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The recoil slammed her backwards, but this time Jones was there behind her, braced and ready. In the split second of the roar, Deeba was trying to remember what was in the cylinder.

Ant? she thought. Salt?

Light flared from the barrel, and the stink-junkies froze. For one, two, three seconds they were all immobile, and the rebels looked up from where they crouched. Then the Smog’s army began to shake, and their masks to bulge.

“What in…?” Obaday said.

The stink-junkies’ helmets shifted. The sacks that covered their faces blew up like lumpy balloons. They split, and from the rips burst out yards and yards of hair.

Oh… that’s what it was, thought Deeba.

Stink-junkies tugged ineffectually at their heads, but their hair kept growing, shooting out of their scalps like waterfalls. Sideburns and stubble erupted from the seams of their masks, and the edges of the eyeglasses. Sudden fat dreadlocks pushed the pipes out of the headpieces, and clogged them so only trickles of Smog escaped.

The attackers reeled under the weight of the sudden shaggy swamp. It oozed out of their heads and mingled in a matted slick. In seconds they were just shambling mounds in a streetful of hair. The odd arm, leg, or split-open helmet poked from the tangle, but nothing could get out of it.

Deeba’s allies got slowly to their feet and stared in astonishment.

With a little swagger, Deeba blew the smoke away from the end of her UnGun. She wrinkled her nose at the reek of scorched hair.

“He says that was amazing,” the book said, translating Yorick Cavea’s twitters.

Cavea opened his head-cage, and the bird flew over the river and joined Deeba on the Diss&Rosa.

“It’s so good you’re here!” Deeba said. “How’d you find us? Where did you get…” She pointed vaguely at the human body on the shore. Cavea whistled.

“He says over the last few days, everyone’s been talking about the Shwazzy and what she’s doing. Then he says other people tell them off and say she’s not the Shwazzy at all, but that she’s doing something anyway. He’s been looking for us. He intercepted the stink-junkies, and realized they were coming for us.”

“Yorick, mate,” said Jones as he rowed. “Keep it down a bit.”

The bird whistled more quietly.

“The Smog’s attacking on several fronts,” the book translated, “and the Unbrellissimo’s flying from place to place, ordering his unbrellas into action defending people.”

“Yeah,” said Deeba. “Defending them so long as they retreat, I bet. While the Smog takes what it wants.”

“Well yes, but apparently some people are saying they don’t want to go, and they’re trying to use the unbrellas to fight back. So Brokkenbroll’s having to order them into action against the people who carry them. Telling everyone it’s for their own good, and they have to pull together.”

It was, Deeba realized, a very confused war. She looked back at the giant hairball still twitching on the docks. Cavea whistled.

“He says he has to go. He doesn’t want to leave his body unguarded tonight. He says good luck, good luck, good luck.” The little bird circled, and Deeba blew it a kiss. Then it scudded over the surface of the river back to its body and its cage.

The higgledy-piggledy procession of upside-down cars proceeded along a river full of obstacles. Hemi steered them past the hulks of sunken ships, and half-submerged old guns, and oddities, and amphibious trees with roots in the sludge on the bottom, leaves emerging from the black water and rustling on the vessels that passed them.

83

Wracked

One by one the s pulled away onto the shore, and each crew set off into the streets. It was less than a mile to the factory.

Soon only the Diss&Rosa was left in the water. In the river-walls, Deeba saw the ends of tunnels, above and below the tide line. They were fringed with slime, and rippled as lizardly things slipped out of the abcity’s underside.

The ghosts around them faded from view, until they were only glimpsed as an occasional half-visible pair of eyes. Deeba felt very exposed in the river.

“Here we go,