Kraken (12 page)

“Billy please. Didn’t I just save you? Let me help you.”

B
ILLY SHIVERED
. D
ANE LED INDOORS, THROUGH UNTIDY ROWS OF
plastic chairs facing a lectern, to a room at the back. The windows were covered with collages of torn coloured tissue paper, faux stained glass. There were leaflets advertising mother-and-child meetings, house-clearance sales. A storeroom full of engine bits and mouldering papers, a bent bicycle, the detritus of years. “The congregation’ll hide us,” Dane said. “You don’t want to mess with them. We scratch their back.” He pulled open a trapdoor. Light reached up.

“Down there?” said Billy.

Concrete stairs led to a striplit hallway, a sliding gate like the door of an industrial elevator. Behind a grille an older man and a shaven-headed boy in boiler suits held up shotguns. The ambient night sound of London disappeared.

“Is that …?” one of the guards said. “Who is that?”

“You know who
I
am?” Dane said. “Yeah you fucking do. Go tell his holiness I’m here and let us in.” Brusque, but with a gentleness Billy could feel, Dane pushed Billy inside.

Beyond the gate the walls were not featureless. Billy’s mouth opened. Still concrete and windowless, the walls were intricately moulded. Stained by London dirt no scrubbing could remove, a nautilus entwined with an octopus, with a cuttlefish, its flattened frilled mantle like a skirt edge. It encoiled limbs with an argonaut bobbing below its extruded eggcase-house. And squid everywhere. Shaped when the walls were wet.

What a corridor, this council-office walkway. A tentacular border of Disney-malevolent vampire squid; ornery Humboldt; whiplash squid in tuning-fork posture. Their bodies were rendered similar sizes, specificities effaced by shared squidness, teuthic quiddity. Their—the word came to Billy and would not lie down—squiddity.
Architeuthis
in the shabby matter of the building.

The buried room where Dane took Billy was tiny as a ship’s cabin. There was a little bed, a steel toilet. On a table was a plate of curry, a cup of something hot. Billy almost wept at the smell.

“You’re in shock,” Dane said, “and you’re starving and knackered. You don’t understand what’s going on. Get that down you and we’ll talk.”

Dane took a forkful—to show it was safe, Billy thought. He ate. The drink was too-sweet chocolate.

“Where are we?”

“The Teuthex’ll explain.”

What’s a Teuthex?
Billy felt like he was swimming. His exhaustion increased. He saw against a dark background. His thoughts faded in and out like a radio station. This was more, he realised, than tiredness.

“Oh,” he said. A welling of alarm.

“Now don’t worry,” said Dane.

“You, what’s, you …” Billy jiggled the cup and stared at it. Put the spiked thing heavily down before he dropped it, as if that mattered. Black came in at him like an ink cloud. “What did you do?”

“Don’t worry,” Dane said.

“You need this,” Dane said.

Dane said another thing but his voice was too far away now.
Bastards
, Billy tried to say. Part of him told another part of him that Dane would not rescue him just to kill him now, but most of him was too tired to be afraid. Billy was in the dark quiet, and just before it closed behind him and over him he swung his own legs onto the bed and lay down, proud that no one did it for him.

I
NTO SLEEP’S BENTHOS AND DEEPER.
A
SLANDER THAT THE DEEPEST
parts are lightless. There are moments of phosphor with animal movement. Somatic glimmers, and in this trench of sleep those lights were tiny dreams.

A long time sleep, and blinks of vision. Awe, not fear.

Billy might surface and for a moment open his flesh eyelids not his dream ones, and two or three times saw people looking down at him. He heard always only the close-up swirl of water, except in deep dream once through muffling miles of sea a woman said, “When’ll he wake?”

He was night-krill was what he was, a single minuscule eye, looking at absence specked with presence. Plankton-Billy saw an instant’s symmetry. A flower of limbflesh outreaching. Slivers of fin on a mantle. Red rubber meat. That much he knew already.

He saw something small or in the distance. Then black after black, then it came back closer. Straight-edged, hard-lined. An anomaly of angles in that curved vorago.

It was the specimen. It was his kraken, his giant squid quite still—still in suspension in its tank, the tank and its motionless dead-thing contents adrift in deep. Sinking toward where there is no below. The once-squid going home.

