Un Lun Dun

69. The Balance of Forces

“Good to have you back, Deeba!” Rosa shouted from the cab as Skool effortlessly hauled Deeba and her companions on.

Deeba hugged the ungainly driver, and Skool patted her clumsily on the back.

“Let me introduce everyone,” Deeba said. “This is Bling and Cauldron.” Cauldron stuck out three of his four hands, and shook the hands of Obaday, Jones, and Skool simultaneously. Bling reared up on its rear legs and gave a solemn locust bow.

“Where to, Deeba?” Rosa shouted.

“Webminster Abbey. Quick as you can.”

“Really?” said Rosa.

“She knows what she’s doing,” Obaday Fing said.

“You’re absolutely right, she does,” said Jones. “So on we go.”

“No, I don’t,” Deeba said. “I’m probably making mistakes. But we haven’t got nothing to go against the Smog with, and we know it’s scared of the UnGun, and we know that’s at the abbey.”

“Is it now?” said Jones.

“Webminster Abbey it is,” Rosa said, and the bus began to chug through the sky.

“What’s going to happen to him?” Hemi said, pointing at the immobile figure of Murgatroyd, hidden in a pile of rubbish. Deeba remembered how he had left her for the Unstible-thing to burn, and she’d imagined all sorts of bloodthirsty and fatal things to do while they had tied him up.

“I dunno,” she said grudgingly. “We couldn’t just do him in.”

“See…” said Hemi. “Just not sure I agree…”

“I just couldn’t.”

“Well, he’s not waking up for a while,” Jones said. “And when he does, it’ll take the same again for him to get out of those bonds. By the time he gets back to the Propheseers and Brokkenbroll, they’ll know we’ve done a bunk[7].”

Deeba stared out of the windows at the towers and spirals and steeples made of what looked like untold coiled wires. She had never flown over this neighborhood, and was frustrated that she couldn’t look down at the abcityscape below, but she and Hemi stayed away from the platform, out of sight.

Obaday rummaged nosily through her luggage. He made rude noises about her sewing kit.

“What is the point of this dreadful equipment?” he muttered. He stitched up some of the rips in her and Hemi’s trousers, and replaced her needles and thread with some from his own scalp.

“Can’t we go faster?” Deeba said. “I’m worried about the phlegm effect.”

“Not without drawing attention,” Jones said. “They think we’re looking for you. If they see us suddenly speeding up, they’re going to think we’ve got a lead, or they’re going to realize we’re doing a runner. And either way they’re going to come after us. Soon enough, they’ll realize we’re AWOL, and they’re going to have to start choosing sides. But at the moment, there’s enough stuff up here for no one to notice us. So long as we don’t draw attention.”

It was true. There were a few other buses, dangling below balloons or innumerable little spinning propellers. There were insects and birds, and high-flying rubbish like ragged dustbin bags crawling against the wind, and low clouds, and a flock of escaped washing hurtling around the sky with incomprehensible purpose. Deeba even glimpsed a grossbottle, but this one wasn’t being ridden. It was wild— disgusting but not an enemy.

A little way off, Deeba saw a patch of the abcity, several streets by several streets, completely surrendered to Smog.

“I wish we could speed up,” Jones said, seeing where she was looking. “We don’t have much time. And I don’t even just mean with you and your family. Look out there. I mean for UnLondon. The Smog’s spreading.”

“According to Brokkenbroll,” Obaday said, “the Smog’s gathering forces. Now—”

“Wait a sec,” said Hemi. “Brokkenbroll’s really on the Smog’s side, even if Mortar doesn’t know it. Why’d he tell the truth about what it’s doing?”

“Because he wants people to be scared of it, so they’ll trust him to protect them,” Deeba said. “When they realize he’s in on it, he’ll already be in charge. That’s what the unbrellas are for. He might even be exaggerating how bad it is.”

“I don’t think so,” said Jones grimly. “Its attacks are coming more often, and smogglers are taking over more places.”

“They travel underground, along the train tubes and the sewers,” Obaday said.

“Smoglodytes and stink-junkies and smombies come with the Smog wherever it goes,” Jones said. “People have tried to fight, but its forces are too strong. The unbrellas defend people, but they can’t— or won’t— disperse a decent-sized smoggler. Even electric fans sometimes don’t. People just run, when the Smog moves in. UnLondon’s filling with refugees.”

“It’s taking over in patches,” Deeba said slowly. “Separating us into camps. Easier to control.”

“You know, Brokkenbroll even said we’d have to give up certain areas,” Jones said thoughtfully. “And Mortar went along with it. Telling us to make orderly retreats. Into designated ‘safe’ zones.”

“Like they’re herding us,” said Hemi.

“There are a lot of rumors in UnLondon,” Obaday Fing said. “There are mercenaries on the Smog’s side. Like the man who attacked you and the Shwazzy in the bus.”

“What happened to him?”

Obaday spat.

“A disgrace to the market. Barnabus Cudgel. He’s worked alongside me for years. It turns out he was part of a group calling itself the Concern. They say there’s business they want to do, factories and the like, that’ll lead to more smoke and more emissions, so it makes sense to work with the Smog, would you believe? They want to do deals with it.”

“They told you this?” said Deeba.

“They put out leaflets and graffiti and whatnot,” Jones said. “Secret distribution. But it’s not hard to find.”

Skool gesticulated, drew large letters in the air.

“That’s true. You see their sign on the walls,” Obaday said. “More and more. ‘E = A.’ ‘Effluence equals affluence.’ ” He smiled sardonically.

“And people have seen the Hex, they say,” Jones said. “Fighting on the Smog’s side.”

“What’s that?” Deeba said, seeing Jones, Hemi, and Obaday Fing exchange fearful glances.

“Nasty, nasty,” Hemi muttered.

“A group of spellspeakers,” said Jones. “Very powerful. If the Smog’s got them on its side, life’s going to be even harder for us.”

“Don’t we have any magicians?”

Jones and Fing looked at each other forlornly.

“I can make a sweet come out of your ear,” Rosa yelled from the front.

“That’s great,” Deeba muttered.

“No, but I really can! Not just quick fingers, you know, I really pull it out of your ear!”

“Perhaps,” Deeba said, “that’ll come in handy.”