Sky Run (13 page)

‘How long till we get to City Island, Peggy?' I asked, and not for the first time, more for the umpteenth. Or maybe even the umpteenth plus one.

‘Not far now, Martin,' she said, which was the standard answer. And she threw the dregs of her green tea overboard. A little shoal of sky-fish pounced on them and snaffled them up.

But I felt she was just trying to keep me quiet. It had been ‘not far now' since we set off, and I didn't even know if we were halfway there yet.

‘Are we halfway there yet?'

‘I hope so.'

‘So it's about the same again?'

‘Could be, Martin. Kind of depends on the route we have to take from here. I'm trying to keep to the back roads. Maybe another seven days, maybe ten.'

‘OK.'

‘You getting bored?'

‘Just wondering.'

‘Maybe we'll stop off somewhere, get a change of diet and a proper shower.'

You couldn't waste water on a boat like ours, you had one basinful each per day for the whole business, teeth brushing included.

‘At least the sky's clear now,' I said. ‘Nothing nasty coming our way.'

‘Don't speak too soon,' Peggy said. ‘Let's not tempt providence.'

But I already had.

We saw them about an hour later. There were so many you could barely count them all, and they were constantly moving and drifting, which made assessing their numbers near impossible. I thought, when I saw them, that it was a swarm of sky-jellies – not the men-of-war, but the smaller, more friendly ones, the ones without the poison sacs. But that was only what they looked like. It wasn't what they were.

Alain advised Peggy to cut the solar engines and close the wind sails. Even she didn't know what they were. But he did.

‘They're just jellies, aren't they?' she said. ‘They're not going to bother us.'

‘No,' Alain said. ‘They're mines.'

‘What?'

‘It's a minefield.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Wait …'

He fetched his crossbow and fitted a bolt into it. Then he went and stood on the prow and fired the arrow high into the air. It arced up and then fell; on its descent it hit one of the ‘jellies' – which immediately exploded. The shrapnel from the explosion set off three or four other mines, which exploded in turn, and they set off others, then the noise stopped, and it was quiet again, and we could see pieces of the mines falling down towards the sun.

‘Well …' Peggy said. ‘Well now …'

The minefield was huge and the mines were drifting in the wind.

‘Can't we go around it?' I asked.

‘We can try,' Alain said. ‘But it might drift with us.'

‘Under it then?' I said.

‘We'll lose buoyancy and sink,' Peggy said.

‘Over it then?' I was running out of options now.

‘Atmosphere's too thin,' she grumbled.

‘Go back then, and find another route?' I suggested.

‘That'll add more several days, but it's safest,' Alain said.

Peggy looked thoughtful.

‘A few more days? I was hoping to get there in good time, before the term started –'

‘Or we can try to sail through it,' Alain said. And he and Peggy shared a look.

I stared at the minefield ahead of us. I couldn't say that going through it seemed like a very good idea.

As we floated, trying to make a decision, we were hailed by another sky-boat, a smallish one, about the size of ours, which had come out from the shelter of a tatty-looking one-boat island over on our right.

‘Ahoy there!'

The boat was steered by a man, bare-chested and sunburnt, with a couple of gold teeth in his insincere-looking smile, and a scraggy beard that hadn't been trimmed lately.

‘Ahoy there! You need a pilot? You looking to get across?'

Peggy looked at him like she wasn't too impressed by his character, at least if his appearance was any true indication of it.

‘Maybe,' she said.

‘I can guide you,' the man said.

‘Oh yeah?'

‘Taken plenty of boats through. Not lost a one.'

‘Oh yeah?'

‘Seen a few folk try it on their own – never made it, though.'

‘Oh yeah?' Peggy said. ‘That so?'

‘How many of you?'

‘Five.'

‘Do it for a thousand Units.'

‘
How
much?'

‘It's two hundred Units a head.'

‘You don't charge by the boat?'

‘Charge by the passenger.'

‘That sounds expensive.'

‘It's the expertise you're paying for. Expertise, know-how, local knowledge.'

Peggy looked more doubtful than ever, and a touch suspicious with it.

