King Rat

by China Miéville

  “The thought I heard someone, I thought so!” he exclaimed. Saul straightened a little more, his brow furrowed. “I’ve been waiting here night after night, saying no, go home, it’s ridiculous, he won’t come here, of all places, and now here you are!” He glanced at the book in Saul’s hand. “You found my reading material, then. I wanted to know all about you. I thought that might tell me a bit.”

  He looked a little closer at Saul’s red eyes and his own face widened.

  “You didn’t know, did you?” His smile of pleasure was broader than ever. “Well. That does explain a few things. I thought you were rather quick to join your so-called father’s murderer.” Saul’s eyes flickered. Of course, he thought, giddy with grief, of course. The man was eyeing him. “I thought blood must have been thicker than water but, of course, why on Earth should he have told you?” He rocked back on his heels, stuck his hands in his pockets.

  “I’ve needed to talk to you for a long time. The rumors have been flying about you, you know! You’ve been famous for years! So many places, so many leads, so many possibilities… I’ve been all over, chasing impossible crime… You know, any time I heard about some weird break-in, some murder, something that doesn’t fit the bill, something people couldn’t have done, I’d run to investigate. The police can be very helpful with information.” He grinned. “So many dead ends! And then I came here…” The man grinned again. “I could just smell him, and I knew I’d found you, Saul.”

  “Who are you?” Saul finally breathed.

  The man smiled pleasantly at him but did not answer. He seemed to see Deborah for the first time.

  “Hi! My God, what a night you must be having!” He strolled forward as he laughed. Deborah clung still to Saul. She gazed at the man with guarded eyes. “Anyway,” he continued easily, reaching out his hand towards her, “I’m afraid I’m not interested in you.”

  He snatched her wrist and wrenched her out of Saul’s grasp. Too late, Saul realized that the urbane man had taken her, his head moved slowly down to look where she had been even as his mind screamed at him to look up, to move.

  He dragged his head up through the thick air.

  He saw the man close his left hand in Deborah’s hair, Saul reached out in horror, determined to intervene, but the man who was still smiling broadly glanced down at her briefly and sent his other fist slamming into the underside of her chin just as she opened her mouth to scream, and the impact split the skin and bone of her jaw and snapped her mouth closed so fast that blood spurted out from between her lips where she bit deep into her tongue. The scream died before it appeared, mutating into a wet exhalation. Even as Saul’s slow, slow feet took him towards her the man swivelled on his toes and pulled her body around from the nape of the neck where he held her, built up momentum, spun fast and buried her face in the side of the door-frame.

  He released her and turned back to Saul.

  Saul shrieked in anguish and disbelief, stared past the man at Deborah’s carcass, which slid down the door-frame and tumbled back into the room. It was twitching as nerve endings died. Her flattened and distorted face stared blindly up at Saul as she danced in a posthumous fit, her heels pattering on the floor like a monsoon, blood and air bubbling out of her exploded mouth.

  Saul bellowed and flung himself at the man with all his rat-strength.

  “I’ll eat your fucking heart!” he screamed.

  The tall man sidestepped the flurry of blows easily, still grinning broadly. He pulled his fist back leisurely and sent it into Saul’s face.

  Saul saw the blow coming and moved away from it, but he was not fast enough and it snapped into the side of his skull, sending him reeling. He spun round, hit the floor hard. A shrill sound hurt his head. He turned to look at the man, who stood with his lips pursed, whistling a jaunty, repetitive air. He glared at Saul and his eyes flickered dangerously. Without pause, the tune he was whistling changed, became less organized, more insidious. Saul ignored him, tried to crawl away. The whistling stopped short.

  “So it’s true,” the Piper hissed, and his urbane voice had metamorphosed into something unstable. He looked as if he was about to be sick, and he looked enraged. “Dammit, neither man nor rat, can’t shift you. How dare you how dare you…” His eyes were wild and sick-looking.

  “I can’t believe how stupid you are coming here, rat-boy,” said the Piper as he approached him. He shook with effort and his voice righted itself. “Now I’m going to kill you and string your body up in the sewers for your father to find, and then I’m going to play for him and make him dance and dance, and eventually when he’s really tired I’m going to kill him.”

