Iron Council - China Mieville [190]
“Cutter. I won’t let them. I won’t. Listen to me. You have to tell them. You have to get back and tell them. They have to go. Send the train up north, find a way into the mountains. I don’t know. Maybe they have to desert the train, be fReemade. Whatever. But they can’t come into the city.
“Be quiet.” Cutter had been about to speak but he closed his mouth hard. He had never seen Judah like this: all the beatific calm was gone, and something stone-hard remained. “Be quiet and listen. You have to go now. Get out of the city however you damn well can, and find them. If Rahul or Drogon or anyone finds their way back I’ll send them after you. But Cutter, you have to stop the train from coming.”
“What about you?”
Judah’s face set. He seemed wistful.
“You might fail, Cutter. And if you do, I might, just, be able to do something.”
“You know how to use the mirrors, don’t you? You remember? Because those militia . . . they’ve come all the way through the cacotopic zone. They’ll reach the Council. And I ain’t sure, but I bet I know what they are, what they’d have to be to be hardcore enough to take us, but travel quick and light like they’ve done. If I’m right you’ll have to do what you can, Cutter. You’ll have to show the Council. Do right by me, Cutter.”
“And you? What are you going to do? While I’m off persuading the damn Council.”
“I said. I’ve an idea—something for safety’s sake. A last plan. Because by Jabber and by gods and by everything, Cutter, I will not let this happen. Stop them. But if you don’t, I’ll be here, with my plan. Do right by me, Cutter.”
Bastard, Cutter thought, tearing up, trying to speak. Bastard to say that to me. You know what you are to me. Bastard. He felt his chest hollow, felt as if he were falling inside, as if his very fucking innards were straining for Judah.
“Love you, Judah,” he said. He looked away. “Love you. Do what I can.” I love you so much Judah. I’d die for you. He wept without sob or sound, furious at it, trying to wipe it away.
Judah kissed him. Judah straightened, kind, implacable, held Cutter gently by the chin and tilted his head up. Cutter saw the damp on the wallpaper, saw the doorframe, looked at Judah’s stubble all grey, the man’s thin face. Judah kissed him and Cutter heard a sound from his own throat, and was enraged at himself and then also at Judah. You bastard, he thought or tried to think at the kiss, but he could not make himself. He would do what Judah asked. I love you Judah.
part nine
SOUND AND LIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
A dirigible flew fast. It was pushed by wind and its engine over stone fragments. The dead towns it overflew, the remnants of railroad boom, were like discolourations on heliotypes. Cutter watched from the little cockpit.
The Collective had got them out. First two decoy balloons had set out, piloted by dummies, and while the militia pounded them, the escape dirigible flew. The pilot went so low towerblocks rose around them. The ship had cut between the smokestacks of the slum factories, evaded hunter warflots.
They travelled in fear of air-pirates, but beyond the idiot aggressions of githwings and a few outlander wyrmen nothing attacked them in the wilds outside the city. Cutter thought of Judah all the time. In him moved a complex of anger, and a kind of need he could not exorcise.
“Be careful, Cutter,” Judah said before he went, and held him. He would not say what he was doing, why he was staying. “You have to be quick. They’re through. The militia, through the cacotopos, and they’re hunting the Council down. Come back,” he said. “When they turn away, or scatter, come back, and I’ll be waiting. And if they refuse to turn away, come ahead of them, come to the city, and I’ll be here, I’ll wait.”
You never will, Cutter thought. Not in the way you know I want.
The pilot was Remade, his arm a python that he strapped to him. He hardly spoke. Over three days, all Cutter learnt was that he had once worked for a crime-boss, that