Kraken by China Miéville

arriving, as if summoned by drama. Billy stared at Vardy. He had his glasses in his hand, so Vardy was a touch hazy. Billy had actually heard this story, or its outlines, he remembered: an anecdote in a lecture hall. Where they could, his lecturers, with vicarious panache, would spice the stories of their forebears’ theories. They told anecdotes of a polymath Faraday; read Feynman’s achingly sad letter to his dead wife; described Edison’s swagger; eulogised Curie and Bogdanov martyred to their utopian researches. Steenstrup had been part of that dashing company.
    The way Vardy spoke was almost as if he could no-shit see Steenstrup’s performance. As if he were looking at the black weapon thing Steenstrup had lifted from the jar. That leviathan part, more like a tool of alien design than any mouth. Preserved, precious, manifest like the finger bone of a saint. Whatever he had claimed, Steenstrup’s bottle had been a reliquary.
    “That article,” Vardy said. “It’s a fulcrum. With a certain way of looking at things, it would easily be worth breaking the law for. Because it’s sacred text. It’s gospel .”
    B ILLY SHOOK HIS HEAD . H E FELT AS IF HIS EARS WERE RINGING .
    “And that,” Baron said, audibly amused, “is what the professor gets paid for.”
    “What our thieves have been doing is building a library,” said Vardy. “I bet you good money that over the last few months stuff by Verrill and Ritchie and Murray and other, you know, classic teuthic literature has also been nicked.”
    “Jesus,” said Billy. “How do you know so much about this?” Vardy swatted the question away—literally, with his hand—as if it were an insect.
    “It’s what the man do,” Baron said. “Zero to guru in forty-eight hours.”
    “Let’s move on,” said Vardy.
    “So,” Billy said. “You think this cult nicked the book, took the squid, and killed that guy? And now they want me?”
    “Did I say that?” Vardy said. “I can’t be sure these squiddists did anything. Something doesn’t add up, to be honest.”
    Billy started up unhappy performed laughter at that. “D’you think?” he said.
    But Vardy ignored him and went on. “But it’s something to do with them.”
    “Come on,” said Billy. “This is batshit.” He pleaded. “A religion about squid?”
    The little room felt like a trap. Baron and Vardy watched him. “Come on now,” Vardy said. “You can have faith in anything,” Vardy said. “Everything’s fit to be worshipped.”
    “You going to say this is all a coincidence?” Baron said.
    “Your squid just disappeared, right?” Vardy said.
    “And no one’s watching you,” Baron said. “And no one did anything to that poor sod downstairs. It was suicide by bottle.”
    “And you,” said Vardy, staring at Billy, “you don’t feel anything’s wrong with the world, right now. Ah, you do, though, don’t you? I can see. You want to hear this.”
    A silence. “How did they do it?” said Billy.
    “Sometimes you can’t get bogged down in the how,” Baron said. “Sometimes things happen that shouldn’t, and you can’t let that detain you. But the why? we can make headway with.”
    Vardy walked to the window. He was against its light, a dark shape. Billy could not tell if Vardy was facing him or facing out.
    “It’s always bells and smells,” Vardy said, from his obscurity. “Always high-church. They might … abjure the world” —he rolled the pomp of the phrase around—“but for sects like this it’s all rites and icons. That’s the point. Not many cults have had their reformation.” He walked out of the window’s glare. “Or if they have, hello you poor buggers in Freezone, along comes a Council of Trent and the old order bites back. They really have to have their sacraments.” He shook his head.
    Billy paced between posters, cheap artworks and pinboard message exchanges between colleagues he did not know. “If you worship that animal … I’ll put it simply,”