Perdido Street Station

by China Miéville

  “If you think of any arena of study or knowledge, it lies somewhere in this triangle, but not squarely on one corner. Take sociology, or psychology, or xenthropology. Pretty simple, right? It’s down here, in the ‘Social’ corner? Well, yes and no. That’s definitely its closest node, but you can’t study societies without thinking about the questions of physical resources. Right? So straight away, the physical aspect is kicking in. So we have to move sociology along the bottom axis a little bit.” He slid his finger a fraction of an inch to the left. “But then, how can you understand, say, cactacae culture without understanding their solar-focus, or khepri culture without their deities, or vodyanoi culture without understanding shamanic channelling? You can’t,” he concluded triumphantly. “So we have to shift things up towards the occult.” His finger moved a little, accordingly.

  “So that’s roughly where sociology and psychology and the like are. Bottom right-hand corner, little bit up, little bit along.

  “Physics? Biology? Should be right over by material sciences, yeah? Only, if you say that biology has an effect on society, the reverse is also true, so biology’s actually a tiny bit to the right of the ‘Material’ corner. And what about the flight of wind-polyps? The feeding of soul trees? That stuff’s occult, so we’ve moved it again, up this time. Physics includes the efficacy of certain substances in thaumaturgic hexes. You take my point? Even the most ‘pure’ subject’s actually somewhere between the three.

  “Then there’s a whole bunch of subjects that define themselves by their mongrel nature. Socio-biology? Halfway along the bottom and a little bit up. Hypnotology? Halfway up the right flank. Social/psychological and occult, but with a bit of brain chymistry thrown in, so that’s over a bit . . .”

  Isaac’s diagram was now covered in little crosses where he located the various disciplines. He looked at Yagharek and drew a neat, final, careful x in the very centre of the triangle.

  “Now what are we looking at right here? What’s bang in the middle?

  “Some people think that’s mathematics there. Fine. But if maths is the study that best allows you to think your way to the centre, what’re the forces you’re investigating? Maths is totally abstract, at one level, square roots of minus one and the like; but the world is nothing if not rigorously mathematical. So this is a way of looking at the world which unifies all the forces: mental, social, physical.

  “If the subjects are located in one triangle, with three nodes and one centre, then so are the forces and dynamics they study. In other words, if you think this way of looking at things is interesting or helpful, then there’s basically one kind of field, one kind of force, being studied in its various aspects here. That’s why this is called ‘Unified Field Theory.’ “

  Isaac smiled, exhausted. Godspit, he realized suddenly, I’m doing rather a good job of this . . . Ten years of research have improved my teaching . . . Yagharek was watching him carefully.

  “I . . . understand . . .” the garuda finally said.

  “I’m glad to hear it. There’s more, old son, so gird your loins. UFT’s not very accepted as a theory, you know. It’s probably about the status of the Fractured Land Hypothesis, if that means anything to you.” Yagharek nodded. “Fine, you know what I mean, then. Just about respectable, but a bit crackpot. However, to shred the last vestiges of credibility I might have been able to muster, I subscribe to a minority view among UFT theorists. That’s over the nature of the forces under investigation.

  “I’ll try and keep this simple.” Isaac squeezed his eyes closed for a minute and gathered his thoughts. “Right. The question is whether it’s pathological for a dropped egg to fall.”

  He paused and let the image hang for a minute.

  “See, if you think that matter and therefore the unified force under investigation are essentially static, then falling, flying, rolling, changing your mind, casting a spell, growing older, moving, are basically deviations from an essential state. Otherwise, you think that motion is part of the fabric of ontology, and the question’s how best to theorize that. You can tell where my sympathies lie. Staticists would say I’m misrepresenting them, but fuck it.

  “So I’m a MUFTI, a Moving Unified Field Theorist. Not a SUFTI, a Static Unified . . . you get the idea. But then, being a MUFTI raises as many problems as it solves: if it moves, how does it move? Steady gait? Punctuated inversion?

