Un Lun Dun (10 page)

18

Highs and Lows

“The Pons Absconditus isn’t much farther,” Inessa said. “Well, I mean, it’s all over the place. But one fairly constant anchorage isn’t much farther. We’ll get you there and that little wisper won’t have a chance to get near you again. Then the Propheseers will explain everything. They’ll show you the book.” The UnSun was gone, and Zanna and Deeba pulled themselves, exhausted, over the roofs. The Slaterunners surrounded them closely now, kept watch on all sides.

“What book?” Zanna said.

“I’ve never seen it,” Inessa said. “Not many people have. But you hear things. It’s big. It’s old. It’s thick, bound in devilhide and printed in kraken ink. But that’s considerably less important than what’s inside.”

“Which is?” said Zanna.

“UnLondon. The history, the politics, the geography. The past…and the future. Prophecies.” She looked at Zanna. “Prophecies about you.”

Zanna looked thoughtful. The two girls stared back at the motionless fireworks of the November Tree behind them. “You do realize,” said Zanna, “that you’re stroking a milk carton.”

“You’re just jealous,” said Deeba. She was holding Curdle in one hand, gently rubbing it with her other. “’Cause it’s the one thing here more interested in me than you.”

“I am jealous,” said Zanna. “That is
exactly
it.”

They were tired and hungry and homesick, and Hemi’s sudden appearance had frightened them.

“It’ll be alright,” Zanna whispered.

“I wonder how Obaday and the conductor and that lot are doing,” Deeba said. “I hope they got away from the flies by now.”

“Oh,” said Zanna. “Yeah. I hope.” Deeba looked at her suspiciously.

“You hadn’t thought,” said Deeba. “You’re too busy thinking about what’s in that book.”

Zanna said nothing.

They crept on through the ivory loonlight, Deeba and Zanna miserable with exhaustion. After a long time climbing, Deeba realized that Curdle was shifting in her hands, sniffing, whiffling, and puffing with its opening.

“Zann,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Listen,” Deeba said. “Curdle’s being funny. Something’s…” The two girls stood still a moment, motioned the Slaterunners to stop, were silent.

Faintly, from behind them, they heard a pattering.

It came closer. Something was approaching, was only a few streets away, below them.

“It’s him again!” whispered Zanna.

“But…it’s too heavy…” Deeba said. “And there’s more than one…”

“Footsteps.” The two girls jumped as Inessa slid in between them and hunkered close to the roof, her ear to the slates. “Someone knows you’re here. They’re coming.”

“He must’ve been a spy,” said Zanna. “He’s sent them after us…”

“There was that weird bird, too,” Deeba said.

“Jonas, Alf,” Inessa said to two strong-looking Slaterunners. They squatted by Zanna and Deeba, offering their backs. “Hang on,” Inessa said.

“You must be joking,” Deeba said.

Inessa pointed.

Several streets away, dark shapes were bobbing above the gutters. Heads in strange masks jutted into the roofworld itself.

“Oh my God!” Zanna said. “They’re giants!”

“Quickly,” Inessa said. “The rest of the tribe’ll delay them, but we’re going now. Hang on.”

Zanna and Deeba felt the lurch of their carriers, the faint huffs as they cleared clay and slate, the long moments of soaring as they jumped over the gaps of streets.

“Help,” Deeba wheezed, her eyes clenched.

Behind them was a sound of shattering tiles and the
phut
s of blowpipes as the Slaterunners ambushed the intruders.

“Who are they?” Zanna said as Jonas roofran.

“Know who…you are…” Jonas said between breaths. “Must be…with the Smog.”

“Keep going,” said Inessa. “They’ve got up here.”

Zanna opened her eyes. Strange figures silhouetted against the sky, approaching steadily across the roofs.

“Deeba,” she said. “They’re coming after me.”

“There’s nothing for it,” Inessa said after a moment, sounding despairing. “We’re going to have to…descend.”

“No!” said Alf and Jonas.

“We’ve no choice!” Inessa said. “They’ll never expect it. It’s the only way we’ll lose them.

“Three generations,” she said wistfully. “Well…Anything for the Shwazzy.
Follow me!
”

She ran to the edge of the roof. She leapt, somersaulted, plunged towards the street below…

…and landed almost immediately. She stood up. Her head was only a little below them.

Jonas and Alf dropped off the roof. The pavement started just inches below the eaves. The roofs slanted directly up from the ground.

“Where are the houses?” said Deeba.

“What houses?” Inessa said.

Deeba and Zanna stood in the little alley, embedded with the bulbs of streetlamps, staring astonished at the roofslopes they had just left.

“I can’t believe it!” Deeba said. “Even if you fall off you’ll only scrape your knee.”

“You thought there were
houses
under the roofs?” Inessa said. “That would be madness! Just because we want to live free doesn’t mean we shouldn’t consider safety…”

“The people following aren’t giants at all,” Zanna realized.

“On which topic…” Jonas said.

“Yes, now’s not the time,” Inessa said. She gestured, and she, the Slaterunners, Zanna, and Deeba dropped to their hands and knees and rolled into the tiny space below the eaves.

They waited, then froze when they heard bootsteps overhead.

There were hunters on the roof above them. It sounded as if they were milling from one corner to another, poking into shadows. None spoke.

Deeba held her hand over Curdle’s opening, so it could not whimper.

For a horrible moment one of the unseen figures was directly above them, so close the guttering shook by Zanna’s head. She and Deeba stared at each other, their eyes very wide. None of the Slaterunners, nor either of the girls, dared breathe.

At very long last, the searchers moved away. Zanna let out a trembling sigh. Silently, Inessa beckoned and crawled on.

