Un Lun Dun Read online

  “Does the afternet connect to…what was it they called it in UnLondon…the undernet?” Deeba said.

  “Yeah. And both of them to your internet. But not many people can make the connections work. Ah, here we go.”

  Deeba saw the fat ghost closing drawers in the other room.

  “Quick,” she whispered.

  “Alright,” he said, “so if I just…click here, and feed in a few…there we go. We’re in. Now.” He looked at her sideways and shook his head as he typed. “‘Benjamin Hue Unstible,’” he said, and hit return.

  The screen went blank, then whirred, then flashed up a single entry.

  BENJAMIN HUE UNSTIBLE.

  THANATOPIAN CITIZENSHIP GRANTED. New immigrant.

  CAUSE OF IMMIGRATION: smoke inhalation/poisoning.

  There was a very long silence.

  “Oh. My. Gosh,” said Hemi.

  “I was right,” Deeba said, and clenched her fists.

  “Unstible died weeks ago,” said Hemi. “Killed by…the Smog?”

  “So…could it be his ghost, handing out unbrellas?” Deeba said. “It doesn’t look anything like any of you lot…”

  “No,” said Hemi. “If he were a ghost he’d be listed as having moved to Wraithtown. Unstible’s passed over completely. Whatever that thing is, whatever it looks like, whatever it’s doing…it’s not Benjamin Unstible.”

  45

  Nasty Rain

  Hey! the ghost mouthed, seeing them on the computer. It scattered the ghost-papers it held, and floated towards them shaking its fist.

  “Print it!” said Deeba. Hemi stabbed at the buttons. “Quick!”

  The chubby ghost reached for the paper as it emerged, but Hemi snatched it and gave it to Deeba. The ghost banged on the keyboard and the screen went blank. What you doing? he bellowed silently as Deeba and Hemi ran.

  The paper was hard to read. The typeface was surrounded by whorls of ghost-print, a flickering of all the fonts once used on official forms. And the paper had obviously been recycled. Its previous forms—scribbled messages and newspaper pages—floated around it.

  But through all the spectral interference, Unstible’s name and the details of his “immigration to Thanatopia”—his death—could be made out.

  “That proves it,” said Hemi, pausing in the building’s entrance. Deeba folded the printout carefully into her pack.

  “I told you,” she said.

  “Alright, alright,” said Hemi, shoving her towards the door as behind them a crowd of irate bureaucrat ghosts appeared.

  When they emerged, the UnSun had dawned. Deeba stared at the strange, familiar shape.

  “We got to tell Brokkenbroll,” said Deeba urgently. “And the Propheseers.”

  “Whoa, whoa,” said Hemi. He looked behind him nervously as they walked through Wraithtown. “‘We’? This is your thing. I’m sorry, but I did what you paid for. Good luck, I’m gone.”

  “Wait, what?” Deeba stopped and stared at him. “You can’t. You’re joking. It isn’t Unstible who’s doing things. Don’t you see? Something’s really wrong. I need to get to the Pons Absconditus. Can you help?”

  “Its touchdown’s nowhere near here,” Hemi said. “You could get a bus but…” He seemed to sniff the air. “It’s a Rogueday. I don’t know how often they run on a Rogueday.”

  “Hold on,” Deeba said. “Rogueday. You remember where I first met you?”

  “’Course,” he said. “I was breakfast shopping.” Stealing, Deeba thought. “In the market, just up the way.”

  “I’ve got a friend there who might help us.”

  “There’s no us,” Hemi said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I cannot get involved.”

  “But…don’t you care?” Deeba said. “It’s UnLondon…” She stopped suddenly. She’d never seen him so agitated. She realized that it wasn’t that he didn’t care—it was that he was overwhelmed. And she remembered what had happened to him in the market.

  She needed his help. Deeba almost despaired. One thing that stopped her was that though Hemi kept acting as if he was about to walk away, he didn’t. She thought quickly. He obviously had to fend for himself.

  “Look,” she said, thinking carefully. She took out the rest of the money she’d brought. “This is all I have. It’s yours, all of it, if you’ll help me. I can’t do this on my own.” Her voice almost caught.