‘And how'd they get there? All those mines?'

The man shrugged. Peggy scowled at him.

‘Didn't plant them there yourself, by any chance?'

‘Lady, please –'

‘So how'd they get there then?'

‘Just drifted in. Some war zone somewhere. They lay the mines then the war moves on and the mines get forgotten about and the solar tide takes them –'

‘And they end up by your doorstep and you make a living out of them?'

‘It's an ill wind, lady,' the man said, and he showed us the gold teeth again. ‘It's an ill wind that don't blow somebody some good. I ain't the only one making a living out of misfortunes.'

‘Well, we don't have a thousand Units,' Peggy said. ‘So I guess the answer's no.'

‘Eight hundred. I'll do you a discount as it's kids.'

Peggy shook her head.

‘Friend, if I had eight hundred Units, I wouldn't be giving them to you. And as I don't, I won't be giving them to you either.'

The man chewed his lip.

‘Six hundred to get you through. That's my last and best.'

‘Well, thanks anyway,' Peggy said.

‘OK,' the man said. ‘You'd better go round the long way then. It'll cost you three or four days. But it's your time. If you ain't got money, then time's the alternative. Sorry I can't do it no cheaper, but I'd be undercutting myself, and then if word got about …'

And he touched his forelock with his finger, in a kind of mock and sarcastic salute, and he turned his boat around and went back to his scrap-heap island.

‘Shyster,' Peggy muttered. ‘Wouldn't surprise me if he bought all those mines army surplus and laid the whole minefield himself, just to rip off unsuspecting travellers. Well, I suppose we'd better turn around and go back and take the long way.'

She went to take a look at the sky charts.

‘Or I could do it, if you want …'

It was Alain. Peggy looked at him.

‘You do it? Pilot the boat?'

‘Wouldn't be the first time.'

‘You've sailed a boat through a minefield?'

‘Few times.'

‘Have you now? And you got through?'

‘Here I am as evidence.'

‘Right …' Peggy stood, weighing up the chances. ‘What happens if we hit one? Will it sink the boat?'

‘Not necessarily. It could do. Could trigger a chain reaction with other mines nearby and blow us up. Or it could just be some damage and injuries.'

‘What kind of injuries, son?'

‘Arms, legs, chest … head and neck …'

‘Oh,
those
kinds of injuries. Nothing too serious then,' Peggy said. Alain twitched, irritated, but he didn't respond. ‘What do you all think?' she asked.

‘I trust Alain,' Gemma said. (But, as I may have said before, it was no surprises there.)

‘I'm willing to chance it,' Angelica said. But I sort of knew she would be; after all her rat-skinning escapades, she wouldn't be bothered by a few sky-mines.

‘Martin?'

‘Well …'

I wanted to turn around and go the long way, but I was too afraid to say I was afraid. It was the embarrassment more than anything. I wondered then if other people had also got themselves into situations they didn't want to be in, just out of sheer embarrassment and not wanting to be put down as the local wimp.

‘Fine by me,' I said.

‘OK, young man,' she said. ‘You've got the wheel.'

And she got out of the way and let Alain take over at the helm.

‘All right,' he said. ‘Before we start, everyone get something, a broom, boat-hook, pole, anything. Cover the end with a cloth, something soft. If a mine gets too near, then very gently push it off. But don't, whatever you do, touch the spikes – or it'll go. All right?'

‘I think we've got that,' Peggy said.

‘All right. Then I'll open up the solar panels –'

He did. And we began to move. I heard a gold-toothed voice calling to us, from the nearby island.

‘You'll kill yourselves, you crazy sons-of- –'

But Peggy just yelled back at him to hold his tongue.

And on we sailed.

The problem was that they didn't stay still. The slightest thermal, the smallest change in the wind, and they'd drift in a second to somewhere else. The way would be clear in front of you, and then there were suddenly five sky-mines blocking your way, and you had to swerve or dive, or swing around in a moment.

‘One coming up port side, Martin.'

That was my bit. Port side, stern. I saw it coming and got the broom to it and gave it a shove.

