Un Lun Dun

36. Concern in Code

They’ll be fine, Deeba told herself. She told herself that again and again.

UnLondon’ll get through. The Propheseers’ll work out what’s going on. Whatever it is. Maybe I’m the one with the wrong idea. Maybe everything’s fine. Anyway, the Propheseers’ll see to it, one way or the other.

Whenever she thought that, though, Deeba could not help remembering all the confusion about the Shwazzy and the prophecies. She couldn’t forget quite how wrong the end of the stick was that the Propheseers had got hold of there.

Still, she thought, they’ll have learnt their lesson. They’ll be keeping more of an eye out.

UnLondon would have to look after itself. She wasn’t the Shwazzy. She was just someone. How could just someone be any help, whatever was going on?

It’ll be fine, Deeba thought. You saw how Brokkenbroll and Jones and the binja got on.

But she was never a hundred percent convinced.

Besides…she found herself starting to think. She got ashamed of herself then. Because the thought that had been creeping out was Besides, even if something terrible does happen, you don’t need to know about it.

“Zanna,” Deeba said. “I need to ask you something.

“What if you knew something bad was going on somewhere, but the people there didn’t know, and they thought something good was happening, but you knew it wasn’t, and you didn’t know for a hundred percent certain but you did know really, and you didn’t know how to get a message to them, and you never hear from them so you wouldn’t know if they were able to do anything if you did get a message to them…”

Deeba faltered and came to a stop. It had all seemed clearer in her head.

“Deebs,” Zanna said. “I’ve got no idea what you’re on about.”

She walked away, glancing back at Deeba with confusion. And, Deeba realized, fear.

That was when she decided. Even though things were alright now for her and her friends, she couldn’t ignore the fact that something might be very not-alright in UnLondon. She had to try to get word to the abcity. She could only imagine how hard that might be.

Deeba considered dropping messages in bottles down into the sewers. She wondered what she could write on an envelope that would ensure a letter’s passage across the Odd. But whatever she tried, she’d never know whether the message had got through, and she had to be sure.

When she came to that conclusion, Deeba was surprised to realize that what she felt wasn’t foreboding so much as excitement. Despite the possibility that something was badly wrong in UnLondon, she was excited by what she’d found out, and by what it meant for her: she had to get back.

So the question became how to return to UnLondon.

Deeba told herself repeatedly that she didn’t want to go, even if she could. She didn’t convince herself.

After several attempts, Deeba found her way back to the basement deep in the estate. But this time when she turned the big valve, London didn’t ebb away. So she went looking for other ways into the abcity.

Deeba walked over several bridges, always trying to concentrate on somewhere else at the other end— somewhere in UnLondon. It didn’t work.

She looked for hidden doors. She closed her eyes and wished hard. She clicked her heels together. She pushed at the back of her parents’ wardrobe. Nothing worked.

What’s going on over there? she thought.

In despair, Deeba wrote to the only other person she could think of in contact with UnLondon: Minister Elizabeth Rawley at the House of Commons.

She realized the letter would have to go through many secretaries and assistants, so she camouflaged her message.

Dear Minister Rawley,

You do not need to know my name. I know that you have gone somewhere quite like London but in other ways quite UNlike it. I think you know what I mean and you can see I know what I am talking about. I am writing to you because it is maybe more easy for you to go to that place than me, and I think that maybe that place is in trouble. You might know there is a plan for a fight against someone who SMOKES a lot— you know who I am talking about— and I think the man who is supposed to help is maybe not who he says he is and is actually an enemy working for that enemy. You know the man I mean, the one who is UNSTABLE. [Deeba was particularly proud of this pun.]

If you can go to that place or send other people I think maybe you should have a look at him and make sure he is doing what he says he is, or our friends are in trouble.

Thank you.

A Friend.

At least I’m doing something, Deeba thought, but she knew the minister would probably never get the letter. So she kept trying to think of other ways back to UnLondon.

At night she would sit up in bed, wearing and reading the glove that Obaday Fing had made from the book. “Brick wizardry,” she read. “Pigeons. Difficult to get in. Enter by booksteps, on storyladders…”

And one night, reading those words as she had many times before, Deeba suddenly stopped, and slowly clenched her word-gloved fist. Because out of the blue, finally, she had had an idea. And though she immediately, carefully— almost dutifully— went through all the reasons she shouldn’t act on her thought, Deeba could not stop worrying about her friends in UnLondon, and she knew she’d try whatever she could.