“How do they hypnotize people?”
“Wings—of unstable dimensions and shapes, beating as they do in various planes—stuffed with oneirochromatophores. Colour-cells like those in an octopus’s skin, sensitive to and affecting psychic resonances and subconscious patterns. They tap the frequencies of the dreams that are . . . ah . . . bubbling under the surface of the sentient mind. They focus them, draw them out into the surface. Hold them still.”
“How does a mirror protect you?”
“Good question, Isaac.” Vermishank’s manner was changing. He sounded more and more as if he was giving a seminar. Even in a situation like this, realized Isaac, the didactic instinct was strong in the old bureaucrat. “We simply don’t know. We’ve done all manner of experiments, with double-mirrors, treble-mirrors and so on. We don’t know why, but seeing them reflected negates the effect, even though it is formally an identical sight, as their wings are already mirrored in each other. But, and this is very interesting, reflect it again—look at them through two mirrors, I mean, like a periscope—and they can hypnotize you again. Isn’t that extraordinary?” He smiled.
Isaac paused. There was, he realized, something almost urgent about Vermishank’s manner. He seemed anxious to leave nothing out. It must have been Lemuel’s unwavering pistol.
“I’ve . . . seen one of these things feeding . . .” said Isaac. “I saw it . . . eat someone’s brain.”
“Hah.” Vermishank shook his head appreciatively. “Astonishing. You are lucky to be here. You did not see it eat anyone’s brain. Slake-moths don’t live entirely in our plane. Their . . . ah . . . nutritional needs are met by substances that we cannot measure. Don’t you see, Isaac?” Vermishank gazed at him intently, like a teacher trying to encourage the right answer from a petulant pupil. The urgency flashed again in his eyes. “I know biology’s not your strong point, but it’s such an . . . elegant mechanism, I thought you might see it. They draw the dreams out with their wings, flood the mind, break the dykes that hold back hidden thoughts, guilty thoughts, anxieties, delights, dreams . . .” He stopped. Sat back. Composed himself.
“And then,” he continued, “when the mind is nice and juicy . . . they suck it dry. The subconscious is their nectar, Isaac, don’t you see? That is why they only feed on the sentient. No cats or dogs for them. They drink the peculiar brew that results from self-reflexive thought, when the instincts and needs and desires and intuitions are folded in on themselves and we reflect on our thoughts and then reflect on the reflection, endlessly . . .” Vermishank’s voice was hushed. “Our thoughts ferment like the purest liquor. That is what the slake-moths drink, Isaac. Not the meat-calories slopping about in the brainpan, but the fine wine of sapience and sentience itself, the subconscious.
“Dreams.”
The room was silent. The idea was stunning. Everyone seemed to reel at the notion. Vermishank seemed almost to be revelling in the effect his revelations were having.
Everyone started at a clanging sound. It was just the construct, busy vacuuming the rubbish beside David’s desk. It had tried to empty the bin into its receptacle, had slightly missed and spilled the contents. It was busy trying to clear up the pieces of crumpled paper that surrounded it.
“And . . . Dammit, of course!” Isaac breathed. “That’s what the nightmares are! They . . . it’s like fertilizer! Like, I don’t know, rabbit-shit, that feeds the plants that feed the rabbits . . . It’s a little chain, a little ecosystem . . .”
“Hah. Quite,” said Vermishank. “You are thinking at last. You can’t see slake-moth faeces, or smell it, but you can sense it. In your dreams. It feeds them, makes them boil. And then the slake-moth feeds on them. A perfect loop.”
“How do you know all this, you swine?” breathed Derkhan. “How long have you been working on these monsters?”
“Slake-moths are very rare. And a state secret. That is why we were so excited about our little clutch of the things. We had one old, dying specimen, then received four new grubs. Isaac had one, of course. The original, that had fed our little caterpillars, died. We were debating whether to open the cocoon of another during its change, killing it but gleaning invaluable knowledge of its metamorphic state, but before we had decided, regrettably,” he sighed, “we had to sell all four. They were an excessive risk. The word came that our research was taking too long, that our failure to control the specimens was making the . . . ah . . . paymasters nervous. Funding was withdrawn, and our department had to pay its debts quickly, given the failure of our project.”
