Perdido Street Station (35 page)

As he opened his mouth
to say something, the construct pushed itself up into an active
posture. It extended its suction tube and began, tentatively at
first, to clear the floor of dust. As Isaac watched, the construct
extended a rotating brush behind it and began to scrub the boards.
Isaac watched it for any signs of faltering, but its pace increased
with almost palpable confidence. Isaac’s face lightened as he
watched the construct perform its first successful cleaning job for
weeks.

"That’s
better!" Isaac announced over his shoulder to David. "Damn
thing can clean again. Back to normal!"

In the huge, crisp
cocoon, extraordinary processes began.

The caterpillar’s
swathed flesh began to break down. Legs and eyes and bristles and
body-segments lost their integrity. The tubular body became fluid.

The thing drew on the
stored energy it had drawn from the dreamshit and powered its
transformation. It self-organized. Its mutating form bubbled and
welled up into strange dimensional rifts, oozing like oily sludge
over the brim of the world into other planes and back again. It
folded in on itself, shaping itself out of the protean sludge of its
own base matter.

It was unstable.

It was alive, and then
there was a time between forms when it was neither alive nor dead,
but saturated with power.

And then it was alive
again. But different.

Spirals of biochymical
slop snapped into sudden shapes. Nerves that had unwound and
dissolved suddenly spun back into skeins of sensory tissue. Features
dissolved and reknitted in strange new constellations.

The thing flexed in
inchoate agony and a rudimentary, but growing, hunger.

**

Nothing was visible
from the outside. The violent process of destruction and creation was
a metaphysical drama played out without an audience. It was hidden
behind an opaque curtain of brittle silk, a husk that hid the
changing with a brute, instinctual modesty. After the slow, chaotic
collapse of form, there was a brief moment when the thing in the
cocoon was poised in a liminal state.

And then, in response
to unthinkable tides of flesh, it began to construct itself anew.
Faster and faster.

Isaac spent many hours
watching the chrysalis, but he could only imagine the struggle of
autopoiesis within. What he saw was a solid thing, a strange fruit
hanging by an insubstantial thread in the musty darkness of a large
hutch. He was perturbed by the cocoon, imagining all manner of
gigantic moths or butterflies emerging. The cocoon did not change.
Once or twice he prodded it gingerly, and set it rocking gently and
heavily for a few seconds. That was all.

Isaac watched and
wondered about the cocoon when he was not working on his engine. It
was that that took most of his time.

Piles of copper and
glass began to take shape on Isaac’s desk and floor. He spent
his days soldering and hammering, attaching steam-pistons and
thaumaturgic engines to the nascent engine. His evenings he spent in
pubs, in discussion with Gedrecsechet, the Palgolak Librarian, or
David or Lublamai, or ex-colleagues from the university. He spoke
carefully, not giving away too much, but with passion and
fascination, drawing out discussions on maths and energy and crisis
and engineering.

He did not stray from
Brock Marsh. He had warned his friends in Salacus Fields that he
would be out of touch, and those relationships were fluid anyway,
relaxed, superficial. The only person he missed was Lin. Her work was
keeping her at least as busy as him, and as the momentum of his
research picked up, it was increasingly difficult to find times when
they could meet.

Instead, Isaac sat up
in bed and wrote her letters. He asked her about her sculpture, and
he told her that he missed her. Every other morning or so he would
stamp and post these letters in the box at the end of his street.

She wrote back to him.
Isaac used her letters to tease himself. He would not let himself
read them until he had finished his day’s work. Then he would
sit and drink tea or chocolate in his window, sending his shadow out
over the Canker and the darkening city, and read her letters. He was
surprised at the sentimental warmth these moments made him feel.
There was a degree of maudlin relish in the moods, but just as much
affection, a real connection, a lack he felt when Lin was not there.

Within a week he had
built a prototype of the crisis engine, a banging, spitting circuit
of pipes and wire that did nothing more than produce noise in great
gobbets and barks. He took it apart and rebuilt it. A little over
three weeks later another untidy conglomerate of mechanical parts
sprawled before the window, where the cages of winged things had
gained their freedom. It was uncontained, a vague grouping of
separate motors and dynamos and converters spread across the floor,
connected by rough-and-ready engineering.

