Un Lun Dun (40 page)

As she went, Deeba glanced at the burrowing machine and wondered how often the secret squad came through to UnLondon. The vehicle had to dig not only through the crust of the earth, but through the Odd, through the membrane between the city and the abcity.
If I just climbed back behind it,
Deeba wondered,
into its tunnel…could I walk all the way home?

But even if it would work—which she doubted—Hemi was right. It was still a trap. The Smog would still come after her, and there was no one to keep her, her friend Zanna, or her family safe but her. She had a job to do. And UnLondon needed her.

Deeba and her comrades descended nearby in a tangle of loud, late-night/ early-morning streets full of shoppers and partygoers. Deeba realized she had missed crowds.

Even in such a boisterous area, filled with the tunes from several different music machines, and UnLondoners dancing in even more astounding costumes and colors than normal, Deeba could feel an edge of anxiety that had not been there when she first visited the abcity. Many people carried unbrellas. People watched each other suspiciously.

“UnSun’ll be up soon,” Jones said. “We should find some cover.”

“Look,” said Hemi. “Can you feel it? People know something’s up. See people all tense? Rumors are out. Word’s probably spreading about what you did up by Webminster Abbey, Deeba—people probably don’t know who to trust anymore. But they know something’s up. They know there’s a battle coming. Maybe some of them even reckon they’re going to have to pick sides.”

80

Rendezvous

While the UnSun was up, they sheltered in emptish houses. When they emerged, they stuck to backstreets and moved as fast as they could, at Deeba’s urgent insistence. Signs of trouble were everywhere. The abcity was growing more tense.

There were few people in the streets, even allowing for the fact that they went by night. Once, scouting ahead, Jones flapped his hand frantically and the travelers hid in the deeps of an alley till a group of binja trooped past the entrance, their weapons out, following a Propheseer Deeba vaguely remembered from the Pons.

“They’re sending out squads,” Jones whispered.

In some areas the streets were patrolled by nervous-looking locals swinging makeshift weapons and wearing cobbled-together armor. Most UnLondoners knew a fight was coming, but didn’t yet know what the sides were, let alone which one they were on.

“Don’t forget the Concern, and those they pay,” the book said. “There are plenty who’ll line up with the Smog, when it comes to it.”

Order was breaking down: once, in the distance, the travelers saw the looming heads of giraffes in the loonlight, far from their usual hunting grounds. Once they thought they saw the distinctive helmets of London police, and hid until the officers, if there were any, went by.

“Was it them?” said Deeba. “The same ones? Did they get out?” But no one had seen them clearly: everyone was on edge. “Let’s just get going.”

Hemi led them to a moil house, with eccentric walls of variegated trash.

“How do you know this is safe?” Obaday said.

“Better avoid the obvious emptish houses now,” Hemi said. “We don’t want just anyone walking in on us. But that?” He indicated a set of scratches by the front step. To Deeba they looked random. “It’s a sign from a local…guild. Safe house. There’ll be a bit of food; it won’t be watched.”

“What guild?” said Obaday.

“Guild of extreme shoppers,” said Deeba, and Hemi laughed. He strained against the door, oozed out of his clothes and through the entrance itself, opened it from within, and held out his hand for his outfit, to get dressed again before he’d let them in.

Inside, Deeba leaned her head against the dark glass of an oven door, part of the moil wall. She rested her hands on broken toasters embedded in see-through mortar.

“This is a
thieves’ hideout
!” the book gasped. Obaday looked up, startled. He nodded in horrified realization, opened his mouth to say something—then met Hemi’s eye. The half-ghost raised an eyebrow.

“Oh…” said Obaday to the book eventually. “Hush up.”

The house on Unshrink Street was opposite an official newswall, showing headlines like
A
LL GOING WELL
! B
E READY TO RETREAT FROM ATTACKED AREAS
!
and instructions such as
R
EPORT ANY UNUSUAL ACTIVITY OR YOUNG VISITING
L
ONDONERS TO THE
P
ROPHESEERS
! T
HIS IS FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY
!

Like several they had seen, this one was scrawled over with counter-graffiti, from more than one group.
E
=
A
,
someone had sprayed. It had been crossed out vigorously, and next to it written
P
ROPHS
R S
UCKY
S
ELLOUTS
!
Deeba read. On one patch was written
C
HOSEN
O
NE
R
OOLZ
!

“Look at that,” sighed Deeba, peeking out at it from under a curtain. The sky was not quite light, and airborne buses were trawling with searchlights. “Zanna’s still getting all the credit.”

Deeba woke to mutterings, and sat up in sudden shock in a newly crowded room. The travelers were no longer alone.

They’d been joined by a small group of locals, as varied and bizarre as most collections of UnLondoners, talking quietly to Hemi and the others, while Skool kept an eye on the door. They greeted Deeba with great, though hushed, excitement.

“It’s wonderful to meet you,” said a large woman wearing a dress made of insects’ wings “May I see the UnGun? Of course if it’s inconvenient…”

“You helped my sister up by the abbey,” said a man shorter than Deeba but more muscular than Jones. “I wanted to say thank you.”

“I don’t know what’s going on with the Propheseers,” said a third person, who was tall and wore thick glasses and whose sex Deeba couldn’t tell. “’Course, people like us’ve never seen eye-to-eye with them
entirely,
but I always understood them before. But now their instructions make no sense.”

“Who are these people?”
Deeba hissed to her companions. “Why are they here?”

“Rumors travel faster than we do,” Hemi said.

“How?”
said Deeba. “I don’t want nothing traveling faster than us.”

