Perdido Street Station (58 page)

Isaac looked around.
There was nowhere to hide in the alcove, but across the little room
was another just like it, completely swathed in darkness. Anything
crouching within it would have been invisible in the shadow.

"We all woke up
here," said Derkhan. "All of us except Lemuel had these
weird clothes on. Yagharek was..." She shook her head in
confusion and touched her bloody wound gently. She winced. "Yagharek
was shoehorned into some dollymop’s dress. There were a couple
of lamps, lit and waiting for us when we woke. Lemuel and Yagharek
told me what happened...Yagharek was talking...he was being very
weird, talking about a
web...
" She shook her head.

"I understand
that," said Isaac heavily. He paused and felt his mind scurry in
awe away from the vague memories he had. "You were unconscious
when the Weaver hauled us out. You wouldn’t have seen what we
saw...where he took us..."

Derkhan frowned. She
had tears in her eyes.

"My damn...my damn
ear hurts so much, ‘Zaac," she said. Isaac rubbed her
shoulder clumsily, his face creasing, until she continued. "Anyway,
you were out, so Lemuel took off, and Yagharek went with him."

"
What?"
shouted Isaac, but Derkhan shushed him with her hands.

"You know Lemuel,
you know the sort of work he does. It turns out he knows the sewers
well. Apparently they can be a useful bolt-hole. He did a little
reconnaissance trip into the tunnels, and came back actually knowing
where we are."

"Which is?"

"Murkside. He left
and Yagharek demanded to go with him. They swore they’d be back
within three hours. They’ve gone to get some food, some clothes
for me and Yagharek, and to see the lay of the land. They left about
an hour ago."

"Well godsdamn,
let’s go and
join them...
"

Derkhan shook her head.

"Don’t be an
idiot, ‘Zaac," she said, sounding exhausted. "We
can’t afford to get separated. Lemuel knows the
sewers...they’re
dangerous.
He told us to stay put.
There’s all manner of things down here...ghuls, trows, gods
know what. That’s why I stayed with you while you were out. We
have
to wait for them here.

"And besides
which, you’re probably the most wanted person in New Crobuzon
right now. Lemuel’s a successful criminal: he knows how not to
be seen. He’s at much less risk than you."

"But what about
Yag?" howled Isaac.

"Lemuel gave him
his cloak. With the hood up and that dress torn up and wrapped round
his feet, he just looked like a weird old man. Isaac, they’ll
be back soon. We
have
to wait for them. We have to make plans.
And you have to
listen."
He looked up at her, concerned
at her miserable tone.

"Why’s it
taken us here, ‘Zaac?" she said. Her face creased in pain.
"Why did it
hurt us,
why did it dress us like this...?
Why didn’t it
heal
me...?" She wiped tears of pain
away angrily.

"Derkhan,"
Isaac said gently. "I could never know..."

"You should see
this," she said, sniffing quickly. She handed him a crumpled and
stinking sheet of newspaper. He took it slowly, his face curling with
distaste as he touched the sodden, filthy thing.

"What is it?"
he said, unfolding it.

"When we woke up,
all disorientated and confused, it came bobbing down one of the
little tunnels there, folded into a little boat." She looked at
him askance. "It was coming
against
the current. We
fished it out."

Isaac opened it out and
looked at it. It was the centre pages from
The Digest,
one of
New Crobuzon’s weekly papers. He saw from the date at the top
of the page—
9th Tathis 1779—
that it had come out
that same morning.

Isaac scanned his eyes
over the little collection of stories. He shook his head in
incomprehension.

"What am I
missing?" he asked.

"Look at the
letters to the editor," said Derkhan.

He turned the sheet
over. There it was, second letter down. It was written in the same
formal, stilted fashion as the others, but its content was wildly
different.

Isaac’s eyes
widened as he read.

Sirs and Madam—

Please accept my compliments on your exquisite tapestry skills. For
the furtherment of your craftwork I have taken it upon myself to
extricate you from an unfortunate situation. My efforts are urgently
required elsewhere and I am unable to accompany you. Doubtless we
will meet again before much time has elapsed. In the meantime please
note that he of your number whose inadvertent animal husbandry has
led to the city’s present unfortunate predicament may find
himself the victim of unwanted attentions from his escaped charge.

