Part 16 (2/2)

* * * We did not fear gla.s.s. Why should we fear that dirty, algae-coloured stuff, that made only the tiniest imprisonments? Punctuated by bubbles and stains, blown in curves and dusted with lead and tin, a finger-length in diameter, gla.s.s did not frighten us.

Through our meaningless, occasional imitations, we saw what you did. Cleaning the gla.s.s with potash and burnt ferns, limestone and manganese. We did not pay much attention. It only made your mangling of us in little concave chambers more precise. We did not pay much attention.

We looked back later and realised how remiss we had been. We should not have been surprised at the source of our trouble.

Venice was our nightmare. Where there was no reflection we could make our world as we wanted it, but where mirrors or metal or water saw your buildings, we had no choice but to throw up our own a.n.a.logues-sometimes instantly, with all the agony and effort that took. In most places your eyesores came and went momentarily, as you moved your specula, your points of reflection, and glimpsed some wall or tower. But Venice, city of ca.n.a.ls, forced us to live in your architecture. Even in the forgiving prison of water, which let our bricks and mortar lap and ebb against your designs, we were uniquely constrained. Venice hurt us.

It was under the protection of Venice, more than half a millennium ago, that the epoch of our humiliation became that of our despair.

In the fires of Murano (observed from the a.n.a.logue you made us keep of it, in puddles and in the local commodities themselves), washed by estuary salt and silicates in new concentrations, industrious men made crystal gla.s.s. And while those accidental alchemists stared in piggish awe at the white, white-hot stuff they had made, their paymasters in the city of ca.n.a.ls mixed tin and quicksilver, and made the tain.

Once, we were exiled to a landscape that was ours. It was only broken in places by rippling pools of distortion where there was water, where we might be called to perform our mute play of you. And then there were tiny moving snares, the first mirrors, but when we could evade them, where we were not cursed and tied to someone of substance, still they could not harness us. The rest of our retreat, our prison, was ours, to decorate and shape and inhabit as we wanted, only glimpsed occasionally by you through your little holes, the s.p.a.ces that sucked us into your shapes. The rest of our world was ours, and you would not have recognised it.

And then the tain.

Looking for Jake, By China Mieville Gla.s.s democratised. Though we fought it, though we sought to keep it arcane. Gla.s.s became ma.s.s, in scant centuries, and the tain, that dusting of metal that stained its underside, with it.

You put out lights at night and trapped us even then in your outlines. Your world was a world of silvered gla.s.s. It became mirrored. Every street had a thousand windows to trap us, whole buildings were sheathed in tained gla.s.s. We were crushed into your forms. There was no minute, and not a sc.r.a.p of s.p.a.ce where we could be other than you were. No escape or respite, and you not noticing, not knowing as you pinioned us. You made a reflecting world.

You drove us mad.

Once there was a room of mirrors in Isfahan, hundreds of years ago. Lah.o.r.e's palace was ringed by Murano gla.s.s and Venetian tain. What misery is this? we thought when those places were built. We would stare at each other, each of us trapped in that place, our bodies fractured, staring at each other, scores of us taking the same form, scores snared when one person entered those rooms. What have they done? And then there was Versailles. Our bleakest place. The worst place in our world. A dreadful jail. It can be no worse than this, we thought then, stupidly. We are in h.e.l.l.

Do you see? Can you understand why we fought?

Every house became Versailles. Every house a hall of mirrors.

So far from the dangerous heart of town, the soldiers of the Heath were able to relax discipline a little. In the little false forests of the park, those not on guard duty played cards and smoked, read, listened to ca.s.settes.

Between the little tents was a variety of equipment and furniture, in disrepair and in good condition. Stacking plastic chairs and wooden desks that looked pilfered from schools, ranged randomly: trunks and boxes, all map-stained by weather.

The unit was swollen with incomers, with Londoners who had joined up to fight. The full-timers spoke with accents from around the country, used the jargon unthinkingly and tersely, moved their equipment without effort. The others, men and women whose uniforms were imperfectly pieced together and amended, who walked and swung their weapons with self-conscious care, were recent volunteers.

Sholl saw a girl in her midteens, wearing a Robbie Williams T-s.h.i.+rt above her camouflage trousers, uncertainly hefting her rifle, while a burly Mancunian private showed her, gently, how to take aim. There was a group of young men listening to hip-hop on a cheap machine that stripped it of ba.s.s, looking at maps, bickering in the slang of south London estates.

The CO gave Sholl lager, and good food, and let him sleep. Sholl was surprised at his own exhaustion. Before the officer left him, they talked, in the most general terms, about the war.

Sholl was careful not to discuss his plans, not to preempt himself. But along with what he said Looking for Jake, By China Mieville was communicated something calm, a sense of something preparatory. He did not discuss his plans, but with his unexplained invitation -whether you'd join me- with his measure, he set himself apart.

When he woke, Sholl emerged from the tent into the damp clearing, and quietly toured the camp. The men and women of the unit were in their groups, as before, quietly working or playing, but he saw them watching him. Sholl knew instantly that they suspected him, though they could not have said of what. His conversation with the CO, his invitation, had been reported.

