Three Princes (13 page)

A cloud-enshrouded mountaintop resolved itself on the horizon ahead of them. Oken felt a brief disorientation. Surely they had not yet crossed the thousand leagues of the wide Atlantic to be this close to the New World continent so swiftly? Then he saw Mabruke grip the fore-rail to keep his balance in the winds and turn, gesturing for Oken to join him.

Oken did not want to leave the relative comfort of the windbreak where he sat, but he stood reluctantly and wentover. The craft rode with amazing smoothness, considering the speed at which the water jets were pushing her.Oken felt the decks quiver beneath his feet, as though he trod on a living beast and not on a wooden deck and laminated hull.

Mabruke turned his face back into the winds, pointing to the misty mountaintop growing taller out of the horizon. “Madeira!” He had to shout to be heard above the wind rushing past their faces. “That’s our next stop. We will be boarding a Quetzal there.”

Oken nodded, but he sighed inwardly. Too good to be true. A flight above deep waters was yet ahead of him. Still nodding, he wentback to the bench and sat down, arms folded tightly across his chest. He closed his eyes and spent the remainder of the boat ride walking through his memories of the Avenue of the Sacred Places, gathered closely against the walls of Marrakech.

THE ATTENDANTS
referred to their aircraft in the masculine, the opposite of sailors, who saw the feminine nature of their watercraft. It made sense to Oken. Women and ships were far more accommodating in their interiors. The corridors of the Quetzal were even narrower in real life than they had seemed as lines on a page. Both men had to duck, then bend their heads sideways to get through the entryways. Mabruke could stand in the middle of their cabin and touch both sides with his fingertips, and he had to bend his head respectfully so as not to scrape the top of his head if he did. Everything was bamboo, the ubiquitous building material of the Quetzals—carved, bent, formed, layered, and laminated with colored resins, sometimes embedded with flakes of mica so that corners glittered.

Sunlight shone in from a single, round window. The pane of glass was crystal clear and just big enough to permit a view of the ocean far below.

The beds, at that time of day folded up flat against the walls, were ornate frames with intricately woven leather straps as a mattress. The cup and basin set out in front of a shaving mirror were hollowed-out bamboo sections, polished smooth and lacquered a pale rosy color that emphasized the grain. To Oken, the images of the two pieces as they reflected in the mirror looked as though they were slowly oozing lines of blood from a hundred cuts.

No matter. He was thirsty after the long trek across the island and the even longer climb up the stairway to the top of the Quetzal station, then the nerve-racking walk up the ramp into the Quetzal himself. The only water Oken was interested in just then was the drinking water in the pitcher, set in a niche above the basin. He ignored the bloody-looking image of the cup and filled it from the pitcher. The water was icy cold, and especially thirst quenching because of the bubbles dancing through it. He poured a second cupful and drank that. Then he filled it a third time and passed it over to his friend.

“Good of you to test it for me,” Mabruke said with a tease in his voice.

Oken teased back. “Shouldn’t you wait a bit first to see if there was anything slow- acting in it?”

Mabruke took this with a totally serious look. He frowned at the cup, then bent his head and sniffed at the water carefully, several times. He closed his eyes, searching memory, and sniffed once again.

He opened his eyes, looked at Oken, and smiled. “Just a nice bit of bubbles! You shouldn’t be so suspicious.”

“If I weren’t,” Oken said in retort, “how would I learn?”

Mabruke emptied the cup in a single draft, then held it out for more.

WHILE THEY
were seated later in the crowded dining compartment, the Quetzal lifted up and away from his mooring atop the station, so gently that the two men almost failed to notice. Oken, however, glanced out the nearest porthole, felt a delicious thrill through his flesh when he realized that the station building was falling slowly away. Not an altogether unpleasant thrill. He had felt the same thrill when he once stepped up close to the grand windows in Natyra’s apartment, in order to lean his forehead against the cool glass. Novgorod, far below, was quilted with a layer of white velvet and diamonds, gleaming in the soft light of the full Moon. He had had too much champagne, at Natyra’s insistence. He felt, just for an instant, that he was falling downward, spiraling toward that moonlit quilt. He had taken himself then to the silken quilts of Natyra’s bed and recovered. That instant of thrill remained. This was the same, the thrill of surrender.

“Fear is not the least among them,” Mabruke said, quoting Oken’s words.

Oken met his friend’s intense gaze. “How can I serve Egypt if I am so transparent?”

“You are too well trained as royalty to be transparent about anything.” Mabruke lifted his glass of wine to see its color in the light. “I am curious to hear if you had a quote from the Horus Scope about why we should not be flying today?”

Oken did. “Do not sail on any wind this day.”

