Un Lun Dun

28. The Laboratory

The Unbrellissimo led them through the building in absolute darkness.

They stumbled through corridors and rooms and up flights of stairs, following his voice.

“What if there are traps?” Lectern said.

“Shut up,” the book said urgently. “I want to hear this. I need to know what’s going on.”

“It’s been obvious for a while that the Smog’s been preparing something,” Brokkenbroll said. “The Smog’s always hidden, set the odd fire, rushed out and drunk it, disappeared again. Lurking in deserted buildings or under the ground. But things have been changing.

“People have been wondering for months now if the Shwazzy’s due. I think that’s what’s got the Smog so nervous. It must think it’s quest season.

“It was obvious that Unstible was worried, though. I don’t think…” Brokkenbroll looked momentarily at the book, then away, seemingly embarrassed. “I’m not sure he ever quite believed the prophecies were true.” (“Might have been sensible,” the book said morosely.) “When I heard he’d gone, it made me think. Perhaps he was right. Just in case the Shwazzy didn’t come…I thought Unstible was onto something. UnLondon needs a backup plan.”

They kept on through the building’s windowless, unlit innards. Deeba heard Curdle sniff its way.

“Something occurred to me,” the Unbrellissimo said. “The bullets that the Smog fires: they’re rain. An aggressive kind of rain, but rain all the same. The Smog’s a cloud. And clouds have one natural enemy. The unbrella.”

“Hang on,” Deeba said. “Your umbrellas are broken.”

There was an awkward silence.

“Your umbrellas are sticks,” Brokkenbroll said coldly. “My unbrellas are awake. And still protectors. So I decided to train them, with a little finessing, to protect UnLondoners.

“I needed an army. It wouldn’t be enough to rely on the discards that usually dribble through. So I’ve been recruiting. All the way from here.

“Then I heard something had happened. I listen to the gossip of clouds, which come and go between this sky and yours, and they said the Smog was cackling, that it had defeated its enemy. I wondered if something had happened to the Shwazzy. So I called a watcher to check. Hoped the information was wrong. That’s what you saw, young lady.”

“Zanna didn’t get hit,” said Deeba. “It was another girl.”

“Ah…” said Brokkenbroll. “Blond? Tall? That explains the confusion. I was under the impression that the Shwazzy had been incapacitated. Which, sadly, has now turned out to be true. So it’s just as well I’ve been preparing, after all.”

There was a faint light in the hallway. Brokkenbroll stood by the outline of a door.

“But how?” said Deeba. “Umbrellas can’t stop bullets.”

“Please,” hissed Mortar. “You’re being rather brusque.”

“Leave her alone, Mortar,” Lectern muttered. “What our visitor is trying to say, Unbrellissimo, is that, uh…”

“She’s absolutely right,” Brokkenbroll said. “Neither umbrellas nor unbrellas can stop bullets. Not untreated, they can’t. But as I say— the Smog’s bullets are just rain, and my subjects keep the rain off. I knew there must be ways of reinforcing them.”

“So they’re like bulletproof vests?” said Deeba.

“Almost. The problem is that the Smog can change its chemicals, can fire missiles in many different compounds. The only way to make unbrellas effective against anything it might produce was to know everything about the Smog.”

“So that’s why we’re here,” Deeba said. “You got into Unstible’s workshop and read his books, innit? He knew more’n anyone else, and you’ve been learning.”

“Smart girl,” murmured Lectern.

Brokkenbroll laughed.

“You flatter me,” he said. “I couldn’t make head or tail of those texts. Believe me, I’ve tried. No, I knew I’d need help from an expert.”

He opened the door. The illuminations in the room beyond made them blink.

It was an enormous workshop. The ceiling soared. There were shelves crammed with books and dusty machines, and flasks and scrolls and pens and junk. There were piles of plastic, and bits of coal. By a huge fireplace was a freight elevator.

The chamber was filled with boiling kettles and glass and rubber tubes, boilers and conveyor belts. In the center was a bubbling brass vat.

There were no windows in the room. The light came from an enormous number of placid-looking insects the size of Deeba’s fist, which sat on shelves and stools and crawled sluggishly up the walls. Their abdomens were lightbulbs, screwed into their thoraxes. Their slow motion made the shadows crawl.

The room was a hubbub. Thronging every surface were broken umbrellas. They trotted in spidery motion through turning cylinders, in front of sprays of liquid. They hauled up a ridge to the edge of the vat, and one by one jumped in.

They darted in the liquid like penguins underwater, and emerged again, shivering, leapt out and slotted themselves into an enormous rack. Rows and rows of unbrellas dripped and dried.

Mortar and Lectern gasped.

Standing by the ash-filled fireplace was a man in a filthy white coat. He looked pale in the glow of the shifting insect bulbs. He was short and fat, with bloodshot eyes and an enormous bald head.

He looked tired, but he smiled at Deeba and the Propheseers.

“No!” Mortar said at last. “Is that you?”

“Hello old friend,” the strange little figure said.

“Ben?” said Mortar. “Benjamin Unstible?”