Perdido Street Station (33 page)

"Five hundred
years ago, a while after the Cacotopic Stain opened, there was a mild
Torque storm that swept down from somewhere at sea, in the
north-east. It hit New Crobuzon for a while." Isaac shook his
head slowly. "Nothing in the league of Suroch, obviously, but
still enough for an epidemic of monstrous births and some very
strange tricks of cartography. All the affected buildings were pulled
down sharpish. Very sensible in my view. That’s when they drew
up plans for the cloudtower—didn’t want to leave the
weather to chance. But that’s broke now, and we’re fucked
if we get any more random Torque currents. Fortunately, they seem to
be getting rarer and rarer over the centuries. They sort of
peaked
around the 1200s."

Isaac waved his hands
at Yagharek, warming to his task of denunciation and explanation.

"You know, Yag,
when they realized something was up down south in the scrubland—and
it didn’t take them long to clock it was a
massive
Torque-rift—there was a lot of crap talked about what to
call
it, and the arguments still haven’t died, half a fucking
millennium on. Someone named it the Cacotopic Stain, and the moniker
stuck. I remember being told in college that it was a terrible
populist description, because Cacotopos—Bad Place,
basically—was moralizing, that the Torque was neither good nor
bad, so on. Thing is...obviously, that’s right at one level,
right? Torque’s not
evil...
it’s mindless, it’s
motiveless. That’s what I reckon anyway—others disagree.

"But even if
that’s true, seems to me that western Ragamoll is
precisely
a Cacotopos. That’s a vast stretch of land which is totally
beyond our power.
There’s no thaumaturgy we can learn,
no techniques to perfect, which’ll let us do
anything
with that place. We’ve just got to stay the fuck out and hope
it eventually ebbs away. It’s a huge fucking badland crawling
with Inchmen—which admittedly live outside Torque-zones, as
well, but seem particularly happy there—and other things I
wouldn’t even bother trying to describe. So you’ve got a
force that makes a total mockery of our sentience. That’s
‘bad’
as far as I’m concerned. It could be the fucking definition of
the word. See, Yag...it pains me to say this, it really does, I mean
I’m a fucking rationalist...but the Torque is
unknowable
!"

With a huge gush of
relief, Isaac saw that Yagharek was nodding. Isaac nodded too,
fervently.

"Partly selfish,
all this, you understand," Isaac said, with sudden grim humour.
"I mean, I don’t want to be arsing around with experiments
and end up turning into some...I don’t know, some
revolting
thing.
Just too bloody risky. We’ll stick to crisis, all
right? On which topic, I’ve got some stuff to show you."

Isaac gently took
Sacramundi’s report from Yagharek’s hands and returned it
to the shelves. He opened a desk drawer and brought out his tentative
blueprint.

He placed it in front
of Yagharek, then hesitated and drew away slightly.

"Yag, old son,"
he said. "I really have to know...is that behind us, now? Are
you...satisfied? Convinced? If you’re going to fuck about with
Torque, for Jabber’s sake tell me
now
and I’ll bid
you goodbye...and my condolences."

He studied Yagharek’s
face with troubled eyes.

"I have heard what
you say, Grimnebulin," said the garuda, after a pause.
"I...respect you." Isaac smiled humourlessly. "I
accept what you say."

Isaac began to grin,
and would have responded, except that Yagharek was looking out of the
window with a melancholy stillness. His mouth was open for a long
time before he spoke.

"We know of the
Torque, we garuda." He paused lengthily between sentences. "It
has visited the Cymek. We call it
rebekh-lajhnar-h’k"
The word was spat out with a harsh cadence like angry birdsong.
Yagharek looked Isaac in the eye.
"Rebekh-sackmai
is
Death: ‘the force that ends.’
Rebekh-kavt
is
Birth: ‘the force that begins.’ They were the First
Twins, born to the worldwomb after union with her own dream. But
there was a...a sickness...a
tumour—"
he paused to
savour the correct word as it occurred to him "—in the
earthbelly with them.
Rebekh-lajhnar-h’k
tore its way
out of the worldwomb just behind them, or perhaps at the same time,
or perhaps just before. It is the..." He thought hard for a
translation. "The
cancer-sibling.
Its name means: ‘the
force that cannot be trusted.’ "

Yagharek did not tell
the folk story in any incantatory, shamanic tones, but in the deadpan
of a xenthropologist. He opened his beak wide, closed it abruptly,
then opened it again.

