China Mieville - Kraken

“Alright,” said Collingswood. She smiled in appreciation. “Alright, that’s quite cool.”

A young man came out from the back. “Morning,” he said. Anders Hooper was tall, mixed-race, wearing a Gundam T-shirt. “Can I…” He hesitated at sight of Collingswood’s uniform. “Help you?”

“Might be,” she said. “Sell enough to make your rent on this place?”

“Who are you?”

“Answer the question, Mr. Hooper,” said Baron.

“… Sure. There’s a lot of interest in anime and stuff. We’re one of the best suppliers…”

“You can get all this shit off the Internet,” Collingswood said. “People come here?”

“Sure. There’s…”

“What about your orifuckinggami?” she said. He blinked.

“What about it? That’s more specialist, of course…” He kept his mind pretty cloudy, but what they know? Collingswood got from him, as abruptly as if announced by a beep.

“And you’re the man, right? Shit, we’re in effing Chelsea. How d’you pay? We spoke to Mr. Carr. Says hello by the way. He told us you do custom folding. Special jobs. Sound right, Anders?”

He leaned on the counter. Looked from Baron to Collingswood. He glanced to either side as if someone might be listening.

“What is it you want to know?” he said. “I haven’t done anything illegal.”

“No one said you did,” Collingswood said. “Someone fucking did though. Why did you get into all this?”

“For minimisation,” Anders said. “It’s not just about pressure, or forcing things. It’s about topography, that sort of thing. Someone like Carr-and I’m not being disrespectful, it was him who got me started-but basically, you know, you’re sort of…” He made kneading motions. “You’re shoving stuff in. You’re stuffing a suitcase.”

“More or less what he said,” Baron said.

“If that’s what you want to do, then, you know, fine. But…” His hands tried to describe something. “What you’re trying to do with planurgy is get things into other spaces, you know? Real things, with edges and surfaces, and all that. With origami you’re still dealing with all that surface area. There’s no cutting, you know? The point is you can unfold it, too. You get it?”

“And you don’t have any problems with the fact that this is all, you know, solid,” said Collingswood.

“Not as much as you might think. There’s been a revolution in origami over the last few years… What?”

Collingswood was pissing herself laughing. Baron joined in. After a couple of seconds Anders had the grace to snigger.

“Well, I’m sorry,” he said, “but there has been. Computers’ve helped. We’re in the era of-alright, you’ll like this one, too-extreme origami. It’s all about maths.” He looked at Collingswood. “What’s your tradition?”

“Traditions are for ponces,” she said.

He laughed. “If you say so. When you start bringing in a bit of abmaths, factoring in visionary numbers, that sort of thing-does this mean anything to you?”

“Get on with it.”

“Sorry. My point is, there are ways of…” He leaned over the cash register and held the little digital display between fingertip and thumb. He folded it over.

Collingswood watched it go. Anders flipped it over and over, tucked it behind the keys. He gently concertinaed. The bulky thing collapsed on itself in fold-lines, different aspects of unbroken planes slipping behind each other as if seen from several directions at once. Anders folded, and within a minute and a half what lay on the desk, still connected to a power cord (which now slipped behind an impossible crease into the things’ innards), was a hand-sized Japanese crane. The showing face of one of the bird’s wings was a corner of the cash display, the other was the front of the money drawer. Its neck was a flattened wedge of its buttons. “If you pull there you can make its wings flap,” Anders said.

“Cool,” said Collingswood. “And it ain’t broke?”

“That’s the point.” He manipulated its edges, unfolded the thing back into its original shape. Pressed its keys and it pinged and opened with a little cash chink.

“Nice,” said Baron. “So you make a bit of dosh folding cash registers into birds.”

“Oh yeah,” Anders deadpanned. “Very lucrative.”

“But wouldn’t that still weigh the same?”

“There’s ways of folding into sort of forgettable space, I suppose you could say, so the world won’t notice the weight until you open it.”

“How much would you charge to,” Baron said, “for example, fold up a person? Into a package? That you could post?”

“Ah. Well. There’s a lot of surfaces in a person, and you’ve got to keep track of them all. That’s a lot of folds. Is that what this is about? That bloke who wanted to surprise his friend?”

Collingswood and Baron stared at him. “Which bloke,” Baron said, “would that be?”

“Shit, did something happen? The guy was playing a trick on his mate. Had me make him and his son up like a book. Paid me extra to hand-deliver him. Said he didn’t trust the post. I say said-took me ages to have a clue what he was on about, the way he talked. Pain in my arse getting there, but he made it worth my-”

“Getting where?” Baron said.

He recited Billy’s address. “What happened?” Anders said.

“Tell us everything you can about this man,” Baron said. He held up his notebook. Collingswood spread her hands, tried to feel residues in the room. “And what,” said Baron, “do you mean ‘his son’?”

“The bloke,” Anders said. “Who had me fold him up. It was his kid, too. His boy.” He blinked in Baron’s and Collingswood’s stares.

Baron whispered, “Describe them.”

“The guy was in his fifties. Long hair. Smelt, to be honest. Smoke. I was a bit surprised he could pay-it wasn’t cheap. His son was… a bit not all there.” He tapped his head. “Never said a word… What? What? Jesus, what is it?”

Baron stepped back and dropped his arms to his sides, his notebook dangling. Collingswood stood, her mouth opening, her eyes widening. Their faces went white in time.

“Oh fuck,” whispered Collingswood.

“My good God, this didn’t, this didn’t sound any alarm bells at all?” Baron said. “You didn’t for a bloody second wonder who you might be dealing with?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”

“He doesn’t fucking know,” Collingswood said. Her voice grated. “This fucking newbie cunt has no idea. That’s why they came here. ’Cause he’s new. That’s why he got the job, ’cause he’s green. They knew he had no clue who the fucking shit he was dealing with.”

“Who was I dealing with?” said Anders, shrilly. “What did I do?”

“It is,” said Collingswood. “It is, isn’t it, guv?”

“Oh my good Christ. It sounds like it. My God, it does sound like it.” They shivered in a room suddenly made cold.

Collingswood whispered, “It’s Goss and Subby.”

BILLY WOKE. THE FOG, THE DARK WATER IN HIS HEAD, WAS ALL gone.

He sat up. He was bruised but not tired. He wore the same clothes he had gone to sleep in, but they had been removed and cleaned. He closed his eyes and saw the oceanic things from his doped sleep.

By the door was a man in a tracksuit. Billy scrabbled back on the bed to see him, into some half-cringe, half-pugnacious uncoiling. “They’re waiting for you,” the man said. He opened the door. Billy slowly lowered his hands. He felt, he realised, better than he had for a long time.

“You drugged me,” he said.

“I don’t know anything about that,” the man said anxiously. “But they’re waiting for you.”