Free Looking for Jake by China Miéville

la Fascination have both stories about them. We call him le jockey, a man who is supposed to live on streets like these and to make them move for him, but these are only stories for the children. There are no people on these
rues sauvages,
in Paris, and I think there are none in London too. No one knows why the streets have gone to London that time, like no one knows why your Importune Avenue moved around the area where is now the Arc de la Défence twelve years ago.
    Â 
    Â Â Yours truly,
    Â 
    Â Â Claudette Santier
    Â 
    Â 
    [
There is a handwritten letter.
]
    Â 
    My Dear Charles,
    Â 
    I’m quite aware that you feel ill-used. I apologise for that. There is no point, I think, rehearsing our disagreements, let alone the unpleasant contretemps they have led to. I cannot see that you are going anywhere with these investigations, though, and I simply do not have enough years left to indulge your ideas, nor enough courage (were I younger

.

.

.

Ah but were I younger what would I
not
do?).
    Â Â I have performed three Walks in my time, and have seen the evidence of the wounds the Viae leave on each other. I have tracked the combatants and shifting loyalties. Where, in contrast, is the evidence behind your claims? Why, on the basis of your intuition, should anyone discard the cautions that may have kept us
alive
? It is not as if what we do is safe, Charles. There are reasons for the strictures you are so keen to overturn.
    Â Â Of course yes I have heard all the stories that you have: of the streets that occur with lights ashine and men at home! of the antique costermongers’ cries still heard over the walls of Dandle Way! of the street-riders! I do not say I don’t believe them, any more than I don’t — or do — believe the stories that Potash Street and Luckless Road courted and mated and that that’s how Varmin Way was born, or the stories of where the Viae Ferae go when they unoccur. I have no way of judging. This mythic company of inhabitants and street-tamers may be true, but so long as it is also a myth, you have nothing. I am content to observe, Charles, not to become involved.
    Â Â Good God, who knows what the agenda of the streets might be? Would you really, would you
really
, Charles, risk attempting ingress? Even if you could? After everything you’ve read and heard? Would you risk taking sides?
    Â Â Regretfully and fondly,
    Â 
    Â Â Edgar
    Â 
    Â 
    [
This is another handwritten note. I think it is in Edgar’s hand, but it is hard to be sure.
]
    Â 
    Saturday 27th November 1999.
    Â 
    Varmin Way’s back.
    Â 
    Â 
    [
We are near the end of the papers now. What came out of the package next looks like one of the pamphlet-style reports of sightings. It is marked with a black band in one corner of the front cover.
]
    URGENT: Report of a Walk.
    Walkers: FR, EN, BH (author).
    Â 
    At 11:20 p.m. on Sunday 28th November 1999, a Walk was made the length of Varmin Way. As well as its tragic conclusion, most members will be aware of the extraordinary circumstances surrounding this investigation — since records began, there is no evidence in the archives of a Via Fera returning to the site of an earlier occurrence. Varmin Way’s reappearance, then, at precisely the same location in Plumstead, between Purrett and Rippolson Road, as that it inhabited in February 1988, was profoundly shocking, and necessitated this perhaps too-quickly-planned Walk.
    FR operated as base, remaining stationed on Rippolson Road (the front yard of the still-deserted number 32 acting as camp). Carrying toolbags and wearing Council overalls over their harnesses and belay kits, BH and EN set out. Their safety rope was attached to a fencepost close to FR. The Walkers remained in contact with FR throughout their three-hour journey, by radio.
    In this occurrence of Varmin Way, the street is a little more than 100 metres long. [
An amendment here:
‘Can you