Chapter OneA window burst open high above the market. A basket flew from it and arcedtowards the oblivious crowd. It spasmed in mid-air, then spun andcontinued earthwards at a slower, uneven pace. Dancing precariously as itdescended, its wire-mesh caught and skittered on the building’s roughhide. It scrabbled at the wall, sending paint and concrete dust plummetingbefore it.The sun shone through uneven cloud-cover with a bright grey light. Belowthe basket the stalls and barrows lay like untidy spillage. The cityreeked. But today was market day down in Aspic Hole, and the pungent slickof dung-smell and rot that rolled over New Crobuzon was, in these streets,for these hours, improved with paprika and fresh tomato, hot oil and fishand cinnamon, cured meat, banana and onion.The food stalls stretched the noisy length of Shadrach Street. Books andmanuscripts and pictures filled up Selchit Pass, an avenue of desultorybanyans and crumbling concrete a little way to the east. There wereearthenware products spilling down the road to Barrackham in the south;engine parts to the west; toys down one side street; clothes between twomore; and countless other goods filling all the alleys. The rows ofmerchandise converged crookedly on Aspic Hole like spokes on a brokenwheel.In the Hole itself all distinctions broke down. In the shadowof old walls and unsafe towers were a pile of gears, a ramshackletable of broken crockery and crude clay ornaments, a case of moulderingtextbooks. Antiques, sex, flea-powder. Between the stalls stomped hissingconstructs. Beggars argued in the bowels of deserted buildings. Members ofstrange races bought peculiar things. Aspic Bazaar, a blaring mess ofgoods, grease and tallymen. Mercantile law ruled: let the buyer beware.The costermonger below the descending basket looked up into flat sunlightand a shower of brick particles. He wiped his eye. He plucked the frayedthing from the air above his head, pulling at the cord which bore it untilit went slack in his hand. Inside the basket was a brass shekel and a notein careful, ornamented italics. The food-vendor scratched his nose as hescanned the paper. He rummaged in the piles of produce before him, placedeggs and fruit and root vegetables into the container, checking againstthe list. He stopped and read one item again, then smiled lasciviously andcut a slice of pork. When he was done he put the shekel in his pocket andfelt for change, hesitating as he calculated his delivery cost, eventuallydepositing four stivers in with the food.He wiped his hands against his trousers and thought for a minute, thenscribbled something on the list with a stub of charcoal and tossed itafter the coins.He tugged three times at the rope and the basket began a bobbing journeyinto the air. It rose above the lower roofs of surrounding buildings,buoyed upwards by noise. It startled the roosting jackdaws in the desertedstorey and inscribed the wall with another scrawled trail among many,before it disappeared again into the window from which it had emerged.Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin had just realized that he was dreaming. He hadbeen aghast to find himself employed once again at the university,parading in front of a huge blackboard covered in vague representations oflevers and forces and stress. Introductory Material Science. Isaac hadbeen staring anxiously at the class when that unctuous bastard Vermishankhad looked in.“I can’t teach this class,” whispered Isaac loudly. “The market’s tooloud.” He gestured at the window.“It’s all right.” Vermishank was soothing and loathsome. “It’s time forbreakfast,” he said. “That’ll take your mind off the noise.” And hearingthat absurdity Isaac shed sleep with immense relief. The raucous profanityof the bazaar and the smell of cooking came with him into the day.He lay hugely in the bed without opening his eyes. He heard Lin walkacross the room and felt the slight listing of the floorboards. The garretwas filled with pungent smoke. Isaac salivated.Lin clapped twice. She knew when Isaac woke. Probably because he closedhis mouth, he thought, and sniggered without opening his eyes.“Still sleeping, shush, poor little Isaac ever so tired,” he whimpered,and snuggled down like a child. Lin clapped again, once, derisory, andwalked away.He groaned and rolled over.“Termagant!” he moaned after her. “Shrew! Harridan! All right, all right,you win, you, you . . . uh . . . virago, you spit-fire . . .” He rubbedhis head and sat up, grinned sheepishly. Lin made an obscene gesture athim without turning around.She stood with her back to him, nude at the stove, dancing back as hotdrops of oil leapt from the pan. The covers slipped from the slope ofIsaac’s belly. He was a dirigible, huge and taut and strong. Grey hairburst from him abundantly.Lin was hairless. Her muscles were tight under her red skin, eachdistinct. She was like an anatomical atlas. Isaac studied her in cheerfullust.His arse itched. He scratched under the blanket, rooting as shameless as adog. Something burst under his nail, and he withdrew his hand to examineit. A tiny half-crushed grub waved helplessly on the end of his finger. Itwas a refflick, a harmless little khepri parasite. The thing must havebeen rather bewildered by my juices, Isaac thought, and flicked his fingerclean.