Perdido Street Station (95 page)

**

When they were sure the
slake-moth was dead, Motley sent men and women up and down the stairs
in quick columns, carrying sodden towels and blankets to control the
blaze it had left in its wake.

It took twenty minutes
before the fire was subdued. The beams and boards of the attic were
split and smoke-fouled. Massive footprints of charred wood and
blistered paint stretched the length of the passage. The smouldering
body of the moth rested on the top of the stairs, an unrecognizable
pile of flesh and tissue, twisted by heat into an even more exotic
shape than it had had in life.

"Grimnebulin and
his bastard friends’ll be gone," said Motley. "Find
them. Find where they went. Track them down. Trace them. Tonight.
Now."

It was easy to see how
they had escaped, out of the window and onto the roof. From there,
though, they could have gone in almost any direction. Motley’s
men shifted, looking uneasily at each other.

"Move, you Remade
scum," raged Motley. "Find them
now,
track them down
and
bring them to me."

Terrified gangs of
Remade, of humans, of cactacae and vodyanoi set out from Motley’s
terrace-den, off into the city. They made pointless plans, compared
notes, frantically raced down to Sunter, to Echomire and Ludmead, to
Kelltree and Mog Hill, all the way to Badside, over the river to
Brock Marsh, to West Gidd and Griss Fell and Murkside and Saltpetre.

They might have walked
past Isaac and his companions a thousand times.

There was an infinity
of holes in New Crobuzon. There were far more hiding places than
there were people to hide. Motley’s troops never had a chance.

On nights like that
one, when rain and streetlamp light made all the lines and edges of
the city complex—a palimpsest of gusting trees and architecture
and sound, ancient ruins, darkness, catacombs, building sites,
guesthouses, barren land, lights and pubs and sewers—it was an
endless, recursive, secretive place.

Motley’s men made
their way home empty-handed and afraid.

**

Motley raged and raged
at the unfinished statue that taunted him, perfect and incomplete.
His men searched the building, in case some clue had been missed.

In the last room on the
attic corridor, they found a militiaman sitting with his back to the
wall, comatose and alone. A bizarre, beautiful glass flintlock lay
across his lap. A game of tic-tac-toe was scratched into the wood by
his feet.

Crosses had won, in
three moves.

**

We run and hide like
hunted vermin, but it is with relief and joy.

We know that we have
won.

Isaac carries Lin in
his arms, sometimes hauling her over his shoulder apologetically when
the way is tough. We race away. We run as if we are spirits. Weary
and exhilarated. The shabby geography in the east of the city cannot
restrain us. We clamber over low fences and into narrow swathes of
backyards, rude gardens of mutant apple trees and wretched brambles,
dubious compost, mud and broken toys.

Sometimes a shade
will pass across Derkhan’s face and she will murmur something.
She thinks of Andrej; but it is hard that night to retain guilt, even
when it is deserved. There is a sombre moment, but under that spew of
warm rain, above the city lights that bloom promiscuous as weeds, it
is hard not to catch each other’s eyes and smile or caw softly
in astonishment.

The moths are gone.

There have been
terrible, terrible costs. There has been Hell to pay. But tonight as
we settle in a rooftop shack in Pincod, beyond the reach of the
skyrails, a little way north of the railway and the squalor of Dark
Water Station, we are triumphant.

**

In the morning, the
newspapers are full of dire warnings.
The Quarrell
and
The
Messenger
both hint that severe measures are to come.

Derkhan sleeps for
hours, then sits alone, her sadness and her guilt finally given space
to flower. Lin moves fitfully, in and out of consciousness. Isaac
dozes and eats the food we have stolen. He cradles Lin constantly. He
talks of Jack Half-a-Prayer in wondering tones.

He sifts through the
battered and broken components of the crisis engine, tuts and purses
his lips. He tells me he can get it working again, no problem.

At that I come alive
with longing. A final freedom. I want if badly. Flight.

He reads the
pilfered papers over my shoulder.

In the climate of
crisis, the militia are to be given extraordinary powers, we read.
They may revert to open, uniformed patrols. Civilian rights may be
curtailed. Martial law is mooted.

