Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [105]
Isaac waved his hands at Yagharek, warming to his task of denunciation and explanation.
“You know, Yag, when they realized something was up down south in the scrubland—and it didn’t take them long to clock it was a massive Torque-rift—there was a lot of crap talked about what to call it, and the arguments still haven’t died, half a fucking millennium on. Someone named it the Cacotopic Stain, and the moniker stuck. I remember being told in college that it was a terrible populist description, because Cacotopos—Bad Place, basically—was moralizing, that the Torque was neither good nor bad, so on. Thing is . . . obviously, that’s right at one level, right? Torque’s not evil . . . it’s mindless, it’s motiveless. That’s what I reckon anyway—others disagree.
“But even if that’s true, seems to me that western Ragamoll is precisely a Cacotopos. That’s a vast stretch of land which is totally beyond our power. There’s no thaumaturgy we can learn, no techniques to perfect, which’ll let us do anything with that place. We’ve just got to stay the fuck out and hope it eventually ebbs away. It’s a huge fucking badland crawling with Inchmen—which admittedly live outside Torque-zones, as well, but seem particularly happy there—and other things I wouldn’t even bother trying to describe. So you’ve got a force that makes a total mockery of our sentience. That’s ’bad’ as far as I’m concerned. It could be the fucking definition of the word. See, Yag . . . it pains me to say this, it really does, I mean I’m a fucking rationalist . . . but the Torque is unknowable.”
With a huge gush of relief, Isaac saw that Yagharek was nodding. Isaac nodded too, fervently.
“Partly selfish, all this, you understand,” Isaac said, with sudden grim humour. “I mean, I don’t want to be arsing around with experiments and end up turning into some . . . I don’t know, some revolting thing. Just too bloody risky. We’ll stick to crisis, all right? On which topic, I’ve got some stuff to show you.”
Isaac gently took Sacramundi’s report from Yagharek’s hands and returned it to the shelves. He opened a desk drawer and brought out his tentative blueprint.
He placed it in front of Yagharek, then hesitated and drew away slightly.
“Yag, old son,” he said. “I really have to know . . . is that behind us, now? Are you . . . satisfied? Convinced? If you’re going to fuck about with Torque, for Jabber’s sake tell me now and I’ll bid you goodbye . . . and my condolences.”
He studied Yagharek’s face with troubled eyes.
“I have heard what you say, Grimnebulin,” said the garuda, after a pause. “I . . . respect you.” Isaac smiled humourlessly. “I accept what you say.”
Isaac began to grin, and would have responded, except that Yagharek was looking out of the window with a melancholy stillness. His mouth was open for a long time before he spoke.
“We know of the Torque, we garuda.” He paused lengthily between sentences. “It has visited the Cymek. We call it rebekhlajhnar-h’k.” The word was spat out with a harsh cadence like angry birdsong. Yagharek looked Isaac in the eye. “Rebekh-sackmai is Death: ‘the force that ends.’ Rebekh-kavt is Birth: ‘the force that begins.’ They were the First Twins, born to the worldwomb after union with her own dream. But there was a . . . a sickness . . . a tumour—” he paused to savour the correct word as it occurred to him “—in the earthbelly with them. Rebekh-lajhnar-h’k tore its way out of the worldwomb just behind them, or perhaps at the same time, or perhaps just before. It is the . . .” He thought hard for a translation. “The cancer-sibling. Its name means: ‘the force that cannot be trusted.’ “
Yagharek did not tell the folk story in any incantatory, shamanic tones, but