  Saul pulled himself up, stumbled out of his way, sent a lumbering kick at the Piper’s balls. The Piper grabbed his foot, pulled up very fast, sending him thumping onto his back and pushing the wind out of him. All the while he kept talking, amiable and animated.

  “I’m the Lord of the Dance, I’m the Voice, and when I say jump, people jump. Except you. And I have you here about to die. You’re a fucking abortion. If you don’t dance to my tune, you don’t belong in this world. Twenty-five years in the planning, and here’s the rat’s secret weapon, the supergun, the half-and-half.” He shook his head and wrinkled his nose sympathetically. He kneeled next to Saul who struggled for breath, tried to hold his head up.

  “I’m going to kill you now.”

  A high-pitched screech made them both look up. Something burst the plastic sheet shrouding the window with an improbable pop, shot through the tattered window of the flat, a figure, careering through the air towards the Piper, shoving into his body with an impact that took him flying away from Saul’s supine body. Saul struggled up, saw an immaculately suited man trying to strangle the Piper, who convulsed, sending his adversary flying back across the room.

  It was Loplop, with terror in his eyes, screaming at Saul to come on, grabbing him and running for the window, until a short clear sound stopped him cold. Saul turned and saw the Piper’s puckered lips as he rose, whistling. A liquid tune, repetitive and simple. Loplop was stiff. Saul saw a look of wonder cross his face as he turned to face the Piper, his eyes alive and ecstatic.

  Saul backed away, felt the wall behind him. He could see Deborah’s corpse behind Loplop, see the stain of blood oozing liberally onto the floor. To his left was the Piper, moving forward now, still whistling. Before him was Loplop, stepping towards him, his eyes not seeing, his arms outstretched, his feet moving in rhythm to the Piper’s bird song.

  Saul tried to get past Loplop, could not, felt his throat underneath those fingers. The Bird Superior fell on him and began to squeeze the air out of him, all the while holding his own entranced face up to catch the music. He was not heavy but his body was as stiff as metal. Saul beat at him, twisted, tugged at his fingers. Loplop was impervious, unaware. As blackness began to creep in at the edges of his vision, Saul saw the Piper in the corner of the room, rubbing his throat, and the rage pushed blood back into Saul’s face, even past Loplop’s cruel talons, and he spread his arms wide, cupped his hands exactly as his father had warned him not to in the swimming pool, even if you’re just playing, Saul, and he slammed his hands down, clapping with all his strength, around Loplop’s ears.

  Loplop shrieked and snapped up, arcing his back, his hands quivering. Saul’s rat-strength had driven air deep into those aural cavities, shattering the delicate membranes and sending bubbles rushing in like acid through the ruptured flesh. Loplop shook in agony.

  Saul rolled out from under him. The Piper was upon him again, and he wielded the flute like a club. Saul could only roll a little out of his way and feel it crush his shoulder rather than his face. He dodged again and this time his chest was struck, and the pain took his breath away.

  Behind him Loplop stumbled away from the wall, fumbled blindly, as if his other senses had gone with his hearing.

  The Piper gripped the flute in both hands, straddled Saul and pinned his arms to the floor with his knees, raised the flute like a
ceremonial dagger, ready to drive the stubby object into Saul’s chest. Saul screamed in terror.

  Loplop still shrieked, and his voice mixed with Saul’s. The dissonance made the air shake and something in the vibrations made Loplop turn and kick the flute from the Piper’s clenched hands. The Piper bellowed in rage and reached for it. Loplop pulled Saul from under the tall man’s legs, and hauled him to the window. Still Loplop shrieked, and the sound did not stop as he leapt onto the sill of the ruined window. He was still shrieking as he grabbed Saul with his right hand and stepped out into darkness.

  Saul could not hear his own despairing yell through Loplop’s incessant keening. He closed his eyes and felt air swirl around him, waited for the ground, which did not come. He opened his eyes a little and saw a confusion of lights, moving very fast. He was falling still…the only sound was Loplop’s wail.

  He opened his eyes fully and he saw that the constriction around his chest was not terror but Loplop’s legs, and that the ground was shooting not towards him but parallel to him, and that he was not falling but flying.

