Perdido Street Station (69 page)

Like one of her own
officers, she saw that a couple of the gangsters wore flamethrowers;
hard backpacks of pressurized oil that burst through a flaming nozzle
to ignite. They had been modified, as had her own man’s, to
spray the burning oil directly backwards out of the pack.

Stem-Fulcher stole
another glance at several of Motley’s extraordinary Remade
troops. It was impossible to tell how much original organic material
was retained under the Remades’ metal layers. Certainly the
impression was one of almost total replacement, with bodies sculpted
with exquisite and unusual care to mimic human musculature.

At first sight, nothing
of the human was visible. The Remade had heads of moulded steel. They
even sported implacable faces of folded metal. Heavy industrial brows
and inset eyes of stone or opaque glass, thin noses and pursed lips
and cheekbones glinting darkly like polished pewter. The faces had
been designed for aesthetic effect.

Stem-Fulcher had only
realized that they were Remade, rather than fabulous constructs, when
she had glimpsed the back of one’s head. Embedded behind the
splendid metal face was a much less perfect human one.

This was the only
organic feature retained. Jutting out from the back end of those
immobile metal features were mirrors, like a sweep of hair. They were
held in front of the Remades’ real, human eyes.

The body was at one
hundred and eighty degrees to the human face, pistol-arms and legs
and chest all facing the other way, with the metal head completing
the illusion from the front. The Remade kept their bodies facing the
same way as their unreversed companions at all times. They walked
along corridors and into lifts with their arms and legs moving in a
convincing automated analogue to a human stride. Stem-Fulcher had
fallen deliberately behind them for a few steps, and watched their
human eyes darting back and forth, their mouths twisted in
concentration as they scanned what was ahead of them through their
mirrors.

There were others, she
saw, Remade more simply, with greater economy, to the same purpose.
Their heads had been twisted around in a half-circle, until they
gazed out from their own backs over a twisted, painful-looking neck.
They stared into their mirrored helmets. Their bodies moved
perfectly, without fumbling, walking and manipulating weapons and
armour with hardly stilted motion. There was something almost more
offputting about their relaxed, organic motions below reversed heads
than the solid artificial motion of their more thoroughly Remade
comrades.

Stem-Fulcher realized
she was looking at the result of months or more of continual
training, constantly living through mirrors. With bodies reversed as
theirs were, it would have been a vital strategy. These troops, she
pondered, must have been specifically designed and built with
slake-moth husbandry in mind. Stem-Fulcher could hardly believe the
scale of Motley’s operation. It would be no wonder, she thought
ruefully, if, in dealing with the slake-moths, the militia seemed a
little amateurish by comparison.

I think we were
quite right to bring them on board,
she reflected.

**

With the passage of the
sun, the air over New Crobuzon slowly thickened. The light was thick
and yellow as corn-oil.

Aerostats swam through
that solar grease, eddying back and forth across the urban geography
in a weird half-random motion.

Isaac and Derkhan stood
in the street beyond the dump’s wire. Derkhan carried a bag,
Isaac carried two. In the light, they felt vulnerable. They were
unused to the city day. They had forgotten how to live in it.

They skulked as
insignificantly as they could, and ignored the few passers-by.

"Why the godsdamn
did Yag have to piss off like that?" hissed Isaac. Derkhan
shrugged.

"He seems
restless, all of a sudden," she said. She thought, then
continued slowly. "I know it’s bad timing," she said,
"but I find it...quite moving. He’s such a...an empty
presence most of the time, you know? I mean, I know you get to talk
to him in private, you know the...the
real
Yagharek...But most
of the time he’s a garuda-shaped absence." She corrected
herself harshly. "No. He’s
not
garuda-shaped, is
he? That’s the problem. He’s more of a man-shaped
absence. But now...well, he seems to be filling up. I’m
beginning to sense that he
wants to do
something or other, and
doesn’t want to do something else."

Isaac nodded slowly.

"I know what you
mean," he said. "There’s definitely something
changing in him. I told him not to leave and he just ignored me. He’s
definitely becoming more...wilful...if that’s a good thing."

Derkhan was staring at
him curiously.

She spoke slowly.

"You must be
thinking of Lin all the time," she said.

