He had to get the thing out of the cage. It looked so miserable, flailing pointlessly in that little space. Isaac hung back, slightly afraid and a little disgusted at the idea of touching the extraordinary thing. Eventually he picked up the box, staggering under the massively increased weight, and held it just above the ground in a much larger cage left over from his experiments, a chicken-wire-fronted mini-aviary five feet high that had contained a small family of canaries. He opened the front of the hutch and tipped the fat grub into the sawdust, then quickly closed and latched the front grille.

He stood back to gaze at his rehoused captive.

It looked directly at him, now, and he felt its childish pleas for breakfast.

“Oh steady on,” he said, “I haven’t even eaten yet.”

He backed uneasily away, then turned and made for his parlour.

Over his breakfast of fruit and iced buns, Isaac realized that the effects of the dreamshit were wearing off very quickly. It might be the worst hangover in the world, he thought wryly, but it’s gone within the hour. No wonder the punters come back.

From across the room, the foot-long caterpillar scrabbled around the floor of its new cage. It nosed miserably around the dirt, then reared up again and waved its head in the direction of the packet of dreamshit.

Isaac slapped his hand over his face.

“Oh, Hell’s Donkeys,” he said. Vague emotions of unease and experimental curiosity combined in his mind. It was a childish excitement, like that of boys and girls who burnt insects with magnified sun. He stood and reached into the envelope with a big wooden spoon. He carried the congealed lump over to the caterpillar, which almost danced with excitement as it saw, or smelt, or somehow sensed, the dreamshit approaching. Isaac opened a little feeding hatch at the back of the crate and tipped the doses of drug in. Immediately the caterpillar raised its head and slammed it down on the lumpy mess. Its mouth was large enough now that its workings could easily be seen. It slid open and gnawed voraciously at the powerful narcotic.

“That,” said Isaac, “is as big a cage as you’re going to get, so ease up on the growing, right?” He backed away to his clothes, without taking his eyes from the feeding creature.

Isaac picked up and sniffed the various clothes strewn around the room. He put on a shirt and trousers with no smell and a minimum of stains.

Better sort out a “things to do” list, he thought grimly. Top of which is “Beat Lucky Gazid to death.” He stomped to his desk. The triangular Unified Field Theory diagram he had drawn for Yagharek was at the top of the papers that covered it. Isaac pursed his lips and stared at it. He picked it up and looked thoughtfully over to where the caterpillar gnawed happily. There was something else he should do that morning.

There’s no point putting it off, he thought reluctantly. Maybe I can clear the decks for Yag and learn a little about my friend here…maybe. Isaac sighed heavily and rolled up his sleeves, then sat down at a mirror for a rare and perfunctory preen. He poked inexpertly at his hair, found another, cleaner shirt into which he changed, oozing resentment.

He scribbled a note for David and Lublamai, checked that his giant caterpillar was secure and unlikely to escape. Then he descended the stairs and, pinning his message to the door, walked out into a day full of sharp clear blades of light.

Isaac sighed and set off to find an early cab to take him to the university and the best biologist, natural philosopher and bio-thaumaturge he knew: the odious Montague Vermishank.

Chapter Seventeen

Isaac entered New Crobuzon University with a mixture of nostalgia and discomfort. The university buildings were little changed since his time as a teacher. The various faculties and departments dotted Ludmead with a grandiose architecture that overshadowed the rest of the area.

The quad before the enormous and ancient Science Faculty building was covered with trees shedding their blossom. Isaac walked footpaths worn by generations of students through a blizzard of garish pink petals. He strode busily up the scrubbed steps and pushed open the great doors.

Isaac was brandishing faculty identification that had expired seven years previously, but he need not have bothered. The porter behind the desk was Sedge, an old, entirely witless man, whose tenure at the faculty long predated Isaac’s own, and looked set to continue for ever. He greeted Isaac as he always did, on these irregular visits, with an incoherent mutter of recognition. Isaac shook his hand and enquired after his family. Isaac had reason to be grateful to Sedge, before whose milky eyes he had liberated numerous expensive pieces of laboratory equipment.

Isaac strode up the steps past groups of students, smoking, arguing, writing. Overwhelmingly male and human, there were, nonetheless, the occasional defensive tight-knit group of young xenians or women or both. Some students conducted theoretical debates at ostentatious volume. Others made occasional marginal notes in their textbooks and sucked at rolled cigarillos of pungent tobacco. Isaac passed a group squatting at the end of a corridor, practising what they had just learned, laughing delightedly as the tiny homunculus they had made from ground liver stumbled four steps before collapsing in a pile of twitching mulch.

The number of students around him decreased as he continued up stairs and along corridors. To his irritation and disgust, Isaac found that his heart was speeding up as he approached his erstwhile boss.

He walked the plush darkwood panelling of the Science Faculty’s administration wing, and approached the office at the far end, on the door of which was written in gold leaf: Director. Montague Vermishank.

Isaac paused outside and fiddled nervously. He was emotionally confused, striving to maintain a decade’s anger and dislike along with a conciliatory, non-confrontational tone. He breathed deeply once, then turned and knocked briskly, opened the door and walked in.

“What do you think…” shouted the man behind the desk, before stopping abruptly when he recognized Isaac. “Ah,” he said, after a long silence. “Of course. Isaac. Do sit down.”

Isaac sat.

Montague Vermishank was eating his lunch. His pale face and shoulders leaned sharply over his enormous desk. Behind him was a small window. It looked out, Isaac knew, over the wide avenues and large houses of Mafaton and Chnum, but a grubby curtain was pulled across it and the light was stifled.

Vermishank was not fat, but he was coated from his jowls down in a slight excess layer, a swaddling of dead flesh like a corpse’s. He wore a suit too small for him, and his necrotic white skin oozed from his sleeves. His thin hair was brushed and styled with a neurotic fervour. Vermishank was drinking lumpy cream soup. He dipped doughy bread into it regularly and sucked at the resulting mess, chewing but not biting off, gnawing and worrying at the saliva-fouled bread that dripped wan yellow onto his desk. His colourless eyes took Isaac in.

Isaac stared uneasily and was thankful for his tight bulk and his skin the colour of smouldering wood.

“Was going to shout at you for failing to knock or make an appointment, but then I saw it was you. Of course. Normal rules do not apply. How are you, Isaac? Are you after money? Need some research work?” asked Vermishank in his phlegmy whisper.

“No, no, nothing like that. I’m not bad, actually, Vermishank,” said Isaac with strained bonhomie. “How’s all your work?”

“Oh, good, good. Doing a paper on bio-ignition. I’ve isolated the pyrotic flange in a fire-bes.” There was a long silence. “Very exciting,” whispered Vermishank.

“Sounds it, sounds it,” enthused Isaac. They stared at each other. Isaac could not think of any more small talk. He loathed and respected Vermishank. It was an unsettling combination.