One last thing, that might have announced itself as such, the finality was so unequivocal. Something beneath the descending tank, at which from way above though already deep in pitch tiny Billy-ness stared.

Under the tank was something utter and dark and moving, something so slowly rising, and endless.

Chapter Fifteen

C
OLLINGSWOOD, WHOSE BRIEF THIS SORT OF THING WAS, HAD
spent a couple of hours talking to a woman who referred to herself as an “asset” about some of the esoterica of material science. The woman had emailed a list of names, of researchers and grifters. “This sort of stuff changes all the time,” she had warned. “Can’t vouch for any of them in particular.”

“I called the first couple, guv,” Collingswood said, “but it was a bit tricky on the phone, you get me? Some of them gave me more names. I don’t think any of them knew what I was on about. I need to see them face-to-face. You sure you want to come? Ain’t you got shit to do?” She could rarely parse Baron’s brain, which was to be expected: it was only the inexperienced and unskilled who sent their thinkings all over the place, profligate and foolish.

“Indeed,” Baron said. “But that’s what mobile phones are for, aren’t they? This is the best lead we have.”

They traced a zigzag route through London, Baron in his plain clothes, Collingswood in her costume-like uniform, hoping to surprise their informers into helpful candour. There were not many names on the list—infolding and weightomancy were arcana among the arcane, a geeky byway. Baron and Collingswood went to offices, community colleges, the back rooms of high-street shops. “Is there somewhere private we can talk?” Baron would say, or Collingswood would open with, “What d’you know about making big shit little?”

One name on the list was a science teacher. “Come on, boss, let’s give the class a treat, eh?” Collingswood said, and marched in past pupils gaping from behind Bunsen burners. “George Carr?” Collingswood said. “What do you know about making big shit little?”

“E
NJOY THAT
?” C
ARR SAID
. T
HEY WERE WALKING IN THE PLAYGROUND
. “What was it, some science teacher tell you you’d never amount to anything?”

“Nah,” she said. “They all knew I’d amount to fucking loads.”

“What the hell does a cult squad want with me?”

“We’re just chasing a few leads, sir,” Baron said.

“Ever flog your skills?” Collingswood said. “Shrinkage for hire?”

“No. I’m not good enough and not interested enough. I get what I need out of it.”

“Which is what?”

“Come on holiday with me one day,” he said. “Three weeks of clothes in one carry-on bag.”

“Could I bring my dog?” Baron said.

“What? No way. Condensing something that complicated’s out of my league. I might just get it in, maybe, but Fido’s not going to be fetching sticks on the beach at the other end.”

“But it’s possible.”

“Sure. There’s a few people could do it.” He stroked his stubble. “Has anyone given you Anders’s name?”

Baron and Collingswood glanced at each other. “Anders?” Baron said.

“Anders Hooper. Runs a shop in Chelsea. Funny little specialist place. He’s very good.”

“So why haven’t we heard of him?” Baron said, waving his list.

“Because he’s only just started. Been doing it about a year, professionally. Now
he’s
good enough and keen enough to do it for lucre.”

“So how come
you’ve
heard of him?” Collingswood said.

Carr smiled. “I taught him how to do it. Tell him his Mr. Miyagi says hi.”

•   •   •

H
OOPER’S SHOP SHARED SPACE ON A TERRACE WITH A DELICATESSEN
, a travel bookshop, a florist. It was called Nippon This! Characters stared from the window with manga enthusiasm beside robot kits and nunchuck tat. Inside, a third of the small shelf space was taken up with books on the philosophy, mathematics, and design of origami. There were stacks of books of fold patterns. Incredible examples—dinosaurs, fish, klein bottles, geometric intricacies, all made from single uncut sheets.

“Alright,” said Collingswood. She smiled in appreciation. “Alright, that’s quite cool.”

A young man came out from the back. “Morning,” he said. Anders Hooper was tall, mixed-race, wearing a Gundam T-shirt. “Can I …” He hesitated at sight of Collingswood’s uniform. “Help you?”

“Might be,” she said. “Sell enough to make your rent on this place?”

“Who are you?”

“Answer the question, Mr. Hooper,” said Baron.

“… Sure. There’s a lot of interest in anime and stuff. We’re one of the best suppliers …”

“You can get all this shit off the Internet,” Collingswood said. “People come here?”