I urge you to continue your fabric work, of which I find myself a
devotee.

Most faithfully yours,

W.

Isaac looked up slowly
at Derkhan.

"Gods only knows
what the rest of
The Digest’s
readers will think of
that..." he said in a hushed voice. " ‘Stall, that
damn spider’s powerful!"

Derkhan nodded slowly.
She sighed.

"I just wish,"
she said unhappily, "I understood what it was
doing..."

"You never could,
Dee," said Isaac. "Never."

"You’re a
scientist, ‘Zaac," she said sharply. She sounded
desperate. "You have to know something about these damn things.
Now please
try
to tell us what it’s saying..."

Isaac did not argue. He
reread the note and rummaged inside his head for whatever scraps of
information he could find.

"It just does
whatever it has to to...to make the web prettier," he said
unhappily. He caught sight of Derkhan’s ragged wound, and
looked away again. "You can’t understand it, it doesn’t
think like us
at all.
" As he spoke, something occurred to
Isaac. "Maybe...maybe that’s why Rudgutter’s been
dealing with it," he said. "If it doesn’t think like
us, maybe it’s immune to the moths...Maybe it’s like
a...a hunting dog..."

He’s lost
control of it,
he thought, remembering the mayor’s shouts
from outside.
It’s not doing what he wants.

He turned his attention
back down to the letter in
The Digest.

"This bit about
tapestry-work..." Isaac mused, chewing his lips. "That’s
the worldweb, isn’t it? So I think it’s saying it likes
what we were...um...doing in the world. How we were ‘weaving.’
I think that’s why it got us out. And this later section..."
His expression became more and more fearful as he read.

"Oh gods," he
breathed. "It’s like what happened to Barbile..."
Derkhan’s mouth was set. She nodded reluctantly. "What was
it she said? ‘It’s tasted me...’ The grub I had, I
must’ve been tantalizing it with my mind all the time...It’s
tasted me already...It must be hunting me..."

Derkhan stared at him.

"You won’t
get it off your tail, Isaac," she said quietly. "We’ll
have to kill it."

She had said
we.
He looked up at her gratefully.

"Before we
formulate any plans," she said, "there’s another
thing. A mystery. Something I want explained." She gestured at
the other alcove across the dark room. Isaac peered curiously into
the filthy obscurity. He could just make out a lumpy, motionless
shape.

He knew what it was
instantly. He remembered its extraordinary intervention in the
warehouse. His breath sped up.

"It wouldn’t
speak or write to anyone else," Derkhan said.

"When we realized
it was here with us, we tried to talk to it, we wanted to know what
it had done, but it completely ignored us. I think it’s been
waiting for you."

Isaac slid over to the
lip of the ledge.

"It’s
shallow," Derkhan said behind him. He slipped off into the cool
watery muck of the sewers. It came up to his knees. He pushed through
it unthinkingly, ignoring the thick stench he raised as it sluiced
through his legs. He waded through the noisome excremental stew
towards the other little shelf.

As he drew closer, the
dull inhabitant of that unlit space whirred slightly and pushed its
battered body as near upright as it could. It was crammed into the
little space.

Isaac sat next to it,
shook his fouled shoes as clean as he could. He turned to it with an
intent, hungry expression.

"So," he
said. "Tell me what you know. Tell me why you warned me. Tell me
what’s going on."

The cleaning construct
hissed.

Under a damp hollow of
bricks by Trauka Station, Yagharek waited.

He gnawed a hunk of
bread and meat that he had begged wordlessly from a butcher. He had
not been unmasked. He had simply thrust his tremulous hand out from
under his cloak and the food had been given to him. His head had
remained hidden. He had shuffled away, his feet cramped and hidden by
rags. His gait was of an old, tired man.

It was much easier to
hide as a human than as an unwounded garuda.

