Un Lun Dun

50. Malevolent Breather

Deeba’s eyes widened. She cried out.

“What?” called Hemi. “What, what, what?”

“It’s him, it’s the thing,” she said. “Unstible. It’s here.”

Behind her, Deeba heard a beating like wings as the flock of unbrellas took off from the empty streets, the murmurs of Brokkenbroll and Murgatroyd receding rapidly with them.

Unstible’s face looked terrible in the glow. He seemed plumper than she remembered, and his skin was oily and seeping and graying and unhealthy. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. He leaned over the fire and, still staring at Deeba, took another long, luxurious snort.

“Aaaaaaaaah,” he sighed. He seemed to fill out. Deeba saw his skin ripple, and strain.

“Hello again,” he said. His voice was different from when she had heard him before. He was relaxed, now, and it was a slow grating wheeze.

“Now it’s just you…and me.”

“Unstible” moved slowly around the fire, breathing deeply, keeping his eyes on Deeba. He rummaged in her bag.

“Have to know what you’ve seen,” he said. “Have to know who you’ve told. And why you came.”

“Who are you?” Deeba whispered.

A slow and ghastly smile came over “Unstible’s” face.

“You know,” he said. He wagged his finger at her. “You’re not fooled by this silly puppet.” He prodded himself in the chest. “You know, don’t you, little girl?”

Deeba did know.

“Why?” she said. “Why are you all doing this?”

“Everyone’s happy. The minister gets what she wants. Unbrella man what he wants. And me…why am I doing this? Because of her LURCH…because I’m hungry,” he crooned.

The Unstible-thing brought out the word-glove from her bag, and looked at it quizzically. Then it threw it on the fire, and sighed happily as smoke wafted up.

“Old…” it said. “Powerful…And this? From the boy-thing’s pocket.” It held up the Shwazzy’s travelcard. Deeba stared at it in astonishment. “Unstible” dropped it on the fire too, and crooned happily, sniffing its smoke. “More Propheseer power!”

“You did steal it!” she said furiously, and tried to bang Hemi’s head with her own.

“I wanted to see if she was really the Shwazzy,” he said through his teeth, and butted her back. “I was just going to have a look and put it back. Could we possibly discuss this later?”

Like a tide coming in, little lapping wavelets of dirty smoke were edging into view around the corner. The smoggler a few streets away was stretching. Within it, Deeba could see creeping figures. As the Smog came, so did a few of the smaller intrepid smoglodytes.

No two were the same shape. There were things like crosses between rats and fungus, or bodiless things like two monkey arms attached together, or millipedish creatures the size of Deeba’s forearm, each of its legs ending in tiny hands.

The smoglodytes were graveworm-pale and colorless. All had either enormous dark eyes, all pupil, to see in the filthy half-light of the Smog, or no eyes at all. And all had some adaption for breathing the poisonous stew, like enormous nostrils, or many pairs of them, to suck what little oxygen there was out of the clouds. Deeba saw one thing like a cat-sized snail, watching her with a bouquet of retractable eyes. Below them its face was an organic gas mask.

“You surprise me,” Unstible said. “Why would you come back? Thought we could forget about you…and the other one. Where’s she?”

For a moment Deeba didn’t understand. Then her eyes widened.

“Nowhere,” she said. “She don’t remember nothing.”

“Was more worried about her,” Unstible said. “Wasn’t expecting you at all. But Brokk persuaded me it would work, and when I came to fetch what she breathed, it did seem to be the end of it. But now…” He smiled at Deeba and widened his mad-looking eyes. “Seems it wasn’t. Perhaps she’ll remember. If you got back, I certainly better go back and take care of her. Can’t have the Shwazzy coming back here.”

“She’s not!” Deeba shouted. “Leave her alone! You took all the memories out with your smoke! She don’t know nothing!”

“Safety first, safety first. Make sure. Seeing you here, I think I’d better sort her out. Just as soon as we’ve taken care of you.”

“No…!” Deeba gasped in horror.

