Perdido Street Station (24 page)

"The point
is,
Yag, that what you’ve got there is water behaving very much as
it
shouldn’t.
Right? And that’s what you want. You
want heavy stuff, this thing here, this body—" he poked
Yagharek gently in the chest—"to fly. Are you with me?
Let’s turn our minds to the
ontological conundrum
of
persuading matter to break habits of aeons. We want to make elements
misbehave. This isn’t a problem of advanced ornithology, it’s
philosophy.

" ‘Stail,
Yag, this is stuff I’ve been working on for years! It’d
almost turned into a kind of
hobby.
But then this morning I
looked again at some notes I’d made early on in your case, and
I linked it up with all my old ideas, and I saw that this was the way
to go. And I’ve been wrestling with it all day." Isaac
shook a piece of paper at Yagharek, a piece of paper on which was a
triangle containing a cross.

Isaac grabbed a pencil
and wrote words at the three points of the triangle. He turned the
diagram to face Yagharek. The top point was labelled
Occult/thaumaturgical;
the bottom left
Material;
the
bottom right
Social/sapiential.

"Righto, now,
don’t get too bogged down with this diagram, Yag old son, it’s
supposed to be an aid to thought, nothing more. What you’ve got
here is a depiction of the three points within which all scholarship,
all knowledge, is located.

"Down here,
there’s material. That’s the actual physical stuff, atoms
and the like. Everything from fundamental femtoscopic particles like
elyctrons, up to big fuck-off volcanos. Rocks, elyctromagnetism,
chymical reaction...All that sort of thing.

"Opposite, that’s
social. Sentient creatures, of which there’s no shortage on
Bas-Lag, can’t just be studied like stones. By reflecting on
the world and on their own reflections, humans and garuda and
cactacae and whatnot create a different order of organization, right?
So it’s got to be studied in its own terms—but at the
same time it’s also obviously linked to the physical stuff that
makes everything up. That’s what this nice line is here,
connecting the two.

"Up top is occult.
Now we’re cooking. Occult: ‘hidden.’ Takes in the
various forces and dynamics and the like that aren’t just to do
with physical bits and bobs interacting, and aren’t just the
thoughts of thinkers. Spirits, daemons, gods if you want to call them
that, thaumaturgy...you get the idea. That’s up at that end.
But it’s linked to the other two. First off, thaumaturgic
techniques, invocation, shamanism and so on, they all affect—and
are affected by—the social relations that surround them. And
then the physical aspect: hexes and charms are mostly the
manipulation of theoretical particles—the ‘enchanted
particles’—called
thaumaturgons.
Now, some
scientists—" he thumped his chest "—think
they’re essentially the same sort of thing as protons and all
the physical particles.

"This..."
said Isaac slyly, his voice slowing right down, "is where stuff
gets
really
interesting.

"If you think of
any arena of study or knowledge, it lies somewhere in this triangle,
but
not
squarely on one corner. Take sociology, or psychology,
or xenthropology. Pretty simple, right? It’s down here, in the
‘Social’ corner? Well, yes and no. That’s
definitely its closest
node,
but you can’t study
societies without thinking about the questions of physical resources.
Right? So straight away, the physical aspect is kicking in. So we
have to move sociology along the bottom axis a little bit." He
slid his finger a fraction of an inch to the left. "But then,
how can you understand, say, cactacae culture without understanding
their solar-focus, or khepri culture without their deities, or
vodyanoi culture without understanding shamanic channelling? You
can’t
" he concluded triumphantly. "So we have
to shift things up towards the occult." His finger moved a
little, accordingly.

"So that’s
roughly where sociology and psychology and the like are. Bottom
right-hand corner, little bit up, little bit along.

