Un Lun Dun (27 page)

56

Incommunicado

“The featherkey’s in a forest,” the book said.

“A forest? In UnLondon?” said Deeba. “Where?”

“Where most things are in cities and abcities,” the book said. “It’s in a house.”

“If you say so,” Deeba said. “How do we get there?”

“I know where the house is,” the book said. “But we don’t even know where
we
are.”

“Actually…” said Hemi. He was standing by the alley entrance. “Listen.”

Deeba strained. She could make out a noise like a constant grinding, a sliding and slamming like very heavy machines.

“What is that?” she said.

“You know where we are?” Hemi said to the book. “It’s Puzzleborough.”

“Of course,” the book said. “That would make sense.”

“What?” Deeba said.

“It’s like one of those games,” Hemi said. “In crackers. A square with a picture in it chopped into nine or sixteen little squares, and one of them taken out, then they’re all slid and mixed up, moving them one at a time into the empty space. And you have to try to make the picture again? In Puzzleborough, the houses are like that.”

“A house was taken out, years ago,” the book said. “And the rest of the buildings got moved around, and now there’s a load of streets where none of the houses is in the place it should be.

“Every few minutes they all shift around. One of the ones next to the empty lot slides into it, and behind it another slots into the space it left, and it goes all through the borough. But there aren’t nine or sixteen or twenty-five houses, there are hundreds. That means thousands of possible arrangements. You never know where any house is going to be. Everything’s jumbled up.

“Maybe the only people in UnLondon as intrepid as the Wordhoard Pit librarians are the Puzzleborough postal workers. They’re still trying to deliver the mail from decades ago. But the house numbers keep moving. Some of those posties have been tracking a particular house for years, now. Everyone’s waiting for the day the houses land back in the right order.”

“Anyway the
point is…
” Hemi interrupted with ostentatious yawning motions. “Point is we know where we are.”

“So how do we get to this forest?” Deeba said.

“Well, if we were going direct,” the book said, “we’d cut this way south, but that would take us through the Talklands of Mr. Speaker, and you never know with him, so instead we should go round—”

“Hold on,” Deeba said, and clicked her fingers. “Mr. Speaker? I’ve heard of him. Doesn’t he have working telephones?”

“I think so,” said the book. “He’s interested in everything to do with talking. But so what?”

“I can use it to buy some time. I can call home. Talk to my family,” Deeba said. “To stop them forgetting.”

Hemi looked at the book and then at her.

“It would be pretty risky,” Hemi said.

“Why? Is this Mr. Speaker on the Smog’s side?” she said.

“No,” said the book. “But he’s on no one’s side.”

“Don’t tangle with Mr. Speaker,” said Hemi.

“If we go through his yard it’ll be quicker
and
I’ll get to use his phone.”

“It’ll only be quicker if he doesn’t…do something to you,” said the book.

“You know,” said Deeba, “for someone who doesn’t want to be here and thinks we should go back to the bridge, you care a lot about this.”

“I…I…” the book spluttered. Hemi tried to hide a smile.

“Come on, then,” Deeba said. “We haven’t got time to waste. You’re not the ones who are going to get for
got
in a few days’ time if you don’t phone home. We’re going to go straight through this Mr. Speaker’s place, and I’m going to call my family on the way. You said yourself nine days wasn’t very long. But if I communicate with them, the countdown starts again. And if we have any trouble, I’ll just have to
amuse
him, won’t I? After all, I’m the
funny sidekick.
”

57

The Quiet Talklands

There were several maps of the abcity in the book, but Deeba couldn’t make much sense of them. Their scale seemed to change from one section to the next, and the angles of their projections, and their orientations. Deeba simply followed the book’s directions.

They hiked through the streets, avoiding crowds and the pedaled vehicles of UnLondon. They crept into empty and emptish buildings when suspicious balloons or helicopter-style things with blades like huge flat corkscrews flew overhead, in case they were Propheseer spy vehicles. Deeba eyed the unbrellas in the hands of many of the people they passed.

