Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [152]
Kapnellior himself was an Evolutionist. He held to the view that the Weavers were a species of conventional spider that had been subjected by some Torquic or thaumaturgic fluke—thirty, forty thousand years ago, probably in Sagrimai—to a sudden, short-lived evolutionary acceleration of explosive velocity. Within a few generations, he had explained to Rudgutter, the Weavers evolved from virtually mindless predators into aestheticians of astonishing intellectual and materio-thaumaturgic power, superintelligent alien minds who no longer used their webs to catch prey, but were attuned to them as objects of beauty disentanglable from the fabric of reality itself. Their spinnerets had become specialized extradimensional glands that Wove patterns in with the world. The world which was, for them, a web.
Old stories told how Weavers would kill each other over aesthetic disagreements, such as whether it was prettier to destroy an army of a thousand men or to leave it be, or whether a particular dandelion should or should not be plucked. For a Weaver, to think was to think aesthetically. To act—to Weave—was to bring about more pleasing patterns. They did not eat physical food: they seemed to subsist on the appreciation of beauty.
A beauty unrecognized by humans or other denizens of the mundane plane.
Rudgutter was praying fervently that the Weaver did not decide that slaughtering Rescue would make a pretty pattern in the æther.
After tense seconds, the Weaver retreated, still holding up its hand with splayed fingers. Rudgutter exhaled with relief, heard his colleagues and the militia guard do the same.
. . . FIVE . . . whispered the Weaver.
“Five,” agreed Rudgutter evenly. Rescue paused and nodded slowly.
“Five,” he whispered.
“Weaver,” said Rudgutter. “You’re right, of course. We wanted to ask about the five creatures loose in the city. We’re . . . concerned about them . . . as, it sounds, are you. We want to ask if you will help us clear them out of the city. Root them out. Flush them out. Kill them. Before they damage the Weave.”
There was a moment of silence, and then the Weaver danced suddenly and quickly from side to side. There was a soft, very fast drumming as its sharp feet pattered on the floor. It jigged bizarrely.
. . . WITHOUT YOU ASK THE WEAVE IS TIGHT RUCKED COLOURS BLEED TEXTURES WEARING THREADS FRAY WHILE I KEEN FUNERAL SONGS FOR SOFT POINTS WHERE WEBSHAPES FLOW I WISH I WILL I CAN COILS OF MONSTERS SHADE SLATESCAPES WINGS MOIL SUCK WORLDWEAVE COLOURLESS DRAB IT IS NOT TO BE I READ RESONANCE PRANCE FROM POINT TO POINT ON THE WEB TO EAT SPLENDOUR REAR AND LICK CLEAN RED KNIFENAILS I WILL SNIP FABRICS AND RETIE THEM I AM I AM A SUBTLE USER OF COLOUR I WILL BLEACH YOUR SKIES WITH YOU I WILL SWEEP THEM CLEAN AND KNOT THEM TIGHT . . .
It took several moments for Rudgutter to realize that the Weaver had agreed to help them.
Cautiously, he grinned. Before Rudgutter could speak again, the Weaver pointed straight up with its front four arms. . . . I’M TO FIND WHERE PATTERNS GO AMOK WHERE COLOURS RUN WHERE VAMPIR INSECTS SUCK BOBBIN-CITIZENS DRY AND I AND I WILL BE BY BY-AND-BY . . .
The Weaver stepped sideways and was gone. It had peeled away from physical space. It was running acrobatically along the span of the worldweb.
The wisps of ætherwebs that crawled invisible across the room and human skin began, slowly, to fade.
Rudgutter turned his head slowly from side to side. The militia were straightening their backs, releasing sighs, relaxing from the combat positions they had unconsciously held. Eliza Stem-Fulcher caught Rudgutter’s eye.
“So,” she said. “It’s hired, right?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The wyrmen were cowed. They told stories of monsters in the sky.
They sat at night around their rubbish-fires in the city’s great dumps and cuffed their children to