**

But throughout that
blustery day, the shit, the filthy discharge, the dream-poison of the
slake-moths is sinking slowly through the aether and on into the
earth. I fancy I can feel it as I lie under these dilapidated planks;
it subsides gently around me, denatured by the daylight. It drifts
like polluted snow through the planes that entangle the city, on
through layers of materia, leeching out of our dimension and away.

And when the night
comes, the nightmares have gone.

It is as if some
gentle sob, some mass exhalation of relief and languor sweeps the
city. A wave of calm gusts in from the nightside, from the west, from
Gallmarch and Smog Bend to Gross Coil, to Sheck and Brock Marsh,
Ludmead and MogHill and Abrogate Green.

The city is cleansed
in a tide of sleep. On piles of piss-damp straw in Creekside and the
slums, on bloated featherbeds in Chnum, huddled together and alone,
the citizens of New Crobuzon sleep soundly.

The city moves
without pause, of course, and there is no let-up for the nightcrews
in the docks, or the battering of metal as late shifts enter mills
and foundries. Brazen sounds puncture the night, sounds like war.
Watchmen still guard the forecourts of factories. Whores seek
business wherever they can find it. There are still crimes. Violence
does not dissipate.

But the sleepers and
the waking are not taunted by phantoms. Their terrors are their own.

Like some
unthinkable torpid giant, New Crobuzon shifts easily in its dreams.

I had forgotten the
pleasure of such a night.

When I wake to the
sun, my head is clear. I do not ache.

We have been freed.

**

This time the
stories are all of the end of the "Midsummer Nightmare," or
the "Sleeping Sickness," or the "Dream Curse," or
whatever other name the particular newspaper had coined.

We read them and
laugh, Derkhan and Isaac and I. Delight is palpable everywhere. The
city is returned. Transformed.

We wait for Lin to
wake, to come to her senses.

But she does not.

**

That first day, she
slept. Her body began to reknit itself. She clutched Isaac tight and
refused to wake. Free, and free to sleep without fear.

But now she has
woken and sat up sluggishly. Her headlegs judder a little. Her
mandibles work: she is hungry, and we find fruit in our stolen hoard,
give her breakfast.

She looks unsteadily
from me to Derkhan to Isaac as she eats. He grips her thighs,
whispers to her, too low for me to hear. She jerks her head away like
a baby. She moves with a spastic, palsied quivering.

She raises her hands
and signs for him.

He watches her
eagerly, his face creasing in incredulous despair at her fumbling,
ugly manipulations.

Derkhan s eyes widen
as she reads the words.

Isaac shakes his
head, can hardly speak.

Morning...food...warming,
he falters,
insect...journey...happy.

She cannot feed
herself. Her outer jaws spasm and split the fruit in two, or relax
suddenly and let it fall. She shakes with frustration, rocks her
head, releases a cloud of spray that Isaac says are khepri tears.

He comforts her,
holds the apple before her, helping her to bite, wiping her when she
drips juice and residue across herself.
Afraid,
she signs, as
Isaac hesitantly translates.
Mind tiring spilling loose, art
Motley!
She shakes suddenly, peering around her in terror. Isaac
shushes her, comforts her. Derkhan watches in misery.
Alone,
Lin
signs desperately, and spews out a chymical message that is opaque to
us all.
Monster warm Remade...
She looks around.
Apple,
she
signs.
Apple.

Isaac lifts it to
her mouth and lets her feed. She jigs like a toddler.

When the evening
comes and she falls asleep once more, quickly and deeply, Isaac and
Derkhan confer, and Isaac begins to rage and shout, and to cry.

She’ll recover,
he shouts, as Lin shifts in her sleep,
she’s half-dead
with fucking tiredness, she’s had the shit beaten out of her,
it’s no wonder, no wonder she’s confused...

But she does not
recover, as he knows she will not.

**

We ripped her from
the moth half drunk. Half her mind, half her dreams had been sucked
into the gullet of the vampir beast. It is gone, burnt up by stomach
juices and then by Motley’s men.

