Perdido Street Station Part 10

"Never," she snapped, and turned.

Behind her, she thought she heard a ma.s.sive fluttering through the wooden walls.

She walked briskly back through the chamber of strange animals, realizing halfway through that she still clutched the now-empty box in which the grubs had come. She folded it and put it in her pocket.

She pulled the telescoping gate closed behind her on the ma.s.sive chamber full of shadowy, violent shapes. She returned the length of the scrubbed white corridor and at last back into the Research & Development antechamber, through the first heavy door.

She pushed it closed and bolted it, before turning happily to join her white-suited fellows staring into femtoscopes or reading treatises or conferring quietly by the doors that led to other specialist departments. Each had a legend stencilled on it in red and black.

As Dr. Magesta Barbile walked back to her bench to make her report, she glanced briefly over her shoulder at the warnings printed on the door she had taken.

Biohazard. Danger. Extreme Caution Required.

CHAPTER T TEN.

"Are you a dabbler in drugs, Ms. Lin?"

Lin had told Mr. Motley many times that it was difficult for her to speak when she was working. He had affably informed her that he got bored when he was sitting for her, or for any portraits. She didn't have to answer him, he had said. If anything he said really interested her, she could save it up for afterwards and discuss it with him at the end of the session. She really mustn't mind him, he had said. He couldn't possibly stay still for two, three, four hours at a time and say nothing. It would drive him mad. So she listened to what he said and tried to remember one or two remarks to bring up later. She was still very careful to keep him happy with her.

"You should give them a try. I'm sure you have, actually. Artist like you. Plumbing the depths of the psyche. Such-like." She heard a smile in his voice.

Lin had persuaded Mr. Motley to let her work in the attic of his Bonetown base. It was the only place with natural light in the whole building, she had discovered. It was not only painters or heliotypists who needed light: the textures and tactility of surfaces that she evoked so a.s.siduously in her gland-art was invisible by candlelight, and exaggerated in gasjets. So she had wrangled with him nervously until he had accepted her expertise. From then on, she was greeted at the door by the cactus valet and led to the top floor, where a wooden ladder dangled from a trapdoor in the ceiling.

She came and went into the attic alone. Whenever Lin arrived she would find Mr. Motley waiting. He would stand in the enormous s.p.a.ce a few feet from where she pulled herself into his view. The triangular cavity seemed to stretch at least a third the length of the terrace, a study in perspective, with the chaotic agglutination of flesh that was Mr. Motley poised at its centre.

There were no furnis.h.i.+ngs. There was one door leading to some little corridor outside, but she never saw it open. The attic air was dry. Lin trod over loose boards, risking splinters with every step. But the dirt on the large dormer windows seemed translucent, admitting light and diffusing it. Lin would gently sign for Mr. Motley to position himself below the wash of sun, or cloudlight. Then she would pace around him, reorienting herself, before continuing with her sculpture.

Once she had asked him where he would put a life-size representation of himself.

"It's nothing for you to worry about," he had answered with a gentle smile.

She stood before him and watched the lukewarm grey light pick out his features. Every session before she started she would spend some minutes making herself familiar with him again.

The first couple of times she had come here, she had been sure that he changed overnight, that the shards of physiognomy that made up his whole reorganized when no one was looking. She became frightened of her commission. She wondered hysterically if it was like a task in a moral children's tale, if she was to be punished for some nebulous sin by striving to freeze in time a body in flux, forever too afraid to say anything, starting each day from the beginning all over again.

But it was not long before she learnt to impose order on his chaos. It felt absurdly prosaic to count count the razor-sharp shards of chitin that jutted from a sc.r.a.p of pachyderm skin, just to make sure she had not missed one in her sculpture. It felt almost vulgar, as if his anarchic form should defy accounting. And yet, as soon as she looked at him with such an eye, the work of sculpture took shape. the razor-sharp shards of chitin that jutted from a sc.r.a.p of pachyderm skin, just to make sure she had not missed one in her sculpture. It felt almost vulgar, as if his anarchic form should defy accounting. And yet, as soon as she looked at him with such an eye, the work of sculpture took shape.

