After several seconds, the top of the chimney had collapsed inwards and clogged the shaft. The remaining stub swayed and held.
One by one, the walls of the room fell away. The rubble of the laboratory was open to the air. The rebrella clicked closed, and spun into Deeba’s hand.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Deeba…” It was Mortar. The soporific little smoggler that had covered his face was gone, sucked into the growing cloud above them. He staggered to his feet, raising a plume of dust, and shuffled towards her, blinking.
“I don’t know what’s happened,” he said, “but I do know I’ve been a terrible, terrible fool. Please forgive me. I simply…couldn’t believe my own old friend Unstible was…” His voice failed him.
Deeba eyed him. She knew she should be extremely angry with him, and she would be soon, but not just then.
“He wasn’t,” she said. “Your friend didn’t do nothing. It was the Smog.” She decided not to show him Unstible’s skin. He looked on the verge of collapse already.
“But…can you ever…”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll forgive you later. Right now there’s no time.” She pointed up. Mortar stared in horror at the growing mass of greening cloud.
“What’s it doing?”
Deeba spoke urgently.
“It’s getting ready to make every unbrella in UnLondon a firebomb—all them unbrellas it and Brokkenbroll told everyone to carry. For protection.” With your help, she thought, but didn’t say. It was obvious from Mortar’s face that he knew it.
“What can we do?” he said mournfully. “What can I do?”
“First, we need to…stop her getting away,” Deeba said suddenly and, without even thinking, hurled the rebrella at Lectern, who was creeping towards the elevator. It tangled into the Propheseer’s legs, pulled her down. Lectern wailed. “She went over to Brokkenbroll,” Deeba said. “Deliberately.”
“Lectern!” Mortar said.
“Yeah, it’s terrible, but we don’t have time to be horrified yet,” Deeba said. She thought quickly. She looked up at the Smog, and out over the ruined walls across UnLondon.
All over the city, dark plumes were rising from the smogmires.
Everywhere were flashes of fires and battles, and the noises of struggle, as the great war for UnLondon raged. But something new was happening.
The Smog was oozing out of the streets it had taken over, tugging out of the sewers and the houses, floating up into a choking lid. It sat in the air in fat globs acres wide, dangling filaments of smoke like feelers, sucking the last of itself from chimneys.
All the Smog of UnLondon rose. Nightbirds, highfish, and flying vessels lurched, shocked, to evade it.
From every battleground, the Smog seeped out of the reanimated flesh of the smombies. They collapsed, or were suddenly controlled by surprised ghosts who’d been struggling to push the sentient smoke out of them. The Smog gushed out of the tanks and pipes on the stink-junkies. They fell to the floor and wheezed in withdrawal as the pollutants that had addicted them floated away.
All the clots of Smog billowed through the air and rolled into each other, like blobs of mercury. They joined into fatter clouds. They slowly approached the densest patch of all, over Deeba’s head. After weeks in Unstible’s skin, it was luxuriating in the open sky.
Deeba heard cheers from across UnLondon.
“They think it’s over,” said Deeba. “They think they won. But it’s drawing together, so it can mix that chemical in. It boiled it so it could breathe it—now it’s going to mix it into every bit of Smog there is. Then it’ll spread again…and rain. While everyone celebrates. They’ll see it coming, but they’ll just put up their unbrellas.”
“And then…” said the book.
“The unbrellas,” Deeba said. “And the people carrying them. They’ll all burn.”
94
The Dreadful Sky
“Can you get to the bridge?” she said. “Mortar! Can you?”
With a visible effort, Mortar looked away from the growing mass of Smog.
“Yes,” he said. “I may be tired, and an idiot, but I wouldn’t be a Propheseer if I couldn’t get to the Pons Absconditus.”
“Right,” said Deeba. She thought fast. “You have to go everywhere. Hundreds and thousands of people are out and about tonight. You have to go everywhere, and tell them the Smog’s coming back, and that their unbrellas won’t help them: they’ll kill them.
