Un Lun Dun (42 page)

82

The Tangle

As Jones and Skool tugged on the oars, Deeba saw that the sky was darker, more stained with Smog than ever. Deeba was sure that those shreds would be mostly gathered over Unstible’s factory, where they were heading.

One by one the
s began to cross the river, with faint splashes. Lectern and three binja huddled with Deeba and her companions in the
Diss&Rosa.
A widening wedge of vessels followed. The ghosts walked and drifted like thread over the river’s surface, appearing and disappearing.

What had been the car’s windshield and windows were below water level, and Deeba watched the brown swirl. She thought she could hear the noises of fighting in the wind.

“Sounds like trouble,” Hemi said.

From the shore they had left, Deeba heard the song of a bird.

She looked back sharply. Jones stopped rowing, and looked through his telescope. He swore excitedly.

Running around the corner of a warehouse was a familiar figure, in an old-fashioned khaki jerkin, trousers, and big boots. In place of a head, he had a birdcage, within which a little bird sang.

“Mr. Cavea!” said Deeba, and jumped up, swaying the
dangerously. She waved her hands excitedly over her head, and Yorick Cavea waved back, desperately, without breaking stride. “But we saw him get et!”

“That was just his vehicle,” the book said. “He must’ve got a new one.”

“What’s he singing? What’s he singing?”

Cavea had reached the
s that had not yet cast off, and was shoving them towards the river hurriedly.

“He’s saying…‘Quick,’” the book said. “He says: ‘They’re coming.’”

No one on the shore seemed to understand Cavea. One or two even shoved him back.

“Too late,” said Hemi. Lectern let out a cry.

Masked figures were emerging into the docks, following in Cavea’s footsteps, stepping in time. The nightlights reflected in their goggles. Pipes clanked and rattled from their helmets and the sacks over their heads. Deeba heard the hissing of gas sluiced through tubes.

“Stink-junkies,” she said. “Hundreds.”

The UnLondoners still at the river’s edge stared a moment in horror at the oncoming army, then tried to race onto the water.

“Too slow, too slow,” said Jones. “They won’t make it!”

They could not all launch onto the Smeath before the Smog’s slaves reached them. The front line of stink-junkies was already raising hoses, preparing to spray their enemies with flame or poison. Deeba’s army was way outnumbered.

Flumen and a few others stepped forward, swinging spanners and planks. The Slaterunners somersaulted to the edges of the roofs, blowpipes at the ready. But these brave efforts could only slow the remorseless march by a few seconds.

“They’re doomed!” said Jones, stricken.

“No they’re not,” said Deeba. Her voice was suddenly hard.
“Everyone who’s not a stink-junkie!”
she shouted as loud as she could. “
Get down right now!
Jones, catch me.”

Every Slaterunner, librarian, marketeer, utterling, nomad, adventurer, and birdcage-headed explorer hit the pavement, leaving Deeba a clear line of sight to the horde of stink-junkies. She raised and fired the UnGun.

The recoil slammed her backwards, but this time Jones was there behind her, braced and ready. In the split second of the roar, Deeba was trying to remember what was in the cylinder.

Ant?
she thought.
Salt?

Light flared from the barrel, and the stink-junkies froze. For one, two, three seconds they were all immobile, and the rebels looked up from where they crouched. Then the Smog’s army began to shake, and their masks to bulge.

“What in…?” Obaday said.

The stink-junkies’ helmets shifted. The sacks that covered their faces blew up like lumpy balloons. They split, and from the rips burst out yards and yards of hair.

Oh…
that’s
what it was,
thought Deeba.

Stink-junkies tugged ineffectually at their heads, but their hair kept growing, shooting out of their scalps like waterfalls. Sideburns and stubble erupted from the seams of their masks, and the edges of the eyeglasses. Sudden fat dreadlocks pushed the pipes out of the headpieces, and clogged them so only trickles of Smog escaped.

The attackers reeled under the weight of the sudden shaggy swamp. It oozed out of their heads and mingled in a matted slick. In seconds they were just shambling mounds in a streetful of hair. The odd arm, leg, or split-open helmet poked from the tangle, but nothing could get out of it.

Deeba’s allies got slowly to their feet and stared in astonishment.

With a little swagger, Deeba blew the smoke away from the end of her UnGun. She wrinkled her nose at the reek of scorched hair.

“He says that was amazing,” the book said, translating Yorick Cavea’s twitters.

Cavea opened his head-cage, and the bird flew over the river and joined Deeba on the
Diss&Rosa.

“It’s so good you’re here!” Deeba said. “How’d you find us? Where did you get…” She pointed vaguely at the human body on the shore. Cavea whistled.

