Kang-Speak Sample

As mentioned in the main article about Paradise/Towers, I was asked to write a brief section of Kang-speak as an audition for the novel, just to show I could do it and wouldn’t find it a chore to keep up. At the time, I hadn’t plotted out the story so didn’t know if the sample would make it into the final book. In the end, bits of it did get recycled, but as this is mostly introducing Downspout and his world it doesn’t contain any major spoilers. So without further delay …

They call me Downspout, and I am not as a Kang should be. I am brave and bold, and if you think I am untruthing any Kang will tell you Downspout was the Kang who got within fifteen footsteps of the Blue Kang brainquarters, and took a hotcross bow in the shoulder on the Day the Red Kang Cried Wolf. The Kang that fired it had more frit than me, thinking they’d aimed close enough to my brainbox to send me turntail away. She cried more as the arrow misflew to my shoulder than I did when Switchroom B pulled it out again. The Kang all said they thought they would be all hailing me that day, but I did not game over. There is a red pucker sore where the arrow was now. Sometimes it aches when the cold air blows through the ventegrande grills.

Still, I am not as a Kang should be. Some days, I think the Yellow Kang must see it too. They look at my hair, which is so short on the top that it will not bedhead in the morning like a Kang’s hair should, and shorter still at the sides so there is no hair there to colour yellow. They watch me with eye-smiles as I tie my winder-binder, but if they ask I tell them it is so the sack-fats do not bounce as I run and I can run fast and silent as a good Kang should run. The Kangs all grew sack-fats across the Red Mist Year, except Switchroom A, but no other Yellow Kang uses the winder-binder, perhaps no other Kang in the whole wide Towers, and they all still run, some faster than me. But they do not barnirubble. No Kang knew why there were there or what they were for, but once it was clear they were come one, come all the Yellow Kang would mock Switchroom A to tears for her lack, even Switchroom B who in every other way was a mirror to her. I never mocked Switchroom A.

A good Kang should care for fabshion, too. In the daylight, we play the never-ending game, but by nightlight we raid the reloomers before the Rezzies can take their pick. We take any scrap of cloth that comes in our colours, and cut and sew and make ends meet. The Yellow Kang sewcircle for half the night, passing thread or rag between them, holding it up to their bodies and saying it will make this thing or that. It is the shoes that are the hardest. No Rezzie nor Caretaker either ever wore yellow shoes, and it was always either cobble together a shoe from yellow scrap or else take a shoe and wrap it up yellow. Neither was good, a case of doo or diet. The day that Cleaning-Staff Only took the rogue lift to floor thirty-four-but-might-be-twenty-six and came back with the bottle of thing that made brown shoes fade yellow, the Yellow Kangs stayed up whooping so far past lights out that it was nearly lights in again. I was as glad not to have to sew yellow plastic to yellow plastic as any Kang, but that seemed a bit to-do to me. I want a shoe with no squeak in and a top that keeps the warm air in and the cold air out, and that is as much fabshion as I need. So I went to bed and let them to whooping.

I do not sleep as a good Kang should sleep: I keep one eye open but also the other eye too. My body will not give in without a fight. It takes my mind away wandering as soon as I lie down in the dark and will not let it come back to bed. Counting unhappinesses like the other Kangs are counting sleep, until sometimes I find they are leaking out of my eyes there are so many. At least once between the Red Mist days, it will go wandering and bring back the face. I don’t know whose. It is not the face of Kang, or Rezzie, and definitely not Caretaker, but is bits of all three. The skin is dry and fine-lined like a Rezzie or Caretaker, but the hair is big and bushy like a Kang’s hair should be. It has white, but not all over: a single streak that falls over the eyes to the left and the nose to the right. It is as if they are a White Kang, although there are no White Kangs not ever and they are an oldster. But not a Rezzie or a Caretaker, because they are also a youngster. It is a muddle of a face, this oldster Kang Rezzie youngster face, and when it comes into my mind from wherever it is always sad and not now-ish. It speaks to me, the muddle-Kang not now-ish cry face.

“We always raised you to be what you are, Ray-bot” it says in my sleepyhead, “but just this once be what they say and be safe.”

I don’t know what the words mean all together that way, but when they are there in my mind they make me sad and not now-ish as a Kang should not be.

But I am Kang. Because I am not Caretaker, not Rezzie, not the Cowardy Cutlet, and that is all the things. Perhaps I am a cleaner in this guise. Perhaps they gave me legs instead of tracks and set me here to wallscrawl the Towers to give the other Cleaners work to do wiping it away again so life is not too yawny and dull. Perhaps one day they will come to me and say you are well done, little cleaner, you are medium rare and we have come now to take you to the cleaners and you can unscrawl the walls and your eyes need never leak again because we are cleaners and we have no eye dear. And they will take my legs and my arms and give me track and claw and I will chase the Yellow Kang through the carrydors and play the never-ending game from the other side. Sometimes that thought can make me warm as a radiator. But in the deep down I think I would rather be a ray-bot. Once I know what that may be.

