Perdido Street Station (45 page)

Derkhan brought the
materials over. She began to sketch onto Umma Balsum’s arm. She
cast her mind back desperately, trying to get the colours exactly
right. It took her about twenty-five minutes to finish her attempt.
The anchor she had drawn was a little more garish than Benjamin’s
(partly a consequence of the quality of the inks), and perhaps
somewhat squatter. Nonetheless, she was sure that anyone who knew the
original would recognize hers as a copy of it. She sat back,
tentatively satisfied.

Umma Balsum waved her
arm like a fat chicken’s wing, drying the inks. She fiddled
with the remnants of Benjamin’s bedroom.

"...bloody
unhygenic bloody way to make a living..." she murmured, just
loud enough for Derkhan to hear. Umma Balsum picked up Benjamin’s
razor and, holding it with a practised grip, nicked herself slightly
on the chin. She rubbed the bloodstained paper against her cut. Then
she lifted up her skirt and pulled the trouser leg as far onto her
fat thighs as it would go.

Umma Balsum reached
under the table and brought out a leather and darkwood box. She set
it on the table and opened it.

Inside was a tight,
interlocking tangle of valves and tubes and wires, looping over and
under each other in an incredibly dense engine. At its top was a
ridiculous-looking brass helmet, with a kind of trumpet attachment
jutting from the front. The helmet was tethered to the box by a long
coiled wire.

Umma Balsum reached out
and extracted the helmet. She hesitated, then placed it on her head.
She fastened the leather straps. From some hidden place inside the
box she pulled out a large handle, which slotted neatly into a
hexagonal hole at the side of the boxed engine. Umma Balsum placed
the box at the edge of the table nearest Derkhan. She attached the
engine to a chymical battery.

"Righto,"
said Umma Balsum, dabbing absentmindedly at her still-dripping chin.
"Now, you’ll have to get this going by winding that
handle. Once the battery kicks in, you keep an eye on it. If it
starts to play up,
start winding that handle again.
You let
that current falter, we lose the connection, and without careful
disengagement your mate risks losing his mind, and what’s worse
so do I. So
watch it close...
Also, if we make contact, tell
him not to move around or I’ll run out of cable." She
rattled the wire which attached her helmet to the engine. "Got
me?" Derkhan nodded. "Right. Give me that thing he wrote.
I’m going to get into character, try and harmonize. Start
winding, and don’t stop till the battery takes over."

Umma Balsum stood and
picked up her chair, shoving it back against the wall, puffing. Then
she turned and stood in the relatively open space. She visibly braced
herself, then drew a stopwatch out of her pocket, pressed the stud
which turned it on and nodded at Derkhan.

**

Derkhan began to wind
the handle. It was mercifully smooth. She felt oiled gears inside the
box begin to connect and catch, calculated tension biting against her
arm, powering up the esoteric mechanisms. Umma Balsum had dropped the
stopwatch on the table, was holding
RR
in her right hand,
reading Benjamin’s words in an inaudible whisper, her lips
moving quickly. She held her left hand slightly raised, and its
fingers danced a complicated quadrille, inscribing some thaumaturgic
symbols in the air.

When she reached the
end of his article she simply returned to the beginning and began it
again, in an endless quick loop.

The current flowed
around and around the coiled wire, visibly jolting Umma Balsum,
setting her head vibrating very slightly for a few seconds. She
dropped the paper, continuing to recite Benjamin’s words
sotto
voce
from memory. She turned slowly, her eyes quite vacant,
shuffling her feet. As she turned, there was a second when the
trumpet at the front of her helmet was directly pointed at Derkhan.
For a split second, Derkhan felt a pulse of weird sethereo-mental
waves buffet her psyche. She reeled slightly, but continued to turn
the handle, until she felt another force take it and move it on, and
she gently released her hand and watched it go. Umma Balsum moved
until she was facing the north-west, until she was aligned with the
Spike, out of sight in the centre of the city.

Derkhan watched the
battery and the engine, made sure it maintained a steady circuit.

Umma Balsum closed her
eyes. Her lips moved. The air in the room seemed to sing like a wine
glass stroked on its rim.

Then, suddenly, her
body jerked violently. She shuddered. Her eyes snapped open.