“He says over the last few days, everyone’s been talking about the Shwazzy and what she’s doing. Then he says other people tell them off and say she’s not the Shwazzy at all, but that she’s doing something anyway. He’s been looking for us. He intercepted the stink-junkies, and realized they were coming for us.”

“Yorick, mate,” said Jones as he rowed. “Keep it down a bit.”

The bird whistled more quietly.

“The Smog’s attacking on several fronts,” the book translated, “and the Unbrellissimo’s flying from place to place, ordering his unbrellas into action defending people.”

“Yeah,” said Deeba. “Defending them so long as they retreat, I bet. While the Smog takes what it wants.”

“Well yes, but apparently some people are saying they don’t want to go, and they’re trying to use the unbrellas to fight back. So Brokkenbroll’s having to order them into action against the people who carry them. Telling everyone it’s for their own good, and they have to pull together.”

It was, Deeba realized, a very confused war. She looked back at the giant hairball still twitching on the docks. Cavea whistled.

“He says he has to go. He doesn’t want to leave his body unguarded tonight. He says good luck, good luck, good luck.” The little bird circled, and Deeba blew it a kiss. Then it scudded over the surface of the river back to its body and its cage.

The higgledy-piggledy procession of upside-down cars proceeded along a river full of obstacles. Hemi steered them past the hulks of sunken ships, and half-submerged old guns, and oddities, and amphibious trees with roots in the sludge on the bottom, leaves emerging from the black water and rustling on the vessels that passed them.

83

Wracked

One by one the
s pulled away onto the shore, and each crew set off into the streets. It was less than a mile to the factory.

Soon only the
Diss&Rosa
was left in the water. In the river-walls, Deeba saw the ends of tunnels, above and below the tide line. They were fringed with slime, and rippled as lizardly things slipped out of the abcity’s underside.

The ghosts around them faded from view, until they were only glimpsed as an occasional half-visible pair of eyes. Deeba felt very exposed in the river.

“Here we go,” muttered Jones, looking over his shoulder, and veering the
Diss&Rosa
slowly towards a darkness Deeba realized was a gate sluicing into the river. It led into a narrow channel that cut into the back of the abcity, behind rows of buildings in brick, moil, and magic.

“Where are we going?” Deeba whispered.

“Into the canals,” said Hemi.

The concrete walls were so close rowing was difficult.

The houses backed straight onto the water. Sometimes they connected and made a tunnel, their big windows high over the canal. Levers and brackets jutted from the walls, and old chains swung. Wooden doors rose out of the water ahead.

“It’s blocked,” said Deeba.

“It’s a lock,” said Jones.

He climbed from the
Diss&Rosa
and operated a mechanism on the bank, opening the gateway slightly so water poured through. The
went forward to another gate. Jones closed the first and opened the other. This time the water level rose.

“Like steps,” Jones said, “up into the backstreets.”

The locks continued, to a quiet, narrow stretch of water.
We must be way above the river now,
thought Deeba.

“Everyone hush,” Jones whispered, pointing to the windows of the houses that backed onto them.

“I think they’ve got other things to worry about,” Deeba said. From the streets beyond the buildings, they could hear shouting, and running.

Through the
Diss&Rosa
’s windshield, Deeba saw fingers of weed rise from the murk and stroke the underside of the metal. Deeba put her face close to the glass to watch them, then sat hurriedly back.

“It moved,” she said.

The stuff floated around them. It drifted by in little islands. As Deeba watched it, one
quivered,
and reached out a tendril to grab a passing piece of rubbish. It hauled it in—it was a mouldy fish carcass—and the slimy clot of weed quivered more.

“That’s shudderwrack,” said Lectern. “Keep your hands out of the water.”

“That’s it,” said Jones, and drew in the oars. “Too narrow. I’ll have to pull from the shore…” He stopped. The houses came right up to the water. There was no towpath.

Skool held up a glove.

“Skool…?” said Obaday Fing.

Skool took hold of the rope attached to the
Diss&Rosa
’s front. Then, with a wave, Skool tapped the glass and brass of the diving helmet ostentatiously, and stepped off the bow into the water. There was a splash so quick it sounded like
shloop,
and Skool was gone.

The rope descended into a widening ring of ripples. Clumps of shudderwrack drifted over to examine the disturbance, and Obaday batted them away. “Skool!” he said.

There was a knocking at the inverted windshield. Looming out of muddy darkness, a glove rapped at the glass.

“There!” said Deeba.

The water was too dirty to see much, but Deeba could just make out Skool’s arm, and a hulking shadow that must be the brass bowl of the helmet. Skool put thumb and forefinger together in an
everything’s okay
motion.

