Perdido Street Station Part 52

The tunnel was part of a subversive topography.

It crept at bizarre angles between the walls of the terrace, tight and close, sending the sound of his breath and the clanking of the monkeys' bouncing into Isaac's ears. His hands and knees ached from the crus.h.i.+ng pressure of the sharp stone-shards under him. Isaac estimated that they were moving back through the terraced houses. They were shuffling downwards, and Isaac remembered how the curve of the dome had decapitated the houses at a lower and lower point as they approached the gla.s.s. The closer the houses were to the edge of the dome, he realized, the lower they would be, the more filled with old wreckage.

They were shuffling their way along the little stub of the street, towards the gla.s.s dome, down through deserted floors in an interst.i.tial burrow. Isaac s.h.i.+vered for a moment in the dark. He was sweating from heat and from fear. He was terribly frightened. He had seen the slake-moths. He had seen them feed. He knew what might be before them in the depths of this wedge of rubble.

After a short time of crawling Isaac felt a moment's drag on him, then a release. He had reached the full extent of his piping, and Yagharek had let it go to drag behind him.

Isaac did not speak. He could hear Shadrach behind him, breathing deeply and grunting. The two men could not move more than five feet apart, because the wires connected their helmets to a single motor.

Isaac threw up his face and swung it around him, desperately searching for light.

The monkey-constructs swung their way up. Every few moments, one would momentarily turn on the lights in its eyes, and for a minuscule fraction of a second, Isaac would see a stark crawlway of littered brick and the metal gleam of the constructs' bodies. Then the lights would go out. Isaac would try to negotiate by the ghost image that slowly ebbed from his eyes.

In the absolute dark, it was easy to sense the slightest glimmer. Isaac knew that he was crawling towards a source of light when he looked up and saw the grey outline of the tunnel ahead. Something pressed Isaac's chest. He started ma.s.sively, then recognized the pewter fingers and dark bulk of a construct. Isaac hissed to Shadrach to stop.

The construct gesticulated to Isaac with exaggerated jerky gestures. It pointed forward, towards its two fellows that hovered at the edge of the visible shaft, where the tunnel turned a sharp corner upwards upwards.

Isaac indicated that Shadrach should wait. Then he crept forward at an almost motionless pace. Glacial dread was beginning to creep through his system, from the stomach out. He breathed deep and slow. He s.h.i.+fted his feet slowly, inching along, until he felt his skin p.r.i.c.kle as it emerged into a shaft of faint light.

The tunnel ended in a wall of brick five feet high, on three sides of him. A wall rose behind him, above the tunnel mouth. Isaac looked up and saw a ceiling way above him. A pestilential stench began to dribble into the hole. Isaac screwed up his face.

He was crouching in a hole, by the wall, embedded in the cement floor of a room. He could see nothing of the chamber above and beyond him. But he could hear faint sounds. A slight rustle, like wind against discarded paper. The softest sound of liquid adhesion, like fingers sticky with glue meeting and parting.

Isaac swallowed three times and whispered to himself, gearing himself up to bravery, forcing himself on. He turned his back on the bricks before him, on the room beyond them. He saw Shadrach watching him on all fours, his face set. Isaac looked intently into his mirrors. He tugged briefly at the pipe attached to the top of his helmet, that twisted its way backwards into the tunnel and disappeared below Shadrach's body into the depths, diverting his telltale thoughts.

Then Isaac began to stand, very slowly. He stared with violent fervour into the mirrors, as if trying to prove himself to some testing G.o.d-See! I'm not looking behind me, you d.a.m.n well see if I do! The top of Isaac's head breached the lip of the hole, and more light fell across him. The foul smell grew stronger still. The top of Isaac's head breached the lip of the hole, and more light fell across him. The foul smell grew stronger still.

His terror was very strong. His sweat was no longer warm.

Isaac tilted his head and stood a little taller, until he saw the room itself in the sepia light that fought its way through one filthy, tiny window.

It was a long, thin room. Eight or so feet wide, and about twenty feet long. Dusty and long-deserted, with no visible entrance or exit, no hatches or doors.

Isaac did not breathe. At the furthest end of the room, sitting and seeming to stare directly at him, the lattice of its complex killing arms and limbs moving in baffling antiphase, its wings half-open in languorous threat, was a slake-moth.

It took a moment for Isaac to realize that he had not moaned. It took another few seconds of staring into the vile thing's twitching antennaed sockets to realize that it had not sensed him. The moth s.h.i.+fted and turned a little, moving until it was three-quarters on to him.

Absolutely silently, Isaac exhaled. He twitched his head fractionally, to see the rest of the room.

When he saw its contents, he had to fight all over again not to make a sound.

Lying at irregular intervals the whole length of the floor, the room was littered with the dead.

