The new rules were being crossed out. Billy could feel the fight. He saw the wall shrink and grow, be there and un-be and have been and not have been; he felt able to stand and not; he felt the fucking sky reshape and rework as with instructions written and put under erasure in penmanship-duel the consciousness of Grisamentum—full of new krakeny power, ink-magic—battled with the tentacled thing that was not kraken at all.
The specimen pressed its arms against its tank. Suckers pressed vacuum-flush against the plastic, pulling the great body into position. It was not trying to get out—that was where it belonged.
Billy was standing.
He had birthed it into consciousness. It was Architeuthis dux. Specimen, pining for preservative. Squid-shaped paradox but not the animal of the ocean. Architeuthis, Billy understood for the first time, was not that undefined thing in deep water, which was only ever itself. Architeuthis was a human term.
“It’s ours,” he said.
Its ink was vast magic: Grisamentum had been right about that. But the universe had heard Billy, and he had been persuasive.
Maybe if Grisamentum had harvested ink direct from those trench dwellers, not from a jarred, cured, curated thing, the power would have been as protean as he had intended. But this was Architeuthis ink, and it was disinclined to be his whim. “It’s a specimen and it’s in the books,” Billy said. “We’ve written it up.”
The comixed inks raged against each other. The universe flexed as they fought. But as Grisamentum mixed with the ink it mixed with him; as he took its power it took his. And much of Grisamentum had been spilt: there was more of it than of him. It was specimen ink, curated by a citizen of London, by Billy, and bit by bit it metabolised the ink-man. The wall was rising again, and Byrne was falling to the ground.
Grisamentum sent out anguish that made the house quake. He slipped out of selfness like all the rest of him, in the tide, in the drains. He was overwritten. He was effaced by ink that, as it won, in an instant’s satisfaction returned to its unthinking form and fell out of the air like dark rain.
THE WALL WAS BACK. THE KITCHEN WAS BACK. THE WET HOUSE WAS full again of dead fish.
“What did you do?” Byrne screamed at Billy. “What did you do?”
The sense, all sense, of Grisamentum, was gone. There was only the undead Architeuthis, still moving, stinking, chemical in its tank, poor skin flaking, poor tentacles palsied, drenched in ink that was nothing, now, but dark grey-brown liquid.
Chapter Seventy-Nine
THE GUNFARMERS RAN. WHY WOULD THEY STAY? BYRNE STAYED. Why, and where, would she go? She let Billy disarm her. She ran her fingers through the water on the floor.
“Nice one, rudeboy,” Collingswood said to Billy.
He sat with his back to the streaming walls. London was safe, Billy kept thinking, not subject to that cosmic scriptic totalitarianism. He heard Saira and Simon coming, having seen their enemies run. Collingswood turned as they entered.
“Alright, nobody move,” she said. “This is the police.” They stared at her. “Nah, I’m just fucking with you,” she said. “What happened, Billy? Jesus, look at that thing. And it’s fucking moving.” Architeuthis wriggled sluggishly.
Collingswood took half-hold of Byrne, who slumped and did not try to fight.
“Where’s your ghost?” Billy said to Simon.
“… I think it’s gone.” They heard sirens, the swish of wheels on the sea-wet street. Police came to the house, in not a very long time.
“Hi Baron,” Billy said, as Baron came blinking in, pistol outstretched, blinking at the sea ruin. Baron and his officers stared at the twitching squid, the exhausted fighters.
“Billy,” Baron said. “Billy bloody Harrow, as I live and breathe …”
“Boss,” said Collingswood, and turned her back. “See you made it.” She lit a cigarette.
“What the bloody hell have you lot been up to?” Baron said.
“Want me to fill you in?” Collingswood said.
“No Vardy?” Billy said.
Baron shrugged. “You’re coming with me, Billy.”
“Ataboy boss,” said Collingswood. “That’s sorted them.”
“Enough of your shit, Kath,” he said.
“I’ll come with you.” Billy nodded. “As long as I can sleep.”
“What are the plods going to make of this?” Baron said.
“Collingswood’ll do you a report,” Billy said.
“Doubt it,” she said. She was looking around the room, squinting, sniffing, knacking. “Hang on.”
Billy approached the Architeuthis. Baron watched and let him go. He whispered to it as if it were a skittish dog. “Hello,” he said to the preserved eight-metre many-armed newborn thing,