“Maybe gather up more Propheseers. Move as fast as you can. Tell people to get underground, whatever. And throw their unbrellas away!”
“But what then?” said the book. “The Smog’ll be everywhere…”
“First thing’s to stop it killing everyone,” she snapped. “Then we’ll work out what’s next.”
“What are you going to do?” Mortar asked.
“I need to get my friends,” Deeba said. “Jones and Obaday and the others…I have to make sure they’re okay.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
“No. You have to go now. There’s no time. Spread the word. I’ll…try to sort things out here.”
Mortar looked for a moment as if he was about to argue, then changed his mind.
“I’ll get the bridge,” he said. He shook his head to clear it, and concentrated.
“She’d better go with you,” said Deeba. “Don’t want her escaping to London.” She stretched out her hand, and her rebrella yanked Lectern towards her. Lectern squeaked.
“How did you do that with an unbrella?” said Mortar.
“It’s not,” Deeba said. “It’s a rebrella…that’s another thing! Everyone can fix their unbrellas. That frees them from Brokkenbroll.”
“So if they fix them, they can use them against the Smog…?”
“No, they’ll still explode in the rain. Forget it. You have to get everyone inside, fast. We’ll fix the unbrellas afterwards. Brokkenbroll’s not the problem now.”
Above them, the Smog was condensing. Its smogglers were congealing into it one after the other. The green tinge was spreading throughout its substance.
“Get the bridge here,” said Deeba.
Mortar gripped Lectern’s shoulder. Lectern was so slumped and defeated, Deeba didn’t think she would run.
He should take Brokkenbroll, Deeba thought. But the Unbrellissimo was still out cold, and no one had the strength to drag him. She watched the Smog.
A cold awareness settled in her stomach. The Smog was seconds away from merging completely, mixing its new chemical, and spreading out again for attack. Even with the help of several other Propheseers, there was no way Mortar could warn more than a handful of UnLondoners.
It’s not going to work, Deeba thought. We have nothing.
When she looked back at Mortar, the bridge was there, jutting from the edge of the building. She glimpsed the desks on its surface, saw its girders recede with perspective.
There was a bass growling from the sky. The last trail of smoke disappeared like sucked spaghetti into the thick green-tinted Smog, which rumbled.
“Go!” shouted Deeba. Mortar went onto the bridge, dragging Lectern. He looked at Deeba. A tentacle of Smog swooped down towards the roof, moaning like a monster. “Go!” she shouted.
Mortar waved once. Deeba ducked to avoid the swirl. When she looked back the bridge was gone.
The Smog churned its murderous chemical within itself. It made shapes with its clouds, sank towards Deeba.
With Mortar gone, Deeba felt a strange calm. Perhaps it was certainty—the certainty of defeat. She knew she had no time to retreat to where Jones and the others were waiting, and she knew there would be no point even if she could. She tried not to think about all the people in two worlds the Smog had at its mercy.
She had stayed in the remains of the room because she couldn’t bear to run from her enemy. Not after everything that had happened. It’s crazy, thought Deeba. I have nothing. But still, she realized, that was why she’d stayed.
Brokkenbroll lay untrustworthy and unconscious. Deeba was alone.
The Smog descended.
Deeba made a brief move towards the remains of the corridor, then stopped. She wouldn’t get farther than ten feet. There was no point. She looked up.
The Smog made itself a green cloud face. It loomed over her, and sent out a cathedral-sized smoke tongue to lick its smoke lips. It bashed air currents together in its miles-wide mouth, and with a voice made out of thunder, it said to her:
Deeba closed her eyes as the Smog came down. All she could think, again and again, was: I have nothing.
95
Nothing
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
And the UnGun.
Deeba opened her eyes.
Nothing and the UnGun!
96
Six-Shooter
The enormous Smog-mouth plummeted towards her. Deeba raised the empty UnGun.
It’s no mistake! she thought. In the book! It’s not “Nothing but the UnGun” the Smog’s scared of, it is supposed to be “Nothing and the UnGun.”
