China Mieville - Kraken

“Look,” said Billy to Fitch. “We’re here. We’ve got it. We’re protecting it. We’re not going to let it burn, and that’s what kicks it off. Now we’ve got one of the big players. The whole… burning should be getting a lot less probable, right?” The Londonmancers had been future-hunting frantically. Fitch grinding pavements at every snatched stop; rushed ambulomantic walks to see what the twists of city nudge-nudged; ailuromancy over light-footed cats; the readings of dust and chance London objects. “This must’ve all helped, right?”

“No,” said Fitch. He opened and closed his mouth and tried again. “It closes harder than ever. Soon. I don’t know how, but we’ve achieved nothing.”

No redemption, no remission, no reversion. Still just that oncoming.

COLE WORKED LATE. THE DEBRIS FROM THE FIGHT HAD BEEN cleared. He shook his head and sifted through the papers that remained on the desk, listing what was there and working out what must therefore have been taken. He ignored a knock, but his door opened. A man peered in.

“Knock knock?” he said. “Professor Cole?”

“Who are you?” The man shut the door behind him.

“My name is Vardy, Professor. Professor Vardy, in fact.” He smiled, not very well. “I work with the police.” Cole rubbed his eyes.

“Look, Mister, Professor, Doctor, whatever, Vardy, I’ve already…” He looked through his fingers and paused. “The police? I’ve had two visits from the police, and I’ve told them everything. It was a stupid prank, it’s all finished. Which police do you work with?”

“You’re wondering whether I’m part of the conventional crime squad come to do a bit more dusting, or whether I’m with the-what do my colleagues call us? special unit?-and whether I know about all your other less conventional interests. Did they buy it? The regulars? That this was just a ‘prank’? Two men too old to be students breaking in and beating you up?”

“They believed what I told them,” Cole said.

“I’m sure they did. They’ve every reason not to want to get too involved. What with everything else going on. The sky, the city… Well, you can feel it all.”

Cole shrugged. “It doesn’t make much difference.”

“That’s an odd thing to say.”

“Look…” said Cole.

“Professor Cole, listen. I know you were part of Grisamentum’s team.”

“Just because I did some work for him…”

“Please. Every knacker in London did some work for him at some point or other. And it was you behind that spectacular send-off. The funeral. Great fire. The cremation.” Cole watched him. “You must know you’re not talking to a moron. Word’s getting out anyway. Did you hear about the rumble last night? Everyone’s saying Grisamentum was there. It’s not just me who knows he never died.”

“I swear to you,” Cole said, “I’m not in touch with him. I don’t know what he’s doing, and whatever his plans are, I’ve got nothing to do with them.”

“Professor Cole, you’re probably one of the few people who knows that things have been burning and disappearing, and might even have a chance of explaining how.”

“That’s way beyond me! The principle’s the same as some of the stuff I’ve done, but that’s out of my league.”

“Oh, I do know that.”

“You know?”

“It’s my job to have a pretty clear sense of what you can do and what you can’t do. So I know you couldn’t have burnt all that stuff out of time. But I also know that you did have something to do with it. You’ve been delivering information and charges, haven’t you? According to demands?”

“… I…”

“And no, I don’t think you’re in cahoots with Grisamentum. And I know why you’re doing this. Family. Professor, I know your daughter’s disappeared.” Cole’s face collapsed. Agony, relief, agony.

“Oh, God…”

“I know your wife’s no longer with us,” Cole said. “From what I gather-she’s at a C of E school, isn’t she?-your daughter probably takes more after you than her mother. But she’s mixed-race and she’ll have certain abilities. Combine that with whatever you’ve been handing over, in the right hands…”

“You think she’s being used? You think they’re making her do this stuff?”

“Could be. But if so, well. We can use right back. We can use you to track down whoever’s doing this. I’m asking you to work with me. To trust me.”

HE MUST BE A PIG IN SHIT RIGHT NOW, GRISAMENTUM, BILLY thought. His worst enemy down, captive. Without their Svengali, enforcers like the Tattoo’s fistmen would fall back unhappily on a loose network of contacts and half-trusted lieutenants, trying to decide what to do. Subby and Goss were the most important of these, and they were many things-including back from wherever they’d been, apparently-but not leaders.

“Goss and Subby went to get something,” Paul told Dane, Billy and the innermost Londonmancers. “They went hunting for something. I don’t know more.”

Baron and his crew must be highly in demand now, Billy thought, as local forces struggled with irrupting violence nightmaring their usual run. What would be turning up in these last days was not stabbed dealers of disallowed drugs and smashed shop windows, but strangely dead new figures with blood that did not run as blood should. Terrorised pushers of building-site dust. The Tattoo was gone, the dead Grisamentum was back, the balance of power was fucked, and the boroughs of London were Peloponnesea-as the world got ready to end, this was their great multivalent war.

“I need to…” Billy said, but what? He needed to what? He and Dane looked at each other.

Freelancers were rampaging. Puffed-up thugs with imperfectly learned knacks; consciousnesses born in vats, escapees from experiments; seconds-in-command of all kinds of minor ganglets decided that this was it!-their chance. The city was full of mercenaries carrying out long-delayed vendettas as the strike fell and the familiars came back to work, bit by defeated bit, on terrible, punitive terms.

Never mind, some thought, those in the worst circumstances. Only a few more days and we’ll all be gone forever.

ABSOLUTELY SOD-ALL WAS WHAT THEY HAD TO SHOW FOR THAT, Collingswood thought. Absolutely cack. It was obvious something big had happened. Not that she knew what it was yet: she’d pitched up at the site of some shitstorm or other, tasting familiar people in the air, tasting the very Billy and Dane they’d been there hoping to snatch, the knacks she threw out unpleasantly degrading in that atmosphere, slugs in salt. There was a shift, alright. Something had seesawed, and it was maddening and ridiculous how hard it was to work out what. And Baron and Vardy didn’t help.

That’s fucking it. Collingswood cooked up everything she had. Rang around and called in favours, sent out eager Perky on sniffing errands, stressed as shit by hurry, by whatever it was impending. Took, though she assiduously avoided reflecting on the fact, charge of the investigation. Seemed as if figures she’d never expected to hear from again, that she’d never faced herself but that were well known in the specialist police milieu, were back, or back again, or not dead, or pushing for the end of the world, or coming to get you.

This time it was her ignoring Baron’s calls for a bit. Working from home, from ley line-squatting cafés, with a laptop. Some stop-offs with contacts. “What are you hearing? Don’t give me that no one knows bollocks, there ain’t nothing no one knows nothing about.”

Because the one line of stories that kept coming, the one connection that made her think she still had it, in these winding-down times, concerned the gunfarmers. Whom she had officially mentally upgraded from rumour. Which she had done, she reminded herself later, scrabbling for pride in that wrecked time, before all those gathered hints reached her and critical massed into intuition, and she suddenly knew not only that the gunfarmers were about to attack, but where.