Lin would stand and stare at him, switching focus rapidly from visual cell to cell, her concentration fleeting across her eyes, gauging the aggregate that was Mr. Motley through the minutely changing parts. She carried dense white sticks of the organic paste she would metabolize to make her art. She had already eaten several before arriving, and as she took the visual measure of him, she would chew rapidly on another, stolidly ignoring the dull, unpleasant taste, and rapidly pa.s.sing it through her headbody to the sac inside the hindpart of her headthorax. Her headbelly would swell visibly as she stored up her mulch.

She would turn and pick up the beginnings of the work, the three-toed reptile claw that was one of Mr. Motley's feet, and she would tie it into place on a low bracket. Then she would turn back and kneel, facing her subject, opening the little chitin case protecting her gland and fastening the nether lips at the rear of her headbody with a gentle slup slup onto the edge of the sculpture behind her. onto the edge of the sculpture behind her.

First, Lin would gently spit a little of the enzyme that broke down the integrity of the already hardened khepri-spit, returning the edge of her work-in-progress to a thick sticky mucus. Then she would focus hard on the section of the leg she was working on, taking in what she could see and remembering the features out of her sight, the exoskeletal jags, the muscular cavities; she would begin gently to squeeze the thick paste from her gland, her sphincter-lips dilating and contracting and extending, rolling and smoothing the sludge into shape.

She used the opalescent nacre of the khepri-spit to good effect. At certain places, though, the hues of Mr. Motley's bizarre flesh were too spectacular, too arresting, not to be represented. Lin would glance down and grab a handful of the colourberries arrayed on her pallet before her. She would take them in subtle combinations and quickly eat them, a careful c.o.c.ktail of redberries and cyanberries, say, yellowberries and purpleberries and blackberries.

The vivid juice would be spat through her headguts, down peculiar intestinal byways and into an adjunct of her main thoracic sac, and within four or five minutes she could push the mixed colour into the diluted khepri-spit. She would smear the liquid froth into careful position, slopping astonis.h.i.+ng tones in suggestive patches and scabs, where it coagulated quickly into shape.

It was only at the end of hours of work, bloated and exhausted, her mouth foul with berry acid and the musty chalk of the paste, that Lin could turn and see her creation. That was the skill of the gland-artist, who had to work blind.

The first of Mr. Motley's legs was coming along, she had decided, with some pride.

The clouds just visible through the skylight moiled vigorously, dissolving and recombining in sc.r.a.ps and shards in new parts of the sky. The air in the attic was very still, by comparison. Dust hung motionless. Mr. Motley stood poised against the light.

He was good at staying very still, as long as one of his mouths kept up a rambling monologue. Today he had decided to talk to Lin about drugs.

"What is is your poison, Lin? Shazbah? Tusk has no effect on khepri, does it, so that's out . . ." He ruminated. "I think artists have an ambivalent relations.h.i.+p with drugs. I mean, the whole project's about unlocking the beast within, right? Or the angel. Whatever. Opening doors one thought were jammed closed. Now, if you do that with drugs, then doesn't that make the your poison, Lin? Shazbah? Tusk has no effect on khepri, does it, so that's out . . ." He ruminated. "I think artists have an ambivalent relations.h.i.+p with drugs. I mean, the whole project's about unlocking the beast within, right? Or the angel. Whatever. Opening doors one thought were jammed closed. Now, if you do that with drugs, then doesn't that make the art art rather a let-down? Art's got to be about communication, hasn't it? So if you rely on drugs, which are, I do not care what any proselytizing little ponce dropping a fizzbolt with chums at a dancehall tells me, which are an intrinsically rather a let-down? Art's got to be about communication, hasn't it? So if you rely on drugs, which are, I do not care what any proselytizing little ponce dropping a fizzbolt with chums at a dancehall tells me, which are an intrinsically individualized individualized experience, then you've opened the doors, but can you communicate what you've found on the other side? experience, then you've opened the doors, but can you communicate what you've found on the other side?

"Then on the other hand, if you remain stubbornly straight-edged, keep sternly to the mind as she is more usually found, then you can communicate with others, because you're all speaking the same language, as it were . . . but have you opened the door? Maybe the best you can do is peer through the keyhole. Maybe that'll do . . ."

Lin glanced up to see which mouth he was speaking from. It was a large, feminine one near his shoulder. She wondered why it was that his voice remained unchanged. She wished she could reply, or that he would stop talking. She found it hard to concentrate, but she thought she had already extracted as good a compromise as she would get from him.