  Hemi eyed the cash. He hesitated. He reached for it slowly.

  “Nuh-uh,” Deeba said, pulling her hand back. “Cash on delivery. Get me to the bridge—it’s all yours. Or at least to the market—we’ll work something out. Promise. Please.”

  “I’m not sure about this,” Hemi muttered. “I’m really not sure about this.”

  They were at the edge of Wraithtown, peering across a stretch of concrete at the market, the traders and shoppers. A wall must have stood there years before, and they were huddled behind its ghost. Deeba squinted through misty spectral bricks, past the upside-down bathtub and concrete mixer and supermarket trolleys that were growing at the plaza’s edges.

  “It’ll be fine,” Deeba said.

  “It will not be fine,” Hemi said. “They hate me.”

  “Well, I guess now I’m here, you don’t have to come in,” Deeba said hesitantly.

  “Whatever,” Hemi said vaguely. “I might as well stick it a bit longer, earn the rest of the dosh.”

  “Okay,” said Deeba without looking at him.

  She held on to his hand and walked through the ghost of the wall. She felt a faint resistance, and then she was through.

  “And I promise,” Deeba added, “I won’t let them chat any rubbish at you. And that includes Obaday.”

  Halfway to the market, Hemi stopped.

  “Wait,” he said. There was terrible urgency in his voice. He pointed up.

  Light was leaving the sky. Racing across the pale circle of the UnSun came black cloud, like squirted ink. It was rushing up from the streets, spreading above the roofs, tugging itself through the air, approaching the market.

  People had seen it. Some were standing their ground and looking up, scared but trying to be brave. Many were running. They scattered towards the surrounding houses.

  “Quick, quick, quick,” said Hemi. “We have to get under cover. It’s the Smog.”

  “What about your unbrella?” he said as they ran.

  “It’s not an unbrella,” Deeba said breathlessly, “it’s an umbrella…”

  “Can it protect us? No? What’s the point of that?”

  Hemi looked around quickly, and ran to a manhole cover in the street.

  “Help me!” he said, and he and Deeba began to pry it from the ground.

  Hemi’s hands moved fast. He tensed with effort, and for a moment she couldn’t see what he did with his fingers.

  “Got to get the lock,” he muttered, then: “Yes!” Something clicked, and they hauled the cover from the street. “Get in, quickly.”

  He followed Deeba onto the ladder in the dank hole. Hemi hauled the covering back over them, wedged it with a stone, so they could peer through the crack.

  Ankles in shoes scampered around them, as well as wheels and other odder limbs. The air was darkening.

  There was a clattering. The metal lid began to ring like a cymbal. Pellets ricocheted.

  Some way off, Deeba could just see a woman who had been issued an unbrella standing unafraid as the onslaught began. The unbrella leapt, pulling the woman’s hand above her head, spun, blocking the Smog’s attacks, sending its missiles flying.

  Chunks of carbon were slamming into the pavement, centimeters from Deeba’s face. The air was full of slugs of metal that hit hard enough to chip the pavement.

  “It’s too dangerous,” said Hemi, and lowered the lid.

  They clung in darkness. The noise was enormous. Below the hammering of the Smog’s attack Deeba could hear shouts, and screams of pain. And underlying everything a noise that could be thunder, or could be an enormous growling voice.

/>   “It’s showing what it can do,” Hemi whispered. “It’s been attacking like this every few days. And it’s had its addicts or its smombies start fires. It’s declaring war.”

  The cacophony eventually eased, and stopped, and only the moans of injured could be heard. Slowly, Hemi pushed back the lid and they stepped out.

  Throughout the market, injured people lay. A few were lying still, punctured and bleeding from where the Smog’s missiles had hit them. The stalls were ripped and smoking.

  All over the pavement and between the rows of tents the market was littered with remnants of the attack. Nuggets of metal and mineral from thumb- to fist-sized lay and smoldered. As Deeba watched, they slowly evaporated. They fizzed like dissolvable pills, and their matter boiled off in smoke that wafted away.

  The sky was clear. The Smog had gone.

