Un Lun Dun

It was battered and mottled with rust. She flicked the bullet compartment in the middle. It spun.

Deeba could still hear buzzing, but she wasn’t sure it came from the lightbulb now. She stood very still, and listened. She closed her eyes. I could fall asleep, she thought.

The noise was coming from behind the door. She put a hand on the wood. There were unclear sounds in the room, or corridor, or whatever was beyond it. I could open it and go exploring, she thought. If this place has the UnGun in it…what else might be here? Maybe there’s a garden. Or a bedroom. Or a phone…I could call home again!

She put her hand slowly to the handle.

Something was bothering her. She paused and wondered what it might be. She couldn’t think what was wrong.

“Deeba,” she heard, for what she realized was the second time. “Turn around.”

She did so, curiously, and there were her friends, staring down, sideways, through the window, beckoning.

The view beyond the window was shaking violently, and Deeba realized that the window must have nearly pulled itself free. With a cold rush, she woke back into herself. She had been in some kind of dream.

“Come on!” shouted Hemi. “Let go of the door!”

Even as he spoke, Deeba saw one of the Black Window’s legs swing up into view, free of its bonds. It pulled the wedge of wood out from under its sash.

The window slammed shut.

Deeba saw the horror on her friends’ faces, but she could no longer hear them. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. Deeba raised her arm, and hurled the UnGun as hard as she could.

The big pistol spun in the air, crossing the room, straight into the very center of one of the panes. The glass exploded into hundreds of pieces, and the window spasmed.

Deeba ran.

She watched Hemi, then Obaday, then Jones and the utterlings try to grab the pistol as it passed into UnLondon. It was traveling straight up to them, and at the end of its trajectory, it would pause and come back at her.

She was halfway to the broken window, and she saw another of its legs pull free.

The UnGun had reversed direction. She and it were racing towards each other. As she reached the jagged edge of glass, she saw one of the bishops’ crooks reach out of nowhere, hook the pistol through the trigger guard, and yank it out of sight.

Deeba put her hands in front of her face, screamed, and dived through the broken window.

She felt her hair brush at fringes of glass still in the frame. She kept her eyes closed. As she passed through the window, gravity twitched around her again, and suddenly she was rising, not diving, and was grabbed by helpful hands.

“Deeba! Deeba! You’re alright! You’re back!” Her friends crowded around her, and she opened her eyes.

“What happened?” said Hemi. “You went all weird!”

“I du

“Gone,” said Jones.

It was several feet away, where Skool had kicked it as she leapt free. The wounded spider-window was pulling itself away from the ruined bait. It limped back into the shadows around Webminster Abbey. Deeba let her heartbeat slow.

“I almost,” Deeba said, “almost feel a bit sorry for it.” She hugged each of her friends in turn, including, to their obvious delight, the bishops. Dangling on the end of Bon’s staff was the pistol. He twirled it ostentatiously.

“We got it,” Deeba said.

They crowded around the UnGun.

“It’s amazing,” said Hemi.

“It looks ancient,” said Obaday.

“Someone actually managed to bring something back,” said Bon.

“A successful ’naut. I never thought I’d see it,” said Bastor.

“It’s not loaded,” said Jones. “Where are the bullets?”

Silence settled on them.

“Pardon?” said Deeba.

“I…it’s…” Jones said, hesitant under her stare. He pointed at it. “…unloaded…Bullets?”

“Ammo,” said Deeba. “Right.” And fainted.

76. Dwellers in the Smoke

Deeba listlessly played with the remains of her food.

After she had come to, her friends clucking frantically around her, they had agreed it was exhaustion and stress that had knocked her out. She seemed to have no ill effects.

The bishops had fetched food, chairs, and a table from an emptish house nearby, and they had sat down to eat in front of the abbey. It was the first hot meal Deeba had had for a long time, and though it was a bizarre, mixed-up picnic— eggs, potatoes, salad, curry, chocolate, fruit, olives, and spaghetti— it made her feel better, at least physically.

There was no improving her temper, however, nor that of her friends. The realization that after all they’d gone through to get the UnGun, they were missing a vital component, had put them all in terrible and argumentative moods.

“We have to go back,” Jones repeated, glowering over the remains of supper.

“Are you crazy?” said Obaday. “We don’t even know where the bullets are.”

“They must be in same room as the UnGun,” Jones said. “Stands to reason.”

“That makes perfect sense,” said Bishop Bon, just as Bishop Bastor said, “We can’t assume any such thing.” They stared at each other.

“Deeba is not going back in there,” said Hemi.

“No one’s asking her to,” said Jones. “I’ll go.”

“It’s too risky,” said Obaday.

“The bloody gun’s pointless without them!” said Jones.

“How are we supposed to get the window back?” said Hemi.

“It’s an insect, not a philosopher!” Jones shouted. “We’ll just trap it the same way again.”

And on and on, around the argument went, repeating itself in loops. Deeba sat in surly silence, as she had since the begi

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.