China Miéville - King Rat

The door opened again and two more figures appeared. The first was Fabian. Saul was appalled, nearly leapt to his feet. Fabian was even more emaciated and exhausted-looking than Natasha. His finery could not disguise that. He was limping. Like Natasha, he wore walkman headphones. It was that beat, the tune that only he could hear, that propelled Fabian forward.

Behind him was the Piper.

As he entered the room he stopped, breathed in deeply, gave a huge smile. He spread his arms wide as if he would embrace all the dancers below him.

Fabian stayed very close to him.

Saul looked up at Anansi. He was oscillating on his rope, his sudden tension communicated violently through his body.

Rush him?

Should we rush him? thought Saul frantically.

What is to be done?

Anansi and Saul were paralysed, caught in the gaze of a snake. And the Piper could not even see them.

Natasha turned and saw her two companions. She held out her hand and the Piper pulled something out of his pocket, tossed it across the stage to her. As it curved through the air it was transfixed for a moment in a beam of white light. It seemed to freeze, letting Saul examine it at his leisure. It glinted, a small plastic case, like a cassette but smaller, squarer…

A DAT.

A Digital Audio Tape. Natasha used them to record her tracks.

He screamed and leapt to his feet as Natasha’s hand closed around the tape.

The cavernous space was full of sound, there was no room for his paltry screech. He could not even hear it himself in the cacophony of beats and basslines. The dancers danced on, unperturbed, Natasha turned towards the decks, Fabian continued his shambling little rotations… but the Piper turned his head sharply at the imperceptible sound, stared up, through the cat’s cradle of light beams, past the too-cool bodies on the lower walkway, up into the shadow of the roof, gazing directly into Saul’s eyes.

The Piper gave a jaunty wave, and grinned. He was burning with triumphalism.

Saul propelled himself along the gantry while the Piper laughed on the stage. The dancers were oblivious. The beats seemed to slow down, everything was slow, Saul could see the mass of bodies below him sink and rise ponderously.

He pounded along the iron towards the corner where Anansi hung, paralysed. He stared through the floor at Natasha walking slowly towards the DAT player she had plugged in, reaching out with the hand holding the tape. Saul looked up as he drew near Anansi, who swung from side to side, around and around, a useless pendulum.

Saul had not stopped shouting. He was ululating appallingly as he ran. Anansi looked up at him. As Natasha slipped the tape into the deck and crooked one of the headphones against her shoulder, Saul grabbed the rail with his left hand and vaulted up high, moving so slowly he could stare at the faces below him, all the individuals that made up the bouncing mass. He brought his feet down together on the railing, bent down and leapt out, sending himself through the air, flying above the dancers like a superhero.

Anansi’s eyes widened as Saul surged towards him, his arms flailing, legs tucked up in front of him like a long-jumper. Saul spread his arms and legs wide, and crashed into Anansi forty feet above the stage.

He clutched at Anansi, hugged himself to him. He felt himself lurching crazily back and forth through the air, heard Anansi yelling something at him. The rope holding the two bodies was vibrating, dangerously taut. Saul was screaming into Anansi’s ears.

‘Down!’ he screamed. ‘Go down now!’

Saul felt himself drop and his stomach lurched. His descent smoothened out as Anansi manipulated the fibres in his hand. Smoother than any abseiler, the spider-man and his cargo sank swiftly towards the stage.

As they plummeted, Saul and Anansi spun around their centre of gravity, and the room whirled around them. Saul caught glimpse after glimpse of the dancers, frozen, gazing at the men dropping out of the air. Some looked aghast or confused, but most were laughing, enrapt at this new entertainment.

‘Run! Get the fuck out!’ screamed Saul, but the Jungle was remorseless, and no one heard him except Anansi.

Saul looked down, eight feet from the stage, relaxed his grip and dropped from Anansi like a bomb.

He was rigid, his quarry dead in his line of flight. Even over the Drum and Bass beats, Saul thought he heard a collective gasp. His face set as he fell, his legs straightened, but the Piper had been watching and he danced nimbly to one side, away from Saul’s punishing boots, leaving Saul to slam into the wooden stage.

He staggered but remained on his feet. The decks were so well supported that the record playing did not even skip at his arrival. Saul looked on in horror as Natasha’s hand tightened on the DAT player’s volume control, her face furrowed over the headphones as she prepared to mix from the record to the tape, waiting for the right moment in the beat.

Saul leapt towards her, prepared to throw her away from the decks, to hurt her if need be, rage and fear filling him, but as he neared her something slammed into him from behind and he went sprawling, flying off to the side of the stage. Natasha did not even look round.

Saul rolled on the floor, twisted, and pulled himself back up.

Fabian was bearing down on him.

His friend was not looking at him, was focusing over Saul’s shoulder, just as Loplop had done that night in the flat. He moved towards Saul without pausing, his arms outstretched like a cinematic zombie.

Behind Fabian, Saul saw Anansi touch the stage, only for the Piper immediately to smack him hard in the mouth, sending him sprawling. But Saul’s attention was taken by the tiniest of motions: Natasha’s hand turning the volume slowly up.

Saul barrelled into Fabian, trying to run through him, overpower him, and his friend held him fast, twisted as Saul tried to run past him. The two came crashing down, Saul’s hand outstretched, an inch from Natasha’s shoe.

She nodded in satisfaction and turned up the DAT.

Everything froze.

There was a sublime moment. Everyone was utterly still: the dancers, the men who had jumped on stage to break up the rights they saw there, Saul, rigid with despair.

The beats that slid insidiously from the speakers were all at the high end, cymbals, no bassline. A tiny snatch of piano cried out plaintively.

But it was the flute which held the attention.

A sudden burst had heralded the song, a trill that had erupted into the room’s collective consciousness and cleared the minds of the listeners. As Saul watched, Natasha removed her headphones and her walkman. No need for them now. This was the song she had been listening to. Behind him Fabian rose and followed suit.

The snatch of flute had shocked the dancers into submission, and now it faded, leaving only echoes and the sounds of radio static, the ghosts of dead stations rolling over the beat and the soulless piano. Still there was no bassline. Saul could not get up. He saw the dancers begin to shake their heads and extricate themselves from the snares of the flute, and then another burst exploded into the room and with comically precise timing, the assembled throng all snapped back upright, their eyes rapt.

And then again. Again.

The Piper stared at Saul, the amiable cast of his face belied by his ghastly wide eyes, ferocious with pleasure.

‘You lose,’ he mouthed to Saul.

Saul glared balefully at the Piper. He raised his arm theatrically, and caught Anansi’s eye as he struggled to his feet. Shaking, Anansi imitated him.

Together, they brought their arms down.

‘Now!’ Saul shrieked.

Floorboards and pipes boiled over with rats. Saul’s crack troops exploded into the room, racing voraciously through the frozen legs of the dancers towards the stage. The walls erupted as spiders burst from the pores of the building and spilled like liquid towards the Piper.