Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [18]
“That is exactly as I had expected. It is even—forgive me—somewhat hackneyed. However, that doesn’t detract from the power of the work itself. Khepri spit is a wonderful substance. Its lustre is quite unique, and its strength and lightness make it convenient, which I know is not the sort of word one is supposed to think of in connection with art, but I am pragmatic. Anyhow, to have such a lovely substance used for the drab wish-fulfilment of depressed khepri is a terrible waste. I was so very relieved to see someone using the substance for interesting, unsettling ends. The angularity you achieve is extraordinary, by the way.”
Thank you. I have powerful gland technique. Lin was enjoying the licence to boast. Originally I was a member of the Outnow school which forbids working on a piece after spat out. Gives you excellent control. Even though I have . . . reneged. I now go back while the spit is soft, work it more. More freedom, can do overhangs and the like.
“Do you use a great deal of colour variation?” Lin nodded. “I saw only the sepia of the heliotypes. That is good to know. That is technique and aesthetics. I’m very interested to hear your thoughts on themes, Ms. Lin.”
Lin was taken aback. Suddenly she could not think what her themes were.
“Let me put you in an easier position. I’d like to tell you what themes I am interested in. And then we can see if you’d be right for the commission I have in mind.”
The voice waited until Lin nodded assent.
“Please tilt your head up, Ms. Lin.” Startled, she did so. The motion made her nervous, exposing as it did the soft underbelly of her beetle head, inviting harm. She held her head still as eyes behind the mirror-fish watched her.
“You have the same cords in your neck as a human woman. You share the hollow at the base of your throat beloved by poets. Your skin is a shade of red that would mark you out as unusual, that’s true, but it could still pass as human. I follow that beautiful human neck up—I have no doubt you won’t accept the description ‘human,’ but indulge me a minute—and then there is . . . there is a moment . . . there is a thin zone where that soft human skin merges with the pale segmented cream underneath your head.”
For the first time since Lin had entered the room, the speaker seemed to be searching for words.
“Have you ever created a statue of a cactus?” Lin shook her head. “Nonetheless you have seen them up close? My associate who led you here, for example. Did you happen to notice his feet, or his fingers, or his neck? There is a moment when the skin, the skin of the sentient creature, becomes mindless plant. Cut the fat round base of a cactus’s foot, he can’t feel a thing. Poke him in the thigh where he’s a bit softer, he’ll squeal. But there in that zone . . . it’s an altogether different thing . . . the nerves are intertwining, learning to be succulent plant, and pain is distant, blunt, diffuse, worrying rather than agonizing.
“You can think of others. The torso of the Cray or the Inchmen, the sudden transition of a Remade limb, many other races and species in this city, and countless more in the world, who live with a mongrel physiognomy. You will perhaps say that you do not recognize any transition, that the khepri are complete and whole in themselves, that to see ‘human’ features is anthropocentric of me. But leaving aside the irony of that accusation—an irony you can’t yet appreciate—you would surely recognize the transition in other races from your own. And perhaps in the human.
“And what of the city itself? Perched where two rivers strive to become the sea, where mountains become a plateau, where the clumps of trees coagulate to the south and—quantity becomes quality—are suddenly a forest. New Crobuzon’s architecture moves from the industrial to the residential to the opulent