  People emerged from dugouts and the cellars and the barricaded emptish buildings into which they had leapt. They examined the shredded awnings.

  There were also the lucky few with unbrellas.

  “This is going to work,” said a woman. She twirled her broken unbrella, its spokes bent into an ugly claw, its upper surface boiling with smoke from the attacks it had deflected. “Did you see?”

  Her companion was a man in an outfit of tied-together ribbons. “You’re right,” Deeba heard him say reverentially. He twirled his own unbrella. It was bent in its shaft. “Nothing could touch us. I wasn’t even doing anything—were you? It’s all Brokkenbroll. They’re all obeying him.”

  Hemi knelt by a victim of the terrible mineral rain, a woman in a puffy dress interwoven with ivy. He looked up at Deeba and shook his head.

  Some of the injured were being carried away, or tended to by various strange-looking doctors. There were a few others beyond help.

  The market after the attack was a strange mixture of the exhilarated and the destroyed. Deeba and Hemi walked through the triumphant, the injured, and, here and there, the dead.

  46

  Old Friends

  “Obaday!”

  The needle-headed designer looked up in astonished delight.

  “Deeba!”

  Obaday was dressed in a natty suit of poems. He was sweeping up chunks of coal and iron into a big pile in front of his stall, which effervesced back into little threads of smog and drifted away even as he built it. He swept Deeba up in a hug. She laughed and hugged him back. “Deeba, what are you doing here?” He held her at arm’s length and looked at her.

  From the rear of Obaday’s stall came an excited snuffling.

  “Is that…?” Deeba said, and Curdle came bouncing out from behind the curtain. The little milk carton rolled its cardboard body at them and leapt into Deeba’s hands.

  “Curdle!” she said. She tickled it and it squirmed. “What’s it doing with you, Obaday?”

  He looked sheepish.

  “Well,” he said. “After you left, the silly little thing was miserable. It was pining. Lectern was going to let it go back in the Backwall Maze, but I thought that maybe it would rather…live with someone who knew you and the Shwazzy…sort of thing.”

  “Oh right,” she said and smiled. “You’re keeping it for its sake. You don’t care one way or the other.”

  “Alright, alright,” he said. “Anyway. How on earth did you get here? Why did you come? It’s a difficult time…”

  His words petered out. He stared at Hemi.

  Hemi stood tense and ready to run. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t take him for part-ghost—but you’d know he wanted to be somewhere else. He looked at Obaday suspiciously.

  “Obaday,” Deeba said. “Think what you say.”

  “But Deeba,” he hissed. “You don’t know who that is. He’s a—”

  “I know exactly who that is. His name’s Hemi, and he’s a half-ghost. He’s a pain in the arse, but he’s also who got me here, and who helped me.”

  “But he’ll try to—”

  “Shut up, Obaday. No he won’t. I mean it.” Deeba spoke sternly. “He helped me. And we’ve got something really important to show you. Hemi’s with me, and I don’t want to hear anything about it.”

  Obaday thinned his lips.

  “If you say so, Deeba,” he said. “You are of the Shwazzy’s party, after all. If you say so. Come and have a cup of tea. And…” There was a long pause. “And your guest, too.”

  They sat in the sumptuous fabric-lined back room, now shot through with hundreds of holes through which the UnSun shone. The stink of the Smog’s missiles filled the air.

  “You’ve chosen a pretty terrible time to come and visit us,” Obaday said. “Did you see what happened?” Deeba nodded. “Well then. You see the war’s hit…rather a complicated stage.”

  “That’s what I’m here about,” Deeba started to say, but Obaday continued.

  “Thank God for the unbrellas, that’s all I can say.” He tapped the one at his belt. Its fabric was torn on one section of webbing. “That little split—that’s what makes it an unbrella—doesn’t stop it protecting me. If it weren’t for Unstible’s formula—and if it weren’t for Brokkenbroll’s orders, too—none of us could face the Smog. Shame so many of us still can’t—there aren’t enough unbrellas yet. I tell you, though, they have the Smog rattled.”

  “I think there’s a reason the Smog’s attacking more,” Deeba said.

