Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [20]
“Name…and title.”
Isaac raised an eyebrow.
“Am I, then, in the presence of nobility?”
The garuda stared at him blankly. Eventually it spoke slowly without breaking his gaze.
“I am Too Too Abstract Individual Yagharek Not To Be Respected.”
Isaac blinked. He rubbed his face.
“Um…right. You have to forgive me, Yagharek, I’m not familiar with…uh…garuda honorifics.”
Yagharek shook his great head slowly.
“You will understand.”
Isaac asked Yagharek to come upstairs, which he did, slowly and carefully, leaving gouges in the wooden stairs where he gripped with his great claws. But Isaac could not persuade him to sit down, or to eat, or to drink.
The garuda stood by Isaac’s desk, while his host sat and stared up at him.
“So,” said Isaac, “why are you here?”
Again, Yagharek gathered himself for a moment before he spoke.
“I came to New Crobuzon days ago. Because this is where the scientists are.”
“Where are you from?”
“Cymek.”
Isaac whistled quietly. He had been right. That was a huge journey. At least a thousand miles, through that hard, burning land, through dry veldt, across sea, swamp, steppe. Yagharek must have been driven by some strong, strong passion.
“What do you know about New Crobuzon’s scientists?” asked Isaac.
“We have read of the university. Of the science and industry that moves and moves here like nowhere else. Of Brock Marsh.”
“But where do you hear all this stuff?”
“From our library.”
Isaac was astonished. He gaped, then recovered.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I thought you were nomads.”
“Yes. Our library travels.”
And Yagharek told Isaac, to Isaac’s growing amazement, of the Cymek library. The great librarian clan who strapped the thousands of volumes into their trunks and carried them between them as they flew, following the food and the water in the perpetual, punishing Cymek summer. The enormous tent village that sprung up where they landed, and the garuda bands that congregated on the vast, sprawling centre of learning whenever it was in their reach.
The library was hundreds of years old, with manuscripts in uncountable languages, dead and alive: Ragamoll, of which the language of New Crobuzon was a dialect; hotchi; Fellid vodyanoi and Southern vodyanoi; high khepri; and a host of others. It even contained a codex, Yagharek claimed with discernible pride, written in the secret dialect of the handlingers.
Isaac said nothing. He was ashamed at his ignorance. His view of the garuda was being torn up. This was more than a dignified savage. Time to get me down my library and learn about the garuda. Pig ignorant bastard, he reproached himself.
“Our language has no written form, but we learn to write and read in several others as we grow,” said Yagharek. “We trade for more books from travellers and merchants, of whom many have passed through New Crobuzon. Some are native to this city. It is a place we know well. I have read the histories, the stories.”
“Then you win, mate, because I know shit about your place,” said Isaac despondently. There was a silence. Isaac looked back up at Yagharek.
“You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”
Yagharek turned away and looked out of the window. Barges floated aimlessly below.
It was difficult to discern emotion in Yagharek’s scraping voice, but Isaac thought he could hear disgust.
“I have crawled like vermin from hole to hole for a fortnight. I have sought journals and gossip and information, and it led me to Brock Marsh. And in Brock Marsh it led me to you. The question that led me has been: ‘Who can change the powers of material?’ ‘Grimnebulin, Grimnebulin,’ everyone says. ‘If you have gold,’ they say, ‘he is yours, or if you have no gold but you interest him, or if you bore him but he pities you, or if a whim takes him.’ They say you are a man who knows the secrets of matter, Grimnebulin.”
Yagharek looked directly at him.
“I have some gold. I will interest you. Pity me. I beg you to help me.”
“Tell me what you need,” said Isaac.
Yagharek looked away from him again.
“Perhaps you have flown in a balloon, Grimnebulin. Looked down at roofs,