The bus was hovering. “Are you okay?” Jones hissed, Skool peering over his shoulder. The girls nodded. “That way to the bridge. Stay high and find Chief Badladder. Tell her I sent you. Show her the pass. Tell her I’ll owe her. Stay safe.” He blew them a kiss, and shouted at Rosa to go.
The bus soared, something pale seemed to drop from it, and it shot away. The two grossbottles droned into view, buccaneers on their backs, and scudded in the bus’s wake.
“What was that?” said Zanna. “Did you see something…falling? From the bus?”
“I dunno,” whispered Deeba.
Wind chilled Zanna and Deeba. The noise of the flies ebbed away.
The two girls sat in the cold. Silence settled on them like damp. They shivered. They were tired and overwhelmed, and suddenly very, very alone.
16
Stuck
“Come on,” said Zanna eventually. “We can’t just sit and feel sorry for ourselves.”
“I bet I could,” Deeba said, but she stood, holding Curdle.
“We deserve to,” Zanna said. “We just can’t.”
The UnSun was getting lower, and the sky darker.
“We have to find somewhere to shelter,” Zanna said.
“And food,” said Deeba.
They clambered laboriously up the slope, hauled themselves onto the ridge, and stared.
They were in the middle of undulating roofs, a slatescape in red and gray and the color of rust. It rose and fell like mountainside, steep, shallow, deep, flat, interrupted by trenches where streets must run, unlit alleys between houses. The angles were broken by dormer windows, by squat chimneys like patches of mushrooms, by tangles of antennae, wire fingers pointing in all directions.
They stared for a long time in the direction Zanna thought she had seen something fall. They could see nothing moving over the up-and-down of the tiles.
“What do we do?” said Deeba. “How do we get anywhere?”
“I don’t know,” said Zanna. “Let’s try this…” She began to shuffle along the ridge. Deeba stared.
“You’re kidding,” she said. Sighing, she put Curdle in her bag, and—slowly—followed her friend.
They stopped, suddenly, as an awful bleating cry sounded nearby, and was answered from a long way off.
“What was that?” whispered Deeba.
“How should I know?” Zanna whispered back.
“Well I’m not Shwazzed. You know everything, Shwazzy. Shwa me what you can do.”
“Shut up,” said Zanna.
“Shwat up yourself.” Zanna couldn’t help laughing at the ridiculous riposte.
They gripped a chimney stack and waited for their hearts to slow down. Far off, they could see the rise of tower blocks and the odd shell or vegetable or typewriter-and-fridge roof of UnLondon, but for a long way, it was just foreboding hillocks of slate.
The air was darkening. Deeba leaned into the chimney. Curdle nuzzled her forlornly.
“Oh man,” Deeba said. She couldn’t stop herself saying, “I want my mum and dad. How do we get down?”
“Why in the name of Unstible,” a loud voice said, “would you want to get down?”
Zanna and Deeba whirled around. Curdle squeaked.
They were surrounded.
There were men and women on the ledges. They wore tough-looking furs and padded boots.
They trotted carelessly on brick ledges, somersaulted like gymnasts, and landed poised on slopes. One man had a baby strapped to him in a harness on his chest. It gurgled happily as he scampered up and down giddying slopes.
“‘Get down’ indeed,” the same voice said.
On a roof overlooking them was a tall, athletic, imperious-looking woman. She strode casually, reached a gap between buildings, jumped calmly over it, and landed on her toes. She took hold of an antenna and swung around it.
“You, young grubs, are in the territory of the Slaterunners. So might I ask just what exactly groundlubbers like you are doing in the Roofdom? Because we prefer guests ask before they come in.”
Zanna and Deeba swallowed.
“We’re looking for someone called Badladder,” Zanna said.
“Oh are you?” the woman said, and the Slaterunners laughed. “And what might you want with Badladder?”
“Conductor Jones dropped us here,” Zanna said.
“He had to go,” said Deeba. “He wanted to stay but—”
“We were being chased by grossbottles,” Zanna said. “He said Badladder’d help us. He said he’d owe her one.” The Slaterunners were blinking, surprise breaking through their arrogance.
“What help is it you need?” the woman said.
“People want to stop me,” Zanna said hesitantly. “I don’t know why. It’s because of…this.” She held up the travelcard.
“Shwazzy!” The whisper went through the Slaterunners. “Shwazzy!” “Shwazzy!”
“You’re here?” someone said. “It’s happened!” And: “At last!” “Is Unstible with you?” “Did you bring the Klinneract?”
“I don’t know what any of that means,” Zanna said. “Jones said the Propheseers would explain.”
“We have to get out of here,” Deeba said.
“Will you help me?” said Zanna.
“Of course,” the woman said. “I can’t believe you’re here. At last. Now the bloody Ess Emm Oh Gee better watch itself!” She vaulted and landed in front of them. “I’m Inessa Badladder. This is Eva Roadshun; Alfred Stayhigh; Jonas Ridgetrotter; Marlene Chimneyvault…”
“I’m Zanna. This is Deeba. Pleased to meet you.”
“The Propheseers live in Pons something,” Deeba said.
“Shwazzy, it’s an honor to be of help,” Badladder said, ignoring Deeba.
“We have to go to the bridge,” said Zanna.
“The Pons Absconditus,” said Badladder. “Of course.”
17
The Upside
“The secret,” said Inessa Badladder, “is not to look down.”
