King Rat

by China Miéville

  The word stayed in the air after he had spoken it.

  King Rat spoke again.

  “I’m your dad…”

  “No you fucking aren’t, you weird old fucked-up spiritual degenerate,” replied Saul instantly. “I might have your blood in my veins, you fucking rapist bastard, but you aren’t shit to me.”

  Saul smacked himself on the forehead, laughing bitterly.

  “I mean, hello? ‘Your mother was a rat, and I’m your uncle.’ Jesus, nice one—playing me like a fucking idiot! And…” Saul paused and jerked his finger viciously at King Rat, “and, that goddamn fucking lunatic Piper who wants me dead only knows about me because of you.”

  Saul sat down hard and held his head in his hands. King Rat watched him.

  “I mean, I keep saying I’ve sorted it out, right?” Saul murmured. “And I just can’t stop thinking about it. You killed my father, you rapist shit, and when you did that you let some fucking spirit of darkness out after me, you gave him my fucking address, and, what, I’m supposed to go ‘Daddy!’?” Saul shook his head in disgust. He felt his gut twist with contempt and hatred. “You can fuck off. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “So what’re you after, an apology?”

  King Rat was scornful. He moved towards Saul.

  “What do you want? We’re blood. It was half an age since I left, since you were a little Godfer in the fat man’s arms. I could clock you getting flabby. It was time to join your old dad, the cutpurse king. We’re blood.”

  Saul stared up at him.

  “No, fucker, I don’t want shit from you.” Saul stood. “What I want is out.” He moved off behind the throne, turned to face King Rat. “You can deal with the Piper on your own. He only wants me because of you, you know? You’ve been bragging about me, you stupid shit. You don’t give a fuck about family. You raped my mum so you could have your weapon. The Piper knows it; he called me the secret weapon. I know what I mean to you. I know I’m a good way on getting at him, because he can’t control me.”

  “But he only wants me dead because of you. So, tell you what.”

  Saul moved backwards as he spoke, towards the room’s peculiar exit.

  “Tell you what. You deal with the Piper as best you can, and I’ll look after myself. Agreed?”

  And Saul looked King Rat in the eye, those eyes he could still not see, and he left the room.

  Up above the sewers: in the sky, over the slate. Out in the air. Saul fingered the skin over his bruises and felt it stretched out taut and split. He gazed at London, spread out before him, unfolding, the underworld threatening to burst through, to rupture its surface tension. It was dark; his life was always dark now. He was becoming a night creature.

  His body hurt. His head ached, his arms were scratched and stretched, his muscles burned with deep bruises. But he could not stay still. He felt a desperate eagerness to work through it, to burn the pain out of his body. He swung meaninglessly around girders and antennae, loose-limbed and elegant like a gibbon. He was suddenly very hungry, but he remained on the roofs for a while, running and jumping over low walls and skylights. He straddled the intricacies of St. Pancras station, and sped along the spine of roofs which jutted out behind it like a dinosaur’s tail.

  This was the realm of the arches. Weird little businesses waged a battle against empty space, cramming into the unlikely hollows below the railway lines. They proclaimed themselves with crude signs.

  OFFICE EQUIPMENT CHEAP.

  WE DELIVER.

  Saul descended to street level. He was fighting to channel the force of elation which had flooded through him at his renunciation of King Rat. He was fragile, ready to burst into tears or hysterics. He was captivated by London.

  Someone approached him from around a corner: a woman in heels, he could hear, a brave soul walking this area alone at night. He did not want to scare her; so he slumped against a wall and slid down to the floor, just a comatose drunk.

  The associations of homelessness struck him and, as the heels clicked by him unseen, he thought of Deborah and he felt his throat catch. And then it was easy to think of his father.

  But Saul did not have time for this, he decided. He leapt up and followed his nose to the dustbins of this odd realm, a world where the streets were empty off houses, where the only things that surrounded him were the peculiar businesses, Victorian throwbacks.

