Wings (8 page)

She reached up and took the stone out of his hand.

He didn't resist.

Then she touched the Thing.

It spoke. What it said sounded very much like the words the woman had just used. She pulled her hand away sharply, and looked at the Thing with her head on one side. Then she stood back.

At another command the Floridians formed, not a line, but a sort of V shape with the woman at the tip of it and the travellers inside it.

"Are we prisoners?" said Gurder, who had cooled off a bit.

"I don't think so," said Masklin. "Not exactly prisoners, yet." The meal was some sort of a lizard. Masklin quite enjoyed it; it reminded him of his days as an Outsider. The other two ate it only because not eating it would be impolite, and it probably wasn't a good idea to be impolite to people who had spears when you didn't.

The Floridians watched them solemnly.

There were at least thirty of them, all wearing identical argy clothes. They looked quite like the Store nomes, except for being slightly darker and much skinnier. Many of them had large, impressive noses, which the Thing said was perfectly okay and all because of genetics.

The Thing was talking to them. Occasionally it would extend one of its sensors and use it to draw shapes in the dirt.

"Thing's probably telling them we-come-from-place-belong-far-on-big-bird-that-doesn't-go-flap," said Angalo.

A lot of the time the Thing was simply repeating the woman's own words back at her. Eventually Masklin couldn't stand it any more "What's happening. Thing?" he said. "Why's the woman doing all the talking?"

"She is the leader of this group," said the Thing.

"A woman? Are you serious?"

"I am always serious. It's built in."

"Oh." Angalo nudged Masklin. "If Grimma ever finds out, we're in real trouble," he said.

"Her name is Very-small-tree, or Shrub," the Thing went on.

"And you can understand her?" said Masklin.

"Gradually. Their language is very close to original nomish." "What do you mean, original nomish?"

"The language your ancestors spoke." Masklin shrugged. There was no point in trying to understand that now.

"Have you told her about us?" he said.

"Yes. She says -"

Topknot, who had been muttering to himself, stood up suddenly and spoke very sharply at great length, with a lot of pointing to the ground and to the sky.

The Thing flashed a few lights.

"He says you are trespassing on the land belonging to the Maker of Clouds. He says that is very bad. He said the Maker of Clouds will be very angry." There was a general murmur of agreement from many of the nomes.

Shrub spoke to them sharply. Masklin stuck out a hand to stop Gurder from getting up.

"What does, er, Shrub think?" he said.

"I don't think she is very sympathetic to the topknot person. His name is Person-who-knows-what-the-Maker-of-Clouds-is-thinking."

"And what is the Maker of Clouds?"

"It's bad luck to say its true name. It made the ground and it is still making the sky. It -"

Topknot spoke again. He sounded angry.

We need to be friends with these people, Masklin thought. There has to be a way.

"The Maker of Clouds is" - Masklin thought hard - "a sort of Arnold Bros. (est. 1905)?"

"Yes," said the Thing.

"A real thing?"

"I think so. Are you prepared to take a risk?"

"What?"

"I think I know the identity of the Maker of Clouds. I think I know when it will make some more sky."

"What? When?" said Masklin.

"In three hours and ten minutes."

Masklin hesitated. "Hold on a moment," he said, slowly, "that sounds like the same sort of time that -"

"Yes. All three of you, please get ready to run. I will now write the name of the Maker of Clouds."

"Why will we have to run?"

"They might get very angry. But we haven't time to waste." The Thing extended a sensor. It wasn't intended as a writing implement, and the shapes it drew were angular and hard to read.

It scrawled four shapes in the dust.

The effect was instantaneous.

Topknot started to shout again. Some of the Floridians leapt to their feet.

Masklin grabbed the other two travellers

"I'm really going to thump that old nome in a minute," said Gurder. "How can anyone be so narrow-minded?"

Shrub sat silent while the row went on around her. Then she spoke, very loud but very calmly.