  His head faced backwards, so he could not see Loplop as they flew. The Bird Superior’s legs, elegant in Savile Row tailory, wrapped around him below his armpits. Terragon Mansions receded behind them. Saul saw a thin figure standing in the punctured plastic shadow of his father’s flat, somehow heard a faint whistling over Loplop’s cries.

  In Willesden’s dirty darkness the trees were obscure, a tangle of fractal silhouettes from which there now burst pigeons and sparrows and starlings, startled out of their sleep by the compulsion of the Piper’s spell. They swirled like rubbish for a moment, and then their movements became as precise and sudden as a mathematical simulation.

  They converged on the Piper, imploding from all sectors of the sky towards his hunched shoulders, and then en masse they rose again, suddenly clumsy, trying to fly in concert, dragging the Piper’s body through the air with them.

  “The fucker’s following us!” Saul screeched in fright. He realized as he spoke that Loplop could not hear him, that all that stopped Loplop from joining his subjects in transporting the Piper was the fact that Saul had deafened him.

  Saul rocked alarmingly in Loplop’s tight embrace. The streets lurched below them. They oscillated uncertainly between the skies and the freezing earth. Loplop’s wails were now turning to moans; he crooned to comfort himself. Behind them a writhing clot of birds dragged the Piper through the air after them. As birds fell away, exhausted or crushed, others rushed to their place, dug their claws into the Piper’s clothes and flesh, pulling against each other, bearing him on in a butterfly’s drunken rush.

  The Piper was gaining on them.

  The moon glinted briefly on water and railway tracks far below. Loplop began to spiral out of the sky.

  Saul shook the legs that held him, shouted at him to continue, but Loplop was close to fainting, and the screaming in his head was all he could hear. Saul caught glimpses of a vast roadway and an undulating red plain below them, but they were snatched from his field of vision as Loplop’s body spun. The Piper was closing in, shedding his entourage like a ragged man shedding clothes.

  They fell. Saul caught glimpses of a network of railtracks spreading out like a fan, and then that red field again, the tight-packed roofs of a hundred red buses. They were spiralling towards Westbourne Park station, where bus routes and railways converged on a hill, under the yawning gloom of the Westway.

  They swept into that shade and crashed to the ground. Saul was thrown from Loplop’s grasp. He rolled over and over, came to a stop, covered in dust and dirt. Loplop lay some feet away, hunched up in a strange position, his arms wrapped around his head, his arse thrust into the air, his knees on the ground.

  They were beside the dark entrance to the bus terminus. A little way off was the yard, full of the buses Saul had seen from the air. In the cavernous building before him were hundreds more. They were packed tight, an intricate puzzle set up and solved day after day; there was a strict order in which they could leave the garage. Each was surrounded by its fellows, no more than two feet away on any side, a maze of the ridiculous-looking vehicles.

  Loplop’s suit was muddy and ruined.

  Moving unsteadily through the sky came the Piper. Saul stumbled across the threshold into the vaulted chamber, dragging Loplop behind him. He ducked out of sight behind the nearest bus, which constituted one of the red labyrinth’s external walls. He shook Loplop’s leg, pulled him towards him. Loplop flopped a little and lay still. He breathed heavily. Saul looked around frantically. He could hear the storm of wings which heralded the Piper’s arrival, and above it the thin whistle of the Lord of the Dance himself. There was a gust of air as the Piper was swept down into the cold hall, spewing feathers in his wake.

  The whistling stopped. Instantly the birds dispersed in panic, and Saul heard a thud as the Piper landed on the roof of a nearby vehicle. For a minute, there was no sound apart from the escaping birds, then footsteps approached across the buses’ roofs.

  Saul let go of Loplop’s legs and flattened himself against the bus beside him. He crawled sidewise, striving for quietness. He felt feral instincts awaken in him. He was dead silent.

  The bus was an old Routemaster, with an open platform at the back. Saul made his way silently into this opening, as the footsteps above him grew nearer. They moved slowly, up and down over the roofs, punctuated by little leaps as the Piper crossed the ravine between two vehicles.

  Saul backed slowly up the stairs without a sound as the footsteps approached. Then again there was a jump, and the landing made him shudder with the vibration as the Piper leapt onto Saul’s bus and strode across its roof.