“Which was what?” hissed Isaac. “Weapons? Torture?”
“Oh, really, Isaac,” said Vermishank calmly. “Look at you, stiff with moral outrage. If you hadn’t stolen one of them in the first place, it would never have escaped, and it would never have freed its fellows—which is what must have happened, you realize—and think how many innocent people would have lived.”
Isaac stared at him aghast.
“Fuck you!” he screamed. He rose and would have leapt at Vermishank had Lemuel not spoken.
“Isaac,” he said curtly, and Isaac saw that Lemuel’s gun was trained on him. “Vermishank is being very co-operative and there’s more we need to know. Right?”
Isaac stared at him, nodded and sat.
“Why are you being so helpful, Vermishank?” asked Lemuel, returning his gaze to the older man.
Vermishank shrugged.
“I do not relish the idea of pain,” he said with a little simper. “In addition to which, although you will not like this . . . it will do you no good. You cannot catch them. You cannot evade the militia. Why would I hold back?” He gave a smug, loathsome grin.
And yet his eyes were nervous, his upper lip sweating. There was a forlorn note buried deep in his throat.
Godspit! thought Isaac with a sudden shock of realization. He sat up and stared at Vermishank. That is not all! He . . . he’s telling us because he’s afraid! He doesn’t think the government can catch them . . . and he’s afraid. He wants us to succeed!
Isaac wanted to taunt Vermishank with this, to wave the knowledge of his weakness at him, to punish him for all his crimes . . . but he would not risk it. If Isaac were to antagonize him too flagrantly, to confront him with an understanding of his fear that Isaac doubted Vermishank himself possessed, then the vile man might withdraw all his help out of spite.
If he needed to think he was crowing to beg for help, then Isaac would let him.
“What is dreamshit?” said Isaac.
“Dreamshit?” Vermishank smiled, and Isaac remembered the last time he had asked Vermishank that question and the man had affected disgust, had refused to sully his mouth with the foul word.
It came easy to him now.
“Hah. Dreamshit is baby food. It is what the moths feed their young. They exude it all the time, but in great quantities when they are parenting. They are not like other moths: they’re very caring. They nurture their eggs assiduously, by all accounts, and suckle the newborn caterpillars. Only in their adolescence, when they pupate, can they feed themselves.”
Derkhan interjected.
“Are you saying that dreamshit is slake-moth milk?”
“Exactly. The caterpillars cannot yet digest purely psychic food. It must be imbibed in quasi-physical form. The liquid the moths exude is thick with distilled dreams.”
“And that’s why some fucking druglord bought them? Who was it?” Derkhan’s mouth curled.
“I have no idea. I merely suggested the deal. Which of the bidders was successful is irrelevant to me. One has to husband the moths carefully, stud them regularly, milk them. Like cows. They can be manipulated—by someone who knows what they’re doing—fooled into exuding milk without having born grubs. And the milk has to be processed, of course. No human, or any other sentient race, could drink it neat. It would instantly explode their mind. The inelegantly named dreamshit has been rendered and . . . ah . . . cut with various substances . . . Which incidentally, Isaac, means that the cater
pillar you raised—that I presume you fed on dreamshit—must have grown into a less than healthy moth. It is as if you fed a human baby milk laced with large quantities of sawdust and pondwater.”
“How do you know all this?” hissed Derkhan.
Vermishank looked at her blankly.
“How do you know how many mirrors it takes to make you safe, how do you know they turn the minds they . . . they eat into that . . . milk . . . ? How many people have you fed to them?”
Vermishank pursed his lips, a little perturbed.
“I am a scientist,” he said. “I use the means at my disposal. On occasion, criminals are sentenced to death. The manner of their death is not specified . . .”
“You swine . . .” she hissed viciously. “What about all the people the dealers take to feed them, to make the drug . . . ?” she continued, but Isaac cut her off.
“Vermishank,” he said softly, and stared at the other man. “How do we get their minds back? The ones who’ve been taken.”
