Kraken

by China Miéville

  Hurray. At some point the echoes of the room Dane was in changed, as people came in. Dane stopped talking to himself and tried to listen. He could not see who was there, with what had been done to his eyes. He could not see, but even through waves of pain he could hear, and he knew that the voice he heard was that of the Tattoo.

  “Seriously, nothing?” the Tattoo said.

  “Lot of screaming, but you don’t count that,” said the voice of one of the Nazis. “You alright? You seem stressed.”

  “I am a bit stressed. Truth to tell I’m a bit bloody stressed. Remember the monsterherds?”

  “No.”

  A snuffling, a slobber, canine whickering. That dogman was there. That mage-knacked member of this crew, a man made himself half German shepherd, a pitiful fascist meat pun that Dane scorned even as the teeth and muzzle that pun occasioned mauled him.

  “Well … They used to run with Grisamentum, back when I … Back when. Well, one of my factories just got interrupted by a bunch of dust or something acting very much like some kind of bloody dragon.”

  “I don’t know what that means …”

  “It means there’s stuff coming back I wasn’t expecting to face again. This little shitfucker has to know something. He’s in on something. He knows where the fucking squid is—it’s his god, isn’t it? And he knows where Billy Harrow’ll be. Keep at it.”

  Keep at it. Dane prayed without ceasing. He prayed silently and motionlessly. Tentacled God in darkness please give me strength. Strength to listen, and to learn. Krakens in your vast silent and ammoniac wisdom have mercy. He knew that he should listen, that he should wait and say nothing, if even he could answer the questions, which mostly he could not even if he would, which he would not, because this would not end. He knew that it would not be too long now, weak as he was and unblooding from all the holes the Nazis had made, woozy and too tired and done to even scream, a thing hanging in thermals of pain—he knew that this was a pitch of this that was its own limit, and that therefore, again, for the second time, before that moment when he would spill enough of himself out that a critical mass of lack would be reached and he would have nowhere to go but into death, the ghastly chaos sunwheel he could no longer see would be rotated. The swastika was, as its hippy antifash defenders insisted, a sign of life, even when deployed like this.

  Who made you? Kraken made me. As a by-product. Uncaring. Was the comfort in that, or in the secret hope that secretly the secret kraken cared? We are all squidshit, Dane thought.

  The Chaos swastika mightn’t be able to return those actually passed for much time, but it was thuggishly fecund enough to infect him, up to the very point of death, into livingness again. It would rotate with him swastikad on it, and it would wind in life out of all control, pouring it back into him, so blood would drip up, ruined organs reinflate, splayed bone ends grope for each other, grizzling as they slotted shard back into shard hole, fixing him all up, back into pain.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  A “TWO-WAY MIRROR”—ONCE A LONG TIME AGO PERHAPS intended to dissemble, but now a lie that drew attention to itself. Behind it were Baron and Vardy, standing in such similar poses that it would have been comical to an observer. On the other side of the glass, Collingswood questioned Jason.

  “So how come I can notice him now?” Vardy said. “I should think I recognise him, presumably.”

  “Collingswood,” Baron said.

  “She’s not bad, is she?”

  “She’s bloody good,” Baron said. “That’s how she saw him in the first place.” Her questions to Jason had been tempered, nuanced, enhanced by various knacked enhancements: from an uncanny form of unbearable wheedling to the imposition of unphysical pain. “If you’d been here when you were supposed to … Where the bloody hell have you been, Professor?”

  “Professor is it now?”

  “Well.” Baron turned to him. “Look, you can’t say I haven’t given you your head, right? Thank God Collingswood isn’t in here to hear me say that—we’d never hear the end of her giggling. I know your job’s to channel the bleeding divine, and when have I ever stood in your way? Aren’t I the bloke puts ‘Do Not Disturb, Eschatology Being Revelationed’ on your door? Eh? But you’re supposed to keep me in the loop, and turn up when I need you, and do me the sheer minimum modicum of salutage and whatnot, right? You were supposed to be here for this questioning about two hours ago. So where the bloody hell have you been?”

