Un Lun Dun - China Mieville [97]
“Well, you open a door, obviously,” the book said.
“What door?”
“A very important door. A door without the opening of which the Smog cannot be stopped!”
“You don’t know, do you?” Deeba said.
“No,” said the book.
“No idea?”
“Not really.” It sounded quite defeated. “I think it’s the doorway to the room where the squid beak is, but…no. Not really.”
Deeba stamped around the room in rage.
“We spent two days crashing around in a forest, and people died, and we aren’t even sure what for! I’m supposed to use it to get something to get something else! Why don’t I just get the last thing in the first place?”
“As I say, the occasions tend to present themselves, and then it’s clear…” the book said.
“I’d shut up now, if I were you,” Hemi muttered to it. The book took his advice.
“If Diss hadn’t died getting us this,” she said, staring at the key, “I’d tear the bloody useless thing up. I know it’s not your fault,” she said to the book. “It was my idea. And I know it would be nice for you if what’s written in you turned out to be sort of true. But we don’t have time. And it’s too risky. So go through the tasks, and tell me what each one’s supposed to do.”
“Well, as I say, the squidbeak clipper’s supposed to hold on to something in the tearoom—”
“Forget it,” Deeba said. The book hesitated, then continued.
“The bone tea’s refreshing—”
“No.”
“But…we need it to give to the aleactor, to send him to sleep when we play ludo, so we can take the teeth-dice—”
“I said no.”
“The teeth-dice we need to chew up a—”
“No.”
“The snail, I think, can prove to us that slow and steady wins out—”
“Are you joking? No.”
“The black-or-white king’s crown explains an outcome—”
“Whatever. Don’t even know what that means.”
“—and the UnGun’s a weapon.”
There was a pause.
“Is it? A weapon? For real?”
“For very real,” Hemi said. “I didn’t know it was in the prophecy, but everyone’s heard of the UnGun.”
“It’s the most famous weapon in UnLondon’s history,” the book said.
Hemi nodded—surreptitiously, so the book wouldn’t see that Deeba wanted independent verification of everything it was saying.
“Why?” she said. “What did it do?”
Hemi looked at the book, and Deeba was sure the book was looking back at him.
“I dunno,” said Hemi. “Heroic stuff.”
Deeba rolled her eyes. “What is it?”
“A gun,” the book said, “only an un one. It says in me, ‘The Smog’s afraid of nothing but the UnGun.’ That’s what all this, all the seven tasks, leads up to. The fetching of the UnGun. It was put in a very safe place, where no one would mess with it, years ago.”
“Smog’s afraid of nothing but the UnGun, eh?”
“Yes,” the book said, then added nervously, “Well to be honest it actually says ‘nothing and the UnGun,’ but we realized that must be a misprint.”
“You’re kidding me,” Deeba snapped. “So you did know you there could be mistakes in you?”
“It was three letters,” the book said forlornly. “We didn’t think anything of it…”
“Alright. Whatever.” Deeba thought. “A weapon. Alright. Right now we haven’t got much to fight the Smog with. We need a weapon, and the Smog’s obviously scared of this one.
“So that’s what we’re going to do,” Deeba said. “We’ll skip the rest of the stuff. Save us some time. We’ll go straight to the last stage of the quest. Let’s go get the UnGun. Then we can deal with the Smog, and I can go home.”
67
Weapon of Choice
“This is ridiculous.” Deeba could tell from the book’s voice that if it could walk, it would be refusing to. It would be digging in its heels. Unluckily for it, it was tucked under her arm, and she was walking rapidly. “I said this is ridiculous.”
“I heard you,” Deeba said.
“So? Are you going to stop?”
“Nope.”
Hemi, Curdle, and the utterlings ran after the arguing duo. Deeba was turning decisively but randomly down side roads as shadows lengthened in the UnSun.
“Look,” said the book frantically. “You can’t pick and choose bits from a prophecy. That’s not how they work.”
“Let’s be honest,” Deeba said. “We all know you have no idea how prophecies work.”
Hemi winced and sucked in his breath, shook