Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [73]
“Yagharek?”
“Have you forsaken me, Grimnebulin?”
Yagharek was shrieking like a tortured bird. His words were almost impossible to understand. Isaac gesticulated at him to calm down.
“Yagharek, what the fuck are you talking about . . . ?”
“The birds, Grimnebulin, I saw the birds! You told me, you showed me, they were for your research . . . what has happened, Grimnebulin? Are you giving up?”
“Hang on . . . how in the name of Jabber’s arse did you see them fly away? Where’ve you been?”
“On your roof, Grimnebulin.” Yagharek was quietening. He was calmer. He radiated a massive sadness. “On your roof, where I perch, night after night, waiting for you to help me. I saw you release all the little subjects. Why have you given up, Grimnebulin?”
Isaac beckoned him up the stairs.
“Yag, old son . . . Damn, I don’t know where to start.” Isaac stared up at the ceiling. “What the arse were you doing on my roof? How long have you hung about up there? ’Stail, you could’ve kipped down here, or something . . . that is absurd. Not to say a bit eerie, thinking of you up there while I work or eat or shit or whatnot. And—” he held up his hand to cut off Yagharek’s response “—and I have not given up on your project.”
He was silent for a while. He let the words sink in. He waited for Yagharek to calm, to return from the miserable little hollow he had carved for himself.
“I haven’t given up,” he repeated. “What’s happened is quite good, actually . . . We’ve entered a new phase, I think. Out with the old. That line of research has been . . . ah . . . terminated.”
Yagharek bowed his head. His shoulders shuddered slightly as he breathed out lengthily.
“I do not understand.”
“Right, well, look, come over here. I’m going to show you something.”
Isaac led Yagharek over to the desk. He paused momentarily to tut at the huge caterpillar that sagged on its side in the box. It stirred weakly.
Yagharek did not spare it a glance.
Isaac pointed to the various bundles of paper that propped up overdue library books and teetered on his desk. Drawings, equations, notes and treatises. Yagharek began to sift slowly through them. Isaac guided him.
“Look . . . See all the damn sketches everywhere. Wings, for the most part. Now, the starting point for the research was the wing. Seems sensible, don’t it? So what I’ve been about is understanding that particular limb.
“The garuda who live in New Crobuzon are useless for us, by the way. I put up notices in the university, but apparently there’re no garuda students this year. I even tried to argue for the sake of science with a garuda . . . uh . . . community leader . . . and it was a bit of a disaster. Let’s put it that way.” Isaac paused, remembering, then blinked himself back to the discussion. “So instead, let’s look to the birds.
“Now, that leads us to a whole new problem. The little beggars, the humming birds and wrens and whatnot are all interesting and useful in terms of . . . y’know . . . broad background, the physics of flight and what have you, but basically we’re looking at the big boys. Kestrels, hawks, eagles if I’d got hold of any. Because at this stage I’m still thinking analogously. But I don’t want you to think I’m close-minded . . . I’m not studying the mayfly or whatever just out of interest, I’m trying to work out if I can apply it.
“I mean, I’m presuming you’re not fussy, right, Yag? I’m presuming that if I graft onto your back a pair of bat or bluebottle wings, or even a wind-polyp’s flightgland, you’re not going to be fussy. Might not be pretty, but it’s just about getting you into the air, right?”
Yagharek nodded. He was listening fiercely, sifting through the papers on the desk as he did so. He was intent on understanding.
“Right. So it seems reasonable, even given all that, that it’s the big birds we should be looking at. But of course . . .” Isaac rummaged among the papers, grabbed some pictures from the wall, handed sheafs