“There was already rumors,” Hemi said. “People must’ve been worried for a while. Now there’s something they can do about it. The first people here are going to be those…extreme shoppers, or people who know them, but I bet you word’s spreading.”

“We have to get rid of them,” Deeba muttered.

“Why?” Jones said. Deeba stared at him.

“What? What are you…? If they can find us, the Propheseers will, too! We have to travel
fast,
and
quiet.
”

“People know you’re on the move,” Jones said. “A few—at first just people with connections, like this lot—might find you. There’ll be more. There might be a few you can’t trust, but not all.”

“Don’t panic, Deeb,” Hemi said. He held her shoulders and looked at her steadily. “Don’t you get it?” he said. “You knew the war was coming. This lot are your allies. More than that.

“They’re your troops.”

A slow calm spread through Deeba. She looked again at the newcomers. They might well be outlaws. Several of them would have attracted long glances in London, and at least two would have brought the streets to a standstill and paranormal investigators to the scene.

Here they were just locals, and they were there to join
her.
None, she realized, carried an unbrella.

She smiled cautiously at Hemi, and he smiled back at her.

“Alright everyone,” she said. The room went silent. In a moment of panic, her words dried in her throat.
They’re waiting!
she thought.

The anxiety only lasted a second. She coughed and smiled.

“Thanks for coming. Thanks for joining. Let me tell you what’s going on.”

Deeba’s rather convoluted explanation was helpfully intercepted and steered by Obaday and the book, and interrupted by expostulations of rage and disgust from the newcomers. Jones drew a crude map on the floor. There were at least two obvious routes to Unstible’s factory, and they were taking neither of them.

“Rendezvous is
here,
” said Jones. He didn’t say which way they were ultimately going.

“And listen,” said Deeba. “From now on, wherever you go, or come with us or not…tell people. Not to trust unbrellas. Find other ways to fight. And if the Smog comes for an area,
do
fight. Don’t just give up like the Propheseers say.”

When they left the house, Deeba saw that the altering graffiti had itself been altered. In front of
C
HOSEN
O
NE
R
OOLZ
!
someone had added
U
N
-.

“Look at that,” she said, delighted. “It’s accurate now.”

Hemi was blushing.

That night there were more fires, and Propheseer vessels above, and sounds of skirmishes. There was deeper darkness against the black sky: Smog on malevolent missions. The travelers stopped and started, hiding and scurrying, many times.

Twice, those disembodied car headlights swept mindlessly around the travelers as they went.
N
OT YET GOT
U
NBRELLA
??
the official graffiti said.
T
OMORROW
—
B
ROKKENBROLL
& U
NSTIBLE TO HAND OUT
L
AST
B
ATCH
!!! D
EFEND YOURSELF AGAINST THE
S
MOG
!

Deeba heard the far-off grunting of smoglodytes, and the brutal pattering of coal nuggets and metal bullets.

“Big attacks tonight,” she said. “They’re going to terrify everyone, so the last people’ll get unbrellas.”

“Why doesn’t he send unbrellas after you?” Hemi whispered. “He could fill the streets with them.”

“He can’t,” said Deeba. “If people saw them going off all over the place, and didn’t know why, they’d get suspicious. Brokk blatantly needs everyone to trust them. Right till the last moment.”

When the morning came the skies didn’t lighten as much as they should.

“What’s that?” Hemi sniffed. The air was acrid, with a smell that wasn’t quite burning.

“It’s exhaust,” said Deeba. “Like car fumes. I bet you it’s from London. Murgatroyd must’ve got out of that house, back to his boss…They’ve turned up those chimneys. To bulk up the Smog. They know something’s going to kick off.”

“Today they hand out the last unbrellas,” Hemi said.

“And the Smog’ll make its final attack,” said Deeba. “With only unbrellas to protect them people’ll do whatever Brokkenbroll says. Which means what the Smog says.”

“If we don’t get in the way,” said Hemi.

“So,” said Deeba. “Let’s make sure we get in the way.”

They had to stop when it was light, but of course they couldn’t sleep. They listened to the panicked UnLondoners beyond the safe-house walls.

“Bling, Cauldron.” Jones beckoned. “Would you go on ahead, and pass on a note? Get things ready?”

Deeba watched them go. She squinted—there was something strange about the two utterlings, she thought, something shifting in their look, something not quite all there. She shook her head. It must be nerves. She was mad with impatience. She checked and rechecked what was in her bag, pointlessly. She whispered to her parents, and imagined their responses, until Jones came and told her it was time.

The top of the UnSun had only just sunk below the horizon when Jones motioned the travelers down, behind a clutch of dustbins. He pointed into the sky.

Way above them, a man was visible in a rowing boat, dangling from a balloon. He held a rod, on the end of which was metal cord thirty or forty feet long, and a burning tire.

“The crazy fool’s fishing!” hissed Obaday.

“Smog!” They could just hear the man’s voice. “Smog! Come and get it! I have a proposition!”

“What’s he trying to do?” whispered Hemi.

“A deal,” said the book.

“I’d like to discuss options with you,” the man shouted. “I’m with the Concern, but I’m…not entirely happy with the way things are going.”

From a smogmire a few streets away, a pillar of cloud rose. It hungrily engulfed the wisps of smoke pouring off the tire, followed the trail along the sky. A fat blob of Smog engulfed the burning rubber.

“Good, you enjoy that,” the man said. He was peering over the edge of his boat, and his voice was trembling. “And, and I’d like you to consider the following options. I’m willing to set up, and run on
your
terms, at least two rubbish-fired plants, on the understanding that you and I are partners…”