Part 4 (1/2)

BWVF PAPERS, NO. 223. JULY 1981.

uncertain, but there is little reason to doubt his veracity. Both specimens tested exactly as one Looking for Jake, By China Mieville would expect for VD, suggesting no difference between VD and VF at even a molecular level.

Any distinction must presumably be at the level of gross morphology, which defies our attempts at comparison, or of a noncorporeal essence thus-far beyond our capacity to measure.

Whatever the reality, the fact that the two specimens of VF mortar can be added to the BWVF collection is cause for celebration.

This research should be ready to present by the end of this year.

REPORT ON WORK IN PROGRESS:.

VF and Hermeneutics by B. Bath.

Problems of knowledge and the problematic of Knowing . Considerations of VF as urban scripture. Kabbala considered as interpretive model. Investigation of VF as patterns of interference. Research currently ongoing, ETA of finished article uncertain.

REPORT ON WORK IN PROGRESS:.

Recent changes in VF Behaviour by E. Nugen.

Tracking the movements of VF is notoriously difficult. [ Inserted here is a scrawl - 'No b.l.o.o.d.ykidding. What do you think we're all b.l.o.o.d.y doing here? ] Reconstructing these patterns over the longue duree [ the accent is added by hand] is perforce a matter of plumbing a historical record that is, by its nature and definitionally, partial, anecdotal and uncertain. As most of my readers know it has long been my aim to extract from the annals of our society evidence for long-term cycles (See Working Paper 19, Once More on the Statten Curve ), an aim on which I have not been entirely unsuccessful.

I have collated the evidence from the major verified London sightings of the last three decades (two of those sightings my own) and can conclusively state that the time between VF arrival at and departure from a locus has decreased by a factor of 0.7. VF are moving more quickly.

In addition, tracking their movements after each appearance has become more complicated and (even) less certain. In 1940, application of the Deschaine Matrix with regard to a given VF's arrival time and duration on-site would result in a 23% chance of predicting reappearance parameters (within two months and two miles): today that same process nets only a 16% chance.

VF are less predictable than they have ever been (barring, perhaps, the Lost Decade of 187686).

The s.h.i.+ft in this behaviour is not linear but punctuated, sudden bursts of change over the years: once between 1952 and '53, again in late 1961, again in '72 and '76. The causes and consequences are not yet known. Each of these pivotal moments has resulted in an increased Looking for Jake, By China Mieville pace of change. The anecdotal evidence we have all heard, that VF have recently become more skittish and agitated, appears to be correct.

I intend to present this work in full within 18 months. I wish to thank CM for help with the research. [ This CM is presumably Charles Melville, to whom the package was addressed.

Clipped to the BWVF papers is this handwritten note: Yes, Edgar is a pompous a.r.s.e but he is on to something big.

What is it Edgar N. is onto? Of course I wondered, and still wonder, though now I thinkperhaps I know. ]

* * * [ Then there is a doc.u.ment unlike the others so far. It is a booklet, a few pages long. It waswhen I started to read this that I stopped, frowned, looked again at the envelope, realised myinadvertent intrusion, and decided almost instantly that I would not stop reading. 'Decided'

doesn't really get the sense of the urgency with which I continued, as if I had no choice. b.u.t.then if I say that, I absolve myself of wrong doing which I won't do, so let's say I 'decided',though I'm unsure that I did. In any case, I continued reading. This doc.u.ment is printed onboth sides like a flyer. The first sentence below is in large red font, and const.i.tutes the booklet'sfront cover. ]

URGENT: Report of a Sighting.

Princ.i.p.al witness: FR.

Secondary: EN.

On Thursday 11th February 1988, so far as it is possible to tell between 3:00 a.m. and5:17 a.m., a little way south of Plumstead High Street SE18, Varmin Way occurred.

Even somewhat foreshortened from its last known appearance (Battersea 1983 - see the VF Concordance), Varmin Way is in a buckled configuration due to the constraints of s.p.a.ce. One end adjoins Purrett Road between numbers 44 and 46, approximately forty feet north of Saunders Road: Varmin Way then appears to describe a tight S-curve, emerging halfway up Rippolson Road between numbers 30 and 32 (see attached map). [ There is no map. ]

Two previously terraced dwellings on each of the intersected streets have now been separated by Varmin Way. One on Rippolson is deserted: surrept.i.tious enquiries have been made of inhabitants of each of the others, but none have remarked with anything other than indifference Looking for Jake, By China Mieville to the newcomer. Eg: in response to FR's query of one man if he knew the name of 'that alley', he glanced at the street now ab.u.t.ting his house, shrugged and told her he was 'b.u.g.g.e.red if he knew'. This response is of course typical of VF occurrence-environs (See B. Harman, 'On the Non-Noticing', BWVF Working Papers no. 5).

