Un Lun Dun

by China Miéville

  Other utterlings stood protectively before him, and the two groups began to struggle. But it didn’t last long. The loyal utterlings were confused. The others, the rebellious words, started in a minority, but grew in numbers quickly. Deeba felt the hands gripping her let go one by one.

  “STOP!” shouted Mr. Speaker, and spat out one last enormous utterling, a bewildered three-legged blob, but then the renegade words swarmed him. They clambered over Mr. Speaker’s body, and he flailed his weak arms and legs, trying and failing to bat them away.

  Something like a long saggy hat wrapped a tentacle around his mouth, and others held him down. Mr. Speaker squashed down in his throne, and struggled and mmmmmed and tried to look fierce with only his eyes.

  It was no good. His obedient utterlings had scattered. His words had revolted.

  “What d’you reckon they’ll do?” Hemi said.

  “Dunno,” Deeba said.

  It was dawn. Awhile after the utterlings had subdued their speaker, they had ceremoniously ushered Deeba and her companions to sleeping quarters and given them supper, all with immense exaggerated bows. The travelers had slept, and woken refreshed, and Deeba was eager to get going.

  They were escorted by a gaggle of the silently squabbling utterlings that were attempting to organize things. The utterlings showed them out with pomp and politeness.

  “Might not last,” the book muttered. “The smaller ones’ll ebb and disappear before long. Mr. Speaker’ll be trying to whisper new ones all the time, and he’ll try to talk more loyal ones into existence. And there must be some who want to get back to obeying him, waiting for the right moment…”

  “God, don’t you ever stop moaning?” snapped Deeba. “Miserable git.” She could see Mr. Speaker, still trapped and gagged in his chair. “Give them a chance.”

  The utterlings made Where? motions.

  “Where are we going?” said Deeba, stroking Curdle.

  “That way,” Hemi said, pointing into the streets.

  “We’re looking for a forest,” Deeba said. “We have to find something. Quickly. In fact…” She looked at the utterlings. They were small, but strong, and inquisitive. “In fact, do any of you want to come with us?”

  “What?” said the book.

  “Why not? The more the better.”

  The utterlings looked at her and at each other. After a few seconds, the majority, with ostentatious mimes of Thanks and Regret for not being able to accompany you, went back to the rest of their silently squabbling kind. But three came to stand with the travelers.

  One was the silver-furred locust; one was the bear with a pair of legs too many; and one was the four-armed four-legged several-eyed little man. They looked at Deeba and Hemi shyly.

  “That’s brilliant!” said Deeba. “Cool. Let me see if I remember…” She pointed at the bear. “You’re Diss,” she said. It nodded and reared on its hind four legs. It had no mouth, but Deeba knew it was smiling.

  “And you…” She pointed at the locust. “You’re Bling.” The arm-sized insect fluffed up its silver coat.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you are,” she said to the many-limbed man. “You got spoke before I got here. What are you?” The man sketched shapes in the air.

  Deeba shook her head. “What is it…? Paraffin? Paintbrush? Purpose?”

  The utterling shook its mouthless head.

  “Redcurrant?” said Hemi. “Blackjack?” No, it mimed.

  “Quiddity?” said the book. “Sesquipedalian? Oh this is ridiculous. We’re never going to guess like this. Out of all the words in the whole language, how—”

  “Cauldron,” Deeba said, looking at the utterling with her head on one side. It jumped up and down and nodded and threw up its four arms and spun in a jig.

  Hemi stared at Deeba in openmouthed delight.

  “How could you possibly tell?” the book said.

  “I dunno.” Deeba shrugged airily. “Doesn’t it look like the word cauldron to you?”

  They set off under the early light of the UnSun, leaving the utterlings to bicker and bargain with each other and chaotically start to make decisions. Deeba, Hemi, Curdle, and the book walked out of the Talklands to look for a forest in a house, accompanied by the words Cauldron, Diss, and Bling.

  61

  Hired Help

  “So you know where the forest-in-a-house is?” Deeba said.

