King Rat

by China Miéville

  “This is a riveting, brilliant novel. The language sings, the concepts are original and engrossing.”

  —Charles de Lint

  “King Rat goes down as sweetly as week-old garbage, to leave the reader eyeing speculatively the manhole covers of Soho and Battersea. A knotted, toothy, thought-provoking read.”

  —M. John Harrison

  “China Miéville blends a lot of good, solid folkloric material with a good deal of contemporary urban paranoia and Drum and Bass music, the multilayered richness of which the Piper seeks to use for his own ends. It’s ambitious. to be sure, and involved at times—it would help to know something about Cockney rhyming slang, the layout of London and its environs, and jungle music—but the book can easily be enjoyed by anyone with a love of good, gritty make-believe. King Rat is a strong first novel in the quirky sub-sub-genre of subterranean fairy tales that, with such recent good books as Lisa Goldstein’s Dark Cities Underground and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, looks less cute and more promising by the minute.”

  —The Onion

  “For lovers of modern urban tales, China Miéville’s King Rat could be a serious contender to rival Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, Peter Crowther and James Lovegrove’s Escardy Gap, and anything by Charles de Lint… A richly imagined and detailed tapestry, King Rat is a unique blend, with a pinch of the Brothers Grimm and a dash of Tolkien. A fine meld of the exotic and rare, dark and mysterious, that becomes a wholly mesmerizing and original voice that’s impossible to ignore.”

  —Charleston Post & Courier

  “[Miéville’s] prose melds James Herbert’s nihilistic violence with the metropolitan paranoia of Martin Amis, circa London Fields, and he shows a talent for authentic dialogue and cinematic set pieces. Most striking, perhaps, is the meticulously crafted topography of a brooding London peopled by despondent youth and bizarre night creatures and rife with the rhythms of Drum ’n’ Bass.”

  —The Times (London)

  “King Rat: a story so compelling you almost haven’t time to notice how fine the writing is: a dark myth reinvented for our time and for London in particular with great wit, style, and imagination.”

  —Ramsey Campbell

  “[An] extraordinary debut novel… China Miéville is a remarkably eloquent new writer who has produced genuine magic here.”

  —Locus

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  KING RAT

  Copyright © 1998 by China Miéville

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Book design by Victoria Kuskowski

  First published in England by Macmillan, 1998.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Miéville, China.

  King Rat / China Miéville.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN 0-312-89073-7 (hc)

  ISBN 0-312-89072-9 (pbk)

  I. Title.

  PR6063.1265K56 1999

  823'.914-dc21

  99-26657

  CIP

  First Hardcover Edition: September 1999

  First Trade Paperback Edition: October 2000

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  TO MAX

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  Thank you to everyone who read this in the early stages. All my love and gratitude go to my mother, Claudia, for all her support, always; and to my sister, Jemima, for her advice and feedback.

  Deep love and thanks to Emma, of course, for everything.

  My heartfelt thanks to Max Schaefer, who gave me invaluable criticisms, hours of word-processing help, and great friendship during a generally rubbish year.

  I can never thank Mic Cheetham enough. I am incredibly lucky to have her on my side. And thanks to all at Macmillan, particularly my editor Peter Lavery, and at Tor, particularly Brian Cholfin and Jenna Felice.

  I owe too many writers and artists to mention, but respect is especially due to Two Fingers and James The Kirk for their novel Junglist. They blazed a trail. Many thanks also to Iain Sinclair for generously letting me keep the metaphor I accidently stole from him. Jake Pilikian introduced me to Drum and Bass music and changed my life. Big up to all the DJs and Crews who provided a soundtrack. Awe and gratitude especially to A Guy Called Gerald for the sublime Gloc: old, now, but still the most terrifying slab of guerrilla bass ever committed to vinyl. Rewind. A London Sometin’…

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  PART ONE: GLASS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  PART TWO: THE NEW CITY

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  PART THREE: LESSONS IN RHYTHM AND HISTORY

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  PART FOUR: BLOOD

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  PART FIVE: SPIRITS

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  PART SIX: JUNGLIST TERROR

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  A LONDON SOMETIN’…

  TEK 9

  I can squeeze between buildings through spaces you can’t even see. I can walk behind you so close my breath raises gooseflesh on your neck and you won’t hear me. I can hear the muscles in your eyes contract when your pupils dilate. I can feed off your filth and live in your house and sleep under your bed and you will never know unless I want you to.

  I climb above the streets. All the dimensions of the city are open to me. Your walls are my walls and my ceilings and my floors.

  The wind whips my overcoat with a sound like washing on a line. A thousand scratches on my arms tingle like electricity as I scale roofs and move through squat copses of chimneys. I have business tonight.

