Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [185]
Rudgutter nodded. “Add to that,” he said, “our Weaver, still out there somewhere, still hunting the moths busy tearing up his precious worldweave . . . We’ve got a reasonable collection of troops.”
“But they’re not co-ordinated,” said Stem-Fulcher. “That’s what worries me. And morale in the city is slipping. Obviously very few people know the truth, but everyone knows they can’t sleep at night, for fear of their dreams. We’re plotting a map of the nightmare hotspots, see if we can’t see some pattern, track the moths in some way. There’s been a spate of violent crime over the last week. Nothing big and planned: the sudden attacks, the spur-of-the-moment murders, the brawls. Tempers,” she said slowly, “are fraying. People are paranoid and afraid.”
After the silence had settled for a moment, she spoke again.
“This afternoon you should receive the fruits of some scientific labours,” she said. “I’ve asked our research team to make some helmet that’ll stop the moth-shit seeping into your skull when you sleep. You’ll look absurd in bed, but at least you’ll rest.” She stopped. Rudgutter was blinking rapidly. “How are your eyes?” she asked.
Rudgutter shook his head.
“Going,” he said sadly. “We just can’t solve the problem of rejection. It’s about time for a fresh set.”
Bleary-eyed citizens made their way to work. They were surly and unco-operative.
At the Kelltree docks, the broken strike was not mentioned. The bruises on the vodyanoi stevedores were fading. They heaved spilt cargos from the dirty water as always. They directed ships into tight spaces on the banks. They muttered in secret about the disappearance of the stewards, the strike-leaders.
Their human workmates stared at the defeated xenians with a mixture of emotions.
The fat aerostats patrolled the skies over the city with restless, clumsy menace.
Arguments broke out with bizarre ease. Fights were common. The nocturnal misery reached out and took victims from the waking world.
In the Bleckly Refinery in Gross Coil, an exhausted crane operator hallucinated one of the torments that had ripped up his sleep the previous night. He shuddered just long enough to send the controls spasming. The massive steam-powered machine disgorged its load of molten iron a second too early. It spewed in a white-hot torrent over the lip of the waiting container and spattered the crew like a siege engine. They screamed and were consumed by the merciless cascade.
At the top of the great deserted concrete obelisks of Spatters the city garuda lit huge fires at night. They banged gongs and saucepans and shouted, screaming obscene songs and raucous cries. Charlie the big man told them that would keep the evil spirits from visiting their towers. The flying monsters. The dæmons that had come to town to suck the brains out of the living.
The raucous café gatherings in Salacus Fields were subdued.
The nightmares pushed some artists into frenzies of creation. An exhibition was being planned: Dispatches from a Troubled City. It was to be a showcase of art and sculpture and soundwork inspired by the morass of foul dreams in which the city wallowed.
There was a fear in the air, a nervousness at invoking certain names. Lin and Isaac, the disappeared. To speak them would be to admit that something might be wrong, that they might not just be busy, that their enforced, silent absence from regular haunts was sinister.
The nightmares were splitting the membrane of sleep. They were spilling into the everyday, haunting the sunlit realm, drying conversations