That, Isaac realized, was the source of that unspeakable stench. He turned his head and put his hand over his mouth as he saw that near him lay a decomposing cactacae child, its rotting flesh falling from fibrous hardwood bones. A little way away was the stinking carca.s.s of a human, and beyond that Isaac saw another, fresher human corpse, and a bloated vodyanoi. Most of the bodies were cactus.

Some, he saw with misery and without surprise, were still breathing. They lay discarded: husks; empty bottles. They would drool and p.i.s.s and s.h.i.+t their last imbecilic days or hours out in this stifling hole, until they died of hunger and thirst and rotted as mindlessly as they had lived at the end.

They could not be in paradise or h.e.l.l, thought Isaac despondently. Their spirits could not roam in spectral form. They had been metabolized. They had been drunk and shat out, converted by vile oneirochymical processes and become fuel for a slake-moth flight.

Isaac saw that in one of its crooked hands, the moth was dragging the body of a cactus elder, sash still dangling portentous and absurd about its shoulders. The moth was sluggish. It raised its arm indolently and let the mindless cactus man fall heavily across the mortar floor.

Then the slake-moth moved a little and reached underneath it with its hind legs. It shuffled forward a little, its heavy, uncanny body slipping across the dusty floor. From below its abdomen, the slake-moth pulled out a great, soft globe. It was about three feet across, and as Isaac squinted into his mirror to see it more clearly, he thought he recognized the thick, mucal texture and drab chocolate colour of dreams.h.i.+t.

His eyes widened.

The slake-moth measured the thing with its back legs, spreading them to encompa.s.s the fat globule of slake-moth milk. That's got to be worth f.u.c.king thousands . . . That's got to be worth f.u.c.king thousands . . . Isaac thought. Isaac thought. No, cut it to make it palatable, there's probably No, cut it to make it palatable, there's probably millions millions of guineas there! No wonder everyone's trying to get these d.a.m.n things back . . . of guineas there! No wonder everyone's trying to get these d.a.m.n things back . . .

Then, as Isaac watched, a piece of the slake-moth's abdomen unfolded. A long organic syringe emerged, a tapering segmented extrusion that bent backwards from the slake-moth's tail on some chitinous hinge. It was nearly as long as Isaac's arm. As he watched, his mouth slack with revulsion and horror, the slake-moth prodded it against the ball of raw dreams.h.i.+t, paused a moment, then plunged it deep into the centre of the sticky ma.s.s.

Under the armour that had unfolded, where the soft part of the underbelly was visible, from where the long probe had emerged, Isaac saw the abdomen of the slake-moth convulse peristaltically, squirting some unseen thing the length of the bony shaft into the depths of the dreams.h.i.+t.

Isaac knew what he was seeing. The dreams.h.i.+t was a food source, to give starving hatchlings reserves of energy. The protruding jag of flesh was an ovipositor.

The slake-moth was laying its eggs.

Isaac slipped back below the surface of the wall. He was hyperventilating. Urgently, he beckoned Shadrach.

"One of the G.o.dsd.a.m.ned things is right there right there and it's laying its and it's laying its eggs eggs so we have to d.a.m.n well take it right now . . ." he hissed. Shadrach smacked his hand over Isaac's mouth. He held Isaac's eyes until the older man had calmed a little. Shadrach turned his back as Isaac had done, then stood slowly and gazed for himself onto the grisly scene. Isaac sat with his back to the bricks, waiting. so we have to d.a.m.n well take it right now . . ." he hissed. Shadrach smacked his hand over Isaac's mouth. He held Isaac's eyes until the older man had calmed a little. Shadrach turned his back as Isaac had done, then stood slowly and gazed for himself onto the grisly scene. Isaac sat with his back to the bricks, waiting.

Shadrach dropped down again to Isaac's level. His face was set.

"Hmmm," he murmured. "I see. Right. Did you say the moth-thing can't sense constructs?" Isaac nodded.

"As far as we know," he said.

"Right then. You've done a d.a.m.n fine job programming these constructs. And they're an extraordinary design. Do you really mean it, that they'll know when to attack, if we give them instructions? They can understand variables that complicated?"

Isaac nodded again.

"Then we have a plan," said Shadrach. "Listen to me."

CHAPTER F FORTY-FIVE.

Slowly, trembling almost uncontrollably, the memory of Barbile's quasi-death vivid in him, Isaac climbed out of the hole.

He kept his eyes rigidly on the mirrors before him. He was dimly aware of the discoloured wall behind them. The vile shape of the slake-moth shook in the mirrors as his head moved.

As Isaac emerged, the slake-moth stopped moving suddenly. Isaac stiffened. It turned its head upwards and flickered its enormous tongue through the air. The vestigial antennae in its ocular sockets waved uneasily from side to side. Isaac moved again, creeping towards the wall.

The slake-moth moved its head uneasily. There was obviously some leakage, Isaac thought, from the edge of his helmet, some trickles of thought that wafted tantalizingly through the aether. But nothing clear enough for the slake-moth to find him.