  Vardy nodded. “Apologies. But I do have news.” He organised the air with his hands. “There’s no way you get an end like this without someone wanting it—this is not just an accident. And now the Tattoo’s going mad. I still can’t work out where this ending comes into whoever-it-is’s plans.”

  “He is going mad,” Baron said. He was tearing up the city. “We’ve tried to have a word with his people, but something’s pushed him over the edge …”

  “So I’ve been out quizzing a bunch of the people in Grisamentum’s and the Tattoo’s penumbra, you might say,” Vardy said. “We know Adler was an associate of the former, but we don’t know why he was in the museum when he was. We don’t know what he had planned, so I’ve been wondering if it’s some of the others who were all cut loose when Grisamentum died … who are behind all this.”

  “And?”

  “Listen to me, this is what I’m saying. There’s a presiding intelligence behind all this. Whatever’s coming, that’s got the angels walking, it’s not some by-product of another scheme, it has intent behind it. But we don’t know what.”

  “I know that …”

  “No. It’s not an accident. Listen. We’re close. Do you understand?” Vardy spoke in a surly lecture. “The world is going to end. Really soon. End. Soon. And we don’t know why, or who wants it to.”

  “It’s got to be Griz,” Baron said quietly. “Got to be. He never died …”

  “But why? It doesn’t make any bloody sense. Why’d he want to burn himself now, then? That’s why I’ve been out there. Asking questions.”

  “And? Bloody and? Where’s it getting you?”

  “Does the name Cole ring any bells?” Vardy said. “If I say ‘physicist.’ If I say ‘Grisamentum.’ Any bells at all?”

  “No.”

  “One of the names being thrown around Grisamentum’s court around the time he, ahem, died. Died according to the oncologists. Cole’s a pyromancer. Works with djinn, is the whisper. Rather closely, according to some rumours. One of several people that for no reason we could clock was talking to Grisamentum in the last days. Apparently he was one of the ones you tried to debrief after the funeral but he always diligently refused to chat to the force.”

  “… Oh, right, I think I remember. I always assumed he was there because Griz wanted a dramatic send-off, to be honest. Big sparkly pyre. What’s your point?”

  “There’s dramatic and dramatic.”

  “What was it he did for Griz, then?”

  “Experimental pyro stuff: memory-fire, that sort of thing, he says.”

  “Says?”

  “I’ve been looking into Grisamentum’s associates, so I was asking around about him. I told you I had news. Not expecting much, to be honest. Expecting some hedging of bets, some ‘Grisamentum was a gentleman, you could leave your doors unlocked, was a pleasure to work with him,’ a thank-you-very-much-and-bugger-off. But what I got was a bit more surprising. He has a daughter. Cole does.”

  “Mrs. Cole on the scene?”

  “Dead years ago. Don’t you want to know what I heard? His daughter’s gone missing.”

  Baron stared. Eventually began to nod. “Is that so?” he said slowly.

  “It’s the word.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “First Adler, then Cole. Someone’s working through Grisamentum’s known associates. Doing things to … inconvenience them.”

  “Like shoving them in bottles.”

  “And snaffling their kids.”

  “Why?”

  “If I kn
ew that, Baron. But it’s a pattern.”

  “Bit out of your remit, this, isn’t it? Where’s the goddery?” Vardy closed his eyes and shrugged. “So … How do you think we should play this? Have a word, obviously, but …”

  “Well, you’re the boss, obviously, but I’d suggest me being point man here.”

  “I thought he won’t speak to cops.”

  “He wouldn’t back then, certainly, but I’m not a policeman, am I? I’m an academic, like him.”

  “And what more tenacious freemasonry do there be, eh?” Baron nodded. “Alright. For God’s sake, though, keep me apprised. We’ll see what we can do about tracking down young Miss Cole. Now look, this is not unimbloodyportant. Shut up and pay attention to what your colleagues are doing. Like this colleague here, right now.” Baron pointed through the window.

