Wings (16 page)

The nomes looked at one another.

Gurder cast an apprehensive eye over his shoulder.

Then they all stared at the passages that radiated off the control room.

"Like alligators?" said Masklin.

"Worse."

"Er," Gurder said, "We did look in all the rooms, didn't we?"

"It's something they made up, Gurder. It's not real," said Masklin.

"Whoever would want to make up something like that?" "Humans would," said Masklin.

"Huh," said Angalo, nonchalantly trying to swivel around in the chair in case any tentacled things with teeth were trying to creep up on him. "I can't see why."

"I think I can. I've been thinking about humans a lot."

"Can't the Thing send a message to the Concorde drivers?" said Gurder. "Something like 'Don't worry, we haven't got any teeth and tentacles, guaranteed'?"

"They probably wouldn't believe us," said Angalo. "If I had teeth and tentacles all over the place that's just the sort of message I'd send. Cunning."

The Concorde screamed across the top of the sky, breaking the transatlantic record. The Ship drifted along behind it.

"I reckon," said Angalo, looking down, "that humans are just about intelligent enough to be crazy."

"I think," said Masklin, "that maybe they're intelligent enough to be lonely." The plane touched down with its tires screaming. Fire engines raced across the airport, and there were other vehicles behind them.

The great black ship shot over them, turned across the sky like a Frisbee, and slowed.

"There's the reservoir!" said Gurder. "Right under us! And that's the railway line! And that's the quarry! It's still there!" "Of course it's still there, idiot," muttered Angalo as he headed the Ship toward the hills, which were patchy with melting snow.

"Some of it," said Masklin.

A pall of black smoke hung over the quarry. As they got closer, they saw it was rising from a burning truck. There were more trucks around it, and also several humans, who started to run when they saw the shadow of the Ship.

"Lonely, eh?" snarled Angalo. "If they've hurt a single nome, they'll wish they'd never been born!"

"If they've hurt a single nome, they'll wish I'd never been born," said Masklin. "But I don't think anyone's down there. They wouldn't hang around if the humans came. And who set fire to the truck?"

"Yay!" said Angalo, waving a fist in the air.

Masklin scanned the landscape below them. Somehow he couldn't imagine people like Grimma and Dorcas sitting in holes, waiting for humans to take over. Trucks didn't just set fire to themselves. A couple of buildings looked damaged too. Humans wouldn't have done that, would they?

He stared at the field by the quarry. The gate had been smashed, and a pair of wide tracks led through the slush and mud.

"I think they got away in another truck," he said.

"What do you mean, yay?" said Gurder, lagging a bit behind the conversation.

"Across the fields?" said Angalo. "It'd get stuck, wouldn't it?" Masklin shook his head. Perhaps even a nome could have instincts. "Follow the tracks," he said urgently. "And quickly!"

"Quickly? Quickly? Do you know how difficult it is to make this thing go slow?" Angalo nudged a lever. The Ship lurched up the hillside, straining at the indignity of restraint.

They'd been up here before, on foot, months ago. It was hard to believe.

The hills were quite flat on the top, forming a kind of plateau overlooking the airport. There was the field where there had been potatoes. There was the thicket where they'd hunted, and the wood where they'd killed a fox for eating nomes.

And there... there was something small and yellow, rolling across the fields.

Angalo craned forward.

"Looks like some kind of a machine," he admitted, fumbling for levers without taking his eyes off the screen. "Weird kind of one, though." There were other things moving on the roads down there. They had flashing lights on top.

"Those cars are chasing it, do you think?" said Angalo.

"Maybe they want to talk to it about a burning truck," said Masklin. "Can you get to it before they do?" Angalo narrowed his eyes. "Listen, I think we can get to it before they do even if we go via Floridia." He found another lever and gave it a nudge.

There was the briefest flicker in the landscape, and the truck was now right in front of them.

"See?" he said.

"Move in more," said Masklin.

Angalo pressed a button.

"See, the screen can show you below -" he began.

"There's nomes!" said Gurder.

"Yeah, and those cars are running away!" shouted Angalo. "That's it, run away! Otherwise it's teeth and tentacles time!"

"So long as the nomes don't think that too," said Gurder.

"Masklin, do you think -" Once again, Masklin wasn't there.

I should have thought about this before, he thought.

The piece of branch was thirty times longer than a nome. They'd been keeping it under lights, and it seemed to be growing quite happily with one end in a pot of special plant water. The nomes who had once flown in the Ship had grown lots of plants that way.

Pion helped him drag the pot toward the hatch. The frogs watched Masklin with interest.

When it was positioned as well as the two of them could manage, Masklin let the hatch open. It wasn't one that slid aside. The ancient nomes had used it as some kind of elevator, but it didn't have wires - it went up and down by some force as mysterious as auntie's gravy or whatever that was.

It dropped away. Masklin looked down and saw the yellow truck roll to a halt.

When he straightened up, Pion was giving him a puzzled look.

"Flower is a message?" said the boy.

"Yes. Kind of."

"Not using words?"

"No," said Masklin.

"Why not?" Masklin shrugged.

"Don't know how to say them."

It nearly ends there... But it shouldn't end there.

Nomes swarmed all over the Ship. If there were any monsters with tentacles and teeth, they'd have been overwhelmed by sheer force of nome.

Young nomes filled the control room, where they were industriously trying to press buttons. Dorcas and his trainee engineers had disappeared in search of the Ship's engines. Voices and laughter echoed along the argy corridors.

Masklin and Grimma sat by themselves, watching the frogs in their flower.

"I had to see if it was true," said Masklin.

"The most wonderful thing in the world," said Grimma. "You know, a bromeliad looks quite different from what I expected."

"No. I think there are probably much more wonderful things in the world," said Masklin. "But it's pretty good, all the same."

