China Mieville - Kraken

“We have to hurry,” Billy said to Dane. He waited, bided, as best he could, but he had to tell Saira to hurry too. She stared at him expressionless.

The attackers knew the secret Fitch and Saira and their treacherous comrades kept. But the rest of the Londonmancers they had come to butcher did not, had been the out-of-the-loop, the hard core of excluded, an unwitting camouflage left in place to pretend all was as it should be. Some were aware that they were being kept in a cloud of unknowing, but they had no knowledge of what that secret knowledge was. They did not understand the gunfarmers’ question. Which surely must be provoking to a killer. Some frantic seers had managed to provoke the antibodies into appearance, a little late.

“We were trying to keep them safe,” Saira said. “That’s why we didn’t tell them anything.” With a clatter of wood-bits and kicked-away plaster, Fitch arrived at the threshold. He looked in and simply wailed. He gripped the entrance.

“We have to go,” Billy said. “Saira, I’m sorry. The cops’ll come in any minute. And the bastards who did this know we’ve got the kraken.”

Dane put Billy’s hand to a dead woman’s wound. In the Londonmancer’s cooling flesh was a warmth. “Incubation,” Dane said. “Gunfarmers.” In the dead the bullets were eggs. Guns would grow and hatch, and perhaps one or two little pistols might muster the strength to emerge, call for their parents.

“We can’t take them,” Billy whispered.

“We can’t take them,” Saira said, dead-voiced, seeing Dane’s action.

The last of the Londonmancers and the London antibodies went with their leader, if that’s what Fitch still was, down those attention-drawing urban kinkways back to their lorry. “We’re the Londonmancers,” Fitch kept saying, and moaning. “Who would do this?” You broke neutrality first, Billy did not say.

“It’s new rules,” Dane said. “Everything’s up for grabs. This is just nuts. They didn’t care they’d be seen.” Like they wanted it. That’s how terror works. They stared at Paul.

“Not this one,” he said. Jerked his head at his own back. “Nazis and fists and Boba Fetts, but not gunfarmers.”

Blood puddled. Those Londonmancers who had survived stared at the kraken sloshing in its tank. “But why is it…?” they said. “What’s it doing here? What’s going on?” Fitch did not answer. Saira looked away. Paul watched them all. Billy felt as if the kraken were staring at him with its missing eyes.

“MARGE AIN’T HOME. AND SHE AIN’T PICKING UP HER MESSAGES. And I don’t know what she was doing there at the double-team. So what do you want us to do?” Collingswood reeled from a wave of the balefulness she had once called Panda. The nickname did not hold in her head, these worse days. “Was all a bit of a fucking balls-up, eh, boss? What now?”

Containment was all they could hope for on a night like this, with so many little wars under way. They could only intervene where possible, stand in the way of some carnages, patch up whatever aftermaths. The madness of, what-some kraken’s pain, perhaps?-seemed to have infected everything. The city was hacking itself.

So Collingswood asked the question not for elucidation-stepping into the ruins of the housing of the London Stone, the obvious signs that there had been murder there, though all they could do was log it and move on-but to make it clear that Baron had no answer. He was on the doorstep, looking in and shaking his head with the studied mildness that Collingswood had grown into her job witnessing. Around the room constables brushed things and pretended they were looking for fingerprints-conventional protocols increasingly ridiculous. They glanced at Baron to see if he would tell them what to do.

“Bloody hell,” he said, and raised his eyebrows at her. “This is all a bit much.”

Fucking no, she thought. She crossed her arms and waited for him to say something else. Not this time. She was so used to reading his nonchalance, his asides, his patient waiting for suggestions as if pedagogically, as signs that there was nothing that could faze him, as symptomatic of absolute police-officerly control, that it was not only with surprise but rage that she realised he had no idea what to do.

When was the last fucking time you came up with shit? she thought. When did you tell us what to do? She shamed him into meeting her eye, and what she saw in the deeps of his, like a lighthouse a long way away, was fear.

kollywood? She brushed the tiny voice out of the way as if her hair had irritated her. She did not need Baron knowing that Perky, her little pig-spirit friend, was with her.

“So,” he said at last. If you hadn’t known him a long time you might buy it. You might think he was calm. “Still no word from Vardy?”

“You already asked me. I told you. No.” Vardy had gone to speak to Cole, he’d said, to sound him out. That was the last anyone had heard. They could not track him down, nor could they Cole. Baron nodded. Looked away and back again. “It was his sodding idea that we decoy the end of the world; it was him who pulled whatever he does and tweaked the dates,” Baron said.

“Exfuckingscuse me, you reckon it was him spent a day with his head in the fucking astral persuading constellations to fart around a bit quicker?” she said. “Fuck off it was him, he had me do it.”

“Alright, well. I thought the whole idea was to flush everyone out and that it certainly did.”

“I think I was never a hundred percent sure what exactly the sodding idea was, boss.”

“Perhaps he’ll be good enough to join us,” Baron said.

“I’m going,” Collingswood said.

“What’s that?”

“Can’t help the London-tossers now. I’m going. I’m going out.” She pointed, in any direction. They could hear the rumpus of the night. “I been thinking. I know what I’m good at and I know what I can get. This information about this right here? That ain’t it. They got me here too early. I was supposed to hear about this. This was a fucking fake duck noise.” She blew a raspberry. “I’m police,” she said. “I’m going policing. You.” With three points she commandeered three officers. All obeyed her summons immediately. Baron opened his mouth as if he would call her back, then hesitated.

“I think I’ll come with,” he said.

“No,” she said. She left with her little crew following.

She trod over the smashed-up entrance into the night street. “Where to, guv?” one of the officers asked her.

where we goin kollywood? Perky said.

She had been trying to gather friends; given her druthers Collingswood would have been completely enveloped in amiable presences. But it was hard to get their attention, now. As time stretched toward whatever was at its end, the minds, wills, spirits, quasi-ghosts and animal intents she might have had flit around her in better times were skittish, and too nervy to be much help. She had Perky, with its uncanny porcine affection, and a very few diffuse policely functions too vague to do more than emit words so drawled in her hidden hearing that she could not tell if they were words or imitation of a siren, whispered now-then-now-then or nee-naw-nee-naw incessantly. Just her, three men, a fidgety pig and lawful intent.

“Perky,” she said. The officers looked at her, but they had learned on recent FSRC-seconded business not to ask questions like Who are you talking to? or What the fuck is that thing? “Perky, scoot off a bit, tell me where there’s fighting. Let’s see what we can do.”

kay kollywood sminit

Collingswood thought of Vardy, and what came to her mind was a tug of anger and concern comingled. You better be okay, she thought. And if you are, I’m fucking livid with you. Where the fuck are you? I need to know what this is.