Mabruke saluted him with the glass, then sipped at the wine, rolling it in his mouth carefully before swallowing it with a show of pleasure. “I thought you might say that. No winds here. Not even a breeze to ruffle your hair.”

“Never mind my hair—look at your glass.”

Mabruke was holding his wineglass level, with a steady hand, yet the wine was slightly askew, pooling as though creeping up one side to escape. Startled, Mabruke released the glass in midair, snatching his hand back as if the glass were suddenly too hot to hold, or too dangerous.

Oken reached out swiftly and caught the glass by its stem just before it hit the table. Droplets of wine splashed over the rim onto his hand, and onto the cuff of his white silk jacket.

“That’s too fine a vintage to waste on sleight of hand,” Mabruke said, much too evenly.

The edge in his voice struck Oken’s ear. He put his hand up to his mouth, and quickly licked the drops from his skin. “Not the least bit underhanded.” He drank the wine in a long, slow draft, then set the empty glass in front of Mabruke.

Mabruke carefully laid one dark, long-fingered hand on the table, placing the other hand as deliberately across it.

“They use uneven flotation on first launching,” Oken said as explanation. “The sails get better purchase on the winds closer to the ground that way. The passenger section rotates to adjust. Our flight should level out shortly.”

“It said that in the book, did it?”

“You read it, too, long before I did.”

“Not as permanently. You must remind me, from time to time.”

“THERE IS
clearly nothing holding this ship up in the sky—at any instant, everyone will realize it, and we will plummet into the sea!” Mabruke spoke wearily, despite his effort to make a jest.

Oken had wondered why Mabruke insisted on taking his meals in their cabin, and kept the curtains drawn. Oken was surprised and dismayed by this explanation, however, accustomed as he was to Mabruke’s childlike pleasure in traveling for traveling’s sake. “The physics of it is in the book.”

Mabruke shook his head, then reached up to rub his forehead. “Pay no attention,” he said. “I am not myself yet, I suppose. Having gone from captivity underground to captivity in the sky is not the journey I had anticipated. Please, do not take this amiss. I need sleep and our travels so far have provided me with very little. The quiet here is peaceful.”

Mabruke sighed and his countenance grew still, introspective. Oken waited for him to continue.

“Just let me sleep. I will return to my usual self before we arrive.”

“I’ll go back to prowling around the ship, then, shall I?”

“Prowl on! Take your key, and lock the door behind you.”

Oken assessed the contents of his pockets and selected a pair of gloves. “Pleasant dreams,” he said cheerfully as he went out, making certain that the lock clicked clearly as he pulled the door shut.

A NARROW
catwalk was woven into the netting that bound the Quetzal’s top tubes together. Despite the seeming frailty of the materials, the bamboo treads between the curved walls of the gap were as surprisingly stable as the Queen’s Bridge. Oken could easily place a hand on the bamboo railing on either side. Even filtered by the net, the view was overwhelming.

The aeroship moved with serene calm. The only sign of their speed was the brisk wind that tossed his thick curls about. The sky above and the ocean below were unchanging, eternal, calm, and endless, the sublime expanse of the Atlantic. As the pilots said, up here they were “one with the sky.” Oken felt his spirit shift and expand to encompass the vastness of the world seen from the Quetzal’s vantage. There was no place within that vastness for fear. The voice of the wind was a wordless cry of triumph.

The ship’s staff were from the Andes in Tawantinsuyu, “The Empire of the Four Quarters.” They wore beaded and embroidered cotton vests and trousers and feathered armbands, and walked silently through the ship barefoot. Each had the same traditionally braided black hair and golden skin of the Cinnamon Twins, Jaia and poisonous Jaianna, in Casablanca. There were, however, no native women. Oken had wondered about that since noting it in the crew manifest.

Most passengers thought the crewmen looked alike and addressed them simply as “lad.” When Oken introduced himself, he pleased them immediately by knowing their individual names and duties, skimmed from the manifest. After that, they had endless fun teaching him the correct pronunciation of their native names, which was returned by his fanciful translations of those names into Trade.

This daily walk around the open ring was his reward for these efforts. The staff were so delighted by his unusual enchantment with the experience of flying that they had given him the freedom of the entire Quetzal. Even the brilliantly colored macaws welcomed him when he appeared on the bridge. Each pilot had his own such bird as assistant, to act as liaison with the albatross outrunners, the true navigators.

