Iron Council (15 page)

He does not know the names of any or even if they have names, but there are those according to some faint specificity of physique he christens: Red-eyes and Oldster and The Horse. Judah
asks Oldster about the mud figures. Toys, his informant says, or games: something like that. —So you’d no longer make them? Judah asks, and the stiltspear snorts and looks skyward in embarrassment. Judah no longer blushes at his gaffes. So far as he can tell it is a question of propriety not ability: it would be as inappropriate for an adult stiltspear to make the little figures as for a New Crobuzon adult to demand the lavatory like a toddler.

Judah accompanies the dams. They seem glazed with the daylight. They catch armfuls of shelled waterspider larger than Judah’s spread hands. They milk their silk, weaving webs between roots and submerged boughs, turning rivulets into fish-traps.

Judah sees something uncanny. A lithe musclefish jackknifes, lapis scales vivid. And then Judah hears a moment of song, a two- or three-layered stripped-down breath of rhythm,
buh buh buh buh
in quick intricate time, several dams together, and the musclefish is still. It is set in its coil, unmoving, frosted in place in the water, and a hunter spears it with her jag-hand and at the instant she stabs
for it she and her companions cease singing and the musclefish twitches again but too late. Judah sees it happen again, days later, a little near-silent choir, a muttered hum that for a moment keeps prey still.

Freshwater dolphin pass in deeper channels. They are ugly,
inbred-looking things. The snorts of a sarcosuchus spook them. The stiltspear young try to teach Judah to make a mud-figure of
his own. They have decided he is a child like them. His models are desperately crude and make them breathe the sighs that are their laughs.

When they sing to their statuettes he tries good-humouredly
to copy them, knowing he can only be a clown and, performing with good grace, —Shallaballoo, he says. —Callam callay cazah! And of course nothing happens, of course all the stiltspear children set their mud walking and his own folds sticky on itself and collapses.

It is the end of summer and the paludal air is stretched thin. Shots sound. With the distant percussion of the rifle every stiltspear freezes in camouflage and for seconds Judah is alone in a copse of sudden trees. With silence the swamplanders slowly return to their appearance. Every one of them looks at Judah.

There are hunters, draped in the little corpses of swamp mammals. They are exploring and collecting in the bogland.

Judah passes one within ten yards, but he has become local, so the man does not hear or see him, only hefts his rifle and looks stupidly past Judah to the watercourses. Another man is sharper. He aims directly at Judah’s chest in expert motion.

—Godsdamn blast, he says. —Came near to killing you. There is a cautious look to him as he makes out Judah’s clothes and his swamp-pallor. He thumbs a way north. —They out that way, ‘nother three four miles, be there by sundown, he says.

The bayou animals are quiet. There is not the chittering and faint scuttle and splash. Judah slows. This is a hinge moment and though there is none to blame for getting him here save himself, he must close his eyes and think on what will be and what has been. He will not let the moment finish: by ornery bastard will he hangs onto it, like a dog worrying a man, till time drags itself away bleeding and Judah is back and sadder.

—Oh now, he says. He is some misbegot thing in time. There is a shudder.

There is a lip of earth, a jetty. There is a clearing at the edge of a big muskeg, flat and detritus-studded acres of gently moving liquid. There is a new trail through dripping trees, to a huddle of tents and wagons, sod huts roofed in moss on the tamed ground. There are shots.

Judah carries a present in his pack and a posy of swampflowers. He sees a party of men in besmirched white shirts and thick trousers. They investigate charts and are squinting at obscure instruments. They boil kettles of food over fires that roll off oily smoke like squid-ink billows. They half-greet Judah. He must look like some mud-and-slurry spirit. The Remade pack-animals tread uneasily as he approaches.

The leader stands. An older man, still scrawny and tough as
a dog. Judah looks only at him, follows him into his tarpaulined room.

Light grubs dimly through the canvas. There is simple darkwood furniture, a cabinet that will fold out to a bed, in the tight confines.

