Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [266]
Isaac’s face was hard. He spoke in a monotone. He looked at the avatar carefully.
“There’s only four of us, and one of those we can’t rely on,” he went on. “Can you contact your . . . congregation?” The avatar nodded slowly, waiting for an explanation. “See, we need people to connect those cables across the city.” Isaac tugged the list out of the avatar’s hands and began to sketch on the back: a jagged sideways Y for the two rivers, little crosses for Griss Twist, The Crow, and scribbles delineating Brock Marsh and Spit Hearth in between. He linked the first two crosses with a quick slash of pencil. He looked up at the avatar. “You’re going to have to organize your congregation. Fast. We need them in place with the cable by six o’clock.”
“Why do you not perform the operation here?” asked the avatar. Isaac shook his head vaguely.
“It wouldn’t work. This is a backwater. We have to channel the power through the city’s focal point, where all the lines converge.
“We have to go to Perdido Street Station.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Carrying a bloated sack of discarded technology between them, Isaac and Yagharek crept back through the quiet streets of Griss Twist, up the broken brick stairwell of the Sud Line. Like shambling city vagrants in clothes ill-suited to the sweltering air, they trudged a path through the skyline of New Crobuzon, back to their collapsing hideout by the railway line. They waited for a squealing onrush of train to pass, blowing energetically from its flared chimney, then picked their way through fences of wavering air poured upwards from the scalding iron tracks.
It was midday, and the air wrapped them like a heated poultice.
Isaac put down his end of the sack and tugged at the rickety door. It was pushed open from inside by Derkhan. She slipped through to stand in front of him, half closing the door behind her. Isaac glanced up and could see someone standing ill-at-ease in a dark corner.
“Found someone, ’Zaac,” whispered Derkhan. Her voice was taut. Her eyes were bloodshot and nearly tearful in her dirty face. She pointed briefly back into the room. “We’ve been waiting.”
Isaac had to meet the Council; Yagharek would inspire awe and confusion but no confidence in those he approached; Pengefinchess would not go; so hours ago, it was Derkhan who had been forced out into the city on the grisly and monstrous errand. It had turned her into some bad spirit.
At first, when she left the hut and walked into the city, made her way quickly through the tarry darkness that filled the streets, she had cried in a drab fashion to ease the pressure of her tortured head. She had kept her shoulders skulking high, knowing that of the few figures she saw quickly pacing their way somewhere, a high proportion were likely to be militia. The heavy nightmare tension of the air drained her.
But then as the sun rose and the night sank slowly into the gutters, her way had become easier. She had moved more quickly, as if the very material of the darkness had resisted her.
Her task was no less horrendous, but urgency bleached her horror until it was an anaemic thing. She knew that she could not wait.
She had some way to go. She was making for the charity hospital of Syriac Well, through four or more miles of intricately twisting slum and collapsing architecture. She did not dare take a cab, in case it was driven by a militia spy, an agent out to catch perpetrators like her. So she paced as quickly as she dared in the shadow of the Sud Line. It raised itself higher and higher above the roofs as it passed further and further from the city’s heart. Yawning arches of dripping brick soared over the squat streets of Syriac.
At Syriac Rising Station, Derkhan had broken away from the tracks of the rails and borne off into the snarl of streets south of the undulating Gross Tar.
It had been easy to follow the noise of