“No one knows who we are yet,” Hemi said. “When the Propheseers get word out we’ll be in more trouble.”

When Deeba mentioned that she was hungry, Hemi disappeared and reappeared almost instantly with food from a street vendor.

“Figured we should stay out of sight,” he said as they ate. “So that was half-ghost shopping.”

As they walked, she told him about London—he didn’t ask, but she wanted to talk about it. She told him about her family, and it made her miss them, but feel good too, even though it was a sad kind of good. She tried to learn more about his life in Wraithtown, and he grunted monosyllabic answers.

By late afternoon they reached the river, and crossed by the BatSee Bridge. Deeba was captivated by the sight of the utterly straight river Smeath running like a ruler through the abcity. She felt exposed on the bridge, under the big sky, but Deeba couldn’t help stopping in the center for a moment and staring along the river, to where the two iron crocodile snouts formed Towering Bridge.

The enormous half-submerged heads stared at each other, blinking occasionally, each wearing a crown as tall as a tower, connected by a walkway at the top. As Deeba watched, the two huge mouths opened slowly, showing enormous riveted fangs, and closed again.

Hemi pulled Deeba on, past brown towers on the other side of the river. They were a little like London’s Parliament if it had been made by giant termites.

“This is it,” said the book as they stepped onto the north side of the river. “This is Mr. Speaker’s Talklands.”

“Why’s it so quiet?” said Deeba.

The streets were not empty, but the few people they passed were walking quickly, and looking down. No one was speaking.

“Shhhh,” the book said. It spoke in little bursts of whisper when no one was near. “Mr. Speaker. Laws. No unapproved talkage.”

“No
way.
”

“Shhh. Could get us arrested. He has…special servants. Could be anywhere. Shouldn’t antagonize them. Keep shtum till we’re at the phone.”

“What then?” Deeba whispered. “How’m I supposed to keep shtum there?”

“Well, talk fast. It was your stupid idea.”

It was eerie, walking in completely silent streets. Deeba found herself scuffing her feet just to make a sound.

“So where is the phone?” she whispered.

“No idea,” said the book. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Shut up,” Deeba hissed. “I’m making this call. So look in your index and find it.”

It took them until almost the setting of the UnSun, but by a combination of trial, error, and deduction, under the book’s complaining direction, they found their way into thickets of backstreets.

“He’s built a maze around the telephone,” the book said. “So people can’t find it.”

The streets emptied as they went on. They passed between terraces that loomed and leaned and became overhangs, until they walked in a tunnel between buildings.

The turns grew sharper, the streets shorter and more cramped. The alleys seemed to double back impossibly. Deeba and her companions passed dead ends, spirals, carefully confusing blind alleys.

“I think I’ve got a map,” the book said. “Check around page three-sixty.”

There was a plan of the maze, so extraordinarily complicated it looked like a human brain. Below it was printed: T
HE
B
LABYRINTH
.

“I can’t follow this,” Deeba said, staring in the light of the streetlamps and the moving stars.

“’Course you can,” the book said. “You see the entrance? Put your finger on it. Now follow as I tell you. Don’t press too hard on the page, you’ll tickle. Are you ready?

“We’ve gone left, left, right, left, left, right, right, left, and right. Then left. Stop. Where your finger is is where we are.”

“How can you remember that?” Hemi said.

“I’m a book,” it said smugly. “We have good memories. Mark that place.
Gently.
Do you have a pencil? Now find a way from where we are to the center. When you’ve found one, move your finger along it.”

It took Deeba and Hemi several minutes of false starts and retracing their trails, but eventually they traced a twisting route to the center of the maze. Deeba moved her finger slowly along it, and the book translated her fingertip journey, murmuring directions she and Hemi cautiously followed.

At last they turned into the cul-desac at the center of the Talklands maze. In front of them was a red phone box.