The intention to secure the secrets of their Quetzal technology had led to the curious convention of keeping the bridge and engine room completely separate from the passenger section. The only exit from the passenger section of the vessel suspended in the nets at the center of the winged-rings was through a hatch at the very tip of the aeroship’s tail, the passenger entrance when the aeroship was moored. The wing-sails, sleekly folded down in full flight, created a streamlined covering around the ring, protecting the catwalk. Stepping out to the flotation ring itself was a brief, albeit breathtaking, climb up three bamboo steps, holding on to a hemp lead line. The only entrance to the bridge and engine room of the Quetzal was halfway around the ring at the fore, via a daredevil slide down a double rope with a harness around his waist clipped as a security line. The crew did this barefoot. Oken quickly learned to use the heels of his fancy, pointed boots to keep himself in place.

Once through the opened hatch, bamboo ladder rungs led down into the bridge and engine room. Drummers and pipe players sat in a small alcove overlooking the bridge, setting the rhythm of the cyclers as they worked, as well as entertaining the crew.

In a sunken recess across the bridge, the engines were situated. Seven young men were riding atop dual-wheeled cycles, pedaling in place to rhythms played out by the drums and pipes. Intricatly interlaced gears set to whirring furiously by the young men. These, in turn, operated complex pumps and bellows painted with giant, grotesque faces that alternately grimaced and grinned as they worked. They made a rhythmic breathing noise, slow andpowerful.

Another group of young men lounged on woven mats, resting for their turn at the wheels, laughing and joking among themselves. Bowls of shredded coca leaves were passed among them, and everyone was chewing them. Some were singing along with the music, in a language startlingly similar to the words in Verdi’s opera. The whirring noise of the many gears was a steady, happy hum droning through the music. Seven more slept in hammock-slung rugs around the perimeter of the bridge.

“Tawantinsuyu is a well-organized state,” Brugsch had written.

Lacking the draft animals whose loyalty and strong backs powered the earliest civilizations of the Old World, the civilizations of the New World devised a multitude of ingenious ways of harnessing human power. This practice led to a greatly enhanced appreciation of the individual’s contribution to the smooth working of the empire as a whole, an ethic that echoes that of Egypt. This shared sensibility has helped greatly in smoothing the initial contacts between Egypt and these distant peoples.

The queen had marked that passage with a carefully inked-in line of stars, making it stand out in his emotional response to the material. He saw the living enactment of it here, which pleased him. He would be able to report this observation when he returned to Memphis.

The cyclers waved at Oken in greeting. He saluted them in return. Two of the macaws who were not actively engaged in navigation work fluttered up from their perches and settled, one on each shoulder.

“Hoy, Oken!” the bird on his left shoulder tilted his head to regard Oken with both eyes.

“Hoy, Chocolate Roll.” Oken stroked the animal’s head with one finger as they greeted each other. Oken reached into his pocket and fished out a cacao bean. Chocolate Roll took the bean and winked at Oken as he spun it around in his beak with a dexterous flip, then quickly chewed up and swallowed the precious cacao. His eyes closed and he demonstrated his name, Chocolate Roll. The pleasure of the bean made him roll his head around, eyes close, wings akimbo.

The bird on Oken’s other shoulder laughed, shaking out his wings like a dancer on display. Chocolate Roll thanked Oken, pressing his brilliantly green head against Oken’s cheek before lifting off in a flurry of wings to return to his human partner.

The bird on Oken’s left shoulder winked at him, bobbing his head once. “Hoy, pretty-man, Oken!”

“Hoy, pretty-bird, Duster,” Oken said, giving the bird a tickle in the rich feathers of his neck.

Duster held out his clawed foot, waiting for his bean. He snapped it up, then fluttered his wing tips swiftly over Oken’s face, laughing, his head pointed skyward.

“All yours,” Oken said to Duster, leaning his head toward the bird.

Duster nuzzled through Oken’s rich, dark curls then carefully, with due deliberation, selected just a single strand and plucked it out. He walked down to Oken’s wrist before fluttering off to his perch. The strand of hair was placed in a pullout drawer at the base of his perch. When Duster first asked Oken for hair, the captain had explained that Duster’s mate, Chochoc, was nest-building. Oken felt the strands were an excellent contribution, since he suspected that his easy ac ceptance of the bird’s request had marked him as the proper kind of reasonable—trusting him.

Oken strolled over to the helmsmen on their dais, seated before a broad panel of color-coded levers. Oken kept his hands casually in his pockets and did not speak to them. Their concentration was focused on the view through the glass windows that gave the aeroship its lifelike appearance when seen from afar. Just visible ahead was the flock of albatross that flew in careful formation in advance of the Quetzal, guiding the helmsmen. A fine gridline was etched onto the inner surface of the windows, creating reference points for the relationships of bird, sail, and wing. These crewmen were “Wind Walkers.” Their counterparts, the albatross, were “Wind Riders.” “Cloud Talkers,” the macaws, flew back and forth between the pilots and the albatross as messengers, bridging the gap between human and avian minds.