  “When you pick up a piece of wood and hold it ten feet above the ground, it has more energy than when it’s on the ground. We call that potential energy, right? That’s not controversial among any scientist. Potential energy’s the energy that gives the wood the power to hurt you or mark the floor, a power it doesn’t have when it’s just resting on the ground. It has that energy when it’s motionless, like it was before, but when it could fall. If it does, the potential energy turns into kinetic energy, and you break your toe or whatever.

  “See, potential energy’s all about placing something in a situation where it’s teetering, where it’s about to change its state. Just like when you put enough strain on a group of people, they’ll suddenly explode. They’ll go from grumpy and quiescent to violent and creative in one moment. The transition from one state to another’s affected by taking something—a social group, a piece of wood, a hex—to a place where its interactions with other forces make its own energy pull against its current state.

  “I’m talking about taking things to the point of crisis.”

  Isaac sat back for a minute. To his surprise, he was loving this. The process of explaining his theoretical approach was consolidating his ideas, making him formulate his approach with a tentative rigour.

  Yagharek was a model pupil. His attention was totally unwavering, his eyes as sharp as stilettos.

  Isaac took a long breath and continued.

  “This is major shit we’re dealing with here, Yag mate. I’ve been nibbling at crisis theory for arsing years. In a nutshell: I’m saying it’s in the nature of things to enter crisis, as part of what they are. Things turn themselves inside out by virtue of being things, understand? The force that pushes the unified field on is crisis energy. Stuff like potential energy, that’s one aspect of crisis energy, one tiny partial manifestation. Now, if you could tap the reserves of crisis energy in any given situation, you’re talking about enormous power. Some situations are more crisis-ridden or -prone than others, yes, but the point of crisis theory is that things are in crisis just as part of being. There’s loads of sodding crisis energy flowing around all the time, but we haven’t yet learnt how to tap it efficiently. Instead it bursts over unreliably and uncontrollably every so often. Terrible waste.”

  Isaac shook his head at the thought.

  “The vodyanoi can tap crisis energy, I think. In a tiny, tiny way. It’s paradoxical. You tap the existing crisis energy in the water to hold it in a shape it fights against, so you put it in more crisis . . . but then there’s nowhere for the energy to go, so the crisis resolves itself by breaking down into its original form. But what if the vodyanoi used water they’d already . . . uh . . . watercræfted, and used it as a constituent for some experiment that drew on the increased crisis energy . . . Sorry. I’m digressing. The point is, I’m trying to work out a way for you to tap into your crisis energy, and channel it to flight. See, if I’m right, it’s the only force that’s always going to be . . . suffusing you. And the more you fly, the more you’re in crisis, the more you should be able to fly . . . That’s the theory, anyway . . .

  “But to be honest, Yag, this is much bigger than that. If I can really unlock crisis energy for you, then your case becomes, frankly, a pretty paltry concern. We’re talking about forces and energy that could totally change . . . everything . . .”

  The incredible idea stilled the air. The dirty environs of the warehouse seemed too small and mean for this conversation. Isaac stared out of the window into the grubby New Crobuzon night. The moon and her daughters were dancing sedately above him. The daughters, smaller than their mother but bigger
than stars, shone hard and cold above him. Isaac thought about crisis.

  Eventually Yagharek spoke.

  “And if you are right . . . I will fly?”

  Isaac burst into laughter at the bathetic demand.

  “Yes, yes, Yag old son. If I’m right, you’ll fly again.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Isaac could not persuade Yagharek to stay in the warehouse. The garuda would not explain his objections. He simply slipped away into the evening, a wretched outcast for all his pride, to sleep in some ditch or chimney or ruin. He would not even accept food. Isaac stood at the door to the warehouse and watched him go. Yagharek’s dark blanket swung loosely from that wooden framework, those false wings.

  Eventually, Isaac closed the door. He returned to his ledge and watched lights slide along the Canker. He rested his head on his fists and listened to the tick of his clock. The feral sounds of New Crobuzon at night inveigled their way through his walls. He heard the melancholy lowing of machines and ships and factories.

  In the room below him, David and Lublamai’s construct seemed to cluck gently in time to the clock.

  Isaac collected his drawings from the walls. Some that he thought were good he stuffed into an obese portfolio. Many he squinted at critically and threw away. He got onto his big belly and rooted under the bed, bringing out a dusty abacus and a slide-rule.