  “I do,” the book said. “It’s written in me. And I’ve no reason to think that’s wrong. But we’re stopping off somewhere else first.”

  Deeba could not help being self-conscious at the head of such a peculiar group, but no one they passed paid them any particular attention. People were too busy keeping an eye on the skies for Smog attack, their unbrellas at the ready.

  “Why?” Deeba said. “We should hurry.”

  “How much money do you have?” the book said.

  Deeba sifted through the few out-of-date pounds, dollars, a little pack of marks and francs and pesetas from before Europe got the euro, and many dog-eared rupees. As she gathered it, Hemi hesitated, then pulled out the notes she’d given him and added them to her pile.

  “You can owe me that,” he said. “If it’ll help to have a bit extra now. Pay me back later, alright?”

  “Right, cheers,” she said, carefully not looking at him. “That’s what we’ve got. Why?”

  “Perfect,” the book said. “Because where we’re going, we’ll need some help. We’re going to hire someone.”

  “When we get into the forest-in-a-house,” it said, “we’re looking for a bird. A particular bird. Its name’s Parakeetus Claviger. We need something it has.”

  “The featherkey,” said Deeba.

  “Exactly. And it’s going to be nigh-on impossible to get it. The chapter in me about the Shwazzy getting hold of the featherkey makes a point of telling lots of stories about how many people’ve failed because they can’t find Claviger, or understand it, and so on.”

  “And hiring someone’ll help?”

  “Just wait,” the book said. “It’ll be indispensable.”

  It led them to an area of old wooden buildings, interspersed with the reconstituted junk of moil tech.

  “So who is this bloke?” said Deeba.

  “There’s no shortage of hireable bravos in UnLondon,” the book said. “And I was wondering who we should approach, when I remembered one in particular. He doesn’t live far. His name’s Yorick Cavea. He has all sorts of the usual qualities necessary for endeavors like this: once he fought off an entire horde of giraffes armed only with a corset-stay, believe it or not.” The book let that sink in. “He also fancies himself a bit of an explorer, which combined with the money’s why we’ll probably be able to entice him. Let me do the talking. Here we are.” They stood by a front door.

  “Have we got time for this?” Deeba said to Hemi. “Do we need him?”

  “Yeah, and are we going to have to go up against giraffes?” said Hemi.

  “How’s this Cavea going to help with Claviger?” Deeba said. Then the door opened, and she said, “Ah.”

  Yorick Cavea was a tall man. He wore a silk dressing gown and held a glass of whiskey or something. But on his human shoulders, Cavea’s head was an old-fashioned bell-shaped birdcage. Inside it was a mirror, a cuttlefish bone, and a small pretty bird gripping a little swing.

  The bird chirped.

  “Ah, Yorick,” the book said. “Nice to see you again too.” Cavea shook Deeba’s hand, Hemi’s, and Cauldron’s with its human arm. The bird whistled.

  “Always straight to the point, eh, Yorick?” the book said. “Well, this young lady has an offer she’d like to make you. Deeba?”

  Deeba fanned out a chunk of her money. The bird stared at it. “Tweet,” it said, and Cavea’s man-hands steepled together.

  “Well of course,” the book said. “I wouldn’t expect you to be swayed merely by something so vulgar as money. But there’s more at stake. You wouldn’t expect me to go into detail here—one never kn
ows who’s listening. But suffice to say…it’s going to be quite the expedition.”

  Cavea pondered. The bird twittered.

  “Dangerous, certainly,” the book said. “And suited to your unique capabilities.”

  Another whistle.

  “Yes, of course we’ll wait.”

  Yorick Cavea disappeared for a minute in his house, emerging in an old-fashioned khaki safari suit and swinging an unbrella.

  “Wait,” said Deeba. “You can’t bring that.”

  The bird sang a few questioning notes.

  “Sorry old chap, rules of this particular engagement,” the book said. Cavea stood still for a moment. In the cage-head, the little bird sang on its swing. “It’d take too long to explain, but she’s right, it’s for the best.”

  Cavea threw the unbrella back in the house and closed the door, complaining in vociferous avian tones.

