She rubbed the UnGun’s smooth handle, opened the revolving cylinder as Jones had shown her, and stared for what felt like the thousandth time into the six empty chambers. Yet again, Deeba tried to remember if she had seen any bullets—or anything else at all—in the room behind the Black Window.
Yet again, she had to admit that her memory of that time was hazy, and that she couldn’t be sure. But she didn’t think she’d seen anything.
The loon shone onto the midnight meal and the billowing silk. In its gray light, Deeba saw a little caravan of ants crossing the table, passing morsels of food back along the line, rummaging among the remnants.
Her friends kept arguing. Deeba ignored them.
She tried to work out how the pistol was loaded. Deeba picked up a big grape pip and idly dropped it into one of the slots. She jumped when she saw that an ant was on her fingers.
It trotted off, following the trail of juice clockwise around the rim of the cylinder, crawled busily into one of the holes.
“Get out of there,” Deeba muttered, and shook the UnGun. From her pocket she took a scrap of paper, twisted it, and poked it gently after the ant.
The paper wedged in the chamber, just as the ant crawled out from under it, and straight in to the next hole along. Deeba swore.
She tried to entice the insect out with a pinch of sugar from the table, sprinkling it on the edge of the cylinder. Then with a sudden suspicion, she licked her finger. The grains were not sugar but salt.
Deeba swore again, and laughed without any humor. Things were just not going her way.
Her friends continued their bad-tempered exchange. Deeba picked up one of the broken bricks from when they had made their bait window, which lay discarded and redundant. She carved her initials in the brick with her fork, sending little chips of it onto the table around her, and into the UnGun.
The arguments were exasperating her. She sighed, wound a hair around her finger and plucked it out to fiddle with it, huffily scrunched it into a little matted wad, and dropped it into the mechanism. With a sniff of impatience she closed the cylinder, the ant still inside it, and spun it, watched it whir, then slapped it still.
“There’s no point to this,” she announced. They were all quiet. “We’re not getting anywhere.”
“We should do something quick,” said Jones.
“What are we going to do?” said Deeba. She turned the UnGun over and over in her hand. “We’re knackered. You’re right—this stupid thing’s useless without bullets. But the rest of you’re right too—we can’t go back now.”
“Propheseers and Unbrellissimo are going to track us down soon,” said Hemi.
“I know, but what can we do?” said Deeba, meaning I’m too knackered. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll have to take the bus back to the Talklands and I’ll call my mum and dad again, and buy us a bit of time with the phlegm effect, and we’ll come back then, or something.”
She fiddled with the UnGun’s cylinder, to empty it of the rubbish inside.
It wouldn’t budge.
She frowned, and tried again, without success.
“Jones,” she said. “Could you open this please?”
“What did you do?” he said grumpily, struggling with it. “It’s jammed.”
“I didn’t do anything!” Deeba said, then hesitated. “I was seeing how it worked.”
Jones pulled and twisted at it, but it stayed firmly shut. He eyed her.
“What did you put in this?” he said. Everyone looked at Deeba.
“Nothing. Just…stuff,” said Deeba. “I was seeing how it worked. Give me that.” She grabbed it back, and tried again and failed again to open it herself.
“Well, that solves that,” snapped Hemi. “There’s no point trying to get bullets when the UnGun’s broken.”
“I can fix it!” said Deeba desperately. “Just give me a minute.”
“Deeba,” said Obaday Fing gently, and laid his hand on the pistol’s barrel. “Stop.”
She stared at him, and her grip faltered. At that moment, there was a scream.
Something rushed overhead, with a noise like a flock of heavy wings. Several voices cried out maniacally together from the sky. In almost the same instant, Deeba heard the words “Boss,” “Message,” “In,” “From,” “Go,” and “You,” shouted in different, but similar voices.
“What’s that?” she said as crazy laughter and the sound of rushing diminished above her. There was a creaking, the noise of heavy thumping.
“What is that?” Jones said.
“Can that have been—” Bishop Bon said.
