Perdido Street Station

by China Miéville

  Barbile cried out and waited a moment, then realized that she was still alive and began to scream again.

  The slake-moth turned on Derkhan. Two of its whip arms flailed across the seven feet separating them and smacked petulantly across her back. There was an almighty cracking sound. Derkhan was thrown through the open door, her breath pushed violently through her lungs. She wailed as she fell.

  “Don’t look round!” screamed Isaac. “Go! Go! I’m coming!”

  He tried not to hear Barbile begging. He did not have time to reload.

  As he made his way slowly for the door, praying that the creature would continue to ignore him, he watched what unfolded in the mirror.

  He refused to process it. It was, for now, a mindless slick of images. Later he might consider it, if he left this house alive and found his way home, to his friends, if he survived to plan, he would think on what he was seeing.

  But for now he carefully thought of nothing as he saw the slake-moth turn its attention back to the woman held fast in its arms. He thought of nothing as he saw it force open her eyes with slender simian fingers and thumbs, heard her scream until she vomited with fear and then stop all her noises very suddenly as she caught sight of the flexing patterns on the slake-moth’s wings. Saw those wings gently widen and stretch taut into a hypnotic canvas, saw Barbile’s entranced expression as her eyes widened to gaze on those morphing colours; saw her body relax and the slake-moth drool in vile anticipation, its unspeakable tongue unrolling again out of that gaping mouth and snaking its way up Barbile’s saliva-spattered shirt to her face, her eyes still glazed in idiot ecstasy at those wings. Saw the feathered tip of the tongue nuzzle gently against Barbile’s face, her nose, her ears and then shove suddenly, forcefully past her teeth into her mouth (and Isaac retched even as he tried to think of nothing), thrusting at indecent speed into her face, her eyes bulging as more and more of the tongue disappeared into her.

  And then Isaac saw something flicker under the skin of her scalp, bulging and wriggling and rippling beneath her hair and flesh like an eel in mud, saw a movement that was not hers behind her eyes, and he watched mucus and tears and ichor pour from the orifices of her head as the tongue wriggled into her mind and just before he fled Isaac saw her eyes dim and go out and the slake-moth’s stomach distend as it drank her dry.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Lin was alone.

  She sat in the attic, leaning back against a wall with her feet splayed like a doll’s. She watched the dust move. It was dark. The air was warm. It was sometime in the small hours, between two and four.

  The night was interminable and unforgiving. Lin could hearfeel vibrations in the air, the tremulous cries and howls of disturbed sleep rocking the city all around her. Her own head felt heavy with portent and menace.

  Lin rocked back a little and rubbed her headscarab wearily. She was afraid. She was not so stupid as to not know that something was wrong.

  She had arrived at Motley’s some hours before, in the late afternoon of the previous day. As usual, she had been instructed to make her way to the attic. But when she had entered the long, desiccated room, she had been alone.

  The sculpture loomed darkly at the far end of the room. After she had looked around, idiotically, as if Motley could be hiding unseen in the bare space, she had walked over to examine the piece. She had supposed, a little uneasily, that Motley would join her soon.

  She had stroked the khepri-spit figure. It was half finished. Motley’s various legs had been rendered in curling shapes and hyperreal colours. It terminated about three feet from the floor in drooping, liquid undulations. It looked as if a life-size candle in Motley’s shape had been half burned.

  Lin had waited. An hour had passed. She had tried to lift the trapdoor and open the door to the passageway, but both were locked. She had stamped on the one and thumped the other, loudly and repetitively, but there was no response.

  There’s some mistake, she had told herself. Motley’s busy, he’ll be along shortly, he’s just tied up, but it was totally unconvincing. Motley was consummate. As a businessman, a thug, a philosopher and a performer.

  This delay was no accident. This was deliberate.

  Lin did not know why, but Motley wanted her to sit, and sweat, alone.

  She sat for hours until her nervousness became fear became boredom became patience, and she drew designs in the dust and opened her case to count her colourberries, again and again. Night came, and still she was left.

  Her patience became fear again.

  Why is he doing this? she thought. What does he want? This was quite different from Motley’s usual playing, his teases, his dangerous loquacity. This was far more ominous.

