Un Lun Dun Page 6

  “What is it?” said Zanna.

  “I thought I saw something,” said Deeba, pointing up. “Like…a crab. Moving on the ceiling.”

  “Well…” Zanna looked around. “It’s gone now. This place is full of weird things.”

  The basket dangled between a bus on stilts and another on what looked like giant ice skates. The three passengers got out. At the last moment a man wearing a toga ran and caught the basket; said good-bye to a companion, who hurried off; and got in.

  He was big and heavy to haul. When he stepped onto the platform, there was a hissing. The milk carton was huddled behind Deeba, exhaling aggressively.

  “Curdle,” Zanna muttered. “Deeba, keep your manky pet under control.”

  The new passenger stared huffily at Curdle from behind his beard.

  “See that?” Deeba whispered.

  “That bloke does not like us.”

  They went much higher this time, midway between the roofs and the strangely lit sky. UnLondon sprawled to the horizon. A few animal-footed buses crawled carefully over and around houses. Light from the empty sun gleamed on a million surfaces. It was a ragged and jagged landscape. Low clouds buzzed below their wheels, obscuring neighborhoods, moving in various directions purposefully.

  “That?” Jones pointed at what looked like a shirt, racing madly through the air. “When washing blows away in London, if it stays in the air long enough, it blows all the way here. Then it’s free. Never has to come down.”

  They passed a stepped pyramid, a corkscrew-shaped minaret, a building like an enormous U.

  “I wish my mum was here,” Deeba whispered. She couldn’t even look up as the thought took her. “And my dad. Even my brother Hass.”

  “Me too,” said Zanna.

  “’Course you do,” said Jones gently. The sadness and homesickness that filled the two girls was sudden, but it didn’t feel like it came out of nowhere. It had been there many hours, underneath everything, and now that things were calmer, with the beautiful view below them, it sort of ambushed them.

  “My mum must have the police and everything,” Deeba said.

  “Actually, I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” said Jones.

  “What do you mean?” said Zanna.

  “Difficult to explain. The Propheseers’ll tell you.” The girls shook their heads in exasperation. “Just…I wouldn’t worry yet.”

  Deeba and Zanna were quiet. Sensing their mood, Curdle snuffled up to Deeba’s foot. She picked up the little carton and, ignoring its sour smell, stroked it.

  “Yet?” Zanna said. Conductor Jones looked evasive, and started muttering something about air currents and tacking and the directions. “You said,” Zanna insisted, “don’t worry yet?”

  “Well,” he said grudgingly. “Londoners can get out of the habit of thinking about some things. Things that come here. But I wouldn’t worry yet.”

  13

  Encounters on a Bus

  Obaday and Skool could tell Zanna was upset. Obaday offered to read to her from his jacket. “Although,” he added doubtfully, eyeing his lapels, “I confess this story isn’t quite the alpine romance I was expecting…” When she declined his offer, he opened his bag and handed Zanna and Deeba what looked like two tiles and cement. They stared at them dubiously, but they were both starving, and the strange sandwiches had a surprising—and surprisingly enticing—aroma.

  They bit experimentally. The tiles tasted like crusty bread—the cement like cream cheese.

  Below them was the Smeath, the great river of UnLondon, drawing an amazingly straight line across the abcity. A few spirals, curlicues, and straight lines—tributaries and canals—poked off from it in various directions, into the streets. Bridges crossed it, some familiar in shape, some not, some static, some moving.

  “Look at that!” Deeba cried out. Far off, there was a bridge like two huge crocodile heads, snout-to-snout.

  Deeba started humming a tune, and Zanna snorted with laughter and joined in: it was the theme song to the program EastEnders, which started with an aerial shot of the Thames.

  “Dum dum dum dum dum, deee dum,” they sang, looking down at the water. The passengers looked at them as if they were mad.

  A few birds and intelligent-seeming clouds examined the bus curiously. “Here comes a highfish,” said Jones, and the girls jerked back in horror at the approaching jackknifing body, its ferocious teeth and unmistakable shark fin. It glided with a faint burring sound. Where its ocean cousins’ side fins were, it grew dragonfly wings.