The old man smells the battered bouquet. Judah becomes
confused—he has forgotten his city manners. Should he be giving flowers to this aging man? But the man responds with grace, smelling the still-beautiful blooms and putting them in water.

He is poised. His hair is white and gathered in a precise pigtail. He has very vivid blue eyes. Judah rummages in his bag (the bodyguards stiffen and raise pistols) and brings out a figurine.

—This is for you, he says. —From the stiltspear.

The man receives it with what seems very genuine pleasure.

—It’s a god, Judah says. —They don’t do so much by way of art or carvings. Only little simple things.

It is a rope-swathed ancestor spirit. This one Judah made himself. The man looks into its swaddled face.

—I want to ask you something, Judah says. —I didn’t know you’d be here yourself . . .

—Always, when we break new ground. This is holy work, son.

Judah nods as if he has been told something precious.

—There are people in the swamp, sir, he says. —I’m here for them, I guess.

—Do you think I don’t know that, son? Think I don’t know why you’re here? That’s why I’m telling you this is holy work we’re doing. I’m trying to save you sorrow.

—They aren’t as you’d think from Shac’s bestiary sir . . .

—Son I respect the
Potentially Wise
more than most but you don’t need to tell me. It’s a long time since I’ve thought it, ah, accurate shall we say. That’s not at issue.

—But sir. I need to know, what I want to know is how . . . is exactly where you think you might go because there are, these people, these stiltspear, they, they . . . I don’t know as they could face what you might bring here . . .

—I wouldn’t mean no harm but I by gods and by Jabber will not turn away now. There is nothing harsh to his voice but the fervour makes Judah cold. —Understand, son, what’s coming. I have no plans for yon stiltspear, but if their way intersects with mine then yes, my way will crush them down.

—Do you know what you see here? he says. —Every one of us here, and every one coming, the dustiest navvy, each clerk, each camp whore, each cook and horseman and each Remade, every one of us is a missionary of a new church and there is nothing that will stop holy work. I mean you no unkindness. Is that all you have to say to me?

Judah stares at him in terrible sadness. He works to speak.

—How long? he says at last. —What are the plans?

—I think you know the plans, son. The old man is calm. —And how long? You need to ask the downs. And then you need to ask
the gods and spirits of yon fen how much good clean grit they can eat up.

He smiles. He touches Judah’s knee.

—You sure there’s nothing else you’d like to tell me? I had hope of hearing other things from you, but you’d have spoken them by now. I want to thank you for the god you gave me, and I’ll be obliged if you’ll go to your stiltspear people and tell them that they have my deepest most respectful gratitude. You know I’ll be seeing them soon, don’t you?

He points to the wall, to a map that shows all the land from New Crobuzon to Rudewood, to the swamps and on to the port of Myrshock, and some hundreds of miles into the continent, into the west. Details are vague: this is debated land. But Judah can see the crosshatched levelling in the heart of the swamp.

—I know what I see, the old man says and there is real kindness in his voice. —I have in my time seen enough men go native. It’s an affectation, son, whatever you think now. But I won’t lecture you. There’s no recrimination. I will only tell you that history is coming, and your new tribe best move from its path.

—But dammit, says Judah. —This isn’t empty land!

The old man looks bewildered. —What they have, what they’ve had lying there for centuries in that marsh, whatever it is, it’s welcome to face the history I bring, if it can.

Back in deep waterland among the stiltspear, Judah does not know what to say. The fronds gather behind him, a closure he knows is
a lie.

The children try to make him learn their golems again. He has never affected the smallest glamour before, has thought himself without talent. A stiltspear elder approaches while he strains, and touches Judah’s chest. Judah opens his eyes, feels things move in him. Whether it is the touch, the air of the swamp, or the raw things he has been eating, he feels a facility he never has, and in astonishment he sees that just faintly he can make his mud model move. The stiltspear children give little hums of acclaim.

—There are some coming, he says at night. The stiltspear only stare politely. —There are men coming and they will fill your swamp. They will split your wetlands, and diminish them.

Judah recalls the map. A neat trisection. Ink that will come to be a changed land, millions of tons of displaced scree and a devastation of the trees.

