Un Lun Dun by China Miéville Read Free Book Online Page B

town. As things are getting nasty in the abcity…”
    Rosa’s eyes grew wider and wider.
    “That is
never
the
Shwazzy
!”
    Zanna and Deeba looked at each other.
    “Oh my lord!” Rosa went on. “I heard rumors from the old place that something was happening, on the drivers’ grapevine…one of them even said she’d tracked the Shwazzy down to a café! But I thought it was just foolishness…But it’s finally happened! It’s time!”
    “It is indeed!” the conductor said. “And it’s down to us to get her to the Pons Absconditus.”
    “So, she’s going to fight for us! She’ll fix things!”
    “Hold on,” said Zanna. “I don’t know anything about that…”
    “What’s the holdup?” the elderly woman shouted.
    “Coming, Mrs. Jujube!” Joe Jones spoke quietly to Obaday and the girls. “We should be careful who knows about this. There are…those who’d like to get in the way. The Pons is a few stops away. We’ll go as usual, so no one knows anything’s up. Get you there in a few hours.
    “Please.” Jones closed Obaday’s fingers around his money without taking any. “You’re escorting the Shwazzy. Now remember—not a word. As far as anyone’s concerned, you’re just regular petitioners, come to ask the Propheseers a question. And what about that? Is that with you? Does it have a name?” He pointed at the milk carton, hesitating by the bus’s platform.
    “Yes,” Deeba said. “It’s called…Curdle. Come on, Curdle.”
    Zanna crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows.
    The carton leapt happily inside after them.
    “Curdle?” whispered Zanna.
    “Oh shut up,” said Deeba. “Just get on with being Shwazzed, will you?”
             
    There were a few other passengers on the bottom deck, oddly dressed men and women and a few even odder other things. As they always did on buses, Zanna and Deeba headed for the staircase to the upper level. The conductor stopped them.
    “Not this time,” he said. “Wait a bit.”
    He rang the bell, and the bus moved. Obaday and Skool sat, but Zanna and Deeba stood next to Jones on the platform at the back.
    “Our next stop’s Manifest Station,” he said. “We’re heading straight there.”
    “Not
straight
there,” Deeba said. She pointed through the front window. “I mean, there’s a wall in the way.” They did not seem to be slowing down.
    “We’re going to hit it,” said Zanna. The bus gunned straight for the bricks. Deeba and Zanna winced and closed their eyes.
    “Hold tight, please,” Jones shouted.
    There was a hissing sound, the flapping of heavy cloth, and the thrumming of ropes. Zanna and Deeba opened their eyes again, hesitantly.
    A tarpaulin bulged from the bus’s roof like an enormous fungus. It inflated into a huge balloon, tethered by ropes from the upper windows. The bus sped up, and the rugby-ball-shaped balloon stretched longer than the vehicle beneath it.
    There was a thump behind them, as if something had hit the vehicle’s rear, a scuffing like an animal ascending the metal. Deeba and Zanna turned in alarm, then gasped and rocked and held on, as with a stomach-jolting tug, the bus started to rise.
    Dangling below the balloon, it passed over the wall, leaving a threadwork of streets and buildings below, ascending over UnLondon.

12
    Safe Conduct
    “It’s beautiful,” Zanna said.
    The girls held on to the pole and leaned out over the roofs.
    “God,” said Zanna. “My dad would be
sick
if he saw me doing this.”
    “Eeurgh,” said Deeba. “Imagine.” She leaned over and made a puking noise. “It’d go
everywhere.
”
    Conductor Jones stood on the platform with them, and they both knew somehow that if they were to slip, he’d be there to grab them.
    The bus puttered low over the streets. Towers poked up around it. UnLondoners looked up and waved at it.
    They passed squat tower blocks, arches of brick and stone, the hotchpotch slopes of roofs. There were stranger things, too: skyscraper-high chests of