Kraken

by China Miéville

  Less than a minute later he was back in a novelty alarm clock shaped like a chimney sweep, in the window of a shop where Billy and Dane loitered.

  “Hey,” he said.

  A clock is shouting at me, Billy thought, so loud anyone with a hint of nous would have been able to read it. He stared at Wati. Little while ago I was a guy worked in a museum.

  “Third floor from the top. Go.”

  “Wait,” said Dane. “He’s there? Is he alright?”

  “You’d better see.”

  “JESUS,” WHISPERED BILLY. “IT STINKS.”

  “I told you,” said Wati. Dane held him out like a weapon. Wati was in a ripoff toy, a “Powered Ranga!” they had brought.

  The curtains were drawn. The stench was of rotting food, filthy clothes, uncleaned floors. The rooms were littered with mouldering rubbish. There were tracks—cockroaches, mice, rats. Tribble whimpered. The ridiculous scrabbly thing pulled itself out of the bag and half rolled, half hairily oozed into the living room. From where came sounds.

  “More of you?” A voice stretched taut. “Can’t, can’t be, I’ve accounted, or you have, you’re all done, aren’t you, that’s us, isn’t it? Tribble, Tribble? You can’t speak, can you, though?”

  “That’s him,” said Dane. “Simon.” He drew his speargun.

  “Oh Jesus,” Billy said.

  On every surface was Star Trek merchandise: model Enterprises; plastic Spocks claimed emotionlessness more convincingly than the character they represented; Klingon weapons hung on the walls. There were plastic phasers and communicators on the shelves.

  Sitting on the sofa, staring at them, Tribble on his lap, was a ghastly looking man. Simon’s face was pale and thin, scab-crusted. His Star Trek uniform was dirty, the insignia one blot among many.

  “Thought maybe you were more of them,” he said.

  He was surrounded, encauled, coronaed with whispering figures. They fleeted in and out of visibility, made of dark light. They entered his body and exited it, they faded up, they ebbed out. They moved around the room, they crooned, they hooted in faint lunatic imitations of speech.

  Every one of the figures looked exactly like Simon. Each was him, staring in hate.

  “What happened, Simon?” Dane said. He whipped his hand through the air to disperse the shades, as if they were insect-clouds or bad smells. They ignored him and continued their cruel haunting. “What happened?”

  “He’s lost it,” said Wati. “He’s completely gone.” In his agitation he went from toy to toy, speaking snatches from each. “Imagine dealing …” “… with that …” “… every moment…” “… every day …” “… and night as well.” “He’s gone.”

  “We need an exorcist,” said Dane.

  “I knew it was trouble,” Simon said. He shied from the angry him-spirits. “I started feeling them, in the matter stream. But it’s always one last job.” He made a shooting motion. Several of the figures in joyless mockery finger-shot him back. “Couldn’t not. They made it real, God.”

  “I told you,” said Billy. Amid scattered novels set in the favoured universe was a box, still surrounded by paper and string. It contained a big book and yet another phaser. The book was the catalogue of an auction. A very expensive Star Trek sale. The model of the Enterprise—it was from Next Generation, in fact—had a reserve of $200,000. There were uniforms, furniture, accoutrements, most from the Picard years. But there were a few from other spin-offs, and from the first series.

  Billy found the phaser listed. The details were geekily precise (it was a phase pistol type-2, with removable type-1 inset, and so on). The reserve price was high—the prop had been used on-screen many times. Billy picked it up, and the translucent Simons looked at it wrathfully and wistfully. Below it was a card, on which was written: As agreed.

  The weapon was surprisingly heavy. Billy turned it experimentally, held it out and pulled the trigger.

  The sound was bizarrely and instantly recognisable from TV, high spitting crossbred with mosquito whine. There was heat, and he saw light. A particle beam of some impossible kind burst out of the meaningless weapon, seared the air, light-speeding into the wall as Dane shouted and leapt, and the spirit-Simons screamed.

  Billy stared at the thing dangling in his hand, at the scorched wall. The stupid toylike lump of plastic and metal that shot like a real phaser.

  “ALRIGHT,” SAID DANE, AFTER MORE THAN AN HOUR COAXING sentences from Simon, shielding him from the Simons that surrounded him. “What have we figured?”

