Un Lun Dun - China Mieville [52]
When she came to that conclusion, Deeba was surprised to realize that what she felt wasn’t foreboding so much as excitement. Despite the possibility that something was badly wrong in UnLondon, she was excited by what she’d found out, and by what it meant for her: she had to get back.
So the question became how to return to UnLondon.
Deeba told herself repeatedly that she didn’t want to go, even if she could. She didn’t convince herself.
After several attempts, Deeba found her way back to the basement deep in the estate. But this time when she turned the big valve, London didn’t ebb away. So she went looking for other ways into the abcity.
Deeba walked over several bridges, always trying to concentrate on somewhere else at the other end—somewhere in UnLondon. It didn’t work.
She looked for hidden doors. She closed her eyes and wished hard. She clicked her heels together. She pushed at the back of her parents’ wardrobe. Nothing worked.
What’s going on over there? she thought.
In despair, Deeba wrote to the only other person she could think of in contact with UnLondon: Minister Elizabeth Rawley at the House of Commons.
She realized the letter would have to go through many secretaries and assistants, so she camouflaged her message.
Dear Minister Rawley,
You do not need to know my name. I know that you have gone somewhere quite like London but in other ways quite UNlike it. I think you know what I mean and you can see I know what I am talking about. I am writing to you because it is maybe more easy for you to go to that place than me, and I think that maybe that place is in trouble. You might know there is a plan for a fight against someone who SMOKES a lot—you know who I am talking about—and I think the man who is supposed to help is maybe not who he says he is and is actually an enemy working for that enemy. You know the man I mean, the one who is UNSTABLE. [Deeba was particularly proud of this pun.]
If you can go to that place or send other people I think maybe you should have a look at him and make sure he is doing what he says he is, or our friends are in trouble.
Thank you.
A Friend.
At least I’m doing something, Deeba thought, but she knew the minister would probably never get the letter. So she kept trying to think of other ways back to UnLondon.
At night she would sit up in bed, wearing and reading the glove that Obaday Fing had made from the book. “Brick wizardry,” she read. “Pigeons. Difficult to get in. Enter by booksteps, on storyladders…”
And one night, reading those words as she had many times before, Deeba suddenly stopped, and slowly clenched her word-gloved fist. Because out of the blue, finally, she had had an idea. And though she immediately, carefully—almost dutifully—went through all the reasons she shouldn’t act on her thought, Deeba could not stop worrying about her friends in UnLondon, and she knew she’d try whatever she could.
37
An Intrepid Start
When she came to school the next day, Deeba’s bag was packed. It contained sandwiches and chocolate and crisps and drink, a penknife, a notepad and pens, a stopwatch, a blanket, plasters and bandages, a sewing kit, a wad of out-of-date foreign money she’d gathered from the backs of drawers all over her house, and other bits and pieces that she thought might just be useful. On top of them all, Deeba had put her umbrella.
That morning, she’d hugged each of her family members for a long time, to their amused surprise. “I’ll see you later,” she’d said to her brother Hass. “I might be away for a while. But there’s something I have to do.”
She reminded herself several times that her plan might not work. That all her preparations might come to nothing. Still, her heart was going very fast most of the day. She thought it was excitement; then she thought it was fear. Then she realized it was