Perdido Street Station (41 page)

"Big fucker comes
downstairs flapping big horrible wings make your bonce woozy snapping
big teeth and...and...all over claws and big fucking stinky
tongue...
and I...Mr. Lublub’s gawping in the
looking-glass and then he turns to face it and goes...dopey...and I
saw...me head went funny and when I woke up the thing’s stuck
its tongue right in...in...Mr. Lub’s
gob
and
slurpslurp
noises going off in me head and I...I buggered off, I couldn’t
do nothing, I swear...I’m
scared...
" Teafortwo
began to cry like a two-year-old, dribbling snot and tears down his
face.

When Lemuel Pigeon
arrived, Teafortwo was still sobbing. No amount of cajoling or
threatening or bribes could calm the wyrman down. Eventually he went
to sleep, curled up in a quilt ruined with his mucus, exactly like an
exhausted human baby.

**

"I’m here on
false pretences, Isaac. The message I got was that it’d be
worth my while to drop over to your gaff." Lemuel looked at
Isaac with a speculative air.

"Godsdammit,
Lemuel, you fucking spiv," exploded Isaac. "Is that what’s
bothering you? Jabber and fuck, I’ll make sure you get yours,
all right? Is that better? Now fucking listen to me...Someone has
been
attacked
by something that hatched out of one of the
grubs
you obtained for me,
and we need to stop the thing
before it does someone
else,
and we need to
know about it,
so we need to track down whatever cove it was got it in the
first
place,
and we need to do it
sharpish.
Are you with me,
old
son?"

Lemuel was quite
unintimidated by this outburst.

"Look, you can’t
damn well blame me..." he began, before Isaac interrupted with a
howl of irritation.

"Devil’s
Tail, Lemuel, no one’s blaming you, you cretin! Quite the
opposite! What I’m saying is that you are by far too good a
businessman not to keep careful records, and I need you to check ‘em
out. We both know everything goes through you...you’ve got to
get me the name of whoever originally got the big fat caterpillar.
The enormous one with really weird colours. You know?"

"Vaguely remember
it, yes."

"Well, that is
good."
Isaac calmed a little. He ran his hands over his
face and sighed enormously. "Lemuel, I need your help," he
said simply. "I’ll pay you...But I’m also begging. I
really need you to help me here. Look." He opened his eyes and
glared at Lemuel. "The damn thing may have keeled over and died,
right? Maybe it’s like a mayfly: one glorious day. Maybe Lub’ll
wake up tomorrow happy as a sandboy.
But maybe not.
Now, I
want to know: one—" he counted off on fat fingers "—how
to snap Lublamai out of this; two, what this damn thing is—the
one description we have is a little garbled." He glanced at the
wyrman sleeping in the corner. "And three, how we catch the
fucker."

Lemuel stared at him,
his face immobile. Slowly and ostentatiously, he pulled a snuff-box
from his pocket and took a sniff. Isaac’s fists clenched and
unclenched.

"Fine, ‘Zaac,"
Lemuel said quietly, replacing his little jewelled box. He nodded
slowly. "I’ll see what I can do. I’ll be in touch.
But I’m not a charity, Isaac, I’m a businessman and
you’re a customer. I get something for this. I’ll
bill
you,
all right?"

Isaac nodded wearily.
There was no rancour in Lemuel’s voice, no viciousness, no
spite. He was simply stating the truth that underlay his bonhomie.
Isaac knew that if it paid better not to uncover the purveyor of the
peculiar grub, Lemuel would simply do that.

**

"Mayor."
Eliza Stem-Fulcher swaggered into the Lemquist Room. Rudgutter looked
up at her questioningly. She threw a thin newspaper onto the table
before him. "We’ve got a lead."

**

Teafortwo left quickly
when he woke, with David and Isaac trying to reassure him that no one
held him responsible. By the evening, a horrible kind of drab calm
had arrived at the warehouse on Paddler Way.

David was spooning a
thick compote of fruit puree into Lublamai’s mouth, massaging
it down his throat. Isaac was pacing listlessly across the floor. He
was hoping that Lin would return home, find the note he had pinned on
her door last night and come to him. If it had not been in his
writing, he reflected, she would have thought it was a bad joke. To
have Isaac invite her to his laboratory-house was unprecedented. But
he needed to see her, and he was worried that if he left, he would
miss some vital change in Lublamai, or some nugget of indispensable
information.

