Perdido Street Station (99 page)

**

I visited Howl
Barrow today. I saw Lichford. I stood before a grey wall in
Barrackham, the crumbling skin of a dead factory, and read all the
graffiti.

I was foolish. I
took risks. Did not remain carefully hidden.

I felt almost drunk
with that little snatch of freedom, eager for more.

So I returned at
last through the night, to that hollow and forsaken attic, to Isaac’s
brutal betrayal.

What breach of
faith, what cruelty.

I open it once more
(ignoring Derkhan’s pathetic little words, like some dusting of
sugar on poison). The extraordinary tension in the words seems to
make them crawl. I can see Isaac striving for so many things as he
writes. Bluff no-nonsense. Anger, stern disapproval. True misery.
Objectivism. And some weird comradeship, some shame-faced apology.

...
had a visitor
today...
I read, and...
under the circumstances...

Under the
circumstances. Under the circumstances I will flee you. I will turn
and judge you. I will leave you with your shame, I will know you from
the inside and I will pass on and I will not help you.

...
not going to
ask you "how could you?"
I read and I feel weak
suddenly, truly weak, not as if I will faint or vomit but as if I
will die.

It makes me cry out.

It makes me scream.
I cannot stop this noise, I do not want to, I shriek and shriek and
as my voice grows, memories of war-cries come to me, memories of my
band racing in to hunt or fight, memories of funereal ululation and
exorcism wails but this is none of these, this is my pain,
unstructured, uncultured, unregulated and illicit and my own, my
agony, my loneliness, my misery, my guilt.

**

She told me no, that
Sazhin had asked for her that summer; that as it was his
gathering-year she had said yes; that she wanted to pair exclusively
as a present to him.

She told me I was
unfair, that I should leave her immediately, respect her, show
respect and leave her be.

**

It was an ugly,
vicious coupling. I was only a little stronger than her. It took a
long time to subdue her. She clawed and bit me every moment, battered
me viciously. I was unrelenting.

I grew infuriated.
Lustful and jealous. I beat her and entered her when she lay stunned.

Her anger was
extraordinary and awesome. It woke me to what I had done.

**

Shame has draped me
since that day. Remorse came only a little later. They gather about
me as if to replace my wings.

**

The band’s
vote was unanimous. I did not contest the facts (it entered my mind
to do so for the briefest moment and a wave of self-loathing made me
retch).

There could be no
question about judgement.

I knew it was the
correct decision. I could even show a little dignity, a tiny shred,
as I walked between the elected finishers of the law. I was slow,
shuffling with the enormous weight of ballast attached to me, to stop
me fleeing and flying, but I walked on without pause or question.

It was only at the
last that I faltered, when I saw the stakes that would tether me to
the baked earth.

**

They had to drag me
the last twenty feet, into the dried-up bed of the Ghost River. I
twisted and fought at every step. I begged for mercy I did not
deserve. We were half a mile from our encampment and I am sure that
my band heard every scream.

**

I was stretched out
cruciform, my belly in the dust and the sun driving upon me. I tugged
at my bonds until my hands and feet were absolutely numb.

Five on each side,
holding my wings. Holding my great wings tight as I thrashed and
sought to beat them hard and viciously against my captors’
skulls. I looked up and saw the sawman, my cousin, red-feathered
San’jhuarr.

Dust and sand and
heat and the coursing wind in the channel. I remember them.

**

I remember the touch
of the metal. The extraordinary sense of intrusion, the horrific
in-out-in-out motion of the serrated blade. It fouled with my flesh
many times, had to be withdrawn and wiped clean. I remember the
breathtaking inrush of hot air on tissue laid bare, on nerves torn
from their roots. The slow, slow, merciless cracking of bone. I
remember the vomit that quenched my screams, briefly, before my mouth
cleared and I drew breath and screamed again. Blood in frightening
quantities. The sudden, giddying weightlessness as one wing was
lifted away and the stubs of bone trembled shatteringly back into my
flesh and ragged fringes of meat slithered from my wound and the
agonizing pressure of clean cloth and unguents on my lacerations and
the slow stalk of Sanjhuarr around my head and the knowledge, the
unbearable knowledge that it was all about to happen again.

**

I never questioned
that I deserved the judgement. Even when I fled to find flight again.
I was doubly ashamed. Crippled and shorn of respect for my
choice-theft; I would add to that the shame of overturning a just
punishment.

I could not live. I
could not be earthbound. I was dead.

**

I put Isaac’s
letter in my ragged clothes without reading his merciless, miserable
farewell. I cannot say for sure that I despise him. I cannot say for
sure I would do other than he has done.

I step out and down.

Some streets away in
Saltbur, a fifteen-storey towerblock rises over the eastern city. The
front door will not lock. It is easy to clamber over the gate that
supposedly blocks access to the flat roof. I have climbed that
edifice before.

It is a short walk.
I feel as if I am sleeping. The citizens stare at me as I step past
them. I am not wearing my hood. I cannot see that it matters.

No one stops me as I
climb the huge building. On two levels, doors open very slightly as I
walk past on the treacherous stairwell, and I am stared at by eyes
too hidden in darkness for me to see. But I am not challenged, and
within minutes I am on the roof.

One hundred and
fifty feet or more. There are plenty of taller structures in New
Crobuzon. But this is high enough that the block rears out of the
streets and stone and brick like something enormous emerging from
water.

I stalk past the
rubble and the signs of bonfires, the detritus of intruders and
squatters. I am alone in the skyline tonight.