Isaac wanted to wait
for Yagharek, but the garuda could not be contacted, living as he was
like a vagrant. Isaac believed it to be Yagharek’s weird,
inverted clutching at dignity. Living on the street he was beholden
to none. The pilgrimage he had made across the continent would not
end with him gratefully relinquishing his responsibility, his
self-control. Yagharek was a deracinated outsider in New Crobuzon. He
would not rely on, or be thankful to, others.

Isaac imagined him
moving from place to place, sleeping on bare floors in deserted
buildings, or curled up on roofs, huddled by steam-vents for heat. It
might be an hour before he came to visit, or it might be weeks. It
only took half a day of waiting before Isaac decided to test his
creation in Yagharek’s absence.

**

In the belljar where
the wires and tubes and flexing cables converged, Isaac had placed a
piece of cheese. It sat there, drying slowly, while he hammered at
the keys of his calculator. He was trying to mathematize the forces
and vectors involved. He stopped often to take notes.

Below him, he heard the
sniffling of Sincerity the badger, and Lublamai’s clucking
response, the humming progress of the cleaning construct. Isaac was
able to ignore them all, zone them out, focus on the numbers.

He felt a little
uncomfortable, unwilling to pursue his work with Lublamai in the
room. Isaac was still pursuing his unusual policy of silence.
Perhaps
I’m just developing a taste for the theatrical,
he thought,
and grinned. When he had solved his equations as best he could, he
dawdled, willing Lublamai to leave. Isaac peered under the walkway at
where Lublamai scrawled diagrams on graph paper. He did not look as
if he were about to go. Isaac grew tired of waiting.

He picked his way
through the miasma of metal and glass that littered his floor and
squatted gently with the information-input of the crisis engine on
his left. The circuit of machinery and tubes described a meandering
circle around the room, culminating in the cheese-filled belljar by
his right hand.

Isaac held a flexing
metal tube in one hand, its end connected to his laboratory boiler by
the far wall. He was nervous, and excited. As quietly as he could, he
connected the tube to the power-input valve on the crisis engine. He
released the catch and felt the steam begin to fill the motor. There
was a hissing hum and a clattering. Isaac knelt over and copied his
mathematical formulae on the input keys. He slotted four programme
cards quickly into the unit, felt the little wheels slide and bite,
saw the dust rise as the engine’s vibrations increased.

He murmured to himself
and watched intently.

Isaac felt as if he
could sense the power and data passing through the synapses to the
various nodes of the dismembered crisis engine. He felt as if the
steam was pushing through his own veins, turning his heart into a
hammering piston. He flicked three large switches on the unit, heard
the whole construction warming up.

The air hummed.

For sluggish seconds,
nothing happened. Then, in the dirty belljar, the clump of cheese
began to shudder.

Isaac watched it and
wanted to shout with triumph. He twisted a dial one hundred and
eighty degrees and the thing moved a little more.

Let’s bring on
a crisis,
Isaac thought, and pulled the lever that made the
circuit complete, that brought the glass jar under the attention of
the sensory machines.

Isaac had adapted the
belljar, cutting away its top and replacing it with a plunger. He
reached for this now and began to press it, so that its abrasive
bottom moved slowly towards the cheese. The cheese was under threat.
If the plunger completed its motion the cheese would be completely
crushed.

As Isaac pressed with
his right hand, with his left he adjusted knobs and dials in response
to juddering pressure gauges. He watched their needles plunge and
leap and adjusted the thaumaturgic current in response.

"Come on, you
little fucker," he whispered. "Look out, eh? Can’t
you feel it? Crisis coming for you..."

