Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [274]
Jutting directly from the splintered brick was a six-foot fence of iron links and wooden slats and concrete, built years ago to contain the dumps in their infancy. But now the weight of accumulated filth made the old wirelinks bow alarmingly over the water. With the decades, sections of the flimsy wall had burst and split from its concrete moorings, spewing rubbish into the river below. The fence had gone unrepaired, and in those places now it was only the solidity of the crushed rubbish itself which held the dump in place.
Blocks of compressed garbage regularly cascaded into the water in greasy landslides of slag.
The huge cranes which took cargo from the trash-barges had originally been separated from the garbage they unloaded by a few yards of no-man’s-land—flat scrub and baked earth—but that had rapidly disappeared as the rubbish encroached. Now the dump workers and crane operators had to hike across the scoriatic landscape to cranes that sprouted directly from the vulgar geology of the dump.
It was as if the trash was fertile, and that it bore great structures.
Derkhan and the vodyanoi turned corners in the muck until they could no longer see the Council’s hide. They left a trail of cable that became invisible the moment it touched the ground, transformed into one meaningless piece of litter in a whole vista of mechanical refuse.
The hillocks of garbage subsided as they approached the Tar. Ahead of them, the rusted fence rose four feet or so from the surface layer of detritus. Derkhan changed course fractionally, headed for a wide break in the wire, where the dump was open to the river.
Across the squalid water Derkhan could see New Crobuzon. For a moment, the lumpy spires of Perdido Street Station were just visible, perfectly framed in the fence’s hole, bulging distantly over the city. She could see the rail-lines pick their way between towers that stabbed randomly from the bedrock. Militia struts jutted ugly into the skyline.
Opposite her, Spit Hearth welled up fatly to the river’s edge. There was no unbroken promenade by the side of the Tar, only sections of streets that traced it for a short time, then private gardens, sheer warehouse walls and wasteground. There was no one to watch Derkhan’s preparations unfold.
A few feet from the edge, Derkhan dropped the end of the cable and moved cautiously towards the break in the fence. She felt with her feet, making sure the ground would not fall forward and pitch her into the filthy river seven or more feet below. She leaned out as far as she dared, and scanned the gently moving surface.
The sun was slowly approaching the rooftops to the west, and the dirty black of the river was varnished with reddening light.
“Penge!” Derkhan hissed. “You there?”
After a moment, there was a small splashing sound. One of the indistinct pieces of flotsam that littered the river bobbed suddenly closer. It moved against the current.
Slowly, Pengefinchess raised her head from the river. Derkhan smiled. She felt an odd, desperate relief.
“All right then,” said Pengefinchess. “Time for my last job.”
Derkhan nodded with absurd gratitude.
“She’s here to help,” Derkhan said to the other vodyanoi, who stared at Pengefinchess in alarmed suspicion. “This cable’s too big and heavy for you to manage yourself. If you get in, then I’ll feed it down to you both.”
It took a few seconds for him to decide the risks posed by the newcomer were less important than the job in hand. He glowered at Derkhan in nervous fear, and nodded. He padded quickly to the break in the link-fence, paused for a fraction of a second, then hopped elegantly up and plunged into the water. His dive was so controlled that there was only a tiny splash.
Pengefinchess eyed him suspiciously as he kicked closer to her.
Derkhan looked quickly around, saw a cylindrical metal pipe thicker than her thigh. It was long and incredibly heavy, but working urgently, ignoring her tortured muscles, Derkhan hauled it