Un Lun Dun - China Mieville [109]
The Black Window moved in agitation. Jones swung the bait gently, making its legs rattle. Other spider-windows watched and drummed their limbs.
“Is it angry, or flirting?” whispered Hemi.
“I dunno,” said Deeba. “But it’s interested. Get ready.”
Deeba took hold of the rope that led out of the tunnel, and got ready to send Skool a message.
The bait twitched and jiggled. Don’t look too close, Deeba thought. But the soldering-iron-and-pipe gun they’d rigged up seemed enough to fool the agitated Black Window. It drew back its limbs, paused, then pounced.
It gripped the dangling fake window.
“Now!” shouted Deeba, and Jones pulled hard on the second cord, as Obaday Fing had shown him. The loops Fing had woven around the bait all tightened together. It was beautifully precise. The thick silk bonds clamped firmly, and pinned the Black Window’s legs to the ridiculous marionette.
Instantly, everything went mad.
The captured window yanked its body, swinging at the end of the tether, trying to pull free. Jones staggered, was almost hauled off the little ledge.
All the other Black Windows began to run towards them.
“Quick!” yelled Deeba. “Help!”
Hemi pulled frantically at the rope, several quick tugs. “Anything more than four,” they’d told Skool, “means pull.”
There were agonizing seconds of delay. Then the rope was hauled back hard, and the captured Black Window began to rise.
Deeba, Hemi, and Jones clambered as fast as they could up the slope of the tunnel. Their captive slid behind them, still shaking as it tried to escape, opening and slamming shut like a biting mouth.
Black Windows followed them into the funnel. Deeba felt the vibrations of feet closing behind, and thought in terror that she couldn’t go any faster, until with one last heave, Skool yanked the tethered window the last few meters of the tunnel, sweeping Jones, Hemi, and Deeba with it.
They came spilling out of Webminster Abbey, to where Skool hauled, and Obaday, the utterlings, and the bishops waited anxiously. The Black Window they had snared skidded out, shaking furiously in its bonds, tied to the now distinctly unimpressive-looking fake. Curdle circled it, emitting aggressive puffs of air.
“We’re okay!” said Deeba. “Don’t let go of it!”
Giant wooden spiders’ legs poked aggressively out of the hole, looking for prey, but the windows wouldn’t come out of the abbey. None except the one that they had caught.
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