"Lots and lots of money in drugs . . . of course you know that. D'you know what your friend and agent agent Lucky Gazid is prepared to pay for his latest illicit tipple? Honestly, it would astonish you. Ask him, do. The market for these substances is extraordinary. There's room for a few purveyors to make quite tidy sums." Lucky Gazid is prepared to pay for his latest illicit tipple? Honestly, it would astonish you. Ask him, do. The market for these substances is extraordinary. There's room for a few purveyors to make quite tidy sums."

Lin felt that Mr. Motley was laughing at her. Every conversation he had with her wherein he disclosed some hidden details of New Crobuzon's underworld lore, she was embroiled in something she was eager to avoid. I'm nothing but a visitor, I'm nothing but a visitor, she wanted to sign frantically. she wanted to sign frantically. Don't give me a streetmap! The occasional shot of shazbah to come up, maybe a jolt of quinner to come down, that's all I ask . . . Don't know about the distribution and don't want to! Don't give me a streetmap! The occasional shot of shazbah to come up, maybe a jolt of quinner to come down, that's all I ask . . . Don't know about the distribution and don't want to!

"Ma Francine has something of a monopoly in Petty Coil. She's spreading her sales representatives further afield from Kinken. D'you know her? One of your kind. Impressive businesswoman. She and I are going to have to come to some arrangement. Otherwise it's all going to get messy." Several of Mr. Motley's mouths smiled. "But I'll tell you something," he added softly. "I'm taking a delivery very soon of something that should rather dramatically change my distribution. I may have something of a monopoly myself . . ."

I'm going to find Isaac tonight, decided Lin nervously. decided Lin nervously. I'm going to take him out to supper, somewhere in Salacus Fields where I can touch his toes with mine. I'm going to take him out to supper, somewhere in Salacus Fields where I can touch his toes with mine.

The annual s.h.i.+ntacost Prize compet.i.tion was coming up fast, at the end of Melluary, and she would have to think of something to tell him as to why she was not entering. She had never won-the judges, she thought haughtily, did not understand gland-art-but she, along with all her artist friends, had entered without fail for the last seven years. It had become a ritual. They would have a grand supper on the day of the announcement, and send someone to pick up an early copy of the Salacus Gazetteer Salacus Gazetteer, which sponsored the compet.i.tion, to see who had won. Then they would drunkenly denounce the organizers for tasteless buffoons.

Isaac would be surprised that she was not taking part. She had decided to hint at some monumental work-in-progress, something to keep him from asking questions for some time.

Of course, she reflected, she reflected, if his garuda thing's still going on, he won't really notice if I enter or not. if his garuda thing's still going on, he won't really notice if I enter or not.

There was a sour note to her thoughts. She was not being fair, she realized. She was p.r.o.ne to the same kind of obsessing: she found it difficult, now, not to see the monstrous shape of Mr. Motley hovering at the corner of her vision at every hour. It was just bad timing that Isaac should be obsessed at the same time as her, she thought desultorily. This job was swallowing her up. She wanted to come home every night to freshly mixed fruit salad and theatre tickets and s.e.x.

Instead, he scribbled avidly in his workshop, and she came home to an empty bed in Aspic Hole, night after night. They met once or twice a week, for a hurried supper and a deep, unromantic sleep.

Lin looked up and saw that the shadows had moved some way since she had come into the attic. Her mind felt foggy. Her delicate forelegs cleaned her mouth and eyes and antennae in quick pa.s.ses. She chewed what she had decided would be the day's last clutch of colourberries. The tartness of the blueberries was tempered by the sweet pinkberries. She was mixing carefully, adding an unripe pearlberry or a nearly fermenting yellowberry. She knew exactly the taste she was striving for: the sickly, cloying bitterness of a colour like vivid, greying salmon, the colour of Mr. Motley's calf muscle.

She swallowed and squeezed juice through her headgullet. It squirted eventually onto the s.h.i.+mmering sides of the drying khepri-spit. It was a little too liquid: it spattered and dribbled as it emerged. Lin worked with it, rendering the muscle tone in abstract streaks and drips, a spur-of-the-moment rescue.

