Perdido Street Station (11 page)

Lublamai and David had
gone, Isaac realized. He was alone.

He undulated like a
walrus, scattering papers and prints all over the boards. He turned
his gasjet off and peered up out of the dark warehouse. Through his
dirty window he could see the great cold circle of the moon and the
slow pirouettes of her two daughters, satellites of ancient, barren
rock glowing like fat fireflies as they spun around their mother.

Isaac fell asleep
watching the convoluted lunar clockwork. He basked in the moonlight
and dreamt of Lin: a fraught, sexual, loving dream.

The Clock and Cockerel
had spilt out of doors. Tables and coloured lanterns covered the
forecourt by the canal that separated Salacus Fields from Sangwine.
The smash of glasses and shrieks of amusement wafted over the dour
bargemen working the locks, riding the sluicing water up to a higher
level, taking off towards the river, leaving the boisterous inn
behind.

Lin felt vertiginous.

She sat at the head of
a large table under a violet lamp, surrounded by her friends. Next to
her on one side was Derkhan Blueday, the art critic for the
Beacon.
On the other was Cornfed, screaming animatedly at Thighs Growing, the
cactacae cellist. Alexandrine; Bellagin Sound; Tarrick Septimus;
Importunate Spint: painters and poets, musicians, sculptors, and a
host of hangers-on she half-recognized.

This was Lin’s
milieu. This was her world. And yet she had never felt so isolated
from them as she did now.

The knowledge that she
had landed
the
job, the huge request they all dreamed of, the
one work that could see her happy for years, separated her from her
fellows. And her terrifying employer very effectively sealed her
isolation. Lin felt as if suddenly, without warning, she was in a
very different world from the bitchy, game-playing, lively, precious,
introspective Salacus Fields round.

She had seen no one
since she had returned, shaken, from her extraordinary meeting in
Bonetown. She had missed Isaac badly, but she knew that he would be
taking the opportunity of her supposed work to be drowning himself in
research, and she knew also that for her to venture to Brock Marsh
would anger him greatly. In Salacus Fields, they were an open secret.
Brock Marsh, though, was the belly of the beast.

So she had sat for a
day, contemplating what she had agreed to do.

Slowly, tentatively,
she had cast her mind back to the monstrous figure of Mr. Motley.

Godspit and shit!
she had thought.
What was he?

She had no clear
picture of her boss, only a sense of the ragged discordance of his
flesh. Snippets of visual memory teased her: one hand terminating in
five equally spaced crabs’ claws; a spiralling horn bursting
from a nest of eyes; a reptilian ridge winding along goats’
fur. It was impossible to tell what race Mr. Motley had started out
as. She had never heard of Remaking so extensive, so monstrous and
chaotic. Anyone as rich as he must be could surely afford the best
Remakers to fashion him into something more human—or whatever.
She could only think that he chose this form.

Either that, or he was
a victim of Torque.

Lin wondered if his
obsession with the transition zone reflected his form, or if his
obsession came first.

Lin’s cupboard
was stuffed with her rough sketches of Mr. Motley’s
body—hastily hidden on the assumption that Isaac would stay
with her tonight. She had made scrawled notes of what she remembered
of the lunatic anatomy.

Her horror had ebbed,
over the days, leaving her with crawling skin and a torrent of ideas.

This, she had decided,
could be the work of her life.

Her first appointment
with Mr. Motley was the next day, Dustday, in the afternoon. After
that, it was twice a week for at least the next month: probably
longer, depending on how the sculpture took shape.

Lin was eager to begin.

**

"Lin, you tedious
bitch!" yelled Cornfed and threw a carrot at her. "Why are
you so quiet tonight?"

Lin scrawled quickly on
her pad.

Cornfed, sweetheart,
you bore me.

Everyone burst into
laughter. Cornfed returned to his flamboyant flirtation with
Alexandrine. Derkhan bent her grey head towards Lin and spoke softly.

"Seriously,
Lin...You’re hardly speaking. Is something up?"

Lin, touched, shook her
headbody gently.

Working on something
big. Taking up a lot of my mind,
she signed at her. It was a
relief to be able to speak without writing every word: Derkhan read
signing well.

I miss Isaac,
Lin added mock-forlornly.