"She is telling them," said the Thing, "that it is not wrong to write the name of the Maker of Clouds. It is often written by the Maker of Clouds itself.

'How famous the Maker of Clouds must be, that even these strangers know its name,' she says." That seemed to satisfy most of the nomes.

Topknot started to grumble to himself.

Masklin relaxed a bit, and looked down at the figures in the sand.

"N... A... 8... A?" he said.

"It's an S," said the Thing, "Not an 8."

"But you've only been talking to them for a little while!" said Angalo. "How can you know something like this?"

"Because I know how nomes think," said the Thing. "You always believe what you read, and you've all got very literal minds. Very literal minds indeed."

Geese: A type of bird which is slower than the Concorde, and you don't get anything to eat. According to nomes who know them well, a goose is the most stupid bird there is, except for a duck. Geese spend a lot of time flying to other places. As a form of transport, the goose leaves a lot to be desired. If it weren't for the nomes telling them what to do, geese would just fly around lost and honking the whole time, if you want my scientific opinion.

From A Scientific Encyclopaedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri.

In the beginning, said Shrub, there was nothing but ground. NASA saw the emptiness above the ground, and decided to fill it with sky. It built a place in the middle of the world and sent up towers full of clouds. Sometimes they also carried stars because, at night, after one of the cloud towers had gone up, the nomes could sometimes see new stars moving across the sky.

The land around the cloud towers was NASA's special country. There were more animals there, and fewer humans. It was a pretty good place for nomes. Some of them believed that NASA had arranged it all for precisely that reason.

Shrub sat back.

"And does she believe that?" said Masklin. He looked across the clearing to where Gurder and Topknot were arguing. They couldn't understand what one another was saying, but they were still arguing.

The Thing translated.

Shrub laughed.

"She says, Days come, days go, who needs to believe anything? She sees things happen with her own eyes, and these are things she knows happen. Belief is a wonderful thing for those who need it, she says. But she knows this place belongs to NASA, because its name is on signs."

Angalo grinned. He was nearly in tears. "They live right by the place the going-up jets go from and they think it's some sort of magic place!" he said.

"Isn't it?" said Masklin, almost to himself. "Anyway, it's no more strange than thinking the Store was the whole world. Thing, how do they watch the going-up jets? They're a long way away."

"Not far at all. Eighteen miles is not far at all, she says- She says they can be there in little more than an hour." Shrub nodded at their astonishment, and then, without another word, stood up and walked away through the bushes. She signalled the nomes to follow her.

Half a dozen Floridians trailed after their leader, making the shape of a V with her at the point.

After a few yards the greenery opened out again beside a small lake.

The nomes were used to large bodies of water. There were reservoirs near the airport. They were even used to ducks.

But the things paddling enthusiastically toward them were a lot bigger than ducks. Besides, ducks were like a lot of other animals and recognised in nomes the shape, if not the size, of humans and kept a safe distance away from them. They didn't come baring toward them as if the mere sight of them was the best thing that had happened all day.

Some of them were almost flying in their desire to get to the nomes.

Masklin looked around automatically for a weapon. Shrub grabbed his arm, shook her head, and said a couple of words.

"They're friendly," the Thing translated.

"They don't look it!"

"They 're geese," said the Thing. "Quite harmless, except to grass and minor organisms. They fly here for the winter." The geese arrived with a bow wave that surged over the nomes' feet, and arched their necks down toward Shrub. She patted a couple of fearsome-looking beaks.

Masklin tried hard not to look like a minor organism.

"They migrate here from colder climates," the Thing went on. "They rely on the Floridians to pick the right course for them."

"Oh, good. That's -" Masklin stopped while his brain caught up with his mouth. "You're going to tell me they fly on them, right?"

"Certainly. They travel with the geese. Incidentally, you have two hours and forty-one minutes to launch."

"I want to make it absolutely clear," said Angalo slowly, as a great feathery head explored the water-weeds a few inches away, "that if you're suggesting that we ride on a geese -"

"A goose. One geese is a goose."

