Un Lun Dun

“We have to get rid of them,” Deeba muttered.

“Why?” Jones said. Deeba stared at him.

“What? What are you…? If they can find us, the Propheseers will, too! We have to travel fast, and quiet.”

“People know you’re on the move,” Jones said. “A few— at first just people with co

“Don’t panic, Deeb,” Hemi said. He held her shoulders and looked at her steadily. “Don’t you get it?” he said. “You knew the war was coming. This lot are your allies. More than that.

“They’re your troops.”

A slow calm spread through Deeba. She looked again at the newcomers. They might well be outlaws. Several of them would have attracted long glances in London, and at least two would have brought the streets to a standstill and paranormal investigators to the scene.

Here they were just locals, and they were there to join her. None, she realized, carried an unbrella.

She smiled cautiously at Hemi, and he smiled back at her.

“Alright everyone,” she said. The room went silent. In a moment of panic, her words dried in her throat. They’re waiting! she thought.

The anxiety only lasted a second. She coughed and smiled.

“Thanks for coming. Thanks for joining. Let me tell you what’s going on.”

Deeba’s rather convoluted explanation was helpfully intercepted and steered by Obaday and the book, and interrupted by expostulations of rage and disgust from the newcomers. Jones drew a crude map on the floor. There were at least two obvious routes to Unstible’s factory, and they were taking neither of them.

“Rendezvous is here,” said Jones. He didn’t say which way they were ultimately going.

“And listen,” said Deeba. “From now on, wherever you go, or come with us or not…tell people. Not to trust unbrellas. Find other ways to fight. And if the Smog comes for an area, do fight. Don’t just give up like the Propheseers say.”

When they left the house, Deeba saw that the altering graffiti had itself been altered. In front of CHOSEN ONE ROOLZ! someone had added UN-.

“Look at that,” she said, delighted. “It’s accurate now.”

Hemi was blushing.

That night there were more fires, and Propheseer vessels above, and sounds of skirmishes. There was deeper darkness against the black sky: Smog on malevolent missions. The travelers stopped and started, hiding and scurrying, many times.

Twice, those disembodied car headlights swept mindlessly around the travelers as they went. NOT YET GOT UNBRELLA?? the official graffiti said. TOMORROW—BROKKENBROLL & UNSTIBLE TO HAND OUT LAST BATCH!!! DEFEND YOURSELF AGAINST THE SMOG!

Deeba heard the far-off grunting of smoglodytes, and the brutal pattering of coal nuggets and metal bullets.

“Big attacks tonight,” she said. “They’re going to terrify everyone, so the last people’ll get unbrellas.”

“Why doesn’t he send unbrellas after you?” Hemi whispered. “He could fill the streets with them.”

“He can’t,” said Deeba. “If people saw them going off all over the place, and didn’t know why, they’d get suspicious. Brokk blatantly needs everyone to trust them. Right till the last moment.”

When the morning came the skies didn’t lighten as much as they should.

“What’s that?” Hemi sniffed. The air was acrid, with a smell that wasn’t quite burning.

“It’s exhaust,” said Deeba. “Like car fumes. I bet you it’s from London. Murgatroyd must’ve got out of that house, back to his boss…They’ve turned up those chimneys. To bulk up the Smog. They know something’s going to kick off.”

“Today they hand out the last unbrellas,” Hemi said.

“And the Smog’ll make its final attack,” said Deeba. “With only unbrellas to protect them people’ll do whatever Brokkenbroll says. Which means what the Smog says.”

“If we don’t get in the way,” said Hemi.

“So,” said Deeba. “Let’s make sure we get in the way.”

They had to stop when it was light, but of course they couldn’t sleep. They listened to the panicked UnLondoners beyond the safe-house walls.

“Bling, Cauldron.” Jones beckoned. “Would you go on ahead, and pass on a note? Get things ready?”

Deeba watched them go. She squinted— there was something strange about the two utterlings, she thought, something shifting in their look, something not quite all there. She shook her head. It must be nerves. She was mad with impatience. She checked and rechecked what was in her bag, pointlessly. She whispered to her parents, and imagined their responses, until Jones came and told her it was time.

The top of the UnSun had only just sunk below the horizon when Jones motioned the travelers down, behind a clutch of dustbins. He pointed into the sky.

Way above them, a man was visible in a rowing boat, dangling from a balloon. He held a rod, on the end of which was metal cord thirty or forty feet long, and a burning tire.

“The crazy fool’s fishing!” hissed Obaday.

“Smog!” They could just hear the man’s voice. “Smog! Come and get it! I have a proposition!”

“What’s he trying to do?” whispered Hemi.

“A deal,” said the book.

“I’d like to discuss options with you,” the man shouted. “I’m with the Concern, but I’m…not entirely happy with the way things are going.”

From a smogmire a few streets away, a pillar of cloud rose. It hungrily engulfed the wisps of smoke pouring off the tire, followed the trail along the sky. A fat blob of Smog engulfed the burning rubber.

“Good, you enjoy that,” the man said. He was peering over the edge of his boat, and his voice was trembling. “And, and I’d like you to consider the following options. I’m willing to set up, and run on your terms, at least two rubbish-fired plants, on the understanding that you and I are partners…”

Two stalks of smoke rose out of the mass, to the level of the boat, and eyed the fisherman. Deeba could almost hear his gulp from there.

“Oh no,” she breathed.

“There’s nothing we can do,” said Jones grimly. “Stay still. We can’t let it see us.”

“So…” the man said. “What do you say?”

The Smog yanked the tire, the fishing rod, and the man out of the boat. He wailed as he fell. The Smog swallowed him. Deeba didn’t hear him land. Perhaps the Smog bore him with it, in a grip of airborne dirt, as it disappeared back into its stronghold.

“We’re doomed,” whispered Deeba to Hemi as they trudged along. “We can’t fight that.”

“You don’t mean that,” he whispered back. “You don’t.”

Deeba said nothing. We might as well just give in, she thought. She looked at the UnGun and almost laughed. What good is this?

Slowly, Deeba became aware of a noise. A whispered hubbub.

Jones led them through a district of warehouses and moil buildings, and the bizarre one-offs of UnLondon— buildings like bottles, and radiators, by fences like upturned nails.

They made one last turn, and there was the river. Deeba gasped.

It wasn’t the sight of its dark water under the lights and crawling stars that took her breath. It wasn’t the extraordinary, bizarre collection of boats that jostled at the edge of the dock. It wasn’t the outlandish silhouettes of the bridges and waterside buildings, which looked cut out and pasted on the sky. It wasn’t even the sight of Bling and Cauldron, standing with obvious pride on either side of a grizzled harborman, waiting.

It was everyone else.

There must have been more than a hundred people on the dock, standing in little groups. All of them were looking at Deeba.