Un Lun Dun (34 page)

69

The Balance of Forces

“Good to have you back, Deeba!” Rosa shouted from the cab as Skool effortlessly hauled Deeba and her companions on.

Deeba hugged the ungainly driver, and Skool patted her clumsily on the back.

“Let me introduce everyone,” Deeba said. “This is Bling and Cauldron.” Cauldron stuck out three of his four hands, and shook the hands of Obaday, Jones, and Skool simultaneously. Bling reared up on its rear legs and gave a solemn locust bow.

“Where to, Deeba?” Rosa shouted.

“Webminster Abbey. Quick as you can.”

“Really?” said Rosa.

“She knows what she’s doing,” Obaday Fing said.

“You’re absolutely right, she does,” said Jones. “So on we go.”

“No, I don’t,” Deeba said. “I’m probably making mistakes. But we haven’t got nothing to go against the Smog with, and we know it’s scared of the UnGun, and we know that’s at the abbey.”

“Is it now?” said Jones.

“Webminster Abbey it is,” Rosa said, and the bus began to chug through the sky.

“What’s going to happen to him?” Hemi said, pointing at the immobile figure of Murgatroyd, hidden in a pile of rubbish. Deeba remembered how he had left her for the Unstible-thing to burn, and she’d imagined all sorts of bloodthirsty and fatal things to do while they had tied him up.

“I dunno,” she said grudgingly. “We couldn’t just do him in.”

“See…” said Hemi. “Just not sure I agree…”

“I just couldn’t.”

“Well, he’s not waking up for a while,” Jones said. “And when he does, it’ll take the same again for him to get out of those bonds. By the time he gets back to the Propheseers and Brokkenbroll, they’ll know we’ve done a bunk.”

Deeba stared out of the windows at the towers and spirals and steeples made of what looked like untold coiled wires. She had never flown over this neighborhood, and was frustrated that she couldn’t look down at the abcityscape below, but she and Hemi stayed away from the platform, out of sight.

Obaday rummaged nosily through her luggage. He made rude noises about her sewing kit.

“What is the point of this dreadful equipment?” he muttered. He stitched up some of the rips in her and Hemi’s trousers, and replaced her needles and thread with some from his own scalp.

“Can’t we go faster?” Deeba said. “I’m worried about the phlegm effect.”

“Not without drawing attention,” Jones said. “They think we’re looking for you. If they see us suddenly speeding up, they’re going to think we’ve got a lead, or they’re going to realize we’re doing a runner. And either way they’re going to come after us. Soon enough, they’ll realize we’re AWOL, and they’re going to have to start choosing sides. But at the moment, there’s enough stuff up here for no one to notice us. So long as we don’t draw attention.”

It was true. There were a few other buses, dangling below balloons or innumerable little spinning propellers. There were insects and birds, and high-flying rubbish like ragged dustbin bags crawling against the wind, and low clouds, and a flock of escaped washing hurtling around the sky with incomprehensible purpose. Deeba even glimpsed a grossbottle, but this one wasn’t being ridden. It was wild—disgusting but not an enemy.

A little way off, Deeba saw a patch of the abcity, several streets by several streets, completely surrendered to Smog.

“I wish we
could
speed up,” Jones said, seeing where she was looking. “We don’t have much time. And I don’t even just mean with you and your family. Look out there. I mean for UnLondon. The Smog’s spreading.”

“According to Brokkenbroll,” Obaday said, “the Smog’s gathering forces. Now—”

“Wait a sec,” said Hemi. “Brokkenbroll’s really on the Smog’s side, even if Mortar doesn’t know it. Why’d he tell the truth about what it’s doing?”

“Because he
wants
people to be scared of it, so they’ll trust him to protect them,” Deeba said. “When they realize he’s in on it, he’ll already be in charge. That’s what the unbrellas are for. He might even be
exaggerating
how bad it is.”

“I don’t think so,” said Jones grimly. “Its attacks are coming more often, and smogglers are taking over more places.”

“They travel underground, along the train tubes and the sewers,” Obaday said.

“Smoglodytes and stink-junkies and smombies come with the Smog wherever it goes,” Jones said. “People have tried to fight, but its forces are too strong. The unbrellas defend people, but they can’t—or won’t—disperse a decent-sized smoggler. Even electric fans sometimes don’t. People just run, when the Smog moves in. UnLondon’s filling with refugees.”

“It’s taking over in patches,” Deeba said slowly. “Separating us into camps. Easier to control.”

“You know, Brokkenbroll even said we’d have to give up certain areas,” Jones said thoughtfully. “And Mortar went along with it. Telling us to make orderly retreats. Into designated ‘safe’ zones.”

“Like they’re herding us,” said Hemi.

“There are a lot of rumors in UnLondon,” Obaday Fing said. “There are mercenaries on the Smog’s side. Like the man who attacked you and the Shwazzy in the bus.”

“What happened to him?”

Obaday spat.

“A disgrace to the market. Barnabus Cudgel. He’s worked alongside me for years. It turns out he was part of a group calling itself the Concern. They say there’s business they want to do, factories and the like, that’ll lead to more smoke and more emissions, so it makes sense to work
with
the Smog, would you believe? They want to do deals with it.”

“They told you this?” said Deeba.