  “What are they? The hims?” Billy said.

  “This is why I wouldn’t travel that way,” Dane said. “This is my point. For a piece of rock or clothes or something dead, who cares? But take something living and do that? Beam it up? What you done is ripped a man apart then stuck his bits back together and made them walk around. He died. Get me? The man’s dead. And the man at the other end only thinks he’s the same man. He ain’t. He only just got born. He’s got the other’s memories, yeah, but he’s newborn. That Enterprise, they keep killing themselves and replacing themselves with clones of dead people. That is some macabre shit. That ship’s full of Xerox copies of people who died.”

  “This is why he stopped working?” said Billy.

  “Maybe he knew it wasn’t doing him any good. Something was making him nervous. But then he comes back and does it again. And it’s a huge job.” Dane nodded. “The kraken. Tips him over the edge. You know how many years Simon spent beaming in and out of places, “getting coordinates,” beaming out with merchandise? You get me? Do you know how many times he’s died?

  “Almost as many times as James T. fucking Kirk is how many. That man sitting there was born out of nothing a few days ago, when he got the kraken out. And this time, when he arrived, all the hes who died before were waiting. And they were pissed off.

  “They want revenge. Who killed the Simon Shaws? Simon Shaw is who. Time and again.”

  “It’s hardly fair,” Billy said. “He’s the only one of the whole lot of them who hasn’t killed anyone; he only just got here. It’s them who killed each other.”

  “Yeah,” said Dane. “But he’s the only one of them living, and that anger’s got to go somewhere. They ain’t the most logical things. That’s why Simon’s being haunted by Simons. Poor bastard.”

  “Right,” said Billy. “So why did he do it?” He pointed at the phaser, the catalogue, the note. “Someone contacts him. Here comes one of the biggest Trekkie sales for years, and he’s getting none of it, and someone contacts him with an offer he can’t refuse. They’ve done something with this gun.”

  Dane nodded. “Contracted some mage. Some shaper’s knacked it so it’s real.”

  “What’s he going to do?” said Billy. “Not want the world’s only working phaser? They say you just have to port one thing. So who wrote this note? Simon didn’t want a giant squid. Whoever dangled this gun in front of him’s our mystery player. They’re the ones who’ve got your god.”

  PART THREE

  LONDONMANCY

  Chapter Forty

  BILLY STARED AT SIMON’S ANGRY DEAD SELVES. DID SIMON FEEL the guilt they laid on him, the culpability for countless unintentional suicides? What an original sin.

  At last Wati returned into a statuette of an Argelian dancer. “Open the door,” he said. Outside, a harassed-looking woman waited carrying a coiling ram’s horn.

  “Dane,” she said, entered. “God almighty, what’s been going on here?”

  “Mo’s the best I know,” Wati said. “And no one knows her …”

  “Are you an exorcist?” Billy said. The woman rolled her eyes.

  “She’s a rabbi, you moron,” said Wati. “Simon couldn’t give a shit one way or the other.”

  “I’ve seen legion possession before,” Mo said. “But never … God almighty they’re all him.” She walked through the ghost corona and murmured to Simon gently. “I can try something,” she said. “But I’ve got to get him back to the temple.” She sho
ok the shofar. “This won’t cut it.”

  Dark came early and stayed full of lights and the shouts of children. Wati was on watch, circling through figures a mile around. Dane, Billy and Mo watched the moaned malice of Simon’s haunters.

  “We have to go,” Wati said suddenly from a foot-high McCoy.

  “Too early,” Dane said. “It’s not even midnight …”

  “Now,” Wati said. “They’re coming.”

  “Who do you …?”

  “Christ, Dane! Move! Goss and fucking Subby!”

  And everyone moved.

  “TATTOO’S THOUGHT LIKE US,” WATI SAID AS THEY GRABBED THEIR stuff and hauled poor Simon in his ghost-cloud. “He’s tracked Simon down. His knuckleheads are coming. And Goss and Subby are with them.

  “Some are in the main stairs. The rest are close. Goss and Subby are close.”

  “Any other way out?” Dane said. Wati was gone, back.

  “If there is there’s no statues by it.”

