Looking for Jake Part 20

The Fish of the Mirror.

Its vast, unsympathetic attention turned slowly to Sholl. He felt himself becoming more precise as it considered him, more exact. He bristled from its thoughtful application.

He could not breathe.

Will you touch me? he thought.

Enough. It was like pus.h.i.+ng through ice, but he made himself move. Step forward through his awe. This was what it came to. He had not come here, unarmed, to stare. He had a plan.

They must have known. Without any doubt, they must have known the truth. So was it a game?

Did they not mind me?

For a long time after the jailing of the imagos, their world was nothing like yours. Except where there was water, things were shaped in very different ways, in other dimensions. For a very long time. But the imperialism of the tain, earth's specularisation, meant less and less s.p.a.ce for the other world to be other. Places of imago aesthetics grew smaller and fewer. The mimicked land spread.

Looking for Jake, By China Mieville Ways were found to minimise the hurt. When one woman tilted one looking gla.s.s in Rome, must the whole imago universe pitch like an unstable s.h.i.+p? Where one man faces thirty windows, did thirty imagos have to be lashed powerless? Solutions were found. There are strategies, even in prison.

Let the mirrors, the tains themselves, let them move, pitch between the worlds. Let them bend s.p.a.ce, so that one imago may seem fractured, but will always match one of you. From caprice to precision.

The prison's rule went from one of great freedom with occasional, arbitrary and greatly cruel punishment, to one of structure and limitations and no freedom at all. With the imperialism of mirrors, all this became necessary. I see this now. I've understood it. I didn't know, before.

Faced with the mindless dynamism of the mirror, a new strategy was found, and it gave the imago world a certain shape.

When I came through, I burst through the tain, and hurled onto steep slopes. I rolled with momentum, afraid that gravity would take me back across, and leave me bobbing in the water back on the other side.

I stopped and breathed mirror air. I shook.

I made my way up a path, amazed by the feel of earth underneath me, by the colour of the night sky, by the trees. I walked very slowly. I was afraid of what I might find. I gripped the ground with my feet, I listened to the wind. I emerged from the woods and set out for the city, Right is left, here, and left right, so the signs say and but the city is in every other way the same. There was no tiny part of the world that was safe from mirrors, so the imagos finally gave in, and made a reflection.

I held my breath for so long when I came here-when I came back, I want to say, though that would be wrong. It is as if London has been blotted, and I walk in the paper.

I wander through Islington-it gets tedious to always give it its mirror name-and along the railway lines toward Kensal Rise. The sun rises behind me, on the wrong side of the sky. I suppose I have come home.

This place is more like London than London now: there are no changes here, no imago exudations, no signs of the war. It is like London was. There are no fires. There is only the grey, silent city, abandoned, on the wrong side of the mirror. A vacant likeness. Very often, my feet make the only sound.

The imagos, all giddy with freedom, are gone, through the open doors, for revenge and emanc.i.p.ation's sake. The fauna of mirrors have gone. There are no birds here: there never were, only little shards of imago-matter made to copy them. No rats. No urban foxes, no insects. But strangely, the city is not quite empty.

Looking for Jake, By China Mieville I am not the first here. Others have made their way through. I have caught glimpses, at the edges of streets, or climbing in the reflected trees. Only a very few, here and there: men and women, gone feral in ragged wool and fur, running through the streets, but not as if they are streets. I do not know if they are rebel imagos, or escaped humans. Some vampires must hate being meatbound too much to live with their siblings, and any human would find this place a sanctuary now.

These are my fellow citizens. They are frightened-I am too, I think-but we are all safe here.

There is nothing here that wants to kill us. I am not a danger any more. We can walk these empty, mirrored streets, retracing favourite routes in looking-gla.s.s script, as if unwinding our memories. We can get on with being alone.

The gla.s.s of the mirror ruptured, tearing apart my face, when the patchogue burst out of the tain, but I was very quick. I met it, my own snarling face. I wasn't subdued or driven out of my mind by it. I had never trusted that image anyway. That was why it found me where it did, in the toilet of a hospital, near my ward of melancholics and hysterics.

We rolled and choked each other in the debris of its pa.s.sing. We struggled below the urinal, smas.h.i.+ng open the doors of empty cubicles. Though we-they, I mean, the vampires-are strong and hard to kill, I managed it, with long edged bludgeons of mirrored gla.s.s. I stabbed and sawed, scoring my fingers, and felt my muscles tremble with the effort, but after long minutes I lay in blood more its than mine, and my doppelganger's head was taken off, and it was dead, and I was exhilarated and terrified. But without reflection.

Afterward, I tried to tell. But I came out all wet with blood and the patients, my old cohorts, screamed murder, and then they saw that I'd nothing in the tain, and they screamed that I'd become a monster. They called me vampire. My friends. They stared at me all b.l.o.o.d.y, at the emptiness in the gla.s.s, with terror so frantic I ran.