58

Touching Base

“Dad?”

“Deeba?”

The phone had accepted the coins in various currencies that Deeba had fed it. It wasn’t a good line, and Deeba’s voice and her father’s were separated by long pauses, and heavily distorted, but they could hear each other.

Hemi, Curdle, and the book waited outside the phone box, looking into the rapidly encroaching night.

“Dad, can you hear me? I’m so glad to talk to you!”

“What are you up to, darling?” he said after another long pause. Even knowing about the phlegm effect, Deeba could not help being shocked by how calm he sounded. She had not been home for so long.

“I’m okay, Dad, I just wanted to say I’ll see you soon. And to tell you I love you and…and don’t forget about me.”

As she spoke, Deeba was astonished to see through the glass a dense clot of wasps emerge from the phone outside the box and tear off into the night. They flew close together, extraordinarily fast, disappearing in an instant.

After a moment, they, or another group, zoomed back down out of the sky and into the phone again. They buzzed together, and through the receiver, Deeba heard her father’s voice.

“Forget about you?” he laughed. “What are you talking about, mad girl?” She laughed back, a little hysterical with happiness.

“Get Mum, will you?” she said, and watched the insects zip off again to buzz her voice down the phone to her father. But only half of them came back, and when she heard her father’s response, it was broken up and faint.

“…can’t…not…gone out…” he said.

“Say that again, Dad, I can’t hear you.” Deeba sent the wasps skywards. “Tell her I said hello! Tell her I called!”
Make her think about me,
Deeba thought. Hemi knocked on the phone box. Deeba didn’t even look at him, just made an irritated motion.

Her father said something else in an even more fragmented voice, and Hemi knocked again. The book muttered her name.

“Will you shut up, you two?” she said with her hand over the receiver.

“Deeba,” said the book. “Get out here now.”

When Deeba turned, what she saw through the glass made her hang up in the middle of the static that was all she could hear. She stepped back outside to join her companions.

Dark figures were bearing down on them.

They moved furtively, and fast.

“What are they?” Deeba said. She saw a quickly scuttling thing moving like a crab, something dark red and simian, a stiff-legged man the size of her little brother. They and others came towards the travelers, with no sound.

They approached with slow and threatening motions, in an amazing variety of shapes and colors and spikes and limbs. None of them had mouths.

“They’re Mr. Speaker’s court,” the book whispered. “They’re going to take us back to him. We’ve been done for unauthorized speaking in the Talklands.”

“Maybe I can explain,” Deeba said.

“Explain? You’ve done enough talking. Just keep your mouth shut from now on.”

One of the skulking little figures stamped its foot in obvious anger. It was a little potbellied man with yellow skin, on four scrawny legs, waving four thin arms at them to shut up. He had at least five or six eyes, blinking rapidly and glowering. He made a
shhhh
motion, with his forefinger in front of where his mouth should be.

His companions grabbed Deeba and Hemi roughly by their arms. A big mouthless squirrel with wings and something like the cross of an armadillo and a centipede squabbled silently over the book, until the squirrel-thing bore it away.

“Careful!” Deeba heard the book say. “You’ll scratch my cover!” She struggled but could not break free.

“Deeba,” Hemi muttered. “D’you think you could have a plan that
doesn’t
involve me being attacked?”

“Leave us alone,” she shouted. Each word seemed to make her captors more angry. “I just wanted to talk to my mum and dad. I wasn’t causing trouble. I have to go!”

But Deeba, Hemi, Curdle, and the book were swept away, out of the Blabyrinth and through the streets. For the first time since entering the borough Deeba heard noises. The night rang with extraordinary cries, single words spoken with an amazing, resounding voice.

“K
ETTLE
!” she heard, and “M
AGNANIMOUS
! S
EPTIC
! G
ULLY
!”

These and other words emanated from an enormous building shaped like a drum, towards which the silent figures dragged them.