The brick wall that
contains the roofspace is five feet high. I lean on it and look out,
to all sides.

I know what it is I
see.

I can place myself
exactly.

That is a glimpse of
the Glasshouse dome, a smudge of dirty light between two gas towers.
The clenching Ribs are only a mile away, dwarfing the railways and
the stubby houses. Dark clutches of trees pepper the city. The
lights, the lights of all the different colours, all around me.

I vault easily onto
the wall, and stand.

I am on top of New
Crobuzon now.

It is such an
enormous thing. Such a great wallow. There is everything within it,
spread out under my feet.

I can see the
rivers. The Canker is about six minutes’ flying time away. I
stretch out my arms.

**

The winds rush up to
me and hammer me with joy. The air is boisterous and alive.

I close my eyes.

I can imagine it
with absolute exactitude. A flight. To kick out with the legs and
feel my wings grab the air and throw it easily earthward, scooping
great chunks away from me like paddles. The hard slog into a thermal
where the feathers plump and prime, spread out, drifting, easing,
gliding up around in a spiral over this enormity below me. It is
another city from above. The hidden gardens become spectacles to
delight me. The dark bricks are something to shake off like mud.
Every building becomes an eyrie. The whole of the city can be treated
with disrespect, landing and alighting on a whim, soiling the air in
passing.

From the air, in
flight, from above, the government and militia are pompous termites,
the squalor a dulled patch passing quickly away, the degradations
that take place in the shadow of the architecture are none of my
concern.

I feel the wind
force my fingers apart. I am buffeted invitingly. I feel the
twitching as my ragged flanges of wingbone stretch.

I will not do this
any more. I will not be this cripple, this earth-bound bird, any
longer.

This half-life ends
now, with my hope.

I can so well
picture a last flight, a swift, elegant curving sweep through the air
that parts like a lost lover to welcome me.

Let the wind take
me.

I lean forward on
the wall, out over the tumbling city, into the air.

**

Time is quite still.
I am poised. There is no sound. The city and the air are poised.

**

And I reach up
slowly and run my fingers through my feathers. Pushing them slowly
aside as my skin bristles, rubbing them mercilessly the wrong way,
against the grain. I open my eyes. My fingers close and clutch at the
stiff shafts and oiled fibres on my cheeks and I snap my beak shut so
I will not cry out, and I begin to pull.

And a long time
later, hours later, in the deepest part of the night, I step back
down through that pitch stairwell and emerge.

A single cab
clatters quickly through the deserted street and then there is no
sound. Across the cobbles, beige light drools down from a guttering
gasjet.

A dark figure has
been waiting for me. He steps into the little pool of light, and
stands, his face shadowed. He waves slowly to me. There is a
fractional moment when I think of all my enemies and wonder which
this man is. Then I see the huge scissoring mantis limb with which he
greets me.

I find that I am not
surprised.

Jack Half-a-Prayer
extends his Remade arm again and with a slow, portentous movement, he
beckons me.

He invites me in.
Into his city.

I step forward into
what little light there is.

I do not see him
start as I pass out of silhouette and he sees me.

I know how I must
look.

My face a mass of
raw and ragged flesh, bleeding copiously from a hundred little
punctures where the feathers left my flesh. Tenacious fluffs of down
that I have missed patch me like stubble. My eyes peer out from bald,
pink, ruined skin, blistered and sickly. Trickles of blood draw paths
along my skull.

My feet are
constricted again by filthy strips of rag, their monstrous shape
hidden. The fringes of feathers that segued into their scales are
ripped clean. I walk gingerly, my groin as raw and newly plucked as
my head.

I tried to break my
beak, but I could not.

I stand before the
building in my new flesh.

**

Half-a-Prayer
pauses, but not for very long. With another languorous stroke, he
repeats his invitation.

It is generous, but
I must decline.

He offers me the
half-world. He offers to share his bastard liminal life, his
interstitial city. His obscure crusades and anarchic vengeance. His
scorn for doors.

Escaped Remade,
fReemade. Nothing. He does not fit in. He has wrested New Crobuzon
into a new city, and he strives to save it from itself.

He sees another
broken-down half-thing, another exhausted relic that he might convert
to fight his unthinkable fight, another for whom existence in any
world is impossible, a paradox, a bird that cannot fly. And he offers
me a way out, into his uncommunity, his margin, his mongrel city. The
violent and honourable place from where he rages.

He is generous, but
I decline. That is not my city. Not my fight.

I must leave his
half-breed world alone, his demimonde of weird resistance. I live in
a simpler place.

He is mistaken.

I am not the
earthbound garuda any more. That one is dead. This is a new life. I
am not a half-thing, a failed neither-nor.

I have torn the
misleading quills from my skin and made it smooth, and below that
avian affectation, I am the same as my citizen fellows. I can live
foresquare in one world.

I indicate him
thanks and farewell and turn away, stepping off into the dim
lamplight to the east, towards the university campus and Ludmead
Station, through my world of bricks and mortar and tar, bazaars and
markets, sulphur-lit streets. It is night and I must hurry to my bed,
to find my bed, to find a bed in this my city where I can live my
life.

I turn away from him
and step into the vastness of New Crobuzon, this towering edifice of
architecture and history, this complexitude of money and slum, this
profane steam-powered god. I turn and walk into the city my home, not
bird or garuda, not miserable crossbreed.

I turn and walk into
my home, the city, a man.