China Miéville - Un Lun Dun

“Why in the name of Unstible,” a loud voice said, “would you want to get down?”

Zanna and Deeba whirled around. Curdle squeaked.

They were surrounded.

There were men and women on the ledges. They wore tough-looking furs and padded boots.

They trotted carelessly on brick ledges, somersaulted like gymnasts, and landed poised on slopes. One man had a baby strapped to him in a harness on his chest. It gurgled happily as he scampered up and down giddying slopes.

“ ‘Get down’ indeed,” the same voice said.

On a roof overlooking them was a tall, athletic, imperious-looking woman. She strode casually, reached a gap between buildings, jumped calmly over it, and landed on her toes. She took hold of an antenna and swung around it.

“You, young grubs, are in the territory of the Slaterunners. So might I ask just what exactly groundlubbers like you are doing in the Roofdom? Because we prefer guests ask before they come in.”

Zanna and Deeba swallowed.

“We’re looking for someone called Badladder,” Zanna said.

“Oh are you?” the woman said, and the Slaterunners laughed. “And what might you want with Badladder?”

“Conductor Jones dropped us here,” Zanna said.

“He had to go,” said Deeba. “He wanted to stay but—”

“We were being chased by grossbottles,” Zanna said. “He said Badladder’d help us. He said he’d owe her one.” The Slaterunners were blinking, surprise breaking through their arrogance.

“What help is it you need?” the woman said.

“People want to stop me,” Zanna said hesitantly. “I don’t know why. It’s because of…this.” She held up the travelcard.

“Shwazzy!” The whisper went through the Slaterunners. “Shwazzy!” “Shwazzy!”

“You’re here?” someone said. “It’s happened!” And: “At last!” “Is Unstible with you?” “Did you bring the Klinneract?”

“I don’t know what any of that means,” Zanna said. “Jones said the Propheseers would explain.”

“We have to get out of here,” Deeba said.

“Will you help me?” said Zanna.

“Of course, ” the woman said. “I can’t believe you’re here. At last. Now the bloody Ess Emm Oh Gee better watch itself!” She vaulted and landed in front of them. “I’m Inessa Badladder. This is Eva Roadshun; Alfred Stayhigh; Jonas Ridgetrotter; Marlene Chimneyvault…”

“I’m Zanna. This is Deeba. Pleased to meet you.”

“The Propheseers live in Pons something,” Deeba said.

“Shwazzy, it’s an honor to be of help,” Badladder said, ignoring Deeba.

“We have to go to the bridge,” said Zanna.

“The Pons Absconditus,” said Badladder. “Of course.”

“The secret,” said Inessa Badladder, “is not to look down.”

“I wasn’t going to,” said Zanna.

The Slaterunners led Zanna and Deeba laboriously over the roofs. They threw up rope bridges over the gaps of streets and guided the girls over, whispering, “Look straight ahead.” Once there was that sudden plaintive bleating again. Zanna and Deeba froze.

“Don’t worry,” Inessa said. “It’s just a trip.”

“A what?”

Clattering elegantly down the slates came a line of goats, staring with their strange eyes.

“That’s what you call a group of them,” Inessa said. “A trip of mountain goats.” The animals watched them go. Deeba stared back, thinking she had seen something flit pale and fast behind the goats, but only the chewing herd moved.

“I can’t understand how you lot can live down there, without this freedom,” Inessa said. “Walled in. I’m third-generation groundless. My mother never touched down, nor my grandmother. My great -grandmother once had to. It was an emergency. The roof was on fire.”

“Look,” said Zanna, and the two girls paused in their exhausting climb. As it set behind the bizarre silhouettes of UnLondon, the UnSun was rainbow-shaped, an arch of light.

Flocks of birds gathered, circled, and separated into species. Swirls of pigeons and starlings and jackdaws headed towards the tall, thin rectangular towers that dotted the abcity. The buildings’ fronts broke with thousands of drawers, into each of which one bird flew. The little compartments slid shut. “They are chests of drawers!” Deeba said. “That’s where the birds sleep!”

“Of course,” said Inessa. “You couldn’t just have them all over the place; it would be chaos.”

The UnLondon moon rose, and Zanna and Deeba stared at it in astonishment. It was not a circle, nor a crescent. Instead, it was a perfectly symmetrical spindle, pointed at the top and the bottom, like the slit in a cat’s-eye.

“Our way will be lit,” Inessa said, “by the light of the loon.”

Stars appeared in the dark. They were not still like the stars of London: they crept like luminous insects every which way. There was a sputter as streetlamps came on in the streets below and orange light shone up from the gaps between the roofs.

“What was that?” said Deeba. She pointed past the edge of a gutter, into one of those narrow unseen alleys.

There was nothing there. “I swear I’m going mad,” Deeba muttered. “I keep thinking I see something.”

The girls followed their guides, clambering onto an apex, and into a sudden glow. The light source came into view. It was only a few streets away, just beyond the edges of Roofdom.

“It’s…” Deeba whispered.

“…beautiful,” Zanna said.

For a moment it looked like a fireworks display, the most amazing, huge, impressive one ever. But it wasn’t moving. It was an enormous tree of firework-bursts, stuck together and motionless.

The trails of several rockets made a trunk. They jutted off at various heights in boughs of light and curved down like a willow tree. Colors filled the rocket-trail branches like leaves, in glimmering red, blue, green, silver, white, and gold. Catherine wheels and the bursts of Roman candles, the buds of sparklers hung motionless and silent like fruit.

“The November Tree,” Inessa said.

“This is a good time to see it,” Inessa said. “It was a bit forlorn a couple of weeks ago. Almost at the end of its life. But Guy Fawkes Night is springtime for the November Tree.”

Fireworks were obsolete the instant after they ignited. Every November on Fireworks Night, the most choice effects of the most impressive displays in London would seep through into UnLondon as they became moil, and blossom into the November Tree. Over the year the tree would dim, shedding its glow and colors, until by November the fourth it was little more than a skeleton of smoke trails.

Then the cycle would begin again. The rejuvenated tree would light up the night.

Several small, crackling shapes scampered up the November Tree. Squirrels. Their claws gripped the solid glow. Their coats smoldered, but they did not seem uncomfortable.

“This is where the toughest red squirrels moved,” Inessa said. “After the grays came. They’re fireproof, though they keep that to themselves. Once or twice a gray makes it here and tries to follow them. Don’t get very far.” She mimed an explosion.

“I wish I had my phone,” Deeba whispered to Zanna. “I want to take a picture.”

At the shining highest branches, something swooped. Most of the birds were gone from the sky now, but above the tree was one that had not joined any of the throngs. It circled.

“There’s something weird with that bird’s head,” said Deeba.

Its skull bulged wrongly. The November Tree’s light glinted from its eyes.