  “Don’t worry,” the book said. “We’ll keep watch for Smog. Half up front. That’s only fair.”

  Deeba tucked a wad of the cash into Cavea’s inside pocket. They followed the book’s directions into the UnLondon afternoon, through different landscapes of the abcity, at last into a warren of narrow streets.

  Deeba tried to make conversation with Cavea, but while it was obvious that the bird in the cage could understand her polite questions, she didn’t understand any of its whistled answers. Mr. Cavea took the book under his arm. The bird plumped its plumage and warbled.

  At some points the streets were crowded: at other times they were the only people they could see, and Cavea’s lovely singsong was all they could hear, apart perhaps from the tiniest whisper of houses. Hemi and Deeba walked side by side.

  “What you looking for?” said Deeba. Hemi was examining chalk- and scratch-marks on some of the houses they passed.

  “Just seeing who’s who and what’s what round here,” Hemi murmured.

  “What you on about?”

  “There are signs only a few of us know how to read,” he said. “For stashes, caches, emptish houses, that sort of thing.”

  “Signs for who? Ghosts?”

  “No, for…” He scratched his chin. “Alternative shoppers.”

  “Thieves?!”

  “Right then,” the book interrupted.

  They were by an anonymous brick terrace. The houses were three stories high, in conventional red brick with black slate roofs. Shoppers milled where the road met others, and people leaned at several of the front doors, chatting to neighbors. If it weren’t for the eccentric look of some of the inhabitants, it could almost have passed for a residential street in London. Almost.

  “We’re here,” said the book.

  “We never are,” murmured Hemi.

  One house was bursting with leaves. They pressed up against the glass of every window from the inside, blocking off any view within. They squeezed out from below the panes, and through the gaps at the top and bottom of the front door. A little plume of ivy poked from the chimney.

  The caged bird on top of Mr. Cavea’s body began singing fervently, the book interjecting.

  “Come come,” the book said. “I’m not denying it’s dangerous. That’s ridiculous. There were no false pretenses. Well then there’s no problem—just walk away. Of course. But then there’s no payment. And you won’t be part of the expedition that gets deep into the forest.” Mr. Cavea hesitated, the bird fluttering in agitation.

  “No one’s asking you to do anything much,” the book said. “Honestly? All we want you to do is engage someone in conversation. Aha. That’s right, you’ve got it.”

  The bird stared at the money, its head cocked on one side.

  “You’re not heading in, are you?” The speaker was an elderly man, sitting on the doorstep opposite. He was dressed in a skirt of animal tails. He scratched his beard and sipped a hot drink and shook his head wisely.

  “I’d not,” he said. “See them there?” He pointed at a rope stub emerging from behind the front door. “That was where the last lot of explorers set off. That’s where they set up a base camp, they did, but never saw ’em again. Heard rumors though. Heard noises at night. It’s a rum place, the forest, full of noises. No one knows its paths. I’ve lived here near on fifty years, and I’ve never been in nor never would. No, if I was you—”

  Cavea squawked an interruption.

  “I agree,” muttered the book. Mr. Cavea’s human body yanked open the front door. “He says he’d go in even if we weren’t paying him anything. Just to get away from that bloke.”

  Deeba followed them. The utterlings and Hemi went with her. The old man opposite was left watching openmouthed as they hurried into the dark interior of the house, and into the forest.

  62

  Into the Trees

  Deeba stepped into a realm of rustling hush, and warmth, and green light. The door closed behind her. She gaped.

  “Oh my gosh,” she said.

  To either side were walls in bright wallpaper, and some way ahead she could just see stairs leading up on the left, and a corridor on the right. It was hard to make out the details of the inside of the house, because everywhere around them, filling it, were plants.

  The carpet and the floorboards were rucked with lichen, moss, ferns, and undergrowth. Ivy clotted the walls. The corridor was full of trees. They were old, gnarled things that twisted around themselves to fit into the cramped space. Vines hung from them, and from the ceiling, and trembled as little animals and birds scampered up them.