The plunger edged
sadistically closer and closer to the cheese. The pressure in the
pipes was growing dangerously high. Isaac hissed in frustration. He
slowed the pace with which he threatened the cheese, moving the
plunger inexorably down. If the crisis engine failed and the cheese
did not show the effects he had tried to programme, Isaac would still
crush it. The crisis was all about potentiality. If he had no genuine
intention to crush the cheese, it would not be in crisis. You could
not
trick
an ontological field.

Then, as the whine from
steam and singing pistons became uncomfortable, and the edges of the
plunger’s shadow sharpened as it bore down on the base of the
belljar, the cheese exploded. There was a loud semi-liquid smack, as
the nugget of cheese blew up with speed and violence, spattering the
inside of the belljar with crumbs and oil.

Lublamai yelled up,
asking what in Jabber’s name was that, but Isaac was not
listening. He sat gawping at the destroyed cheese like a fool, his
mouth slack. Then he laughed with incredulity and joy.

"Isaac? What the
fuck you up to?" yelled Lublamai.

"Nothing, nothing!
Sorry to bother you...Just some work...Going pretty well,
actually..." Isaac’s reply was interrupted as he broke off
to smile.

He turned off the
crisis engine quickly and lifted the belljar. He ran his fingers over
the smeared, half-melted mess inside.
Incredible!
he thought.

He had attempted to
programme the cheese to hover an inch or two above the floor. So from
that point of view, he supposed this was a failure. But he had not
expected
anything
to happen! Certainly, he had got the maths
wrong, misprogramming the cards. It was obvious that specifying the
effects he was aiming for would be extremely hard. Probably the
tapping process itself was appallingly crude, leaving all sorts of
room for errors and imperfections in the process. And he hadn’t
even
tried
to create the kind of permanent feedback loop that
he was eventually aiming for.

But, but...
he had
tapped crisis energy.

This was totally
unprecedented. For the first time, Isaac truly believed that his
ideas would work. From now on, the job was one of refinement. A lot
of problems, of course, but problems of a different and much lesser
order. The basic conundrum, the central problem of all of crisis
theory, had been
solved.

Isaac gathered his
notes, leafed through them reverentially. He could not believe what
he had done. Immediately, more plans came to him.
Next time,
he thought,
I’ll use a piece of vodyanoi watercraeft.
Something already held together by crisis energy. That should make
life a whole lot more interesting, maybe we can start getting that
loop going...
Isaac was giddy. He slapped his forehead and
grinned.

I’m going out,
Isaac thought suddenly.
I’m going to...to get drunk. I’m
going to find Lin. I’m going to have a night off. I’ve
just solved one of the intractable damn problems in one of the most
controversial paradigms of science and
I deserve a drink...He
smiled at his mental outburst, then grew serious. He realized that he
had decided to tell Lin about the crisis engine.
I can’t
think about it on my own any more,
he thought.

He checked that he had
his keys and his wallet in his pockets. He stretched and shook
himself, then descended to the ground floor. Lublamai turned at the
sound of his feet.

"I’m off,
Lub," said Isaac.

"You calling it a
day, Isaac? It’s only three."

"Listen, old son,
I’ve clocked up a few extra hours," Isaac grinned back.
"I’m having a half-day. Anyone asks, I’ll see ‘em
tomorrow."

"Righto,"
said Lublamai, returning to his work with a wave. "Have a good
one."

Isaac grunted goodbye.

He stopped in the
middle of Paddler Way and sighed, purely for the pleasured the air.
The little street was not busy, but neither was it deserted. Isaac
saluted one or two of his neighbours, then turned and strode off
towards Petty Coil. It was a gorgeous day, and he had decided to walk
to Salacus Fields.

**

The warm air seeped in
through door and windows and cracks in the warehouse walls. Once,
Lublamai stopped working to adjust his clothing. Sincerity was
tussling playfully with a beetle. The construct had finished cleaning
some time ago, and now stood gently ticking in the far corner, one of
its optical lenses seemingly fixed on Lublamai.

A little while after
Isaac left, Lublamai rose and, leaning out of the open window by his
desk, he tied a red scarf to a bolt in the brick. He made a list of
shopping that he needed, should Teafortwo come by. Then he returned
to work.