Perdido Street Station (23 page)

The escape was a
signal. There was a storm of wings.

Falcons, moths, batkin,
aspises, horseflies, parakeets, beetles, magpies, creatures of the
upper air, little water-top skimmers, creatures of the night, the day
and the gloaming burst from Isaac’s window in a shimmering
explosion of camouflage and colour. The sun had sunk on the other
side of the warehouse. The only light that caught the clouds of
feather, fur and chitin was from streetlamps and shards of sunset
reflected on the dirty river.

Isaac basked in the
glory of the sight. He exhaled as if at a work of art. For a moment
he looked around for a box-camera, but then he turned back and was
contented just to stare.

A thousand silhouettes
eddied in the air by his warehouse-home. They swirled together,
aimless for a moment, then felt the currents of the air and were
whisked away. Some went with the wind. Some tacked and fought the
gusts and wheeled over the city. The peace of that first confused
moment broke down. Aspises flew through the shoals of disoriented
insects, their tiny leonine jaws closing on fat little bodies with a
crunch. Hawks skewered pigeons and jackdaws and canaries.
Dragonfly-snakes corkscrewed in thermals and bit at prey.

The flight-styles of
the liberated animals were as distinct as their silhouetted forms.
One dark shape flitted chaotically around the sky, sinking towards a
streetlamp, unable to resist the light: a fell-moth. Another rose
with a majestic simplicity and arced into the night: some bird of
prey. This one opened momentarily like a flower then squeezed and
jetted away with a squirt of discoloured air: one of the small
wind-polyps.

Bodies of the exhausted
and the dying fell out of the air with a little patter of flesh. The
ground below would be discoloured with blood and ichor, Isaac
realized. There were gentle splashes as the Canker claimed victims.
But there was more life than death. For a few days, a few weeks,
Isaac mused, the sky over New Crobuzon would be more colourful.

Isaac sighed
beatifically. He looked around and ran over to the few boxes of
cocoons and eggs and grubs. He shoved them over to the window,
leaving only the big, dying, multicoloured caterpillar undisturbed.

Isaac grabbed handfuls
of eggs and hurled them out of the window after the fleeing shapes.
He followed them with caterpillars that twisted and jack-knifed as
they fell towards the paved ground. He shook cages that rattled with
delicate pupating shapes, and emptied them out of the window. He
poured out a tank of water-born larvae. For these young, it was a
cruel liberation, a few seconds of freedom and rushing air.

Eventually, when the
last tiny shape had disappeared below, Isaac closed the window. He
turned back and surveyed the warehouse. He heard a faint drone of
wings, and saw a few airborne shapes circulating the lamps. An aspis,
a handful of moths or butterflies, and a couple of small birds.
Well,
he thought,
they’ll find their own way out, or they wont
last long and I can clear them out when they starve.

Littering the floor in
front of the window were some of the runts and the dying, the
weaklings, that had fallen before they could fly. Some were dead.
Most crawled feebly this way and that. Isaac set to cleaning them
out.

"You have the
advantage that you are
(a)
rather beautiful; and
(b)
rather interesting, old chum," he said to the huge, sickly grub
as he worked. "No, no, don’t thank me. Just consider me a
philanthrope.
And also, I don’t understand why you don’t
eat. You’re my project," he said, jettisoning a dustpan
full of feebly crawling bodies into the night air. "I doubt
you’ll last the night, but fuck it, you’ve appealed to my
pity and my curiosity and I’ll have one last stab at rescuing
you."

**

There was a shuddering
bang. The door to the warehouse had been hurled open.

"Grimnebulin!"

It was Yagharek. The
garuda stood in the dimly lit space, legs apart and arms clutching at
his cloak. The jutting shape of his wooden wing disguise swayed
unrealistically from side to side. It was not properly attached.
Isaac leaned over the rail and frowned.

"Yagharek?"

"Have you forsaken
me, Grimnebulin?"

Yagharek was shrieking
like a tortured bird. His words were almost impossible to understand.
Isaac gesticulated at him to calm down.

"Yagharek, what
the fuck are you
talking
about...?"

