Un Lun Dun

75. The Room Nowhere

“It’s really not happy, is it?” said Obaday Fing.

It was early night, and the stars moved above them. Deeba and her companions examined their captive in the almost-full loon, and the faint glow from windows at the edges of the square. The cobweb curves of the huge abbey moved gently in the wind.

“I simply can’t believe it,” said Bishop Bon.

“I’m terribly impressed,” said Bastor.

The window rattled and shook, still pinned to the bait. Skool kept the cord attached to its bonds taut.

“Let’s get on with it,” Jones said. “This bloody thing’s strong.”

They looked down through the glass.

In the room behind the window, the bulb dangled horizontally, and the wall the pistol was attached to looked like a floor below them. Next to it was a closed wooden door. It was only about six feet away.

“So that’s the UnGun,” said Hemi.

It was a very big, heavy revolver, like the ones Deeba had seen in cowboy films. She leaned close to the glass, and the window opened and slammed like teeth. They all jumped back.

“Right, so we get a rope with a hook, and we dangle it inside, and grab it,” said Obaday.

Hemi wedged a hefty plank of wood in the window’s opening, to its obvious fury. Its snared legs were twitching. Skool struggled to hold it.

“Come on!” said Jones.

“Here we are, here we are,” said Obaday. But when he dangled a hook of bent piping on his spider-silk rope through the open window on the pavement, something strange happened. As soon as the rope passed through the window’s opening, it immediately changed direction, and fell sideways.

Obaday stood with a rather stupid expression on his face. The rope dangled in an L-shape, down to the window, then inside at a right angle.

“It’s ’cause down’s a different direction there,” Deeba said. “That’s not a floor below us, it’s a wall. We need something stiff.”

They tried with the bishop’s staffs, but they couldn’t reach the UnGun.

“Whatever you’re going to do,” said Jones, watching Skool struggle, “may I ask you to speed up?” Deeba heard creaking from the wood keeping the Black Window open.

Everyone looked at each other.

“I knew it,” Deeba said, and before she had time to reconsider, she sighed and stepped into the open window.

Deeba heard her friends’ appalled shrieks as she slipped through.

She experienced a very peculiar fall, changing direction beyond the glass. She twisted, and rolled on the floor of the little room.

“Deeba!” she heard. “Get out of there!”

She looked out the window at her friends. They were looking down at her, from her angle seeming to jut straight out of a wall beyond the glass. Hemi was reaching urgently through the window.

“One second,” she said.

Opposite her on the wall was the UnGun.

Deeba walked across the concrete floor, her friends urging her to hurry. She felt unnaturally sensitive, noticing the cracks beneath her feet and on the walls around her. She heard the lightbulb buzzing.

When she closed her hand around the wooden grip of the UnGun on the wall, she braced herself, expecting to be hardly able to pick it up. She lifted it.

It was lighter than she had expected. She hefted it in her hand, examined it.

It was battered and mottled with rust. She flicked the bullet compartment in the middle. It spun.

Deeba could still hear buzzing, but she wasn’t sure it came from the lightbulb now. She stood very still, and listened. She closed her eyes. I could fall asleep, she thought.

The noise was coming from behind the door. She put a hand on the wood. There were unclear sounds in the room, or corridor, or whatever was beyond it. I could open it and go exploring, she thought. If this place has the UnGun in it…what else might be here? Maybe there’s a garden. Or a bedroom. Or a phone…I could call home again!

She put her hand slowly to the handle.

Something was bothering her. She paused and wondered what it might be. She couldn’t think what was wrong.

“Deeba,” she heard, for what she realized was the second time. “Turn around.”

She did so, curiously, and there were her friends, staring down, sideways, through the window, beckoning.

The view beyond the window was shaking violently, and Deeba realized that the window must have nearly pulled itself free. With a cold rush, she woke back into herself. She had been in some kind of dream.

“Come on!” shouted Hemi. “Let go of the door!”

Even as he spoke, Deeba saw one of the Black Window’s legs swing up into view, free of its bonds. It pulled the wedge of wood out from under its sash.

The window slammed shut.

Deeba saw the horror on her friends’ faces, but she could no longer hear them. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. Deeba raised her arm, and hurled the UnGun as hard as she could.

The big pistol spun in the air, crossing the room, straight into the very center of one of the panes. The glass exploded into hundreds of pieces, and the window spasmed.

Deeba ran.

She watched Hemi, then Obaday, then Jones and the utterlings try to grab the pistol as it passed into UnLondon. It was traveling straight up to them, and at the end of its trajectory, it would pause and come back at her.

She was halfway to the broken window, and she saw another of its legs pull free.

The UnGun had reversed direction. She and it were racing towards each other. As she reached the jagged edge of glass, she saw one of the bishops’ crooks reach out of nowhere, hook the pistol through the trigger guard, and yank it out of sight.

Deeba put her hands in front of her face, screamed, and dived through the broken window.

She felt her hair brush at fringes of glass still in the frame. She kept her eyes closed. As she passed through the window, gravity twitched around her again, and suddenly she was rising, not diving, and was grabbed by helpful hands.

“Deeba! Deeba! You’re alright! You’re back!” Her friends crowded around her, and she opened her eyes.

“What happened?” said Hemi. “You went all weird!”

“I dunno,” she said. “I was sort of dreaming. It was something in that room, it…Where’s the window?” she shouted.

“Gone,” said Jones.

It was several feet away, where Skool had kicked it as she leapt free. The wounded spider-window was pulling itself away from the ruined bait. It limped back into the shadows around Webminster Abbey. Deeba let her heartbeat slow.

“I almost,” Deeba said, “almost feel a bit sorry for it.” She hugged each of her friends in turn, including, to their obvious delight, the bishops. Dangling on the end of Bon’s staff was the pistol. He twirled it ostentatiously.

“We got it,” Deeba said.

They crowded around the UnGun.

“It’s amazing,” said Hemi.

“It looks ancient,” said Obaday.

“Someone actually managed to bring something back,” said Bon.

“A successful ’naut. I never thought I’d see it,” said Bastor.

“It’s not loaded,” said Jones. “Where are the bullets?”

Silence settled on them.

“Pardon?” said Deeba.

“I…it’s…” Jones said, hesitant under her stare. He pointed at it. “…unloaded…Bullets?”

“Ammo,” said Deeba. “Right.” And fainted.