‘Not that hard, Martin!'

The mine veered off, but it gathered speed as it went, and about a hundred metres from us, it crashed into another.

‘Get your heads down!'

Alain ducked too.

Next thing, there was a boom, and then shrapnel everywhere, and bits of metal embedded in the boat.

‘Anyone hurt?' Peggy said. Nobody seemed to be. ‘Not so enthusiastic next time, eh, Martin?'

I wanted to say, let's turn around and go back. But, when I looked, the mines had closed in behind us, and going back was every bit as bad as going on, maybe even worse.

Alain turned the wheel to move the rudder, and set the tilts to angle us up or down; we moved on through the minefield, and the mines drifted past us.

‘They so look like sky-jellies,' Gemma said.

‘Yes, they're supposed to,' Alain told her. And I did wonder if he and the Liberation Enlightenment Army hadn't laid a few mines themselves, maybe even these ones, surrounding us right now.

‘Look over there.'

Angelica was pointing to the right, where a pod of sky-whales was bobbing along, heading towards us through the outskirts of the minefield.

‘Great Whites …'

‘Yes, and you know what they eat, don't you?'

‘Sky-fish,' I said.

‘Yes. Sky-fish. Sky-jellies in particular.'

‘Oh dear …'

There were six of the sky-whales. It wasn't difficult for them to avoid the mines. A flick of a fin, and they were past. The trouble came when the lead whale got hungry, opened his jaws, swallowed down what he thought was one sky-jelly, and then gulped down another. Then he carried on flying, and they were all coming towards us. And the big whale had two sky-mines inside him.

‘Oh no … oh no …'

Alain took evasive action, steering around more of the mines, but the whales kept coming. Then, without so much as a blink, the lead whale simply exploded, and there were bits of meat and blubber raining down everywhere, all over the sky and the boat and the deck.

‘Oh, that is gross … that is –'

‘All over my sandals!'

‘Gemma, you don't need to worry about your sandals right now,' Peggy said. ‘When we're out of this minefield you can worry about them.'

‘That is … disgusting …'

It wasn't too pretty, I had to admit. I saw that Angelica was frantically polishing her glasses, so I guess she'd got hit by the exploding whale too. As for the other whales in the pod, they just flew on, oblivious, like they hadn't noticed one of their number was no longer with them.

‘They're thinning the mines …'

They were too. We were through the middle of the minefield and coming out of the other side.

‘Starboard. Three coming up!'

We all rushed to starboard and fended the mines away from the hull. I used the broom gently this time. The mines lazily floated off.

Then finally – and I guess it had taken little more than an hour – we were through. The mines were behind us, and there they stayed, grim reminders of some long-forgotten war or inter-island dispute. The mines outlived the wars and went on fighting them, and inflicted punishments for old enmities on perfectly innocent strangers.

‘Do you know what the war was about, Peggy?' I asked.

‘All I know is there's always one on somewhere,' she said. ‘And everyone says how terrible they are, and how this latest war is the war to end all wars, and how everyone ought to learn from it, and then they go and have another anyhow, like they never learned anything.'

‘Maybe they never got educated at City Island,' I said.

But she shook her head.

‘When it comes to warring,' she said, ‘the only difference education has is it makes you better at it, more's the pity. You think just stupid people fight wars? The generals, the colonels, the admirals, the commanders – educated, every one of them. You know how long it takes to train a professional fighter? They're educated people. If I were you, I wouldn't put too much faith in education when it comes to keeping the peace.'

‘Peggy, do you want to take the wheel now?'

We'd forgotten about Alain and hadn't even thanked him. He looked exhausted.

We told him how great he was – Gemma especially. I saw that, like the rest of us, he was pretty dirty and covered in bits of blubber and didn't smell too good. But then, when you've got a sky-whale exploding in the vicinity, what can you expect?

So when I spotted the sign before anyone else did, I was pretty pleased with myself, and gave myself full marks for observation. Because you can have a basin wash on a boat like ours, like I said, but a proper shower and laundry and a meal other than sky-fish are just impossibilities and like mirages in the sun.