“Oh yes. Not easy to stretch all the way…but I can. And do. A few favors for a few Londonsiders, here and there. Best to make the effort with your friend, as soon as it’s less…busy here. Soon as I have a moment. I’ll be sure. Anyway the practice’ll be good for me. There’ll be other, bigger reasons to go back to London, soon, I think. Best get good at the journey.

“But that’ll be nothing for you to worry about. Soon, everything’ll be nothing for you to worry about.”

The smoglodytes crawled, flopped, and scuttled into Unstible’s company, cooing and slobbering with interest as the Smog grew closer.

“Now,” the man-shaped thing said, and unfolded the Wraithtown printout that proved that Unstible— the real Unstible— had died. He sniffed it, licked it like a connoisseur. He folded it and tore it in half and half again, smiled, and dropped the pieces into the fire.

The paper combusted with a flare of phosphorescence, and a swirl of released spirits. The heat pushed one little piece in an updraft, wafted it over the edge and onto the ground.

The thing in Unstible’s shape exhaled, then breathed in hard, and a stream of smoke gushed up from the fire and into him through his mouth, and into each nostril. He breathed in the paper’s smoke.

“Aaaaah,” he exhaled, smacking his lips appreciatively. “Never eaten ghost-paper before. Unstible’s death certificate. Clever to get it. Clever girl. It’s gone now, though.” He waved his empty hands. “Nothing to show.”

He tipped a spadeful of rubbish into the fire, and sucked at the resulting burp of stink. He poked around in the garbage, looking for something, sighed ostentatiously. The smoglodytes whickered.

“No books,” he said. He looked at Deeba. “I love books.”

“They’ll stop you,” Deeba said, trying to sound brave. “We’ll stop you. You won’t win. They’ll get rid of you just like we did before, in London.”

There was a pause. Unstible stared. Then he screamed with laughter. He opened his mouth so wide its sides split a little, and wisps of smoke exhaled with each guffaw, and curled up out of the corners of his eyes till he dabbed them with a handkerchief.

“Got rid? Ha. ‘Rid.’ Yes. Of course, there was no arrangement then. Oh no. Just like there’s none now. Of course.

“But…you’re wrong, Deeba Resham.” He stalked closer, his whisper crawling into her skull. “They will not win, here. They have already lost. I will rule. And everything will burn, and burn, and burn, and smoke.

“I will print blueprints for smokeless chimneys, and build modern factories with filters to keep the air pure, and then I will burn them in old old furnaces and I will drink the smoke and grow strong. I will go to the galleries and burn the pictures and have them in me. Because I like art, you see.”

His face was inches from Deeba’s, and she almost choked on the reek of burnt plastic. The smoglodytes jabbered.

“And books,” he whispered. “Lovely lovely books, all burning. Fires of paper and print. I will breathe in histories and stories, learn it all in the smoke. I learn and learn all the books you burn. But soon I’ll choose what goes up. No more breathing leftovers then. I’ll burn them all.

“My partner wants to run things, and make you burn things for me, so I grow.

“In my UnLondon you will print books over a furnace, so I can breathe them while the ink’s still wet. You will fire the libraries. Light the shelves of the Wordhoard Pit, and fire will take them all, and the bookcliff below, and spread out and take all the libraries in all the worlds. And I will wait at the top and breathe the smoke of them all, and I will know everything.”

“It won’t fit in your lungs,” Deeba said desperately.

“Not this I,” he said, prodding his chest carelessly. “The other I…” He breathed the word out, lengthily, until he wheezed smoke.

“And there’s no reason to stop there.” It spoke almost as if to itself, now. “All the books in the London libraries too. No act to stop me this time. No weapon, no truce, no deals, nothing. Not when I’m finished here, not with the strength I’ll have…But I’m getting ahead of myself.” Unstible smiled in a ghastly way.

“Now,” he said. “Time to make sure. Time to find out what you know.”

“So you’re a torturer too?” Deeba said, and felt Hemi shake. She tried to keep her voice from trembling. “Going to hurt us till we talk? I already told you everything.”

“Torture?” the Smog-Unstible said. “Silly. Silly girl. I don’t have to make you tell the truth. I know everything in all the smoke I breathe into me.” He looked at the brazier, and back at Deeba. “So to find out what’s in your head?

“All I have to do is burn you.”