“I wasn’t going to,” said Zanna.
The Slaterunners led Zanna and Deeba laboriously over the roofs. They threw up rope bridges over the gaps of streets and guided the girls over, whispering, “Look straight ahead.” Once there was that sudden plaintive bleating again. Zanna and Deeba froze.
“Don’t worry,” Inessa said. “It’s just a trip.”
“A what?”
Clattering elegantly down the slates came a line of goats, staring with their strange eyes.
“That’s what you call a group of them,” Inessa said. “A trip of mountain goats.” The animals watched them go. Deeba stared back, thinking she had seen something flit pale and fast behind the goats, but only the chewing herd moved.
“I can’t understand how you lot can live down there, without this freedom,” Inessa said. “Walled in. I’m third-generation groundless. My mother never touched down, nor my grandmother. My great-grandmother once had to. It was an emergency. The roof was on fire.”
“Look,” said Zanna, and the two girls paused in their exhausting climb. As it set behind the bizarre silhouettes of UnLondon, the UnSun was rainbow-shaped, an arch of light.
Flocks of birds gathered, circled, and separated into species. Swirls of pigeons and starlings and jackdaws headed towards the tall, thin rectangular towers that dotted the abcity. The buildings’ fronts broke with thousands of drawers, into each of which one bird flew. The little compartments slid shut. “They are chests of drawers!” Deeba said. “That’s where the birds sleep!”
“Of course,” said Inessa. “You couldn’t just have them all over the place; it would be chaos.”
The UnLondon moon rose, and Zanna and Deeba stared at it in astonishment. It was not a circle, nor a crescent. Instead, it was a perfectly symmetrical spindle, pointed at the top and the bottom, like the slit in a cat’s-eye.
“Our way will be lit,” Inessa said, “by the light of the loon.”
Stars appeared in the dark. They were not still like the stars
of London: they crept like luminous insects every which way. There was a sputter as streetlamps came on in the streets below and orange light shone up from the gaps between the roofs.
“What was that?” said Deeba. She pointed past the edge of a gutter, into one of those narrow unseen alleys.
There was nothing there. “I swear I’m going mad,” Deeba muttered. “I keep thinking I see something.”
The girls followed their guides, clambering onto an apex, and into a sudden glow. The light source came into view. It was only a few streets away, just beyond the edges of Roofdom.
“It’s…” Deeba whispered.
“…beautiful,” Zanna said.
For a moment it looked like a fireworks display, the most amazing, huge, impressive one ever. But it wasn’t moving. It was an enormous tree of firework-bursts, stuck together and motionless.
The trails of several rockets made a trunk. They jutted off at various heights in boughs of light and curved down like a willow tree. Colors filled the rocket-trail branches like leaves, in glimmering red, blue, green, silver, white, and gold. Catherine wheels and the bursts of Roman candles, the buds of sparklers hung motionless and silent like fruit.
“The November Tree,” Inessa said.
“This is a good time to see it,” Inessa said. “It was a bit forlorn a couple of weeks ago. Almost at the end of its life. But Guy Fawkes Night is springtime for the November Tree.”
Fireworks were obsolete the instant after they ignited. Every November on Fireworks Night, the most choice effects of the most impressive displays in London would seep through into UnLondon as they became moil, and blossom into the November Tree. Over the year the tree would dim, shedding its glow and colors, until by November the fourth it was little more than a skeleton of smoke trails.
Then the cycle would begin again. The rejuvenated tree would light up the night.
Several small, crackling shapes scampered up the November Tree. Squirrels. Their claws gripped the solid glow. Their coats smoldered, but they did not seem uncomfortable.
“This is where the toughest red squirrels moved,” Inessa said. “After the grays came. They’re fireproof, though they keep that to themselves. Once or twice a gray makes it here and tries to follow them. Don’t get very far.” She mimed an explosion.
“I wish I had my phone,” Deeba whispered to Zanna. “I want to take a picture.”
At the shining highest branches, something swooped. Most of the birds were gone from the sky now, but above the tree was one that had not joined any of the throngs. It circled.
“There’s something weird with that bird’s head,” said Deeba.
Its skull bulged wrongly. The November Tree’s light glinted from its eyes.
“You’re right,” said Zanna. But it wheeled off too fast to see—into a last, sleepy flock of ducks—and disappeared.
“What was that?” said Zanna, but she was interrupted by Inessa’s shout.
“Hey!” Deeba and Zanna turned and screamed.
Creeping without sound from around a chimney pot behind them, hunched over like a monkey, draped in what looked like a curtain, was Hemi. He was only inches away. He was reaching out, his fingers actually touching Zanna’s pocket.
He leapt up as the Slaterunners launched themselves at him, his look of concentration becoming one of alarm. Hemi scrambled up and down the roofs to get away, Inessa’s tribe quickly after him. They gained on him, but he reached the edge of a roof, gathered himself, and jumped, the cloth he wore flapping like a cape, down into the dim gap between the buildings and out of sight.
When his pursuers reached the building’s edge they looked into the alley in both directions, and shook their heads.
“He’s gone,” one shouted.
“Who was that?” Inessa said. Deeba and Zanna were shaking.
“A ghost,” Deeba managed to say.
“That was him off the bus,” said Zanna. “He’s following us.”
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 phuts 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 u
p 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.
Un Lun Dun Page 7