Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [272]
Andrej was light, but he was beginning to weigh them down, his mass seeming to increase with every second. They stretched their aching arms and shoulders, drew deep breaths. A few feet away, the crowds emerging from the station thronged past the entrance to their little hideaway.
When they had rested and rearranged their burdens, they braced themselves and set out again, into the backstreets once more, walking in the shadow of the Sud Line, towards the city’s heart, the towers not yet visible over the surrounding miles of houses: the Spike and the turrets of Perdido Street Station.
Isaac began to talk. He told Yagharek what he thought would happen that night.
Derkhan made her way through the reclaimed filth of the Griss Twist dump towards the Construct Council.
Isaac had warned the great Constructed Intelligence that she would be coming. She knew she was expected. The idea made her uncomfortable.
As she approached the hollow that was the Council’s lair, she thought she heard a susurration of lowered voices. She stiffened instantly, and drew her pistol. She checked that it was loaded, and that the firing pan was full.
Derkhan picked up her feet, stalking with care, avoiding any sound. At the end of a channel of rubbish, she saw the opening-out of the hollow. Someone walked briefly past her field of view. She stole carefully closer.
Then another man walked past the end of the gorge of crushed garbage, and she saw that he was dressed in work overalls, and that he was staggering slightly under the weight of a burden. Slung over his broad shoulder was a massive coil of black-coated cable, entwining him vastly like some predatory constrictor.
She straightened up slightly. It was not the militia waiting for her. She walked on into the presence of the Construct Council.
She entered the hollow, glancing up nervously to ensure that there were no airships overhead. Then she turned to the scene before her, gasping at the scale of the gathering.
On all sides, engaged in all manner of opaque tasks, were nearly a hundred men and women. Mostly human, there were a handful of vodyanoi among them, and even two khepri. All were dressed in cheap and soiled clothes. And almost all were carrying or squatting before enormous coils of industrial cable.
It came in a variety of styles. Most was black, but there were brown and blue coatings as well, and red and grey. There were pairs of burly men staggering under loops nearly the thickness of a man’s thigh. Others carried skeins of wire no more than four inches in diameter.
The thin hubbub of speech died away quickly as Derkhan entered, and all the eyes in the place turned to her. The rubble crater was crammed with bodies. Derkhan swallowed and looked over them carefully. She saw the avatar stumbling towards her on halting, brittle legs.
“Derkhan Blueday,” he said quietly. “We are ready.”
Derkhan huddled for a short time with the avatar, checking carefully over a scribbled map.
The bloody concavity of the avatar’s open skull emitted an extraordinary reek. In the heat, his peculiar half-dead stench was utterly unbearable, and Derkhan held her breath as long as she could, gulping air when she had to through the sleeve of her filthy cloak.
While Derkhan and the Council conferred, the rest of the assembled kept a respectful distance.
“This is almost all of my bloodlife congregation,” said the avatar. “I sent out mobile Is with urgent messages, and the faithful have gathered, as you see.” He paused and clucked inhumanly. “We must proceed,” he said. “It is seventeen minutes past five o’clock.”
Derkhan looked up at the sky, which was deepening slowly, warning of dusk. She was sure that the clock the Council was checking, some timepiece buried deep in the bowels of the dump, was second-perfect. She nodded.
At a command from the avatar, the congregation began to stagger out of the dump, wobbling under their loads. Before they left, each turned to the place in the wall of the dump