When Isaac had made his way to the wall, Shadrach followed him up and into the room. Again, his presence discomfited the slake-moth a little, but nothing more than that.

After Shadrach, three monkey-constructs pulled themselves into view, leaving one to guard the tunnel. They began to walk slowly towards the slake-moth. It turned towards them, seemed to watch them without eyes.

"I think it can sense their physical shape and their movement, and ours as well," whispered Isaac. "But without any mental trail, it doesn't see any . . . either of us as sapient life. We're just moving physical stuff, like trees in the wind."

The slake-moth was turning to face the oncoming constructs. They separated and began to approach the moth from different directions. They did not move fast, and the slake-moth did not seem concerned. But it was a little wary.

"Now," whispered Shadrach. He and Isaac reached out and began slowly to haul in the metal piping that extended from the top of their helmets.

As the open ends of the pipes drew closer, the slake-moth grew agitated. It skittered back and forth, returning to protect its eggs, then stalking forward a few feet, its teeth chattering in a terrible rictus.

Isaac and Shadrach looked at each other and counted silently together.

On three, they pulled the ends of their pipes out into the open room. In a single movement, as swiftly as they could, they whipped the metal around and sent the open ends into the corner, fifteen feet from them.

The slake-moth went berserk. It hissed and screeched in a loathsome register. It hunched up its body, increasing its size, and a host of exoskeletal jags flicked out of hollows in its flesh in organic threat.

Isaac and Shadrach stared into their mirrors, awed by its monstrous majesty. It had spread its wings and turned to face the corner where the pipe ends coiled. Its wing-patterns pulsed with misdirected, hypnotic energy.

Isaac was frozen. The slake-moth's wings eddied with uncanny patterns. It stalked towards the pipe-ends in a low, predatory crouch, now on four legs, now six, now two.

Quickly, Shadrach pulled Isaac towards the dreams.h.i.+t ball.

They walked forward, pa.s.sing the incensed, hungry slake-moth, almost close enough to touch. They saw it approaching in their mirrors, a ma.s.sive looming animal weapon. As they pa.s.sed it, both men turned smoothly on their heels, walking backwards towards the dreams.h.i.+t at one moment, then forwards the next. That way, they kept the slake-moth behind them, visible in the mirrors.

The moth walked straight past the constructs, knocking one aside without even noticing, as a serrated spine swung sideways in quivering, ravenous rage.

Isaac and Shadrach walked carefully, checking in their mirrors that the ends of their mental exhaust-pipes remained where they had been thrown, acting as slake-moth bait. Two of the monkey-constructs followed the slake-moth at a small distance, the third approaching the eggs.

"Quickly," hissed Shadrach, and pushed Isaac to the floor. Isaac fumbled with the knife at his belt, wasting seconds with the clip. Then he had it out. He hesitated a moment, and then pushed it smoothly into the big, sticky ma.s.s.

Shadrach watched intently in his mirrors. The slake-moth, shadowed by the hovering constructs, pounced absurdly on the snaking ends of the pipes.

As Isaac drew his knife down the surface of the egg-case, the moth flailed with fingers and tongue to find the enemy whose mind remained tauntingly conscious.

Isaac wound the ends of his s.h.i.+rt around his hands and began to tug at the split he had made in the ma.s.s of dreams.h.i.+t. With a big effort, he pulled the yielding ball apart.

"Quickly," said Shadrach again.

The dreams.h.i.+t-raw, uncut, distilled and pure-seeped through the cloth around Isaac's hands and made his fingers tingle. He gave one last tug. The centre of the dreams.h.i.+t ball was laid open, and there in the centre was a little clutch of eggs.

Each was translucent and oval, smaller than a hen's. Through its semi-liquid skin, Isaac could see some faint, coiling shape. He looked up and beckoned the monkey-construct that stood nearby.

At the far end of the room, the slake-moth had picked up one of the metal tubes, putting its face in the flow of emotion from its open end. It shook it in confusion. It opened its mouth and unrolled its obscene, intrusive tongue. It licked the end of the pipe once, then plunged its tongue into it, eagerly seeking the source of this tempting flow.

"Now!" said Shadrach. The slake-moth's hands moved along the coiled metal, seeking purchase. Shadrach's face went suddenly white. He spread his legs and braced himself. "Now, dammit, do it now now!" he shouted. Isaac looked up in alarm.

Shadrach was staring intently into his mirrors. With his left hand, he was aiming behind him, pointing his thaumaturgic pistol at the slake-moth.

Time slowed down as Isaac looked into his own mirrors and saw the dull metal pipe in the hands of the moth. He saw Shadrach's hand, steady as the dead, clutching his flintlock, pointing it behind his own back. He saw the monkey-constructs waiting for their order to attack.

He looked down again at the vile clutch of eggs, seeping and glutinous below him.

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 gla.s.s 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 ma.s.sive f.l.a.n.g.es 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 sc.u.m that had been its eggs. It hooted and crooned.