When the spit was dry she disengaged. She felt a sticky seal of mucus stretch and snap as she pulled her head away from the half-finished leg. She leaned to one side and tensed, pus.h.i.+ng the remaining paste through her gland. The ribbed underbelly of her headbody squeezed itself out of its distended shape, into more usual dimensions. A fat white glop of khepri-spit dropped from her head and curled on the floor. Lin stretched her gland-tip forwards and cleaned it with her rear legs, then carefully closed the little protective case below her wingtips.

She stood and stretched. Mr. Motley's amiable, cold, dangerous little p.r.o.nouncements broke off sharply. He had not realized she was finished.

"So soon, Ms. Lin?" he cried with theatrical disappointment.

Losing my edge if not careful, she signed slowly. she signed slowly. Takes a lot out of you. Got to stop. Takes a lot out of you. Got to stop.

"Of course," said Mr. Motley. "And how is the meisterwork?"

They turned together.

Lin was pleased to see that her impromptu recovery from the watery colourberry juice had created a vivid, suggestive effect. It was not entirely naturalistic, but none of her work was: instead, Mr. Motley's muscle seemed to have been thrown violently onto the bones of his leg. An a.n.a.logy perhaps close to the truth.

The translucent colours spilt in uneven grots down the white that glinted like the inside of a sh.e.l.l. The slabs of tissue and muscle crawled over each other. The intricacies of the many-textured flesh were vivid. Mr. Motley nodded approvingly.

"You know," he ventured quietly, "my sense of the grand moment makes me wish there was some way I could avoid seeing anything more of this until it's finished. I think it is very fine so far, you know. Very Very fine. But it's dangerous to offer praise too early. Can lead to complacency . . . or to the opposite. So please don't be downhearted, Ms. Lin, if that is the last word I say, positive or negative, on the matter, until the very end. Are we agreed?" fine. But it's dangerous to offer praise too early. Can lead to complacency . . . or to the opposite. So please don't be downhearted, Ms. Lin, if that is the last word I say, positive or negative, on the matter, until the very end. Are we agreed?"

Lin nodded. She was unable to take her eyes from what she had created, and she rubbed her hand very gently over the smooth surface of the drying khepri-spit. Her fingers explored the transition from fur to scales to skin below Mr. Motley's knee. She looked down at the original. She looked up at his head. He returned her gaze with a pair of tiger's eyes.

What . . . what were were you? you? she signed at him. she signed at him.

He sighed.

"I wondered when you'd ask that, Lin. I did hope that you wouldn't, but I knew it was unlikely. It makes me wonder if we understand each other at all, It makes me wonder if we understand each other at all," he hissed, sounding suddenly vicious. Lin recoiled.

"It's so . . . predictable. You're still not looking the right way. At all. It's a wonder you can create such art. You still see this this-" he gesticulated vaguely at his own body with a monkey's paw "-as pathology. You're still interested in what was was and how it went and how it went wrong wrong. This is not error or absence or mutancy: this is image and essence This is not error or absence or mutancy: this is image and essence . . ." His voice rang around the rafters. . . ." His voice rang around the rafters.

He calmed a little and lowered his many arms.

"This is totality."

She nodded to show that she understood, too tired to be intimidated.

"Maybe I'm too hard on you," Mr. Motley said reflectively. "I mean . . . this piece before us makes it clear that you have have a sense of the ruptured moment, even if your question suggests the opposite . . . So maybe," he continued slowly, "you yourself a sense of the ruptured moment, even if your question suggests the opposite . . . So maybe," he continued slowly, "you yourself contain contain that moment. Part of you understands without recourse to words, even if your higher mind asks questions in a format which renders an answer impossible." that moment. Part of you understands without recourse to words, even if your higher mind asks questions in a format which renders an answer impossible."

He looked at her triumphantly.

"You too are the b.a.s.t.a.r.d-zone, Ms. Lin! Your art takes place where your understanding and your ignorance blur."

Fine, she signed as she gathered her things. she signed as she gathered her things. Whatever. Sorry I asked. Whatever. Sorry I asked.

"So was I, but not any more, I think," he replied.

Lin folded her wooden case around her stained pallet, around the remaining colourberries (she needed more, she saw) and the blocks of paste. Mr. Motley continued with his philosophical ramblings, his ruminations on mongrel theory. Lin was not listening. She tuned her antennae away from him, felt the tiny ructions and rumblings of the house, the weight of the air on the window.

