Un Lun Dun

74. Spider-Fishing

“Make sure you don’t pull the wrong cord,” whispered Deeba. There were two: one took the weight, the other tightened the loops.

Their trap dangled below them.

“No two are alike,” the bishops had explained, and told them of the infinite rooms beyond the Black Windows’ panes. They had glimpsed monsters and gas and mustard-colored limbos, as well as the more tantalizing vaults and stairways and arsenals, the glints of coins that attracted those foolish adventurers.

“We’ve got to get past them, and we’ve still got no idea where the UnGun is,” Fing had said.

“Where do you think it would be?” Deeba had said. “It was put somewhere no one could get at.”

Fing shook his head helplessly.

“It’s in one of them,” said Hemi. He and Deeba nodded at each other.

“Maybe…we can trick them,” said Deeba eventually. “No two are alike, you said?”

“All different. We’ve seen a sword, a flame, a coal mine—”

“— the canopy of a tree…But all different.”

“Because we’re looking for one particular window, right?” Deeba said. “And we reckon we know what’s in it. So, if all the windows are different, how d’you think they’d react if they saw one exactly like them?”

“They’d hate it,” said Jones.

“They’d love it,” said Hemi. “Maybe they’d, y’know…I mean, there are no baby windows, are there? Maybe they’ve been waiting.”

“I agree with you,” said Bon and Bastor simultaneously, Bon pointing at Hemi and Bastor at Jones. The bishops looked startled.

“It don’t matter,” said Deeba. “If they’re territorial and they attack, or if they’re lonely and they want to, you know, whatever. Either way, if there’s one just like them, they’re going to come see.”

With tools from the bus, Jones had pulled free a window from an empty building.

Following Bon and Bastor’s description, they’d sawed and hammered, while the locals had ignored them as foolish treasure seekers. They made attachments to the frame, taking care not to crack the glass, and behind it nailed a flat piece of wood, on which Hemi drew exaggerated lines of perspective.

“Now the main thing,” Deeba had said.

From his tool kit, Jones had taken a soldering iron with a grip like a pistol, stuck a length of pipe on its end, like a barrel, and attached it to the wood behind the glass.

The thing was inelegant. Its eight limbs swung stiffly on old hinges. It moved randomly when they jiggled it. Still, it was an eight-legged window with what looked like a gun behind it.

“It’ll do,” Deeba had said. “They won’t have seen nothing like it before.”

The bait swung below them, in the darkness of the web. A long time passed.

Every time a spider-window approached, Deeba gazed into its glass. There was one that contained nothing, one with a room full of lamps. When a third came close, Deeba squinted, and felt Jones’s hand close around her mouth to stop her screaming.

Hammering on the inside of the glass as the Black Window rose was a gaunt, exhausted woman. She was thin, her hair was wild and dry, her eyes staring. She stared straight at Deeba and Hemi as the window passed.

The light was waning.

“It’s evening,” Deeba whispered. “Maybe this isn’t working.”

“Maybe it’ll help,” said Hemi. “It’ll stand out more.”

He shone his flashlight on it, and Jones swung their clumsy window from side to side. Its limbs waggled. Deeba saw several of the Black Windows stop moving, then, to her simultaneous triumph and horror, pick their way towards them.

“Here they come,” whispered Hemi.

From the shadows in the rear of the hall, a window came fast.

“We’ve got something’s attention,” whispered Jones.

The Black Window ran with its unnerving many-legged motion, leaving the gloom. It leapt onto a thread between floor and ceiling, and raced towards them. It plunged on its silk right in front of their bait.

The window hung, its legs wide. Through its glass, Deeba could see a weak electric bulb, the gray of a little room, and attached to a wall opposite, a huge, antique revolver.

“That’s it!” She grabbed Jones’s hand. “It’s the one with the UnGun in it! It’s come to check out its double. Never seen another with a pistol in it.”

The Black Window moved in agitation. Jones swung the bait gently, making its legs rattle. Other spider-windows watched and drummed their limbs.

“Is it angry, or flirting?” whispered Hemi.

“I dunno,” said Deeba. “But it’s interested. Get ready.”

Deeba took hold of the rope that led out of the tunnel, and got ready to send Skool a message.

The bait twitched and jiggled. Don’t look too close, Deeba thought. But the soldering-iron-and-pipe gun they’d rigged up seemed enough to fool the agitated Black Window. It drew back its limbs, paused, then pounced.

It gripped the dangling fake window.

“Now!” shouted Deeba, and Jones pulled hard on the second cord, as Obaday Fing had shown him. The loops Fing had woven around the bait all tightened together. It was beautifully precise. The thick silk bonds clamped firmly, and pinned the Black Window’s legs to the ridiculous marionette.

Instantly, everything went mad.

The captured window yanked its body, swinging at the end of the tether, trying to pull free. Jones staggered, was almost hauled off the little ledge.

All the other Black Windows began to run towards them.

“Quick!” yelled Deeba. “Help!”

Hemi pulled frantically at the rope, several quick tugs. “Anything more than four,” they’d told Skool, “means pull.”

There were agonizing seconds of delay. Then the rope was hauled back hard, and the captured Black Window began to rise.

Deeba, Hemi, and Jones clambered as fast as they could up the slope of the tunnel. Their captive slid behind them, still shaking as it tried to escape, opening and slamming shut like a biting mouth.

Black Windows followed them into the funnel. Deeba felt the vibrations of feet closing behind, and thought in terror that she couldn’t go any faster, until with one last heave, Skool yanked the tethered window the last few meters of the tunnel, sweeping Jones, Hemi, and Deeba with it.

They came spilling out of Webminster Abbey, to where Skool hauled, and Obaday, the utterlings, and the bishops waited anxiously. The Black Window they had snared skidded out, shaking furiously in its bonds, tied to the now distinctly unimpressive-looking fake. Curdle circled it, emitting aggressive puffs of air.

“We’re okay!” said Deeba. “Don’t let go of it!”

Giant wooden spiders’ legs poked aggressively out of the hole, looking for prey, but the windows wouldn’t come out of the abbey. None except the one that they had caught.