Un Lun Dun

81. A Special Boat Service

Deeba smiled at the UnLondoners waiting. They carried bows and arrows, clubs, a few strange-looking guns. Standing on a roof overlooking them, Deeba saw a little group, one of whom was effortlessly standing on her hands.

“Slaterunners,” Deeba said, delighted. She waved at them. “Isn’t that a bit high for you?” she said. They grinned.

“Took a bit of getting used to,” one said.

“A lot of our friends were against it,” said another. “Said no good would come of leaving the Roofdom. But when we heard the rumors…well, we had to come.”

“You finally did it, then? Came on real roofs?”

“It’s scary up here! But, special times, ain’t it? You’re Deeba. Inessa Badladder thought it must be you she kept hearing about. Well, at first she thought it was the Shwazzy, but then she changed her mind when she heard more. She says hello. We’d like to come…fight by you.”

Deeba had to turn away. She felt a bit choked up by the sight of the little army.

Standing some way from the main body of volunteers, there was a wispy gang of Wraithtown ghosts. They looked ill at ease.

“Oh my gosh,” she said. “Hemi, it’s the man from the council! Maybe he did see what was on the screen.”

“And he’s brought others,” said Hemi.

He walked over purposefully and began to talk to the chubby ghost, and the others. The bureaucrat smiled uncomfortably. Deeba saw their faint, spectral mouths moving inaudibly. She saw Hemi pointing people out, speaking in a voice that wove in and out of audibility for her. He stood and spoke with authority.

“Don’t see what they’re doing,” someone muttered. “They couldn’t do anything even if they wanted to.”

Deeba stared unpleasantly at the woman who’d spoken. She walked ostentatiously to the gathered ghosts, standing by Hemi. He introduced her, and though she could not hear every word he said, she watched his mouth and, at the relevant moments, reached forward and shook as if she could feel the spectral hands they held out.

“There are others on the way,” he said.

“I just wanted to say thank you very much for coming,” she said. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

“There’s more smoke,” she said. “More fires. The Smog’s trying to spread. And there’s fumes coming out of chimneys. That’s probably the Concern, lighting furnaces to help it.”

“We need a diversion or two,” said Jones. “No point us all trying for the break-in—”

“Jones!”

They froze. Approaching them from behind the crowd was a Propheseer, bodyguard binja walking in front of her.

Jones leapt and reached for his weapon, but the Propheseer threw up her hands and said, “Wait, wait!”

It was Lectern. She looked at the book, in Hemi’s arms.

There was silence for several seconds. The Slaterunners, librarians, and others watched tensely. Lectern looked immensely uncomfortable. The martial-artist dustbins watched from below their just-open lids.

“Book,” said Lectern in sheepish greeting.

“Come to fight?” the book said.

“Actually,” Lectern said, “I came to apologize. And to join you.”

“Some of us’ve been getting suspicious for a while now,” Lectern said. “Brokkenbroll’s suggestions have got more and more like orders, and they don’t make any sense. And Unstible wouldn’t let any of us help with his studies. He wouldn’t even let us see his notes. That’s our job! But then a couple of days ago,” she said, “Brokkenbroll tells us that we might have to consider abandoning the Wordhoard Pit. That it’s too costly to keep it safe. That we should let the Smog take it.

“Or, he says, another option’s to build a few fires ourselves, or start up an old factory or something, and maybe come to an arrangement with the Smog! Says he’s got contacts considering something like that! Well…” She looked at them.

“So you started remembering what I said,” said Deeba. Lectern nodded. She couldn’t meet Deeba’s eye. “Is it just you?”

“I know there’re others who don’t like what’s going on,” said Lectern. “Some of them might be on their way. But I didn’t know which of them to risk talking to. So when I heard the talk about what was going on, I just…walked off the Pons. Put my ears to the ground, listened out for where you might be.”

“So word’s spreading a bit too much,” muttered Deeba. “We better be quick. Do the others know?”

“They must know I’m gone by now, but I made sure they didn’t follow us.”

“And the others are loyal to Brokkenbroll?” Jones said.