I want a sky above me, she thought, she thought, not this ancient dusty brace of beams, this tarred, brittle roof. I'm walking home. Slowly. Through Brock Marsh. not this ancient dusty brace of beams, this tarred, brittle roof. I'm walking home. Slowly. Through Brock Marsh.

Her resolution increased as her thoughts progressed.

I'll stop at the lab and nonchalantly ask Isaac to come with me, and I'll steal him away for a night.

Mr. Motley continued sounding.

Shut up, shut up, you spoilt child, you d.a.m.n megalomaniac with your crackpot theories, thought Lin. thought Lin.

When she turned to sign goodbye goodbye, it was with only the faintest semblance of politeness.

CHAPTER E ELEVEN.

A pigeon hung cruciform on an X of darkwood on Isaac's desk. Its head bobbed frantically from side to side, but despite its terror, it could only emit a bathetic cooing.

Its wings were pinned with thin nails driven through the tight s.p.a.ces between splayed feathers and bent hard down to pinion the wingtip. The pigeon's legs were tied to the lower quarters of the little cross. The wood beneath it was spattered with the dirty white and grey of birds.h.i.+t. It spasmed and tried to shake its wings, but it was held.

Isaac loomed over it brandis.h.i.+ng a magnifying gla.s.s and a long pen.

"Stop f.u.c.king about, you vermin," he muttered, and prodded the bird's shoulder with the tip of the pen. He gazed through his lens at the infinitesimal shudders that pa.s.sed through the tiny bones and muscles. He scribbled without looking at the paper beneath him.

"Oy!"

Isaac looked round at Lublamai's irritated call, and left his desk. He paced to the balcony's edge and peered over.

"What?"

Lublamai and David were standing shoulder to shoulder on the ground floor, their arms folded. They looked like a small chorus line about to burst into song. Their faces were furrowed. There was silence for some seconds.

"Look," began Lublamai, his voice suddenly placatory, "Isaac . . . We've always agreed that this is a place we can all do the research we want to do, no questions asked, back each other up, that sort of thing . . . right?"

Isaac sighed and rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.

"For Jabber's sake, boys, let's not play old soldiers," he said with a groan. "You don't have to tell me we've been through thick and thin, or what have you, I know you're a.r.s.ed off, and I don't blame you . . ."

"It smells, Isaac," said David bluntly. "And we're treated to the dawn chorus every minute of the day."

As Lublamai spoke, the old construct wheeled its way uncertainly behind him. It stopped and its head rotated, its lenses taking in the two poised men. It hesitated a moment, then folded its stubby metal arms in clumsy imitation of their poses.

Isaac gesticulated at it.

"Look, look, that stupid thing's losing it! It's got a virus! You'd better have it trashed or it'll self-organize; you'll be having existential arguments with your mechanical skivvy before the year's out!"

"Isaac, don't change the f.u.c.king subject," said David irritably, glancing round and shoving the construct, which fell over. "We all have a bit of leeway when it comes to inconveniences, but this is pus.h.i.+ng it."

"All right!" Isaac threw up his hands. He looked slowly around. "I suppose I sort of underestimated Lemuel's abilities to get things done," he said ruefully.

Circ.u.mscribing the entire warehouse, the whole length of the raised platform was crammed with cages filled with flapping, crying, crawling things. The warehouse was loud with the sounds of displaced air, the sudden s.h.i.+fts and fluttering of beating wings, the spatter of droppings, and loudest of all, the constant screech of captive birds. Pigeons and sparrows and starlings registered their distress with their coos and calls: feeble on their own, but a sharp, grating chorus en ma.s.se. Parrots and canaries punctuated the avian wittering with squawked exclamation marks that made Isaac wince. Geese and chickens and ducks added a rustic air to the cacophony. Hard-faced aspises flung themselves through the air the short distance of their cages, their little lizard bodies banging against the chickenwire fronts. They licked their wounds with their tiny lions' faces and roared like aggressive mice. Huge gla.s.s tanks of flies and bees and wasps, mayflies and b.u.t.terflies and flying beetles sounded a vivid aggressive drone. Bats hung upside down and regarded Isaac with fervent little eyes. Dragonfly-snakes rustled their long elegant wings and hissed loudly.