Un Lun Dun - China Mieville [7]
“How’s that possible…?” Zanna said. “And what was it doing by your window?”
5
Down to the Cellar
The two girls crept out into the estate night.
“Quick,” Zanna whispered. “It was over there.”
“This is mad,” hissed Deeba, but she moved as quickly as her friend, in the same half-bent run. “We don’t even have a flashlight.”
“Yeah but we’ve got to look,” Zanna said. “What is going on?” They shivered a little in the clothes they had quickly put on, looking nervously around them into darkness and halos of lamplight. They headed for the bins, and the hollow full of rubbish where they had seen the impossible spy.
“So it was some sort of remote control thing, innit?” Deeba said as Zanna looked around in the smelly dark. “And maybe…I dunno, maybe it had a camera or something…and…” Deeba stopped, as what she was saying began to sound more and more unlikely.
“Come help me,” Zanna said.
“What you doing?”
“Looking for something,” Zanna said.
“What?”
Zanna poked about in the rubbish, holding her nose as she prodded the overspill from the bins with a stick.
“There’s going to be rats and stuff,” Deeba said. “Leave it.”
“Look,” said Zanna. “See that?” She pointed at one streak among many across the cement of the estate.
The smear, just faintly visible, stretched from the rubbish tip, towards the dark ground-floor windows of Zanna’s house.
“That thing. These are its tracks.”
Zanna got on her hands and knees.
“Yeah, see?” she said. “You can see scratch-marks. Where it’s dug in with its…you know…metal points.”
“If you say,” said Deeba. “Let’s go.”
“Look. It was watching, or listening or whatever, at mine. Now we can see where it went.”
“We don’t even know what we’re after.” Deeba followed Zanna, who bent carefully over and traced her way through the dark estate. Deeba peered over her friend’s shoulders, trying to make out the tracks Zanna could see.
“You blatantly look like a mad person,” Deeba whispered. “If anyone sees you, what they going to think?”
“Who cares? Anyway, there’s no one. If there was, I’d be out of here.”
“I don’t even see nothing.”
“Marks,” Zanna said. “Tracks.”
She headed into the backs of the estate, between the brown concrete of those huge buildings. They were heading deep into the dead zones behind all the towers, into a maze of walls, bins, garages, and rubbish. Deeba looked around nervously.
“Come on, Zann,” she said. “We dunno where we are.”
“I’ve got a feeling…” Zanna said. She was distracted.
“This way…” she said, glancing down without slowing. In fact, she looked now as if she were following a memory, or an instinct, rather than a trail. She wound between the enormous buildings, lit here and there by inadequate yellow lights.
“I can’t see it,” Deeba said anxiously. “There’s nothing.”
“Yes, there is,” said Zanna dreamily. She pointed, almost without looking. “There, see?” She sounded surprised. “It came this way.” She accelerated.
“Zanna!” said Deeba in alarm, and trotted to keep up with her. “How can you even see that?”
The main road was just out of sight: even at this hour, they could hear traffic. Zanna turned a corner, moving almost as if she were being tugged.
“Wait!” said Deeba, and came up behind her.
In front of them, in the base of one of the monoliths, surrounded by puddles of pretty oily water, below a weakly shining lamp, the girls saw a door. It was ajar. On its threshold, even Deeba could see it was marked with a smear of oil.
“No way,” Deeba said, eyeing Zanna. “You are not going there…”
Zanna stepped inside. Behind her, shouting, “Wait! Wait!” Deeba followed.
“Is anyone there?” Zanna said, not very loud. They were in a narrow corridor below ground level. The only windows were stubby ones by the ceiling, cracked and flecked with cobwebs and fly husks. The one or two bulbs let light out resentfully, as if they were misers who hoarded it.
“We are going,” Deeba said. “There’s nothing here.”
Pipes and wires ran along the walls, and meters ticked.
“Hello?” Zanna said.
The corridor ended in a huge basement. It must have stretched