"Physics? Biology?
Should be right over by material sciences, yeah? Only, if you say
that biology has an effect on society, the reverse is also true, so
biology’s actually a tiny bit to the right of the ‘Material’
corner. And what about the flight of wind-polyps? The feeding of soul
trees? That stuff’s occult, so we’ve moved it again, up
this time. Physics includes the efficacy of certain substances in
thaumaturgic hexes. You take my point? Even the most ‘pure’
subject’s actually somewhere between the three.

"Then there’s
a whole bunch of subjects that
define
themselves by their
mongrel nature. Socio-biology? Halfway along the bottom and a little
bit up. Hypnotology? Halfway up the right flank. Social/psychological
and occult, but with a bit of brain chymistry thrown in, so that’s
over a bit..."

Isaac’s diagram
was now covered in little crosses where he located the various
disciplines. He looked at Yagharek and drew a neat, final, careful x
in the very centre of the triangle.

"Now what are we
looking at
right here?
What’s bang in the middle?

"Some people think
that’s mathematics there. Fine. But if maths is the study that
best allows you to
think your way
to the centre, what’re
the forces you’re investigating? Maths is totally abstract, at
one level, square roots of minus one and the like; but the world is
nothing if not rigorously mathematical. So this is a way of looking
at the world which unifies all the forces: mental, social, physical.

"If the subjects
are located in one triangle, with three nodes and one centre, then so
are the forces and dynamics they study. In other words, if you think
this way of looking at things is interesting or helpful, then there’s
basically
one
kind of field, one kind of force, being studied
in its various aspects here. That’s why this is called ‘Unified
Field Theory.’ "

Isaac smiled,
exhausted.
Godspit,
he realized suddenly,
I’m doing
rather a good job of this...Ten years of research have improved my
teaching...
Yagharek was watching him carefully.

"I...understand..."
the garuda finally said.

"I’m glad to
hear it. There’s more, old son, so gird your loins. UFT’s
not very accepted as a theory, you know. It’s probably about
the status of the Fractured Land Hypothesis, if that means anything
to you." Yagharek nodded. "Fine, you know what I mean,
then. Just about respectable, but a bit crackpot. However, to shred
the last vestiges of credibility I might have been able to muster, I
subscribe to a minority view among UFT theorists. That’s over
the nature of the forces under investigation.

"I’ll try
and keep this simple." Isaac squeezed his eyes closed for a
minute and gathered his thoughts. "Right. The question is
whether it’s
pathological
for a dropped egg to fall."

He paused and let the
image hang for a minute.

"See, if you think
that matter and therefore the unified force under investigation are
essentially
static,
then falling, flying, rolling, changing
your mind, casting a spell, growing older, moving, are basically
deviations
from an essential state. Otherwise, you think that
motion is part of the fabric of ontology, and the question’s
how best to theorize that. You can tell where my sympathies lie.
Staticists would say I’m misrepresenting them, but fuck it.

"So I’m a
MUFTI, a Moving Unified Field Theorist. Not a SUFTI, a Static
Unified...you get the idea. But then, being a MUFTI raises as many
problems as it solves: if it
moves,
how does it move? Steady
gait? Punctuated inversion?

"When you pick up
a piece of wood and hold it ten feet above the ground, it has more
energy than when it’s on the ground. We call that potential
energy, right? That’s not controversial among
any
scientist. Potential energy’s the energy that gives the wood
the power to hurt you or mark the floor, a power it doesn’t
have when it’s just resting on the ground. It has that energy
when it’s motionless, like it was before, but when it
could
fall
If it does, the potential energy turns into kinetic energy,
and you break your toe or whatever.

"See, potential
energy’s all about placing something in a situation where it’s
teetering, where it’s about to change its state. Just like when
you put enough strain on a group of people, they’ll suddenly
explode. They’ll go from grumpy and quiescent to violent and
creative in one moment. The transition from one state to another’s
affected by taking something—a social group, a piece of wood, a
hex—to a place where its interactions with other forces make
its
own energy
pull against its current state.

"I’m talking
about taking things to the point of
crisis
!"