I've lived a long time. I don't know why. Maybe it's our imagos that kill us. Even trapped in mimicry, maybe their hatred reached past the gla.s.s and slowly throttled us, after our scores of years and ten. Only I killed mine, so I kept not dying. I've lived a long time, alone. For years, and years, not knowing what I was, more afraid of all of you than I'd ever been before, and resenting you more, a tide of it, bitter and growing, and alone.

This is my first time beyond the mirror, but I know all the imago histories by heart. I have had them told to me. Whispered through cold gla.s.s. All the stories of old Venice. I'd have loved to have been there. All the stories of the Yellow Emperor. I've mopped floors and disinfected stalls for years, in all manner of places, so I could work close to my siblings in the mirrors, and whisper to them when you weren't about, when the shop closed or the train arrived. It's perversely safe in those places. No one noticed me to notice I had no image.

There are strategies, to not being seen being unseen, to having no reflection. A way of moving, little dances of avoidance. They're hard to learn, and a master recognises another. When I saw her, the woman in the station, I made her my new sister instantly, as I watched her bobbing elegantly away from glazed walls and windows. I sat her down in the cafe and made her teach Looking for Jake, By China Mieville me what she was, what I would be. For a very long time she'd say nothing. When finally she realised that I wouldn't betray her, when she saw the tremor in me, the excitement, this making sense, this community, she told me enough-what I needed to know.

I went turncoat without regret. I was sick of you all. That night I uncovered the mirror in my lodgings, pressed up close to its empty face, and whispered into its gla.s.s, what would you haveme do?

I've been a spy for a long time. Living days in your toilets, nights sleeping with my ear to the gla.s.s, hearing stories. They must-I don't believe that they could not-have known what I was, that I wasn't as other vampires. But they rewarded me when they came through, letting me live as one of their crippled scouts. I've seen them, the imagos, killing every human they see, and they have always left me. I lived among them. They saved me. From the man they wouldn't touch, whom I touched. Showed myself up. And now I have turned away, and run, and hidden from them.

After long years of feeling nothing, I find that I feel shame. And I swear that I don't know for whom: I don't know which of my betrayals makes me ashamed. Am I a bad man, or a bad imago? Which is it that hurts me?

I find a comfort in this nearly empty city. Now that the illusion, the silly little game I played (myself as monster) is over, I find a comfort being simply alone.

There's nothing unique about me now. On the other side, no person has a reflection now. But if I went back to be as them, that would make me prey. I don't find myself frightened by that-more indifferent. I'm disposed to stay here, in this city where I can be alone.

I wonder who he was, that man my siblings, the imagos, wouldn't touch. I wonder why they wouldn't, and what he'll do.

I like it in this nearly empty London. The air's cool. There is food-tins and bottles in all the deserted stores, their wares printed in mirror-writing.

I've taken to climbing towers, and looking out-when light's waxing and waning-looking out over the inverted horizon, tracking the river, that curves the wrong way, and the skysc.r.a.pers, on the wrong side of the city. It's calming. The city all unlit and coursed through with wind, like a natural formation. Gla.s.s bows fractionally, in window frames, in the bl.u.s.ter. From up high, I sometimes see the other citizens, the escapees from all the chaos on the other side. I recognise some of them: we pa.s.s each other once or twice a day, at opposite ends of the street, and I know they recognise me.

We don't smile, our eyes don't meet, but we know each other. We are quite safe here: we don't fear each other.

Sometimes I stare into puddles (I'm careful not to tread on them), try to see through the obscurity. I wonder what is happening in London Prime.

Looking for Jake, By China Mieville One of the refugees to my quiet city does the same. I've seen him, standing over the water, hands on hips, squatting and watching. A man bearded through lack of care, wrapped in what was once an expensive coat. I've watched him, and seen him see me, but we haven't yet spoken. We stand at opposite ends of the street, staring intermittently each into his own water, and it is as if we are in the same room, about to meet.

The sun is going down over my quiet London, over in the east.

This is a surrender, Sholl thought. That's how this should be told.

Refraction is the change in direction of a wave-like light-when it pa.s.ses into a new substance. There was nothing we could do, thought Sholl. We had nothing. We have to changedirection.

The Fish of the Mirror listened to him.

We surrender, Sholl told it again. That had always been his intention.

Is that it? Is that the plan?

Sholl did not know whose voice it was he gave the words to. The question was stark.

What would you have me do? he thought.

He did not tell himself that he had not lied to the soldiers, that he had promised them nothing about his plan: he had told them nothing, but he knew that he had lied.

The Fish of the Mirror turned and came closer, expanding, unlight pa.s.sing through it. It listened without comment. It granted him audience, and heard his pet.i.tion.