  “Yes, Unstible was talking about it the other day. I read it on the walls. He explained that the Smog’s getting worried. Because it can see we’ve got a new strategy.”

  “Yes,” Deeba said. “But about that. About Unstible…”

  “So really,” Obaday continued, “it’s actually a good sign that it’s being more aggressive. It means we can be pleased with our progress. That’s what Unstible said.”

  “Obaday, will you listen?” Deeba snapped. “I’m trying to tell you something. The reason the war’s getting worse isn’t ’cause the Smog’s worried, but ’cause Unstible’s not on your side.”

  She showed him the piece of paper with its official Wraithtown stamp.

  “What is this…?” he said.

  “Look. Unstible died. The Smog killed him. Whoever that is giving orders and making up potions, it’s not Unstible.”

  “This…this doesn’t mean anything,” Fing said uncertainly. “It might not be real.”

  “Obaday,” Deeba said. “Don’t be stupid. Look at it.” The paper flared with ghostliness as she spoke: around its edges a leaf even became visible, a momentary haunting by the wood that had been made into the paper. “Why d’you think I’m here? I sort of realized something weird was going on. Now I got proof, I need to show that lot at the bridge.”

  “Well…” Obaday glanced at Hemi. “I’m sure your friend here wouldn’t do anything deliberately, but you can’t trust the Wraiths. Some people even say they’re in league with the Smog.”

  Hemi jumped to his feet. “I knew it,” he said. “I told you, Deeba.”

  “I’m not saying you, and I’m not saying I believe it,” said Obaday. “If Deeba says you’re alright, then…you’re probably alright. But maybe, I don’t know, someone in the office wants to undermine Unstible, or something.”

  “I saw it in the database,” said Deeba. “On the computer.”

  “Well…” Obaday turned the paper over and examined it. “I’m sure there’s an explanation. Maybe this is another Unstible. What do you think’s going on, then? It doesn’t make any sense. Unstible’s helping. He’s obviously on our side.”

  Before Deeba could answer, there was a shout. “Obaday Fing!” one of his assistants yelled through the Smog-tattered cloth. “Quickly. Something’s coming.”

  “What?” he said, leaping to his feet and swinging his unbrella. “Is the Smog back?”

  “No. It’s a bus.”

  47

  The Other Abnaut

  The bus came in low over the roofs, swinging in its harness below a balloon.

  The market traders stopped their reconstruction and gawped. No
bus was scheduled to stop at the market.

  There was more than one balloon-tethered bus in UnLondon, but the symbol on its front was unmistakable. It was the Scrollscrawl. Leaning out from the platform, Deeba could see the tiny waving figure of Conductor Jones. She waved back excitedly.

  “Ahoy,” he shouted as the bus came to a stop a few meters above. He dropped the basket on the rope. “Deeba, I can’t believe you’re back, girl! You actually came back! I didn’t think it could be true…Come up! There’s someone here wants to speak to you.”

  A little crowd had gathered.

  “Hi Jones!” Deeba shouted. “Who is it?”

  Another man appeared on the platform at Jones’s side. He was thin and fidgety, carrying a briefcase.

  “Ah, Miss Resham?” he said nervously. She could only just hear him. “I’m from Minister Rawley’s office. The minister was very intrigued by your letter.”

  “What?” she said. “She got it? How…how did you get here? And how did you know it was from me?”

  “Who is that?” Hemi whispered to her.

  “Well now.” The man smiled briefly. “We, ah, have our ways. Reconstruct a letter’s journey, check video footage, that sort of thing. We were able to work out that you must have sent it. We tried to contact you at home, Miss Resham, but we realized you must’ve come here. We’re very keen to, um, speak to you, please, as soon as possible.”

  “What did I tell you?” Deeba said to Obaday. He was staring foolishly at the bus, his mouth open. “D’you think they’d have sent him all the way from London if there weren’t something going on?”

  “I…but…” Obaday could only stammer. “There must be a mistake…”

  “Nuh-uh,” Deeba said. “I think things are kicking off. Watch yourself. I think things aren’t what you reckon. Hold on, Jones!” she shouted up. “I’m coming. Do you want to come?” she said to Hemi. “You don’t have to.”