One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries (13 page)

She ducked as voices wafted upwards.

“…
against the clock as the upslope winds take her into the jet stream … launch window scheduled for twenty-two hundred hours…”

Autumn kept her head down low. Suddenly there seemed to be people everywhere, most of them dressed in dark brown coveralls. She snuggled into a crouch and hugged her knees, too terrified to move again in case she exposed herself. In the space of minutes her horizons had expanded to encompass things surely even Jarrah had never dreamed of.

Her reverie did not last long. A cry went up as she was spotted. As scared as she was, she didn’t try to run. There was nowhere to go and if she fell she would probably break a leg.

She was still staring at the zeppelin when they brought her down and took her before the Birdman. Everybody stared at her. Nobody was smiling. Up close, the Birdman was anything but handsome. His mysterious crescent eyes blazed with what she took for silent fury. He said nothing. He didn’t have to.
She shouldn’t be here. She should have stayed Downbelow where she belonged.
Her mind was flooded with Brook’s outrage, but her own defiant explanations lodged pathetically in her windpipe.
 

“
Let her go. She won’t tell anybody,” a voice called out behind her.

A guard lay a heavy hand on Autumn’s shoulder. She turned just as two more Birdmen in flying regalia approached.
Two!
One tall, one short. Both wore skinsuits layered with heavily-treated leathers.
 

Her mouth opened in surprise, but before so much as a squeak came out, the one who had spoken tugged his helmet free, revealing a familiar face that took her utterly by surprise.

He was a she.

“
Jarrah!”

The guard cut her off before she could ask a single question. Her mouth was still hanging stupidly open when the other Birdman intervened. Stepping forward, he smiled and gently touched her cheek. Autumn raised her hand and placed it upon his own. His skin was tough and leathery. Not skin. She was touching leather glove.

Jarrah grinned. “Told you I’d been up and down that chute before. I knew you didn’t believe me.”

“
But what—”

Jarrah pressed her finger against her lips. “Shhh. They don’t tell us anything much Downbelow. Some things we’ve got to figure for ourselves.”

“
Like what they’ve done to Brook?”

Jarrah frowned, then rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me she’s bitching about pre-motherhood already. That girl does nothing but complain, I swear.”

“
But—”

“
They’re not hurting her. It’s just not quite the honeymoon she envisaged. They never stay more than a day or two. Their seed is frozen in nitrogen. No Birdman ever visits the same dome twice.”

“
But—”

“
Where am I going?” Jarrah smiled. She nodded toward the open sky. “There’s a new dome surfaced beyond the south salt flats. I’m bringing knowledge in place of seed.” She glanced up at the mighty balloon. “They never would have built that thing off the plans without my help.”

With that, she signaled the control booth. All three Birdmen approached the zeppelin’s tiny underside compartment. Two tall, one short. Three stepping in unison.

“
Wait!”

A klaxon sounded and the people in dark overalls began to scurry for cover.

“
Jarrah!”

“
Come on Miss, it’s time to go.” The guard placed his hand lightly on Autumn’s shoulder. This time he didn’t seem so frightening.

“
You can watch the launch from the control booth. No need to worry. We’ll all be perfectly safe.” He nodded at the zeppelin. “Those three are the ones taking all the chances.”

Autumn threw a final incredulous glance at Jarrah, just in time to catch her wave in return. The three Birdmen entered the compartment as the mighty transparent shielding began to waver. Outside, the air was still and clear, but for how long? Who could say? All Autumn could be certain of was that sand and storms would not imprison her forever. Where Jarrah was going, one day she would follow.

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I
went
through a gluten-free phase a while ago. I had myself convinced that milled-bone bread was going to deliver all these health benefits and I’d be like a new man. I can’t decide now whether I really did have more energy, eating bone bread, but frankly, it tasted like shit. It never rose properly. It was this dense lump, sitting at the bottom of my stomach, and if I felt healthier, maybe that was down to the weight I lost, eating less bread.
 

The worst thing about bone bread was the rumours. If anyone else orders a bag of bone flour, nobody cares. If they don’t know about bone bread, they don’t think twice about it, or if they do, they figure it’s to go on the garden. If
I
order bone flour, though, it’s another story. I’m a freak. I must be eating people.
 

You don’t believe me, right? That’s really what they said. Once it was out there, all kinds of people believed it.

Just to be perfectly clear: I don’t eat people. Google it. Bone flour is from cows.

I’m sorry. I’m getting worked up. But you see how it is? This sort of thing happens to me all the time. I could sue for slander, but that would just give more publicity to these claims
—
and that’s what people would remember: not that they lied, just what they said.
 

So I don’t get out much.

I’ll be honest; I don’t get out at all. I might be nearly eight metres tall, but I don’t need much space, not really. The house is enough for me.

My parents were big, too, and I miss them. They had our house fitted out right for our family before I was even born. From the outside, it looks like a high-ceilinged three-storey townhouse. It fits in with its neighbours. The front door is big, I guess, but it’s hidden behind an alcove. The house doesn’t attract attention.

I attract attention, but only if I go out.

I don’t need to go out, not these days. That’s what the internet is for. That and cat videos. And porn (I’m kidding: I don’t use porn!)

It feels a little strange, writing you this long email, but we’ve been chatting for a while now and I think we’re starting to get serious. I should tell you a bit more about myself so you know what you are getting into. So we both know.