Grimma told him about events in the quarry, the fight with the humans, and the stealing of the Cat to escape. Her eyes gleamed when she talked about fighting humans.

Masklin looked at her with his mouth open in admiration. She was muddy, her dress was torn, her hair looked like it had been combed with a hedge, but she crackled with so much internal energy that she nearly was throwing off sparks.

It's a good thing we got here in time, he thought. Humans ought to thank me.

"What are we going to do now?" she said.

"I don't know," said Masklin. "Try to find home, I suppose. Or a home. According to the Thing, there's lots of worlds out there with nomes on them. Just nomes, I mean. Or we can find one all to ourselves. A new home. That might be even better."

"You know," said Grimma, "I think the Store nomes would be happier just staying on the Ship. That's why they like it so much. It's like being in the Store. All the Outside is outside."

"Then I'd better go along to make sure they remember that there is an Outside. It's sort of my job, I suppose," said Masklin. "And, when we've found somewhere, I want to bring the Ship back."

"Why? What'll be here?" said Grimma.

"Other nomes."

"Oh, yes," said Grimma.

"And humans," said Masklin. "We should talk to them." "What?"

"They really want to believe in... I mean, they spend all their time making up stories about things that don't exist. They think it's just themselves in the world. We never thought like that. We always knew there were humans. They're terribly lonely and don't know it." He waved his hands vaguely. "It's just that I think we might get along with them," he finished.

"They'd turn us into pixies!"

"Not if we come back in the Ship. If there's one thing even humans can tell, it's that the Ship isn't very pixieish."

Grimma reached out and took his hand. "Well... if that's what you really want to do."

"It is."

"I'll come back with you."

There was a sound behind them. It was Gurder. The Abbot had a bag slung around his neck and had the drawn, determined look of someone who is going to See It Through no matter what.

"Er. I've come to say good-bye," he said.

"What do you mean?" said Masklin.

"I heard you say you're coming back in the Ship?"

"Yes, but -"

"Please don't argue." Gurder looked around. "I've been thinking about this ever since we got on the Ship. There are other nomes out there. Someone ought to tell them about the Ship coming back. We can't take them now, but someone ought to find all the other nomes in the world and make sure that they know about the Ship. Someone ought to be telling them about what's really true. It should be me, don't you think? I've got to be useful for something."

"All by yourself'?" said Masklin.

Gurder rummaged in the bag.

"No, I'm taking the Thing," he said, producing the black cube.

"Er -" Masklin began.

"Don't worry," said the Thing. "I have copied myself into the Ship's own computers. I can be here and there at the same time."

"It's something I really want to do," said Gurder helplessly.

Masklin thought about arguing and then thought, Why? Gurder will probably be happier like this. Anyway, it's true. This Ship belongs to all nomes. We're just borrowing it for a while. So Gurder's right. Someone's got to find the rest of them, wherever they are in the world, and tell them the truth about nomes. I can't think of anyone better for the job than Gurder. It's a big world. You need someone really ready to believe really hard.

"Do you want anyone to go with you?" he said.

"No. I expect I'll find some nomes out there to help me. I've been talking to Pion." He leaned closer. "To tell the truth," he said, "I'm looking forward to it."

"Er. Yes. There's a lot of world, though," said Masklin. "You can't be sure you'll find any help."

"I'll have to hope, then."

"Well... if you're sure..." said Masklin doubtfully.

"Yes. More sure than anything I can remember," said Gurder. "And I've been pretty sure of a lot of things in my time, as you know."

"We'd better find somewhere suitable to set you down," said Masklin.

"That's right," said Gurder. He tried to look brave. "Somewhere with a lot of geese," he said.

They left him at sunset, by a lake.

It was a brief parting. If the Ship stayed anywhere for more than a few minutes now, humans would flock toward it.

"You were wrong to let him go," said Grimma as they closed the hatch. "He doesn't even know how to steer a goose!"

"I told him that, and he said that Pion gave him a few hints and if he couldn't find any goose nomes, then he'd learn himself," said Masklin. "He said that if the Floridians could do it, then he could too. He was very definite about it."

"He'd learn? Gurder? Just like that?" said Grimma.

"Well, you learned how to drive the Cat," said Masklin.

"Huh! That was different. I had to."

"Maybe there are things he has to do too. He's got a chance. Why should we try to stop him?"

"But we're his friends!"

"That's what I mean," said Masklin.

The last they saw of Gurder was a small, waving figure on the shore. And then there was just a lake turning into a green dot on a dwindling landscape. A world unfolded, with one invisible nome in the middle of it. And then there was nothing.

The control room was full of nomes watching the landscape unroll as the Ship rose.

Grimma stared at it.

"I never realised it looked like that," said Grimma. "There's so much of it!"

"It's pretty big," said Masklin.

"You'd think one world would be big enough for all of us," said Grimma.

"Oh, I don't know," said Masklin. "Maybe one world isn't big enough for anyone. Where are we heading, Angalo?"

Angalo rubbed his hands and pulled every lever right back.

"So far up," he said, with satisfaction, "that there is no down." The Ship curved away, toward the stars.

Below, the world stopped unrolling because it had reached its edges, and became a black disc against the sun.

Nomes and frogs looked down on it.

And the sunlight caught it and made it glow around the rim, sending rays up into the darkness, so that it looked exactly like a flower.

TERRY PRATCHETT is the author of the immensely satisfying group of Discworld novels, which includes Mort, Wyrd Sisters, and Equal Rites. Although these books were intended for adults, they have a devoted following among younger readers as well. He is also co-author of the highly acclaimed fantasy novel Good Omens.

Terry Pratchett's body lives in England. It says that the whereabouts of his mind is probably not locatable in any normal atlas.