“Sure. There’s …”

“What about your orifuckinggami?” she said. He blinked.

“What about it? That’s more specialist, of course …” He kept his mind pretty cloudy, but
what they know
? Collingswood got from him, as abruptly as if announced by a beep.

“And you’re the man, right? Shit, we’re in effing Chelsea. How d’you pay? We spoke to Mr. Carr. Says hello by the way. He told us you do custom folding. Special jobs. Sound right, Anders?”

He leaned on the counter. Looked from Baron to Collingswood. He glanced to either side as if someone might be listening.

“What is it you want to know?” he said. “I haven’t done anything illegal.”

“No one said you did,” Collingswood said. “Someone fucking did though. Why did you get into all this?”

“For minimisation,” Anders said. “It’s not just about pressure, or forcing things. It’s about topography, that sort of thing. Someone like Carr—and I’m not being disrespectful, it was him who got me started—but basically, you know, you’re sort of …” He made kneading motions. “You’re shoving stuff in. You’re stuffing a suitcase.”

“More or less what he said,” Baron said.

“If that’s what you want to do, then, you know, fine. But …” His hands tried to describe something. “What you’re trying to do with planurgy is get things into other spaces, you know? Real things, with edges and surfaces, and all that. With origami you’re still dealing with all that surface area. There’s no cutting, you know? The point is you can unfold it, too. You get it?”

“And you don’t have any problems with the fact that this is all, you know,
solid,”
said Collingswood.

“Not as much as you might think. There’s been a revolution in origami over the last few years … What?”

Collingswood was pissing herself laughing. Baron joined in. After a couple of seconds Anders had the grace to snigger.

“Well, I’m sorry,” he said, “but there has been. Computers’ve helped. We’re in the era of—alright, you’ll like this one, too
—extreme
origami. It’s all about maths.” He looked at Collingswood. “What’s your tradition?”

“Traditions are for ponces,” she said.

He laughed. “If you say so. When you start bringing in a bit of abmaths, factoring in visionary numbers, that sort of thing—does this mean anything to you?”

“Get on with it.”

“Sorry. My point is, there are ways of …” He leaned over the cash register and held the little digital display between fingertip and thumb. He folded it over.

Collingswood watched it go. Anders flipped it over and over, tucked it behind the keys. He gently concertinaed. The bulky thing collapsed on itself in fold-lines, different aspects of unbroken planes slipping behind each other as if seen from several directions at once. Anders folded, and within a minute and a half what lay on the desk, still connected to a power cord (which now slipped behind an impossible crease into the things’ innards), was a hand-sized Japanese crane. The showing face of one of the bird’s wings was a corner of the cash display, the other was the front of the money drawer. Its neck was a flattened wedge of its buttons. “If you pull there you can make its wings flap,” Anders said.

“Cool,” said Collingswood. “And it ain’t broke?”

“That’s the point.” He manipulated its edges, unfolded the thing back into its original shape. Pressed its keys and it pinged and opened with a little cash chink.

“Nice,” said Baron. “So you make a bit of dosh folding cash registers into birds.”

“Oh yeah,” Anders deadpanned. “Very lucrative.”

“But wouldn’t that still weigh the same?”

“There’s ways of folding into sort of forgettable space, I suppose you could say, so the world won’t notice the weight until you open it.”

“How much would you charge to,” Baron said, “for example, fold up a person? Into a package? That you could post?”

“Ah. Well. There’s a lot of surfaces in a person, and you’ve got to keep track of them all. That’s a lot of folds. Is that what this is about? That bloke who wanted to surprise his friend?”

Collingswood and Baron stared at him. “Which bloke,” Baron said, “would that be?”

“Shit, did something happen? The guy was playing a trick on his mate. Had me make him and his son up like a book. Paid me extra to hand-deliver him. Said he didn’t trust the post. I say
said
—took me ages to have a clue what he was on about, the way he talked. Pain in my arse getting there, but he made it worth my—”

“Getting where?” Baron said.

He recited Billy’s address. “What happened?” Anders said.

“Tell us
everything you can
about this man,” Baron said. He held up his notebook. Collingswood spread her hands, tried to feel residues in the room. “And what,” said Baron, “do you mean ‘his son’?”