  THERE IS NOWHERE THE SEWERS DON’T GO. FAT FILAMENTS TRACKING humans under everything, unceasingly sluicing shitty rubbishy rain. The gentle downslope links all those pipes to the sea, and it was back along those pipes, defying gravity and the effluvial flow that the sea had sent its own filaments, its own sensory channels of saltwater, tickling below the city, listening, licking the brickwork. For a day and a half there was a secret sea under London, fractal in all the tunnels.

  Pipes filled with brine that spied on the inhabitants of buildings, watching, listening, hunting. You might obscure the attention of the Londonmancers, with the complicity of a treacherous borough, with strikebreaking hexes strong enough: but nothing could stay hidden from an inquisitive sea.

  Billy waited, alone but for the repeated anxious occurrences of Wati, who came, went, into the doll and out again, to the frontlines of the strikes.

  “Done what the sea asked me,” said Sellar at some low dark point of the night, and went, with a quick backward wave, returning to his dreams of drenched apocalypse. It’s fire, not water, Billy thought. I don’t think you’re going to like it.

  His phone went, and he connected immediately. He said nothing, only listened. There was a brief silence before a voice said, “Billy?” He could tell it was not Jason. He broke the connection and swore. They had the proletarian chameleon. It had gone wrong.

  He stood in the front garden of the sea’s embassy—it was dark, his clothes were dark, no light glinted on his glasses, and he knew he could do this unseen—and threw the phone as hard as he could, which was hard, now, into the darkness over the roofs. He did not hear it land. At last, as he sat by the step of the house, he heard a swill of water in the pipes below his feet. Another bottle was pushed from the letter box.

  The sea told him where the Chaos Nazis were. It said that was where its help would end. That it would not be intervening, could not take any sides. It was closing in on time for daylight. Billy leaned forward on his knees and rested his forehead on the door.

  “Now listen,” he said. “Listen a minute. You can’t get in there, can you, Wati?” Billy said.

  “No figures in that house.”

  “Listen, sea,” Billy said. “See here, sea.” He smiled tiredly. “That’s the sort of thing’s helped get us where we are now, people wanting to stay neutral.” He felt some recognition. He felt as if he remembered this. As if he’d been in the sea only days before, or nights before, in fact, at night, in the night, as he dreamed those ink dreams. He put his hand on the door. He knew this place.

  “What is it you want to stay neutral about? You want to stay out of a war. This wouldn’t be London versus you—that’s not what we’re up against. So what is it? Chaos Nazis? I don’t believe it. The Tattoo? Does a gang boss really frighten you?”

  Oh, snap! Did that kind of petty psychology work on the fucking ocean? Nothing ventured, Billy thought, nothing ventured. What else did he have? Two weapons he did not understand and a polybodied trade unionist. There was nothing but silence from inside the embassy.

  “So what is it? Protocol? Niceties? I’m going to say this. I’m going to beg.” Billy was already on his knees. “Please. So you mess up some balance of power? So what? You know what’s coming. The fire and end of it all. I bet this fire burns seawater too. Dane’s going to fix it, though, you know. So if you don’t want everything to burn, if you don’t want London to burn, if you don’t want the sea to burn … help me.”

  “DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NOW?” COLLINGSWOOD SAID. JASON Smyle wheezed. A few cosmetic knacks, a little unnatural dermatological intervention, and his skin looked quite untouched, all his bruises glamoured away.

  “What happens now is this,” she said. “You’ve broken various laws, but as well you bloody know they’re oddball laws. They’re like the constitution, they ain’t written. What that means is you go into the other court system. Which means whatever I want it to mean.” She was less than half Jason’s age. She leaned back and put her feet on the table. “So your cooperation will be greatly appreciated. So.” She twanged briefly into ridiculous American. “One mo’ ’gain. What was you after, coming here? Where’s Billy? And where’s the squid?” But they had been over this many times, and no amount of cajoling or threatening elicited any more.