“Some. A lot of them…sort of pretend, to themselves, that they believe him.”

“The binja?”

“These are the only ones I know you can trust.”

“What about Mortar?”

She looked sadly at them.

“He’s worst of all,” said Lectern quietly. “He’s been friends with Unstible so long, he won’t hear a word of criticism. And the funny thing is, he gets more aggressive and stupidly pro-Unstible the more Unstible looks dodgy. Goes on and on about how brilliantly everything’s going and how Unstible’s going to fix everything and the Smog’ll be routed soon. It’s like he knows something bad’s going on, and he has to prove to himself he doesn’t.

“He’s just being weak, really,” she said. “You can’t help feeling a bit sorry for him.”

“Yeah,” said Deeba grimly. She thought of Diss, and Rosa, and the locals by the abbey, and others across UnLondon. “Yeah you can.”

Some of the vessels in the harbor were so old-fashioned they looked like they should be in museums; others were hung with streamers and ropes so they were like shaggy, floating, multicolored animals. Deeba saw one that didn’t have just a figurehead at the front, but an entire hull made up of wooden animals, women, skeletons, men, and geometric curls.

But these weren’t suitable for a secret mission.

Shapes jostled in the water. They were strange and ungainly, with slanted glass sections towards the front and back, and vertically along the sides. It took a moment for Deeba to realize she was looking at the metal-and-glass shells of cars, pulled off, turned over, and made watertight.

“What is that?” she said, pointing at the nearest.

“It’s called a [image should be there],” Jones said.

The four grooves where the wheels had been were now the housings for oars. It didn’t look like the most stable vessel, but it was low and nondescript from afar.

“Which is ours?” Deeba said.

“Traveling in style,” Jones said, and indicated one that must have once been the body of a Rolls-Royce or a Jaguar or a Bentley or something.

“So this is a—” Deeba tried to remember how Jones had said it. “…a rack? No, that’s not right…”

“It’s a [image should be there],” Jones said.

“A…rack? I can’t say it.”

“Easiest way is to bend over and say ‘car.’ ”

“Stay low in the water,” Jones told the gathered army. “And don’t go too fast. We need everyone to look like rubbish. There’s no point avoiding the bridges if they catch us on the water.

“You’ve all been told where you should go. We want you to storm into the front, and— if you make it— we’ll see you inside. There’ll be defenses. No doubt about it. Probably a lot of them. So be prepared to fight hard.”

People waited. After an awkward silence, Jones nudged Deeba, inclined his head.

Deeba hesitated.

“I wasn’t supposed to be here,” she said. “At first I just wanted to go home, but I couldn’t, because you-know-what would’ve come after me. And back where I come from I couldn’t have done nothing about it. So I had to stay and fight, even though that was crazy.

“That thing wants UnLondon— and who knows what else? It’s poison with a mind— you do not want to be here if it runs things. Unfortunately, some people have been taken in.

“But you haven’t. We haven’t. You’re fighting for UnLondon. And you know something? Me too. I want to get home, and I have to stop that thing coming after me, so I’m going after it…but that’s not the only reason. I’m here for UnLondon, too.” She realized it was true. “You lot— us lot— we’re UnLondon’s last chance.

“We don’t ask for much,” she said at last. “Only to live in our abcity. Un Lun Dun!”

It wasn’t much of a speech. But somehow spoken in a night so apocalyptic, beside the lapping river, under a sky crossed with the lights of flying machines and stars and Smog-feeding fires, it inspired.

“Un Lun Dun!” The crowd knew they couldn’t risk shouting it, but they whispered enthusiastically, and it was almost a chant.

Deeba didn’t realize for several seconds that she had said our abcity, and meant it.

“Does this thing have a name?” Deeba said as she settled onto a bench set between what had once been car doors, now upside down and sealed shut.

“It ought to,” said Hemi. “Bad luck otherwise.”

Her companions paused and considered, and all started making suggestions at once.

“Feather-I-Say?”

“Silver Belle Flower?”

“QV-66?”

“No,” said Deeba. “This is the Diss&Rosa.”