Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [302]
He heard an appalling scream.
Isaac froze as memories came back to him in torrents, let him know how he had come to be there, held tight in the Weaver’s arms (he jerked and spasmed as he recalled it all).
The Weaver was stepping lightly over the worldweb, scuttling across metareal filaments connecting every moment to every other.
Isaac remembered the vertiginous pitch of his soul when he had seen the worldweb. He remembered a nausea that had wracked his existential being at the sight of that impossible vista. He struggled not to open his eyes.
He could hear the jabbering of Yagharek and Derkhan’s whispered curses. They came to him not as sounds but as intimations, floating fragments of silk that slipped into his skull and became clear to him. There was another voice, a jagged cacophony of bright fabric shrieking in terror.
He wondered who that might be.
The Weaver moved quickly across pitching threads alongside the damage and potentiality of damage that the slake-moth had wreaked, and might again. The Weaver disappeared into a hole, a dim funnel of connections that wound through the material of that complex dimension and
emerged again into the city.
Isaac felt air against his cheek, wood below him. He woke and opened his eyes.
His head hurt. He looked up. His neck wobbled as he adjusted to the weight of his helmet, still perched tight on his head, its mirrors miraculously unbroken.
He was lying in a shaft of moonlight in some dusty little attic. Sounds filtered into the space through the wooden floors and walls.
Derkhan and Yagharek were raising themselves slowly and carefully onto their elbows, shaking their heads. As Isaac watched, Derkhan reached up quickly and gently felt the sides of her head. Her remaining ear—and his, he quickly ascertained—was untouched.
The Weaver loomed in the corner of the room. It stepped forward slightly, and behind it, Isaac saw a militiaman. The officer seemed paralysed. He sat with his back against the wall, shaking quietly, his smooth faceplate skewwhiff and falling from his head. His rifle lay across his lap. Isaac’s eyes widened when he saw it.
It was glass. A perfect and useless model of a flintlock rifle rendered in glass.
. . . THIS WOULD BE HOMESTEAD FOR THE FLEETING WINGED ONE . . . crooned the Weaver. It sounded subdued again, as if its energy had ebbed from it during the journey through the planes of the web . . . SEE MY LOOKING-GLASS MAN MY PLAYMATE MY FRIENDLING . . . it whispered . . . HE AND ME SHALL WHILE TIME AWAY THIS IS THE RESTING PLACE OF THE VAMPIR MOTH THIS IS WHERE IT FOLDS ITS WINGS AND HIDES TO EAT AGAIN I WILL PLAY TIC-TAC-TOE AND BOXES WITH MY GLASS-GUNNER . . .
It stepped back into the corner of the room and set itself down suddenly with a jerk of its legs. One of its knife-hands flashed like elyctricity, moving with extraordinary speed, scoring a three-by-three grid onto the boards before the comatose officer’s lap.
The Weaver etched a cross into a corner square, then sat back and waited, whispering to itself.
Isaac, Derkhan and Yagharek shuffled into the centre of the room.
“I thought it was going to get us away,” mumbled Isaac. “It’s followed the fucking moth . . . It’s here, somewhere . . .”
“We have to take it,” whispered Derkhan, her face set. “We’ve almost got them all. Let’s finish it.”
“With what?” hissed Isaac. “We’ve got our fucking helmets and that’s it. We’ve not got any weapons to face the likes of that thing . . . we don’t even know where we damn-well are . . .”
“We have to get the Weaver to help us,” said Derkhan.
But their attempts were quite fruitless. The gigantic spider ignored them utterly, wittering quietly to itself and waiting intently, as if waiting for the frozen militia officer to complete his move in tic-tac-toe. Isaac and the others entreated with the Weaver, begged it to help them, but they seemed suddenly invisible to it. They turned away in frustration.
“We have to go out there,” said Derkhan suddenly. Isaac met her eyes.