  The bus was in darkness. Saul moved backwards continually, his hands reaching out to touch the rows of seats on either side. He grasped the steel poles as if the bus was moving, steadying himself. His mouth hung open stupidly. He gazed at the ceiling, his eyes following the steps above. They crossed in a long diagonal, towards where he and Loplop had landed. Then they reached the edge and Saul’s heart lurched into his mouth as the Piper’s body flew past a window on his left. He froze, but nothing happened. The Piper had not seen him. Saul crouched silently, crept forward, came up from underneath the window frame, pushed just enough of his head into the open to see, his hands framing his face, his eyes big, like a Chad graffitied on a wall.

  Below him, the Piper was leaning over Loplop. He was touching him with one hand, his stance like a concerned bystander who finds someone sitting in the street and crying. The Piper’s clothes were shredded from all the tiny bird claws, and they ran red.

  Saul waited. But the Piper did not attack Loplop, just left him in his misery and bloody silence. He stood and slowly turned. Saul ducked down and held himself quite still. His mind suddenly began to replay the grotesque two-step he had seen the Piper perform with Deborah and he felt weak and enraged, and disgusted with himself, and scared. He breathed fast and urgent, with his face down on his knees, hunched on the top floor of the bus, in the dark.

  And then he heard a whistling, and it came from the passenger entrance below. He felt the enormous welling of energy in his arms and legs that fear gave him.

  The Piper’s voice called up to him, as amiable and relaxed as ever.

  “Don’t forget I can smell you, little ratling.” Feet began to mount the stairs and Saul scuttled backwards towards the front of the bus. “What, do you think you can live and sleep and eat in a sewer and I wouldn’t smell you? Honestly, Saul…”

  A dark figure appeared at the top of the stairs.

  Saul rose to his feet.

  “I’m the Lord of the Dance, Saul. You still don’t get it, do you? You really think you’re going to get away from me? You’re dead, Saul, because you just will not dance to my tune.”

  There was fury in his voice as he said that. The Piper stepped forward, and the weak light of the garage hit him. It was enough for Saul’s rat eyes.

  The Piper’s face was a gha
stly white, ruthlessly stripped of color. His hair had been tugged from its neat ponytail by a thousand frantic little claws, and it swept around his face and under his chin and around his throat as if it would strangle him. His clothes were pulled and stripped and tugged and unraveled and stretched in all directions, a collectivity of tiny injuries, and everywhere blood spattered him, streaked his milky face. His expression belied his ruined skin. He stared at Saul with the same relaxed, amiable gaze he had first levelled, the same banal I cheerfulness with which he had greeted Saul, dispatched Deborah, the calm which had only disappeared for one moment when he could not make Saul dance.

  “Saul,” he said, in greeting, and held out his hands.

  He walked forward.

  “I’m not a sadist, Saul,” he said, smiling. He held out his hand as he walked, and when it touched one of the steel poles that rose between seat and ceiling, he gripped it, then grasped it with his other hand. He began to twist it, his body straining and shaking violently with the effort, and the steel slowly bent and tried to stretch, snapped loudly. He did not take his eyes from Saul, nor did his expression change, even as he strained. He yanked at the broken end and the pole broke again, came away in his hand, a twisted cudgel of shining metal.

  “I’m not eager to hurt you,” he continued, resuming his pace. “But you are going to die, because you won’t dance when I tell you to. So you’re going to die now.” The slender club swung down with a flash like an electric arc, and Saul hissed as he saw it move, jerked under the shining thing with a rodent’s nervous grace. The club tore great gouts of stuffing into the air as it eviscerated a seat with its ragged tip.

  The Piper’s strength was awesome and unstoppable, dwarfing the tight rat muscles that reclaimed food had awoken in Saul, his new power that he was so proud of. He rolled away from the club and scuttled backwards to the front end of the bus. He thought of Deborah and rage choked him. His rat side and his humanity oscillated violently, buffeted by the great storm of his anger. He wanted to bite out the Piper’s throat and then he wanted to beat him, to smash his head, pummel him methodically with his fists and then he wanted to claw at his stomach, he wanted to gut him with his sharp claws. And he could do none of these things, because he was not strong enough, and the Piper would kill him.