The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [67]
This is the greatest city in the world. You hear that all the time, because it's true. But it's sort of an untrue truth, for a lot of us.
I don't know where you live. If it's Dog Fenn, then knowing that Parliament's a building like nothing else, or that we've riches in the coffers that would make the rest of the world jealous, or that the scholars of New Crobuzon could outthink the bloody gods ― knowing all of that doesn't do so much. You still live in Dog Fenn, or Badside, or what have you.
But when Jack ran, the city was the greatest for Badside too.
You could see it ― I could see it ― in the way people walked, after Jack'd done something. I don't know how it was uptown in The Crow ― I expect the well-dressed there sneered, or made a show of not caring -but where the houses lean in to each other, where the bricks shed pointing, in the shadow of the glass cactus ghetto, people walked tall. Jack was everyone's: men and women, cactus-people, khepri and vod. The wyrmen made up songs about him. The same people that would spit in the face of a Remade beggar cheered this fReemade. In Salacus Fields they'd toast Jack by name.
I wouldn't do that, of course ― not that I didn't want to, but you can imagine, in the business I'm in, I have to be careful. I'm involved, so of course I can't be seen to be. In my head, though, I'd raise a glass with them. To Jack, I'd think.
In the short time I worked with Jack I never used his given name, nor he mine. It's in the nature of the work, obviously, that you don't use real names. But then, what could be more his name than Jack? Remaking is the ruin of most, but it was the making of him.
It's hard to make sense of Remaking, of its logic. Sometimes the magisters pass down sentences that you can understand. One man kills another with a blade, take his killing arm and replace it, suture a motorknife in its place, tube him up with the boiler to run it. The lesson's obvious. Or those who are made heavy engines for industry, man-cranes and woman-cabs and boy-machines. It's easy to see why the city would want them.
But I can't explain to you the woman given a ruff of peacock feathers, or the young lad with iron spiderlimbs out his back, or those with too many eyes or engines that make them burn from the inside out, or legs made of wooden toys or replaced with the arms of apes so they walk with mad monkey grace. The Remakings that make them stronger, or weaker, or more or less vulnerable, Remakings almost unnoticed, and those that make them impossible to understand.
Sometimes you'll see a xenian Remade, but it's rare. It's hard to work with cactacae vegetable flesh, or the physiognomy of vodyanoi, I'm told, and there are other reasons for the other races, so for the most part magisters'll sentence them to other things. For the most part, it's humans who are Remade, for cruelty or expediency, or opaque logics.
There ain't no one the city hates so much as the renegades, the fReemade. Turning your Remaking on the Remakers, that ain't how it's supposed to be.
Sometimes, you know, I'll admit it's frustrating, to have to keep all my thoughts to myself. Especially during the day, while I'm in at work. Don't get me wrong, I like my colleagues, some of them, they're good lads, and for all I know some would even agree with the way I look at things, but you just can't risk it. You have to know when to keep secrets.
So I stay well out of it. I don't talk politics, I just do what I'm told, stay well out of any discussions.
When you see, when you see how people looked up after Jack had struck, though, my gods. How could anyone not be for that? People needed him, they needed that, that release. That hope.
I couldn't believe it when I heard my crew'd got hold of the man who got Jack caught. I had to keep myself under control at work, not let anyone see I was excited. I was waiting to get my hands on the rat.
For a lot of people, the most