China Mieville - Kraken

“What are you…?”

“Let me explain our problem,” the tattoo said. The man whose back it was on struggled in the guards’ grip. “My problem is no one knows you, Billy Harrow. You come out of nowhere. No one knows your percentage. And normally I couldn’t give a monkey’s what you’re up to, but that kraken, man. That kraken’s choice, mate. And it’s gone. And that’s trouble. Something like that, angel watching over it. If not very well, eh? Here’s the thing-I can’t make sense of what you’ve done, or how. So how about you fill me in?”

Billy tried to think for anything, anything to say to make these impossible abductors let him go. He would tell them anything. But not a solitary word of the Tattoo’s questions made any sense at all.

The shadows shifted. “You’re running with Baron’s mob,” the Tattoo said. “Shit taste, but I can save you from yourself. Now you and me work together, we can’t have secrets. So bring me up to speed.” The Tattoo stared. “What’s the story?”

Men unfold and people are generators and ink rides a man.

“Look at him,” the Tattoo said. “This little prick’s a Christ, is he? You said there’s nothing in his house?”

“Buggery I could taste,” said Goss. He hawked and swallowed what he raised.

“Who took the kraken, Billy?” the Tattoo said. Billy tried. There was a long silence.

“Look,” Goss said. “He’s got knowledges.”

“No,” the Tattoo said, slowly. “No. You’re wrong. He don’t. I think we’re going to want to workshop this.” The man shook and moaned, and a guard hit him again. The Tattoo rocked with the body that bore it. “You know what we need,” the Tattoo said. “Take him to the workshop.” The man who was a radio whispered an ill-tuned-in weather report.

GOSS DRAGGED BILLY, MAKING HIS LEGS MOVE WITH A NEW LOCOMOTION like a cartoon caper. Little Subby followed.

“Get off me,” Billy gasped abruptly. Goss smiled like a grandfather.

“Attention one and all,” said Goss. “I love it when you’re very very quiet. Beyond this door,” Goss said, “just over the road, we can open up the old bonnet, take a look inside, see what’s making the old girl seize up like that.” He tapped Billy’s belly. “We’re all recyclers; we all have to do our bit, don’t we, for the global warming and the polar bears and that. We’ll find new life for her as a fridge.”

“Wait,” whispered Billy. Whispering was all he could do. “Listen, I can…”

“You can what, poppet?” said Goss. “I couldn’t live with myself if I let you get in the way of progress. There’s white-hot innovation around the corner, and we all have to be ready. We’ve never had it so good.”

Goss opened the door into the cold and a girder of streetlamp light. Subby went out. Goss sent Billy after him, onto his hands and knees. Goss came after him. Billy put up his hands. He felt a rush. He heard splintering glass.

Billy crawled away. Goss did not follow. Subby did not move. The air was still. Billy did not understand. Nothing moved but him, for one, two seconds, and he could hear nothing but his own heart. Then air rushed past his ears again, and only then, too late, glass from whatever window had broken hit the ground, and Goss moved, his head shaking in a moment’s confusion as he looked at space where Billy no longer quite was.

Something met Subby. “Huff,” Subby said, and hurtled metres away. A man-shape in darkness gripped a pipework club. Goss shrieked. The attacker slammed the metal into him. It rang as if he were metal too. Goss did not even stagger. He ran to where Subby lay supine, blinking.

The man with the pipe grabbed Billy. He was big, bulky but fast-moving, his hair cut close, his clothes black and scruffy. There was a faint edge of streetlight on him.

“Dane?” Billy gasped. “Dane.”

THEY RAN ALONG THE DIRTY LITTLE NON-STREET, BY THE RAISED tracks, away from the terrible archway. A train passed, rumbling lights in the sky. Somewhere behind them Goss knelt by Subby.

“Come on,” Dane said. Something ran along the bricks beside them, something Billy did not make out. “We’ve got two minutes before they’re up. We’ve got one minute before their boss realises what’s happened. You’re bleeding. Goss can taste it.”

Another train passed. From streets away came the noise of traffic. Dane bundled Billy on. “No way I can take them,” Dane said. “I only got him ’cause they weren’t expecting anything. Plus there was…”

Dane ran them an intricate route until they emerged from the brick maze. They were by a park, the only figures in the street. By the silhouettes of massed trees Dane unlocked a car and shoved Billy in.

Billy wore a beard of blood, he realised. His shirt was stained with it. At some point, the night’s rough handling had split his lip. He dripped.

“Shit,” he mumbled. “Shit, sorry, I…”

“One of his knuckleheads.” Dane said. “Put your seat belt on.” Something filthy scudded from the wall across the deserted road, out of a gutter into the car. The squirrel, coiling under a seat. Billy stared.

“Shtum,” Dane said. He pulled out and drove, fast. “If it weren’t for little sodding nutkin I wouldn’t have found you. It got onto Goss’s car.”

They turned into lights, reached a street where there were shoppers and drinkers by late cafés and amusement arcades. Billy felt as if he would cry, to see people. It felt like the breaching of some meniscus, like he had entered a real night at last. Dane passed him a tissue.

“Wipe your mouth.”

“Leon…”

“Wipe the blood. We don’t want to be stopped.”

“We have to stop, we have to go to the police…” Really? Billy thought even as he said that. You’re not there anymore.

“No,” Dane said, as if he were listening to that monologue. “We do not.” You know that, right? “We’re just going to drive. Wipe your mouth. I’m going to get you out of here.”

Billy watched a quadrant of London he recognised no more than if it were Tripoli go by.

“WELL THIS IS BLOODY FABULOUS, ISN’T IT? THIS IS BLOODY perfect.” Baron stomped around Billy’s flat. He shook his head at the walls, folded and refolded his arms. “This is just how it was supposed to go. This is peachy.”

He stamped past the team powdering for fingerprints. She had her back to them, but from where she stood examining Billy’s doorway, Collingswood got gusts of their resentment.

She could not hear thoughts. So far as she knew, no one could: they spilt from each individual head in too many overlapping and counterflowing streams, and the words that part-constituted some of those streams were contradictory and misleading. But irritation that strong communicated, and knowing it to be mistranslation, she-like most of those with any knack at all for that kind of thing-automatically translated into text.

whos this twat think he is

wankers shd fuck off let real coppers work

y r we leting that litl bitch smoke

She turned and spoke to the thinker of that last fragment. “Because you been told to let us do whatever we want, innit?” she said, and watched the blood leave his face. She stepped over dropped books and followed Baron. She picked up the post on the table.

“Well?” Baron said. “Any ideas?”

Collingswood unlistened, focused on the traces of Billyness. Touched with a fingertip the doorframe, where stains of Billy’s attention read to her like messages squint-seen through a broken screen.

whats this she did that girl

cant get in

shes fit i wouldn’t mind

“What are you bloody smirking at?” Baron said. “Got something?”

“Nothing, boss,” she said. “You know what? No. You got me. This thing was still primed when I got here, you know? That’s why I had to let you in. No entry without invite, and you saw Billy boy-he was way too chickenshit to let anyone he didn’t know in after what we told him.”