  “I swear, I swear, I swear,” Jason kept saying, and she believed him. He did not know. All he knew was the number Billy had given him, that he had surrendered immediately. That was it. Collingswood glanced through the mirror and shook her head. She left the room and joined her colleagues.

  “So what have we got?” Baron said. “It’s all a bit of a turn-up for the books, isn’t it?”

  “And you believe him,” Vardy said.

  “Yeah,” said Collingswood. “Yeah. So …”

  “So,” said Baron. “So our man Billy is not an abductee at all. Is in fact collaborating with a known member, now exile, of the Church of God Kraken. It turns out our ingénue isn’t so ingenuous after all.”

  “What is it with this fucking Stockholm Syndrome?” Collingswood said. “Is Billy, what’s her name, fucking Patty Hearst?” She looked at Vardy.

  “Possible,” he said. “This whole thing stinks of belief to me. I take it we got nothing from the number he gave us?”

  “Nah. Belief in what?”

  “In something.”

  “Alright children, alright,” Baron said. “So, we thought we were looking for a captive, but it turns out we’re looking for a fugitive. Vardy, you better fill Collingswood in on Cole.”

  “Who’s that?” she said. “What did he do? Or she. Was it she? Can I play?”

  “A pyromancer,” Baron said. “Ex-associate of Griz.”

  “Pyro?” Collingswood narrowed her eyes. “Isn’t it fire that people keep seeing? Vardy?”

  “… Yes, it is. Sorry, I just … I’m …” He chewed his knuckle. Baron and Collingswood blinked at this unusual hesitation. “A pyromancer, a squid from the museum, an end of all things, it’s … there’s something close. I just have to parse the faith of it.”

  SO WHAT WAS UP WITH MARGE? HER BEST LEAD HAD GONE TO nothing.

  She had new priorities. She believed all these strangers who kept telling her she was in danger, that she was drawing dangerous attention to herself, that she needed protection.

  Don’t you know what a trap street is? the cult collector had said, and no she had not, but a moment online sorted that. Invented streets inserted into maps to right copyright wrongs, to prove one representation was ripped off from another. It was hard to find any definitive lists of these spurious enmapped locations, but there were suggestions. One of which, of course, was the street on which the Old Queen was.

  So. Was it that these particular occult streets had been made, then hidden? Their names leaked as traps in an elaborate double-bluff, so that no one could go except those who knew that such traps were actually destinations? Or were there really no streets there when the traps were set? Perhaps these cul-de-sacs were residues, yawned into illicit existence when the atlases were drawn up by liars.

  Well, either way. Those were obviously the streets to investigate. Marge looked for more names.

 
; Chapter Fifty-Four

  THE CHAOS NAZIS HID NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR. JUST AN EMPTY building. There was no metaphoric logic to its whereabouts, no cosmic pun: it was just isolated enough and empty enough and easy enough to break into and recustomise from the inside—soundproofing and such—and then to protect that it had been chosen. It was in the far east of London, in a zone depressed enough that not many people took a lot of notice of stuff. It had a deep basement where Dane was being tortured and where Chaos swastikas were cranked and turned. It was near a garage.

  The Nazis were alone and unsupervised. An outsourced resource, subcontracting being as fashionable in gangland as in the rubble of Fordism. The Tattoo had told them, vaguely, to continue what they were doing, and to try to extract something, some hint, from Dane, as to where Billy and the kraken were.

  Inside, it was decked in memorabilia from the Reich, guaranteed—spattered with genuine spatters, blood, brains, gauleiter cum. Candles in niches beside icons of various deviltry, smoke-damaged posters of Nazi bands and pictures from the camps. Exactly what you would expect.

  The Chaos Nazis stood, patchwork fascist fops, all glitz, spandex, leather and eagles. They eyed Dane. He was tied behind a rack of crusted tools. His rack had turned to put a bit more tumourous life in him, so he had eyes and teeth, though not all his teeth, and he could breathe through his nose though it was broken. They had only brought him back a couple of hours ago, had not really got started again yet. He stared at them, alternately spat and raged, and slumped and tried to go into himself.