Un Lun Dun - China Mieville [49]
Of course it was frustrating, sometimes incredibly frustrating, not to be able to tell her best friends about the extraordinary, unbelievable things that had happened. To the two of them. But when she was with Zanna on the back of a bus and they were laughing or joking around, even though Deeba could hardly believe that all those events were gone from Zanna’s head, she told herself it was worth it, and she tried not to think about the more unusual bus she and Zanna had recently taken.
Sometimes at night, Deeba would sit on her bed and look out onto the moonlit estate, and imagine UnLondon under the loonlight. She hoped everyone there was well and happy, and that the battle against the Smog was going according to plan.
It would be hard, but under the guidance of the Unbrellissimo, and Unstible, and with the secret Armets’ techniques, maybe UnLondon could win. Deeba read and reread the mysterious words on the paper glove that she believed was hers, by now, and wished the UnLondoners luck.
When she was there, she had wanted desperately to come home. Now, even though she was truly happy to be back, she was wistful that she could never say anything about the most amazing place she had ever been.
Deeba was certain that she would never see UnLondon again.
33
The Powerful Resurgence of the Everyday
Of course she was wrong.
34
Curiosity and Its Fruits
For a while, Deeba tried not to think about UnLondon, because it made her miss it. She soon realized, however, that she couldn’t stop herself.
In the streets, she would eye passersby and wonder if they knew of the abcity’s existence. She was a member of an exclusive group.
Deeba wanted to know about the UnLondoners, and UnLondon, and the Smog, and the secret war. That war with the Smog, in particular, fascinated her. The idea that something like that had once gone on in her own city made all the impossibility she had seen feel closer to home.
There must be UnLondoners who’ve moved to London, as well as the other way round, she realized. Maybe there’s a secret group I can join, or something. Friends of UnLondon.
After all, she knew now that there were real secret societies.
On the computer in her living room, Deeba went searching on the internet for information, while her mother and father watched television.
There were quite a few websites that said UnLondon, but she checked them all laboriously, and none of them were about the abcity. There can’t be nothing, she thought, but there was.
All the references to Unstible were irrelevant spelling mistakes. All the listings for Armets were about the old helmets, from which the secret defenders had taken their name. Deeba tried countless different spellings of Klinneract and came up with nothing.
She tried to think of new strategies to research the hidden histories. She looked up how to toughen fabric. She looked up weatherwitches, and got loads of pages, but mostly ridiculous foolishness, and nothing at all helpful.
“Mum,” she said. “What’s it called when you study about the weather?”
“Meteorology, sweetheart,” her mother said, and spelt it for her. “You doing homework?”
Deeba didn’t answer. She typed meteorology into the search engine, and sighed as more than fourteen million hits came up. She combined meteorology with the words smog, society, and London. She still got lists of hundreds or thousands of websites.
She was amazed by the numbers of people studying the British weather. The Met office, meteorology departments in universities, departments of London’s mayor’s office, the Royal Meteorological Society. She clicked on them randomly, and skimmed articles about the London Smog of 1952.
And then suddenly, Deeba saw the web address of one of the sites she was reading: rmets.org.
The Royal Meteorological Society, it said at the top of the page, next to a logo that read RMETS.
Deeba stared, her eyes and mouth opening wide.
She’d found the society of so-called weatherwitches with whom Unstible said he’d studied. She’d found the Armets, and they weren’t named after helmets at all.
It’s got garbled