"I am an outcast,
a renegade," Yagharek continued. "It is...no surprise...if
I turn my back on my traditions, perhaps...But I must learn when to
turn to face them again.
Lajhni
is ‘to trust,’ and
‘to bind firm.’ The Torque cannot be trusted, and nor can
it be bound. It is uncontainable. I have known that since I first
knew the stories. But in my...I...I am eager, Grimnebulin. Perhaps I
turn too quickly to things from which I would once have recoiled. It
is...hard...being between worlds...being of no world. But you have
made me remember what I have always known. As if you were an elder of
my band." There was one last, long pause. "Thank you."

Isaac nodded slowly.

"Not at
all...I’m...mighty relieved to hear all that, Yag. More than I
can say. Let’s...say no more about it." He cleared his
throat and prodded the diagram. "I’ve some fascinating
stuff to show you, old son."

**

In the dusty light
under Isaac’s walkway, the repairman from Orriaben’s
constructs teased the innards of the broken cleaning machine with
screwdriver and solder. He kept up a mindless jaunty whistling, a
trick that took no thought at all.

The sound of the
consultation above reached him as the faintest bass murmur,
interspersed with an occasional cracked utterance. He looked up in
surprise, briefly, at this latter voice, but quickly returned to the
matter in hand.

A brief examination of
the mechanisms of the construct’s internal analytical engine
confirmed the basic diagnosis. Apart from the usual age-related
problems of cracked joints, rust and worn bristles—all of which
the repairman quickly patched up—the construct had contracted
some kind of virus. A programme card incorrectly punched or a slipped
gear deep within the steam-driven intelligence engine had led to a
set of instructions feeding back into themselves in an infinite loop.
Activities the construct should have been able to carry out as a
reflex, it had started to pore over, to attempt to extract more
information or more complete orders. Seized by paradoxical
instructions or a surfeit of data, the cleaning construct was
paralysed.

The engineer glanced up
at the wooden floor above him. He was ignored.

He felt his heart
judder with excitement. Viruses came in a variety of forms. Some
simply closed down the workings of the machine. Others led the
mechanisms to perform bizarre and pointless tasks, the result of a
newly programmed outlook on everyday information. And others, of
which this was a perfect, a
beautiful
specimen, paralysed
constructs by making them recursively examine their basic behavioural
programmes.

They were bedeviled by
reflection. The seeds of self-consciousness.

The repairman reached
into his case and brought out a set of programme cards, fanned them
expertly. He whispered a prayer.

His fingers working at
astonishing speed, the man loosened various valves and dials in the
construct’s core. He levered open the protective covering on
the programme input slot. He checked that there was enough pressure
in the generator to power the receiving mechanism of the metal brain.
The programmes would load into the memory, to be actualized
throughout the construct’s processors when it was switched on.
Quickly, he slid first one card, then another and another into the
opening. He felt the ratcheting spring-loaded teeth rotate their way
along the stiff board, slotting into the little holes that translated
into instructions or information. He paused between each card to make
sure that the data loaded correctly.

He shuffled his little
deck like a cardsharp. He sensed the minuscule jerks of the
analytical engine through the fingertips of his left hand. He felt
for faulty input, for broken teeth or stiff, unoiled moving parts
that would corrupt or block his programmes. There were none. The man
could not forebear from hissing triumphantly. The construct’s
virus was entirely the result of information-feedback, and not any
kind of hardware failure. That meant that the cards with which the
man was plying the engine would all be read, their instructions and
information loaded into the sophisticated steam-engine brain.

When he had pushed each
carefully selected programme card into the input slot, each in
considered order, he punched a brief sequence of buttons on the
numbered keys wired up to the cleaning machine’s analytical
engine.