A partial exception is one thirty-five-year-old Purrett Road man, resident in the brick dwelling newly on Varmin Way's north bank. Observed on his way toward Saunders Road, crossing Varmin Way, he tripped on the new kerb. He looked down at the asphalt and up at brick corners of the junction, paced back and forward five times with a quizzical expression, peering down the street's length, without entering it, before continuing on his journey, looking back twice.

[ This is the end of the middle page of the leaflet. Folded and inserted inside is a handwrittenletter. I have therefore decided to reproduce it here in the middle of the leaflet text. It reads:Charles, In haste. So sorry I could not reach you sooner - obviously phone not an option. I told you Icould work this out: Fiona was only on-site because of me, but I modestly listed her asprinc.i.p.al for politics' sake. Charles, we're about to go in and I'm telling you even from whereI'm standing I can see the evidence, this is the real thing. Next time, next time. Or get downhere! I'm sending this first cla.s.s (of course!) so when you get it rush down here. But you knowVarmin Way's reputation - it's restless, will probably be gone. But come find me! I'll be hereat least.

Edgar At the end of this note is appended, in the same handwriting as that of the package'sintroductory note: What a b.a.s.t.a.r.d! I take it this was when you and he stopped seeing eye to eye? Why did he cutyou out like that, and why so coyly?

The leaflet then continues:]

Initial investigation shows that the new Varmin Wayoverlooking 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 ident.i.ty, 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) Looking for Jake, By China Mieville 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 doc.u.mented 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.

* * * [ 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 andthreatened speculations these doc.u.ments raised in me, but I think I should stay out of it.

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 p.i.s.sed off ?']

At 11:20 p.m. on Sat.u.r.day 13 February 1988, from its end on Rippolson Road, an initial examination was made of Varmin Way. Photographs were taken establis.h.i.+ng the VF's ident.i.ty (figure 1). [ Figure 1 is a surprisingly good-quality reproduction of a shot, showing a street signby a wall, standing at leg-height on two little metal or wooden posts. The image is at a peculiarangle, which I think is the result of the photograph not being taken straight on, but fromRippolson 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 cafe on Plumstead High Street. [ Whatwere those 'certain events'? The pointed imprecision suggested to me something deliberatelynot committed to paper, something that the readers of this report, or perhaps a subgroup ofthem, would understand. These writings are a strange mix of the scientifically exact and theimprecise - even the failure to specify the cafe is surprising. But it is the baleful vagueness ofthe certain events that will not stop worrying at me. ] When the group returned to Rippolson Road at 11:53 p.m., to their great frustration, Varmin Way had unoccurred.

[ Two monochrome pictures end the piece. They have no explanatory notes or legend. They are Looking for Jake, By China Mieville both taken in daylight. On the left is a photograph of two houses, on either side of a smallstreet of low century-old houses which curves sharply to the right, it looks like, quickly unclearwith distance. The right-hand picture is the two facades again, but this time the houses - recognisably the same from a window's crack, from a smear of paint below a sash, from thescrawny front gardens and the distinct unkempt buddleia bush - are closed up together. Theyare no longer semidetached. There is no street between them. ]

* * * [ So.

I stopped for a bit. I had to stop. And then I had to read on again.

A single sheet of paper. Typewritten again apart from the name, now on an electronicmachine. ]

Could you see it, Charles? The damage, halfway down Varmin Way? It's there, it's visible in the picture in that report. [ This must mean the picture on the left. I stared at it hard, with thenaked eye and through a magnifying gla.s.s. I couldn't make out anything. ] It's like the slates from Scry Pa.s.s, the ones I showed you in the collection. You could see it in the striae and the marks, even if none of the b.l.o.o.d.y curators did. Varmin Way wasn't just pa.s.sing through, it was resting , it was recovering , it had been attacked. I am right.

Edgar * * * [ I kept reading.

Though it's not signed, judging by the font, what follows are a couple of pages of another typedletter from Edgar. ]

The earliest occurrence I can find of it is in the early 1700s (you'll hear 1790 or '91 or something - nonsense, that's just the official position based on the archives - this one isn't verified but believe me it's correct). Only a handful of years after the Glorious Revolution we find Antonia Chesterfield referring in her diaries to 'a right rat of a street, ascamper betwixt Waterloo and the Mall, a veritable Vermin, in name as well as kind. Beware - Touch a rat and he will bite, as others have found, of our own and of the Vermin's vagrant tribe'. That's a reference to Varmin Way - Mrs Chesterfield was in the Brotherhood's precursor (and you'd not have heard her complaining about that name either - Fiona take note!).

You see what she's getting at, and I think she was the first. I don't know, Charles, correlation is so terribly hard, but look at some of the other candidates. Shuck Road; Caul Street; Stang Street; Teratologue Avenue (this last I think is fairly voracious); et al. So far as I can work it Looking for Jake, By China Mieville out, Varmin Way and Stang Street were highly antagonistic at that stage, but now they're almost certainly noncombative. No surprise: Sole Den Road is the big enemy these days -remember 1987?

(Incidentally, talking of that first Varmin occurrence, did you ever read all the early cryptolit I sent you?