  And finally, at last, hours after her arrival, she heard a noise.

  Motley was in the room, flanked by his cactacae lieutenant and a pair of hulking gladiator Remade. Lin did not know how they had entered. She had been alone seconds before.

  She stood and waited. Her hands were clutching.

  “Ms. Lin. Thank you for coming,” said Motley from a tumorous cluster of mouths.

  She waited.

  “Ms. Lin,” he continued. “I had the most interesting conversation with one Lucky Gazid the day before yesterday. I suspect you haven’t seen Mr. Gazid for a while. He’s been working for me incognito. Anyway, as you doubtless know, there’s something of a citywide drought of dreamshit at the moment. Burglary is up. As is mugging. People are desperate. Prices have gone quite mad. There simply isn’t any new dreamshit being released into the city. What all this means is that Mr. Gazid, for whom dreamshit is the current drug of choice, is in rather a state. He can’t afford the merchandise any more, even with an employee’s discount.

  “So anyway, the other day I heard him swearing—he was in withdrawal and cursing anyone who’d come near, but this was a bit different. D’you know what he shouted as he gnawed himself? Fascinating. It was something along the lines of ‘I should never have given that ‘shit to Isaac!’ “

  The cactacae beside Mr. Motley unclasped his massive hands and rubbed his callused green fingers together. He reached up to his uncovered chest, and with a terrible deliberation, he pricked his finger on one of his own spikes, testing its point. His face was impassive.

  “Isn’t that interesting, Ms. Lin?” continued Motley with a sickly jauntiness. He began to pace crabwise towards her on his innumerable legs.

  What is this? What is this? thought Lin as he approached. There was nowhere for her to hide.

  “Now, Ms. Lin. Some very valuable items have been stolen from me. A clutch of little factories, if you like. Hence the lack of dreamshit. And d’you know? I have to admit I’ve been stymied as to who might have done it. Really. I’ve had nothing to go on.” He paused and a tide of icy smiles crossed his multiple features. “Until I heard Gazid. Then it all . . . made . . . sense.” He spat each word.

  At some silent signal his cactus vizier strode towards Lin, who cringed and tried to break away, but was too late, as he reached out with his enormous meaty fists and gripped her arms tightly, immobilizing her.

  Lin’s headlegs spasmed and she emitted a piercing chymical screech at the pain. Cactacae were usually assiduous in pruning the thorns on the insides of their palms, to better manipulate objects, but this one had let his grow. Clutches of stubby fibrous quills spiked her arms mercilessly.

  She was pinioned, and dragged effortlessly before Motley. He leered at her. When he spoke again his voice was thick with threat.

  “Your bugfucking lover has tried to screw me, hasn’t he, Ms. Lin? Buying up great swathes of my dreamshit, keeping his own moths, so Gazid tells me, and then stealing mine.” He roared the last words, trembling.

  Lin could hardly think over the pain in her arms but she desperately tried to sign from her hip: No no no it’s not like that it’s not like that . . .

  Motley slapped her hands down.

  “Don’t fucking try it, you bug-head bitch, you cross-whore, you slut. Your
scum-sucking man’s been trying to squeeze me out of my own fucking market. Well, that’s a very, very dangerous game.” He backed away a little and regarded her as she writhed.

  “We are going to bring Mr. der Grimnebulin in to account for his theft. D’you think he’ll come if we offer him you?”

  Blood was stiffening the arms of Lin’s shirt. She tried again to sign.

  “You’ll get a chance to explain yourself, Ms. Lin,” said Motley, calm again. “Maybe you’re a partner in crime, maybe you have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s bad luck for you, I must say. I will not be letting this go.” He watched her try desperately to tell him, to explain, to squirm her way free.

  Her arms were seizing up. The cactus was rendering her dumb. As she felt her head dull with the constricting pain, she heard Mr. Motley’s whisper.

  “I am not a forgiving man.”

  Outside the University Science Faculty, the quad thronged with students. Many were wearing the regulation black gowns: a few rebellious souls slung them over their arms as they left the building.