“Now what do we have here?”

Blank walls and cleaners! All this wool I have gathered has slowed me down, and now the Caretakers have me. Two grey uniforms, one wide, one thin. Wide is smiling and has bars on his chest: captain acab. Thin looks like he would be happier if he could mind how you go for the winks under his blue lamp.

“Now stay where you are,” the wide one says as I make to move. “Or I’ll have 347/60 arrest you for resistance.”

“I am not hurting,” I spit at them. “You have no just because.”

The wide one makes his arms a fold across his chest.

“We are responding to reports of a gang of young girls frightening residents on Rubidium Street. Young girls who match your description. So why don’t you tell us what you’re doing here, hmm?”

I look upstreet and downstreet but eye-spy no Yellow Kang.

“What girls?” I say. “What Rezzies?”

“A gang of three or four young girls all dressed in gang colours,” the thin one says before he can not say it. “One of the Rezzi - residents saw them from her window and thought they looked suspicious.”

The wide one gives the thin a glare stare, and he looks to his boots.

“What colours?” I ask.

He does not answer, but I can make my arms a fold too.

“Blue,” he says like a sheep, face in his boots.

“I am no Blue Kang!” I laugh.

“Alright, alright,” the wide one steps forward, face a frown. “No need to lose your temper. I think you need to empty your pockets.”

“You have no just because!” I say again.

The wide one, the captain acab, has a knee in my belly. He has my arm in a twist, and grinds my face to Potassium Street. His foot goes to my back, and as I snarl out my anger he gives a press and a twist and it hurts some more.

“Check her pockets, 347/60,” the wide one says.

The thin one pulls at my clothes but has no bear’s fruit.

“Sir …” he umers, “She doesn’t have any pockets.”

“Not worth the paperwork anyway,” the wide one laughs to the thin. He presses lips to my ear, and says hotly: “Don’t let me catch you loitering around here again, wallscrawler, scaring the poor old dears. Next time you won’t be so lucky.”

The weight on my back is gone. The wide one strolls away, nowhere to be and plenty of time to be there. The thin one looks back, once, but I throw a men-swear at him and he hurries after it like he wants to catch it in his teeth. He says something to the acab, but I don’t hear it. Probably it is nothing nice. If I was as a Kang should be, perhaps I would have ran after and dealt them blows. Instead I pick myself up and try to brush Potassium Street from my knees and face. My knee has a tear in it. I will have to join the sewcircle tonight. The Caretakers will go back to their brainquarters and laugh and laugh and forget.

They call me Downspout. The acab will remember me.

It is not far to a paintstash. The Kang have wilied that a paintspray is as bad as a hotcross bow if the Caretakers find it on you. Worse. An arrowgun will only hurt some other Kang, but a paintspray will scrawl a wall for all to see. The Caretakers see wallscrawl as the worst of all, and tell themselves that if they can only wipe it all away every other badness would disappear too like waste down the chute. Silliness: without the wallscrawl, Kangs would have more time to trouble the Caretakers, not less. But still we wilied and we hide and we no officer we have no paintspray on us we are a good Kang as good and as quiet as a Kang should be. Any Kang that needs can take a paintspray, and any Kang that finds a stash with a hole should fill it as soon as they can. It is outside of the never-ending game, a thing that makes Kang Kang.

There is a blank wall near to the paintstash, but it hides between an alleviator and the Rezziequaters. I am a Yellow Kang, and Yellow Kangs are the best and the boldest. This wallscrawl will not hide. So I go further, across the carrydors and through two squares until I find a canvas that is large and inavoidable. A look upstreet and down. A Rezzie twitches her nets. It will not be long until the Caretakers are here. But not long will be long enough. A shake of the paintspray and I make my first mark. The scrawl is already there in my brainbox, and if I unfocus my peepers I can see it now on the wall. I just have to spray around the not-scrawl until it goes from brainbox to wall. The caretaker, the acab, comes first. I did not see his face as he was foot to my back, but in the scrawl it is twisted and unhuman, rage red. And below him, I scrawl Downspout, face not to Potassium Street but raised high and refiant. This Downspout has a look that says this injustice will be returned to sender and Caretakers must be ware. It is a good wallscrawl.

I hear the squawk of a Caretaker’s talkiebox from around a carrydor. It is time for hightails and to return the paintspray to the stash. But one last look. It is a good wallscrawl, and it will be good for ages to be. Because they call me Downspout, and I am not as a Kang should be, but I am brave and bold and yellow, and no Kang can scrawl like me.