Un Lun Dun (18 page)

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.

37

An Intrepid Start

When she came to school the next day, Deeba’s bag was packed. It contained sandwiches and chocolate and crisps and drink, a penknife, a notepad and pens, a stopwatch, a blanket, plasters and bandages, a sewing kit, a wad of out-of-date foreign money she’d gathered from the backs of drawers all over her house, and other bits and pieces that she thought might just be useful. On top of them all, Deeba had put her umbrella.

That morning, she’d hugged each of her family members for a long time, to their amused surprise. “I’ll see you later,” she’d said to her brother Hass. “I might be away for a while. But there’s something I have to do.”

She reminded herself several times that her plan might not work. That all her preparations might come to nothing. Still, her heart was going very fast most of the day. She thought it was excitement; then she thought it was fear. Then she realized it was both.

That morning she didn’t talk to anyone. Becks was watching her suspiciously, and Zanna looked confused. Deeba ignored them.

At lunchtime she went to the school library.

There were a few other pupils in the room, doing homework, reading, working at the computers. Mr. Purdey the librarian glanced up at her, then went back to his paperwork. Apart from a few whispers, the room was quiet.

Deeba walked past the desks and the other children, and in among the bookshelves. She went to the farthest end of the room and stared at the shelves in front of her. She pulled on the glove made of paper and words.

The multicolored spines of hardback novels stared back. They were slightly battered, and coated in clear plastic. Deeba looked up. The shelves rose a meter or so above her, to the ceiling.

“Right,” whispered Deeba. She checked the contents of her bag one more time. “Enter by booksteps,” she said, reading her hand. “And storyladders.”

No one was watching. She stepped up carefully and put a foot onto the edge of a shelf. Deeba reached up and took hold of another. Slowly, carefully, she began to climb the bookshelves like a ladder. One foot above the other, one hand above the other.

The books didn’t leave much space for her fingers or toes. She felt the bookshelves wobble, but they didn’t collapse. Deeba concentrated on reading the titles just in front of her fingertips.

She knew she must be close to the ceiling. She didn’t slow, and she didn’t look up. She stared straight ahead at the books, and climbed.

A little way up the spines looked less battered. Their colors more vivid. Their titles less familiar. Deeba tried to remember if she had ever heard of
The Wasp in the Wig,
or
A Courageous Egg.

It took a moment for her to realize that she was still climbing. The library floor…

…looked farther down than it should be.

In front of her was a book called
A London Guide for the Blazing World-ers.
Deeba kept climbing. She was definitely beyond where the ceiling had been. Still she didn’t look anywhere but straight in front of her.

She clung to the edges of the shelves and climbed for a long time. A wind began to buffet her. Deeba tore her gaze from a book called
A Bowl for Shadows
and at last looked down. She gave a little scream of shock.

Far, far below her she saw the library. Children walked between the shelves like specks. The bookshelf she was ascending rose like a cliff edge, all the way down, and as far to either side as she could see.

Vertigo made Deeba nauseous. She had to force herself to keep going up.

She stopped to rest when her arms and legs were shaking. By this time, all she could see was an endless stretch of bookshelf. Behind her back was nothing but darkness.

Deeba tried to take a book off the shelf to take a look inside. She almost lost her grip. She heard herself shriek, and she clung to the storyladder while her heart slowed. She wondered if her friends below would hear a tiny tinny sound, and if she fell, whether she would keep tumbling until she landed back into the library.

Eventually she fished her umbrella out of her bag and climbed like a mountaineer, hooking a shelf high above with its curved handle, and hauling herself up.

Once there was a hard squawking and a noise from the void behind her. Something approached her on wings.

Without looking, Deeba grabbed a handful of books and flung them over her shoulder, rustling like rudimentary wings. There was a thud and an angry cawing. The avian noises receded. She did not hear the books land.

Though relieved, Deeba felt vaguely guilty about mistreating them.

She stopped being aware of time. She was only conscious of an endless succession of titles, and of wind growing stronger and louder, and of darkness around her. Deeba’s fingers closed on leaves. She went through places where ivy had claimed the shelves and tangled roots into the books. She went through places where little animals scuttled out of her way.

I might be climbing the rest of my life,
she thought, almost dreamily.
I wonder how far this bookcliff goes. I wonder if I should maybe start moving left. Or right. Or diagonally.

It was growing slowly lighter. Deeba thought she heard a low noise of talking. With a sudden shock, she realized that there were no more shelves.

She had reached the top. She reached up and hauled herself…