**

Isaac sat back for a
minute. To his surprise, he was loving this. The process of
explaining his theoretical approach was consolidating his ideas,
making him formulate his approach with a tentative rigour.

Yagharek was a model
pupil. His attention was totally unwavering, his eyes as sharp as
stilettos.

Isaac took a long
breath and continued.

"This is major
shit we’re dealing with here, Yag mate. I’ve been
nibbling at crisis theory for arsing
years.
In a nutshell: I’m
saying it’s in the
nature of things
to enter crisis, as
part of what they are. Things turn themselves inside out by virtue of
being things, understand? The force that pushes the unified field on
is
crisis energy.
Stuff like potential energy, that’s
one aspect of crisis energy, one tiny partial manifestation. Now, if
you could tap the reserves of crisis energy in any given situation,
you’re talking about
enormous
power. Some situations are
more crisis-ridden or -prone than others, yes, but the point of
crisis theory is that things are in crisis just as part of
being.
There’s
loads
of sodding crisis energy flowing around
all the time, but we haven’t yet learnt how to tap it
efficiently. Instead it bursts over unreliably and uncontrollably
every so often. Terrible waste."

Isaac shook his head at
the thought.

"The vodyanoi can
tap crisis energy, I think. In a tiny, tiny way. It’s
paradoxical. You tap the existing crisis energy in the water to hold
it in a shape it fights against, so you put it in
more
crisis...but then there’s nowhere for the energy to go, so the
crisis resolves itself by breaking down into its original form. But
what if the vodyanoi used water they’d
already...uh...
watercraefted,
and used it as a constituent for
some experiment that drew on the increased crisis energy...Sorry. I’m
digressing. The point is, I’m trying to work out a way for you
to tap into your crisis energy, and channel it to flight. See, if I’m
right, it’s the only force that’s always going to
be...
suffusing you.
And the more you fly, the more you’re
in crisis, the more you should be able to fly...That’s the
theory, anyway...

"But to be honest,
Yag, this is much bigger than that. If I can
really
unlock
crisis energy for you, then your case becomes, frankly, a pretty
paltry concern. We’re talking about forces and energy that
could
totally
change...everything..."

The incredible idea
stilled the air. The dirty environs of the warehouse seemed too small
and mean for this conversation.

Isaac stared out of the
window into the grubby New Crobuzon night. The moon and her daughters
were dancing sedately above him. The daughters, smaller than their
mother but bigger than stars, shone hard and cold above him. Isaac
thought about crisis.

Eventually Yagharek
spoke.

"And if you are
right...I will fly?"

Isaac burst into
laughter at the bathetic demand.

"Yes, yes, Yag old
son. If I’m right, you’ll fly again."

Isaac could not
persuade Yagharek to stay in the warehouse. The garuda would not
explain his objections. He simply slipped away into the evening, a
wretched outcast for all his pride, to sleep in some ditch or chimney
or ruin. He would not even accept food. Isaac stood at the door to
the warehouse and watched him go. Yagharek’s dark blanket swung
loosely from that wooden framework, those false wings.

Eventually, Isaac
closed the door. He returned to his ledge and watched lights slide
along the Canker. He rested his head on his fists and listened to the
tick of his clock. The feral sounds of New Crobuzon at night
inveigled their way through his walls. He heard the melancholy lowing
of machines and ships and factories.

In the room below him,
David and Lublamai’s construct seemed to cluck gently in time
to the clock.

Isaac collected his
drawings from the walls. Some that he thought were good he stuffed
into an obese portfolio. Many he squinted at critically and threw
away. He got onto his big belly and rooted under the bed, bringing
out a dusty abacus and a slide-rule.

What I need,
he
thought,
is to get to the university and liberate one of their
difference engines.
It would not be easy. The security for such
items was neurotic. Isaac realized suddenly that he would have the
chance to scope out the guard systems for himself: he was going to
the university the next day, to talk to his much-loathed employer,
Vermishank.