"The birds,
Grimnebulin, I saw the birds! You told me, you showed me, they were
for your research...what has happened, Grimnebulin? Are you giving
up?"

"Hang on...how in
the name of Jabber’s arse did you see them fly away? Where’ve
you been?"

"On your roof,
Grimnebulin." Yagharek was quietening. He was calmer. He
radiated a massive sadness. "On your roof, where I perch, night
after night, waiting for you to help me. I saw you release all the
little subjects. Why have you given up, Grimnebulin?"

Isaac beckoned him up
the stairs.

"Yag, old
son...Damn, I don’t know where to start." Isaac stared up
at the ceiling. "What the
arse
were you doing on my roof?
How long have you hung about up there? ‘Stail, you could’ve
kipped down here, or something...that is
absurd.
Not to say a
bit eerie, thinking of you up there while I work or eat or shit or
whatnot. And—" he held up his hand to cut off Yagharek’s
response "—and I have not given up on your project."

He was silent for a
while. He let the words sink in. He waited for Yagharek to calm, to
return from the miserable little hollow he had carved for himself.

"I haven’t
given up," he repeated. "What’s happened is quite
good,
actually...We’ve entered a new phase, I think. Out
with the old. That line of research has been...ah...terminated."

Yagharek bowed his
head. His shoulders shuddered slightly as he breathed out lengthily.

"I do not
understand."

"Right, well,
look, come over here. I’m going to show you something."

Isaac led Yagharek over
to the desk. He paused momentarily to tut at the huge caterpillar
that sagged on its side in the box. It stirred weakly.

Yagharek did not spare
it a glance.

Isaac pointed to the
various bundles of paper that propped up overdue library books and
teetered on his desk. Drawings, equations, notes and treatises.
Yagharek began to sift slowly through them. Isaac guided him.

"Look...See all
the damn sketches everywhere. Wings, for the most part. Now, the
starting point for the research was the wing. Seems sensible, don’t
it? So what I’ve been about is understanding that particular
limb.

"The garuda who
live in New Crobuzon are useless for us, by the way. I put up notices
in the university, but apparently there’re no garuda students
this year. I even tried to argue for the sake of science with a
garuda...uh...
community leader...
and it was a bit of a
disaster. Let’s put it that way." Isaac paused,
remembering, then blinked himself back to the discussion. "So
instead, let’s look to the birds.

"Now, that leads
us to a whole new problem. The
little
beggars, the humming
birds and wrens and whatnot are all interesting and useful in terms
of...y’know...broad background, the physics of flight and what
have you, but basically we’re looking at the big boys.
Kestrels, hawks, eagles if I’d got hold of any. Because at this
stage I’m still thinking
analogously.
But I don’t
want you to think I’m close-minded...I’m not studying the
mayfly or whatever just out of
interest,
I’m trying to
work out if I can apply it.

"I mean, I’m
presuming you’re not fussy, right, Yag? I’m presuming
that if I graft onto your back a pair of bat or bluebottle wings, or
even a wind-polyp’s flightgland, you’re not going to be
fussy. Might not be pretty, but it’s just about getting you
into the air, right?"

Yagharek nodded. He was
listening fiercely, sifting through the papers on the desk as he did
so. He was intent on understanding.

"Right. So it
seems reasonable, even given all that, that it’s the big birds
we should be looking at. But of course..." Isaac rummaged among
the papers, grabbed some pictures from the wall, handed sheafs of the
relevant diagrams to Yagharek. "Of course, that turns out not to
be so. I mean, you can get so far on the aerodynamics of birds, all
useful stuff, but it’s actually
very misleading
to be
looking at them. Because the aerodynamics of your body are so fucking
different, basically. You
ain’t
just an eagle with a
scrawny human body attached. I’m sure you never thought you
were...I don’t know how your maths and physics are, but on this
sheet
here
—" Isaac found it and passed it over
"—are some diagrams and equations which show you why big
birds’ flight ain’t the direction to be looking. Lines of
force all wrong. Not strong enough. That sort of thing.

