Perdido Street Station by China Miéville Read Free Book Online Page A

with a high ceiling, painted black like everything in this
troglodytic place, well-lit with gaslamps, and filled with perhaps
forty desks; on each was a bulky typewriter, at each a secretary
copying from reams of notes by their sides. Mostly human and mostly
women, Lin also caught smell and sight of men and cactacae, even a
pair of khepri, and a vodyanoi working at a typewriter with keys
adapted for her huge hands.
    Around the room Remade
were stationed, mostly human, again, but of other races too, rare as
xenian Remade were. Some were organically Remade, with claws and
antlers and slabs of grafted muscle, but most were mech, and the heat
from their boilers made the room close.
    At the end of the room
was a closed office.
    "Ms. Lin,
finally," boomed a speaking-trumpet above its door as soon as
she entered. None of the secretaries looked up. "Please make
your way across the room to my office."
    Lin picked her way
between the desks. She looked closely at what was being typed, hard
though it was, and harder in the odd light of the black-walled room.
The secretaries all typed expertly, reading the scribbled notes and
transferring them without looking at their keyboards or their work.
    Further to our
conversation of the thirteenth of this month, read one, please
consider your franchise operation under our jurisdiction, terms to be
arranged. Lin moved on.
    You die tomorrow,
you fuck, you wormshit. You’re going to envy the Remade, you
cowardly cunt, you’re going to scream till your mouth bleeds, said the next.
    Oh... thought
Lin. Oh...help.
    The door to the office
opened.
    "Come in, Ms. Lin,
come in!" The voice boomed from the trumpet.
    Lin did not hesitate.
She entered.
    **
    Filing cabinets and
bookshelves filled most of the small room. There was a small,
traditional oil painting of Iron Bay on one wall. Behind a large
darkwood desk was a folding screen illustrated with silhouettes of
fish, a large version of the screens behind which artists’
models changed. In the centre of the screen, one fish was rendered in
mirrored glass, giving Lin a view of herself. Lin hovered uncertainly
in front of the screen.
    "Sit, sit,"
said a quiet voice from behind it. Lin pulled up the chair in front
of the desk.
    "I can see you,
Ms. Lin. The mirrored carp is a window on my side. I think it’s
polite to let people know that."
    The speaker seemed to
expect a response, so Lin nodded.
    "You’re
late, you know, Ms. Lin."
    Devil’s Tail!
Of all the appointments to be late to! Lin thought frantically.
She began to scribble an apology on her pad when the voice
interrupted her.
    "I can sign, Ms.
Lin."
    Lin put down her pad
and apologized profusely with her hands.
    "Don’t
worry," said her host disingenuously. "It happens. The
Bonetown is unforgiving to visitors. Next time you’ll know to
leave earlier, won’t you?"
    Lin agreed that she
would, that that was exactly what she would know to do.
    "I like your work
a great deal, Ms. Lin. I have all the heliotypes that made their way
from Lucky Gazid. He is a sad, pathetic, broken cretin, that
man—addiction is very sad in most of its forms—but he
does, strangely enough, have something of a nose for art. That woman
Alexandrine Nevgets was one of his, wasn’t she? Pedestrian,
unlike your own work, but pleasant. I’m always prepared to
indulge Lucky Gazid. It will be a shame when he dies. It’ll
doubtless be a sordid affair, some dirty stubby knife gutting him
slowly for the sake of small change; or a venereal disease involving
vile emissions and sweat caught from an underage whore; or perhaps
his bones will be broken for snitching—the militia, after all,
do pay well, and junkies can’t be choosers when it comes to
income."
    The voice that floated
over the screen was melodious, and what the speaker said scanned
hypnotically: he spoke everything into a poem. His sentences lilted
on gently. His words were brutal. Lin