King Rat

KING RAT

ChinaMieville

“A genuine contribution toLondon ’s subterranean mythology .. .

It’s humane and delinquent. And it bites”

IAIN SINCLAIR

“Full of the rank energy of Jungle rhythms, China Mieville’s rat’s nest of a book gives a new meaning to the term ‘alternativeLondon ’, 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 ofSoho and Battersea. A knotted, toothy, thought provoking read.”

M. JOHN HARRISON

“China Mieville 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.”

CHRISTOPHER FOWLER

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

RAMSEYCAMPBELL

“KING RAT takes us out of the high courts of fairy tale, away from the romanticised city streets of many current fantasies, down into
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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”

CHARLES DE LINT

CHINAMIEVILLE

KING RAT

PAN BOOKS fts

First published 1998 by Macmillan

This edition published 1999 by Pan Books an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd

Pan Macmillan,20 New Wharf Road,London I’ll 9RR

Basingstoke andOxford

Associated companies throughout the world

www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 0 330 37098 7

Copyright © China Mieville 1998

Copyright of China Mieville to be identified is the aiuhoi of this work has been asserted by him in

.Kaini.inee with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

57986

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Phototypeset by Intype London Ltd

Printed and bound inGreat Britain by

Mackays of Chatham pic,Chatham,Kent

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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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 whoprovided 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. ALondon Sometin’...

Tek9

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.

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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 inLondon 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 enterLondon 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.

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The rhythms ofLondon 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 ofNorth London , the city building up below it as it neared theHolloway 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.

He could feel the presence of the population around him. After days in a tent on theSuffolk coast, the weight of ten million people so close to him seemed to make the air vibrate. The tube was full of garish colours and bare flesh, as people headed to clubs and parties.

His father would probably be waiting for him. He knew Saul was coming back, and he would surely make an effort to be welcoming, forfeiting his usual evening in the pub to greet his son. Saul already resented him for that. He felt gauche and uncharitable, but he despised his father’s faltering attempts to communicate. He was happier when the two of them avoided each other. Being surly was easy, and felt more honest.

By the time his tube train burst out of the tunnels of the Jubilee Line it was dark. Saul knew the route.

The darkness transformed the rubble behindFinchley Road into a dimly glimpsed no-man’s-land, but he
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was able to fill in the details he could not see, even down to the tags and the graffiti. Burner. Nax. Coma.

He knew the names of the intrepid little rebels clutching their magic markers, and he knew where they had been.

The grandiose tower of theGaumontState cinema jutted into the sky on his left, a bizarre totalitarian monument among the budget groceries and hoardings of Kilburn High Road. Saul could feel the cold through the windows and he wrapped his coat around him as the train neared Willesden station. The passengers had thinned. Saul left only a very few behind him as he got out of the carriage.

Outside the station he huddled against the chill. The air smelt faintly of smoke from some local bonfire, someone clearing his allotment. Saul set off down the hill towards the library.

He stopped at a takeaway and ate as he walked, moving slowly to avoid spilling soy sauce and vegetables down himself. Saul was sorry the sun had gone down. Willesden lent itself to spectacular sunsets. On a day like today, when there were few clouds, its low skyline let the light flood the streets, pouring into the strangest crevices; the windows that faced each other bounced the rays endlessly back and forth between themselves and sent it hurtling in unpredictable directions; the rows and rows of brick glowed as if lit from within.

Saul turned into the backstreets. He wound through the cold until his father’s house rose before him.

Terragon Mansions was an ugly Victorian block, squat and mean-looking for all its size. It was fronted by the garden: a strip of dirty vegetation frequented only by dogs. His father lived on the top floor. Saul looked up and saw that the lights were on. He climbed the steps and let himself in, glancing into the darkness of the bushes and scrub on either side.

He ignored the huge lift with its steel-mesh door, not wanting its groans to announce him. Instead he crept up the flights of stairs and gently unlocked his father’s door.

The flat was freezing.

Saul stood in the hall and listened. He could hear the sound of the television from behind the sitting room door. He waited, but his father was silent. Saul shivered and looked around him.

He knew he should go in, should rouse his father from slumber, and he even got as far as reaching for the door. But he stopped and looked at his own room.

He sneered at himself in disgust, but he crept towards it anyway.

He could apologize in the morning. I thought you were asleep, Dad. I heard you snoring. I came in drunk and fell into bed. I was so knackered I wouldn’t have been any kind of company anyway. He cocked an ear, heard only the voices of one of the late-night discussion programmes his father so loved, muffled and pompous. Saul turned away and slipped into his room.