"So, I turn to the
other wings in the collection. What if we tacked on dragonfly wings
or what have you? Well, first of all there’s the problem of
getting hold of insect wings big enough. The only insects big enough
already aren’t going to just hand ‘em over. And I don’t
know about you but I don’t fancy fucking off into the mountains
or wherever to ambush an assassin beetle. Get our arses kicked.

"What about
building them to our specifications? Then we can get the size right
and
the shape. We can compensate for your...
awkward
form." Isaac grinned and continued. "Trouble is, material
science being what it is, we
might
be able to make them exact
enough, and light enough, and strong enough, but I honestly doubt it.
I’m working on designs that
might work,
but might not. I
don’t think the odds are good enough.

"Also, you’ve
got to remember that this whole project is dependent on you getting
Remade by a virtuoso. I’m glad to say I don’t know any
Remakers, which is the first thing, and the second is they’re
usually more interested in humiliation, industrial power or
aesthetics than in something as intricate as flight. There are
shit-loads of nerve endings, loads of muscles, ripped-up bones and
the like floating around in your back, and they’d have to get
every one
exactly right if you were going to have the
slightest chance of getting airborne."

Isaac had steered
Yagharek into a chair. He pulled up a stool and sat opposite him. The
garuda was completely silent. He gazed at Isaac with powerful
concentration, then at the diagrams he held. This was how he read,
Isaac realized, with this intensity and focus. He was not like a
patient waiting for a doctor to get to the point: he was taking in
every single word.

"I should say that
I’m not totally finished with this. There’s one person I
know who’s adept at the sort of bio-thaumaturgy you’d
need to have working wings grafted to you. So I’m going to go
round and pick his brains about the chances of success." Isaac
grimaced and shook his head. "And let me tell you, Yag old son,
that if you knew this geezer you’d know how damn noble that is.
There’s no sacrifice I won’t make it for you..." He
paused lengthily.

"So there’s
the chance this chap could say ‘Yes, wings, no problem, bring
him round and I’ll do it on Dustday afternoon.’ That
is
possible, but you employ me for my scientificnous, and I’m
telling you that it’s my professional opinion that that won’t
happen. I think we have to think laterally.

"My first forays
down this route were to look at the various things that fly without
wings. Now, I’ll spare you the details of my schemes. Most of
the plans are...
here,
if you’re interested. A
subcutaneous self-inflating mini-dirigible; a transplant of mutant
wind-polyp glands; integrating you with a flying golem; even
something as prosaic as teaching you basic physical thaumaturgy."
Isaac indicated the notes on each of these plans as he mentioned
them. "All unworkable. Thaumaturgy’s unreliable and
exhausting. Anyone can learn some basic hexes, given application, but
constant countergeotropy
on demand
would take a damn sight
more energy and skill than most people have got. Do you have powerful
sortilege in the Cymek?"

Yagharek shook his head
slowly. "Some whispers to call prey to our claws; some symbols
and passes that encourage bones to knit and blood to clot: that is
all."

"Yeah, that
doesn’t surprise me. So best not to rely on that. And trust me
when I tell you that my other...er...
offbeat
plans were
unworkable.

"So I’ve
been spending all my time working on stuff like this, and getting
nowhere, and I realized that whenever I stop for a minute or two and
just have a think, the same thing comes into my head. Watercraeft."

Yagharek frowned,
drawing his already heavy brows into an overhanging crag of almost
geological aspect. He shook his head to show his confusion.

"Watercraeft,"
Isaac repeated. "You know what that is?"

"I have read
something of it...The skill of the vodyanoi..."

"Bang on, old son.
You’ll see the dockers doing it sometimes, in Kelltree or Smog
Bend. A whole gang of them can shape quite a bit of the river. They
dig holes in the water down to where spilt cargoes lie on the bottom,
so the cranes can hook them. Fucking amazing. In rural communities
they use it to cut trenches of air through rivers, then drive fish
into them. They just fly out of the flat side of the river and flop
onto the ground. Brilliant." Isaac pursed his lips in
appreciation. "Anyway, these days it’s mostly just used to
arse about, make little sculptures. They have little competitions and
whatnot.