Wings (14 page)

The Ship spoke, loudly.

To the humans it must have sounded like a high-pitched chattering.

What it actually said was: "Sorry! Sorry! Is this a microphone? Can't find the button that opens the door... Let's try this one..." Another square hole opened. Brilliant blue light flooded out.

The voice boomed out across the country again.

"Got it!" There was the distorted thud-thud of someone not certain if their microphone was working, and tapping it experimentally.

"Masklin, are you out there?"

"That's Angalo!" said Masklin. "No one else drives like that! Thing, tell Grandson Richard, 39, I must get on the Ship! Please!"

The human nodded.

Humans were milling around the base of the Ship. The doorway was too high up for them to reach.

With Masklin hanging on grimly, Grandson Richard, 39, pushed his way through the throng.

The ship wailed again.

"Er," came Angalo's hugely amplified voice, apparently talking to someone else, "I'm not sure about this switch, but maybe it's... Certainly I'm going to press it, why shouldn't I press it? It's next to the door one, it must be safe. Look, shut up..." A silver ramp wound out of the doorway. It looked big enough for humans.

"See? See?" said Angalo's voice.

"Thing, can you speak to Angalo?" said Masklin. "Can you tell him I'm out here, trying to get to the Ship?"

"No. He appears to be randomly pressing buttons. It is to be hoped that he does not press the wrong ones." "I thought you could tell the Ship what to do!" said Masklin.

The Thing managed to sound shocked. "Not when a nome is in it," it said. "I can't tell it not to do what a nome tells it to do. That's what being a machine is all about."

Grandson Richard, 39, was shoving his way through the pushing, shouting mass of humans, but it was hard going.

Masklin sighed.

"Ask Grandson Richard, 39, to put me down," he said. Then he added, "And say thank you. Say it... it would have been nice to talk more." The Thing did the translation.

Grandson Richard, 39, looked surprised.

The Thing spoke again.

Then he reached up a hand toward Masklin.

If he had to make a list of terrifying moments, Masklin would have put this one at the top. He'd faced foxes, he'd helped to drive the Truck, he'd flown on a goose - but none of them were half so bad as letting a human being actually touch him. The huge whorled fingers uncurled and passed on either side of his waist. He shut his eyes.

Angalo's booming voice said, "Masklin? Masklin? If anything bad's happened to you, there's going to be trouble."

Grandson Richard's finger gripped Masklin lightly, as though the human was holding something very fragile. Masklin felt himself being slowly lowered toward the ground.

He opened his eyes. There was a forest of human legs around him.

He looked up into Grandson Richard's huge face, and trying to make his voice as deep and slow as possible, said the last word any nome said to any human: "Good-bye." Then he ran through the maze of feet.

Several humans with official-looking trousers and big boots were standing at the bottom of the ramp. Masklin scurried between them and ran on upward.

Ahead of him blue light shone out of the open hatchway. As he ran he saw two dots appear on the lip of the entrance.

The ramp was long. Masklin hadn't slept for hours. He wished he'd got some sleep on the bed when the humans were studying; it had looked quite comfortable.

Suddenly, all his legs wanted to do was go somewhere close and lie down.

He staggered to the top of the ramp and the dots became the heads of Gurder and Pion. They reached out and pulled him into the Ship.

He turned around and looked down into a sea of human faces, below him. He'd never looked down on a human before.

They probably couldn't even see him. They're waiting for the little green men, he thought.

"Are you all right?" said Gurder urgently. "Did they do anything to you?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine," murmured Masklin. "No one hurt me."

"You look dreadful."

"We should have talked to them, Gurder," said Masklin. "They need us."

"Are you sure you're all right?" said Gurder, peering anxiously at him.

Masklin's head felt full of cotton wool. "You know how you believed in Arnold Bros. (est. 1905)?" he managed to say.

"Yes," said Gurder.

Masklin gave him a mad, triumphant grin.

"Well, he believed in you too! How about that?"

And Masklin folded up, very gently.

THE SHIP: The machine used by nomes to leave Earth. We don't yet know everything about it, but since it was built by nomes using Science, we will.