Derkhan creased her
face sympathetically.
She is,
Lin thought,
a lovely woman.

Derkhan was pale, tall
and thin—though she had gained a small gut as she passed into
her middle years. Though she loved the outrageous antics of the
Salacus set, she was an intense, gentle woman who avoided being the
centre of attention. Her published writing was spiky and merciless:
if Derkhan had not liked her work, Lin did not think she could have
been Derkhan’s friend. Her judgements in the
Beacon
were
harsh to the point of brutality.

Lin could tell Derkhan
that she missed Isaac. Derkhan knew the true nature of their
relationship. A little over a year ago, when Lin and Derkhan were
strolling together in Salacus Fields, Derkhan had bought drinks. When
she handed over her money to pay, she had dropped her purse. She had
bent quickly to retrieve it, but Lin had beaten her to it, picking it
up and pausing only very slightly when she saw the old, battered
heliotype of the beautiful and fierce young woman in a man’s
suit that had fallen from it onto the street, the xxx written across
the bottom, the lipstick-kiss. She had handed it back to Derkhan, who
had replaced it in the purse without hurrying, and without looking
Lin in the eyes.

"Long time ago,"
Derkhan had said enigmatically, and immersed herself in her beer.

Lin had felt she owed
Derkhan a secret. She had almost been relieved a couple of months
later when she found herself drinking with Derkhan, depressed after
storming out of some stupid row with Isaac. It had given Lin the
opportunity to tell Derkhan the truth that she must already have
guessed. Derkhan had nodded with nothing but concern for Lin’s
misery.

They had been close
since then.

Isaac liked Derkhan
because she was a seditionist.

Just as Lin thought of
Isaac, she heard his voice.

"Godshit,
everyone, sorry I’m late..."

She turned and saw his
bulk pushing through tables towards them. Her antennae flexed in what
she was sure he would recognize as a smile.

A chorus of salutation
greeted Isaac as he approached them. He looked straight at Lin and
smiled at her privately. He caressed her back as he waved at everyone
else, and Lin felt his hand through her shirt clumsily spell out
I
love you.

Isaac yanked a chair
over and forced it between Lin’s and Cornfed’s.

"I’ve just
been to my bank, depositing a few sparkly little nuggets. A lucrative
contract," he shouted, "makes a happy scientist with very
bad judgement. Drinks on me." There was a raucous and delighted
crowing of surprise, followed by a group yell for the waiter.

"How’s the
show going, Cornfed?" said Isaac.

"Oh splendid,
splendid!" shouted Cornfed, and then bizarrely added, very loud,
"Lin came to see it on Fishday."

"Right," said
Isaac, nonplussed. "Did you like it, Lin?"

She briefly signed that
she had.

Cornfed was only
interested in gazing at Alexandrine’s cleavage through her
unsubtle dress. Isaac switched his attention to Lin.

"You would not
believe
what’s been happening..." Isaac began.

Lin gripped his knee
under the table. He returned the gesture.

Under his breath, Isaac
told Lin and Derkhan, in truncated form, the story of Yagharek’s
visit. He implored them to silence, and glanced around regularly to
make sure that no one else was listening in. Halfway through, the
chicken he had ordered arrived, and he ate noisily while he described
his meeting in The Moon’s Daughters, and the cages and cages of
experimental animals he expected to arrive at his laboratory any day
soon.

When he was finished,
he sat back and grinned at them both, before a look of contrition
washed over his face, and he sheepishly asked Lin: "How’s
your work been going?"

She waved her hand
dismissively.

There’s
nothing, dear heart,
she thought,
that I can tell you. Let’s
talk about your new project.

Guilt passed visibly
over his face at his one-sided conversation, but Isaac could not help
himself. He was utterly in the throes of a new project. Lin felt a
familiar melancholy affection for him. Melancholy at his
self-sufficiency in these moments of fascination; affection for his
fervour and passion.

"Look, look,"
Isaac gabbled suddenly, and tugged a piece of paper from his pocket.
He unfolded it on the table before them.

