China Miéville - King Rat

"A genuine contribution to London’s subterranean mythology… It’s humane and delinquent. And it bites"

"Full of the rank energy of Jungle rhythms, China Miéville’s rat’s nest of a book gives a new meaning to the term ‘alternative London’, a kingdom we didn’t know we’d inherited. KING RAT goes down as sweetly as week-old garbage, to leave the reader eyeing speculatively the manhole covers of Soho and Battersea. A knotted, toothy, thought provoking read."

"China Miéville is an intriguing new voice in British fantasy. He’s inventing a language for Jungle London that’s both ancient and part of the city’s future."

"A story so compelling you almost haven’t time to notice how fine the writing is: a dark myth reinvented for our time and for London in particular with great wit, style and imagination"

"King Rat takes us out of the high courts of fairy tale, away from the romanticised city streets of many current fantasies, down into the sewers… And his characters are fabulous, even the bit players… This is a riveting, brilliant novel. The language sings, the concepts are original and engrossing… an utter delight"

To Max

Thank you to everyone who read this in the early stages. All my love and gratitude go to my mother, Claudia, for all her support, always; and to my sister, Jemima, for her advice and feedback.

Deep love and thanks to Emma, of course, for everything.

My heartfelt thanks to Max Schaefer, who gave me invaluable criticisms, hours of word-processing help, and great friendship during a generally rubbish year.

I can never thank Mic Cheetham enough. I am incredibly lucky to have her on my side. And thanks to all at Macmillan, particularly my editor Peter Lavery.

I owe too many writers and artists to mention, but respect is especially due to Two Fingers and James The Kirk for their novel Junglist. They blazed a trail. Many thanks also to Iain Sinclair for generously letting me keep the metaphor I accidently stole from him. Jake Pilikian introduced me to Drum and Bass music and changed my life. Big up to all the DJs and Crews who provided a soundtrack. Awe and gratitude especially to A Guy Called Gerald for the sublime Gloc: old, now, but still the most terrifying slab of guerrilla bass ever committed to vinyl. Rewind. A London Sometin’…

I can squeeze between buildings through spaces you can’t even see. I can walk behind you so close my breath raises gooseflesh on your neck and you won’t hear me. I can hear the muscles in your eyes contract when your pupils dilate. I can feed off your filth and live in your house and sleep under your bed and you will never know unless I want you to.

I climb above the streets. All the dimensions of the city are open to me. Your walls are my walls and my ceilings and my floors.

The wind whips my overcoat with a sound like washing on a line. A thousand scratches on my arms tingle like electricity as I scale roofs and move through squat copses of chimneys. I have business tonight.

I spill like mercury over the lip of a building and slither down drainpipes to the alley fifty feet below. I slide silently through piles of rubbish in the sepia lamplight and crack the seal on the sewers, pulling the metal cover out of the street without a sound.

Now I am in darkness but I can still see. I can hear the growling of water through the tunnels. I am up to my waist in your shit, I can feel it tugging at me, I can smell it. I know my way through these passages.

I am heading north, submerged in the current, wading, clinging to walls and ceiling. Live things scuttle and slither to get out of my way. I weave without hesitation through the dank corridors. The rain has been fitful and hesitant but all the water in London seems eager to reach its destination tonight. The brick rivers of the underground are swollen. I dive under the surface and swim in the cloying dark until the time has come to emerge and I rise from the deeps, dripping. I pass noiselessly again through the pavement.

Towering above me is the red brick of my destination. A great dark mass broken with squares of irrelevant light. One glimmering in the shadow of the eaves holds my attention. I straddle the corner of the building and ease my way up. I am slower now. The sound of television and the smell of food seep out of the window, which I am reaching towards now, which I am rattling now with my long nails, scratching, a sound like a pigeon or a twig, an intriguing sound, bait.

The trains that enter London arrive like ships sailing across the roofs. They pass between towers jutting into the sky like long-necked sea beasts and the great gas-cylinders wallowing in dirty scrub like whales. In the depths below are lines of small shops and obscure franchises, cafes with peeling paint and businesses tucked into the arches over which the trains pass. The colours and curves of graffiti mark every wall. Top floor windows pass by so close that passengers can peer inside, into small bare offices and store cupboards. They can make out the contours of trade calendars and pin-ups on the walls.

The rhythms of London are played out here, in the sprawling flat zone between suburbs and centre.

Gradually the streets widen and the names of the shops and cafes become more familiar; the main roads are more salubrious; the traffic is denser; and the city rises to meet the tracks.

At the end of a day in October a train made this journey towards King’s Cross. Flanked by air, it progressed over the outlands of North London, the city building up below it as it neared the Holloway Road. The people beneath ignored its passage. Only children looked up as it clattered overhead, and some of the very young pointed. As the train drew closer to the station, it slipped below the level of the roofs.

There were few people in the carriage to watch the bricks rise around them. The sky disappeared above the windows. A cloud of pigeons rose from a hiding place beside the tracks and wheeled off to the east.

The flurry of wings and bodies distracted a thickset young man at the rear of the compartment. He had been trying not to stare openly at the woman sitting opposite him. Thick with relaxer, her hair had been teased from its tight curls and was coiled like snakes on her head. The man broke off his furtive scrutiny as the birds passed by, and he ran his hands through his own cropped hair.

The train was now below the houses. It wound through a deep groove in the city, as if the years of passage had worn down the concrete under the tracks. Saul Garamond glanced again at the woman sitting in front of him, and turned his attention to the windows. The light in the carriage had made them mirrors, and he stared at himself, his heavy face. Beyond his face was a layer of brick, dimly visible, and beyond that the cellars of the houses that rose like cliffs on either side.

It was days since Saul had been in the city.

Every rattle of the tracks took him closer to his home. He closed his eyes.

Outside, the gash through which the tracks passed had widened as the station approached. The walls on either side were punctuated by dark alcoves, small caves full of rubbish a few feet from the track. The silhouettes of cranes arched over the skyline. The walls around the train parted. Tracks fanned away on either side as the train slowed and edged its way into King’s Cross.

The passengers rose. Saul swung his bag over his shoulder and shuffled out of the carriage. Freezing air stretched up to the great vaulted ceilings. The cold shocked him. Saul hurried through the buildings, through the crowds, threading his way between knots of people. He still had a way to go. He headed underground.