Perdido Street Station (19 page)

Derkhan turned into a
mildewed brick cul-de-sac and looked around her. A Remade horse stood
by the far end, its hind legs enormous piston-driven hammers. Behind
it, a covered cart was backed nearly to the wall. Any one of the
dead-eyed figures loitering around could be militia informers. It was
a risk she would have to take.

She walked around to
the back of the cart. Six pigs had been loaded out of the cart into a
makeshift pen open on the side nearest the wall. Two men were chasing
the pigs comically around the little space. The pigs squealed and
screeched like babies as they ran. The pen led onto a semicircular
opening about four feet high set into the wall at ground level.
Derkhan peered through this space into a foetid hole ten feet below,
barely lit with gas-jets that flickered unreliably. The burrow boomed
and hissed and gleamed red in the gaslight. Figures came and went
below her, bent double under dripping burdens like souls in some
lurid hell.

A doorless opening to
her left led Derkhan down steep stairs towards the sunken
slaughterhouse.

**

The spring warmth was
magnified here as if by infernal energy. Derkhan sweated and picked
her way through swinging carcasses and slicks of congealing blood. At
the back of the room a raised belt dragged heavy meathooks along the
ceiling in a remorseless circuit, disappearing into the darker bowels
of the charnel-house.

Even the glints of
light from knives seemed filtered through ruddy gloom. Derkhan held a
posset to her nose and mouth and tried not to gag at the rancid,
heavy stench of blood and warm meat.

At the far end of the
room, she saw three men congregated below the open arc she had seen
from the street. In this dark and stinking place, the Dog Fenn light
and air that spilt through from above was like bleach.

At some unspoken
signal, the three slaughtermen stood back. The pig-men in the alley
above had got hold of one of the animals, and in the midst of a
rising wave of curses and grunts and terrified sounds, they hurled
her enormous weight through the opening. The pig screamed as she
pitched into the darkness. She was rigid with terror as she hurtled
towards the waiting knives.

There was a sick-making
crack and snap as the sow’s stiff little legs shattered on
flagstones slimy with blood and shit. She collapsed on legs bleeding
from bone-shards, thrashing and screeching, unable to run or fight.
The three men moved forward with practised precision. One leaned on
the pig’s rump in case she jack-knifed, another pulled back her
head by those lolling ears. The third man split the skin of her
throat with his knife.

Her cries ebbed quickly
with the gouts and wash of blood. The men hauled her huge, twitching
body onto a waiting table by which a rusted saw leaned. One man saw
Derkhan. He nudged another.

"Ay ay, Ben, you
dark horse, you rogue! It’s your fancy tart!" he shouted
good-naturedly, loud enough for Derkhan to hear. The man he spoke to
turned and waved at her.

"Five minutes,"
he yelled. She nodded. Her posset was clamped to her mouth as she
swallowed back bile and spew.

Again and again the
massive, terrified pigs dropped from the alley in a flailing organic
mess, legs folded in unnatural angles against their guts, again and
again they were cut open and bled dry on ancient wooden stands.
Tongues and flaps of ragged skin dangled, dripping. The channels cut
in the abattoir floor burst their banks as a swamp of dirty blood
lapped against buckets of giblets and bleached, boiled cows’
heads.

Eventually, the last
pig had fallen. The exhausted men swayed where they stood. They were
awash with gore, and steaming. There was a brief conference and
raucous laughter, and the one called Ben turned away from his fellows
and approached Derkhan. Behind him, the two remaining men split the
first carcass and swept innards into a huge trough.

"Dee," said
Flex quietly, "I’ll not kiss you hello." He gestured
briefly at his saturated clothes, his bloody face.

"I’m
obliged," she replied. "Can we get out of here?"

They ducked under the
jerkily progressing meathooks and picked their way towards the dark
exit. They took stairs up towards ground level. The light became less
livid as the blue-grey tint of the sky filtered through dirty
skylights in the narrow corridor’s ceiling, a long way above.

