“I don’t think they’re very interested in that,” the book said. Bling had begun walking around the room, pointing things out to the rebellious words. “See? It’s showing them around. They want to be tourists. They only just got born.”
“If they do what they were supposed to, then they’re finished,” Deeba said. “I suppose the last thing they want to do now is what they were told. Then they’d be done.”
The last of the ants was carrying off the last shreds of the fruit. There was nothing left but pips, stones, and stalks, lying on the floor very vaguely in the shape of a man.
“Isn’t there something we can do for the utterlings?” Deeba said quietly to the book. “They’re nearly gone.”
“I don’t think so. They’ve already lasted longer than most of their kind.”
“But…we can’t just let them disappear!”
“I don’t want them to, either,” the book said. “But it’s not under our control.” Deeba watched the dwindling figures.
“Can’t I just speak them again? Cauldron. Bling.”
“It doesn’t work that way. You didn’t speak them in the first place.”
“Well, Mr. Speaker’s certainly not going to speak them again,” said Deeba. “Even if he could…” She stopped suddenly. “But they’re not his things anyway, anymore. They rebelled. Why can’t they speak themselves?”
“Don’t be silly,” the book said. “They haven’t got any mouths.”
“There are people who can’t make sounds but they still talk,” Deeba said. “They use their hands. Or they write things down. Why can’t the utterlings do that? They are doing it, look. They could talk themselves back.”
Cauldron and Bling were gesturing energetically to the Hex’s invisible words.
“Tell them to say themselves,” Deeba said. “That could work. Couldn’t it?”
“It…might,” the book said hesitantly.
“Of course it will,” said Deeba. “Promise me you’ll tell them to try, as soon as they’re done talking to the spell-words. Promise?”
“What do you mean?” said the book. “Why can’t you tell them?”
“Because I have to go,” Deeba said. “Time’s running out.” She sat next to Jones.
Obaday was moaning and clutching his broken wrist, while Lectern tended him. The utterlings were escorting the newly independent words around the world that most words never had the time to notice.
“Come on then,” said Jones. Deeba could hear the exhaustion in his voice. “The Smog’s somewhere upstairs. Time to track it down.”
“Jones,” she said. She sighed. “Look at yourself.”
“Come on now,” he groaned.
“Seriously. That fruit-thing knocked you around. You can’t even walk. And anyway…” She lowered her voice. “Do you really trust Obaday to keep watch over the Hex?” Jones laughed morosely. “You have to watch them, be ready to shock them if they get uppity. They can’t come after me.”
“Deeba, you can’t go on your own.”
“Do you think I want you not to come?” For a moment she could hardly speak. “I don’t even want to go myself. But I got no choice. Look at you, man!” She prodded him gently, and he had to fight to stifle a moan. “You’re a liability. Besides,” she added. “I won’t be on my own. I’ll have Lectern.” They watched the Propheseer.
She was dabbing at Obaday. Curdle butted gently against her, and Lectern gave a little squeak and twitched her hands and dropped her scrap of cloth. It fluttered down and snagged on Obaday’s pins-and-needles hair. Lectern frowned and tried, and failed, to pluck it off.
“A milk carton, a bad-tempered book, and her?” said Jones.
Deeba and Jones began to giggle, a little hysterically. But there wasn’t much time, and even as she laughed, Deeba knew she had to go.
88. The Baleful View
Deeba crept up the stairs, the UnGun raised. Lectern came hesitantly behind her, carrying the book. Curdle jumped energetically from step to step.
“Come on,” the book whispered to Lectern. “Keep up, keep up.”
After several twisting flights, they reached the top. At the end of the hallway was a door, from above and below which Smog oozed.
“We better be fast,” Lectern said. “This Smog’s going to sense us any minute.”
The corridor shimmered in the vivid colors of night. One whole wall of the passageway was windowed.
“Look at that,” breathed Lectern.
They stared out onto UnLondon at war.
There was the streetlamp glow, rising where the inhabited boroughs were, and between them the coiling dark of smogmires. But that night, UnLondon was also flickering in the illumination of many fires. There were the flashes of combustion, and the glowing beams of flashlights from the streets, from the dark cut of the river, where they danced with their reflections, and coming down from the sky, from aircraft and other flying things, racing in all directions.
“It’s kicked off,” said Deeba. “It really has.”
She could hear the sounds of battle.
“Look,” she said.
Below the rising and falling roofscape of the floors below them, they could see the factory forecourt. It was full of a huge fight. Behind the walls and thrown-up barricades, and on roofs to either side, battalions of smombies threw missiles. Stink-junkies pumped smoke and fire.
The attackers, just beyond the entrance, were the UnLondoner troops that had gathered with Deeba by the river.
They fired weapons and swung grappling hooks over the walls. Many wielded big fans, and swung them like axes at the Smog as it approached, blowing its smaller clots away. The dirty smoke scattered, gathered again at the edges of the yard, and re-formed for counterattacks.
“Un Lun Dun!” Deeba heard the rebels shout. “Un Lun Dun!”
“There are more of us than there were by the river,” Deeba said. “People are joining.”
“But most UnLondoners still think Unstible’s on their side, don’t they?” Lectern said.
“Maybe not, not round here. As soon as they see he’s using smombies and that, they’ll know he’s with the Smog. In fact…”
“In fact word of that’ll spread,” the book finished. “And Unstible must know it. So it’s decided, whatever it’s going to do…tonight’s its last chance.”
“But that wasn’t their plan.” Deeba frowned. “The whole thing I heard them talk about…it was all about how people would think Unstible and Brokkenbroll were on their side, and that’s why they’d do what they were told. Why’s he giving it away?”
“Maybe they’re desperate,” the book said uncertainly.
“Look,” said Lectern. She pointed.
Among the vessels, birds, bats, grossbottles, and smogglers racing through the sky was a cluster of shadows. It was flying in a strange way. It was a dense mass surrounded by outriders. It careered towards them as chaotic and lurching as a crowd of moths, coming at tremendous speed.
“What is that?” whispered Lectern.
Specks flew up from the city as the mass approached, and joined it, and others dropped away from it and torpedoed into the streets. Deeba saw one of them fold its wings and fall like a crooked, hook-ended missile.
“Uh-oh,” she said, and stepped back from the window. “It’s the unbrellas.”
In the unbrella flock’s dark center, something dangled like an ugly fruit.
“Brokkenbroll,” Deeba breathed.
The Unbrellissimo was holding on to one of the unbrella’s handles, hanging below it as it opened and closed. He swung and reached with his other hand, grabbed another of the unbrellas. Again and again, he moved like someone on monkey bars, hand-to-hand, as if clambering his way through the sky. The unbrellas carried him each in turn.
The swarm swept into the factory’s yard. They spread out among the fight. Then to Deeba’s surprise they each flipped around, hovering in front of every woman or man, offering their handles.