It turned, and the eyes of the biggest lizard faced Deeba.
“Yes,” whispered Deeba. “I did it!” She bit her lip to stop herself shouting in delight. She watched what had once been her umbrella hopping around the corridor, bending to examine things around it.
“Hey,” she whispered, and it turned to her. “Do you remember me? From a long time ago.”
It paused for several seconds, then nodded its tip uncertainly up and down.
“Do you remember a minute ago you were gripping me?”
It nodded. Vehemently.
“But you don’t want to hold my legs?” She gesticulated at her ankles. The unbrella bent to look at them. It raised its canopy a tiny bit and lowered it again. An umbrella-shrug. Then it shook it no.
“You had to. You were ordered. And now you don’t have to obey.”
It nodded and jumped and spun, and cartwheeled, and bounced from wall to wall and ceiling to floor. It opened and closed and flew in little jerks.
It’s free! It doesn’t have to do what Brokkenbroll says! Deeba thought.
It’s not an unbrella at all, anymore. It’s something else. When it was an umbrella, it was completely for one thing. When it was broken, it didn’t do that anymore, so it was something else, and that’s when it was Brokkenbroll’s. His slave.
But if it’s fixed…It’s not unbroken— then it would be an umbrella, just a dumb tool again. But now it’s not broken either, so it’s not his anymore.
It’s something new. It’s not an umbrella, and it’s not an unbrella. It’s…
“What are you?” muttered Deeba. “A rebrella?” Whatever it is, she thought, it’s its own thing, now.
“You like being free,” she said. The rebrella nodded enthusiastically. “In return…would you help me?”
The floor was littered with glass, and splintered wood from the window frames. There were little metal rods, too, a few inches long, that had secured the windows closed.
Curdle and the rebrella picked up random broken bits and brought them each to Deeba.
“No, not the glass,” she said. “The rod. Yeah, that’s it.”
The unbrella that held her wrists was bent in the middle of its shaft. It took a lot of effort, but with the help of the rebrella— and the enthusiastic unhelpful participation of Curdle— Deeba held it firmly. The rebrella forced it open, and Deeba held a rod flush with the unbrella’s shaft. Between them they managed to unbend it and wrap sticking-tape around and around her captor and the metal rod, binding them together, bracing the unbrella straight.
And suddenly, fixed like that, it wasn’t an unbrella at all. It sprang away from Deeba’s hands and did a dance of delight, like the first rebrella had.
With her hands and legs free, Deeba was able to get hold of the remaining unbrellas in turn. They didn’t fight— their orders had been to hold still.
Two were so broken Deeba couldn’t fix them. The others she patched up quickly. None of them looked good, but very soon Deeba was surrounded by four delighted rebrellas, jumping with the pleasure of no longer being Brokkenbroll’s to control. They were like animals playing.
Her mind raced. She was painfully conscious of how time was passing, that her friends were waiting, and that she had only one last chance to stop the Smog.
“Will you help me?” she said. She had to say it a few times before the rebrellas lined up, seemingly eager. The exception was the red-and-lizard rebrella, which was quicker. Perhaps because it was mine for ages, she thought, it understands me.
“Here’s what I need you to do,” she said. “When I say ‘Attack!’ do this.” She made exaggerated hitting motions.
She knew the Unstible-thing was very strong, but the rebrellas had been un- brellas, all treated with the chemical goo that rendered them invulnerable to the Smog’s attacks. There was poetic justice, she thought— the props the Smog had made to help it take over the city with Brokkenbroll would now be turned against it.
There was a blue rebrella she had sewed up, a yellow one the shaft of which she had straightened, and a black one that had been the easiest to fix: it had just been inverted, and she had snapped it back the right way around.
“There’s no way we’ll be able to sneak in. There’s one chance. I need you to help me,” she said to the red rebrella.
For a moment, she remembered playing with it in the yards of her estate, twirling it like a sword. She wondered what those memories were like for it— for it, two whole lives ago. Perhaps they were like dreams.
“While these three are attacking,” she said, “I need you to fetch something.”
When she had done explaining, Deeba hesitated. Whatever happened in the next few minutes, she knew things were coming to an end.
91. Reactions
Deeba yanked open the door, and the rebrellas swirled inside.
As she entered, everything went slow. Deeba took everything in, in an instant.
The illumination in the workshop shifted. The room was full of the crawling and sluggishly flying lightbulb insects. A huge fire burnt in the fireplace. The big vat was still there on its swiveling stand. It was full of a vividly glowing, bubbling green liquid. Blue gas jets hissed below it.
Around the room, the benches and stands were the same amazing mess of chemicals in beakers, bubbling test tubes, and coils of glass that she remembered.
On a table in the corner, Deeba saw the UnGun and the book. Mortar sat back on a chair, snoring. His head was encased in a fug of smoke. The cage-door entrance to the elevator was closed, and the lift itself was not there.
The rebrellas went charging and twirling, opening and closing, swinging like swords. They moved more swiftly and impressively even than the unbrellas did. Everyone prefers fighting by choice, Deeba thought.
They bore down on the figure in the center of the room.
The Unstible-thing.
For an instant, it was frozen, examining a beaker full of the glowing gunk from the vat. Deeba stared at it in horror.
Unstible was grossly swollen, its skin stretched and puffy, pale and blotched and sick-looking. Its lab coat was tight on its body. It stared at Deeba with bloodshot eyes.
“Deeba!” shouted the book.
As the rebrellas spun aggressively towards it, Unstible opened its mouth and laughed.
It moved. Despite its new bulk, it was unnaturally fast. It cartwheeled out of the path of the oncoming rebrellas, seemed to bounce. It sprang on one hand, keeping hold of the glowing container in the other, twisting its wrist as its body turned so the glass didn’t empty.
It laughed again, with a noise like a sack of dead animals being dragged across coal and broken glass. Unstible flung the beaker at the closest rebrella.
The glass shattered on the toughened canopy, and Deeba opened her mouth to shout in triumph at how easily it repelled his missile. Then her throat constricted.
The glowing liquid burst over the black rebrella, and where it touched the treated fabric, it combusted.
The rebrella went up in oily flames, with a ferocious outpouring of smoke. It burnt in instants, with a squeal of red-hot metal.
Unstible inhaled mightily, and sucked the fumes that gushed from the burning rebrella into its nostrils. They left behind a heat-coiled, twisted umbrella skeleton, and ash.