“—the Hex?” said Bastor. They stared at each other.
“Passing something on?” said Bon.
“‘Message from Boss…’” said Bastor.
“‘In you go.’ Who are they talking to?” said Bon.
There was another scream.
Lights came on in houses, and sleepy people of all shapes peered out.
Panicked UnLondoners came running into view. They wore pajamas or nighties, or T-shirts and boxer shorts, or nothing at all. They ran, children, adults, and the elderly; animals and people and the halfway things of the abcity.
“What’s happening?” shouted Bishop Bon.
From behind a corner at the edge of the square, from the darkness beyond the trembling edges of Webminster Abbey, an enormous shape came lumbering out of the night.
It was clammy-looking and sickly pale. It padded like a clumsy cat. Its body was a pudgy hairless lion’s, but its head was that of an enormous, blindly groping earthworm. It nosed into the bricks and concrete and tar, turning them by some chemical exudations into mulch.
Behind it were other grub-white figures, herding terrified locals before them. They seemed to drag darkness behind them. Deeba realized that they were walking in a bank of spreading, dirty smoke.
“Smoglodytes!” she said.
These were very different from the ones that had paid court to the Unstible-thing when it threatened her. Those had been small and tentative, living in the shallows of the poison. These, now, were mutants from the deeps of the Smog, and they were huge.
Behind the lionworm was a presence like a noseless man’s face on stumpy caterpillar legs; something flying on one bat’s wing and one vulture’s; a gorilla with enormous whiteless eyes in its chest; and others, an impossible variety of impossible shapes. All were colorless. All had either large eyes or no eyes, and bulky filter-noses or huge nostrils or none.
The smoglodytes gnawed and clawed or suckered or whatever at buildings, and even, Deeba saw in horror, at a few UnLondoners too slow to get out of their way, who, with horrified wails, were pulled into the rolling Smog and disappeared.
“They’re claiming the neighborhood!” Hemi said. Locals fled desperately past them, carrying what few possessions they had grabbed. Several gripped unbrellas, opening them in terror, and holding them like shields.
“Everyone move!” shouted Jones. Deeba grabbed one old man’s bags, helped him to the edge of the square. Skool picked up a fallen escapee under each arm, and hauled them out of the road. Deeba and her friends struggled to help the UnLondoners away.
“We have to get out of here!” Hemi shouted. The smoglodytes and the thick Smog they breathed came ominously fast. The outer fringes of the Smog had reached the web, which shook strangely. From a couple of the dark funnels wooden jointed legs twitched.
They’re going to come out, thought Deeba. When the Smog gets inside, they won’t be able to breathe. Any moment, as well as predatory monstrosities and choking fumes, the streets would be full of panicking spider-windows. There was no way the locals would get away.
There was no way she would get away.
“Deeba!” Hemi shouted. A smoglodytic tentacled goat-thing was bearing down on her faster than she could run. With a despairing cry, she raised her hands.
77
Fruit
Deeba had forgotten she was carrying the UnGun. She didn’t realize she was pointing it at th
e smoglodytes, or that she pulled the trigger.
There was an almighty BANG! and an explosion of smoke.
Deeba went flying backwards, sailing over the table, still holding the pistol, her hand stinging and her ears ringing, as something shot from the barrel of the UnGun with a little stab of flame.
Instantly, there was rumbling. The buildings shook.
A plant roared up from below the pavement, splintering the concrete and sending it flying.
Others leapt out of nothing beside it and beyond it, in a thicket and then a copse and suddenly in rows, clambering the sides of buildings and bollards and corkscrewing around lamps.
Deeba stared, her mouth open. In less than a second, the street ran with roots and stems moving so fast they looked like molten wax, setting in exaggerated gnarls. Trees hauled themselves vigorously out of nothing, shook off dust and debris, and were suddenly tall and thick and very there, filling the street and square. Fruit hung from them.
The UnLondoners who moments before had been running for their lives stood still, staring in shock. Deeba got to her feet and stared at the UnGun. She stumbled towards the vines.
