Read Online Looking for Jake by China Miéville - Free Book Online

the middle of the leaflet text. It reads:
    Â 
    Charles,
    Â 
    In haste. So sorry I could not reach you sooner — obviously phone not an option. I
told
you I could work this out: Fiona was only on-site because of me, but I modestly listed her as principal for politics’ sake. Charles, we’re about to go in and I’m telling you even from where I’m standing I can see the evidence, this is the real thing. Next time, next time. Or get down here! I’m sending this first class (of course!) so when you get it rush down here. But you know Varmin Way’s reputation — it’s restless, will probably be gone. But come find me! I’ll be here at least.
    Â 
    Edgar
    Â 
    At the end of this note is appended, in the same handwriting as that of the package’s introductory note:
    Â 
    What a bastard! I take it this was when you and he stopped seeing eye to eye? Why did he cut you out like that, and why so coyly?
    Â 
    The leaflet then continues:
]
    Â 
    Initial investigation shows that the new Varmin Way–overlooking walls of the houses now separated on Purrett Road are flat concrete. Those of Rippolson Road, though, are of similar brick to their fronts, bearing the usual sigil of the VF’s identity, and are broken by small windows at the very top, through the net curtains of which nothing can be seen. (See ‘On Neomural Variety’, by H. Burke, WBVF Working Papers no. 8)
    Those innards of Varmin Way which can be seen from its adjoining streets bear all the usual signs of VF morphology (are, in other words, apparently unremarkable), and are in accordance with earlier documented descriptions of the subject. In this occurrence, it being short, FR and EN were able to conduct the Bowery Resonance Experiment, stationing themselves at either end of the VF and shouting to each other down its lengths (until forced to stop by externalities). [
Here in Edgar’s hand has been inserted

‘Some local thuggee threatening to do me in if I didn’t shut up!’] Each could clearly hear the other, past the kinks in this configuration of Varmin Way.
    More experiments are to follow.
    Â 
    Â 
    [
When I reached this point I was trembling. I had to stop, leave the room, drink some water, force myself to breathe slowly. I’m tempted to add more about this, about the sudden and threatened speculations these documents raised in me, but I think I should stay out of it.
    Â 
    Immediately after the report of the sighting was another, similarly produced pamphlet.
]
    URGENT: Report of an Aborted Investigation.
    Present: FR, EN, BH.
    [
Added here is another new comment in Charles’s nameless contact’s hand. It reads:
‘Dread to think how gutted you were to be replaced by Bryn as new favourite. What exactly did you do
to get Edgar so pissed off
?’
]
    Â 
    At 11:20 p.m. on Saturday 13 February 1988, from its end on Rippolson Road, an initial examination was made of Varmin Way. Photographs were taken establishing the VF’s identity (figure 1). [
Figure 1 is a surprisingly good-quality reproduction of a shot, showing a street sign by a wall, standing at leg-height on two little metal or wooden posts. The image is at a peculiar angle, which I think is the result of the photograph not being taken straight on, but from Rippolson Road, beyond. In an unusual old serif font, the sign reads
Varmin Way.]
    As the party prepared for the expedition, certain events took place or were insinuated which led to a postponement and quick regrouping at a late-night café on Plumstead High Street. [
What were those ‘certain events’? The pointed imprecision suggested to me something deliberately not committed to paper, something that the readers of this report, or perhaps a subgroup of them, would understand. These writings are a strange mix of the scientifically exact and the imprecise — even the failure to specify the café is surprising. But it is the baleful vagueness