thought the most powerful piece, he read, as it could go from where it was to any other square on the board. But it was not. Kraken was. Kraken = universal leaper + zero, he read, = universal sleeper. It could move to any square including the one it was already on. Anywhere including nowhere.
On the board & in life for Kraken in the void nothing is not nothing. Kraken stillness is not lack. Its zero is ubiquity. This is the movement that looks like not moving, & it is the most powerful move of all.
Price rises were a function of neutral buoyancy, Billy read. Art Nouveau was coil-envy. Wars were meagre reflections of speculated kraken politics.
AFTER UNCOUNTED HOURS BILLY LOOKED UP AND SAW, BY THE room’s raised entrance, a young woman. He remembered her from one of the moments during his visions. She stood in her nondescript London uniform of hoodie and jeans. She bit her lip.
“Hi,” she said, shy. “It’s an honour. They said that, like, everyone out there’s looking for you. The angel of memory and everything, Dane said.” Billy blinked. “Teuthex said do you want to come, and they’d be glad if you was … if you want follow me because they’re waiting.”
He followed her to a smaller room, containing one big table and many people. Dane and Moore were there. A few of the other men and women were in robes like the Teuthex’s; most were in civvies. Everyone looked angry. On the table was a digital recorder. The noise of rowdy debate stopped with his entry. Dane stood.
“Billy,” said Moore after a moment. “Please join us.”
“I protest,” someone said. There were murmurs.
“Billy, please join us,” Moore said.
“What is this?” Billy said.
“There’s never been a time like this,” Moore said. “Are you interested in the future?” Billy said nothing. “Do you ever read your horoscope?”
“No.”
“Sensible. You can’t see the future, there’s no such thing. It’s all bets. You’ll never get the same answer from two seers. But that doesn’t mean either of them’s wrong.”
“Might be,” Dane said.
“They might,” Moore said. “But it’s all degrees of might. You want your prognosticators to argue. You never told us what you dreamed, Billy. Something coming up? Everyone can feel something coming up. Since the kraken disappeared. And no one disagrees.” He brought together his hands in a reverse explosion. “And that’s wrong.
“This is a recording we made of a consultation with the Londonmancers,” he said.
“What’s …?” Billy said.
“Well you may ask,” said Dane.
“Voices of the city,” Moore said.
“They wish.”
“Dane, please. Oldest oracles in the M25.”
“Sorry,” Dane said. “But Fitch has been off for years. Just tells you what you want to hear. People just go for tradition …”
“Some of the others are sharper,” said someone else.
“You’re forgetting,” the Teuthex said. “It was the Londonmancers called it first. Fitch may be past it, true. People go out of tradition, true.”
“Sentiment,” Dane said.
“Maybe,” Moore said. “But this time it was him called it. He’s been begging people to pay attention.” He pressed Play.
“—best if you ask,” said a curt digital voice.
“That’s Saira,” Moore said.
“—what you’re here for.”
“Something’s coming up, underneath everything.” It was the Teuthex. “We’re looking for a path between possible—”
“Not this time.” An old man’s voice. He muttered in and out of sense. He sounded urgent, in a confused way. “Have faith, but you have to do something, understand? You’re right, it’s coming, and you have to … It’s all ending.”
“Have faith in what?” the Teuthex said. “In London?”
The old man Fitch maundered about back streets and hidden histories, described pentacles in the banalities of town planning. “Time was I’d have said that,” he abruptly said.
“I don’t understand …”
“No one does. I know what you think. What did they tell you? Did anyone tell you what’s coming? Did they? No. They all know something is. None of them saw any way past it, did they? Something,” Fitch said, and his voice sounded like the voice of dust, “is coming. London’s been telling you. Something happened and there’s no running the numbers. No argument this time. No getting away from it.”
“What is it?”
“The world’s closing in. Something rises. And an end. If any augur augurs you otherwise, sack ’em.” Billy heard despair. “Because they’re lying, or they’re wrong.”
“We need to be looking,” Dane said. “We need to be out there finding God. The Tattoo runs things. He won’t let anyone else have something that powerful.”
“What about the man you said was his enemy?” Billy said. “Might it be him