Kraken

by China Miéville

THERE WAS A STORM THAT NIGHT AS HE HEADED HOME, A HORRIBLE one that filled the air with bad electricity. Clouds turned the sky dark brown. The roofs streamed like urinals.

“You …” Baron was pointing at Billy with a pen, still sorting through the papers, “are too modest. You are the squid man.”

“But what really clinched our interest,” Baron said, “what really rang my bell—and I mean that literally, there’s a bell on my desk—is when you drew us that picture.”

Paint yourself blue and boff cactuses, just do it indoors and don’t involve civilians. Live and let live.

The man who was a radio whispered an ill-tuned-in weather report.

We worship because they’re gods. This is their universe, not ours. What they choose they choose and it’s not ours to know why.” Christ, thought Billy, what a grim theology. It was a wonder they could keep anyone in the room, without the emotional quid pro quo of hope.

“What was that squirrel?” Billy said. “Freelancer,” Dane said. “What? Freelance what?” “Familiar.” Familiar. “Don’t look like that. Familiar. Don’t act like you’ve never heard of one.” Billy thought of black cats. “Where is it now?” “I don’t know, I don’t want to know. It did what I paid it for.” Dane did not look at him. “Job done. So it’s gone.” “What did you pay it?” “I paid it nuts, Billy. What would you think I’d pay a squirrel?” Dane’s face was so deadpan flat Billy could not tell if what he was facing was the truth or contempt. Welcome to this world of work. Magic animals got paid in something, nuts or something.

“The world’s closing in. Something rises. And an end. If any augur augurs you otherwise, sack ’em.”

They had to take care, if they concluded that it was purely secular abcriminality behind the Architeuthis disappearance, to stress what links they could with London’s heresiarchs.

WORD GOT AROUND. IT DOES THAT. A CITY LIKE LONDON WAS always going to be a paradox, the best of it so very riddled with the opposite, so Swiss-cheesed with moral holes. There’d be all those alternative pathways to the official ones and to those that made Londoners proud: there’d be quite contrary tendencies.

The swastika-wearing man in mascara texted a set of exclamation marks to a comrade. A renegade Catholic priest fingered his dog collar. A shaman whispered to her fetish.

Savants could feel an outpouring of alien regret.

dangerous tradition, depending on to whom you spoke. The London Stone was a heart. Did it still beat? Yes, it still beat, though it was sclerotic. Billy thought he could feel it, a faint laboured rhythm making the

The computers within the adjacent building had long ago achieved self-awareness and their own little singularity, learned magic from the Internet, and by a combine of necromantics and UNIX had written into existence little digital devils to do the servers’ bidding.

He was a man who won some hearts and minds. In contrast to the Tattoo, a relentless innovator of brutality for whom etiquette and propriety were useful for the shock they occasioned when being pissed on, Grisamentum valued the traditions of the London hinterland.

EVERYONE WITH AN EAR TO THE CITY KNEW GOSS AND SUBBY were back. Goss, about whom they said he didn’t keep his heart in him, so he’s not afraid of anything; and Subby, about whom what can you say? Back for yet another last job. There was a lot of that going around.

He was never just a thug. Just thugs only ever got so far. The best thugs were all psychologists.

Her impression was that this man devoutly wishing for the effacing of the world by water, the reconfiguration of all humanity’s cities by eels and weeds, the fertilizing of sunken streets with the bodies of sinners, was a decent enough guy.

“The bullets are gun-eggs,” Collingswood said to Baron, looking at Vardy. Farmers squeezing their holy metal beasts to percussive climax, fertilisation by cordite expulsion, violent ovipositors. Seeking warm places full of nutrients, protecting baby guns deep in the bone cages, until they hatched. “What I never got’s why all that makes them all badass.”

In the main room, among the clatter of keyboards, Simone Ball was leafing through her paperwork. She was in her midthirties, loved classic animated films, and was an enjoyer of, though not a frequent participator in, European travel.

THE SEA IS NEUTRAL. THE SEA DIDN’T GET INVOLVED IN INTRIGUES, didn’t take sides in London’s affairs. Wasn’t interested. Who the hell could understand the sea’s motivations, anyway? And who would be so lunatic as to challenge it? No one could fight that. You don’t go to war against a mountain, against lightning, against the sea. It had its own counsel, and petitioners might sometimes visit its embassy, but that was for their benefit, not its. The sea was not concerned: that was the starting point.

What she liked doing was what she was good at.

“Only one and a half human beings have been slain here by thee. Unbelievers and men of evil life were the rest, not more to be esteemed than beasts.” One and a half was how many the Jesus Buddhists counted in the mass of dead after any of their depredations, according to careful religious accounting.

Billy was rinsed with adrenalin.

IT WAS A TATTOOIST IN BRIXTON,” HE SAID. “I CAME IN TO HAVE A big, you know, Celtic cross on my back, but not only black and white—I wanted greens and stuff too, you know, and it was going to take hours. I always rather do that in one go—I can’t get my head around loads of sessions, you know, it’s all or nothing for me; it was always that way.” No one interrupted him. Someone brought him a drink that he drank without looking anywhere other than the nowhere at which he was staring.

predator perfect.