She held the weapon in her right hand, the rebrella with her left. The Smog was right above her. She could feel the wind it pushed as it dropped. All of the Smog was congealed into a dark, rushing shape. It concentrated itself so densely it looked almost solid.
It growled as it came.
Nothing’s the opposite of something. If I fire something, anything, from the UnGun, it shoots it out, and exaggerates it. So if I shoot nothing…
Deeba fired.
There was an enormous implosive rush. This time, the UnGun didn’t recoil. It didn’t push her back. It pulled her forward, and she staggered to stay standing.
With a roar, the UnGun sucked. It sluiced with impossible strength into its barrel.
A huge chunk of the Smog’s cloud-matter was drawn from the sky. In the instant that Deeba pulled the trigger, a tightly twisting vortex sprang from the Smog and funneled into the UnGun.
The Smog broke off from its dive and curved away. The face it had made boiled and re-formed. It looked confused.
It was noticeably smaller than it had been a moment before.
The Smog turned like a vast rearing horse, and snarled. It stared at Deeba, and the cloud swept down again, changing shape as it came.
Deeba hefted the UnGun. It was heavier than it had been. Five chambers left, she thought. She fired again.
The sucking sound roared across the heavens again, even louder than before, like water rushing into a cosmic drain. Another great whirlpool of Smog coiled superfast out of the cloud, slurping out whole banks of its stuff, which gushed out of the air in a dense stream, into the UnGun.
The weapon clicked in Deeba’s hand, the cylinder twisted, and another empty chamber slid into place in front of the hammer. Deeba fired again, and suctioned in another swath.
With three bullet slots full, the Smog was at least half-gone. At last it understood what it was facing. It gathered itself, and in a rolling mass like a storm front, the dark, green-tinged cloud fled across the sky.
Deeba planted her feet and aimed carefully. She fired twice in quick succession. Huge clots of Smog yanked backwards like stretching dough, gushed into the pistol.
One nothing left, Deeba thought.
There was only a small, dense patch of Smog left in the air, but it was large enough to send down a murderous rain if it got away. It flitted frantically in a zigzag over UnLondon, curling around towers and behind high roofs. It was already miles away.
Steady, thought Deeba. She watched it sink towards unlit streets, to hide below roof-level. Deeba shifted her aim, pointing not at it, but at where it was heading.
As its front entered her line of sight, she fired.
One last gust swept into the UnGun. The big lump of Smog strained against the currents, but stretched and twisted, and spiraled, and was pulled in. For seconds, the night sky over UnLondon was full of a horizontal tornado, a corkscrew of poisoned smoke gushing into the UnGun. It hauled backwards over the abcity, the wind rushing through its eddying particles with a noise exactly like screaming.
Until with a long, loud gurgle the last of the Smog disappeared down the barrel, and the sky was clean.
97
Regroupment
For a long time, Deeba just stood in the rubble of the factory, swaying. She dangled the UnGun at the end of her arm, cautiously. Deeba thought she could feel the weapon twitching slightly.
She staggered to an unbroken stool and sat at the remains of a table.
“That,” said the book slowly, “was great.”
Deeba had forgotten it was there. She bent and picked it up, wiped the dust off its cover.
“Are you alright?” she said.
“Okay,” the book said. “It tore out a couple of my pages and burnt them, to scare me. Worked, too. Are you alright?”
Deeba laughed tiredly.
“I think I am,” she said.
Trailing dust, Curdle emerged from a pile of rubbish. It shuffled to Deeba’s feet. She picked it up, too, and stroked it clean.
“And you,” she said, and beckoned to the rebrella. It jumped onto her lap. They listened to the noises of celebration across UnLondon.
There was a cough and a shuffle nearby. Brokkenbroll was staring at her, from the ground. He looked as terrified of her as he had of the Smog.
“It…you…it…” he whispered.
“How long have you been awake?” Deeba said.
Sending up dust, Brokkenbroll fumbled for his unbrellas. All but one were buried under bricks, or lost.