  The bins were not rich in pickings. Without domestic rubbish there was little to them. Saul crept back towards King’s Cross. He found his way to the dumping grounds of the all-night eateries, and amassed a huge pile of food. He played games with himself, refusing to allow himself to eat a mouthful until he had collected everything he wanted.

  He sat in the shade of a skip in a cul-de-sac by a Chinese take-away and fondled the food he had collected, chunks of greasy meat and noodles.

  Saul gorged himself. He ate as he had not for days. He ate to fill all the cavities inside him, to drive out anything that had been left behind.

  King Rat had used him as bait, but the plan had gone wrong. The Piper had pre-empted his plan.

  As Saul stuffed himself, he felt an echo of that surge of strength that had coursed through him the first time he ate reclaimed food, found food, rat food.

  The Piper still wanted him dead, of course, now more than ever. He did not think he would have to wait too long before the Piper came for him.

  It was a new chapter, he reflected. Away from King Rat. Out of the sewer. He ate until his belly felt dangerously taut, and then resumed his position in the skyline.

  Saul felt as if he would burst, not from food but from something that had been released inside him. I should be mad, he thought suddenly, and I’m not. I haven’t gone mad.

  He could hear sounds from all over London, a murmuring. And as he listened, it resolved itself into its components, cars and arguments and music. He felt as if the music was everywhere, all around him, a hundred different rhythms in counterpoint, a tapestry being woven underneath him. The towers of the city were needles, and they caught at the threads of music and wound them together, tightened them around Saul. He was a still point, a peg, a hook on which to wind the music. It grew louder and louder, Rap and Classical and Soul and House and Techno and Opera and Folk and Jazz and Jungle, always Jungle, all the music built on drum and bass, ultimately.

  He had not listened to music for weeks, not since King Rat had come for him, and he had forgotten it. Saul stretched as if waking from a sleep. He heard the music with new ears.

  He realized that he had defeated the city. He crouched on the roof (of what building he did not know) and looked out over London at an angle from which the city was never meant to be seen. He had defeated the conspiracy of architecture, the tyranny by which the buildings that women and men had built had taken control of them, circumscribed their relations, confined their movements. These monolithic products of human hands had turned on their creators, and defeated them with common sense, quietly installed themselves as rulers. They were as insubordinate as Frankenstein’s monster, but they had waged a more subtle campaign, a war of position more effective by far.

  Saul kicked carelessly off and stalked across the roofs and walls of London.

  He could not put off thinking for ever.

  Tentatively, he considered his position.

  King Rat was no longer with him. Anansi was his own man, would do whatever made him and his kingdom safest. Loplop was mad and deaf and maybe dead.

  The Piper wanted to kill them all.

  Saul was on his own. He realized that he had no plan, and felt a curious peace. There was nothing he could do. He was waiting for the Piper to come to him. Until then he could go underground, could investigate London, could find his friends…

  He was afraid of them now. When he let himself think of them, he missed them so much it made him ache, but he was not made of the same stuff as them any more, and he was afraid that he did not know how to be their friend. What could he say to them, now that he lived in a
different world?

  But perhaps he didn’t live in a different world. He lived where he wanted, he thought suddenly, furiously. Wasn’t that what King Rat had told him, all that time ago? He lived wherever he wanted, and even if he didn’t live in the same world as them any more, he could visit, couldn’t he?

  Saul realized how much he wanted to see Fabian.

  And he remembered as well that the Piper wanted to kill him precisely because he could move between the worlds. He felt a fleeting sense of loneliness as he thought about the Piper, and then he realized that the smell of rat was all around him, was always all around him. He stood slowly.

  He realized that the smell of London was the smell of rat.

