Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [52]
Isaac loomed over it brandishing a magnifying glass and a long pen.
“Stop fucking about, you vermin,” he muttered, and prodded the bird’s shoulder with the tip of the pen. He gazed through his lens at the infinitesimal shudders that passed through the tiny bones and muscles. He scribbled without looking at the paper beneath him.
“Oy!”
Isaac looked round at Lublamai’s irritated call, and left his desk. He paced to the balcony’s edge and peered over.
“What?”
Lublamai and David were standing shoulder to shoulder on the ground floor, their arms folded. They looked like a small chorus line about to burst into song. Their faces were furrowed. There was silence for some seconds.
“Look,” began Lublamai, his voice suddenly placatory, “Isaac . . . We’ve always agreed that this is a place we can all do the research we want to do, no questions asked, back each other up, that sort of thing . . . right?”
Isaac sighed and rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.
“For Jabber’s sake, boys, let’s not play old soldiers,” he said with a groan. “You don’t have to tell me we’ve been through thick and thin, or what have you, I know you’re arsed off, and I don’t blame you . . .”
“It smells, Isaac,” said David bluntly. “And we’re treated to the dawn chorus every minute of the day.”
As Lublamai spoke, the old construct wheeled its way uncertainly behind him. It stopped and its head rotated, its lenses taking in the two poised men. It hesitated a moment, then folded its stubby metal arms in clumsy imitation of their poses.
Isaac gesticulated at it.
“Look, look, that stupid thing’s losing it! It’s got a virus! You’d better have it trashed or it’ll self-organize; you’ll be having existential arguments with your mechanical skivvy before the year’s out!”
“Isaac, don’t change the fucking subject,” said David irritably, glancing round and shoving the construct, which fell over. “We all have a bit of leeway when it comes to inconveniences, but this is pushing it.”
“All right!” Isaac threw up his hands. He looked slowly around. “I suppose I sort of underestimated Lemuel’s abilities to get things done,” he said ruefully.
Circumscribing the entire warehouse, the whole length of the raised platform was crammed with cages filled with flapping, crying, crawling things. The warehouse was loud with the sounds of displaced air, the sudden shifts and fluttering of beating wings, the spatter of droppings, and loudest of all, the constant screech of captive birds. Pigeons and sparrows and starlings registered their distress with their coos and calls: feeble on their own, but a sharp, grating chorus en masse. Parrots and canaries punctuated the avian wittering with squawked exclamation marks that made Isaac wince. Geese and chickens and ducks added a rustic air to the cacophony. Hard-faced aspises flung themselves through the air the short distance of their cages, their little lizard bodies banging against the chickenwire fronts. They licked their wounds with their tiny lions’ faces and roared like aggressive mice. Huge glass tanks of flies and bees and wasps, mayflies and butterflies and flying beetles sounded a vivid aggressive drone. Bats hung upside down and regarded Isaac with fervent little eyes. Dragonfly-snakes rustled their long elegant wings and hissed loudly.
The floors of the cages had not been cleaned and the acrid smell of birdshit was very strong. Sincerity, Isaac saw, was wobbling up and down the room shaking her striped head. David saw where Isaac was looking.
“Yeah,” he shouted. “See? The stink’s making her miserable.”
“Fellows,” said Isaac, “I appreciate your forbearance, I really do. It’s give and take, isn’t it? Lub, remember when you were doing those experiments in sonar and you had that chap in banging that huge drum for two days?”
“Isaac, it’s already been nearly a week! How long’s it going to be? What’s the schedule? At the very least clean their mess up!”
Isaac looked down at the irate faces below him. They were very pissed