—They will not stop for you. They will not move for you. You must go. You must go south to where the other clans hunt, deeper, farther away.

There is nothing for a long time. Then the monosyllables of stiltspear gently.

—It is where the other clans hunt. They do not want us.

—But you must. If you do not go you will see what the men will bring. The clans must come together and hide.

—We hide. When the men come we shall be trees.

—It will not be enough. The men will make the land dry. They will cover your village.

The stiltspear look at him.

—You must go.

They will not.

In the next days Judah chews his fingernails. He eats with the stiltspear and watches them and heliotypes their activities and notes them, but with a waxing sickness he feels now that it is for their remembrance.

—There have been fights, they tell him when he demands to know of their wars. —We fought another clan three years ago and many of us were killed.

Judah asks how many and the stiltspear holds up its hands—this one has seven fingers on each—opens and closes them and holds up one more finger. Fifteen.

Judah shakes his head. —Very many, very very many more
will be killed if you do not go, he says, and the stiltspear shakes
its head too—it has learnt the motion from him and uses it with pride.

—We will be trees, it says.

Judah can make his mudling dance. Each day he is stronger at it. Now he makes foot-tall figures from the clay and peat. He does not know what it is he makes happen or how the stiltspear children have taught him or what the adult put in him, but his new capabilities delight him. His little model can beat others now, at the golem circus they play.

It is his only pleasure, and he hates that it feels like an evasion. Once or twice more he begs the stiltspear to come with him to the deeper swamp. It degrades him that he cannot find the words to move them. It is their culture, he says to himself, it is their way, it is their nature. They—not he—are to blame. But he does not believe his own thought.

He feels pinioned by history. He can wriggle like a stuck butterfly but can go nowhere.

There are more reverberations and the explosions from hunters’ guns are audible throughout the days. Judah understands something. He watches the stiltspear corner a calf-thick amphibian, and together sing-breathe the
uh uh uh uh uh
rhythm and for half a second the newt-thing petrifies midflick, held in time made thick, and Judah realises the rhythm they have sung is an echo of the
children’s mud-golem song. The same, made vastly more complex, given several parts.

He is obsessed with the chant. He wants to preserve the moments of its utterance, congeal the sounds, strip them down. He can only time them as closely as he can and write them to work out their relations.

Judah works fast. He feels a knot tying in him. His near-friend Red-eyes helps him. —We make shapes that move. All of us: young one way, hunters another. And Judah sees that the children’s chants are only mimicry; it is their hands that make their golems. The rhythm of the hunters does the work of the children’s pinching fingers. Both intercessions are of a kind.

There is a noise of industry, far off. A growled rhythm.

The first stiltspear to die is a young too confused to control its camouflage. It is shot by a hunter frightened by the rapid flickering between states of a four-footed animal thing and what seems a rotting tree. He does not know what he has killed and it is only chance and neophobia that he does not eat the child. The clan find the little body.

They’ve reached the lake,
Judah thinks. He imagines uncountable wagonloads of nothing, of soil, stone and dirt bloating the swamp.

The time is now. To make his new clan go deep and disappear. There is no other time for this. He has been beaten down. Though every night he says again what he has said—you must go, it is not safe, more will die—he has given up. He is disengaging. An observer again.

The stiltspear debate quietly. Their food grows scarce. The fish and the food-animals are fleeing or being choked. There is venom in the swamp, the runoff of a thousand men and women, the slurry from latrines and cleaning crystals, from black powder, from make-do graves.

There is another death, a lone dam surprised. The roar of industry is always audible.

A party of stiltspear hunters return and try to say what they have seen. A drained core, something approaching. By now there are steam shovels, Judah knows, ever-growing gangs.

—One tried to hurt us, a stiltspear says, and it shows the company the gun it has taken. It is stained with human blood. They have killed, and Judah knows then it is over and done. The time is finished. They do not see it. The sun is dead for them. There is nothing left. He is frantic to learn, to preserve these people in his notes, to salute them.