  I spill like mercury over the lip of a building and slither down drainpipes to the alley fifty feet below. I slide silently through piles of rubbish in the sepia lamplight and crack the seal on the sewers, pulling the metal cover out of the street without a sound.

  Now I am in darkness but I can still see. I can hear the growling of water through the tunnels. I am up to my waist in your shit, I can feel it tugging at me, I can smell it. I know my way through these passages.

  I am heading north, submerged in the current, wading, clinging to walls and ceiling. Live things scuttle and slither to get out of my way. I weave without hesitation through the dank corridors. The rain has been fitful and hesitant but all the water in London seems eager to reach its destination tonight. The brick rivers of the underground are swollen. I dive under the surface and swim in the cloying dark until the time has come to emerge and I rise from the deeps, dripping. I pass noiselessly again through the pavement.

  Towering above me
is the red brick of my destination. A great dark mass broken with squares of irrelevant light. One glimmering in the shadow of the eaves holds my attention. I straddle the corner of the building and ease my way up. I am slower now. The sound of television and the smell of food seep out of the window, which I am reaching towards now, which I am rattling now with my long nails, scratching, a sound like a pigeon or a twig, an intriguing sound, bait.

  P

  A

  R

  T

  O

  N

  E

  GLASS

  O

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  E

  The trains that enter London arrive like ships sailing across the roofs. They pass between towers jutting into the sky like long-necked sea beasts and the great gas-cylinders wallowing in dirty scrub like whales. In the depths below are lines of small shops and obscure franchises, cafés with peeling paint and businesses tucked into the arches over which the trains pass. The colors and curves of graffiti mark every wall. Top floor windows pass by so close that passengers can peer inside, into small bare offices and store cupboards. They can make out the contours of trade calendars and pin-ups on the walls.

  The rhythms of London are played out here, in the sprawling flat zone between suburbs and centre.

  Gradually the streets widen and the names of the shops and cafés become more familiar; the main roads are more salubrious; the traffic is denser; and the city rises to meet the tracks.

  At the end of a day in October a train made this journey towards King’s Cross. Flanked by air, it progressed over the outlands of North London, the city building up below it as it neared the Holloway Road. The people beneath ignored its passage. Only children looked up as it clattered overhead, and some of the very young pointed. As the train drew closer to the station, it slipped below the level of the roofs.

  There were few people in the carriage to watch the bricks rise around them. The sky disappeared above the windows. A cloud of pigeons rose from a hiding place beside the tracks and wheeled off to the east.

  The flurry of wings and bodies distracted a thickset young man at the rear of the compartment. He had been trying not to stare openly at the woman sitting opposite him. Thick with relaxer, her hair had been teased from its tight curls and was coiled like snakes on her head. The man broke off his furtive scrutiny as the birds passed by, and he ran his hands through his own cropped hair.

  The train was now below the houses. It wound through a deep groove in the city, as if the years of passage had worn down the concrete under the tracks. Saul Garamond glanced again at the woman sitting in front of him, and turned his attention to the windows. The light in the carriage had made them mirrors, and he stared at himself, his heavy face. Beyond his face was a layer of brick, dimly visible, and beyond that the cellars of the houses that rose like cliffs on either side.

  It was days since Saul had been in the city.

  Every rattle of the tracks took him closer to his home. He closed his eyes.

  Outside, the gash through which the tracks passed had widened as the station approached. The walls on either side were punctuated by dark alcoves, small caves full of rubbish a few feet from the track. The silhouettes of cranes arched over the skyline. The walls around the train parted. Tracks fanned away on either side as the train slowed and edged its way into King’s Cross.

  The passengers rose. Saul swung his bag over his shoulder and shuffled out of the carriage. Freezing air stretched up to the great vaulted ceilings. The cold shocked him. Saul hurried through the buildings, through the crowds, threading his way between knots of people. He still had a way to go. He headed underground.

  He could feel the presence of the population around him. After days in a tent on the Suffolk coast, the weight of ten million people so close to him seemed to make the air vibrate. The tube was full of garish colors and bare flesh, as people headed to clubs and parties.

  His father would probably be waiting for him. He knew Saul was coming back, and he would surely make an effort to be welcoming, forfeiting his usual evening in the pub to greet his son. Saul already resented him for that. He felt gauche and uncharitable, but he despised his father’s faltering attempts to communicate. He was happier when the two of them avoided each other. Being surly was easy, and felt more honest.

  By the time his tube train burst out of the tunnels of the Jubilee Line it was dark. Saul knew the route. The darkness transformed the rubble behind Finchley Road into a dimly glimpsed no-man’s-land, but he was able to fill in the details he could not see, even down to the tags and the graffiti. Burner. Nax. Coma. He knew the names of the intrepid little rebels clutching their magic markers, and he knew where they had been.