  Jones leaned out and banged the side of the bus. “Get out of it, you dustbin!” he shouted, and the big fish darted off in alarm.

  “What is that?” said Zanna. They were approaching a truly enormous wheel. Its base dipped into the river, and its highest point arced hundreds of meters up, almost to the bus.

  “The UnLondon-I,” Jones said. “It’s what gave them the idea for that big wheel in London. I saw some photos. Ideas seep both ways, you know. Like clothes—Londoners copy so many UnLondon fashions, and for some reason they always seem to make them uniforms. And the I? Well, if an abnaut didn’t actually come here and see it, then some dream of it floated from here into their heads. But what’s the point making it a damn fool thing for spinning people round and round? The UnLondon-I has a purpose.”

  He pointed. What had looked at first like compartments were scoops, pushed around by the river. The UnLondon-I was a waterwheel.

  “The dynamos attached to that keep a lot of things going,” Jones said. Above the wheel was the ring of sunshine. The two circles echoed each other.

  “Some people say,” Jones said, “that the bit missing from the middle of the UnSun was what became the sun of London. That what lights your days got plucked out of what lights ours.”

  Zanna held out her thumb. The hole in the UnSun’s center was about the same size as the sun from their usual life.

  “Every morning it rises in a different place,” Jones said.

  The UnSun glowed. Strange shapes flew around it, the air-dwellers of UnLondon. There were chimneys all over the abcity, but very few were venting smoke. A dark shape approached over the miles of sky.

  “Conductor Jones,” Zanna said, and pointed at the incoming smudge. “What’s that?”

  He pulled a telescope from his pocket and stared into it for a long time.

  “It’s a grossbottle,” he muttered. “But why’s it so high? It should be down feeding on dead buildings…” Suddenly he yanked the telescope to its full extent. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Trouble.”

  The shape was close enough to see clearly now. It raced towards them. It was at least the size of the bus. All the passengers were crowding the windows, alerted by the drone of its approach.

  The grossbottle was a fly.

  “It would never normally come for us,” Jones said. “But look—see the howdah?”

  On the creature’s huge thorax was a platform full of figures. “It’s being driven,” he said. “Airwaymen. Thieves. But I don’t understand. They go for solo balloons, maybe deep-sky trawlers. They know buses are defended. Why risk it?

  “Time to go to work.” He unhooked his bow from the cabinet. “Rosa,” he shouted. “Aerobatics!”

  The grossbottle fly careered towards them. The airwaymen whipped it, prodded it with barbs, and readied weapons. Obaday and Skool were staring at it, aghast.

  Deeba saw motion above her again. She nudged Zanna. There were two little moving presences, but they weren’t crabs. They were hands, poking through the ceiling, fingers scuttling, emerging from the metal—then they were gone.

  Someone stood. Deeba looked down into the face of the bearded man. Alone among the passengers, he did not look afraid as the grossbottle came closer. He met Deeba’s eyes. Through a gap in the toga, she saw familiar paint stains.

  Before she could speak he had leapt up and grabbed…Zanna.

  “Help!” Zanna shouted. “Deebs! Obaday! Skool! Jones!”

  Deeba was helpless
ly pointing at the man, and up at the ceiling.

  “He heard us in the market!” Deeba said. “He must’ve run to Manifest Station. He was waiting for us. He sent a message to them.” She pointed in the direction of the oncoming fly. “And there’s someone upstairs, there is—”

  “Shut it!” The man gripped Zanna by the neck. She struggled, but he was too strong. He held her in front of him like a shield.

  Curdle launched itself at him, but he kicked the little carton away. The passengers huddled terrified. The man tightened his grip on Zanna.

  “Nobody move!” he said.

  14

  Attack of the Manky Insect

  The man swung Zanna from side to side. The passengers were frozen in their seats.

  “Stay back,” he said. “My colleagues’ll be here in a moment. I don’t want any trouble. We’ll take her with us and let the rest of you go. You know you can’t outfly a grossbottle, and you don’t want my associates joining us.”

  “Airwaymen mercenaries?” Jones said, stepping forward. “No, I suspect we don’t.”

  “You stay back!” the man said, and drew a sword with his free hand. Deeba screamed.