  Deeba could only just see through trees and bushes to where thick brambles and creepers plaited through the banisters. She could hear the call of birds, the whisper of leaves, wood knocking gently against wood, and somewhere, the gurgle of running water.

  Light shone greenly through leaves from a bulb Deeba glimpsed hanging from the ceiling.

  “We should get going,” the book said. “It isn’t that long till dusk.”

  What happens at dusk? Deeba thought. She didn’t say anything. They were all too busy dragging themselves through the thickets.

  The utterlings were making the most of their new freedom, roaming and foraging as the little group made their way. Diss snuffled enthusiastically and rooted around in the tangles and thickets and leaf mold, emerging from piles of old vegetation wearing temporary hats of compost. Bling leapt from tree to tree with ostentatious springs and backflips. If they strayed more than a few feet from their cautiously progressing companions, Cauldron would click his little fingers and beckon them back.

  Having the forest wedged into the house seemed to have done something to the space. The walls’ dimensions didn’t work quite as they should. Deeba felt as if she couldn’t see as far as she should be able to, and as if shadows sometimes fell in odd directions. It took them a long time to reach the base of the stairs, and Deeba didn’t think it was just that the plants were so thick they impeded their progress—although they were.

  She was quickly exhausted. She ducked under branches, climbed over others, held them gingerly in front of her and let Bling and Diss and the others pass, so the thorns wouldn’t spring back and whack them. Sometimes, when they were confronted by a particularly tangled thicket, Deeba saw Hemi roll up his sleeve or trouser leg, strain his half-ghostly muscles, and pull his flesh right through the blockage.

  It was warm. The leaves were rubbery and thick. Deeba gripped a vine, and a tree frog crawled over her fingers, making her jump. Strictly speaking, she thought, this place was a cross between a forest and a jungle.

  “This is a jorest,” she said to Hemi.

  “Yeah,” he said. “No, it’s a fungle.” They grinned.

  She hopped over a rotted stump jutting from the carpet and wiped sweat from her face. Mr. Cavea leaned against the stair’s bottom rail, the bird in his cage-head staring at her. Through a gap in the forest canopy, Deeba saw the lightbulb, the air around it dusted with midges.

  “Which way do we go?” said Hemi.

  “My chapter about the featherkey isn’t clear,”
the book said. “We could go right. That’s probably the kitchen at the end of the hall. Or we could go up the stairs.”

  Mr. Cavea whistled.

  “He’s right,” the book said. “We don’t want to go the wrong way. There are predators in here. This isn’t a safe place.”

  Cavea whistled.

  “Are you sure?” the book said.

  “What?” said Deeba.

  “He says he’ll find out where Claviger is. Cavea’s the only one who can ask the locals. And he can get about quicker than us. And probably stay out of trouble easier.”

  “Can he?” said Deeba doubtfully, eyeing him.

  “We should camp,” the book said. “It’s late. We can’t keep going all night.”

  He was right. Deeba needed to stop.

  The caged bird sang.

  “He has nocturnal cousins he can ask,” the book said. “And he’s too polite to say so, but he thinks he’ll be safer if he doesn’t spend the night with us. Isn’t that so, Cavea?”

  Deeba had never seen a little bird look sheepish before.

  They decided it would be too risky to sleep in the open corridor, so they fought through tangles of stalks and leaves to a door nearby. They shoved it open past the resistance of months of plant life, and entered the living room.

  Past a copse of twisted trees there was a sofa and several chairs in front of a television, burrowed through by voles and little digging beasts, and wound around with leaves. The TV was on, with the sound turned down. Through the ivy that crisscrossed its screen, it lit the clearing with the colors of a game show.

  The travelers swept the little hollow free of stones and sticks, and made camp. They were just in time. Twilight came, and one by one, the lights in the house went out. The noises of the forest changed. A new chorus of night-things began.

  “Are you really going to go looking now?” Deeba said. Mr. Cavea nodded his cage.

  She watched him in the television’s colors. Mr. Cavea reached up and opened the door to his birdcage-head. The bird twittered.