Watson, Ian - Black Current 03 (29 page)

           
"A name?"

           
"For the balloon, of course!
Boats have names. A boat
of the air deserves one—we're going to call it
Rose. "

           
"Because
we hope it'll rise/' joked Hasso
. "
Myself, I
thought we should call it
Dough.
But
I got outvoted."

 
          
"Ho ho," said Tam.
"I'm going to paint a huge pink hybrid tea rose on the globe.
Gavotte
or
Stella;
haven't made my mind up yet."

 
          
Yaleen caressed the flowers painted
on one of the pots.
"Rose:
I
like it. Good choice.
Emblem of Pecawar, eh?
I'd have
voted that way myself."

 
          
It was more diplomatic, she thought,
to describe the rose as symbol of Pecawar rather than as Tam's own adopted
motif. He had begun to decorate his pots with roses back in Aladalia soon after
he had got to know Yaleen and had first gone to bed with her. Before that, his
pots had usually sported fleuradieus in various shades from light blue to dark
purple, depending on his mood.

 
          
They drank lemonade, they talked.
They visited the other shed, where she admired the waxed silken bags of the
balloon's "second stage" folded up neatly in three white mounds.

 
          
The balloon needed two stages if it
was to
rise
high enough to catch the easterlies. The
globe alone could not do the job. Buoyed up by hot air rising through a chimney
from a heater in the gondola, the globe would only hoist its burden eight
thousand spans into the sky at most; and that was going at full blast, which
would bum up too much oil too soon. To enter the highfleece region required
more altitude: twice that height. Thus a cluster of three great gasbags would
tower above the globe, quite dwarfing it. These would be inflated with the
lightest of all gases, watergas. Supplies of bottled watergas came from Guineamoy,
where it was obtained by destructively distilling coal in closed iron retorts
to produce coalgas, from which the fire-damp was later removed. The globe would
hoist the gondola. The gasbags in turn would hoist the globe; and the hot air
rising up around the globe would magnify the natural lift of the watergas.

 
          
What's more, much of the watergas
could be pumped back down through condenser valves into the bottles mounted
around the crown of the globe. Thus the gasbags would flop sufficiently for the
whole ensemble to descend at journey's end without any need to vent and waste
the irreplaceable watergas. (Given time, and being so light, watergas could
waste itself well enough by breathing out through the skin of the bags.) By
this means the balloon ought to be able to ascend a second time, perhaps even a
third. By this means they might return home.

 
          
It was Tam, with his knowledge of
furnaces and clays, who had cooked up the strong lightweight ceramics for use
in the hot-air breeder, gas-jars, pumps and such; thus solving a problem which
had foxed the factories of Guineamoy with their prejudice in favour of heavy
lumps of metal.

 
          
Of steering, the balloon had none. As
yet, steering—by means of wooden fans turned by compressed air—was inefficient
and exacted a toll in added burden. Consequently it had been sacrificed in
return for extra altitude and payload. They would sail where the high winds
willed, and would hope that they could pace their eventual descent so as to
choose a safe, hospitable landing spot. (Still, some time in the future Tam's
ceramics would likely lead to the production of powerful lightweight
"engines", which could direct the course of a balloon no matter which
quarter the winds blew from.)

 
          
Next, they visited the gondola and
climbed inside. Tam and Hasso competed in showing her the fittings: canvas
hammocks, tiny galley, privy cubicle (with a large
hole
venting down). Yaleen imagined herself floating through the sky, peeking out
of the little window of the privy, and peeing rain—after which a wind wiped
her bare bum dry.

 
          
Tam displayed the hot-air breeder.

 
          
"We
can
convert it to work on charcoal, which we can make out of any
wood we find. That won't be as efficient as oil, but it'll still do the job.
We'll be glad of the hot air when we're up on the heights of the sky."

 
          
"Why's that? We'll be nearer the
sun."

 
          
"Ah, but where do you suppose
hailstones drop from? Up there! So the higher you go, the colder it must
get."

 
          
She corrected herself: a wind
freezing
her bare bum, while she
peed
yellow ice.

 
          
Hasso explained how partitions and
lockers could be
dismantled,
and reassembled so as to
form a big cart—or, depending on terrain, a sledge. After landing they might
have to haul the
Rose
some way
southward by hand to gain the westerly returning highfleece winds, should the
low winds prove unfavourable. The gondola (with its privy stool duly plugged
and dogged) would even double as a clumsy boat, using silk for a sail. Should
there be water beyond the sands, and the water not
provoke
a phobia.

 
          
For the first time the possibility
occurred to Yaleen that they might not be coming back; might not be able to.
But she shrugged this prospect off.

 
          
After a couple of hours spent at the
expedition headquarters Yaleen departed homeward along Capiz Street with a
shopping list in her pocket. Of spices, yet! So that they could pep up their
"wooden rations" and also whatever fodder they found at journey's
end, if any. Drench the cooking; kill the taste—said Hasso. She forgave him for
his cavalier attitude to meals. He had endured the belt-tightening siege of
Verrino Spire, and had learned to despise good food.

