Perdido Street Station (78 page)

He opened his mouth to
shout to the constructs, and as he inhaled to yell, the slake-moth
leaned forward a moment then pulled at the piping with all its
horrendous strength.

Isaac’s voice was
drowned by Shadrach’s wail and the explosion from his
flintlock. He had waited a moment too long before firing. The
enhanced ball smacked with a boom into the substance of the wall.
Shadrach was pulled through the air. The leather strap attaching his
helmet to his head snapped. The helmet flew away from him and arced
at speed on the end of the pipe, tugging the connections from Isaac’s
engine, shattering against the wall. Shadrach’s perfect curving
trajectory collapsed as he was untethered. He tumbled in an ugly
broken arc, his gun flying away from him, until he landed heavy and
unwieldy on the concrete floor. His head smacked against the rough
concrete floor, sending blood spattering out across the dust.

Shadrach screamed and
moaned, rolled, clutching his head, trying to right himself.

His weltering mindwaves
suddenly burst into the open. The slake-moth turned, growling.

Isaac shouted at the
constructs. As the slake-moth began to stamp horribly quickly towards
Shadrach, the two that stood behind it leapt up at it simultaneously.
Flame burst from their mouths, flaring across the slake-moth’s
body.

It screeched, and a
clutch of skin-whips flailed across its smouldering back, battering
against the constructs. The moth did not stop bearing down on
Shadrach. A tentacular growth snapped around one of the construct’s
necks and tugged it from the slake-moth’s back with awesome
ease. It sent the metal body crunching against the wall as brutally
as it had the helmet.

There was a terrible
sound of rending as the construct burst apart, spreading shattered
metal and flaming oil across the floor. It roared a little way from
Shadrach, melting metal and cracking the concrete.

The construct by Isaac
spat a gobbet of strong acid across the clutch of eggs. Instantly,
they began to smoke, to split and hiss and dissolve.

The slake-moth let out
an unholy, merciless, terrible scream.

Instantly it turned
from Shadrach and tore across the room towards its brood. Its tail
lashed violently from side to side, catching Shadrach as he lay
moaning, sending him sprawling through his own blood.

Isaac stamped once,
savagely, on the liquefying egg-clutch, then stumbled back and out of
the slake-moth’s path. His foot slithered with the glabrous
mess. He half ran, half crawled towards the wall, clutching his knife
in one hand, the precious engine that kept his mindwaves hidden in
the other.

The construct still
clinging to the slake-moth’s back breathed fire all across its
skin once again, and it screeched in pain. The segmented arms flew
back and clutched for purchase on the construct’s skin. Without
pausing, the moth got a grip under the construct’s arms and
tore the thing from its skin.

It hammered it against
the floor, shattering its glass lenses and bursting the metal casing
of its head, sending valves and wire spewing in its wake. It flung
the broken body away from it in a heap of rubbish. The last construct
drew back, trying to gain range from which to spray its enormous,
maddened enemy.

Before the construct
could spit its acid, two massive flanges of serrated bone snaked out
faster than a whiplash and shattered it effortlessly into two.

Its top half twitched
and tried to drag itself across the floor. The acid it had carried
pooled beneath it in the dust in an acrid smoking sump, corroding the
dead cactacae around it.

The slake-moth ran its
hands through the viscid scum that had been its eggs. It hooted and
crooned.

**

Isaac crept away from
the moth, gazing at it in his mirrors, feeling his way along the wall
towards Shadrach, who lay moaning, crying out, befuddled with pain.

In the mirrors before
his eyes, Isaac saw the slake-moth turn. It hissed, its tongue
flickering. It spread its wings, and bore down on Shadrach.

Isaac tried desperately
to reach the other man, but he was too slow. The slake-moth stamped
past him again, and Isaac turned smoothly once more, always keeping
the terrible predator in his mirrors.

As he watched in
horror, Isaac saw the slake-moth pull Shadrach upright. Shadrach’s
eyes rolled. He was concussed and in pain, coated in blood.

He began to slide down
the wall again. The slake-moth spread his arms wide and then, so fast
that it was completed before Isaac realized it had started, it thrust
at him with two of its long, jagged claws, slamming them through
Shadrach’s wrists and into the brick and concrete behind them,
physically pinning him to the wall.

Shadrach and Isaac
cried out together.