“Deeba!” said Jones. “Careful!”
“It’s alright,” she said. “Look.”
The vines had twisted themselves into position and grown in an instant around the smoglodytes.
Wrapped around with coils of stems so thickly they were almost mummified, the smoglodytes were immobilized. There must have been more than a hundred of them, frozen in the positions they had taken when Deeba fired.
She saw the squid-goat thing. It eyed her as she approached. She was sure it was straining against its bonds, but it could do no more than make the grapes hanging from its chin tremble.
Behind it, where the smoglodytes were closer to each other, the vines had grown together, connecting overhead from creature to trapped creature. They grew into fantastic shapes, stretching over the monsters. Their leaves and fruit shook as the smoglodytes struggled, but that was all.
Deeba boldly entered the new green-lined walkways.
“Deeba!” shouted Obaday, but she walked for a little distance between trapped smoglodytes, which watched her from beneath leaves. She plucked a bunch of grapes hanging from the horn of a thing staring at her with rage.
“It looks as if it’s been an arbor for years,” said the book in wonder, from under Obaday’s arm. “Whole new meaning to the word grapeshot…”
Eddying around them, the Smog seemed confused and panicked. It thrust out smoke stalks like snails’ eyes, swept down out of the air, and examined the vines that trapped its inhabitants. It coiled into a column and raced around the gathered UnLondoners, stopping in front of Deeba.
Deeba could tell it was hesitating. Slowly and ostentatiously, she raised the UnGun and aimed at it.
The Smog coalesced, poured out of sight down into a backstreet, and was gone.
“Oh, my, lord,” whispered Hemi. Skool pointed at Deeba, at the Smog, at her again.
“You scared it off!” said Obaday Fing.
Deeba looked at the UnGun. There was still smoke rising from its barrel. Deeba sniffed it. It smelt of grapes.
Tentatively, UnLondoners explored the new groves.
“I’d stay out of them,” Jones called. “You don’t know how long until the vines disappear.”
“They look pretty solid to me,” Deeba said. “And if they do disappear, I’ll bet the smoglodytes won’t hang around. Not without the Smog.”
Curious people in nightclothes were approaching. “Is that…?” they said, and, “Are you…?” Deeba ignored them.
“It still won’t open?” she said as Jones fiddled with the UnGun. He shook his head and handed it back to her.
“Are you sure you can’t remember what went in?” he said. “In what order? Remember, it turns counterclockwise.”
“Not really,” Deeba said. “I think it’s my hair in the next one. Unless it’s the salt…I thought it was sugar, you see…There was some other stuff, too…”
Jones smiled and shook his head.
“Well, if we’d known,” he said, “we might have tried to plan it. But I don’t know if we could’ve done, or if it’d make much difference. We know the Smog is scared of that thing, and no wonder…”
“You should use it,” Deeba said suddenly, and held it out to him. He flung himself to the floor.
“Don’t point it like that!” he shouted. “Is the safety catch on?”
Deeba held it awkwardly, twisting the little lever he indicated. Jones rose.
“You know how to use it,” she said. “My hand still hurts. I don’t know what to do with it. You take it.”
“I do not know how to use it. I’m a close-quarters fighter. I’ll twang a bow if I have to, but that’s all. I’m no gunslinger. Each time you fire it—if you have to fire it again—it’ll hurt less. This is your UnGun, Deeba. There’s no way I’m taking it from you.”
“Listen to you!” She stamped her foot. “You’re acting like I’m the Shwazzy. I’m not. It’s just a gun, and you should use it.”
“The thing is…” Hemi said hesitantly. Deeba saw that he and the others were standing behind her.
“Skool,” Deeba said. “You know how to fight.” She held the UnGun to him, handle-first. Skool raised a glove and wagged a finger no.
“The thing is,” Hemi said, “we all sort of think you’ll do best with it.”
Deeba looked helplessly at the pistol. From the growing crowd of onlookers, she heard a few whispered phrases.