I won't let us be destroyed, he thought. We can do this. They listen to me. He did not know if that was true. He knew only that they would not kill him, and that therefore he could make his offer, and his request.

No one else could get close enough, for long enough, to try. This was the only chance they had.

No one else could possibly have even been heard.

He did not debase himself, did not plead, nor bl.u.s.ter. There was no trick. He came, the self-appointed general of London, spokesperson for humanity, recognising the fact that his side had lost the war, and asking for peace, as a conquered people.

You don't need to kill us any more, he thought. You win.

It was the sobbing of the Liverpudlian officer into his radio that had put the idea in Sholl's Looking for Jake, By China Mieville head. He had stood in the corridor beyond the radio room after midnight, stricken, listening to the man cry and scan the static for a sound. The relentless white noise wore down on Sholl.

What if everyone was waiting, he thought, to make contact, to hear their commands, and there was no way for word to come through? Perhaps the government still sat, in exile, in a bunker underground, making decisions completely without meaning, or perhaps they were all dead. It made no difference. They couldn't speak to their troops. There was no one to make decisions.

Soldiers are paid to fight, and so the dispersed troops tried to, in bandit raids, being slaughtered when the imagos bothered. But fighting was not all that soldiers did: sometimes they surrendered.

Their job, now, Sholl became certain, was to surrender. What if the imagos were not carrying out a meaningless slaughter, but were fighting the war because no one had declared it over? Just like the soldiers. Waiting. For a decision that no one could take, and an order that could not be given.

What if there was no one left to give the order to stop? Would the war continue until stilled by entropy, or until the last human was dead?

Until that descent into Hampstead Tube, Sholl had not known for certain that the imagos would not touch him, but for weeks it had been clear to him that he had lived much longer than he should. He had made less and less effort to hide, and the fauna of mirrors, imagos and scavengers, always avoided him, s.h.i.+ed away from him, without respect or fear, but as if noting something.

What is this? Sholl had thought. Aghast, he had decided that he was chosen for something. For this. He granted himself authority to speak for his people. To surrender. Judas-messiah.

He made no demands, but he offered terms that seemed reasonable: the terms of abject but dignified surrender. An end to hostilities. Tribute, in kind or obedience, in prayer if the Fish of the Mirror required. Whatever was necessary. And in return, humans could live.

Perhaps we'll be nomads, he thought. Or farmers, or serfs, ploughing up London's ruins. Alittle colony of the imago empire. A backwater, eventually, with the freedom granted to thosewho are no trouble. We could make plans then- but Sholl stopped himself. That was not why he was here. This was not strategy or double-bluff; it could not be. This was a surrender.

Am I Petain? Collaborator? Will children use my name as a curse? But there will be children.

We'll live, we'll spread the word that we've lost, and we'll live, in ghettos if we have to, butwe'll live. A new history. What will we be? But we will be.

Someone had to decide. It was this, or die, like we're dying.

He thought of the strange imago that had helped him, still not understanding its motives. He thought with shame again of the soldiers outside, who had come with him against his orders, as Looking for Jake, By China Mieville he had suspected they might, and been slaughtered by the Fish of the Mirror's imago guard. The guard that had let him pa.s.s, waiting for him to do whatever it was that they expected.

Perhaps I've got this all wrong. Perhaps this isn't why they leave me alone at all-what if thechosen one misunderstands what he's been chosen for?

It was too late for that now. His offer-his suit for peace, his surrender- had been made. Sholl bowed his head respectfully and stepped back. He tried to feel like a leader. The humans had nothing with which to bargain-no strength at all. The only thing that Sholl could do was make his forces soldiers, defeated soldiers, rather than bandits or vermin. That was all he had. If the Fish of the Mirror chose, it could ignore Sholl, and hunt down the last Londoners, to the last child. All Sholl had was his surrender. An extraordinary, arrogant claim that it was his to surrender. In all his humility was this last puffed-up pretence. It was all he had. He begged.

Searing, he begged mercy, general to general.

The Fish of the Mirror glowed. Sholl stepped back, his hands up and open. He waited for his conqueror to consider.

This is the story of a surrender.

. . . the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other. They were, besides, quite different; neither beings nor colours nor shapes were the same.

Both kingdoms, the specular and the human, lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors. One night the mirror people invaded the earth. Their power was great, but at the end of b.l.o.o.d.y warfare the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed. He repulsed the invaders, imprisoned them in their mirrors, and forced on them the task of repeating, as though in a kind of dream, all the actions of men. He stripped them of their power and of their forms and reduced them to mere slavish reflections. Nonetheless, a day will come when the magic spell will be shaken off.

The first to awaken will be the Fish. Deep in the mirror we will perceive a very faint line and the colour of this line will be like no other colour. Later on, other shapes will begin to stir.

