Wings (3 page)

"I think we're flying," he said.

"Is that what it was?" said Angalo weakly. "It looks kind of more graceful when you see it from the ground."

"Is anyone hurt?"

Gurder pulled himself upright. "I'm all bruises," he said. He brushed himself down. And then, because there is no changing nomish nature, he added, "Is there any food around?" They hadn't thought about food.

Masklin stared behind him into the tunnel of wires.

"Maybe we won't need any," he said, uncertainly. "How long will it take to get to Florida, Thing?"

"The captain has just said it will be many hours," said the Thing.
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[3] An hour lasts nearly as long as half a day, to a nome.

"We'll starve to death!" said Gurder.

"Maybe there's something to hunt?" said Angalo hopefully.

"I shouldn't think so," .Masklin said. "This doesn't look a mouse kind of place." "The humans'll have food," said Gurder. "Humans always have food."

"I knew you were going to say that," said Angalo.

"It's just common sense." "I wonder if we can see out a window?" said Angalo. "I'd like to see how fast we're going. All the trees and things whizzing past, and so on?"

"Look," said Masklin, before things got out of hand. "Let's just wait for a while, eh? Everyone calm down. Have a bit of a rest. Then maybe we can look for some food."

They settled down again. At least it was warm and dry. Back in the days when he'd lived in a hole in a bank Masklin had spent far too much time cold and wet to turn up his nose at a chance to sleep warm and dry.

He dozed.

Airborne.

Air... born...

Perhaps there were hundreds of nomes who lived in the airplanes in the same way that nomes had lived in the Store. Perhaps they got on with their lives under the carpeted floor somewhere, while they were whisked to all the places Masklin had seen on the only map the nomes had ever found. It had been in a pocket diary, and the names of the faraway places written on it were like magic - Africa, Australia, China, Equator, Printed in Hong Kong, Iceland...

Perhaps they'd never looked out the windows. Perhaps they'd never known that they were moving at all.

He wondered if this was what Grimma had meant by all the stuff about the frogs in the flower. She'd read it in a book. You could live your whole life in some tiny place and think it was the whole world. The trouble was, he'd been angry. He hadn't wanted to listen.

Well, he was out of the flower now and no mistake.

The frog had brought some other young frogs to its spot among the leaves at the edge of the world of the flower.

They stared at the branch. There wasn't just one flower out there, there were dozens, although the frogs weren't able to think like this because frogs can't count beyond one.

They saw lots of ones.

They stared at them. Staring is one of the few things frogs are good at.

Thinking isn't. It would be nice to say that the tiny frogs thought long and hard about the new flower, about life in the old flower, about the need to explore, about the possibility that the world was bigger than a pool with petals around the edge.

In fact, what they thought was... mipmip... mipmip... mipmip.

But what they felt was too big for one flower to contain.

Carefully, slowly, not at all certain why, they plopped down onto the branch.

There was a polite beeping from the Thing.

"You may be interested to know," it said, "that we've broken the sound barrier." Masklin turned wearily to the others.

"All right, own up," he said. "Who broke it?"

"Don't look at me," said Angalo. "I didn't touch anything." Masklin crawled to the edge of the hole and peered out.

There were human feet out there. Female human feet, by the look of it. They usually were the ones with the less practical shoes.

You could learn a lot about humans by looking at their shoes. It was about all a nome had to look at, most of the time. The rest of the human was normally little more than the wrong end of a pair of nostrils, a long way up.

Masklin sniffed.

"There's food somewhere," he said.

"What kind?" said Angalo.

"Never mind what kind," said Gurder, pushing him out of the way. "Whatever it is, I'm going to eat it."

"Get back!" Masklin snapped, pushing the Thing into Angalo's arms. "I'll go! Angalo, don't let him go!" He darted out, ran for the curtain, and slid behind it. After a few seconds, he moved just enough to let one eye and a frowning eyebrow show.

The room was some sort of food place. Human females were taking trays of food out of the wall. Nomish sense of smell is sharper than a fox's; it was all Masklin could do not to dribble. He had to admit it - it was all very well hunting and growing things, but what you got wasn't a patch on the food you found around humans.