“…scared off the Smog…” she heard, and “…Shwazzy…”
“No,” she said immediately, and turned to them. She tucked the UnGun into her belt. “I’m not the Shwazzy. I’m completely unchosen.”
“There’s no way this’ll stay quiet,” the book said.
“I know,” said Deeba. “We have to go now, even though it’s the middle of the night.” In fact, she didn’t feel nearly as tired as she had.
“You’re right,” said Jones. “We need to start traveling covertly. We couldn’t take the bus now…even if any of us could drive it…” He looked up, stricken, at the vehicle bobbing overhead.
They kept their voices down as curious locals came closer.
“Where to now?” Hemi said.
“We’ve got the UnGun…time to move on the Smog,” said Deeba.
There was sudden quiet. The travelers looked at each other.
“Just…like that?” said Hemi.
“Just like that,” Deeba said. “That smoggler’s going to find its way to the rest of itself. It won’t be more than a day or two before the whole Smog knows. And it’s going to figure out that we’re coming for it. And that might make it move.
“Do you remember what it was saying, Hemi? When it had us? It’s been trying to gather strength. That’s what it’s been waiting for, but I don’t think it’s going to wait anymore. And neither are we.”
She looked at her companions.
“Look,” she said. “I have to go. It wants me dead. It’s hunting me. You…” She hesitated. “You don’t have to come…” Her voice petered out.
Jones looked calm; Obaday scared; Hemi excited and scared. It was harder to tell how Skool, Cauldron, and Bling felt, but all of them, she was suddenly sure, were determined. Even Curdle circled like a dog that’d seen a cat.
“I think I speak for all of us,” said Hemi, “when I say do shut up with that.”
Deeba smiled with relief and delight. She was proud of them, and of herself.
“Anyway you still owe me money,” Hemi added.
“Alright then,” she said. “Let’s go. Back to Unstible’s factory. Hands up, Smog.”
“Bishops,” Deeba said. “Can we ask a favor?”
“Of course, dear girl,” said Bon.
“Anything,” said Bastor.
“We need to make sure we’re not followed. And also…When people hear about this, they’re going to ask questions. Businesspeople with plans—th
e Concern. And…the Propheseers. And I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t tell them nothing.”
Deeba was anxious. The Propheseers were the most powerful body of magicians and scholars in the abcity, with reputations built on generations of study and protection. But neither of the bishops acted even slightly surprised.
“Absolutely,” said Bon, making a little locking motion by his lips with the featherkey.
“Don’t look so shocked, my dear,” said Bastor.
“Anyone who can outsmart the Black Windows is damn clever. But anyone who fights off the Smog is…well…”
“A friend of ours.”
“No questions asked.”
Deeba nodded, weak with gratitude.
“There’s one more thing,” she said. “Maybe this is the first time the Smog’s not got a neighborhood it wanted. People are going to be excited. Tell them to enjoy the grapes.” She grinned. “But if the Smog comes back…people shouldn’t use their unbrellas. They should find other ways.
“I know they won’t want to give them up, ’cause they work and all that. Really though, it’ll be safer. They can’t trust those things, or their boss. People round here know you two. It’ll be hard to persuade them, but the more you do, the better. I promise.”
There was a long pause.
“Funnily enough—” said Bon.
“—we believe you,” said Bastor.
“We’ll see what we can do.”
78
Night Eyes
Deeba and her companions traveled through strange quarters in the orange illumination of streetlights and the glow of the fat loon.
They took backstreets, climbing over walls, and through holes in fences, and empty houses. They stayed out of sight, avoiding the few night-walking UnLondoners. To Deeba’s frustration, they had to pause periodically, to let Skool catch up, heavy boots swinging with impressive quiet, but that was made up for by the times Skool pushed away some ridiculously heavy thing blocking their path. Once Jones led Deeba through what she thought for a moment were tree trunks, then realized were enormous skinny legs that supported houses, jostling each other gently.
Un Lun Dun Page 28
