the far corner. He huddled in on himself, hugging his knees.

"Yag," said Isaac. "Keep watch, mate." Yagharek dropped the final twist of the cable he had hauled up, and stood sentry at the edge of the little open s.p.a.ce, looking down across the gradient of the ma.s.sive roof. Isaac staggered under the full weight of the sack. He put it down and began to unpack the equipment.

Three mirrored helmets, one of which he put on. Derkhan took the others, gave one to Yagharek. Four a.n.a.lytical engines the size of large typewriters. Two large chymico-thaumaturgical batteries. Another battery, this one metaclockwork, a khepri design. Several connecting cables. Two large communicators' helmets, of the type used by the Construct Council on Isaac to trap the first slake-moth. Torches. Black powder and ammunition. A sheaf of programme cards. A clutch of transformers and thaumaturgic converters. Copper and pewter circuits of quite opaque purpose. Small motors and dynamos.

Everything was battered. Dented, cracked and filthy. It was a sad pile. It looked like nothing at all. Rubbish.

Isaac squatted beside it and began to prepare.

His head wobbled under the weight of his helmet. He connected two of the calculating engines, linking them into a powerful network. Then he began a much harder job, connecting the rest of the various oddments into a coherent circuit.

The motors were clipped to wires, and they to the larger of the a.n.a.lytical engines. The other engine he tinkered with internally, checking subtle adjustments. He had changed its circuitry. The valves within were no longer simply binary switches. They were attuned specifically and carefully to the unclear and the questionable; the grey areas of crisis mathematics.

He snapped small plugs into receivers and wired up the crisis engine to the dynamos and transformers that converted one uncanny form of energy into another. A dis...o...b..bulated circuit spread out across the flat little roofs.p.a.ce.

The last thing he pulled from the sack and connected to the sprawling machinery was a crudely welded box of black tin, about the size of a shoe. He picked up the end of the cable-the enormous work of guerrilla engineering that stretched more than two miles to the huge hidden intelligence of the Griss Twist dump. Isaac deftly unwound the splayed wires and connected them to the black box. He looked up at Derkhan, who was watching him, her gun trained on Andrej.

"That's a breaker," he said, "a circuit-valve. One-way flow only. I'm cutting the Council off from this lot." He patted the various pieces of the crisis engine. Derkhan nodded slowly. The sky had grown nearly completely dark. Isaac looked up at her and set his lips.

"We can't let that f.u.c.king thing get access to the crisis engine. We have to stay away from it," he explained as he connected the disparate components of his machine. "You remember what it told us-the avatar was some corpse pulled out of the river. Bulls.h.i.t! That body's alive alive . . . mindless, sure, but the heart's beating and the lungs breathe air. The Construct Council had to take that man's mind out of his body while he was . . . mindless, sure, but the heart's beating and the lungs breathe air. The Construct Council had to take that man's mind out of his body while he was alive alive. That was the whole point. Otherwise it would just rot.

"I don't know . . . maybe it was one of that crazy congregation sacrificing himself, maybe it was voluntary. But maybe not. Whichever, the Council don't care about killing off humans or any others, if it's . . . useful. It's got no empathy, no morals," Isaac continued, pushing hard at a resistant piece of metal. "It's just a . . . a calculating intelligence. Cost and benefit. It's trying to . . . maximize maximize itself. It'll do whatever it has to-it'll lie to us, it'll kill-to increase its own power." itself. It'll do whatever it has to-it'll lie to us, it'll kill-to increase its own power."

Isaac stopped for a moment and looked up at Derkhan.

"And you know," he said softly, "that's why it wants the crisis engine. It kept demanding it. Made me think. That's what this is for." He patted the circuit-valve. "If I connected the Council direct, it might be able to get feedback from the crisis engine, get control of it. It doesn't know I'm using this, that's why it was so keen on being connected. It doesn't know how to build its own engine: you can bet Jabber's a.r.s.e that's why it's so interested in us.

"Dee, Yag, d'you know what this engine can do do? I mean, this is a prototype . . . but if it works like it should, if you got inside this, saw the blueprint, built it more solidly, ironed out the problems . . . d'you know what this can do?

"Anything." He was silent for a while, his hands working, connecting his wires. "There's crisis everywhere, and if the engine can detect the field, tap it, channel it . . . it can do anything. I'm hamstrung because of all the maths. You've got to express in mathematical terms what you want the engine to do. That's what the programme cards are for. But the Council's whole d.a.m.n He was silent for a while, his hands working, connecting his wires. "There's crisis everywhere, and if the engine can detect the field, tap it, channel it . . . it can do anything. I'm hamstrung because of all the maths. You've got to express in mathematical terms what you want the engine to do. That's what the programme cards are for. But the Council's whole d.a.m.n brain brain expresses things mathematically. If that b.a.s.t.a.r.d links up to the crisis engine, its followers expresses things mathematically. If that b.a.s.t.a.r.d links up to the crisis engine, its followers won't be crazy any more won't be crazy any more.

"Because you know they call it the G.o.d-machine . . . ? Well . . . they'll be right."

All three of them were quiet. Andrej rolled his eyes from side to side, not comprehending a single word.

Isaac worked silently. He tried to imagine a city in the thrall of the Construct Council. He thought of it linked up to the little crisis engine, building more and more of the engines on an ever-increasing scale, connecting them up to its own fabric, powering them with its own thaumaturgical and elyctro-chymical and steampower. Monstrous valves hammering in the depths of the dump, making the fabric of reality bend and bleed with the ease of a Weaver's spinnerets, all doing the bidding of that vast, cold intelligence, pure conscious calculation, as capricious as a baby.

He fingered the circuit-valve, shaking it gently, praying that its mechanisms were sound.

Isaac sighed and brought out the thick sheaf of programme cards the Council had printed. Each was labelled in the Council's tottering typewritten script. Isaac looked up quizzically.

"It's not yet ten, is it?" he said. Derkhan shook her head. "There's still nothing in the air, is there? The moths aren't out yet. Let's be ready by the time they fly."

He looked down and pulled the lever on the two chymical batteries. The reagents within mixed. The sound of effervescence was dimly audible, and there was a sudden chorus of chattering valves and barking outputs as current was released. The machinery on the roofscape snapped into life.

The crisis engine whirred.

"It's just calculating," said Isaac nervously, as Derkhan and Yagharek glanced at him. "It's not yet processing. I'm giving it instructions."

Isaac began to feed the programme cards carefully into the various a.n.a.lytical engines before him. Most went to the crisis engine itself, but some to the subsidiary calculating circuits connected by little loops of cable. Isaac checked each card, comparing it with his notes, scribbling quick calculations before feeding it into any of the inputs.

The engines clattered as their fine ratcheting teeth slid over the cards, snapping into carefully cut holes, instructions and orders and information downloading into their a.n.a.logue brains. Isaac was slow, waiting until he felt the click that signalled successful processing before removing each card and slotting in the next.

He kept notes, scrawling impenetrable messages to himself on ragged ends of paper. He breathed quickly.

Rain began to fall, quite suddenly. It was sluggish, huge drops falling indolently and breaking open, as thick and warm as pus. The night was close, and the glutinous rainclouds made it more so. Isaac worked fast, his fingers feeling suddenly idiotic, too large.

There was a slow sense of dragging, a weightiness that pulled at the spirit and began to saturate the bones. A sense of the uncanny, of the fearful and hidden, that rolled up as if from within, a billowing ink-cloud from the depths of the mind.