  “Must be one at the back,” Billy said. “A fire escape.”

  “Take a figure,” Wati said. “I’m going to get Goss and Subby off you.”

  “Wait,” Dane said, but Wati was gone. Billy grabbed the phaser, the auction catalogue, a plastic Kirk. There was no one in the corridor. Dane hustled them round corners. Mo and Billy dragged Simon in a blanket that inadequately hid his tormentors. They heard the lift arriving. Dane raised his speargun and motioned Billy and Mo away.

  “Down,” he said, pointing at the fire escape. “Mo, don’t let them see you. Billy, don’t let them see her.” He ran toward the lift.

  “HUFF HUFF HUFF, EH SUBBY?”

  Goss was jogging. Not very intensely, and with an exaggerated comic wobble of the head. Behind him came Subby with the same motion, unselfconsciously.

  “The rest of the bears are just over the stream,” Goss said. “Once we cross the magic bridge we can help ourselves to all the honey. Huff huff huff.” There were two or three more turns between him and the base of the tower. Goss looked the length of the dark street. At a junction with a cul-de-sac were a band of battered dustbins. A moment of hard wind sent a full bin-bag falling, sent the bins wobbling, jostling among themselves, as if they were trying to shift away from Goss’s attention.

  “Remember when Darling Bear and Sugar Bear came home with the Princess of Flower Picnics?” Goss said. He clenched and unclenched his fingers. He smiled, pulling back his lips from his teeth carefully and completely and biting the air. Subby stared at him.

  “Billy, shift.”

  At those faint words Goss stopped.

  “Shut it, Dane.”

  Whispered London voices. They were just off the street, in one of the darknesses that abutted it.

  “He’s nearby,” said a voice. And from farther away came an answer, Shhh.

  “Subby Subby Subby,” whispered Goss. “Keep those little bells on your slippers as quiet as you can. Sparklehorse and Starpink have managed to creep out of Apple Palace past all the monkeyfish, but if we’re silent as tiny goblins we can surprise them and then all frolic together in the Meadow of Happy Kites.”

  He put his finger to his lips and creep-creeped out of the main road into the alley where the voices were. Subby followed him in the same tippy-toe, into the shadow where someone was muttering.

  THE LIFT DOORS OPENED, AND BILLY, LOOKING BACK FROM THE FIRE escape, saw three dark-dressed figures in motorcycle helmets. Dane had his weapon up. There was a percussion.

  “Go,” said Wati-Kirk from Billy’s pocket, and “Go,” said Dane without looking back. Billy and Mo dragged Simon down the stairs.

  “What about Dane?” Billy kept saying. But Wati was gone again.

  It was many floors down. Adrenalin was all that stopped Mo and Billy collapsing under Simon’s weight. They heard scuffles, muffled by walls, above them. Billy felt a horrid crawl of ghosts on his skin as Simon’s tormentors swept through him. When at last they reached the ground floor Billy was gasping, almost retching.

  “Don’t fucking stand there,” said the little Kirk in his pocket. “Move.” A random man at his front door stared at the ghosts of Simon in bewilderment so great he was not even scared. Billy and Mo barrelled toward the elevator shaft and the front door beyond it, but it opened and there were two of Tattoo’s men. Grey cam gear, dark-visored helmets, reaching for weapons.

  Mo cried out and threw up her hands. Billy stood in front of her and fired the phaser.

  He didn’t panic. He had time to reflect for an instant on how calm he was, that he was raising the weapon and pressing the firing stud.

  There was no recoil. There was that kitsch sound, that line of light, punching into the chest of the man at the front and flaring in a bruise of light across him as he flew back. The second man was running at Billy in expert zigzag, and Billy shot several times and missed, scorching the walls.

  Mo was screaming. Billy threw out his hand. The man stopped hard as if he had run into something. He bounced against nothing visible. The man butted the nothing with his helmet, with an audible percussion.

  Billy did not hear the lift arrive or its doors open. He only saw Dane step out behind the Tattoo’s man and swing his empty speargun hard at that featureless motorcycle helmet, in a curve like a batsman’s. The man went down, his pistol skittering away. His helmet flew off.

  His head was a head-sized fist. It clenched and unclenched.

