Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [203]
Now, the sounds of constructs were coming from all around the canyons of garbage.
“Look,” hissed Derkhan, and pointed to the east. From one of the smaller caverns in the muck, two humans were emerging. At first Isaac thought he must be mistaken, and that they must be lithe constructs, but there could be no doubt that they were flesh and bone. They scrambled over the crushed detritus that littered the earth.
They paid the waiting renegades no heed at all.
Isaac frowned.
“Hey,” he said, just loud enough to be heard. One of the two men who had entered the clearing shot him a wrathful glance and shook his head, then looked away. Chastened and astonished, Isaac was silent.
More and more constructs were arriving in the open space. Massive military models, tiny medical assistants, automatic road-drills and household assistants, chrome and steel, iron and brass and copper and glass and wood, steam-powered and elyctrical and clockwork, thaumaturgy-driven and oil-burning engined.
Here and there among them darted more humans—even, Isaac thought, a vodyanoi, quickly lost in the darkness and moving shadows. The humans congregated in a tight knot by the side of what was almost an amphitheatre.
Isaac, Derkhan, Lemuel and Yagharek were completely ignored. They moved together instinctively, unsettled by the bizarre silence. Their attempts to communicate with their fellow organic creatures met either contemptuous silence or irritated shushings.
For ten minutes, constructs and humans dripped steadily into the hollow at the heart of Dump Two. Then the flow stopped, quite suddenly, and there was silence.
“D’you think these constructs are sentient?” whispered Lemuel.
“I’d say so,” said Isaac quietly. “I’m sure it’ll become clear.”
Barges in the river beyond sounded their klaxons, warned each other out of the way. Unnoticed as it came, the terrible weight of nightmares had settled again on New Crobuzon, crushing the minds of the sleeping citizenry under a mass of portent and alien symbols.
Isaac could feel the awful dreams oppressing him, pushing in on his skull. He was aware of them suddenly, waiting in the silence in the city dump.
There were about thirty constructs and perhaps sixty humans. Every human, every construct, every creature in that space except Isaac and his companions bided their time with supernatural calm. He felt that extraordinary stillness, that timeless waiting, like a kind of cold.
He shivered at the patience collected in that rubbish land.
The ground quivered.
Instantly the humans in the corner of the enclosed space fell to their knees, heedless of the sharp detritus around their feet. They gave obeisance, murmuring some complex chant in time, tracing some sacred hand movement like interlocking wheels.
The constructs shifted a little to adjust, remained standing.
Isaac and his companions moved closer together.
“What the godsdamned fuck is this?” hissed Lemuel.
There was another subterraneous tug, a juddering as if the earth wanted to slough off the rubbish heaped onto it. In the north wall of discarded and cast-off produce, two enormous lights came slamming silently on. The gathering was pinned in the cold light, spots so tight nothing spilt from their edges. The humans murmured and made their sign all the more fervently.
Isaac’s mouth dropped slowly open.
“Sweet Jabber protect us,” he whispered.
The wall of rubbish was moving. It was sitting up.
The bedsprings and old windows, the girders and steam engines from ancient locomotives, the air-pumps and fans, the pulleys and belts and shattered powerlooms were falling like an optical illusion into an alternative configuration. He had been staring at it for ages, but only now that it slowly, ponderously, impossibly moved, did Isaac see it. That was an upper arm, the