Read Online Kraken by China Miéville - Free Book Online Page B

buyers’ market in apocalypse. What’s hot in heresy’s Armageddon.”
    “It was all chat, for ages,” Collingswood said. “But since suddenly, something’s actually going on.”
    “And they’re all still insisting it’s their apocalypse that’s going to happen,” Baron said. “And that means trouble. Because they’re fighting about it.”
    “What do you mean something’s going on?” Billy said, but what with his head all over the place and the blatantly actual fact of impossibilities, the scorn he tried to put in it didn’t really take. Collingswood prodded the air, rubbed her fingers together to indicate that she felt something, as if the world had left residue on her.
    “You got to be worried when they’re agreeing about anything,” she said. “Prophets. That’s the last bloody thing you want prophets to do. Even if, especially if, they still don’t agree on details. Heard about them hoodies and asbos rucking in East London?” She shook her head. “Brothers of Vulpus went at it with a bunch of druids. Nasty. Them sickles are sharp. And all over how the world’s going to end.”
    “We’re overstretched, Harrow,” said Baron. “’Course we do other stuff; sacrificed kiddies, animal cruelty, whatnot. But it’s ends-of-the-world where the action is. It’s harder and harder to deal with the apocalypse rumbles. We can’t cope,” he said. “I’m being frank with you. Let alone now something this big has happened. Don’t get me wrong—I got no more time for fortune cookies than you have. Still though. Little while ago, half the prophets in London began to know—know—that the world’s on its way out.” He did not sound as if he was mocking the knowledge. “And I am utterly buggered if I know what that’s about, but then it suddenly got a lot more definite. Round about when you-know-what happened.”
    “Your squid went poof,” Collingswood said.
    “It is not my squid.”
    “Oh it is, though,” she said. “Come on, it is, though.” It felt like his, when she said that. “It happened again,” she said to Baron. “It got closer again.”
    “They brought the public into it,” Baron said. “And that is not on. We go out of our way to keep civies out. But if someone like you, someone with knowledge I mean, does get his face rubbed in it, well, we take advantage.”
    “Some people make better recruits’n others,” Collingswood said. She watched Billy closely. She leaned closer. “Open your gob a minute,” she said. He did not consider saying no. She peered past his teeth. “You shouldn’t have told your mates about the squid,” she said. “You shouldn’t have could.”
    “Vardy doesn’t need me,” Billy said. “He can research all this himself. And I don’t need you.”
    “The professor can be a touch off-putting, I know,” Baron said. He took one of Collingswood’s cigarettes.
    “The way he was talking,” Billy said. “About the squid people. It was like he was one of them.”
    “You’ve put your finger on it,” Baron said. “It is just like he’s one of them. He has a little revelation.”
    “Takes one to know one,” said Collingswood. “Oh yeah.”
    “What?” said Billy. “He was one of …?”
    “Man of faith,” Baron said. “Grew up one of your ultra-born-agains. Creationist, literalist. His dad was an elder. He was in it for years. Lost his faith but not his interest, lucky for us, and not his nous, neither. Every group we look at, he gets it like a convert”—Baron thumped his chest—“because for a moment or two he is.”
    “It’s more than that,” Collingswood said. “He don’t just get it,” she said. She grinned smoke at Billy. She put her hand to her lips, as if she were whispering, though she was not. “He misses it. He’s miserable. He didn’t used to have to put up with none of this random reality cack. He’s pissed off with the world for being all godless and pointless, get me? He’d go back to his old faith tomorrow