  He began to hiss for attention, and lithe heads poked out of piles of rubbish. He barked a quick order and the ranks began to approach him, tentatively at first and then with eagerness. He shouted for reinforcements and seething waves of filthy brown bodies boiled over the lip of the roof, and from chimneys and fire escapes and hidden corners, like a film of spilt liquid running backwards, they congealed around him, tightly wound, an explosion frozen at the flashpoint, hovering with suppressed violence, hanging on his words.

  He would not face the Piper alone, he realized. He would have all the rats in London on his side.

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  Sometimes, between putting food in her mouth and sleeping and then Jungle, seeing Pete, Natasha remembered other things.

  She remembered something; she had a sense of being needed for something. She could not be sure what it was until somebody called her. She fumbled with the phone, confused.

  “Yo yo Tasha!”

  The voice was bizarre, muted and enthusiastic. She did not recognize it at all.

  “Tash man, you there? It’s Fingers. I got your message about Terror and, yeah, that’s no problem. We’re going to stick you on the poster, make out like you’re famous. No one’s gonna admit they haven’t heard of you.” The man on the telephone yelled with laughter.

  Natasha muttered that she did not understand.

  There was a long pause.

  “Look, Tash, you faxed me, man—told me you wanted to spin some at Junglist Terror…you know, couple of weeks time? Well, that’s fine. I wanted to know what name you’re under, because we’re chucking out some last-minute posters. Going to do a blitz down Camden, down your way too.”

  What name? Natasha gathered herself, played the phone call by ear, pretended she understood what was happening.

  “Put me in as Rudegirl K.”

  That was a name she used. Was that what he wanted, the man? Gradually she began to remember, and to understand. Junglist Terror, near the Elephant and Castle. It came back. She smiled delightedly. Had she asked for an opportunity to play? She could not remember that, but she could play Wind City, she didn’t mind…

  Fingers rang off. He seemed perturbed, but Natasha only promised to come on the date he told her, and agreed that she would spread the word. She held the receiver against her ear for a little bit too long after he had rung off. The buzz confused her again, until gentle hands reached around her head and disentangled her from the machine.

  Pete was there, she realized with a jolt of pleasure. He put the receiver down, turned her to look at him. She wondered how long he had been with her. She looked up at him, smiled beatifically.

  “I forgot to tell you that, Natasha,” he said. “I thought we should take the opportunity to show the world what we’ve been doing. So we’re going to play Wind City. OK?”

  Natasha nodded and smiled.

  Pete smiled back. His face; Natasha saw his face. It seemed hurt, she saw long thin scabs adorning it, but she did not really notice them somehow, he grinned so happily. His face was very pale, but he smiled at her with the same wide-eyed pleasure she always associated with him. Such a sweetie, she thought, so green. She smiled.

  Pete backed away from her, holding her hand until he was out of reach.

  “Let’s play some music, Natasha,” he suggested.

  “Oh yes,” she breathed. That would be excellent. A little Drum and Bass. She could lose herself in that, take the tunes apart in her mind, see how they fitted together. Maybe they could play Wind City.

  All of Saul’s friends were accounted for, apart from the man Kay. As he considered the piece of paper he held, the queasy foreboding in Crowley’s stomach grew. He was afraid he knew exactly where Kay was.

  He felt ridiculous, like a cop from some American TV show, operating on hunches, responding to preposterous gut feelings. He had sought to cross-refer the data that had been gathered on the ruined body in the tube with the information they had on Saul’s friend Kay, who had been missing now for a couple of weeks.

  For a while, Crowley had played with the idea that Kay could be behind all this. It would be so much easier to attribute the carnage he had seen to the other missing man. He kept his conjectures to himself. His unwillingness to see Saul as the killer made no sense to those around him, and he could understand why. There was just something, there was just something…the thoughts went around and around in his head…it did not work; he had seen Saul; there was something else happening.

  He jeopardized control of the investigation with his disquiet. He was reduced to scribbled notes to himself, exchanging favors with laboratory technicians, the usual channels too risky for his ideas. He could not sit with his men and women and brainstorm, bouncing possibilities back and forth, because they knew full well who they were looking for. His name was Saul Garamond, he was an escaped prisoner and a dangerous man.