 
          
Caraway, oregano, chilli powder,
pepper, paprika, cloves! She also forgave Hasso for his blithe—and
mean—
presumption that she had some intimate and cut-price
relationship with spice sacks, courtesy of the fact that her dad worked for the
industry. Perhaps Hasso just wanted to make her feel, now that the expedition
was almost ready, that she was contributing something vital? Well, she was! She
was contributing
herself.
She forgave
him; but of course when you forgive somebody, that forgiveness comes between
you. It separates you by an invisible barrier, where you are the forgiving
one,
and he is the forgiven; a picture frame, with you as
the painter, and him as the painted, coloured a certain hue for ever more ...
or at least for a while.

 
          
"Mum! Dad! Is anybody
home?"

 
          
Yaleen's mother appeared at the head
of the stairs. She smiled and held out her arms and descended, her sandals
clopping on the waxed treads. She trod the stairs slowly, with a cautious
grace.

 
          
"Don't hug hard, darling! I'm
pregnant."

 
          
"What?"

           
Yaleen's
mum laughed. "You needn't look so surprised. It's possible, you
know."

 
          
"Where's Dad?"

 
          
"I didn't become pregnant this
very moment, daughter dear! Your dad's at work. Where else? I imagine he's busy
counting peppercorns."

 
          
"Oh.
Of
course."
Where
else
would
her father be?

 
          
Mother appraised her. "We read
of your exploits in the news- sheet. And just yesterday we read how you're
going to leave us—by balloon. Maybe it's best that we're having another child,
vour father and I."

 
          
"How do you mean?"

 
          
"If your heart's set on this
venture I shouldn't try to dissuade you. I imagine that it's a brave thing to
do—braver even than going to that vile place in the west. Besides, your guild
is honouring you. But who has ever come back from the desert?
Who?"

           
"Look,
Mum, those earlier expeditions all failed because explorers tried to foot it
over the sands. We'll float over fast, and in comfort. It'll be a picnic."

 
          
Besides,
thought Yaleen, I’m in love.
At last.
Am I not?

           
I'm almost in love with love itself! And Tam
is my emblem of love; just as surely as love's own emblem is the rose. So
obviously I must help him (and the others too; don 7 forget the others!) to
sail our rose of love through the sky to another land, somewheir or wherever.

 
          
Then
back home again. Back home; goes without saying.

           
My love is a brave rose balloon. Let nothing
blight it. Let no thorn prick it.

           
Yet why, oh why, should I feel this whelming
need to love?
This urge to surrender myself—not so much to a
particular man (absurd idea!) as to love itself?
This need to submerge
myself (that's it, submerge!) in an ecstasy of the emotions?

 
          
Perhaps
a Creator might have felt such an urge, once she had crafted her universe. This
desire to submerge
Herself
in the stream of Being! To
surrender
Herself
to the flow of feeling—so that thus
her worlds should be truly alive, free to live as they choose.

 
          
(Supposing that there is a Creator!
Or ever was. That’s an unsatisfactory
proposition without much meat on it.
A dry bone for Ajelobo
savants to chew over.)

 
          
Let's
look at
this another
way, hmm? I've spent years
crafting my own self. I ve crafted my life. Now I must dive into that life
headlong—to become who I really am.

 
          
Just
so, does my mum become a mother
again.
She does so
instinctively, irrationally, capriciously—whatever she says about reasons,
after the event! Yet perhaps she does so wisely too, with the wisdom of the
heart, not of the head.

 
          
Such
strange heady thoughts are brewed by love! Such an intoxicating ferment!

           
All things outside of me—a ring, a rose, a
gondola, the sky, those dunes which I have yet to glimpse—all of these connect
up with the feelings which are inside me; expressing them, wiring them,
illuminating them. That's why love matters: it makes the world bloom with new
meaning.

 
          
Gently Yaleen embraced her mother.
"Don't worry. I'll be back to play with my new sister!"

 
          
"Sister?
It might be a brother.
Or twins."

           
"Oh, I
suppose so! Dunno why I said that. You'll come to the launching, won't you, to
wave us on our way?"

 
          
"I imagine we will."

 
          
"Don't imagine.
Do!"

 
          
Mother laughed.
"Very
well!"
Only then did she spy the diamond ring on Yaleen's finger.
"That's beautiful. If you fall among savages, you can buy food with
it."

 
          
"Maybe we'll fall amongst
aliens!
Among natives of this world who
were here before ever our people came. There they'll be on the other side of
the sands, hiding in their burrows beneath ruined palaces.
Harking
to us with their huge ears, or in their dreams."

 
          
"And pigs might fly."

 
          
"If a rose can fly, a pig might
fly too."

 
          
"Tonight's won't. We're having
fried pork for dinner."

 
          
Dad came home late that evening;
though not so late that the pork was spoilt. (Mother had commenced frying,
irrespective.) Naturally, Dad was chagrined to be late on this day of days, of
his daughter's surprise return. Mother appeared richly amused at his chagrin—
though she was amused in a composed, controlled, almost artificial way which
struck Yaleen as most peculiar. Mum obviously
relished
something, yet she wasn't going to split her sides
laughing. In case she split the sprig of baby loose inside her? Yaleen was
quite puzzled.