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I told you I don’t get out, so you’re probably wondering how I make a living. I guess you could call me a freelancer. I do lots of little jobs online: piece-work. I choose my own hours and pick jobs that suit me: classifying images, filling out surveys, writing little articles and “how to” guides. It pays a few cents here, a couple of dollars there. None of it takes long, so as long as I put in the hours every day, it adds up to a good-enough living. I order in what I need: groceries from the local shops, custom-made trousers from China, music and videos streamed direct to my TV. It’s a pretty good life. I do all my own repairs. There are always online videos to show me how. I work out, too: I put on an old movie and go through my weight routines in front of the TV. Gotta stay in shape.

I’ve noticed you’re on the internet a lot, too: always available to chat. I like that about you. I like your picture, and I’ve been wondering: is that really you? It’s okay if it’s not. My profile doesn’t say I’m almost eight metres tall, after all. No one is perfect. But if it is you, you’re really cute.

I just wanted to say that.

Even if the photo isn’t you, I bet you’re cute anyway. You make me smile. Maybe we should do a video chat sometime? No hurry.

People stare at me. I know why they stare. I used to think I was a freak myself, but my parents said, “All our people are big: we’re supposed to be big.” They both died young; my parents. Their hearts gave out. If they hadn’t left the Old Country, that wouldn’t have happened. My heart will probably give out, too, if I stay. Here, I’m a freak.

But hey: your profile said you were looking for a tall guy.

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I was telling you about my family. Mum and Dad left the Old Country when my mum was 17 and pregnant. Dad was 17, too: just a few weeks younger than Mum. It wasn’t angry parents that made them run away. My mum’s folks were actually pretty supportive, according to my dad. It wasn’t school authorities, peer pressure or any church. It was something else; something that just wouldn’t happen here.

I guess the best way to explain it is… Well, you’ve heard of Rumplestiltskin, right? I don’t know if that was real, but the story has the basics right. A contract like that holds force of law in the Old Country.

A contract like that
—
something magic in exchange for the first-born child
—
is traditional, but just like in the Rumplestiltskin story, there’s always some wriggle-room. So young girls, sometimes… They’ll sign these contracts, thinking they’ll find the wriggle-room, or thinking they’ll never have kids anyway, or thinking there’s just no other way out of whatever situation their wicked stepmothers have got them into. That’s what keeps Rumplestiltskin and his mates in business.
 

We have the odd wicked stepmother here too, maybe, but over there, it’s part of the job description. Here I think there are just as many nice stepmothers as nasty, and most of them are just average.

So anyway, my grandma had one of these wicked stepmothers in the Old Country, and she had what I guess you’d call these days, an absentee father. She didn’t see much of him: he went off to work for the King and left the child-rearing to his wife.

Grandma’s stepmum wanted to get rid of my grandma so her own kids would be the ones to inherit the family farm. Grandma should probably have just signed away the rights so her stepmother would stop picking on her, but she was only a kid and she didn’t know that then.

The first thing this wicked stepmother tries is to send the poor girl out for firewood on her own, on a cold winter night, without a coat. My grandma is only eight or nine years old when this happens. The part of the Old Country she’s from is like Siberia in winter: we’re talking snow on the ground that’s metres deep and won’t melt away until halfway through spring. Oh, and I forgot to mention: there’s a blizzard.

But Grandma has grown up here and she knows a thing or two about snow. Instead of wandering out into the dark and being lost forever, this little girl digs a hole in the deep snow behind the house and sits at the bottom of the hole, out of the stiff, cold wind, and she calls out very softly, making a noise like a rabbit until she sees a snow fox padding up to the hole to see what he can see.

I don’t know what a rabbit is supposed to sound like, but I guess the fox does, and Grandma does, too.

So: “Tk-tk-tk,” says Grandma, maybe, and
thop-thop-thop
goes the fox as he pads up on his snow-white feet to see if he can find some dinner on a cold winter night.
 

“
Tk-tk-tk,” says Grandma until the fox puts his nose in the hole to see if he can smell a rabbit. Then,
thwak!
My grandma grabs hold of the fox’s nose, forefinger in one nostril, thumb in the other, so he can’t get away. The fox, he tries to run, but Grandma is a big, strong girl for her age, and she holds on tight and she won’t let go.
 

After a while, the fox knows she’s won and he sits very still and whimpers, which is a fox’s way of saying he’s had enough. She loosens her grip on his nose just enough that he can talk.

“
Child,” says the fox, “why do you hold onto my nose so that I cannot run along the snow and find a rabbit for my tea? I wish you would let go.”
 

“
Mr Snow Fox,” says my grandma, very polite now she has his attention, “I have caught you by the nose because I was clever enough to outwit you, and I will not let go until you do something for me.”
 

“
Child,” says the snow fox, “that’s not very nice and it’s not very fair, but you have bested me squarely and I must be on my way, so what would you have me do?” (That’s the way some of the animals talk in the Old Country, or at least, they did back then. I’m telling the story just like my mum told it to me.)
 

“
Mr Fox,” says my grandma (back in the Old Country). “You must dig a tunnel through the snow and guide me to the King’s woodpile and safely back again with an armload of wood.”
 

Grumbling, the snow fox agrees. He spends the rest of the night digging a tunnel through the snow to the King’s woodpile. Grandma crawls along behind the fox, grabs a big armload of wood, and then follows the fox safely home.

The fox sits in the end of the snow-tunnel, still hungry because he hasn’t had any dinner, and he watches her walk those last few steps across the back yard and to the back door.

“
Child,” says the fox, just before she steps inside, “I keep my bargains, but I will remember this and one day, I’ll take my revenge.”
 

But Grandma has her firewood today and she is safely in out of the snow, so she brushes off the fox’s words as a worry that can wait for another time.

The stepmother is a bit pissed off to see my grandma safely home, but with an armload of firewood, she can’t say “boo.” So she bides her time until she sees another chance.

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