Isaac looked away. He
said nothing for a moment. Then he gave a quick nod.

"Always," he
said abruptly, his face collapsing into the most shocking sadness.
"Always. I can’t...I haven’t time to mourn. Yet."

A little way away, the
road curved and separated into a small clutch of alleys. From one of
these hidden culs-de-sac came a sudden metallic bang. Isaac and
Derkhan tensed and flinched backwards against the chainlink fence.

There was a whispering,
and Lemuel peered around the corner of the alley.

He caught sight of
Isaac and Derkhan, grinned triumphantly. He pushed his hands in a
shoving motion, indicating that they should get into the dump. They
turned and found their way to the tear in the wire mesh, checked that
they were not watched and wriggled through into the wasteground.

They moved quickly away
from the street and turned corners in the muck, until they crouched
in a space that was hidden from the city. Within two minutes, Lemuel
came loping after them.

"Afternoon, all,"
he grinned, triumphantly.

"How did you get
here?" said Isaac.

Lemuel sniggered.
"Sewers. Got to keep out of sight. Not so dangerous with the lot
I’m with." His smile faltered as he took them in. "Where’s
Yagharek?" he said.

"He insisted that
he had to go somewhere. We told him to stay, but he wasn’t
having any of it. He says he’ll find us here tomorrow at six."

Lemuel swore.

"Why did you let
him go? What if they pick him up?"

"Damn, Lem, what
in Jabber’s name was I supposed to do?" hissed Isaac. "I
can’t
sit
on him. Maybe it’s some damn religious
thing, some bloody Cymek mystical rubbish. Maybe he thinks he’s
about to die and he has to say goodbye to his damn ancestors. I told
him not to, he said he was going to."

"Fine, whatever,"
muttered Lemuel irritably. He turned to look back behind him. Isaac
saw a small group of figures approaching. "These are our
employees. I’m paying them, Isaac, and you’re owing me."

There were three of
them. They were immediately and absolutely recognizable as
adventurers; rogues who wandered the Ragamoll and the Cymek and
Fellid and probably the whole of Bas-Lag. They were hardy and
dangerous, lawless, stripped of allegiance or morality, living off
their wits, stealing and killing, hiring themselves out to whoever
and whatever came. They were inspired by dubious virtues.

A few performed useful
services: research, cartography and the like. Most were nothing but
tomb raiders. They were scum who died violent deaths, hanging on to a
certain cachet among the impressionable through their undeniable
bravery and their occasionally impressive exploits.

Isaac and Derkhan eyed
them without enthusiasm.

"This," said
Lemuel, pointing to them each in turn, "is Shadrach,
Pengefinchess and Tansell."

The three looked at
Isaac and Derkhan with ruthless, swaggering arrogance.

Shadrach and Tansell
were human, Pengefinchess was vodyanoi. Shadrach was obviously the
hard man of the group. Large and sturdy, he wore a miscellaneous
collection of armour, studded leather and flat, hammered pieces of
iron strapped to shoulders, front and back. It was spattered with
slime from the sewers. He followed Isaac’s eyes to his outfit.

"Lemuel told us to
expect trouble," he said in a curiously melodic voice. "We
came dressed for the occasion."

In his belt swung an
enormous pistol and a big, weighty machete-sword. The pistol was
carved into an intricate shape, a monstrous horned face, its mouth
the muzzle. It would vomit forth the bullets. A flared blunderbuss
flapped on his back, along with a black shield. He would not be able
to walk three steps in the city like that without being arrested. No
wonder they had come through the city’s underside.

Tansell was taller than
Shadrach, but much more slight. His armour was smarter, and seemed
designed at least in part for aesthetics. It was a burnished brown,
layers of stiff curboille, wax-boiled leather engraved with spiral
designs. He carried a smaller gun than Shadrach and a slender rapier.

"So what’s
happening, then?" said Pengefinchess, and Isaac realized from
the vodyanoi’s voice that she was female. There were, with
vodyanoi, no physical characteristics for an inexpert human to
recognize that were not hidden below the loincloths.

"Well..." he
said slowly, watching her.

