A cold awareness settled in her stomach. The Smog was seconds away from merging completely, mixing its new chemical, and spreading out again for attack. Even with the help of several other Propheseers, there was no way Mortar could warn more than a handful of UnLondoners.
It’s not going to work, Deeba thought. We have nothing.
When she looked back at Mortar, the bridge was there, jutting from the edge of the building. She glimpsed the desks on its surface, saw its girders recede with perspective.
There was a bass growling from the sky. The last trail of smoke disappeared like sucked spaghetti into the thick green-tinted Smog, which rumbled.
“Go!” shouted Deeba. Mortar went onto the bridge, dragging Lectern. He looked at Deeba. A tentacle of Smog swooped down towards the roof, moaning like a monster. “Go!” she shouted.
Mortar waved once. Deeba ducked to avoid the swirl. When she looked back the bridge was gone.
The Smog churned its murderous chemical within itself. It made shapes with its clouds, sank towards Deeba.
With Mortar gone, Deeba felt a strange calm. Perhaps it was certainty— the certainty of defeat. She knew she had no time to retreat to where Jones and the others were waiting, and she knew there would be no point even if she could. She tried not to think about all the people in two worlds the Smog had at its mercy.
She had stayed in the remains of the room because she couldn’t bear to run from her enemy. Not after everything that had happened. It’s crazy, thought Deeba. I have nothing. But still, she realized, that was why she’d stayed.
Brokkenbroll lay untrustworthy and unconscious. Deeba was alone.
The Smog descended.
Deeba made a brief move towards the remains of the corridor, then stopped. She wouldn’t get farther than ten feet. There was no point. She looked up.
The Smog made itself a green cloud face. It loomed over her, and sent out a cathedral-sized smoke tongue to lick its smoke lips. It bashed air currents together in its miles-wide mouth, and with a voice made out of thunder, it said to her:
Deeba closed her eyes as the Smog came down. All she could think, again and again, was: I have nothing.
95. Nothing
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
And the UnGun.
Deeba opened her eyes.
Nothing and the UnGun!
96. Six-Shooter
The enormous Smog-mouth plummeted towards her. Deeba raised the empty UnGun.
It’s no mistake! she thought. In the book! It’s not “Nothing but the UnGun” the Smog’s scared of, it is supposed to be “Nothing and the UnGun.”
She held the weapon in her right hand, the rebrella with her left. The Smog was right above her. She could feel the wind it pushed as it dropped. All of the Smog was congealed into a dark, rushing shape. It concentrated itself so densely it looked almost solid.
It growled as it came.
Nothing’s the opposite of something. If I fire something, anything, from the UnGun, it shoots it out, and exaggerates it. So if I shoot nothing…
Deeba fired.
There was an enormous implosive rush. This time, the UnGun didn’t recoil. It didn’t push her back. It pulled her forward, and she staggered to stay standing.
With a roar, the UnGun sucked. It sluiced with impossible strength into its barrel.
A huge chunk of the Smog’s cloud-matter was drawn from the sky. In the instant that Deeba pulled the trigger, a tightly twisting vortex sprang from the Smog and funneled into the UnGun.
The Smog broke off from its dive and curved away. The face it had made boiled and re-formed. It looked confused.
It was noticeably smaller than it had been a moment before.
The Smog turned like a vast rearing horse, and snarled. It stared at Deeba, and the cloud swept down again, changing shape as it came.
Deeba hefted the UnGun. It was heavier than it had been. Five chambers left, she thought. She fired again.
The sucking sound roared across the heavens again, even louder than before, like water rushing into a cosmic drain. Another great whirlpool of Smog coiled superfast out of the cloud, slurping out whole banks of its stuff, which gushed out of the air in a dense stream, into the UnGun.
The weapon clicked in Deeba’s hand, the cylinder twisted, and another empty chamber slid into place in front of the hammer. Deeba fired again, and suctioned in another swath.
With three bullet slots full, the Smog was at least half-gone. At last it understood what it was facing. It gathered itself, and in a rolling mass like a storm front, the dark, green-tinged cloud fled across the sky.
Deeba planted her feet and aimed carefully. She fired twice in quick succession. Huge clots of Smog yanked backwards like stretching dough, gushed into the pistol.
One nothing left, Deeba thought.
There was only a small, dense patch of Smog left in the air, but it was large enough to send down a murderous rain if it got away. It flitted frantically in a zigzag over UnLondon, curling around towers and behind high roofs. It was already miles away.
Steady, thought Deeba. She watched it sink towards unlit streets, to hide below roof-level. Deeba shifted her aim, pointing not at it, but at where it was heading.
As its front entered her line of sight, she fired.
One last gust swept into the UnGun. The big lump of Smog strained against the currents, but stretched and twisted, and spiraled, and was pulled in. For seconds, the night sky over UnLondon was full of a horizontal tornado, a corkscrew of poisoned smoke gushing into the UnGun. It hauled backwards over the abcity, the wind rushing through its eddying particles with a noise exactly like screaming.
Until with a long, loud gurgle the last of the Smog disappeared down the barrel, and the sky was clean.
97. Regroupment
For a long time, Deeba just stood in the rubble of the factory, swaying. She dangled the UnGun at the end of her arm, cautiously. Deeba thought she could feel the weapon twitching slightly.
She staggered to an unbroken stool and sat at the remains of a table.
“That,” said the book slowly, “was great.”
Deeba had forgotten it was there. She bent and picked it up, wiped the dust off its cover.
“Are you alright?” she said.
“Okay,” the book said. “It tore out a couple of my pages and burnt them, to scare me. Worked, too. Are you alright?”
Deeba laughed tiredly.
“I think I am,” she said.
Trailing dust, Curdle emerged from a pile of rubbish. It shuffled to Deeba’s feet. She picked it up, too, and stroked it clean.
“And you,” she said, and beckoned to the rebrella. It jumped onto her lap. They listened to the noises of celebration across UnLondon.
There was a cough and a shuffle nearby. Brokkenbroll was staring at her, from the ground. He looked as terrified of her as he had of the Smog.
“It…you…it…” he whispered.
“How long have you been awake?” Deeba said.
Sending up dust, Brokkenbroll fumbled for his unbrellas. All but one were buried under bricks, or lost.
“You stay away from me!” he whined. He scrabbled backwards, his single unbrella in his hand. He stumbled to his feet. “The Smog…!” he said. “It…you…” His mouth worked a few more seconds; then he ran across the remains of the room, leapt the rubble of the wall and out into the air.
Without any others to carry him, the unbrella lurched down a long way. It opened and closed frantically, struggling to stay airborne. Brokkenbroll clung to it, swaying, with his right hand. His clothes were ragged and flapping and left a trail of powdered brick.