What seemed like hours later, they reached the edge of the Roofdom.

Zanna and Deeba emerged from under the eaves. Before them, the streets sloped away, and the real walls of UnLondon rose, in bricks and wood and the mixed junk called moil.

“Not far now,” Inessa said. Alf and Jonas trod gingerly, and grumbled about how much they hated it down on the ground.

Behind them, the roofs sloped directly up from the pavement like slate tents. Zanna and Deeba rolled their eyes.

19

The Evasive Bridge

Rising from the night streets of UnLondon was the arc of the Pons Absconditus. It was a suspension bridge, with supporting up-down iron curves like two dorsal ridges. It should be spanning a river. It was not. Instead, it rose out of backstreets, from nowhere in particular, went over the roofs, and came down several streets away, in a different nowhere in particular.

There were few bulbs on in few windows. Occasionally, Deeba and Zanna saw four lights rush by through the UnLondon streets, two white lights at the front, two red at the back. The first time, they thought it was a car, but there was nothing there, only a glow like headlights. It was as if in the absence of automobiles, UnLondon had provided their pretty illuminations itself, to leave glowing trails in its night-streets.

The headlights veered past the obstacles that littered the abcity, some half-grown out of the tarmac, some lying ready to be used: old sofas; dishwashers; skips full of glass; chairs emerging from London, growing on their rusty legs like flowers with four stalks.

“Why’d they build the bridge here?” Deeba said.

“They didn’t,” Inessa said. “This is just somewhere people know they can find it. It’s like any bridge: it’s to connect somewhere to somewhere else. That’s what bridges are for.”

There was no one in the streets. The streetlamps shed a dim, dirty light. Below the bridge were a load of dustbins. The corrugated metal cylinders were about half Zanna’s height. They all had their round lids carefully on.

“Now,” said Inessa. “We need to get onto the bridge, to see the Propheseers.”

“It comes down over there,” Deeba said. “Behind those houses.”

But behind those houses, there was another row between them and the end of the bridge. Frowning, Zanna and Deeba turned another corner, and came to a sudden stop.

The bridge still came down close to them—but still just behind another brick row.

“What’s going on?” Zanna said. “We’re not getting any closer.”

Walking under the Pons was no problem. Zanna and Deeba went back and forth below it several times, and it stayed politely immobile. They tried to walk onto it, and its ends stayed stubbornly one or two streets beyond them. They came at it slowly, quickly, sneakily, in full view. It was always just out of their reach.

Zanna and Deeba and the Slaterunners stopped in the dark under the bridge, among the dustbins. Deeba stroked Curdle.

“It’s like a rainbow,” Zanna said. “You can’t reach its end. How are we supposed to get on?”

Something flitted quietly through the air. They tensed, but it was just a scrunched-up piece of paper, dropping from the bridge. It settled among the dustbins.

“I wondered how they kept undesirables off,” Inessa said. “I didn’t realize the bridge was shy.”

“Yeah,” Deeba said. “Looks like they don’t need any guards.”

“Actually,” Inessa said, “I think they have them too.” She pointed.

One by one, dustbins around them were standing up.

There were seven or eight of them. A pair of skinny legs jutted from each of their round metal undersides. From their sides sprouted thin, muscly arms. Their lids teetered, then tilted. They opened just a slit. Inside was darkness, in the thick of which were eyes.

The dustbins stepped closer.

They moved with an athletic precision. The Slaterunners circled warily, ready for attack. But the bin in front raised its hand, and spread surprisingly dainty fingers, as if to say,
Wait.
It tapped the side of its lid, and cupped its hand in an ostentatious listening motion. There was that sound again. The noise of boots.

“They’ve found our trail!” Inessa said.

The dustbin put its finger to where its lips should be. It made quick gestures, and two of its companions ran fast and soundlessly out of the shadows.

In the light of the streetlamps they retracted their arms and legs with a faint
shlp,
leaving only grubby stains where each limb had been. They were instantly disguised—just a pair of dustbins. After a moment they sprouted limbs again. They stood in karate poses. Then they opened their own lids, reached into their own dark interiors, and drew out weapons.

One took out a sword, and the other two pairs of nunchucks, which Zanna and Deeba recognized from martial-arts films. The two dustbins ran off towards the sound of the pursuers, disappearing in shadows.

You:
the dustbin leader pointed to Zanna and Deeba, then pointed straight up, to the bridge above them. Beckoned.

“It wants us to go,” Deeba said.

“Not without the Slaterunners,” Zanna said. “They’re the ones got us here…”

“It’s alright,” Inessa said. “I’ve no business with the Propheseers, whereas you…you’re expected. You go, Shwazzy. We need to get back to the Roofdom. These are the Propheseers’ protectors. They’ll get us out of here safely. We’ll be alright, and so will you.”

Zanna and Deeba gave each of the Slaterunners a hug.

“Thank you,” Zanna said.

“Take care of yourself,” Inessa said. “Shwazzy…we’re counting on you.
All
of us.”

The dustbin crept, Zanna and Deeba behind it, through the same streets that they had just walked. This time, however, the end of the bridge grew closer with every turn.

“How did you do that?” Zanna muttered. The dustbin motioned her to silence.

The Pons Absconditus rose in front of them. To either side were the doorless backs of houses. UnLondoners might be able to see the bridge from their rear windows, but without a guide, they’d have no success reaching it.

It rose like the back of a sea serpent. At its apex were moving figures.

The girls’ dustbin escort walked them onto the bridge.

“Finally,” said Zanna. “The Propheseers.”

“We can go
home,
” Deeba almost gasped.

“And find out the truth,” said Zanna quietly.