“You stay away from me!” he whined. He scrabbled backwards, his single unbrella in his hand. He stumbled to his feet. “The Smog…!” he said. “It…you…” His mouth worked a few more seconds; then he ran across the remains of the room, leapt the rubble of the wall and out into the air.
Without any others to carry him, the unbrella lurched down a long way. It opened and closed frantically, struggling to stay airborne. Brokkenbroll clung to it, swaying, with his right hand. His clothes were ragged and flapping and left a trail of powdered brick.
As he flew slowly away, Deeba heard him wail.
She got to her feet.
“Quick,” she said, and staggered. “We should…I should…” She wasn’t sure what to say next.
“Leave it,” said the book. “He saw you with the Smog, at the end. He’s too afraid to do anything but run. We can deal with him later.”
Deeba sank back onto the stool.
“If we even need to deal with him,” she said. She patted the rebrella. “We know how to free his soldiers. Without them, he’s got nothing.
“And not,” she added, looking at the UnGun, “in the good way.”
“Deeba…?” Through the remnants of the door, staring at the wreckage, came Conductor Jones, leaning wearily on makeshift crutches.
Behind him came Bling and Cauldron, holding Hemi’s hands. And behind them, bleeding, holding his wrist gingerly, but wearing a bewildered smile, was Obaday Fing.
Deeba called their names happily. She stumbled over and hugged those who weren’t too bruised to take it.
“What,” said Hemi, looking at the devastation admiringly, “did you do?”
“The utterlings persuaded those words to go exploring,” said Jones. “And we heard all sorts of banging and whatnot. The Hex are all tied up. We shouldn’t have left you alone.” He hobbled slowly forward. “We tried to get up here as quick as we could.”
“Look at the utterlings!” Deeba said. “They’re back.”
Bling and Cauldron weren’t quite fully solid, but they were more substantial than when she had last seen them.
“You were right,” said Jones. “It worked. Took them awhile to work out how to say themselves by signing, but they’re getting it. Bling does it by rubbing his legs together.”
“The smombies all emptied,” said Hemi. “The smoke went up. Zoomed about the sky. But�
��” He looked about. “You know all about that, don’t you?”
Deeba waved the UnGun vaguely.
“What?” said Jones. “Did you manage to reload?”
“Sort of,” said Deeba. “It’s a prison. It’s full of the Smog.”
They yelled and backed away, then paused as they realized there was no sign of trouble.
“What happened here?” said Jones.
Deeba paused a long time, then laughed.
“I’ll explain,” she said. “But basically…Nothing. Nothing happened.”
The sky was beginning to grow light.
“There’s lots of stuff to do,” Deeba said. “We have to find Brokkenbroll. He got away. And we have to tell everyone in UnLondon what to do with the unbrellas.” She twirled her rebrella, and it did a little midair pirouette of its own.
“There’s all sorts to do. Let’s find the Propheseers. I’ve got an apology to pick up.”
“So we’ve got to get to the Pons, now?” said Jones, trying not to look horrified.
“Don’t worry,” said Deeba. “No more trekking. Give it a minute. The bridge’ll come to us.”
“What about Skool?” said Obaday. “And the binja, and—”
“We’ll make some stops,” said Deeba. “Trust me. Mortar’s going to do exactly what I say.”
She knew it would be awhile, and it was. It took a bit of time, in the confusion at the end of the war, while the Propheseers tried to work out what had happened, and how the abcity had won, and whether they could trust the victory. But after the UnSun had come up and shone gently on UnLondon, the end of the Propheseers’ bridge poked into the ruins of Unstible’s workshop, and Mortar beckoned them all on.
98
Fit for Heroes
“We’re putting the word out,” Mortar said. “All over UnLondon, unbrellas are being converted to rebrellas. Mostly they bounce off immediately into the Backwall Maze or somewhere and join bands of rubbish. But a few of them seem to want to stick around with us.”
Un Lun Dun Page 36