“Back?” Vermishank seemed genuinely baffled. “Ah . . .” He shook his head and furrowed his eyes. “You cannot.”
“Don’t lie to me . . .” screamed Isaac, thinking of Lublamai.
“They have been drunk,” hissed Vermishank, and brought silence quickly to the room. He waited.
“They have been drunk,” he said again. “Their thoughts have been taken, their dreams—their conscious and subconscious—have been burnt up in the moths’ stomachs, have trickled out again to feed the grubs. Have you taken dreamshit, Isaac? Any of you?” No one, least of all Isaac, would answer him. “If you have, you have dreamed them, the victims, the prey. You have had their metabolized minds slip into your stomach and you have dreamed them. There is nothing left to save. There is nothing to get back.”
Isaac felt absolute despair.
Take his body too, he thought, Jabber, don’t be cruel, don’t leave me with that fucking shell that I can’t let die, that means nothing . . .
“How do we kill the slake-moths?” he hissed.
Vermishank smiled, very slowly.
“You cannot,” he said.
“Don’t bullshit me,” hissed Isaac. “Everything that lives can die . . .”
“You misunderstand me. As an abstract proposition of course they can die. And therefore, theoretically, they can be killed. But you will not be able to kill them. They live in several planes, as I’ve said, and bullets, fire, and so forth injure only in one. You would have to hit them in many dimensions at once, or do the most extraordinary amount of damage in this one, and they will not give you the chance . . . Do you understand?”
“So let’s think laterally . . .” said Isaac. He batted his temples hard with the heels of his hands. “What about a biological control? Predators . . .”
“They have none. They are at the top of their food chain. We’re fairly sure that there are animals, in their native land, that are capable of killing them, but there are none within several thousand miles of here. And anyway, if we’re right, to unleash them would be to usher doom more quickly onto New Crobuzon.”
“Dear Jabber,” breathed Isaac. “Without predators or competitors, with a massive supply of food, fresh and constantly replenished . . . There’ll be no stopping them.”
“And that,” whispered Vermishank hesitantly, “is before we’ve even considered what’ll happen if they . . . They are still young, you understand. They are not fully mature. But soon, when the nights become hot . . . We have to consider what might happen when they breed . . .”
The room seemed to go still and cold. Again Vermishank tried to control his face, but again, Isaac saw the raw fear inside him. Vermishank was terrified. He knew what was at stake.
A little way away, the construct was rotating, hissing and clattering. It seemed to be leaking dust and dirt, and moving in random directions trailing a stiff litter-spike behind it. Broken again, thought Isaac, and turned his attention back on Vermishank.
“When will they breed?” he hissed.
Vermishank licked the sweat from his upper lip.
“They are hermaphrodites, I am told. We’ve never observed them mating or seen them lay eggs. We only know what we’ve been told. They come into heat in the back half of the summer. One designated egg-layer. Around about Sinn, Octuary. Usually. Usually, that is.”
“Come on! There must be something we can do!” shouted Isaac. “Don’t tell me Rudgutter’s got nothing in mind . . .”
“I’m not privy to that. I mean, of course I know they’ve plans. Why, yes. But what they are I simply can’t say. I have . . .” Vermishank hesitated.
“What?” yelled Isaac.
“I have heard that they approached dæmons.” No one said a word. Vermishank swallowed and continued. “And were refused help. Even at the highest bribery.”
“Why?” hissed Derkhan.
“Because the dæmons were afraid.” Vermishank licked his lips. The fear that he was trying to keep hidden became visible again. “Do you understand that? They were afraid. Because for all their power and their presence . . . they think as we do. They are sentient, sapient. And as far as the slake-moths are concerned . . . they are therefore prey.”
Everyone in the room was still. The pistol sagged in Lemuel’s hand, but Vermishank made no attempt to run, lost as he was in his own miserable reverie.
“What are we going to do?” said Isaac. His voice was not quite steady.
The grating sound of the construct grew stronger. The thing spun for a moment on its central wheel. Its cleaning arms were extended and clattered against the ground in staccato motion. Derkhan, then Isaac and David and the others looked up at it.