It was an advertisement
for a fair currently in Sobek Croix. The back was crisp with dry
glue: Isaac had torn it from a wall.

mr. bombadrezil’s unique
and
wonderful fair,
guaranteed to astound and enthral the most
jaded palate.
The
palace of love;
The
hall of terrors;
The
vortex;
and many other attractions for reasonable prices. Also come to see
the extraordinary freakshow, the
circus of weird. monsters
and
marvels
from every corner of Bas-Lag!
seers
from the
fractured land;
a genuine
weaver’s claw;
the
living skull;
the lascivious snake-woman;
ursus rex,
the man-king of the Bears; dwarf cactus-people of tiny sizes; a
garuda, bird-man chief of the wild desert; the
stone men
of
Bezhek; caged daemons;
dancing fish;
treasures stolen from
the
gengris;
and innumerable other
prodigies
and wonders. Some
attractions not suitable for the easily shocked or those of a nervous
disposition.
Entrance 5 stivers. Sobek Croix gardens, 14th
Chet to 14th Melluary, 6 to 11 o’clock every night.

"See that?"
Isaac barked, and stabbed the poster with his thumb. "They’ve
got a garuda! I’ve been sending requests all over the city for
dubious bits and bobs, probably going to end up with loads of
horrible disease-riddled jackdaws, and there’s a fucking
garuda
on the doorstep!"

Are you going to go
down?
signed Lin.

"Damn right!"
snorted Isaac. "Straight after this! I thought we could all go.
The others," he said, his voice dropping, "don’t have
to know what it is I’m doing there. I mean, a fair’s
always fun anyway. Right?"

Derkhan grinned and
nodded.

"So are you going
to spirit the garuda away, or what?" she whispered.

"Well, presumably
I could arrange to take heliotypes of it, or even ask it to come for
a couple of days to the lab...I don’t know. We’ll
organize something! What do you say? Fancy a fair?"

Lin picked a cherry
tomato from Isaac’s garnish and wiped it carefully clean of
chicken stock. She gripped it in her mandibles and began to chew.

Could be fun,
she signed.
Your treat?

"Absolutely my
treat!" boomed Isaac, and gazed at her. He stared at her very
close for a minute. He glanced round to make sure that no one was
watching, and then, clumsily, he signed in front of her.

Missed you.

Derkhan looked away for
a moment, tactfully.

Lin broke off the
moment, to make sure that she did it before Isaac. She clapped
loudly, until everyone at the table was staring at her. She began to
sign, indicating Derkhan to translate.

"Uh...Isaac is
keen to prove that the talk of scientists being all work and no play
is false. Intellectuals as well as dissolute aesthetes like us know
how to have a good time, and thus he offers us this..." Lin
waved the sheet, and threw it into the centre of the table where it
was visible to all. "Rides, spectacles, marvels and coconut
shies, all for a mere five stivers, which Isaac has kindly offered to
underwrite..."

"Not for
everyone,
you sow!" Isaac roared in mock-outrage, but he was drowned out
by the drunken roar of gratitude.

"...offered to
underwrite," continued Derkhan doggedly. "Accordingly, I
move that we drink up and eat up and hightail to Sobek Croix."

There was loud, chaotic
agreement. Those who had finished their food and drink gathered their
bags. Others tucked with renewed gusto into their oysters or salad or
fried plantain. Trying to organize a group of any size to do anything
in synchronicity was an epic struggle, Lin reflected wryly. It would
be some time before they set off.

Isaac and Derkhan were
hissing to each other across the table in front of her. Her antennae
twitched. She could pick up some of their murmurs. Isaac excitedly
talking politics. He channelled his diffuse, undirected, pointed
social discontent into his discussions with Derkhan. He was posing,
she thought with amused pique, out of his depth, trying to impress
the laconic journalist.

She could see Isaac
pass a coin carefully across the table, and receive a plain envelope
in return. Undoubtedly the latest issue of
Runagate Rampant,
the illegal, radical news-sheet for which Derkhan wrote.

Beyond a nebulous
dislike of the militia and the government, Lin was not a political
being. She sat back and looked up at the stars through the violet
haze of the suspended lantern. She thought about the last time she
had been to a fair: she remembered the mad palimpsest of smell, the
catcalls and screeches, the rigged competitions and cheap prizes, the
exotic animals and bright costumes, all packed together in a seedy,
vibrant, exciting whole.