“Refflick, Lin,” he said. “Bath time.”Lin stamped in irritation.New Crobuzon was a huge plague pit, a morbific city. Parasites, infectionand rumour were uncontainable. A monthly chymical dip was a necessaryprophylactic for the khepri, if they wanted to avoid itches and sores.Lin slid the contents of the pan onto a plate and set it down, across fromher own breakfast. She sat and gestured for Isaac to join her. He rosefrom the bed and stumbled across the room. He eased himself onto the smallchair, wary of splinters.Isaac and Lin sat naked on either side of the bare wooden table. Isaac wasconscious of their pose, seeing them as a third person might. It wouldmake a beautiful, strange print, he thought. An attic room, dust-motes inthe light from the small window, books and paper and paints neatly stackedby cheap wooden furniture. A dark-skinned man, big and nude anddetumescing, gripping a knife and fork, unnaturally still, sittingopposite a khepri, her slight woman’s body in shadow, her chitinous headin silhouette.They ignored their food and stared at each other for a moment. Lin signedat him: Good morning, lover. Then she began to eat, still looking at him.It was when she ate that Lin was most alien, and their shared meals were achallenge and an affirmation. As he watched her, Isaac felt the familiartrill of emotion: disgust immediately stamped out, pride at the stampingout, guilty desire.Light glinted in Lin’s compound eyes. Her headlegs quivered. She picked uphalf a tomato and gripped it with her mandibles. She lowered her handswhile her inner mouthparts picked at the food her outer jaw held steady.Isaac watched the huge iridescent scarab that was his lover’s head devourher breakfast.He watched her swallow, saw her throat bob where the pale insectileunderbelly segued smoothly into her human neck . . . not that she wouldhave accepted that description. Humans have khepri bodies, legs, hands;and the heads of shaved gibbons, she had once told him.He smiled and dangled his fried pork in front of him, curled his tonguearound it, wiped his greasy fingers on the table. He smiled at her. Sheundulated her headlegs at him and signed, My monster.I am a pervert, thought Isaac, and so is she.Breakfast conversation was generally one-sided: Lin could sign with herhands while she ate, but Isaac’s attempts to talk and eat simultaneouslymade for incomprehensible noises and food debris on the table. Insteadthey read; Lin an artists’ newsletter, Isaac whatever came to hand. Hereached out between mouthfuls and grabbed books and papers, and foundhimself reading Lin’s shopping list. The item a handful of pork slices wasringed and underneath her exquisite calligraphy was a scrawled question inmuch cruder script: Got company??? Nice bit of pork goes down a treat!!!Isaac waved the paper at Lin. “What’s this filthy arse on about?” heyelled, spraying food. His outrage was amused but genuine.Lin read it and shrugged.Knows I don’t eat meat. Knows I’ve got a guest for breakfast. Wordplay on“pork.”“Yes, thanks, lover, I got that bit. How does he know you’re a vegetarian?Do you two often engage in this witty banter?”Lin stared at him for a moment without responding.Knows because I don’t buy meat. She shook her head at the stupid question.Don’t worry: only ever banter on paper. Doesn’t know I’m bug.Her deliberate use of the slur annoyed Isaac.“Dammit, I wasn’t insinuating anything . . .” Lin’s hand waggled, theequivalent of a raised eyebrow. Isaac howled in irritation. “Godshit, Lin!Not everything I say is about fear of discovery!”Isaac and Lin had been lovers nearly two years. They had always tried notto think too hard about the rules of their relationship, but the longerthey were together the more this strategyof avoidance became impossible. Questions as yet unasked demandedattention. Innocent remarks and askance looks from others, a moment ofcontact too long in public—a note from a grocer—everything was a reminderthat they were, in some contexts, living a secret. Everything was madefraught.They had never said, We are lovers, so they had never had to say, We willnot disclose our relationship to all, we will hide from some. But it hadbeen clear for months and months that this was the case.Lin had begun to hint, with snide and acid remarks, that Isaac’s refusalto declare himself her lover was at best cowardly, at worst bigoted. Thisinsensitivity annoyed him. He had, after all, made the nature of hisrelationship clear with his close friends, as Lin had with hers. And itwas all far, far easier for her.She was an artist. Her circle were the libertines, the patrons and thehangers-on, bohemians and parasites, poets and pamphleteers andfashionable junkies. They delighted in the scandalous and the outré. Inthe tea-houses and bars of Salacus Fields, Lin’s escapades—broadly hintedat, never denied, never made explicit—would be the subject of louchediscussion and innuendo. Her love-life was an avant-garde transgression,an art-happening, like Concrete Music had been last season, or ’Snot Art!the year before that.And yes, Isaac could play that game. He was known in that world, from longbefore his days with Lin. He was, after all, thescientist-outcast, the disreputable thinker who walked out of a lucrativeteaching post to engage in experiments too outrageous and brilliant forthe tiny minds who ran the university. What did he care for convention? Hewould sleep with whomever and whatever he liked, surely!That was his persona in Salacus Fields, where his relationship with Linwas an open secret, where he enjoyed being more or less open, where hewould put his arm around her in the bars and whisper to her as she suckedsugar-coffee from a sponge. That was his story, and it was at least halftrue.He had walked out of the university ten years ago. But only because herealized to his misery that he was a terrible teacher.He had looked out at the quizzical faces, listened to the franticscrawling of the panicking students, and realized that with a mind thatran and tripped and hurled itself down the corridors of theory in anarchicfashion, he could learn himself, in haphazard lurches, but he could notimpart the understanding he so loved. He had hung his head in shame andfled.In another twist to the myth, his Head of Department, the ageless andloathsome Vermishank, was not a plodding epigone but an exceptionalbio-thaumaturge, who had nixed Isaac’s research less because it wasunorthodox than because it was going nowhere. Isaac could be brilliant,but he was undisciplined. Vermishank had played him like a fish, makinghim beg for work as a freelance researcher on terrible pay, but withlimited access to the university laboratories.And it was this, his work, which kept Isaac circumspect about his lover.--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.