Free Three Moments of an Explosion by China Miéville

hear,” Sophia said to Will. “She probably already has. Shit.” She looked excited and angry.
    “We better go too,” Will said.
    “I’m glad I’m a bit pissed, to be honest,” Sophia said. “Thanks for the booze. Come on boy: let’s go face it.”
    Cheevers and McCulloch sat alone and in silence.
    “Well now,” Cheevers said eventually. “I doubt there’s much question as to what was just unearthed.”
    “That’s a big deal,” said McCulloch. “Been a fair old while.” He pursed his lips. “Be nice to see. Take tomorrow morning off? Be at mine at six?”
    “Six? Leave it out . Why would I do such a thing?”
    “Don’t you want to see? How long’s it been? They’re going to be up all night dealing with it. Perfect: they’ll be in no state to turn us away.”
    Free Bay was a tiny working harbor. Yards out from the field where Paddick’s team worked, little boats coughed soot. People had heard rumors: when McCulloch and Cheevers arrived at the dig the next morning there was already a small group of townspeople by the site.
    This dig’s security comprised a much larger operation of freelancers and island police than Gilroy’s. They were not trying to get rid of the crowds, just to keep them behind temporary barriers.
    “Stay back, ladies and gents,” one officer called.
    “You’re loving this, aren’t you, Bob?” someone shouted. There was laughter, including from the policeman. He flicked his cap and came to speak to Cheevers.
    McCulloch looked down a slope of crabgrass to where the archaeologists milled around a makeshift screen in the pit. He saw Charlotte and raised his hand and she waved back. He could see she was exhausted.
    “Look.” Cheevers pointed. Will and Sophia stood on the side of the hole, near Paddick’s team. “Apparently Gilroy was here last night. Academic courtesy. Paddick showing her what they’d found.”
    “Bet he enjoyed that,” said McCulloch.
    The students began to fold back the screens. The crowd pushed forward to see. McCulloch stood on tiptoe.
    Within the wider pit was a deep hole where muck and dirt had been carefully dug out from around a plaster figure. With the tenderness of parents, the archaeologists looped slings around it to haul it from the ground.
    The thing rose wobbling into view.
    It was perfect. Unbroken. Splayed in a pose familiar to McCulloch, from images, from the island museum. A typical death shape.
    Seeing such things in glass cases, reading the captions that described them, McCulloch had been awed enough. Now he saw one delivered. He had to hold his breath.
    Its wings were coiled. Its heavy head lolled. The scoops of its great eyes were intricately molded. There was the spiraling body, like something winkled from a shell; there its many limbs, outfolded. Its little hand-things looked as if they were beseeching.
    The archaeologists laid a blanket on the plaster echo of the epochs-dead thing, as if to warm it. They carried it away.
    It was almost two decades since the first such shape had been raised and dusted clean.
    Almost immediately after that first, archaeologists had uncovered three more, and the curlicues on the temples of the volcano’s lower slopes ceased to be decorative filigrees and were suddenly recognizable as images of these other locals. The peculiar dimensions of ruined doorways in the old town made new sense. The mosaics were no longer depictions of mythic visitations: they were simple realism.
    All the island waters were sounded and explored. No one found vessels. Where the things came from, and how, no one could know. It was only ever on the island that evidence—conclusive evidence—of such coexistence had ever been found.
    The creatures lay with the humans, dead islanders alongside them. They’d worked with them. Worshipped with them, the scientists said, looking anew at the shards of illustration still visible, the extraterrestrial and the human at prayer together, coronaed, altar-top boxes glowing.
    Another