Benjamin and Derkhan
turned into a windowless room filled with a tub, a pump and several
buckets. Some tough robes hung behind the door. Derkhan watched
quietly as he stripped off his fouled clothes and threw them in a
pail with water and powdered soap. He scratched himself and stretched
luxuriously, then pumped water vigorously into the tub. His naked
body was streaked with oily blood as if he was newborn. He shook some
of the soap under the sputtering pump, swirled the cold water to make
suds.

"Your mates are
very understanding about you just up and taking a fuck-break, aren’t
they?" said Derkhan mildly. "What have you told them? Did I
steal your heart, you mine, or are we in a purely business
arrangement?"

Benjamin sniggered. He
spoke with a strong Dog Fenn accent, in distinction to Derkhan’s
uptown tones.

"Well, I’ve
been working an extra shift, ain’t I? I’m already working
over my time. I told them you’d be along. Far as they’re
concerned you’re just a tart who’s taken to me, and I to
you. That wig, afore I forget, is a marvel." He grinned
lopsidedly. "Suits you, Dee. You look a smasher."

He stood in the tub,
slowly lowered himself into it, goose-bumps peppering him. He left a
thick scum of blood on the surface of the water. Gore and grime
lifted slowly from his skin and billowed lazily towards the surface.
He closed his eyes a minute.

"I won’t be
long, Dee, I promise," he whispered.

"Take your time,"
she replied.

His head slid below the
bubbles, leaving thin fronds of hair to coil on the surface and be
sucked slowly under. He held his breath a moment, then began to scrub
his submerged body vigorously, coming up and sucking air, then
ducking below again.

Derkhan filled a bucket
with water and stood behind the bath. As he broke the surface she
poured it slowly over his head, rinsing him free of bloody soap
stains.

"Oooh, lovely,"
he muttered. "More, I beg you."

She obliged him.

Eventually he stepped
out of the bath, which looked like the site of violent murder. He
tipped the slimy residue into a sluice hammered into the floor. They
heard it slosh through the walls.

Benjamin stepped into a
rough robe. He wagged his head at Derkhan.

"Shall we get down
to business, love?" He winked at her.

"Just tell me what
services you require, squire," she replied.

They left the room. At
the end of the passage, picked out in the wash from the skylight, was
the little room where Benjamin slept. He closed and locked the door
behind them. The room was like a well, far taller than it was wide.
Another grubby window was set into the square ceiling space. Derkhan
and Benjamin stepped over the flimsy mattress to the ramshackle old
wardrobe at its foot, a relic with a decaying grandeur at odds with
the slum setting.

Benjamin reached inside
and swept a few greasy shirts out of the way. He reached into the
fingerholds drilled strategically in the wardrobe’s wooden
back, and with a little grunt, lifted it away. He turned it gently
sideways and laid it on the cabinet’s floor.

Derkhan looked into the
small brick doorway Benjamin had uncovered while he reached onto a
little shelf in the wardrobe and took down a matchbox and a candle.
He lit the candle in a burst of sulphur, shielding it from the cool
air that wafted from the hidden room. With Derkhan behind him, he
stepped through the wardrobe and lit up the office of
Runagate
Rampant.

**

Derkhan and Benjamin
lit the gaslamps. The room was large, dwarfing the adjoining bedroom.
The air inside was heavy and sluggish. There was no natural light.
High above, the frame of a skylight was visible, but the glass was
painted over in black.

Around the room were
dotted tumbledown chairs and a couple of desks, all covered in paper
and scissors and typewriters. On one chair sat an inactive construct,
its eyes dim. One of its legs was crushed and ruined, bleeding copper
wire and splinters of glass. The wall was papered with posters.
Stacks of mouldering
Runagate Rampants
lined the room. Against
one damp wall was the unwieldy-looking press, a huge iron thing
coated in grease and ink.

Benjamin sat at the
largest desk and tugged a chair over next to him. He lit a long,
drooping cigarillo. It smoked profusely. Derkhan joined him. She
jerked her thumb at the construct.

"How’s that
old thing?" she asked.

"Too bloody noisy
to use during the day. I have to wait till the others have gone, but
then the press is hardly silent itself, so that makes no difference.
And it ain’t half a relief not to have to spin that damn wheel
over and over and over all fucking night, once a fortnight. I just
chuck a bit of coal in his innards, point him at it, and have a
snooze."

