Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [183]
It is without beginning or end. It is complex to a degree that humbles the mind. It is a work of such beauty that my soul wept.
It crawled with life. There were others like our bearer, more of the dancing mad gods, glimpsed across an infinity of webwork.
There were other creatures, too, terrible intricate shapes I will not recall.
The web is not without flaw. In innumerable places the silk is torn and the colours ruined. Here and there the patterns are strained and unstable. As we passed these wounds, I felt the dancing mad god pause and flex its spinneret, repairing and restaining.
A little way off was the tight silk of the Cymek. I swear I caught its oscillations as the worldweb flexed under the weight of time.
Around me was a little localized tangle of metareal gossamer . . . New Crobuzon. And there rending the woven strands in the centre was an ugly tear. It spread out and split the fabric of the city-web, taking the multitude of colours and bleeding them dry. They were left a drab and lifeless white. A pointless emptiness, a pallid shade a thousand times more soulless even than the eye of some sightless caveborn fish.
As I watched, my pained eyes wide with insight, I saw that the rip was widening.
I was so afraid of the spreading rent. And I was dwarfed by the enormity of it all, of the whole of the web. I shut my eyes tight.
I could not close down my mind. It scrambled, unbidden, to remember what it had seen. But it could not contain it. I was left only with a sense of it all. I remember it now as a description. The weight of its immensity is no longer present in my head.
That is the etiolated memory that captivates me now.
I have danced with the spider. I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god.
PART FIVE
Councils
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
In the Lemquist Room, Rudgutter, Stem-Fulcher and Rescue held a council of war.
They had been up all night. Rudgutter and Stem-Fulcher were tired and irritable. They sipped huge bowls of strong coffee as they pored over papers.
Rescue was impassive. He fingered his swaddling scarf.
“Look at this,” said Rudgutter, and waved a piece of paper at his subordinates. “This arrived this morning. It was couriered in person. I had the opportunity to discuss its content with the authors. It was not a social call.”
Stem-Fulcher leaned over, reaching for the letter. Rudgutter ignored her and began to reread it himself.
“It’s from Josiah Penton, Bartol Sedner and Mashek Ghrashietnichs.” Rescue and Stem-Fulcher looked up. He nodded slowly. “The heads of Arrowhead Mines, Sedner’s Bank of Commerce and the Paradox Concerns have taken the time to write a letter together. So I think we can add a long list of lesser names below theirs, in invisible ink, hm?” He smoothed the letter. “Messrs. Penton, Sedner and Ghrashietnichs are ’most concerned,’ it says here, at ’scurrilous reports’ reaching their ears. They have wind of our crisis.” He watched as Stem-Fulcher and Rescue glanced at each other. “It’s all rather garbled. They aren’t at all sure what’s happening, but none of them have been sleeping well. In addition to which, they’ve got der Grimnebulin’s name. They want to know what’s being done to counter, ah . . . ‘this threat to our great city-state.’ “ He put the paper down as Stem-Fulcher shrugged and opened her mouth to answer. He cut her off, rubbing his eyes with exasperated exhaustion.
“You’ve read Inspector Tormlin’s—’Sally’s’—report. According to Serachin, who is now recuperating in our care, der Grimnebulin claims to have a working prototype of some kind of crisis engine. We all understand the gravity of that. Well . . . our good businessmen have found that out. And as you can imagine, they are all—particularly Mr. Penton—most desirous of putting a stop to this absurd claim as quickly as possible. Any preposterous fake engines that Mr. der Grimnebulin might have fabricated to fool the credulous should, we are advised, be summarily destroyed.” He sighed and looked up.