"You can think again. Or compute, or whatever it is you do."

"You have a better suggestion, of course," said the Thing. If it had a face, it would have been sneering.

"Suggesting we don't ride on them strikes me as a whole lot better, yes," said Angalo.

"I dunno," said Masklin, who had been watching the geese speculatively. "I might be prepared to give it a try."

"The Floridians have developed a very interesting relationship with the geese," said the Thing. "The geese provide the nomes with wings, and the nomes provide the geese with brains. They fly north to Canada in the summer, and back here for the winter. Geese like nomes. Geese that carry nomes are steered to better feeding grounds, and find that their nests get protected from rats and other creatures. Geese are bright enough to learn that geese with nomes around have a better life. And the nomes get free transport and a warm place to sleep. It's almost a symbiotic relationship, although, of course, they're not familiar with the term."

"Aren't they? Silly old them," Angalo muttered.

"I don't understand you, Angalo," said Masklin. "You're mad for riding in machines with whirring bits of metal pushing them along, yet you're worried about sitting on a perfectly natural bird."

"That's because I don't understand how birds work," said Angalo. "I've never seen an exploded working diagram of a goose."

"The geese are the reason the Floridians have never had much to do with humans," the Thing continued. "As I said, their language is almost original nomish."

"Yes, and I still don't understand that," said Masklin. "I mean, nomes ought to speak the same language, yes?"

"No. You remember that I told you once that nomes used to be able to talk to humans, and taught them languages?" "Yes?" said Masklin.

"And then the humans changed the language, over hundreds of years. Nomes who lived near humans changed too. But the Floridians never had much to do with humans, so their form of the language is still very much as it used to be."

Shrub was watching them carefully. There was something about the way she was treating them that still seemed odd to Masklin. It wasn't that she hadn't been afraid of them, or aggressive, or unpleasant.

"She's not surprised," he said aloud. "She's interested, but she's not surprised. They were upset because we were here, not because we existed. How many other nomes has she met?'" The Thing had to translate.

It was a word that Masklin had only known for a year.

Thousands.

The leading tree frog was trying to wrestle with a new idea. It was very dimly aware that it needed a new type of thought.

There had been the world, with the pool in the middle and the petals around the edge. One.

But farther along the branch was another world. From here it looked tantalisingly like the flower they had left. One.

The leading frog sat in a clump of moss and swivelled each eye so that it could see both worlds at the same time. One there. And one there.

One. And one.

The frog's forehead bulged as it tried to get its mind around a new idea. One and one were one. But if you had one here and one there...

The other frogs watched in bewilderment as their leader's eyes whizzed around and around.

One here and one there couldn't be one. They were too far apart. You needed a word that meant both ones. You needed to say... you needed to say...

The frog's mouth widened. It grinned so broadly that both ends almost met behind its head.

It had worked it out.

... mipmip... ! It said.

It meant: One. And One More One!

Gurder was still arguing with Topknot when they got back.

"How do they manage to keep it up? They don't understand what each other's saying!" said Angalo.

"Best way," said Masklin.

"Gurder? We're ready to go. Come on." Gurder looked up. He was very red in the face. The two of them were crouched either side of a mass of scrawled diagrams in the dirt.

"I need the Thing!" he said. "This idiot refuses to understand anything!"

"You won't win any arguments with him," said Masklin. "Shrub says he argues with all the other nomes they meet. He likes to."

"What other nomes?" said Gurder.

"There's nomes everywhere, Gurder. That's what Shrub says. There's other groups even in Floridia. And - and - and in Canadia, where the Floridians go in the summer. There were probably even other nomes back home! We just never found them!" He pulled the Abbot to his feet.

"And we haven't got a lot of time left," he added.

"I'm not going up on one of those things!" The geese gave Gurder a puzzled look, as if he were an unexpected frog in their water-weed

"I'm not very happy about it either," said Masklin, "but Shrub's people do it all the time. You just snuggle down in the feathers and hang on."