She squatted like a
frog before him and met his gaze. She wore a voluminous white
one-piece garment—incongruously and bizarrely clean, given her
recent journey—that fitted close around her wrists and ankles,
leaving her large, amphibious hands and feet free. She carried a
recurved bow and sealed quiver over her shoulder, a bone knife in her
belt. A large pouch of some thick reptile skin was strapped to her
belly. Isaac could not tell what was within.

As Isaac and Derkhan
watched, something bizarre happened below Pengefinchess’s
clothes. There was a quick movement, as if something wrapped itself
around her body at speed and then removed itself. As the weird tide
passed, a large patch of the white cotton of her shift became sodden
with water, clinging suddenly to her, then drying as if every atom of
liquid was suddenly sucked out. Isaac stared, thunderstruck.

Pengefinchess looked
down casually.

"That’s my
undine. She and I have a deal. I provide her certain substances, she
clings to me, keeps me wet and alive. Lets me travel in much drier
places than I’d otherwise manage."

Isaac nodded. He had
never seen a water elemental before. It was unsettling.

"Has Lemuel warned
you of the sort of trouble we’re facing?" Isaac said. The
adventurers nodded, unconcerned. Even excited. Isaac tried to swallow
his exasperation.

"These moth-things
aren’t the only thing you can’t afford to look at,
sirrah," said Shadrach. "I can kill with my eyes closed, if
I have to." He spoke with soft, chilling confidence. "This
belt?" He tapped it nonchalantly. "Catoblepas hide. Killed
it in the outskirts of Tesh. Didn’t look at that, neither, or
I’d be dead. We can handle these moths."

"I damn well hope
so," said Isaac grimly. "Hopefully, no actual fighting’ll
be necessary. I think Lemuel feels safer with some backup, just in
case. We’re hoping the constructs’ll take care of
things."

Shadrach’s mouth
curled minutely, in what was probably contempt.

"Tansell’s a
metallo-thaumaturge," said Lemuel. "Aren’t you?"

"Well...I know a
few techniques for working metal," Tansell replied.

"It’s not a
complex job," said Isaac. "Just need a bit of welding. Come
this way."

He led them through the
rubbish to where they had hidden the mirrors and the other materials
for the helmets.

"We’ve got
easily enough stuff here," said Isaac, squatting beside the
pile. He picked up a colander, length of copper piping and, after a
moment of sifting, two sizeable chunks of mirror. He waved them at
Tansell vaguely. "We need this to be a helmet that’s going
to fit snug—and we’re going to need one for a garuda
who’s not here." He ignored the glance that Tansell
exchanged with his companions. "And then we need these mirrors
attached to the front, at an angle so we can easily see directly
behind us. Think you can manage that?"

Tansell looked at Isaac
contemptuously. The tall man sat cross-legged before the pile of
metal and glass. He put the colander on his head, like a child
playing at soldiers. He whispered under his voice, a weird lilting,
and he began to massage his hands with quick and intricate movements.
He pulled at his knuckles, kneaded the balls of his palms.

For several minutes,
nothing happened. Then quite suddenly, his fingers began to glow from
within, as if the bones were illuminated.

Tansell reached up and
began to caress the colander, as gently as if he stroked a cat.

Slowly, the metal began
to shape itself under his coaxing. It softened at each momentary
touch, fitting more snuggly onto his head, flattening down,
distending at the back. Tansell pulled and kneaded it gently until it
was quite flush over his hair. Then, still whispering his little
sounds, he tweaked at the front, adjusting the lip of the metal,
curling it up and away from his eyes.

He reached down and
picked up the copper pipe, gripped it between his hands and
channelled energy through his palms. Obstreperously, the metal began
to flex. He coiled it gently, placing the two ends of the copper
against the colander-helmet just above his temples, then pressing
down hard until each piece of metal broke the surface tension of the
other and began to spill across the divide. With a tiny fizz of
energy, the thick piping and the iron colander fused.

Tansell shaped the
bizarre extrusion of copper that jutted from the newborn helmet’s
front. It became an angled loop extending about a foot. He fumbled
for the pieces of mirror, clicked his fingers until someone handed
them to him. Humming to the copper, cajoling it, he softened its
substance and pushed one, then the other piece of mirror into it, one
in front of each of his eyes. He looked up into them, each in turn,
adjusting them carefully until they offered him a clear view of the
wall of rubbish behind him.