One of the females put the last tray on a trolley and wheeled it past Masklin. The wheels were almost as tall as he was.

As it squeaked past, he jumped out of his hiding place and leapt onto it, squeezing himself among the bottles. It was a stupid thing to do, he knew. It was just better than being stuck in a hole with a couple of idiots.

Rows and rows of shoes. Some black, some brown. Some with laces, some without. Quite a few of them without feet in them, because the humans had taken them off.

Masklin looked up as the trolley inched forward.

Rows and rows of legs. Some in skirts, but most in trousers.

Masklin looked up farther. Nomes rarely saw humans sitting down.

Rows and rows of bodies, topped with rows and rows of heads with faces at the front. Masklin crouched back among the bottles. Grandson Richard, 39, was watching him. It was the face in the newspaper. It had to be. There was the little beard, and the smiling mouth with lots of teeth in it. And the hair that looked as though it had been dramatically carved out of something shiny rather than grown in the normal way. Grandson Richard. 39.

The face stared at him for a moment, and then looked away.

He can't have seen me, Masklin told himself. I'm hidden away here.

What will Gurder say when I tell him?

He'll go mad, that's what.

I think I'll keep it to myself for a while. That might be an amazingly good idea. We've got enough to worry about as it is.

Thirty-nine. Either there've been thirty-eight other Grandson Richards, and I don't think that's what it means, or it's a newspaper human way of saying he's thirty-nine years old. Nearly half as old as the Store. And the Store nomes say the Store is as old as the world. I know that can't be true, but...

I wonder what it feels like to live nearly forever?

He burrowed farther into the things on the shelf. Mostly they were bottles, but there were a few bags containing knobbly things a bit smaller than Masklin's fist. He stabbed at the paper with his knife until he'd cut a hole big enough, and pulled one of them out.

It was a salted peanut. Well, it was a start.

He grabbed the packet just as a hand reached past.

It was close enough to touch.

It was close enough to touch him.

He could see the red of its fingernails as they slid by him, closed slowly over another packet of nuts, and withdrew.

It dawned on Masklin later that the giving-out-food female wouldn't have been able to see him. She just reached down into the tray for what she knew would be there, and this almost certainly didn't include Masklin.

That's what he decided later. At the time, with a human hand almost brushing his head, it all looked a lot different. He took a running dive off the trolley, rolled when he hit the carpet, and scurried under the nearest seat.

He didn't even wait to catch his breath. Experience had taught him that it was when you stopped to catch your breath that things caught you. He charged from seat to seat, dodging giant feet, discarded shoes, dropped newspapers and bags. By the time he crossed the bit of aisle to the food place, he was a blur even by nome standards. He didn't stop even when he reached the hole. He just leapt, and went through it without touching the sides.

"A peanut?" said Angalo. "Between three? That's not a mouthful each!"

"What do you suggest?" said Masklin, bitterly. "Do you want to go to the giving-out-food female and say, there's three small hungry people down here?" Angalo stared at him. Masklin had got his breath back now, but was still very red in the face.

"You know, that could be worth a try," he said.

"What?"

"Well, if you were a human, would you expect to see nomes on a plane?" said Angalo.

"Of course I wouldn't."

"I bet you'd be amazed if you did see one, eh?"

"Are you suggesting we deliberately show ourselves to a human?" Gurder said suspiciously. "We've never done that, you know."

"I nearly did just now," said Masklin. "I won't do that again in a hurry!"

"We've always preferred to starve to death on one peanut, you mean?" Gurder looked longingly at the piece of nut in his hand. They'd eaten peanuts in the Store, of course. Around Christmas Fayre, when the Food Hall was crammed with food you didn't normally see in the other seasons; they made a nice end to a meal. Probably they made a nice start to a meal too. What they didn't make was a meal. "What's the plan?" he said, wearily.

One of the giving-out-food humans was pulling trays off a shelf when a movement made it look up. Its head turned very slowly.

Something small and black was being lowered down right by its ear.

It stuck tiny thumbs in small ears, wagged its fingers, and stuck out its tongue.

"Thrrrrrrrrp," said Gurder.

