China Miéville

I suspect there was a power struggle in the Embassy, that some would have tried, out of habit, without rationale, to wall up information. They didn’t win.

“Paul knows where we are.”

“What are you talking about?” Billy said. He gestured beyond the trailer. “I don’t know where we are and I’m there.”

Their minds were sudden merchants: metaphor, like money, equalised the incommensurable.

“It’s beyond words,” indeed. “There’s no such thing.”

That was why this congregation protected him. He was not just another saint. Billy was the preserver. Giant-squid John the Baptist. The shyness he saw in the Krakenists was devotion. It was awe.

“Oh for God’s sake,” he said.

The men and women stared. He could see them attempting exegesis on his outburst.

“I’m asking you all to have faith. Don’t be afraid. ‘How could it have gone?’ people have asked me. ‘Why aren’t the gods doing anything?’ Remember two things. The gods don’t owe us anything. That’s not why we worship. We worship because they’re gods. This is their universe, not ours. What they choose they choose and it’s not ours to know why.”

Christ, thought Billy, what a grim theology. It was a wonder they could keep anyone in the room, without the emotional quid pro quo of hope.

“She probably used proxies and a cleaner-upper online too, because there was bugger-all of interest in her cache.”

“You have no idea what you’re saying, do you, boss?”

“None at all. I had the techies write it all out phonetically for me.”

There are people out there who’d rather be tools than people.

He tried to grin but it did not go well.

There are no cats in UnLondon, for example, because they’re not magic and mysterious at all, they’re idiots.

Byrne was good, her expertise indispensable, her commitment to the project swiftly personal, but she could not unwind death itself. Only filigree it, in certain ways.

Folklore was self-generating.