  Among the tide of figures were two motionless men. They stood leaning against the tree, ignoring the sap that stuck to them. It was humid, and one man was dressed incongruously in a long coat and dark hat.

  They stood without moving for a long time. One class ended, and then another. The men saw two cycles of students come and go. Occasionally one or the other would rub his eyes, stretch his face a little. Always he would return his apparently casual attention to the main entrance.

  Finally, as the afternoon shadows began to stretch out, the men moved. Their target appeared. Montague Vermishank stepped from the building and sniffed the air gingerly, as if he knew he should enjoy it. He began to remove his jacket, then stopped and pulled it back around him. He set off into Ludmead.

  The men below the tree stepped out from under the leaves and sauntered after their prey.

  It was a busy day. Vermishank headed north, looking around him for a cab. He wound up Tench Way, Ludmead’s most bohemian thoroughfare, where progressive academics held court in cafés and bookshops. The buildings of Ludmead were old and well preserved, their façades scrubbed and freshly painted. Vermishank ignored them. He had walked this way for years. He was oblivious to his surroundings, and to his pursuers.

  A four-wheel cab appeared through the crowd, pulled by some uncomfortable shaggy biped from the northern tundra that paced its way through the rubbish on back-bent legs like a bird’s. Vermishank raised his arm. The cabdriver attempted to manoeuvre his vehicle towards him. Vermishank’s pursuers sped up.

  “Monty,” boomed the larger man and slapped his shoulder. Vermishank turned in alarm.

  “Isaac,” he faltered. His eyes darted around him, sought the cab, which was still approaching.

  “How are you, old son?” yelled Isaac in his left ear, and underneath it, Vermishank heard another voice hissing in his right.

  “The thing poking your stomach is a knife and I will gut you like a fucking fish if you even breathe in a way I don’t like.”

  “So glad to bump into you,” howled Isaac jocularly, waving the cab over. The driver muttered and approached.

  “Try to run and I will cut you and if you get out of my hands I will shoot a bullet into your brain,” the voice crooned with loathing.

  “Come and have a drink at mine,” said Isaac. “Brock Marsh, please driver. Paddler Way, you know it? Handsome beast, by the way.” Isaac kept up a stream of loud nonsense as he swung into the closed carriage. Vermishank followed, shaking and stuttering, goaded by the sting of the blade. Lemuel Pigeon followed him in and slammed the door shut, then sat looking straight forward holding the knife at Vermishank’s side.

  The driver pulled away from the kerb. The creaking and rattling and complaining bleats of the animal cocooned the three men in the cab.

  Isaac turned to Vermishank with the exaggerated delight gone from his face.

  “You have a lot of talking to do, you evil cunt,” he hissed menacingly.

  His prisoner was visibly regaining his poise second by second.

  “Isaac,” he murmured. “Hah. How can I help you?”

  He started as Lemuel jabbed him.

  “Shut your fucking mouth.”

  “Shut my mouth and do a lot of talking, Isaac?” mused Vermishank smoothly, then yelped incredulously as Isaac struck him, hard and suddenly. He gazed at him astonished, gingerly stroking his stinging face.

  “I tell you when to talk,” said Isaac.

  They were silent the rest of the journey, swaying south past Lud Fallow Station and over the sluggish Canker at Danechi’s Bridge. Isaac paid the driver as Lemuel hustled Vermishank into the warehouse.

  Inside, David glowered from his desk, half turning to watch the proceedings. His russet waistcoat was incongruously cheerful. Yagharek skulked in a corner, half visible. His feet were wrapped in rags and his head was hidden in a hood. He had discarded the wooden wings. He was not disguised as whole, but as a human.

  Derkhan looked up from an armchair she had pulled into the middle of the back wall, below the window. She was crying fiercely and without a sound. She was clutching a handful of newspapers. Front pages were strewn around her. “Midsummer Nightmares Spread,” said one, and another asked “What Has Happened to Sleep?” Derkhan ignored these pages, cutting out another minor story from page five or seven or eleven in each paper. Isaac could read one from where he stood: “Eyespy Killer Claims Criminal Editor.”

