Un Lun Dun - China Mieville [111]
“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.
76
Dwellers in the Smoke
Deeba listlessly played with the remains of her food.
After she had come to, her friends clucking frantically around her, they had agreed it was exhaustion and stress that had knocked her out. She seemed to have no ill effects.
The bishops had fetched food, chairs, and a table from an emptish house nearby, and they had sat down to eat in front of the abbey. It was the first hot meal Deeba had had for a long time, and though it was a bizarre, mixed-up picnic—eggs, potatoes, salad, curry, chocolate, fruit, olives, and spaghetti—it made her feel better, at least physically.
There was no improving her temper, however, nor that of her friends. The realization that after all they’d gone through to get the UnGun, they were missing a vital component, had put them all in terrible and argumentative moods.
“We have to go back,” Jones repeated, glowering over the remains of supper.
“Are you crazy?” said Obaday. “We don’t even know where the bullets are.”
“They must be in same room as the UnGun,” Jones said. “Stands to reason.”
“That makes perfect sense,” said Bishop Bon, just as Bishop Bastor said, “We can’t assume any such thing.” They stared at each other.
“Deeba is not going back in there,” said Hemi.
“No one’s asking her to,” said Jones. “I’ll go.”
“It’s too risky,” said Obaday.
“The bloody gun’s pointless without them!” said Jones.
“How are we supposed to get the window back?” said Hemi.
“It’s an insect, not a philosopher!” Jones shouted. “We’ll just trap it the same way again.”
And on and on, around the argument went, repeating itself in loops. Deeba sat in surly silence, as she had since the beginning, playing aimlessly with the UnGun. Spiders aren’t insects, she thought, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t imagine the correction would go down well just then.
She rubbed the UnGun’s smooth handle, opened the revolving cylinder as Jones had shown her, and stared for what felt like the thousandth time into the six empty chambers. Yet again, Deeba tried to remember if she had seen any bullets—or anything else at all—in the room behind the Black Window.
Yet again, she had to admit that her memory of that time was hazy, and that she couldn’t be sure. But she didn’t think she’d seen anything.
The loon shone onto the midnight meal and the billowing silk. In its gray light, Deeba saw a little caravan of ants crossing the table, passing morsels of food back along the line, rummaging among the remnants.
Her friends kept arguing. Deeba ignored them.
She tried to work out how the pistol was loaded. Deeba picked up a big grape pip and idly dropped it into one of the slots. She jumped when she saw that an ant was on her fingers.
It trotted off, following the trail of juice clockwise around the rim of the cylinder, crawled busily into one