He exchanged a few greetings. Steam rose from cooking and laundry, and smoke from small fires. Sholl watched it, so that he did not yet have to meet the soldiers' eyes. They wanted something from him, and knew that it would be forthcoming. He had not come to them like the other frightened Londoners; he had not arrived as a refugee to be made safe. He had brought them something.

The change in the camp was not overt, but it was clear. The soldiers were expectant. The soldiers watched Sholl as if he were a Jesus, with nervous, hopeful interest, and scepticism and excitement. Sholl's mouth was dry. He was not sure what to do. The officer approached him.

”Mr. Sholl,” he said. ”Would you like to talk to us? Would you like to tell us why you're here?

Sholl had thought it would take a little time to come to this. He had wanted a day to feel for the mood of the camp, before he spoke. He had expected to be interrogated by the commander alone, or perhaps with a few lieutenants. He had prepared himself to persuade that audience. He had not thought that with the breakdown of structures, primitive democracy would a.s.sert itself.

The CO knew he was in charge by nothing but the approval of his troops. He was not a stupid man; he understood that ”need to know” had become a dangerous condescension. There was no one to court-martial the insubordinate, and there never would be any more. He needed his women and men to agree with his orders.

He sat with them and leaned against a tree and smoked. They did not look at him. They were still turned to Sholl.

Sholl sat. The legs of the chair sank an inch into the wet earth. Sholl put his head in his hands and tried to make himself ready. He tried to turn the confrontation into a discussion. He started by asking questions.

”We try to get messages to other units. We're still scanning for word from the government, or top bra.s.s or whateverthef.u.c.k.” The commander's voice failed for a second. The idiocy of the statement was obvious. Everyone knew that there was no government, and no one in charge of the army's ragged remains. Sholl nodded as if the remark made sense, not needing to press the point.

Looking for Jake, By China Mieville His questions were answered. Messianism still clung to him-not sought, but useful-and the soldiers told him what he wanted to know guardedly, and waited, knowing that soon he would tell them why he was there.

”So you're trying to get your orders, I understand that,” said Sholl. ”But what do you do day to day?”

They patrolled the edges of the Heath. Unlike the maddened Bermondsey renegades (of whom they had heard, and at whom they were disgusted-”We should go f.u.c.king sort them out, never mind the f.u.c.king imagos,” someone shouted) they welcomed what few civilians made it to join them. There were very few. There were no children. No one had seen any children for weeks.

They patrolled the Heath, and when they saw the enemy hara.s.sing or murdering humans, they tried, where they could, to intervene. They made some minor incursions into the streets that were roamed by murderous imagos, trying to find survivors. ”We know where there are some-in a school up by the hill, we think-but we can't get to them. There's a nest of vamps in the tube station.” That, Sholl already knew.

The vampires and other imagos had not come up onto the gra.s.sland, and so the troops were still alive, but that was just contingent. They might come any time. The soldiers patrolled and waited and scanned the airwaves with their c.r.a.ppy radios, and waited.

”What happened? ”

The question came at Sholl suddenly, breaking through his own queries about the soldiers'

habits-how many, how often, where, why. The man who asked it had no reason to expect an answer from Sholl-a drab-faced newcomer sat among soldiers-but he asked it again, and others echoed him, and Sholl knew he had to answer.

”What happened? Where did they come from? What happened?”

Sholl shook his head.

”From the mirrors,” he said, telling them what they already knew. ”From the tain.”

He used the language he had stolen from his physics books, a language of laws and propositions named after the living and dead who had formulated them, and made it seem as if he spoke it fluently. A cheap shot. He told them (regretting the jargon instantly) that en one sine theta onestill equals en two sine theta two. Except in certain circ.u.mstances.

Except in the case where en one equals minus en two. Except for reflection.

There is something called the Phong Model, Sholl said. It's a graph. It's a model to show how light moves. The s.h.i.+nier the surface, the more precise and bright the reflected light, the narrower the range in which it can be seen. The model used to describe how light bounced off concrete and paper and metal and gla.s.s, its angle of specular reflection narrowing, approximating the Looking for Jake, By China Mieville angle of incidence, its bright spot brightening, as the surfaces became more mirrored.

But something happened, and now Phong describes a turning key.

It used to be a sliding scale. Asymptotic. An endless approximation to infinity or zero. It's become a threshold. As the reflected brightness grows more precise, as its angle of exit narrows to more closely mimic its entry, it's approaching an edge, it is becoming a change of state, he said. Until a critical moment is reached: until light meets the sheen of a gloss surface, and everything alters, and the light unlocks a door, and what was a mirror becomes a gate.

Mirrors became gates, and something came through.

”We know that,” one of the men shouted. ”We know that already. Tell us what happened. Tell us how it happened.”

That, Sholl could not do. He could tell them nothing they had not heard from the vampires that taunted them sometimes: they were the most comprehensible of the imagos.

The soldiers stayed, though, still watching him. They wanted him to be special: they were anxious to forgive him. They asked him questions that allowed him to be circuitous, to seem vaguely wise. He had travelled through London's ruins, that they only looked out over. He could tell them much more about the city than they could learn from their cautious and pointless sorties.

<script>