  The cleaning construct hissed and whirred and clanked its way around the room, clearing the rubbish, sweeping up the dust, collecting the old papers and fruit debris that littered the floor. Sincerity the badger meandered listlessly along the far wall.

  Lemuel shoved Vermishank into the middle of three chairs by the door and sat a few feet from him. Ostentatiously he drew out his pistol and aimed it at Vermishank’s head.

  Isaac locked the door.

  “Right, Vermishank,” he said in a businesslike fashion. He sat and stared at his former boss. “Lemuel is a very good shot, in case you have adventurous ideas. He’s a bit of a villain, actually. Bit dangerous. And I am not in any kind of mood to defend you, so I recommend you tell us what we want to know.”

  “What do you want to know, Isaac?” said Vermishank smoothly. Isaac was enraged, but impressed. The man was damn good at regaining and retaining his aplomb.

  That, Isaac decided, would have to be dealt with.

  Isaac stood and stalked over to Vermishank. The older man looked up at him idly, his eyes only widening in alarm too late as he realized that Isaac was going to hit him again.

  Isaac punched Vermishank in the face twice, ignoring his old boss’s squawk of pain and astonishment. Isaac gripped Vermishank by the throat and lowered himself into a squat, bringing his face next to his terrified prisoner’s. Vermishank was bleeding from his nose, and scrabbling ineffectually at Isaac’s massive hands. His eyes were glazed with terror.

  “I don’t think you understand the situation, old son,” whispered Isaac with loathing. “I have sound reason to believe that you’re responsible for my friend lying upstairs shitting himself and drooling. I am not in any mood for sodding around, playing games, going by rules. I don’t care if you live, Vermishank. D’you understand? Are you with me? So here’s the best way of doing this. I tell you what we know—don’t waste my time asking how we know it—and you fill in what we don’t. Every time you don’t answer or the consensus here is that you’re lying, either Lemuel or I will hurt you.”

  “You can’t torture me, you bastard . . .” hissed Vermishank in a strangulated wheeze.

  “Fuck you,” breathed Isaac. “You’re the Remaker. Now . . . answer the questions or die.”

  “Possibly both,” added Lemuel coldly.

  “See, you’re wrong, Monty,” continued Isaac. “We can torture you. That’s exactly what we can do. So best to co-operate. Answer quickly, and convince me you ain’t lying. Here’s what we know. Correct me if I’m wr
ong, by the way, won’t you?” He sneered at Vermishank.

  There was a pause as Isaac ran through the facts in his head. Then he spoke them, ticking each item off on his fingers.

  “You’re in charge of biohazardous stuff for the government. That means the slake-moth programme.” He looked up for a reaction, some surprise that the secret of the project was out. Vermishank was motionless. “The slake-moths have escaped—the slake-moths that you sold to some fucking criminal. They have something to do with dreamshit, and with the . . . with the nightmares that everyone’s having. Rudgutter thought they were something to do with Benjamin Flex—wrongly, incidentally.

  “Now, what we need to know is the following. What are they? What’s the connection with the drug? How do we catch them?”

  There was a pause as Vermishank sighed lengthily. His lips were trembling wetly, slick with blood and saliva, but he gave a little smile. Lemuel wagged the gun to chivvy him along.

  “Hah. Slake-moths,” breathed Vermishank eventually. He swallowed and massaged his neck. “Well. Aren’t they fascinating? Amazing species.”

  “What are they?” said Isaac.

  “What do you mean? You’ve clearly found out that much. They are predators. Efficient, brilliant predators.”

  “Where are they from?”

  “Hah.” Vermishank pondered a moment. He glanced up as Lemuel lazily and ostentatiously began to aim his gun at Vermishank’s knee. Vermishank continued quickly. “We got the grubs from a merchant on one of the southernmost of the Shards—it must have been on their arrival that you stole one—but they aren’t native to there.” He looked up at Isaac with what looked like amusement. “If you really want to know, the current favourite theory is that they come from the Fractured Land.”

  “Don’t fuck about . . .” shouted Isaac in rage, but Vermishank interrupted him.

  “I am not, you fool. That is the favoured hypothesis. Fractured Land theory has been given a powerful boost in some circles by the discovery of the slake-moths.”