  What I need, he thought, is to get to the university and liberate one of their difference engines. It would not be easy. The security for such items was neurotic. Isaac realized suddenly that he would have the chance to scope out the guard systems for himself: he was going to the university the next day, to talk to his much-loathed employer, Vermishank.

  Not that Vermishank employed him much these days. It had been months since he had received a letter in that tight little hand telling him his services were required to research some abstruse and perhaps pointless bywater of theory. Isaac could never refuse these “requests.” To do so would have been to risk his access privileges to the university’s resources, and hence to a rich vein of equipment he plundered more or less at his leisure. Vermishank did not make any move to restrict Isaac’s privileges, despite their attenuating professional relationship, and despite probably noticing a correlation between disappearing resources and Isaac’s research schedule. Isaac did not know why. Probably to try to keep power over me, he thought.

  It would be the first time in his life he had sought out Vermishank, he realized, but Isaac had to go and see him. Even though he felt committed to his new approach, his crisis theory, he could not entirely turn his back on more mundane technologies such as Remaking without asking one of the city’s foremost bio-thaumaturges’ opinions on Yagharek’s case. It would have been unprofessional.

  Isaac made himself a ham roll and a cup of cold chocolate. He steeled himself at the thought of Vermishank. Isaac disliked him for a huge variety of reasons. One of them was political. Biothaumaturgy after all, was a polite way to describe an expertise one of whose uses was to tear at and recreate flesh, to bond it in unintended ways, to manipulate it within the limits dictated only by imagination. Of course, the techniques could heal and repair, but that was not their usual application. No one had any proof, of course, but Isaac would not be at all surprised if some of Vermishank’s research had been carried out in the punishment factories. Vermishank had the skill to be an extraordinary sculptor in flesh.

  There was a thump on his door. Isaac looked up in surprise. It was nearly eleven o’clock. He put down his supper and hurried down the stairs. He opened the door on a debauched-looking Lucky Gazid.

  What the fuck is this? he thought.

  “ ’Zaac, my brother, my . . . bumptious, bungling . . . beloved . . .” Gazid screamed as soon as he saw Isaac. He groped for more alliteration. Isaac pulled him into the warehouse as lights went on across the road.

  “Lucky, you fucking arse, what do you want?”

  Gazid was pacing from side to side much too quickly. His eyes were stretched wide open, and virtually spiralling in his head. He looked hurt by Isaac’s tone.

  “Steady on, guv, ease up, ease up, no need for nastiness, now is there? Eh? I’m looking for Lin. She here?” He giggled abruptly.

  Ah, thought Isaac carefully. This was tricky. Lucky was a Salacus Fields man, he knew the unstated truth about Isaac and Lin. But this was not Salacus Fields.

  “No, Lucky, she’s not here. And if she were here, for some reason, you’d have absolutely no right to come crashing round here in the middle of the night. What do you want her for?”

  “She’s not at home.” Gazid turned and walked up the ladder, speaking to Isaac without turning his head. “Just been round there, but I s’pose she’s hard at art, eh? She owes me money, owes me commission, for getting her the plumb job and setting her up for life. Guess that’s where she is now, eh? I want some dosh . . .”

  Isaac banged his head in exasperation and leapt up the stairs behind Gazid.

  “What the fuck are you talking about? What job? She’s doing her own stuff right now.”

  “Oh yes, course, righto, yup, that’s the size of it,” agreed Gazid with peculiar absent-minded fervour. “Owes me money, though. I’m fucking desperate, ’Zaac . . . Stand me a noble . . .”

  Isaac was getting angry. He grabbed Gazid and held him still. Gazid had the junkie’s scrawny arms. He could only struggle pathetically in Isaac’s grip.

  “Listen, Lucky, you little puke. How can you be hurting, you’re so strung out now you can hardly stand. How dare you crash round my house, you fucking junkie . . .”

  “Oy!” Gazid shouted suddenly. He sneered up at Isaac, breaking his flow. “Lin isn’t here now, but I’m hungry for something, and I want you to help me or I don’t know what I might end up saying, if Lin won’t help me, you can, you’re her knight in shining armour, her love-bug, she’s your ladybird . . .”

