China Mieville: Kraken

He sipped his wine and poured more for himself and for Saira. It was the year of the bottle, Billy thought, the year of pickling time, flexing himself and feeling the clock hesitate as if he squeezed its throat. It was the year of the bottle once more.

He touched glasses with Saira. It was not the year of anything else. So.

It was coming up to the end of the world again, of course-it always was. But not so frantically as it had been, perhaps. Not with quite such agonies. Billy wasn’t the angel of memory-he was far too human for that-but he could see memory-angelhood from where he stood. Put it that way. Did he have a history to protect? It seemed to him that the streets were no longer starving.

From outside the sky looked in at them. Billy was behind glass.

CHINA MIÉVILLE is the author of King Rat; Perdido Street Station, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Fantasy Award; The Scar, winner of the Locus Award and the British Fantasy Award; Iron Council, winner of the Locus Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award; Looking for Jake, a collection of short stories; Un Lun Dun, his New York Times bestselling book for younger readers; and The City & The City, named one of the top 100 Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly. He lives and works in London.