Lin wakes happy,
talks animated gibberish with her hands, flails to stand and cannot,
falls and weeps or laughs chymically, chatters with her mandibles,
fouls herself like a baby.

Lin toddles across
our roof with her half-mind. Helpless. Ruined. A weird patchwork of
childish laughter and adult dreams, her speech extraordinary and
incomprehensible, complex and violent and infantile.

Isaac is broken.

**

We move roofs, made
uneasy by noises from below. Lin has a tantrum on our journey, made
mad by our inability to understand her bizarre stream of words. She
drums her heels on the pavement, slaps Isaac with weak strokes. She
signs vile insults, tries to kick us away. We control her, hold her
tight, bundle her away.

**

We move by night. We
are fearful of the militia and of Motley’s men. We watch out
for constructs which might report to the Council. We watch carefully
for sudden movements and suspicious glances. We cannot trust our
neighbours. We must live in a hinterland of half darkness, isolated
and solipsistic. We steal what we need, or buy from tiny late-night
grocers miles from where we are settled. Every askance look, every
gaze, every shout, sudden flurry of hooves or boots, every bang or
hiss of a constructs pistons is a moment of fear.

We are the most
wanted in New Crobuzon. An honour, a dubious honour.

**

Lin wants
colourberries.

Isaac interprets her
motions thus. The faltering charade of chewing, the pulsing of her
gland (an unsettling sexual sight).

Derkhan agrees to
go. She loves Lin, too.

They spend hours on
Derkhan’s disguise, with water and butter and soot, ragged
clothes from all over, foodstuffs and the remnants of dyes. She
emerges with sleek black hair that shines like coal-crystals and a
puckered scar across her forehead. She holds herself hunched and
scowls.

When she leaves,
Isaac and I spend the hours waiting fearfully. We are almost totally
silent.

Lin continues her
idiot monologue, and Isaac tries to answer with his own hands,
caressing her and signing slowly as if she were a child. But she is
not: she is half an adult, and his manner enrages her. She tries to
stalk away and falls, her limbs disobedient. She is terrified of her
own body. Isaac helps her, sits her up and feeds her, massages her
tense, bruised shoulders.

Derkhan returns to
our muttered relief with slabs of paste and a large handful of
variegated berries. Their tones are lush and vivid.

I thought the damn
Council had us,
she says.
I thought some construct was after
me. I had to wind through Kinken to get away.

None of us know if
she was really being tracked.

Lin is excited. Her
antennae and her headlegs quiver. She tries to chew a finger of the
white paste, but she trembles and spills it and cannot control
herself. Isaac is gentle with her. He pushes the paste slowly into
her mouth, unobtrusive, as if she ate for herself.

It takes some
minutes for the headscarab to digest the paste and direct it towards
the khepri’s gland. As we wait, Isaac shakes a few
colourberries at Lin, waiting until her twitches decide him that she
wants a particular bunch, which he feeds to her gently and carefully.

We are silent. Lin
swallows and chews carefully. We watch her.

Minutes pass and
then her gland distends. We rock forward, eager to see what she will
make.

She opens her
gland-lips and pushes out a pellet of moist khepri-spit. She moves
her arms in excitement as it oozes shapeless and sopping from her,
dropping heavy to the floor like a white turd.

A thin drool of
coloured spittle from the berries streams out after it, spattering
and staining the mess.

Derkhan looks away.
Isaac cries as I have never seen a human do.

Outside our foul
shanty the city squats fatly in its freedom, brazen again and
fearless. It ignores us. It is an ingrate. The days are cooler this
week, a brief ebbing of the relentless summer. Gusts blow in from the
coast, from the Gross Tar estuary and Iron Bay. Clutches of ships
arrive every day. They queue in the river to the east, waiting to
load and unload. Merchant ships from Kohnid and Tesh; explorers from
the Firewater Straits; floating factories from Myrshock; privateers
from Figh Vadiso, respectable and law-abiding so far from the open
sea. Clouds scurry like bees before the sun. The city is raucous. It
has forgotten. It has some vague notion that once its sleep was
troubled: nothing more.