  So Crowley was cut off from discussion, the medium in which his best work was done. He was afraid that without it his notions were stunted, half truths, soiled with the muck of his own mind that no one could brush off for him. But he had no choice; he was atomized.

  Kay as killer. That was one of the ideas that he must dispense with. Kay was peripheral, not close to any of the main protagonists in this drama. He had even less motive than Saul for any of these actions. He was even less physically impressive than Saul.

  And besides, his blood group matched that which had covered the walls of Mornington Crescent station.

  The fragments of jaw that could be analyzed seemed to match Kay’s.

  Nothing was certain, not with a body as destroyed as that had been. But Crowley believed he knew who they had found.

  And he still, he still, could not believe that it was Saul they wanted.

  But he could talk to no one about this.

  Nor could he share the pity he felt, a pity which was welling up inside him more with every day, a pity which was threatening to dwarf his horror, his anger, his disgust, his fear, his confusion. A growing pity for Saul. Because if he was right, if Saul was not the one responsible for all the things Crowley had seen, then Saul was right in the middle of something horrendous, a kaleidoscope of bizarre and bloody murder. And Crowley might feel isolated, might feel cut off from those around him, but if he was right, then Saul… Saul was truly alone.

  Fabian returned to his room and immediately felt bad again. The only time now that he did not feel oppressed by isolation was when he got on his bike and rode around London. He was spending more and more of his time on the road these days, burning up the junk calories he got from the crap he was eating. He was a wiry man, and his hours and hours on the road were stripping the final ounces of excess flesh from him. He was being pared down to skin and muscle.

  He had ridden for miles in the cold and his skin blushed with the change of temperature. He sweated unpleasantly from his exertions, his perspiration cold on him.

  Straight south he had ridden, down Brixton Hill, past the prison, through Streatham, down towards Mitcham. Real suburbia, houses flattening down, shopping districts becoming more and more flat and soulless. He had ridden up and down and around a round
abouts and along sidestreets: he needed to cross traffic, to wait his turn on the road, to look behind him and indicate brief thanks to someone letting him in, he needed to cut in front of that Porsche and ignore the fact that he had pissed them off…

  This was Fabian’s social life now. He interacted on the fucking tarmac, communicated with people passing him in their cars. This was as close as he came to relationships now. He did not know what was happening.

  So he rode around and around, stopped to buy crisps and chocolate, orange-juice maybe, ate on the saddle, standing outside the poky little groceries and newsagents he now frequented, balancing his bike next to the faded boards advertising ice-cream and cheap photocopying.

  And then back out onto the road, back into the cursory conversations of the roadways, his dangerous flirtations with cars and lorries. There was no such thing as society, not any more, not for him. He had been stripped of it, reduced to begging for social scraps like signalling and brake lights, the rudenesses and courtesies of transport. These were the only times now that anyone took notice of him, modified their behavior because of him.

  Fabian was so lonely it made him ache.

  His answering machine blinked at him. He pressed play and the policeman Crowley’s voice jerked into life. He sounded forlorn, and Fabian did not think it was just the medium which was having that effect. Fabian listened with the contempt and exasperation he always felt when he dealt with the police.

  “…pector Crowley here, Mr. Morris. Ummm… I was wondering if you might be able to help me again with a couple of questions. I wanted to talk to you about your friend Kay and…well…perhaps you could call me.”

  There was a pause.

  “You don’t play the flute, do you, Mr. Morris? Would you or Saul have known anyone who does?”

  Fabian froze. He did not hear what else Crowley said. The voice continued for a minute and stopped.

  A wave of gooseflesh engulfed him briefly and was gone. He fumbled, stabbed at the rewind button.

  “…ould call me. You don’t play the flute, do you, Mr. Morris?”