"How’s the
new issue?"

Benjamin nodded slowly
and pointed at a bound pile beside his chair.

"Not too bad.
Going to print off a few more. We’re running a little thing
about your Remade in the freakshow."

Derkhan waved her hand.

"It’s not a
big story."

"No, but
it’s...y’know...
toothy...
We’re leading on
the election. ‘Fuck the Lottery,’ in slightly less
strident terms." He grinned.

"I know it’s
pretty much the same as last issue, but that’s the time of
year."

"You weren’t
a lucky winner in the lotto this year, were you?" asked Derkhan.
"Your number come up?"

"Nah. Only once in
me life, years ago. Ran out to the ballot clasping me prize voucher
proudly and voted Finally We Can See. Youthful enthusiasm." Ben
sniggered. "You don’t qualify automatically, do you?"

"Devil’s
Tail, Benjamin, I don’t have that kind of money! I’d give
a damn sight more to
RR
if I did. No, and I didn’t win
this year, either."

Benjamin split the
string on the pile of papers. He shoved a handful at Derkhan. She
picked up the top copy and glanced at the front. Each copy was a
single large sheet of paper folded in half and half again. The font
on the front page was about the same size as that used in the
Beacon
or the
Quarrel
or any other of New Crobuzon’s legal
press. However, inside the folds of
Runagate Rampant
stories
and slogans and exhortations jostled with each other in a thicket of
tiny print. It was ugly but efficient.

Derkhan pulled out
three shekels and pushed them across to Benjamin. He took them with a
murmur of thanks and put them in a tin at the front of his desk.

"When are the
others coming?" asked Derkhan.

"I’m meeting
a couple in the pub in an hour or so, then the rest this evening and
tomorrow." In the oscillating, violent, disingenuous and
repressive political atmosphere of New Crobuzon, it was a necessary
defence that except in a few cases, the writers for
Runagate
Rampant
did not meet. That way the chances of infiltration by the
militia was minimized. Benjamin was the editor, the only person on
the constantly shifting staff whom everyone knew, and who knew
everyone.

Derkhan noticed a pile
of roughly printed sheets on the floor by her seat.
Runagate
Rampant’s
fellow seditionist papers. Halfway between
comrades and rivals.

"Anything good?"
she asked, and indicated the stack. Benjamin shrugged.

"
The Shout’s
rubbish this week. Decent lead in
Forge
about Rudgutter’s
dealings with the shipping companies. I’ll get someone to chase
it, actually. Apart from that it’s slim pickings."

"What do you want
me to get onto?"

"Well..."
Benjamin flicked through papers, consulted his notes. "If you
can just keep your ear to the ground about the dock strike...Canvass
opinion, try and get a few positive responses, a few quotes, you
know. And how about five hundred words on the history of the Suffrage
Lottery?"

Derkhan nodded.

"What else’ve
we got coming up?" she asked.

Benjamin pursed his
lips.

"There’s
some rumour about Rudgutter having some illness, dubious cures:
that’s something I’d like to chase, but you can tell it’s
been filtered by Jabber knows how many mouths. Still, keep an ear
open. There’s something else as well...very tentative at this
stage, but interesting. I’m talking to someone who claims
they’re
talking to someone who wants to blow the whistle
on links between Parliament and mob crime."

Derkhan nodded slowly
and appreciatively.

"Sounds
very
tasty. What are we talking? Drugs? Prostitutes?"

"Shit, sure as
eggs Rudgutter’s got fingers in every fucking pie you can think
of. They all have. Churn out the commodity, grab the profit, get the
militia to tidy up your customers afterwards, get a new crop of
Remade or slave-miners for the Arrowhead pits, keep the jails
full...nice as you like. I don’t know what this grass has in
mind particularly, and they’re fucking nervous, apparently,
ready to do a bunk. But you know me, Dee. Softly softly." He
winked at her. "I won’t let this one get away."

"Keep me posted,
won’t you?" Derkhan said. Benjamin nodded.

Derkhan bundled her
collection of papers into a bag, hiding them under assorted detritus.
She stood.

"Right. I have my
orders. That three shekels, by the way, includes fourteen copies of
Double-R
sold."