The door was pushed
open. Isaac and David looked up sharply.

It was Yagharek.

Isaac was momentarily
amazed. This was the first time Yagharek had appeared while David
(and Lublamai, of course, although it hardly counted) were in the
room. David gazed at the garuda huddling under the dirty blanket, the
sweep of the false wings.

"Yag, old son,"
said Isaac heavily. "Come in, meet David...We’ve had a bit
of a disaster..." He trudged heavily towards the door.

Yagharek waited for
him, hovering half in, half out of the entrance. He said nothing
until Isaac was close enough to hear him whisper, a strange thin
noise like a bird being strangled.

"I would not have
come, Grimnebulin. I do not wish to be seen..."

Isaac lost patience
quickly. He opened his mouth to speak but Yagharek continued.

"I have...heard
things. I have sensed...there is a pall over this house. Neither you,
nor either of your friends, has left this room all day."

Isaac gave a short
laugh.

"You’ve been
waiting, haven’t you? Waiting till it was all clear, right? So
you could maintain your precious anonymity..." He tensed, made
an effort to calm himself. "Look, Yag, we’ve had something
of a disaster and I really don’t have time or inclination
to...to pussyfoot about you. I’m afraid our project’s on
hold for a while..."

Yagharek sucked in his
breath and cried out, faintly.

"
You cannot,"
he screeched quietly.
"You cannot desert me..."

"Damn!" Isaac
reached out and pulled Yagharek in through the door. "Now look!"
He marched over to where Lublamai breathed raggedly and gazed and
dribbled. He pushed Yagharek before him. He shoved hard, but not with
violent pressure. Garuda were wiry and tight-muscled, stronger than
they looked, but with their hollow bones and pared-down flesh they
were not a match for a big man. But that was not the main reason why
Isaac was holding back from exerting himself. The mood between him
and Yagharek was testy, not poisonous. Isaac sensed that Yagharek
half wanted to see the reason for the sudden tension in the
warehouse, even if it meant breaking his ban on being seen by others.

Isaac pointed at
Lublamai. David stared vaguely up at the garuda. Yagharek completely
ignored him.

"The fucking
caterpillar I showed you," said Isaac, "turned into
something that did this to my friend. Ever seen anything like that?"

Yagharek shook his head
slowly.

"So you see,"
said Isaac heavily, "I’m afraid that until I sort out what
in the name of Jabber’s arse I’ve let loose over the
city, and until I’ve brought Lublamai back from wherever he is,
I’m
afraid
that the problems of flight and crisis
engines, exciting as they are, are on something of a
low burn
for me."

"You will let slip
my shame..." hissed Yagharek quickly. Isaac interrupted him.

"David
knows
about your so-called shame, Yag!" he shouted. "And
don’t
look at me like that, that’s how I
work,
this is my
colleague, that’s how come I’ve made fucking progress in
your case..."

David was looking
sharply at Isaac.

"What?" he
hissed. "Crisis engines...?"

Isaac shook his head
irritatedly, as if a mosquito was in his ear.

"Making headway in
crisis physics, that’s all. Tell you later."

David nodded slowly,
accepting that now was not the time to discuss this, but his bulging
eyes betrayed his amazement.
That’s all?
they said.

Yagharek seemed to be
twitching with nervousness, with a great bulge of misery that washed
up through him.

"I...I need your
help..." he began.

"Yeah, as does
Lublamai here," shouted Isaac, "and I’m afraid that
counts for a damn sight more..." Then he softened slowly. "I’m
not
dropping you, Yag. I’ve no intention of doing that.
But the thing is, I can’t carry on just now." Isaac
thought for a moment. "If you want to get this done as quick as
possible, you could
help...
Don’t just fucking disappear.
Stay the fuck here
and help us sort this out. That way, we can
get back, sharpish, to your problem."

David looked askance at
Isaac. Now his eyes said,
Do you know what you’re doing?
Seeing that, Isaac blustered, and rallied.

