“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 ALL GOING WELL! BE READY TO RETREAT FROM ATTACKED AREAS! and instructions such as REPORT ANY UNUSUAL ACTIVITY OR YOUNG VISITING LONDONERS TO THE PROPHESEERS! THIS 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 PROPHS R SUCKY SELLOUTS! Deeba read. On one patch was written CHOSEN ONE ROOLZ!
“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 CHOSEN ONE ROOLZ! someone had added UN-.
“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. NOT YET GOT UNBRELLA?? the official graffiti said. TOMORROW—BROKKENBROLL & UNSTIBLE TO HAND OUT LAST BATCH!!! DEFEND YOURSELF AGAINST THE SMOG!
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 i
ts 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…”
Two stalks of smoke rose out of the mass, to the level of the boat, and eyed the fisherman. Deeba could almost hear his gulp from there.
“Oh no,” she breathed.
“There’s nothing we can do,” said Jones grimly. “Stay still. We can’t let it see us.”
“So…” the man said. “What do you say?”
The Smog yanked the tire, the fishing rod, and the man out of the boat. He wailed as he fell. The Smog swallowed him. Deeba didn’t hear him land. Perhaps the Smog bore him with it, in a grip of airborne dirt, as it disappeared back into its stronghold.
“We’re doomed,” whispered Deeba to Hemi as they trudged along. “We can’t fight that.”
“You don’t mean that,” he whispered back. “You don’t.”
Deeba said nothing. We might as well just give in, she thought. She looked at the UnGun and almost laughed. What good is this?
Slowly, Deeba became aware of a noise. A whispered hubbub.
Jones led them through a district of warehouses and moil buildings, and the bizarre one-offs of UnLondon—buildings like bottles, and radiators, by fences like upturned nails.
They made one last turn, and there was the river. Deeba gasped.
It wasn’t the sight of its dark water under the lights and crawling stars that took her breath. It wasn’t the extraordinary, bizarre collection of boats that jostled at the edge of the dock. It wasn’t the outlandish silhouettes of the bridges and waterside buildings, which looked cut out and pasted on the sky. It wasn’t even the sight of Bling and Cauldron, standing with obvious pride on either side of a grizzled harborman, waiting.
It was everyone else.
There must have been more than a hundred people on the dock, standing in little groups. All of them were looking at Deeba.
“Told you word would spread,” Hemi said.
There were men and women in uniforms and rags. There were people who weren’t quite human, and a few who weren’t human at all. She saw a man and a woman in the bus-conductor uniform that Jones wore. There was someone wearing the clothes of the extreme librarians. There were animals, and even a couple of other utterlings.
“Joe Jones,” said the man by Bling. He was older than Jones, and big, with long gray hair. He shook Jones’s hand.
“Bartok Flumen,” said Jones.
“I got your note,” said Flumen. He unfolded the piece of paper. Deeba read what Jones had written.
Bartok! it said. Boats please! Many. Joe Jones. That was all.
“Boats,” said Flumen, and indicated the collected vessels by the river-wall. He raised an eyebrow at the gathering around them. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing so many friends,” he said.
“We didn’t know,” said Deeba.
81
A Special Boat Service
Deeba smiled at the UnLondoners waiting. They carried bows and arrows, clubs, a few strange-looking guns. Standing on a roof overlooking them, Deeba saw a little group, one of whom was effortlessly standing on her hands.
“Slaterunners,” Deeba said, delighted. She waved at them. “Isn’t that a bit high for you?” she said. They grinned.
“Took a bit of getting used to,” one said.
“A lot of our friends were against it,” said another. “Said no good would come of leaving the Roofdom. But when we heard the rumors…well, we had to come.”
“You finally did it, then? Came on real roofs?”
“It’s scary up here! But, special times, ain’t it? You’re Deeba. Inessa Badladder thought it must be you she kept hearing about. Well, at first she thought it was the Shwazzy, but then she changed her mind when she heard more. She says hello. We’d like to come…fight by you.”