  “Who you working for?” Jones said. “What do you want with her?”

  “Shut up!” the man said, and yanked Zanna.

  “Leave it!” Deeba said. “You’re making him angry!”

  The man held Zanna by the throat. Jones faced him, his hands half-out, but he looked at the sword and held back. Obaday was huddling behind Zanna’s attacker, his head down, too terrified to move. The grossbottle was coming closer.

  Suddenly, there was a grunt of effort, and something dropped from the ceiling. A body. A pale boy. The boy from the market. Stark naked. He fell out of nowhere, landed with a smack right in front of Zanna and the bearded man. The man yelped and staggered away—and backed his bum directly onto Obaday Fing’s pincushion head.

  It was the blunt ends of the needles that jammed into his posterior, but they were still easily sharp enough. The big man leapt and shrieked, loosed his grip on Zanna, and swung his weapon.

  Everyone moved. The boy gasped, reached for Zanna, missed, ducked, and dropped out of sight. Deeba shrieked. Jones grabbed Zanna. Obaday shouted, “It’s that boy again, that ghost. He’s in on it too!” He slipped and whacked the back of his head on a metal chairback, groaned, and lay still.

  Jones swept Zanna behind him.

  “Zann!” Deeba hugged her. They crouched behind the conductor. Zanna’s attacker was waving his sword.

  The hands that Deeba had thought were crabs were on the floor between the man’s feet. And poking up from between them was the top of Hemi’s head, his two eyes staring at the girls, then abruptly sinking out of sight.

  “What are you going to do?” the man shouted. “My friends are nearly here.” They could hear the grossbottle. “Give us the girl!”

  “I’m a conductor,” said Jones, and stepped closer.

  “I warn you!” the man shouted, and extended the sword into Jones’s path.

  “I conduct passengers to safety,” said Jones. “I conduct myself with dignity. And there’s one other thing that all of us who take the oath learn to conduct.” He reached up and, so slowly his opponent didn’t respond, touched his forefinger to the point of the sword.

  “Electricity,” Jones said.

  As his skin touched the metal, there was a loud crack. An arc of sparks raced down the metal, into the big man’s hand.

  He jerked, and flew back, landing on his back, dazed and shaking. His false beard was smoking.

  Jones shook his finger: there was a single drop of blood where he had pricked it. He checked Obaday’s head. “He’ll be alright,” he said to Skool.

  “It was that Hemi!” Zanna said. “We saw him in the market.”

  “He was upstairs,” said Deeba. “He was looking through the ceiling…”

  “He must’ve jumped on just as we set off,” said Jones. “Maybe he was the lookout for this charmer.” He pointed at the still-shuddering attacker. “That went a bit wrong, then, didn’t it?” He took handfuls of cord and ribbon from Obaday’s paper pockets. “Tie him up!” Jones shouted, and several passengers obeyed.

  “I dunno,” said Deeba doubtfully. “Didn’t look like that to me…”

  Jones looked around. “Well, he’s gone now, straight through the floor. Keep an eye out, alright?” Deeba and Zanna were looking about avidly, but Hemi was gone. “We’ll deal with that later. Have to focus now. That grossbottle’s coming. As quick as you can, stay down and hold on. Rosa! Evasion!”

  The bus veered, pitched, and accelerated. Passengers shrieked. Jones hooked a leg around the pole and leaned out, notching an arrow into his bow.

  With a growl of wings the grossbottle came close. Jones fired. His arrows thwacked into the fly’s disgusting great eyes and disappeared inside. The insect buzzed angrily but did not slow. The men and women it carried aimed a collection of motley guns. Their faces were ferocious.

  One of them called out, “Prepare to be boarded!”

  Jones drew his copper club.

  “You maggotjockeys!” he yelled. “Leave my bus alone!” He leapt out straight at them.

  Zanna and Deeba cried out. Jones flew through the air, shouting: “Un Lun Dun!”

  “Look!” said Zanna. Jones’s belt was attached to the bus pole with bungee cord. The tether stretched and Jones grabbed hold of the howdah.