"You can sleep
here, you can eat here...David won’t care, he doesn’t
even live here, I’m the only one that does. Then when we hear
anything, we can...well, we can maybe think of some use for you. If
you know what I mean. You can
help,
Yagharek. That’d be
damn useful. The quicker this gets sorted, the quicker we’re
back on your programme. Understand?"

**

Yagharek was subdued.
It took some minutes before he would speak, and then all he would do
was nod and briefly say that yes, he would stay at the warehouse. It
was clear that all he could think of was the research into flight.
Isaac was exasperated, but forgiving. The excision, the punishment
that had befallen Yagharek, had settled on his soul like lead chains.
He was selfish, utterly, but he had some reason.

David fell asleep,
exhausted and miserable. He slept in his chair that night. Isaac took
over caring for Lublamai. The food had passed through him, and the
first noisome duty was to clean up his shit.

Isaac bundled up the
fouled clothes and shoved them into one of the warehouse’s
boilers. He thought of Lin. He hoped she came to him soon.

He realized he was
pining.

Things stirred in the
night.

In the morning, in the
small hours and again when the sun had risen, more idiot bodies were
found. This time there were five. Two vagrants who hid under the
bridges of Gross Coil. A baker walking home from work in Nigh Sump. A
doctor in Vaudois Hill. A barge-woman out beyond Raven’s gate.
A spattering of attacks that disfigured the city without pattern.
North; east; west; south. There were no safe boroughs.

Lin slept badly. She
had been touched by Isaac’s note, to think of him crossing the
city just to plant a piece of paper on her door, but she had also
been concerned. There was a hysterical tone to the short paragraph,
and the plea to come to the laboratory was so utterly out of
character that it frightened her.

Nevertheless, she would
have come immediately had she not returned to Aspic Hole late, too
late to travel. She had not been working. The previous morning she
had woken to find a note thrust under her door.

Pressing business necessitates the postponement of appointments until
further notice. You will be contacted when resumption of duties is
possible.

M.

Lin had pocketed the
curt note and wandered to Kinken. She had resumed her melancholy
contemplations. And then, with a curious sense of amazement, as if
she was watching a performance of her own life and was surprised at
the turn of events, she had walked north-west out of Kinken to
Skulkford, and boarded the railway. She had taken the two stops north
on the Sink Line, to be swallowed by the vast tarry maw of Perdido
Street Station. There in the confusion and hissing steam of the
enormous central concourse, where the five lines met like an enormous
iron and wood star, she had changed trains for the Verso Line.

There had been a
five-minute wait while the boiler was stoked in the cavern at the
centre of the station. Enough time for Lin to look at herself in
incredulity, to ask herself what in the name of Awesome Broodma she
was doing. And perhaps in the name of other gods.

But she had not
answered, had sat still while the train waited, then moved slowly,
picking up speed and rattling in a regular rhythm, squeezing from one
of the station’s pores. It wound to the north of the Spike,
under two sets of skyrails, looking out over Cadnebar’s squat,
barbarous circus. The prosperity and majesty of The Crow—the
Senned Gallery, the Fuchsia House, Gargoyle Park—was riddled
with squalor. Lin gazed into steaming rubbish tips as The Crow segued
into Rim, saw the wide streets and stuccoed houses of that prosperous
neighbourhood wind carefully past hidden, crumbling blocks where she
knew the rats were running.

The train passed
through Rim Station and plunged on over the fat grey ooze of the Tar,
crossing the river barely fifteen feet to the north of Hadrach
Bridge, until it picked its way distastefully over the ruinous
roofscape of Creekside.

**

She had left the train
at Low Falling Mud, at the western edge of the slum ghetto. It had
not taken long to tread the rotting streets, past grey buildings that
bulged unnaturally with sweating damp, past kin who eyed her and
tasted her in the air and moved away, because her uptown perfume and
strange clothes marked her out as one who had escaped. It had not
taken her long to find her way back to her broodma’s house.

Lin had not come too
close, had not wanted her taste to filter through the shattered
windows and alert her broodma or her sister to her presence. In the
growing heat, her scent was like a badge for other khepri, that she
could not remove.