He waited in the
darkness where Lemuel had left him. From the shadows which hid him,
he could watch the comings and goings at the church of the clock
gods. It was an ugly little building, the façade of which was
still painted with the advertising slogans of the furniture shop it
had once been. Above the door was an intricate brass timepiece, each
hour intertwined with the symbols of its associate god.

Yagharek knew the
religion. It was strong among the humans of Shankell. He had visited
its temples when his band had come to the city to trade, in the years
before his crime.

The clock struck one,
and Yagharek heard the ululating hymn to Sanshad, the sun god, come
belting through the broken windows. It was sung with more gusto than
in Shankell but considerably less finesse. It was less than three
decades since the religion had crossed the Meagre Sea with any
success. Obviously its subtleties had been lost in the water between
Shankell and Myrshock.

Before he was conscious
of it, his hunter’s ears had realized that one of the sets of
footsteps approaching his hideaway was familiar. He finished his food
quickly and waited.

Lemuel appeared framed
in the entrance of the little cave. Passers-by came and went in the
light spaces above his shoulders.

"Yag," he
whispered, gazing sightlessly into the grubby hole. The garuda
shuffled forward into the light. Lemuel was carrying two bags stuffed
with clothes and food. "Come on," he whispered. "We
should get back."

They retraced their
steps through the winding streets of Murkside. It was Skullday, a
shopping day, and elsewhere in the city the crowds would be thick.
But in Murkside the shops were mean and poor. Those locals for whom
Skullday was a day off would make their way to Griss Fell or the
Aspic Hole market. Lemuel and Yagharek were not watched by many.

Yagharek sped up,
hobbling on bound feet with a weird, crippled gait to keep up with
Lemuel. They made their way south-east, staying in the shadow of the
raised railway lines, moving towards Syriac.

This is how I came
to the city,
thought Yagharek,
tracking the great iron
pathways of the trains.

They passed under the
brick arches, retracing their way into a little enclosed space
overlooked on three sides by featureless brick. Storm drains
channelled down the walls, along concrete ruts and into a man-sized
grille in the centre of the yard.

On the fourth side, the
south-facing side, the courtyard looked out onto a drab alley. The
land fell away before it. Syriac sat in a depression in the
underlying clay. Yagharek looked out over a tumbledown roofscape of
twisted roofs and mouldering slate, curlicues of brick and forgotten,
warped weathervanes.

Lemuel glanced around
to ensure their privacy, then tugged the grille free. Fingers of
fell-gas curled out and tugged at them. The heat made the stink rich.
Lemuel gave his bags to Yagharek and pulled a primed pistol from his
belt. Yagharek looked at him from under the hood.

Lemuel turned with a
hard smile and said: "I’ve been pulling in favours. Got us
kitted out." He waggled the gun to illustrate his point. He
checked it, hefted it expertly. He pulled the oil-lamp from a bag,
lit it and lifted it with his left hand.

"Stay behind me,"
he said. "Keep your ears open. Move quietly. Watch your back."

With that, Lemuel and
Yagharek descended into the dirt and the dark.

**

There was an
indeterminable time wading through the warm, rank darkness. The
sounds of scuttling and swimming were all around them. Once they
heard vicious laughter from a tunnel parallel to theirs. Twice Lemuel
swung round, aiming the torch and his pistol at a patch of filth
still rippling from where some unseen thing had been. He did not have
to shoot. They were unmolested.

"You know how
lucky we were?" said Lemuel conversationally. His voice bobbed
slowly back to Yagharek on the foetid air. "I don’t know
if it was deliberate, where the Weaver left us, but we’re in
one of the safest places in the New Crobuzon sewers." His voice
stiffened now and then with effort or disgust. "Murkside’s
such a backwater, you don’t have much food down here, you’ve
got no thaumaturgic residues, there aren’t any massive old
chambers to support a whole brood...It’s not very busy."

He was silent for a
moment, then continued.

"Brock Marsh
sewers, for example. All the unstable runoff from all those labs and
experiments, accumulating over the years...makes for a very
unpredictable population of vermin. Rats the size of pigs, speaking
in tongues. Blind pygmy crocodiles, whose
great-great-great-grandparents escaped from the zoo. Crossbreeds of
all sorts.