Un Lun Dun - China Mieville [72]
“Old…” it said. “Powerful…And this? From the boy-thing’s pocket.” It held up the Shwazzy’s travelcard. Deeba stared at it in astonishment. “Unstible” dropped it on the fire too, and crooned happily, sniffing its smoke. “More Propheseer power!”
“You did steal it!” she said furiously, and tried to bang Hemi’s head with her own.
“I wanted to see if she was really the Shwazzy,” he said through his teeth, and butted her back. “I was just going to have a look and put it back. Could we possibly discuss this later?”
Like a tide coming in, little lapping wavelets of dirty smoke were edging into view around the corner. The smoggler a few streets away was stretching. Within it, Deeba could see creeping figures. As the Smog came, so did a few of the smaller intrepid smoglodytes.
No two were the same shape. There were things like crosses between rats and fungus, or bodiless things like two monkey arms attached together, or millipedish creatures the size of Deeba’s forearm, each of its legs ending in tiny hands.
The smoglodytes were graveworm-pale and colorless. All had either enormous dark eyes, all pupil, to see in the filthy half-light of the Smog, or no eyes at all. And all had some adaption for breathing the poisonous stew, like enormous nostrils, or many pairs of them, to suck what little oxygen there was out of the clouds. Deeba saw one thing like a cat-sized snail, watching her with a bouquet of retractable eyes. Below them its face was an organic gas mask.
“You surprise me,” Unstible said. “Why would you come back? Thought we could forget about you…and the other one. Where’s she?”
For a moment Deeba didn’t understand. Then her eyes widened.
“Nowhere,” she said. “She don’t remember nothing.”
“Was more worried about her,” Unstible said. “Wasn’t expecting you at all. But Brokk persuaded me it would work, and when I came to fetch what she breathed, it did seem to be the end of it. But now…” He smiled at Deeba and widened his mad-looking eyes. “Seems it wasn’t. Perhaps she’ll remember. If you got back, I certainly better go back and take care of her. Can’t have the Shwazzy coming back here.”
“She’s not!” Deeba shouted. “Leave her alone! You took all the memories out with your smoke! She don’t know nothing!”
“Safety first, safety first. Make sure. Seeing you here, I think I’d better sort her out. Just as soon as we’ve taken care of you.”
“No…!” Deeba gasped in horror.
“Oh yes. Not easy to stretch all the way…but I can. And do. A few favors for a few Londonsiders, here and there. Best to make the effort with your friend, as soon as it’s less…busy here. Soon as I have a moment. I’ll be sure. Anyway the practice’ll be good for me. There’ll be other, bigger reasons to go back to London, soon, I think. Best get good at the journey.
“But that’ll be nothing for you to worry about. Soon, everything’ll be nothing for you to worry about.”
The smoglodytes crawled, flopped, and scuttled into Unstible’s company, cooing and slobbering with interest as the Smog grew closer.
“Now,” the man-shaped thing said, and unfolded the Wraithtown printout that proved that Unstible—the real Unstible—had died. He sniffed it, licked it like a connoisseur. He folded it and tore it in half and half again, smiled, and dropped the pieces into the fire.
The paper combusted with a flare of phosphorescence, and a swirl of released spirits. The heat pushed one little piece in an updraft, wafted it over the edge and onto the ground.
The thing in Unstible’s shape exhaled, then breathed in hard, and a stream of smoke gushed up from the fire and into him through his mouth, and into each nostril. He breathed in the paper’s smoke.
“Aaaaah,” he exhaled, smacking his lips appreciatively. “Never eaten ghost-paper before. Unstible’s death certificate. Clever to get it. Clever girl. It’s gone now, though.” He waved his empty hands. “Nothing to show.”
He tipped a spadeful of rubbish into the fire, and sucked at the resulting burp of stink. He poked around