The tray in the human's hands crashed onto the floor in front of it. It made a long, drawn-out noise that sounded like a high-pitched foghorn, and backed away, raising its hands to its mouth. Finally it turned, very slowly, like a tree about to fall, and fled between the curtains.

When it came back, with another human being, the little figure had gone.

So had most of the food.

"I don't know when I last had smoked salmon," said Gurder happily.

"Mmmph," said Angalo.

"You're not supposed to eat it like that," said Gurder severely. "You're not supposed to shove it all in your mouth and then cut off whatever won't fit. Whatever will people think?" " 'Sno people here," said Angalo indistinctly." 'Sjust you an' Masklin."

Masklin cut the lid off a container of milk. It was practically nome-sized.

"This is more like it, eh?" said Gurder. "Proper food the natural way, out of tins and things. None of this having to clean the dirt off it, like in the quarry. And it's nice and warm in here too. It's the only way to travel. Anyone want some of this" - he prodded a dish vaguely, not sure of what was in it - "stuff?" The others shook their heads. The dish contained something shiny and wobbly and pink with a cherry on it, and in some strange way it managed to look like something you wouldn't eat even if it was pushed onto your plate after a week's starvation diet.

"What does it taste like?" said Masklin, after Gurder had chewed a mouthful.

"Tastes like pink," said Gurder.
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[4] Little dishes of strange wobbly stuff tasting like pink turn up in nearly every meal on all airplanes. No one knows why. There's probably some sort of special religious reason.

"Anyone fancy the peanut to finish with?" said Angalo. He grinned. "No? I'll chuck it away, shall I?"

"No!" said Masklin. They looked at him. "Sorry," he said. "I mean, you shouldn't. It's wrong to waste good food."

"It's wicked," said Gurder primly.

"Mmm. Don't know about wicked," said Masklin. "Never been very clear on wicked. But it's stupid. Put it in your pack. You never know when you might need it."

Angalo stretched his arms and yawned. "A wash would be nice," he said.

"Didn't see any water," Masklin said. "There's probably a sink or a bathroom somewhere, but I wouldn't know where to start looking."

"Talking of bathrooms..." said Angalo.

"Right down the other end of the pipe, please," said Gurder.

"And keep away from any wiring," volunteered the Thing. Angalo nodded in a puzzled fashion, and crawled away into the darkness.

Gurder yawned and stretched his arms.

"Won't the giving-out-food humans look for us?" he said.

"I don't think so," said Masklin. "Back when we used to live Outside I'm sure humans saw us sometimes. I don't think they really believe their eyes. They wouldn't make those weird garden ornaments if they'd ever seen a real nome." Gurder reached into his robe and pulled out the picture of Grandson Richard, 39. Even in the dim light in the pipe, Masklin recognised it as the human in the seat. He hadn't got creases on his face from being folded up, and he wasn't made up of hundreds of tiny dots, but apart from that...

"Do you think he's here somewhere?" said Gurder wistfully.

"Could be. Could be," said Masklin, feeling wretched. "But, look, Gurder... maybe Angalo goes a bit too far, but he could be right. Maybe Grandson Richard, 39, is just another human being, you know. Probably humans did build the Store just for humans. Your ancestors just moved in because, well, it was warm and dry. And -"

"I'm not listening, you know," said Gurder. "I'm not going to be told that we're just things like rats and mice. We're special."

"The Thing is quite definite about us coming from somewhere else, Gurder," said Masklin meekly.

The Abbot folded up the picture. "Maybe we did. Maybe we didn't," he said. "That doesn't matter."

"Angalo thinks it matters if it's true."

"Don't see why. There's more than one kind of truth."

Gurder shrugged.

"I might say, you're just a lot of dust and juices and bones and hair, and that's  true. And I might say, you're something inside your head that goes away when you die. That's true too. Ask the Thing."

Coloured lights flickered across the Thing's surface.

Masklin looked shocked.

"I've never asked it that sort of question," he said.

"Why not? It's the first question I'd ask."

"It'll probably say something like 'Does not compute' or 'Inoperative parameters.' That's what it says when it doesn't know and doesn't want to admit it. Thing?" The Thing didn't reply. Its lights changed their pattern.