With its two
bone-spears wedged in place, the moth reached out with its
quasi-human hands and coaxed at Shadrach’s eyes. Isaac moaned
at him to beware, but the big warrior was confused and in agony, and
desperately looking around to see what it was that hurt him so.

Instead, he saw the
slake-moth’s wings.

He quietened suddenly,
and the slake-moth, its back still smouldering and cracking with the
heat from the construct’s attack, leaned forward to feed.

Isaac looked away. He
turned his head carefully, so that he would not see that probing
tongue suck the sentience from Shadrach’s brain. Isaac
swallowed and began to walk slowly across the room, towards the hole
and the tunnel. His legs shook and he clenched his jaw. His only hope
was to leave. That way, he might survive.

He was careful to
ignore the slobbering, sucking noises, the liquid grunts of pleasure
and the
drip-drip-drip
of saliva or blood that came from
behind him. Isaac made his careful way towards the only exit in the
room.

As he neared it, he saw
the end of the metal pipe that attached to his helmet still lying
undisturbed by the wall. He breathed a prayer. His mental essence was
still leaking into the room. The slake-moth must know that there was
another sentient being in there with it. The closer Isaac came to the
tunnel, the closer he would be to the pipe’s outlet. It would
no longer be misleading about his location.

And yet, and yet, it
seemed that he was lucky. The slake-moth was so intent on drinking
its fill and, judging by the sounds of ripping tissue, of wreaking
revenge on poor Shadrach’s wracked body, that it was paying no
attention to the terrified presence behind it. Isaac was able to walk
on, past it, away, right to the lip of the burrow.

But there, as he stood
poised, ready to drop quietly into the dark where the construct still
waited and creep his way out into the dome and away from this
nightmare nest, he felt a trembling beneath his feet.

He looked down.

The sound of frantic
clawing feet was skittering through the tunnel towards him. He
stepped back, utterly aghast. He felt the brickwork tremble deep
inside.

**

With an almighty crash,
the monkey-construct came catapulting from the tunnel to slam against
the wall of bricks. It tried to push back with its arms, to
somersault up into the room, but its momentum took it far too fast,
and both its arms snapped neatly off at the shoulder.

It tried to raise
itself, smoke and fire gouting from its mouth, but a slake-moth tore
out of the tunnel and trod on its head, bursting its intricate
machinery.

The moth leapt up into
the room, and for a long merciless moment, Isaac was staring
directly
at it, with its wings outstretched.

It was only after
several moments of terror and despair that Isaac realized the
newcomer was ignoring him, was hurling itself past him across the
bodies in the room towards the ruined eggs.

And as it ran, it
turned its head on its long, sinuous neck, and chattered its teeth in
something like fear.

Isaac flattened himself
against the wall again, peering into his mirrors at both the
slake-moths.

The second moth forced
open its teeth and spat out some high, gibbering sound. The first
moth gave a last almighty suck and let Shadrach’s spent and
ruined body fall. Then it moved back with its sibling, towards the
glutinous ruins of the dreamshit and the eggs.

The two moths spread
their wings. They stood wingtip to wingtip, their various armoured
limbs extended, and waited.

Isaac crept slowly into
the hole, not daring to wonder what was happening, why they were
ignoring him. Behind him, the metal exhaust pipe snaked like an
idiotic tail. As Isaac stared in bewilderment into his mirrors,
unable to make sense of the scene behind him, the space around the
tunnel entrance rippled for a moment. It buckled and suddenly
flowered, and there in the pit with him stood the Weaver.

Isaac gaped in awe. The
enormous arachnid creature loomed over him, looked down through a
clutch of glinting eyes. The slake-moths bristled.

...GRIM AND NEBULOUS
GRIMY AND NEBULAR YOU ARE YOU AREE...came that unmistakable voice,
crooning into Isaac’s ears—especially his missing ear.

"Weaver!" He
almost sobbed.

The vast spider
presence leapt up, landing square on its four hind legs. It
gesticulated intricately in the air with its knife hands.

...FOUND THE REAVER
TEARING WORLDWEAVE OVER THE BLISTERING GLASS AND WE DANCED A
BLOODTHIRSTY DUET EACH SAVAGE MOMENT MORE VIOLENT I CANNOT WIN WHEN
THESE FOUR DASTARDLY CORNERS SQUARE UP TO ME...the Weaver said, and
advanced on its prey. Isaac could not move. He gazed into the shards
of mirror at the extraordinary contest behind him...HIDE LITTLE ONE
YOU ARE A SKILFUL ONE FIXING THE RUCKS AND TEARS IT COMES AROUND YOU
ONE HAS GONE TRAPPED INTO TRAPPING YOU AND CRUSHED LIKE WHEAT AND IT
IS TIME TO FLEE BEFORE THE BEREFT BROTHERSISTER INSECTS ARRIVE TO
MOURN THE MULCH YOU HELPED MELT...