The man closed the lid
on the engine and resealed the construct’s body. He replaced
the twisted screws which held the hatch in place. He rested his hands
on the construct’s lifeless body for a moment. He heaved it
upright, stood it on its treads. He gathered his tools.

The man stepped back
into the center of the room.

"Um...‘Scuse
me, squire," he yelled.

There was a moment of
silence, then Isaac’s voice boomed out.

"Yes?"

"I’m all
done. Problems should be over. Just tell Mr. Serachin to load up the
boiler with a bit of juice, then switch the old thing back on. Lovely
models, the ekbs."

"Yeah, I’m
sure they are," came the response. Isaac appeared at the
railing. "Is there anything else I need to know?" he asked
impatiently.

"No, guv, that’s
about it. We’ll invoice Mr. Serachin within the week. Cheerio,
then."

"Right, bye.
Thanks very much."

"Don’t
mention it, sir," the man began, but Isaac had already turned
and walked back out of sight.

The repairman walked
slowly to the door. He held it open and looked back at where the
construct lay face down in the shadows of the big room. The man’s
eyes flickered momentarily upstairs to check that Isaac was gone,
then he moved his hands to trace out some symbol like interlocking
circles.

"Virus be done,"
he whispered, before walking out into the warm noon.

"What am I looking
at?" asked Yagharek. As he held the diagram he cocked his head
in a shockingly avian motion.

Isaac took the sheet of
paper from him and turned it the right way up.

"This, old son, is
a crisis conductor," Isaac said grandly. "Or at least, a
prototype of one. A fucking triumph of applied crisis
physico-philosophy."

"What is it? What
does it do?"

"Well, look. You
put whatever it is you want...tapped, in here." He indicated a
scrawl representing a belljar. "Then...well, the science is
complicated, but the gist of it...let’s see." He drummed
his fingers on the desk. "This boiler’s kept very hot, and
it powers a set of interlocking engines here. Now, this one’s
loaded up with sensory equipment that can detect various types of
energy fields—heat, elyctrostatic, potential, thaumaturgic
emissions—and represents them in mathematical form. Now, if I’m
right about the unified field, which I am, then all these energy
forms are various manifestations of crisis energy. So the job of this
analytical engine here is to calculate what kind of crisis energy
field is present given the various other fields present." Isaac
scratched his head.

"It’s
fucking complicated crisis maths, old son. That’s going to be
the hardest part, I reckon. The idea is to have a programme that can
say ‘well, there’s so much potential energy, so much
thaumaturgic, and whatnot, that means the underlying crisis situation
must be such-and-such.’ It’s going to try to translate
the...uh...
mundane,
into the crisis form. Then—and this
is another sticking point—the given
effect
that you’re
after also has to be translated into mathematical form, into some
crisis equation, which is fed into this computational engine
here.
Then what you’re doing is using this, which is powered by a
combination of steam or chymistry and thaumaturgy. It’s the
crux of the thing, a converter to tap the crisis energy and manifest
it in its raw form. You then channel that into the object."
Isaac was becoming more and more excited as he talked about the
project. He could not help himself: for a moment, his elation at the
massive potential for his research, the sheer scale of what he was
doing, defeated his resolve to see only the immediate project.

"The thing is,
what we should be able to do is change the form of the object into
one where the tapping of its crisis field actually increases its
crisis state. In other words, the crisis field grows
by virtue of
being siphoned off."
Isaac beamed at Yagharek, his mouth
open. "D’you see what I’m talking about?
Perpetual
fucking motion!
If we can stabilize the process, you’ve
just got an endless feedback loop, which means a permanent font of
energy!" He calmed in the face of Yagharek’s impassive
frown. Isaac grinned. His resolve to focus on applied theory was made
easy, even pressing, by Yagharek’s single-minded obsession with
the commission in hand.

"Don’t
worry, Yag. You’ll get what you’re after. As far as
you’re concerned, what this means—if I can make it
work—is that I can turn you into a walking,
flying
dynamo. The more you fly, the more crisis energy you manifest, the
more you can fly. Tired wings are a problem you won’t face no
more."