Little by little they will differ from us; little by little they will not imitate us. They will break through the barriers of gla.s.s or metal and this time will not be defeated. Side by side with these mirror creatures, the creatures of the water will join the battle.

In Yunnan they do not speak of the Fish but of the Tiger of the Mirror. Others believe that in advance of the invasion we will hear from the depths of mirrors the clatter of weapons.

JORGELUISBORGES.

"Fauna of Mirrors" from The Book of Imaginary Beings.

The patient awoke about midnight and had just entered the dimly lit bathroom when he saw the reflection of his face in a mirror. The face appeared distorted and seemed to be changing rapidly, frightening the patient so much that he jumped through the bathroom window.

Looking for Jake, By China Mieville.

LUISH. SCHWARZ, M.D. and STANTONP. FJELD, PH.D.

"Illusions Induced by the Self-Reflected Image"

ENDNOTES.

1 "I doubt not that you have heard of Mister Jansa- a fellow of lamentable aspect-who is daily seen around the squares of his adopted city where his intense bearing entices crowds of the curious; when surrounded the fellow excoriates 'em in obscure tongues such as would shame the most pious and ecstatic of quakers. Those gathered mock the afflicted with mummery. But horrors! A number of those who have mimicked poor Jansa have fallen to his brain-fever, and are now partners in his unorthodox ministry. " (Kate Vinegar [ed], The London Letters ofIgnatius Sancho [Providence 1954], p. 337.) 2 There is no record of Haygarth fraternising with or even mentioning Dr. Buscard before or after this time, and the reasons behind his 1775 recommendation are opaque. In his diaries, Haygarth's a.s.sistant William Fin noted "a disparity between Dr. H's words and his tone when he claimed Dr. Buscard as his very good friend " (quoted in Marcus Gadd's A BuscardologyPrimer [London 1972], p.iii). De Selby, in his unpublished "Notes on Buscard," claims that Buscard was blackmailing Haygarth. What incriminating material he might have held on his more esteemed colleague remains unknown.

3 A PosthumousVindication of Dr. Samuel Buscard: Proof That "Gibbering Fever" IsIndeed Buscard's Murrain. (London 1782), p. 17.

4 Ibid., p. 25.

5 His last known letter (to his son Matthew) is dated January 1783, and contains a hint as to his plans. Jacob complains "I have not even the money to finish this. Carriage to Bled is a scandalous expense!" (Quoted in Ali Khamrein's Medical Letters [New York 1966], p. 232.) 6 These notorious "Buscard Shacks" loom large in popular culture of the time. See for example the ballad "Rather the Poorhouse than a Buscard Shack" (reproduced in Cecily Fetchpaw's Hanoverian Street Songs: Populism and Resistance [Pennsylvania 1988], p. 677).

7 Contrary to the impression given by the media after the 1986 Statten-Dogger incident, deliberate exposure to the risks of wormword is neither common nor new. Ully Statten was (no doubt unwittingly) continuing a tradition established in the late eighteenth century. In what could be considered a late Georgian extreme sport, London's young rakes and coffee-house dandies would take turns reading the word aloud, each risking correct p.r.o.nounciation and thereby infection.

Looking for Jake, By China Mieville 8 This will come as no surprise to those familiar with Johnson's work. The man is a liar, a fraud, and a bad writer (whose brother is Britain's third-largest importer of bergamot oil).

9 There is a comprehensive list in Gadd, op. cit., p. 74.

10 "Years of Violent Ransacking Leave Slovenia's Historic Churches in Ruins," FinancialTimes, 3/7/85.

My sincere thanks to Emma Bircham, Mic Cheetham, Simon Kavanagh, Peter Lavery, Claudia Lightfoot, Colleen Lindsay, Jemima Mieville, Jake Pilikian, Max Schaefer, Chris Schluep, Liam Sharp and Jesse Soodalter.

My deepest grat.i.tude goes to all the editors who commissioned and/or published some of these stories: Benjamin Adams, Michael Chabon, Pete Crowther, Eli Horowitz, Ian Irvine, Maxim Jakubowski, Pete Morgan, Bradford Morrow, John Pelan, Mark Roberts, Nicholas Royle, Peter Straub, Jeff VanderMeer, and Tony White.

I would like to point out that the historical detail in the story "foundation" is accurate and a matter of record. The U.S. Army did bury Iraqi soldiers alive, using tanks mounted with plows.

Among many other sources, see Patrick Sloyan's article "How the Ma.s.s Slaughter of a Group of Iraqis Went Unreported," The Guardian, 14 February 2003.

CHINA MIeVILLE's fiction has won the Arthur C Clarke Award (twice), the British Fantasy Award (twice), the Locus Award, and several others. His nonfiction includes Between EqualRights, a study of international law. He lives and works in London.

Looking for Jake, By China Mieville.

ALSO BY CHINA MIeVILLE.

King Rat.