Kraken by China Miéville Read Free Book Online Page B

secret?”
    “Are they?” said video-Vardy.
    “Well you tell me you tell me. I can’t get to them and you know me so it’s, you know it’s tantalising is what it is.”
    “Tenets?”
    “Got me. What I hear,” the man made gossip-talk movements with his fingers, “ all I can tell you is they talk about the dark, the rise, the you know the reaching out. They love that the outreaching, hafay …”
    “What?”
    “Hafay hafay, where’s your Greek professor? Alpha phi eta , hafe, hapsis if you like, touchy touchy, that’s what they say—it’s a haptic story, this one.”
    Vardy froze the picture. “He’s sort of a freelance research assistant. A fan . He’s a collector.”
    “Of what?” Billy said.
    “Religions. Cults.”
    “How the hell do you collect a cult?”
    “By joining it.”
    O UTSIDE THE WINDOW WERE THE WIND-BOISTEROUS LIMBS OF trees. The room felt very close. Billy looked away from the light outside.
    The man on-screen was not the only one, Vardy said. A small obsessive tribe. Heresy geeks, going sect to sect, accumulating creeds as greedy as any Renfields. Soldiers of the Saviour Worm one week, Opus Dei or the Bobo Dreds the next, with genius for devotion and sudden brief bursts of sincerity sufficient to be welcomed as neophytes. Some were always cynically in it for the notch on the bedpost, others Damascene certain for two or three days that this one was different , until they remembered their own natures and excommunicated themselves with indulgent chuckles.
    They gathered to compare gnoses, in Edgware Road cafés over sheesha or pubs in Primrose Hill or somewhere called Almagan Yard, mostly their favoured hangouts in the “trap streets,” Vardy said. They traded dissident mysteries in vague competition, as if faiths were Top Trumps cards.
    “What about your apocalypse, then?” “Well, the universe is a leaf on the time-tree, and come autumn it’s going to shrivel and fall off into hell.” Murmurs of admiration. “Ooh, nice one. My new lot say ants are going to eat the sun.”
    “H E WANTS TO JOIN THESE ‘TOOTHIES,’ YOU SEE,” V ARDY SAID. “H E’S a completist. But he can’t find them.”
    “What’s a trap street?” Billy was ignored.
    “Toothies,” Baron said. “Get it? Harrow, sit down.” Billy had stood up and was walking toward the door. “Toothies,” Baron said. “Get it? Tyuh-tyuh-tyuh -Tyoothies.”
    “I’ve had enough,” Billy said.
    “Sit down,” Vardy said.
    “We’re the bloody cult squad, Harrow,” Baron said. “Why d’you think we’re called in? Who do you think’s responsible for what’s going on?”
    “Teuthies.” Vardy smiled. “Worshippers of the giant squid.”

Chapter Six
    “T HE ARTICLE THAT GOT NICKED,” SAID B ARON . B ILLY STOOD still, his hand on the doorknob. “It’s where old Japetus names Architeuthis for the first time. ’Course you can get hold of a reprint, but originals are a bit special, aren’t they?”
    “He was refuting folklore,” said Vardy. “The whole piece is him pooh-poohing some fairy story, and saying, ‘No no, there’s a rational explanation, gentlemen.’ You could say it’s where the sea monster meets …” He gestured around him. “This. The modern world.” The stress was mockery. “Out of fable into science. The end of an old order. Right?” He wagged his finger no . Baron watched him indulgently.
    “Death of legend?” Vardy said. “Because he gives it a name? He said it was Ar-chi-teu-this . Not ‘great’ squid, Billy. Not ‘big,’ not even ‘giant.’ ‘Ruling’.” He blinked. “It rules? That’s him being faithful to the Enlightenment? He shoves it into taxonomy, yeah, but as what? As a bloody demiurge.
    “He was a prophet. At the end of the lecture, you know what he did? Oh, he had props. He was a performer like Billy Graham. Brings out a jar, and what’s in it? A beak.” Vardy snap-snapped his fingers. “Of a giant squid.”
    The light was going: some cloud cover