  It opened. Its huge palm was face-forward. As the man rose it clenched again. Dane punched him hard on the back of his hand-head. The attacker fell again.

  “Come on,” Dane said.

  They ran a twisting route to Mo’s car, and they helped her lay the shivering ghost-delirious Simon inside. Tribble whickered. “I can’t promise.”

  “See what you can do,” Dane said. “We’ll find you. Did they see you?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “And they don’t know me. Even if …” She looked uncertain. There had been no eyes.

  “Go, then. Go.” Dane patted the roof of her car as if releasing it. When she had gone he felt the handles of car doors near them until he found by finger-intuition one he liked, and had it open.

  “What are they?” Billy said. “Those men?”

  “The knuckleheads?” Dane started the car. There were screams behind them. “Takes a certain sort.” He was exhilarated. “There are advantages. You’ve got to like fighting. You should see them naked. Well, you shouldn’t.”

  “How do they see?” They sped into night. Dane glanced at Billy. Grinned and jiggled in his seat and shook his head.

  “God, Billy,” he said. “The way your mind works.”

  “Right.” It was Wati, back in the Kirk again. “Put some distance between us and Goss and Subby.”

  “You genius,” Dane said. “What did you do?”

  “Just helps to be able to do voices. I’ll be one second.”

  Dane accelerated. He waggled the speargun with his left hand. “This is shit,” he said. “I’ve never had to … We’re going to need more than this. It was crap. I need a new weapon.”

  GOSS STOOD STILL AS A BONE. HE LISTENED.

  “This is a blind, you see, Subby,” he said. “I’m wondering where Sparklehorse went.”

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” said a voice from the crude figure on the roof’s vertex. “You got had, is what, you psychopath motherfucker.” That came from a comedy-frog-shaped eraser discarded by the kerb.

  And from a windowbox of long-dead plants, the voice of a little plastic diver: “Good night.”

  “Well,” said Goss, in the silence after Wati left. “Well, Princess Subby. Would you look at that? What a fiddly tra la.”

  THEY WERE OVER THE RIVER. WITH WATER BETWEEN THEM AND that awful fight ground, Dane guided the car to a silent space behind lockups, mean garages at the bottom of a tower. He turned off the engine and they sat in the dark. Billy felt his heart slow, his muscles relax one by one.

  “This is why we should go in with
him,” Dane said. “We can’t take that sort of shit on our own.”

  Billy nodded slowly. The nod mutated until it was a shake of the head. “It doesn’t make any sense,” Billy said.

  He closed his eyes and tried to think. He looked into the black behind his own eyes as if it was the black of the sea. He tried to reach down into it, for some deep intuition. He could reach, and feel, nothing. He sighed. He drummed his fingers on the window in frustration. The touch of the glass cooled his fingertips. Not an idea, but a focus, a sense of where to look. He opened his eyes.

  “The guy,” he said. “In the bottle, the guy I found. Where’s he in all this?”

  “I don’t know,” Dane said. “That’s the problem, we don’t know who he is.”

  “Uh …” said Wati. “That ain’t true.”

  “What?” Dane said to the tiny figure.

  “I told you, when that officer-thing grabbed me, it sort of bled. Bits of info and stuff that went into it. I think I remember feeling … I knew who …” Wati probed his sore spots for information. “Adler,” he said. “That was his name, the geezer in the bottle.”

  “Adler?” Dane said. “Al Adler?”

  “Who is he?” Billy said. “Was he? A friend?”

  Dane’s face went through a run of feelings. “Not exactly. I met him but I never … Al Adler was a tuppenny nothing until he got in with Grisamentum.” They looked at each other. “He turned into a fixer. He ran stuff for Gris.”

  “What happened to him after Grisamentum disappeared?” Billy said.

  “I thought he was off drinking himself to death or something. He was totally Grisamentum’s man. I met him like once just after the funeral, I thought he was losing it. He was yammering about the various people he’d been working with because of his boss, how exciting blah blah. Total denial.”

  “No.” Billy looked away and spoke out of the car window, through the glass into the garage’s shadows. “He wasn’t propping up any bars anywhere. He was doing something that got him killed, in the museum, on the night the kraken went. What if he’s been working for Grisamentum all this time?”