Un Lun Dun

27. A Wall of Cloth and Steel

So fast he was a blur, Brokkenbroll leapt in front of Deeba. In each of his hands was an open unbrella.

The Unbrellissimo twirled as if he were dancing. He spun the bent unbrellas in his hands, holding them like shields. Impossibly, with a pud-pud-pud, the smoggler’s missiles bounced off the canvas.

Brokkenbroll swung the unbrellas so quickly they looked like a shimmering wall of colored cloth and thin metal fingers. He shouted an order. The other unbrellas flapped up, opened, and spun and joined in blocking the Smog’s attack. Some were torn, some bent, some inverted into bowl-shapes. But each made itself a shield.

The onslaught slowed as the smoggler depleted. As its bullets ricocheted away, they dissolved in puffs of smoke, and drifted back towards the Smog. But the unbrellas didn’t give it a chance to regroup. With frantic opening and closing, they made a wind.

The smoggler sent out smog tendrils, groping, trying to hold on to the bridge. But the unbrellas were remorseless against the nasty little miasma. They blew it in clots off the bridge and into the wind.

It was too small to hold firm. It grew paler, and see-through, and then was just a stain in the air, and then was gone.

Deeba and the Propheseers stood in the thick light of the setting UnSun and watched the unbrellas drop, one by one, as if exhausted, beside Zanna.

“Those were bullets,” Lectern said. “And darts. Your unbrellas are canvas.”

“So,” said Mortar to the Unbrellissimo. “How in the name of bleeding bricks did you do that?”

“I wasn’t sure when to tell you,” Brokkenbroll said. “I hadn’t yet done a final test. But events, as you see, forced my hand. At least now we know everything works. Instead of trying to explain, it would be easier if I could show you.

“You can get from the Pons Absconditus to anywhere, can’t you?”

“Of course,” said Mortar. “So long as it’s somewhere. That’s what bridges are for— getting to somewhere. Where do you want to go?”

“Please come with me,” Brokkenbroll said. “And…” He looked thoughtful, and was silent for several seconds. “Yes. You too, young Miss Resham. I think you deserve an explanation. A little while back, I found something. Where to? Set course. We’re going to Ben Hue Unstible’s workshop.”

“What?” said Mortar.

“I’m not leaving Zanna,” Deeba said. “Look at her.”

Zanna lay on a sofa, tended by Propheseers. Her eyes were closed. She was sweating, and pale, and with every breath her lungs made an ugly sound.

“I didn’t know,” the book whispered.

“You can’t help her,” Brokkenbroll said. “Not here. Not yet. But come with me, and I’ll show you how you may be able to.”

“She won’t be safe,” Deeba said.

“She will,” said Lectern. “We can keep the bridge moving.”

“The main mass of the Smog doesn’t know what’s happened,” Brokkenbroll said. “Eventually, a few wisps of this battle may reach it, but there’s time.”

“I just want to go home,” said Deeba, “and take Zanna with me.”

“Of course,” said Brokkenbroll. “That’s what I’d like to facilitate. Believe me.”

Mortar, Lectern and the book, Deeba and Curdle, the Unbrellissimo, and his obedient unbrellas walked down the curve of the bridge.

“Even when the Smog does find out what happened,” Brokkenbroll said, “I think the course of events might put some fear into it.

“It knows that we’re approaching a big fight,” he said. “It’s been preparing for years. Now it’s started. That’s why it attacked the Shwazzy,” he said to Deeba gently. “It was scared of her. It wanted her out of the way before the war. It’s going to attack UnLondon soon.

“But now we’ve given it something to think about. I’ll explain everything.”

They were near the end of the bridge. Mortar and Lectern focused thoughtfully on the streets ahead.

“Let’s go…” Mortar said, and stepped off the end.

“Don’t worry,” Lectern said to Deeba, and tried to give her a reassuring smile. “I know you want to take care of your friend. We’ll make sure everything’s okay.” She beckoned, and followed Mortar, Deeba only a few steps behind.

She took several steps before realizing that the buildings beside her didn’t look much like they had a few seconds before. They were unfamiliar charcoal-colored edifices in the light of the early-evening loon.

There was no bridge behind her.

She walked past some of UnLondon’s odd buildings. A house like a fruit with windows, one in the shape of the letter S and another like a Y, a house in a giant hollowed-out ball of string. It made the building that Brokkenbroll took them towards stand out all the more.

“I remember this place,” Mortar said. “Used to get supplies round the back, by canal…”

It was a perfectly ordinary-looking brick factory. It was several floors high, with a tall chimney-cum-clocktower rising from its heart.