Derkhan stared at the
communicatrix.

Umma Balsum’s
lank hair twisted like a boxful of bait worms. It slid back from her
forehead and snaked backwards, into an approximation of the
greased-down backwards sweep that Benjamin affected when he was not
working. A ripple passed through Umma Balsum, from her feet up. It
was as if a lightning tide swept along her subcutaneous fat, altering
it slightly as it passed. When it had passed out through the crown of
her head, her whole body had changed. She was no fatter, and no
thinner, but the distribution of tissue had subtly modified her
shape. She looked a little broader in the shoulders. Her jawline was
more pronounced, and her ample jowls were somehow minimized.

Bruises flowered on her
face.

She stood for a second,
then collapsed suddenly onto all fours. Derkhan let out a little cry,
but she saw that Umma Balsum’s eyes were still open and
focused.

Umma Balsum sat
suddenly with her legs splayed out, her back leaning against the
sofa’s arm.

Her eyes moved slowly
up as a furrow of incomprehension ploughed her face. She looked up at
Derkhan, still frantically staring. Umma Balsum’s mouth (now
firmer and thinner lipped) opened in what looked like astonishment.

"Dee?" she
hissed in a voice that oscillated with a deeper echo.

Derkhan gawped at Umma
Balsum idiotically.

"Ben...?" she
faltered.

"How did you get
in
here?" hissed Umma Balsum, rising quickly. She
squinted at Derkhan in awe. "I can see
through
you..."

"Ben, listen to
me." Derkhan realized she had to calm him down. "Stop
moving. You’re seeing me through a communicatrix who’s
harmonized with you. She’s shut herself down into a totally
passive recipient state so I can talk straight to you. D’you
understand?"

Umma Balsum, who was
Ben, nodded quickly. She stopped moving, and sank again to her/his
knees. "Where are you?" she whispered.

"In Brock Marsh,
down by the Coil. Ben, we don’t have much time. Where are you?
What happened?
Have they...have they...hurt you?" Derkhan
exhaled tremulously, her tension and despair sweeping through her.

Two miles away Ben
shook his head miserably, and Derkhan saw it in front of her.

"Not yet,"
whispered Ben. "They’ve left me alone...for a while..."

"How did they know
where you were?" hissed Derkhan again.

"Jabber, Dee,
they’ve
always
known, haven’t they? I had fucking
Rudgutter
in here earlier, and he...and he was laughing at me.
Telling me they’d always known where
RR
was, just
couldn’t be bothered to pick us up."

"It was the
strike..." said Derkhan miserably. "They decided we’d
gone too far..."

"
No."

Derkhan looked up
sharply. Ben’s voice, or the approximation that emerged from
Umma Balsum’s mouth, was hard and clear. The eyes that gazed at
her were steady and urgent.

"No, Dee, it
ain’t
the strike. Dammit, I only
wish
we had the kind of impact on
the strike that worried them. No, that’s a fucking
cover
story...
"

"So what...?"
began Derkhan hesitantly. Ben interrupted her.

"I’ll tell
you what I know. After I got here, Rudgutter comes in and he’s
waving
Double-R
at me. And you know what he’s pointing
at? That
really fucking tentative
story we had in the second
section. ‘Rumours of Fat Sun Deal With Top Mobster.’ You
know, the one from that contact I had that was saying the government
sold some shit or other, some failed science project, to some crim.
Nothing! We had nothing! It was just shit-stirring we were doing! And
Rudgutter’s waving it around, and he...he’s shoving it in
my face..." Umma Balsum’s eyes slid away into reverie for
a moment as Ben remembered. "He’s on and on at me. ‘What
d’ye know about this, Mr. Flex? Who’s your source? What
do you know about the
moths?’
Seriously! Moths, as in
butterflies! ‘What do you know about
Mr.
M.’s
recent
problems?’ "

Ben shook Umma Balsum’s
head slowly. "Did you get all that? Dee, I dunno what the fuck
we’re onto here, but we’ve opened up some story
which...Jabber!...which’s got Rudgutter
crapping
himself. That’s why he took me! He kept saying ‘If you
know where the moths are, it’d be best to tell me.’
Dee..." Ben staggered carefully to his feet. Derkhan opened her
mouth to warn him about moving away, but her words died as he moved
carefully towards her on Umma Balsum’s legs. "Dee, you
have to chase this. They’re scared, Dee. They’re really
scared. We’ve got to use this. I didn’t have a fucking
clue what he was on about, but I think he thought I was acting, and I
started milking it, ‘cause it was making him uncomfortable."