  The startled raiders tried to aim at him. He kicked, then whirled his club at them, crackling with electricity. When the pirates rallied, Jones simply let go of their vessel. The elastic catapulted him back across the air into the bus. He somersaulted and landed perfectly.

  Deeba said: “That was amazing…”

  “Tell me later,” he said, and ran up the stairs, the girls following.

  “What was that you shouted?” Zanna said.

  “A war cry,” he said. “Very ancient. The battle call of UnLondon.”

  The top deck was cramped with pumps and gas machines. In one corner was a pile of dirty clothes. Jones aimed an enormous harpoon out of the rear window. He swiveled as the grossbottle veered.

  The bus lurched, brought them almost face-to-face with the grossbottle itself. Jones fired.

  A bolt shot straight between the fly’s enormous shining eyes. It jerked, its wings shuddered, and it dropped away.

  “You got it!” said Zanna. The dirty body of the fly was spinning as it fell. Little dot-figures leapt from its plunging carcass, parachutes blossoming.

  “And don’t come back!” yelled Jones.

  “Conductor Jones,” Deeba said in a strangled voice. “Look.”

  Far below was a patch of waste ground, dotted with crumbling buildings on which enormous insects busily fed. Two more grossbottles—one vivid blue, one a shining purple—rose above their revolting siblings and flew towards the bus, figures visible in the platforms on their backs.

  15

  A Sort of Delivery

  “This is the plan.”

  The bus juddered and arced. “Rosa can’t avoid both those grossbottles. We have to get you out of here,” Jones said to Zanna.

  “What about the passengers?” Zanna said.

  “Don’t worry about them,” he said. “I’ll make sure they’re looked after. But the longer those things follow us, the more of a head start you’ll have.”

  The toga-wearing man was gagged, blindfolded, and tied up. “We’ll get him to the Propheseers,” Jones said. “And we’ll meet you there. Okay?”

  “You’re going to make us go on alone?” Zanna said.

  She and Deeba stared at each other, aghast.

  “You can’t!” said Deeba. “We don’t know anything about where we’re going!”

  “We don’t know where we are…”

  “We just can’t…”

  “I know,” Jones said gently. “Believe me, I wouldn’t if I had any choice. We don’t have much time. There are two gangs of skyjackers on the way,
and we have to get them off your trail. They know where you’re trying to get, but we can mislead them as to how you’ll get there.”

  “Please…” said Zanna.

  “You’re the Shwazzy,” he said, silencing her. “You can do this.”

  “What about me?” said Deeba. “I’m not.”

  “Look to your friend,” Jones told her. “Together, you’ll be okay.”

  “Obaday,” Zanna said. She squeezed the unconscious man’s hand. He muttered, “I wish you could come…”

  “Can you…?” said Jones to Skool, who slumped in dejection and pointed at the heavy diving boots, miming I am too slow.

  “You can do this, Shwazzy,” Jones repeated.

  The bus plunged. Passengers screamed. The grossbottles homed in.

  “We have one go at this,” Jones said. “We’ll only lose them for a few seconds. We’ll drop you at the edge of Slaterunner territory, then lead them away. Slaterunner hunting grounds lead almost all the way to the Pons Absconditus.

  “Tell them if they give you safe passage they’ll have earned the gratitude of the UnLondon conductors. Now hold on. Rosa’s going to do her stuff.”

  UnLondon came so fast all Zanna and Deeba could see was a rush of colors. The aerobus hurtled down. It sped below roof-level, lurching left and right along streets. Crouched on the platform, the girls glimpsed the astonished stares of UnLondoners, saw hats yanked off heads by the bus’s passing. Rosa took them under a bridge so low that the top of the balloon scraped on its arch.

  “Now, Rosa!” Jones shouted.

  Instantly the bus zigzagged and, so suddenly that the shock sent them lurching forward, stopped.

  “Now! Now!” hissed Jones, bundling Zanna and Deeba to the edge of the platform. Deeba held Curdle. The terrified little carton tried to burrow into her hands. The bus dangled a few feet above acres of roof, over a valley between ridges.

  “Jump,” said Jones. They hesitated a second, then thought of the flies close behind them. First Zanna, then Deeba, jumped.

  They landed in the bottom of the V, and the air was knocked out of them.