Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [33]
Isaac fell asleep watching the convoluted lunar clockwork. He basked in the moonlight and dreamt of Lin: a fraught, sexual, loving dream.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Clock and Cockerel had spilt out of doors. Tables and coloured lanterns covered the forecourt by the canal that separated Salacus Fields from Sangwine. The smash of glasses and shrieks of amusement wafted over the dour bargemen working the locks, riding the sluicing water up to a higher level, taking off towards the river, leaving the boisterous inn behind.
Lin felt vertiginous.
She sat at the head of a large table under a violet lamp, surrounded by her friends. Next to her on one side was Derkhan Blueday, the art critic for the Beacon. On the other was Cornfed, screaming animatedly at Thighs Growing, the cactacae cellist. Alexandrine; Bellagin Sound; Tarrick Septimus; Importunate Spint: painters and poets, musicians, sculptors, and a host of hangers-on she half-recognized.
This was Lin’s milieu. This was her world. And yet she had never felt so isolated from them as she did now.
The knowledge that she had landed the job, the huge request they all dreamed of, the one work that could see her happy for years, separated her from her fellows. And her terrifying employer very effectively sealed her isolation. Lin felt as if suddenly, without warning, she was in a very different world from the bitchy, game-playing, lively, precious, introspective Salacus Fields round.
She had seen no one since she had returned, shaken, from her extraordinary meeting in Bonetown. She had missed Isaac badly, but she knew that he would be taking the opportunity of her supposed work to be drowning himself in research, and she knew also that for her to venture to Brock Marsh would anger him greatly. In Salacus Fields, they were an open secret. Brock Marsh, though, was the belly of the beast.
So she had sat for a day, contemplating what she had agreed to do.
Slowly, tentatively, she had cast her mind back to the monstrous figure of Mr. Motley.
Godspit and shit! she had thought. What was he?
She had no clear picture of her boss, only a sense of the ragged discordance of his flesh. Snippets of visual memory teased her: one hand terminating in five equally spaced crabs’ claws; a spiralling horn bursting from a nest of eyes; a reptilian ridge winding along goat’s fur. It was impossible to tell what race Mr. Motley had started out as. She had never heard of Remaking so extensive, so monstrous and chaotic. Anyone as rich as he must be could surely afford the best Remakers to fashion him into something more human—or whatever. She could only think that he chose this form.
Either that, or he was a victim of Torque.
Lin wondered if his obsession with the transition zone reflected his form, or if his obsession came first.
Lin’s cupboard was stuffed with her rough sketches of Mr. Motley’s body—hastily hidden on the assumption that Isaac would stay with her tonight. She had made scrawled notes of what she remembered of the lunatic anatomy.
Her horror had ebbed, over the days, leaving her with crawling skin and a torrent of ideas.
This, she had decided, could be the work of her life.
Her first appointment with Mr. Motley was the next day, Dustday, in the afternoon. After that, it was twice a week for at least the next month: probably longer, depending on how the sculpture took shape.
Lin was eager to begin.
“Lin, you tedious bitch!” yelled Cornfed and threw a carrot at her. “Why are you so quiet tonight?”
Lin scrawled quickly on her pad.
Cornfed, sweetheart, you bore me.
Everyone burst into laughter. Cornfed returned to his flamboyant flirtation with Alexandrine. Derkhan bent her grey head towards Lin and spoke softly.
“Seriously, Lin . . . You’re hardly speaking. Is something up?”
Lin, touched, shook her headbody gently.
Working on something big. Taking up a lot of my mind, she signed at her. It was a relief to be able to speak without writing every word: Derkhan read signing well.
I miss Isaac, Lin added mock-forlornly.
Derkhan creased her face sympathetically. She is, Lin