Tentatively, carefully,
nervously, Ben reached out with Umma Balsum’s hands towards
Derkhan. Derkhan’s throat caught as she saw that Ben was
crying. Tears rolled down his face without him making a sound. She
bit her lip.

"What’s that
whirring noise, Dee?" asked Ben.

"It’s the
motor to the communicating engine. It has to keep going," she
said.

Umma Balsum’s
head nodded.

Her hands touched
Derkhan’s. Derkhan trembled at the touch. She felt Ben clutch
her free hand, kneeling before her.

"I can feel
you..." Ben smiled. "You’re only half visible, like a
fucking spook...but I can
feel
you." He stopped smiling
and groped for words. "Dee...I...they’re going to kill me.
Oh Jabber..." he breathed out. "I’m scared. I know
these...scum...will use
pain
on me..." His shoulders
shuddered up and down as he lost control of his sobs. He was silent
for a minute, looking down, weeping silently for fear. When he looked
up, his voice was solid.

"
Fuck ‘em!
We’ve got the bastards running scared, Dee. You’ve got to
chase it! I hereby appoint you editor of fucking
Runagate
Rampant...
" He grinned fleetingly. "Listen. Go to
Mafaton. I’ve only met her twice, in cafes near there, but I
think that’s where she lives, the contact—we met late,
and I doubt she’d have wanted to find her way back across the
city on her own after, so I’m figuring she’s from round
there. Her name’s
Magesta Barbile.
She hasn’t told
me much. Just that some project she was working on in R&D—she’s
a scientist—the government terminated and sold off to a crime
boss. I thought it could
all
be a wind-up; I published out of
fucking
mischief
more than ‘cause it was a real story.
But my
gods,
the reaction vindicates it."

Now Derkhan was crying,
a little. She nodded.

"I’ll chase
it, Ben. Promise."

Ben nodded. There was a
moment of silence.

"Dee..." said
Ben eventually. "I...I don’t suppose there’s
anything you could do with that communico-wossname that would...I
don’t suppose...you can’t kill me, can you?"

Derkhan let out a gasp
of shock and grief.

She looked around
desperately and shook her head.

"No, Ben. I could
only do that by killing the communicatrix..."

Ben nodded sadly.

"I really don’t
know as I’m going to be able to...hold back from letting some
stuff slip...Jabber knows I’ll try, Dee...but they’re
experts, you know? And I...well...might as well get it all over with,
know what I mean?"

Derkhan was holding her
eyes closed. She wept for Ben, and with him.

"Oh gods, Ben, I’m
so sorry..."

He was suddenly,
ostentatiously brave. Stiff-jawed. Pugnacious. "I’ll do me
best. Just you make damn sure you chase Barbile, all right?"

She nodded.

"And...thanks,"
he said with a wry smile. "And...goodbye."

He bit his lip, looked
down, then up again and kissed her on the cheek for a long time.
Derkhan held him close with her left arm.

And then Benjamin Flex
broke away and stepped back, and with some mental reflex invisible to
the distraught Derkhan, he told Umma Balsum that it was time for them
to disengage.

The communicatrix
rippled again, quivered and staggered, and with an almost palpable
gust of relief her body collapsed back into its own shape.

The battery continued
winding the little handle until Umma Balsum righted herself and
walked closer, laid a peremptory hand on it. She stopped the watch on
the table, and said: "That’s it, dear."

Derkhan stretched out
and laid her head on the table. She wept in silence. Across the city,
Benjamin Flex was doing the same. Both of them alone.

**

It was only two or
three minutes before Derkhan sniffed sharply and sat up. Umma Balsum
was sitting in her chair, calculating sums on a scrap of paper with
great efficiency.

She glanced over at the
sound of Derkhan’s brisk attempts to reassert control over
herself.

"Feeling better,
deario?" she asked breezily. "I’ve worked out your
charge."