Perdido Street Station by China Miéville Read Free Book Online

guinea only a week or so ago; but Gazid had interrupted
her and insisted she retreat from the table with him. And as her
friends, the artistic elite of Salacus Fields, laughed and cheered
them on, Gazid had handed her a stiff white card stamped with a
simple crest of a three-by-three chessboard. On it was a short
printed note.
    Ms. Lin, it
said. My employer was most impressed with the examples of your
work your agent showed him. He wonders whether you might be
interested in meeting him to discuss a possible commission. We look
forward to hearing from you. The signature was illegible.
    Gazid was a wreck and
an addict of most things going, who could not help going to any
lengths to secure money for drugs; but this was not like any scam
that Lin could imagine. There was no angle for him, unless there was
indeed someone wealthy in New Crobuzon prepared to pay for her work,
giving him a cut.
    She had dragged him out
of the bar, to catcalls and whoops and consternation, and had
demanded to know what was going on. Gazid was circumspect at first,
and seemed to rack his brains to think of what lies to spout. He
realized quite quickly that he needed to tell her the truth.
    "There’s a
guy I buy some stuff from occasionally..." he started shiftily.
"Anyway, I had the prints of your statues lying around...uh...on
the shelf when he came round, and he loved them and wanted to take a
couple away, and...uh...I said ‘yeah.’ And then a while
later he told me that he showed them to the guy who supplies him with the stuff I sometimes buy, and that guy liked them, and
took them away, and showed them to his boss, and then they got
to the kind of top man, who’s huge into art—bought some
of Alexandrine’s stuff last year—and he liked them and
wants you to do a piece for him."
    Lin translated the
evasive language.
    Your drug dealer’s
boss wants me to work for him??? she scrawled.
    "Oh shit, Lin,
it’s not like that...I mean, yeah, but..." Gazid paused.
"Well, yeah," he finished lamely. There was a pause.
"Only...only...he wants to meet you. If you’re interested
he has to actually meet you."
    Lin pondered.
    It was certainly an
exciting prospect. Judging by the card, this was not some minor
hustler: this was a big player. Lin was not stupid. She knew that
this would be dangerous. She was excited, she could not help it. It
would be such an event in her art-life. She could drop hints about
it. She could have a criminal patron. She was intelligent enough to
realize that her excitement was childish, but not mature enough to
care.
    And while she was
deciding that she didn’t care, Gazid named the kinds of sums
the mysterious buyer was quoting. Lin’s headlegs flexed in
astonishment.
    I have to talk to
Alexandrine, she wrote, and went back inside.
    Alex knew nothing. She
milked the kudos of having sold canvases to a crime boss for what she
could, but she had only ever met an at-best middle-ranking messenger,
who had offered her enormous sums for two paintings that she had just
finished. She had accepted, handed them over, and never heard
anything again.
    That was it. She had
never even known the name of her buyer.
    Lin decided that she
could do better than that.
    She had sent a message
through Gazid, down the illicit conduit of communication that led
fuck-knew-where, saying that yes, she was interested, and would be
prepared to meet, but she really must have a name to write in her
diary.
    The New Crobuzon
underworld digested her message, and made her wait a week, and then
spat back an answer in the shape of another printed note, pushed
under her door while she slept, giving her an address in Bonetown, a
date, and a one-word name: Motley.
    **
    A frenetic snapping and
clatter sifted into the corridor. Lin’s cactacae escort pushed
open one dark door among the many, and stood aside.
    Lin’s eyes
adjusted to the light. She was looking into a typing pool. It was a
large room