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

The ramp wound in. The doorway shut. The Ship rose in the air until it was high above the buildings.

And it stayed there, while the sun set. The humans below tried shining coloured lights at it, and playing tunes at it, and eventually just speaking to it in every language known to humans. It didn't seem to take any notice.

Masklin woke up.

He was on a very uncomfortable bed. It was all soft. He hated lying on anything softer than the ground. The Store nomes liked sleeping on fancy bits of carpet, but Masklin's bed had been a bit of wood. He'd used a piece of rag for a cover and thought that was luxury.

He sat up and looked around the room. It was fairly empty. There was just the bed, a table, and a chair.

A table and a chair.

In the Store, the nomes had made their furniture out of matchboxes and cotton reels; the nomes living Outside didn't even know what furniture was.

This looked rather like human furniture, but it was nome-sized.

Masklin got up and padded across the metal floor to the door. Nome-sized, again. A doorway made by nomes for nomes to walk through.

It led into a corridor, lined with doors. There was an old feel about it. It wasn't dirty or dusty. It just felt like somewhere that had been absolutely clean for a very, very long time.

Something purred toward him. It was a small black box, rather like the Thing, mounted on little treads. A little revolving brush on the front was sweeping dust into a slot. At least, if there had been any dust it would have been sweeping it. Masklin wondered how many times it had industriously cleaned this corridor, while it waited for nomes to come back.

It bumped into his foot, beeped at him, and then bustled off in the opposite direction. Masklin followed it.

After a while he passed another one. It was moving along the ceiling with a faint clicking noise, cleaning it.

He turned the corner, and almost walked into Gurder.

"You're up!"

"Yes," said Masklin. "Er. We're on the Ship, right?"

"It's amazing... !" Gurder began. He looked wild-eyed, and his hair was sticking up at all angles.

"I'm sure it is," said Masklin reassuringly.

"But there's all these... and there's great big... and there are these huge... and you'd never believe how wide... and there's so much..." Gurder's voice trailed off.

He looked like a nome who would have to learn new words before he could describe things.

"It's too big!" he blurted out. He grabbed Masklin's arm. "Come on," he said, and half ran along the corridor.

"How did you get on?" said Masklin, trying to keep up.

"It was amazing! Angalo touched this panel thing and it just moved aside and then we were inside and there was an elevator thing and then we were in this great big room with a seat and Angalo sat down and all these lights came on and he started pressing buttons and moving things!"

"Didn't you try to stop him?" Gurder rolled his eyes. "You know Angalo and machines," he said. "But the Thing is trying to get him to be sensible. Otherwise we'd be crashing into stars by now," he added gloomily.

He led the way through another arch into - well, it had to be a room. It was inside the Ship. It was just as well he knew that, Masklin thought, because otherwise he'd think it was Outside. It stretched away, as big as one of the departments in the Store.

Vast screens and complicated-looking panels covered the walls. Most of them were dark. Shadowy gloom stretched away in every direction, except for a little puddle of light in the very centre of the room.

It illuminated Angalo in a big padded chair. He had the Thing in front of him, on a sloping metal board studded with switches. He had obviously been arguing with it. When Masklin walked up, he glared at him and said, "It won't do what I tell it!"

The Thing looked as small and black and square as it could.

"He wants to drive the Ship," it said.

"You're a machine! You have to do what you're told!" snapped Angalo.

"I'm an intelligent machine, and I don't want to end up very flat at the bottom of a deep hole," said the Thing. "You can't pilot the Ship yet."

"How do you know? You won't let me try! I drove the Truck, didn't I? It wasn't my fault all those trees and streetlights and things got in the way," he added, after catching Masklin's eye.

"I expect the Ship is more difficult," said Masklin diplomatically.

"But I'm learning about it all the time," said Angalo. "It's easy. All the buttons have got little pictures on them. Look..." He pressed a button.

One of the big screens lit up, showing the crowds outside the Ship.

"They've been waiting there for ages," said Gurder.

"What do they want?" said Angalo.

"Search me," said Gurder. "Who knows what humans want?" Masklin stared at the throng below the ship. "They've been trying all sorts of stuff," said Angalo. "Flashing lights and music and stuff like that. And radio, too, the Thing says."

