Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [177]
“There’s a place I know up in Gidd where we can go,” he decided. “It’ll do for tonight, and then we can make plans.” Derkhan and he moved quickly around the room, gathering useful items into bags they pilfered from David’s cupboards. It was clear they would not be able to return.
Isaac stood numb by the wall. His mouth was slightly open. His eyes were glazed. He shook his head incredulously.
Lemuel glanced up and saw him.
“Isaac,” he yelled. “Go and sort your shit out. We’ve less than an hour. We are leaving. Get off your arse.”
Isaac looked up, nodded peremptorily and stomped up the stairs, to stop and stand still again at the top. His expression was of bemused and miserable disbelief.
After some seconds, Yagharek came silently after him. He stood behind Isaac and peeled back his hood.
“Grimnebulin,” he whispered as softly as his avian throat allowed. “You are thinking of your friend David.”
Isaac turned sharply.
“No fucking friend of mine,” he countered.
“And yet he was. You are thinking of the betrayal.”
Isaac said nothing for several moments. Then he nodded. The look of horrified astonishment returned.
“I know betrayal, Grimnebulin,” whistled Yagharek. “I know it well. I am . . . sorry for you.”
Isaac turned away and walked brusquely to his laboratory space, began shoving bits and pieces of wire and ceramic and glass seemingly at random into a huge carpet bag. He strapped it, bulky and clanking, to his back.
“When were you betrayed, Yag?” he demanded.
“I was not. I betrayed.” Isaac stopped and turned to him. “I know what David has done. And I am sorry.”
Isaac stared in bewilderment, in denial and misery.
The militia attacked. It was only twenty minutes past seven.
The door flew open with a massive sound. Three militia officers came hurtling through into the room, their battering ram flying out of their hands.
The door was still unlocked from when David had fled. The militia had not expected this, and had tried to break down a door which did not resist them. They fell, sprawling and idiotic.
There was a confused moment. The three militia scrabbled to stand. Outside, the squad of officers gaped stupidly into the building. On the ground floor, Derkhan and Lemuel stared back at them. Isaac looked down at the intruders.
Then everyone moved.
The militia outside in the street recovered their wits and rushed the door. Lemuel flipped David’s huge desk onto its side and hunkered down behind the makeshift shield, priming his two long pistols. Derkhan ran towards him, diving for cover. Yagharek hissed and stepped backwards from the rail of the walkway, out of sight of the militia.
In one slick movement, Isaac turned to his laboratory worktable and scooped up two huge glass flasks of discoloured liquid, still spinning on his heels, and hurled them over the rail at the invading officers like bombs.
The first three militia through the door had regained their feet, only to be caught in the shower of glass and chymical rain. One of the massive jars shattered on the helmet of one officer, who hit the floor again, motionless and bleeding. Vicious shards bounced off the others’ armour. The two militia caught by the deluge were still for a moment, then began to shriek suddenly as the chymicals seeped through their masks and began to attack the soft tissues of their faces.
There was still no gunfire.
Isaac turned again and began to grab more jars, taking a moment to pick strategically, so that the effects of the cascading chymicals were not entirely random. Why don’t they shoot? he thought giddily.
The wounded officers had been pulled out into the street. In their place, a phalanx of heavily armoured officers had entered, bearing iron shields with reinforced glass windows through which they stared. Behind them, Isaac saw two officers getting ready to attack with khepri stingboxes.
They must want us alive! he realized. The stingbox could kill, easily, but it could also not. If deaths were all that were desired, it would have been far easier for Rudgutter to send conventional troops, with flintlocks