Obaday and Deeba returned the signal. Skool’s hand disappeared, and a few moments later the rope angled out in front, and the
began to move. For a long time, there was no sound except the gurgle of its progress.

Weed ducked under, investigating the intruder, but Skool was unintimidated. Several times, clots of shredded shudderwrack bobbed to the surface.

“There.” Jones pointed over the roofs. Around a curve in the canal, a brick chimney rose, sooty plumes gushing from it. There was a big clock halfway up one side.

“Unstible’s factory,” Deeba said. She remembered the first time she had come. It felt like a whole other life.

“We’re coming in at the back,” said Lectern nervously. “There should be a loading stage.”

“Time to be on guard,” said Jones. “This is Unstible’s stronghold. He and Brokkenbroll are going to have allies here.”

The bank opened into a yard at the rear of the factory, deserted but for clumps of crabgrass. Deeba looked up at the red brick, the unlit and boarded-up windows. In one corner a door hung ajar. From this angle, she could be looking at a view of London.

As the boat drifted closer, something moved by the doorway. A broken umbrella jerked up. With its effortful open-and-close strokes, it flitted into the air and away.

“It saw us,” said Deeba. “We have to move.”

She knocked on the windshield. Skool’s faceplate appeared below. Obaday beckoned.

“What’s that?” said Lectern.

Something dark was circling Skool in the water, in little spasms, fingering the leather suit with filaments.

“Just a bit of shudderwrack,” said Obaday.

“There’s another,” said Deeba.

Suddenly there were several, and Skool was waving as vigorously as the water would allow, to disperse them. The utterlings jumped up and down in agitation, Cauldron pointing all his arms.

Something moved behind Skool’s back. Ropelike limbs snaked out of the black and coiled around Skool’s legs, arms, chest, and faceplate. There was no sound at all.

“No!” said Obaday, his hands flat on the glass. A huge mass of weed loomed from the mud and enveloped the diver, folding in on itself again and again, pulling Skool out of sight into the dark.

“The shudderwrack,” said Deeba. “It’s got him!”

Everyone scrambled onto the concrete shore. They leaned out over the water as far as they dared, hissing Skool’s name.

“I’m going in,” said Obaday frantically, searching his bag for a weapon, finding nothing but a heavy hand-mirror.

“No!” said Deeba. “That won’t help.”

They were sticking planks and ropes into the water, but for several seconds nothing happened. Then the surface began to bubble. The canal shook and fountained, and a gloved, weed-smothered fist punched out of the water.

“There!” said Obaday.

The fight below the surface was brutal. Thick shudderwrack emerged in temporary claws and mouths, and went swiping back under. Skool’s heavy boot came kicking up at an amazing angle, through a chunk of waterweed.

With huge strength, Skool began to stagger from the deeps, weighed down and bent by weed. But pieces of shudderwrack trembled across the water, alerted by the commotion. They coagulated together, leapt up, and dragged Skool down. Deeba could hear the slimy noise of shudderwrack gnawing.

Deeba took the UnGun from her belt.

“Stand back,” she said. Everyone obeyed.

“Quick,” said Obaday.

“Don’t you…need that?” Lectern said, but everyone ignored her.

Only one of Skool’s hands was in the air now, and as Deeba stepped to the edge and aimed into the water, whips of weed spiraled out, and pulled it under.

Deeba fired.

There was a roaring boom, a spit of flame. She staggered, but this time Deeba didn’t fall.

The air was filled with the smell of cordite, and also, Deeba realized, of the
sea. What’s that about?

Then she saw what was happening in the canal. The water was boiling, frothing, and then was choppy, suddenly covered in waves and white foam that jostled the boats and spattered against the concrete walls.

The UnGun had fired the salt crystal. The fresh—though dirty—water of the canal for meters around had been instantly transformed into brine.

The water seemed confused. It was attempting to mimic the sea. Deeba was sure she heard a gull somewhere overhead. Waves were surging as if the canal were tidal, and slapping against the
Diss&Rosa.

Meters to either side, Deeba could see where the new patch of ocean met the regular waters. The edges of the join were perfectly sharp.

Clots of shudderwrack drifted to the surface. Their trembling didn’t look like the healthy, unpleasant motion from which they took their name. One by one they stopped moving.

“What’s happening?” said Deeba.

“That’s what happens when the freshwater variety of shudderwrack suddenly finds itself in…the sea,” Lectern said. She eyed the UnGun in awe.
Whatever it is, it always uses its bullet well,
Deeba thought.
No wonder it’s such a legend.

There was one sudden big wave, and the water broke over the concrete wall, and deposited Skool at their feet, flecked with dying weed, and highly bewildered.