“I can’t think with that fucking thing in the room!” yelled Isaac, enraged. He strode over, ready to take out his impotence and his fear on the construct. As he approached it, it spun to face him with its glass iris and its two main arms extended suddenly, an errant piece of paper on the end of one. The construct looked disorientingly like a person with outstretched arms. Isaac blinked and continued towards it.
Its right arm stabbed down at the floor and the rubbish and dust it had strewn idiotically in its path. It jerked down again and again, violently tapping at the wooden boards. Its left limb, with its broom end, jerked out to block Isaac’s path, slowing him and wagging, he realized with utter astonishment, to hold his attention, and then its right, a litter-skewer, jerked down once more to point at the floor.
At the dust. In which was scrawled a message.
The point of the skewer had traced its way through the dirt and even scored the wood itself. The words it had scribbled in the rubbish were shaky and uncertain, but entirely legible.
You are betrayed.
Isaac gaped at the construct in complete consternation. It waved its litter-spike at him, the scrap of paper on the end whipping back and forth.
The others had not yet read what was written on the floor, but they could tell from Isaac’s face and the extraordinary behaviour of the construct that something strange was happening. They were standing, gazing curiously.
“What is it, Isaac?” said Derkhan.
“I . . . I don’t know . . .” he murmured. The construct seemed agitated, by turn tapping at the message on the floor and flailing the paper on its spike. Isaac reached out, his mouth wide with amazement, and the construct held its arm still. Gingerly, Isaac plucked the crumpled paper from it.
As he smoothed it out, David leapt up suddenly, horrified and aghast. He rushed across the room.
“Isaac,” he shouted. “Wait . . .” But Isaac had already opened the paper, his eyes had already widened in horror at what was written. His mouth grew slack at the enormity of it, but before he could emit a shout Vermishank moved.
Lemuel had been caught up with the bizarre drama of the construct, his eyes had left his quarry, and Vermishank had seen it. Everyone in the room was staring at Isaac as he fumbled with the rubbish the construct had handed him. Vermishank leapt up from the chair and bolted for
the door.
He had forgotten it was locked. When he yanked at it and it would not open, he cried out in undignified panic. Behind him, David peeled away from Isaac and backed towards Vermishank and the door. Isaac spun on his heel towards them, still clutching the paper. He glared at David and Vermishank in lunatic hatred. Lemuel had seen his error, was bringing his pistol to bear on Vermishank when Isaac moved threateningly towards the prisoner, blocking Lemuel’s line of fire.
“Isaac,” shouted Lemuel, “move!”
Vermishank saw that Derkhan had leapt to her feet, that David was cringing away from Isaac, that the hooded man in the other corner was standing with legs spread and arms out in a weirdly predatory fashion. Lemuel was invisible to Vermishank, behind the looming threat of Isaac.
Isaac looked from Vermishank to David, his eyes oscillating back and forth. He waved the paper.
“Isaac,” Lemuel screamed again. “Get out of the fucking way!”
But Isaac could not hear or speak for rage. There was a cacophony. Everyone in the room was yelling, demanding to know what was on the paper, begging for a clear shot, growling in rage or keening like a great bird.
Isaac seemed to be debating which of David or Vermishank to grab. David was breaking down, begging Isaac to listen to him. With a last desperate pointless tug at the door, Vermishank turned and defended himself.
He was, after all, a highly trained bio-thaumaturge. He babbled an incantation and flexed the invisible, occult muscles he had developed in his arms. He hooked his hand at the arcane energy that made the veins of his forearm stand out like snakes beneath the skin, made his skin twitch and tighten.
Isaac’s shirt was half undone, and Vermishank plunged his right hand through the uncovered flesh below Isaac’s neck.
Isaac bellowed in rage and pain as his tissue gave like thick clay. It became malleable under Vermishank’s trained hands.
Vermishank dug inelegantly through the unwilling flesh. He gripped and ungripped his fingers to grab hold of a rib. Isaac grabbed hold of Vermishank’s wrist and held it. His face was set in a grimace. He was stronger, but pain was disabling him.
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