“They put out leaflets and graffiti and whatnot,” Jones said. “Secret distribution. But it’s not hard to find.”

Skool gesticulated, drew large letters in the air.

“That’s true. You see their sign on the walls,” Obaday said. “More and more. ‘E = A.’ ‘Effluence equals affluence.’” He smiled sardonically.

“And people have seen the Hex, they say,” Jones said. “Fighting on the Smog’s side.”

“What’s that?” Deeba said, seeing Jones, Hemi, and Obaday Fing exchange fearful glances.

“Nasty, nasty,” Hemi muttered.

“A group of spellspeakers,” said Jones. “Very powerful. If the Smog’s got them on its side, life’s going to be even harder for us.”

“Don’t we have any magicians?”

Jones and Fing looked at each other forlornly.

“I can make a sweet come out of your ear,” Rosa yelled from the front.

“That’s great,” Deeba muttered.

“No, but I really can! Not just quick fingers, you know, I really pull it out of your ear!”

“Perhaps,” Deeba said, “that’ll come in handy.”

70

The Gossamer Edifice

The bus continued its slow journey through the night. For the sake of appearances, like other hunting vehicles, they turned powerful searchlights down into the dim streets, and seemed to walk on light-beam legs.

Once a fat python of Smog rose curiously out of a lost quarter, nosing towards the bus. Rosa took them quickly up to where the wind was stronger, and the coil of cloud sank back.

Deeba held Curdle in her arms as she lay across the seats. The cardboard carton burrowed into her hug.

Tomorrow,
she thought,
I’m going to get the UnGun. And then we’ll have something that the Smog really doesn’t want us to.
She drifted to sleep, thinking of the UnGun, and then, with sudden pangs, of her family.

She woke in the very early morning, as the bus’s anchor snared in a tangle of aerials.

“Oh my gosh,” Deeba said.

Deeba saw an area uncomfortably close to them that had become a smogmire. That was not what made her catch her breath.

They were swaying before a huge building. It was like nothing she had ever seen.

It had no straight edges, was all long curving planes stretched like cloth or rubber. In several places it poked into steep cones, and pillars and jags like tree branches jutted from beneath its shimmering, moving surface. It looked like a load of giant tents, all stitched together at crazy random, as big as a stadium. Its entire surface was white, or gray-white, or yellow-white, and it rippled.

“Oh my gosh,” whispered Deeba again. “It’s a cobweb.”

Tons of spider silk had been draped over an enormous irregular framework. It coated it completely, in layers, totally opaque. At its edges, strands of webbing jutted out at angles and anchored to the pavement and surrounding buildings like guyropes.

In one or two places, Deeba could see dark, immobile things smothered in the silk. It was wound around them in shrouds, suspending them in the building’s substance.

“That’ll be Webminster Abbey, then,” said Hemi.

They all descended, and stood together, the bus above them, in front of Webminster Abbey: Skool, Obaday Fing, Rosa, Conductor Jones, Hemi, the utterlings Bling and Cauldron, Curdle the carton, Deeba, and the book.

The cobweb church loomed before them, its strands humming as the early-morning air passed through them. The UnSun was rising, but its weak light didn’t make the abbey less threatening. It seemed to be smothered in shadow.

In several places, the silk curved inwards into tight funnels of darkness, jutting into the interior. Some were only a foot or two above the pavement, some up near the top of the steeple. They ranged from the size of a rabbit hole to that of a trapdoor.

“We’re going to have to go in one of those, aren’t we?” Hemi said.

“Book, do you know what’s inside?” Deeba said.

“The Black Window. I’m afraid I’ve got nothing more than that.”

“Alright,” said Jones cautiously. “Any ideas?”

“Firstly we’ve got to see what’s in there,” said Deeba. “So we just look in, really quick, then get out again and make a plan.”

They looked at each other uncomfortably.

The building was surrounded by a marquee of web, whorls of silk, and web archways. It was like twilight in the cobweb shade. Jones threw a stick into one of the cylindrical tunnels, and they all tensed.

The stick bounced and rolled out.

“Well, it’s not sticky,” said Deeba.

They crept up the silk slope towards the hole. It was like walking on a trampoline.

Skool had to stop. The diving boots were too heavy. They didn’t rip the silk, but sank too deep to walk.

“You’ll have to wait outside,” whispered Deeba. Skool slumped, and backed out of the tunnel. Obaday Fing was clutching his box of scissors, thread, and mirrors as if for comfort.

“You should go with Skool, Obaday,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Make sure there’s no trouble outside.”

“Alright then,” he whispered. “You be careful.” He crept back.

Hemi, Jones, and Rosa were all smiling at Deeba. Even the utterlings seemed to be, in their mouthless way.

“That was kind,” Hemi said.

“Shut up,” said Deeba. “We needed someone outside.”

“Oh, of course,” said Jones.

Deeba grinned grudgingly, looked up—and froze. Something was plummeting out of the shade above them.

“Jones!” she shouted.

The thing came down at tremendous speed. It loomed out of shadow too fast to see clearly, dark, and big, and angled, with limbs splayed.

It dropped over Rosa, and rose again, and disappeared.

Rosa was gone.

“No!” shouted Jones, and jumped, but there was nothing above them. Their attacker had soared into the overhanging web, into the shadows and out of sight.