  Isaac drew back a fat meaty fist and smashed Lucky Gazid in the face, sending the little man yards through the air.

  Gazid squealed in astonishment and terror. He scraped his heels on the bare wood and scrabbled towards the stairs. A star of blood radiated out from below his nose. Isaac shook blood from his knuckles and stalked towards Gazid. He was cold with rage.

  Think I’m going to let you talk like that? Think you can blackmail me, you little shit? he thought.

  “Lucky, you should leave right fucking now if you don’t want me to take your head off.”

  Gazid crawled to his feet and burst out crying.

  “You’re fucking crazy, Isaac, I thought we were friends . . .”

  Snot and tears and blood dripped onto Isaac’s floor.

  “Yeah, well, you thought wrong, didn’t you, old son? You’re nothing but a fucking dreg, and I . . .” Isaac broke off from his contumely and stared in astonishment.

  Gazid was leaning against the empty cages on which the caterpillar’s box lay. Isaac could see the fat grub wriggling, jack-knifing in excitement, twisting desperately against the wire front, squirming with sudden reserves of energy towards Lucky Gazid.

  Lucky hovered, terrified, waiting for Isaac to finish.

  “What?” he wailed. “What are you going to do?”

  “Shut up,” hissed Isaac.

  The caterpillar was thinner than it had been on its arrival, and its extraordinary peacock-feather colours were dulled, but it was undoubtedly alive. It rippled its way around its little cage, feeling through the air like a blind person’s finger, faltering towards Gazid.

  “Don’t move,” hissed Isaac, and edged closer. The terrified Gazid obeyed. He followed Isaac’s line of sight and his eyes widened at the sight of the huge grub rooting its way around the little cage, trying to find a way towards him. He snatched his hand from the box with a little cry and started backwards. Instantly, the caterpillar changed direction, trying to follow him.

  “This is fascinating . . .” said Isaac. As he watched, Gazid reached up and clutched his head, shaking it suddenly and violently as if
it was full of insects.

  “Oh, what is happening in my head?” Gazid stuttered.

  As he drew closer, Isaac could feel it too. Snatches of alien sensation slithered like lightning-quick eels through his cerebellum. He blinked and coughed slightly, in thrall suddenly and briefly to the sensation of emotions that were not his clogging up his throat. Isaac shook his head and squeezed his eyes hard shut.

  “Gazid,” he snapped. “Walk slowly round it.”

  Lucky Gazid did as he was told. The caterpillar toppled over in its eager attempts to right itself, to follow him, to track him down.

  “Why does the thing want me?” moaned Lucky Gazid.

  “Well I don’t know, Lucky,” said Isaac tartly. “The poor thing’s hurting. Looks like it wants whatever you’ve got, Lucky old son. Empty your pockets slowly. Don’t worry, I’m not going to nick anything.”

  Gazid began to pull strips of paper and handkerchiefs from the folds of his soiled jacket and trousers. He hesitated, then reached inside and pulled two fat packets from his inner pockets.

  The grub went berserk. The disorienting shards of synaesthetic feeling whirled through Isaac’s and Gazid’s heads again.

  “What the fuck’ve you got?” said Isaac through clenched teeth.

  “This one’s shazbah,” said Gazid hesitantly and waved the first packet at the cage. The grub did not react. “This one’s dreamshit.” Gazid held the second envelope over the caterpillar’s head, and it all but balanced on its rear end to reach it. Its piteous wails were not quite audible, but they were acutely sensible.

  “There we go!” said Isaac. “That’s it! The thing wants dreamshit!” Isaac held out his hand to Gazid and clicked his fingers. “Give it to me.”

  Gazid hesitated, then handed over the packet.

  “Lot of stuff there, man . . . that’s a lot of moolah there, man . . .” he whimpered. “You can’t just take it, man . . .”

  Isaac hefted the pouch. It weighed about two or three pounds, he estimated. He pulled it open. Again the emotional wails burst piercingly up from the caterpillar. Isaac winced at the poignant and inhuman begging.