  The grandiose tower of the Gaumont State cinema jutted into the sky on his left, a bizarre totalitarian monument among the budget groceries and hoardings of Kilburn High Road. Saul could feel the cold through the windows and he wrapped his coat around him as the train neared Willesden station. The passengers had thinned. Saul left only a very few behind him as he got out of the carriage.

  Outside the station he huddled against the chill. The air smelt faintly of smoke from some local bonfire, someone clearing his allotment. Saul set off down the hill towards the library.

  He stopped at a takeaway and ate as he walked, moving slowly to avoid spilling soy sauce and vegetables down himself. Saul was sorry the sun had gone down. Willesden lent itself to spectacular sunsets. On a day like today, when there were few clouds, its low skyline let the light flood the streets, pouring into the strangest crevices; the windows that faced each other bounced the rays endlessly back and forth between themselves and sent it hurtling in unpredictable directions; the rows and rows of brick glowed as if lit from within.

  Saul turned into the backstreets. He wound through the cold until his father’s house rose before him. Terragon Mansions was an ugly Victorian block, squat and mean-looking for all its size. It was fronted by the garden: a strip of dirty vegetation frequented only by dogs. His father lived on the top floor. Saul looked up and saw that the lights were on. He climbed the steps and let himself in, glancing into the darkness of the bushes and scrub on either side.

  He ignored the huge lift with its steel-mesh door, not wanting its groans to announce him. Instead he crept up the flights of stairs and gently unlocked his father’s door.

  The flat was freezing.

  Saul stood in the hall and listened. He could hear the sound of the television from behind the sitting room door. He waited, but his father was silent. Saul shivered and looked around him.

  He knew he should go in, should rouse his father from slumber, and he even got as far as reaching for the door. But he stopped and looked at his own room.

  He sneered at himself in disgust, but he crept towards it anyway.

  He could apologize in the morning. I thought you were asleep, Dad. I heard you snoring. I came in drunk and fell into bed. I was so knackered I wouldn’t have been any kind of company anyway. He cocked an ear, heard only the voices of one of the late-night discussion programmes his father so loved, muffled and pompous. Saul turned away and slipped into his room.

  Sleep came easily. Saul dreamed of being cold, and woke once in the night to pull his duvet closer. He dreamed of slamming, a heavy beating noise, so loud it pulled him out of sleep and he realized it was real, it was there. Adrenaline surged through him, making him tremble. His heart quivered and lurched as he swung out of bed.

  It was icy in the flat. Someone was pounding on the front door.

  The noise would not stop, it was frightening him. He was shaking, disorientated. It was not yet light. Saul glanced at his clock. It was a little after six. He stumbled into the hall. The horrible bang bang bang was incessant, and now he could hear shouting as well, distorted and unintelligible.

  He fought into a shin and shouted: “Who is it?”

  The slamming did not stop. He called out again, and this time a voice was raised above the din.

  “Police!”<
br />
  Saul struggled to clear his head. With a sudden panic he thought of the small stash of dope in his drawer, but that was absurd. He was no drugs kingpin, no one would waste a dawn raid on him. He was reaching out to open the door, his heart still tearing, when he suddenly remembered to check that they were who they claimed, but it was too late now, the door flew back and knocked him down as a torrent of bodies streamed into the flat.

  Blue trousers and big shoes all around him. Saul was yanked to his feet. He started to flail at the intruders. Anger waxed with his fear. He tried to yell but someone smacked him in the stomach and he doubled up. Voices were reverberating everywhere around him, making no sense.

  “…cold like a bastard…”

  “…cocky little cunt…”

  “…fucking glass, watch yourself…”

  “…his son, or what? High as a fucking kite, must be…”

  And above all these voices he could hear a weather forecast, the cheery tones of a breakfast television presenter. Saul struggled to turn and face the men who were holding him so tight.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” he gasped. Without speaking, the men propelled him into the sitting room.

  The room was full of police, but Saul saw straight through them. He saw the television first: the woman in the bright suit was warning him it would be chilly again today. On the sofa was a plate of congealed pasta, and a half-drunk glass of beer sat on the floor. Cold gusts of air caught at him and he looked up at the window, out over houses. The curtains were billowing dramatically. He saw that jags of glass littered the floor. There was almost no glass left in the window-frame, only a few shards around the edges.

  Saul sagged with terror and tried to pull himself to the window.

  A thin man in civilian clothes turned and saw him.

  “Down the station now,” he shouted at Saul’s captors.

  Saul was spun on his heels. The room turned around him like a funfair ride, the rows of books and his father’s small pictures rushing past him. He struggled to turn back.