"Haven't you tried talking back to them?" said Masklin.

"No. Haven't got anything to say." said Angalo. He rapped on the Thing with his knuckles. "Right, Mr. Clever? If I'm not going to do the driving, who is?"

"Me."

"How?"

"There is a slot by the seat."

"I see it. It's the same size as you."

"Put me in it." Angalo shrugged, and picked up the Thing. It slid smoothly into the floor until only the top of it was showing.

"Look, er," said Angalo, "can't I do something? Operate the windshield wipers or something? I'd feel like a twerp sitting here doing nothing."

The Thing didn't seem to hear him. Its light flickered on and off for a moment, as if it were making itself comfortable in a mechanical kind of way. Then it said, in a much deeper voice than it had ever used before: "RIGHT."

Lights came on all over the Ship. They spread out from the Thing like a tide; panels lit up like little skies full of stars, big lights in the ceiling flickered on, there was a distant banging and fizzing as electricity was woken up, and the air began to smell of thunderstorms.

"It's like the Store at Christmas Fayre," said Gurder.

"Science!" breathed Angalo.

"ALL SYSTEMS IN WORKING ORDER," boomed the Thing. "NAME OUR DESTINATION."

"What?" said Masklin. "And don't shout."

"Where are we going?" said the Thing. "You have to name our destination."

"It's got a name already. It's called the quarry, isn't it?" said Masklin.

"Where is it?" said the Thing.

"It's..." Masklin waved an arm vaguely. "Well, it's over that way somewhere."

"Which way?"

"How should I know? How many ways are there?"

"Thing, are you telling us you don't know the way back to the quarry?" said Gurder.

"That is correct."

"We're lost?"

"No. I know exactly what planet we're on," said the Thing.

"We can't be lost," said Gurder. "We're here. We know where we are. We just don't know where we aren't."

"Can't you find the quarry if you go up high enough?" said Angalo. "You ought to be able to see it, if you go up high enough."

"Very well."

"Can I do it?" said Angalo. "Please?"

"Press down with your left foot and pull back on the green lever, then," said the Thing.

There wasn't so much a noise as a change in the type of silence. Masklin thought he felt heavy for a moment, but then the sensation passed.

The picture in the screen got smaller.

"Now, this is what I call proper flying," said Angalo, happily. "With real Science. No noise and none of that stupid flapping."

"Yes, where's Pion?" said Masklin.

"He wandered off," said Gurder. "I think he was going to get something to eat."

"On a machine that no nome has been on for fifteen thousand years?" said Masklin.

Gurder shrugged. "Well, maybe there's something at the back of a cupboard somewhere," he said. "I want a word with you, Masklin."

"Yes?" Gurder moved closely and glanced over his shoulder at Angalo, who was lying back in the control seat with a look of dreamy contentment on his face.

He lowered his voice.

"We shouldn't be doing this," he said. "I know it's a dreadful thing to say, after all we've been through. But this isn't just our Ship. It belongs to all nomes, everywhere."

He looked relieved when Masklin nodded.

"A year ago you didn't even believe there were any other nomes anywhere," Masklin said.

Gurder looked sheepish. "Yes. Well. That was then. This is now. I don't know what I believe in any more, except that there must be thousands of nomes out there we don't know about. There might even be other nomes living in Stores! We're just the lucky ones who had the Thing. So if we take the Ship away, there won't be any hope for them."

"I know, I know," said Masklin wretchedly. "But what can we do? We need the Ship right now. Anyway, how could we find these other nomes?"

"We've got the Ship!" said Gurder.

Masklin waved a hand at the screen, where the landscape was spreading out and becoming misty.

"It'd take forever to find nomes down there. You couldn't do it even with the Ship. You'd have to be on the ground. Nomes keep hidden! You nomes in the Store didn't know about my people, and we lived a few miles away. We'd never have found Pion's people except by accident. Besides" - he couldn't resist prodding Gurder gently - "there's a bigger problem too. You know what we nomes are like. Those other nomes probably wouldn't even believe in the Ship."