They were coming, Isaac
realized. The Weaver was warning him that they had sensed the death
of the eggs, and were returning, too late, to protect the nest.

Isaac gripped hold of
the edges of the tunnel, prepared to disappear into its folds. But he
was held for a few seconds, his mouth hanging open in awe, his
breathing shallow and amazed, by the sight of the slake-moths and the
Weaver joining battle.

It was an elemental
scene, something way beyond human ken. It was a flickering vision of
horn blades moving much too fast for a human to see, an impossibly
intricate dance of innumerable limbs across several dimensions. Gouts
of blood sprayed in various colours and textures across the walls and
floor, fouling the dead. Behind the unclear bodies, silhouetting
them, the chymical fire hissed and rolled across the concrete floor.
And all the while it fought, the Weaver sang its ceaseless monologue.

...OH HOW IT DOES HOW
IT BRINGS ME TO THE BOIL I BUBBLE AND EFFERVESCE I AM DRUNK
INTOXICATED ON THE JUICE OF ME THAT THESE MAD-WINGERS FERMENT...it
Sang.

Isaac stared in
astonishment. Extraordinary things were happening. The slashing and
the punishing thrusts continued with fervour, but now the slake-moths
were whipping their vast tongues back and forth through the air. They
ran them at lightning speed over the body of the Weaver as it
shuddered in and out of the material plane. Isaac saw their stomachs
distend and contract, saw them lick the length of the Weaver’s
abdomen then reel back as if drunk, then come back hard and attack
again.

The Weaver slipped in
and out of sight, was one minute focused and brutal and would then
become giddy, hop for a moment on the point of one leg, singing
without words, before snapping back to become a voracious killer
again.

Unthinkable patterns
flitted across the slake-moths’ wings, utterly unlike any Isaac
had seen them produce before. They licked hungrily as they slashed
and stabbed at their enemy. The Weaver spoke calmly to Isaac as it
fought.

...NOW LEAVE THIS PLACE
AND REGROUP WHILE I THE DRINKARD AND THESE MY BREWERS BICKER AND GASH
BEFORE THESE TWO BECOME A TRIUMVIRATE OR WORSE AND I SCAMPER FOR
SAFETY GO NOW DOMEWARD AND OUT WE WILL SEE THEE AND ME WE WILL
COMMUNE GO NAKED GO NAKED AS A DEAD MAN ON THE RIVER’S DAWN AND
I WILL FIND YOU EASY AS CAKE WHAT A PATTERN WHAT COLOURS WHAT
INTRICATE THREADS THAT WILL BE WEAVE WELL AND PRETTY NOW RUN FOR YOUR
SKIN...

The mad inebriated
fight continued. As Isaac watched, he saw the Weaver being forced
back, its energy always ebbing and flowing, moving like a vicious
wind, but gradually retreating. Isaac’s terror suddenly
returned. He ducked into the brick burrow and crawled away.

There was a frantic
minute in the dark, as Isaac felt his way at speed along the broken
floor of the tunnel. The skin on his hands and knees was flayed by
stone.

Light glimmered ahead
of him, around a corner and he sped up. He cried out in pain and
astonishment as his palms slapped down onto a patch of smooth,
scorching metal. He hesitated, groped around him with his ragged
sleeve over his hand. The wall and floor and ceiling was plated with
a buffed surface of what, in the faint light, looked like a band of
pressed steel four feet wide. His face creased in incomprehension. He
braced himself, then slid quickly over the metal, hot as a kettle on
a fire, trying to keep his skin from its surface.

He breathed out so fast
and hard he moaned. He hauled himself through the exit, collapsing
across the floor in the dark room where Yagharek waited.

**

Isaac passed out for
three or four seconds. He came to with Yagharek crying out to him,
dancing from foot to foot. The garuda was tense but focused. He was
utterly controlled.

"Wake," spat
Yagharek. "Wake." He was shaking Isaac by his collar. Isaac
opened his eyes wide. The shadows that caked Yagharek’s face
were ebbing away, he realized. Tansell’s hex must be wearing
off.