Deeba had to turn away. She felt a bit choked up by the sight of the little army.
Standing some way from the main body of volunteers, there was a wispy gang of Wraithtown ghosts. They looked ill at ease.
“Oh my gosh,” she said. “Hemi, it’s the man from the council! Maybe he did see what was on the screen.”
“And he’s brought others,” said Hemi.
He walked over purposefully and began to talk to the chubby ghost, and the others. The bureaucrat smiled uncomfortably. Deeba saw their faint, spectral mouths moving inaudibly. She saw Hemi pointing people out, speaking in a voice that wove in and out of audibility for her. He stood and spoke with authority.
“Don’t see what they’re doing,” someone muttered. “They couldn’t do anything even if they wanted to.”
Deeba stared unpleasantly at the woman who’d spoken. She walked ostentatiously to the gathered ghosts, standing by Hemi. He introduced her, and though she could not hear every word he said, she watched his mouth and, at the relevant moments, reached forward and shook as if she could feel the spectral hands they held out.
“There are others on the way,” he said.
“I just wanted to say thank you very much for coming,” she said. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
“There’s more smoke,” she said. “More fires. The Smog’s trying to spread. And there’s fumes coming out of chimneys. That’s probably the Concern, lighting furnaces to help it.”
“We need a diversion or two,” said Jones. “No point us all trying for the break-in—”
“Jones!”
They froze. Approaching them from behind the crowd was a Propheseer, bodyguard binja walking in front of her.
Jones leapt and reached for his weapon, but the Propheseer threw up her hands and said, “Wait, wait!”
It was Lectern. She looked at the book, in Hemi’s arms.
There was silence for several seconds. The Slaterunners, librarians, and others watched tensely. Lectern looked immensely uncomfortable. The martial-artist dustbins watched from below their just-open lids.
“Book,” said Lectern in sheepish greeting.
“Actually,” Lectern said, “I came to apologize. And to join you.”
“Some of us’ve been getting suspicious for a while now,” Lectern said. “Brokkenbroll’s suggestions have got more and more like orders, and they don’t make any sense. And Unstible wouldn’t let any of us help with his studies. He wouldn’t even let us see his notes. That’s our job! But then a couple of days ago,” she said, “Brokkenbroll tells us that we might have to consider abandoning the Wordhoard Pit. That it’s too costly to keep it safe. That we should let the Smog take it.
“Or, he says, another option’s to build a few fires ourselves, or start up an old factory or something, and maybe come to an arrangement with the Smog! Says he’s got contacts considering something like that! Well…” She looked at them.
“So you started remembering what I said,” said Deeba. Lectern nodded. She couldn’t meet Deeba’s eye. “Is it just you?”
“I know there’re others who don’t like what’s going on,” said Lectern. “Some of them might be on their way. But I didn’t know which of them to risk talking to. So when I heard the talk about what was going on, I just…walked off the Pons. Put my ears to the ground, listened out for where you might be.”
“So word’s spreading a bit too much,” muttered Deeba. “We better be quick. Do the others know?”
“They must know I’m gone by now, but I made sure they didn’t follow us.”
“And the others are loyal to Brokkenbroll?” Jones said.
“Some. A lot of them…sort of pretend, to themselves, that they believe him.”
“The binja?”
“These are the only ones I know you can trust.”
“What about Mortar?”
She looked sadly at them.
“He’s worst of all,” said Lectern quietly. “He’s been friends with Unstible so long, he won’t hear a word of criticism. And the funny thing is, he gets more aggressive and stupidly pro-Unstible the more Unstible looks dodgy. Goes on and on about how brilliantly everything’s going and how Unstible’s going to fix everything and the Smog’ll be routed soon. It’s like he knows something bad’s going on, and he has to prove to himself he doesn’t.
Un Lun Dun Page 30