The Bromeliad 3 - Wings

Chapter 1

Airports: A place where people hurry up and wait.

-From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the EnquiringYoung Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri.

Let the eye of your imagination be a camera... .

This is the universe, a glittering ball of galaxies like the ornament onsome unimaginable Christmas tree.

Find a galaxy... . Focus.

This is a galaxy, swirled like the cream in a cup of coffee, everypinpoint of light a star.

Find a star... . Focus.

This is a solar system, where planets barrel through the darkness aroundthe central fires of the sun. Some planets hug close, hot enough to meltlead. Some drift far out, where the comets are born.

Find a blue planet ... Focus.

This is a planet. Most of it is covered in water. It's called Earth.

Find a country... . Focus... . Blues and greens and browns under thesun, and here's a pale oblong, which is ... focus ... an airport, aconcrete hive for silver bees. There's a ... focus ... building full ofpeople and noise, and ... focus ... a hall of lights and bustle, and ... focus ... a. bin full of rubbish, and ... focus ... a pair oftiny eyes... .

Focus... . Focus... . Focus... . Click!

Masklin slid cautiously down an old burger carton.

He'd been watching humans. Hundreds and hundreds of humans. It wasbeginning to dawn on him that getting on a jet plane wasn't like stealinga truck.

Angalo and Gurder had nestled deep into the rubbish and were gloomilyeating the remains of a cold, greasy french fry.

This has come as a shock to all of us, Masklin thought.

I mean, take Gurder. Back in the Store he was the Abbot. He believed thatArnold Bros. made the Store for nomes. And he still thinks there's some sort of Arnold Bros. somewhere, watching over us, because we wereimportant. And now we're out here and all we've found is that nomesaren't important at all... .

And there's Angalo. He doesn't believe in Arnold Bros., but he likes tothink Arnold Bros. exists just so that he can go on not believing inhim.

And there's me.

I never thought it would be this hard.

I thought jet planes were just trucks with more wings and less wheels.

There's more humans in this place than I've ever seen before. How can we find Grandson Richard, 39, in a place like this?

I hope they're going to save me some of that french fry.

Angalo looked up.

"Seen him?" he said, sarcastically.

Masklin shrugged. "There are lots of humans with beards," he said. "They all look the same to me."

"I told you," said Angalo. "Blind faith never works." He glared at Gurder.

"He could have gone already," said Masklin. "He could have walked right past me."

"So let's get back," said Angalo. "People will be missing us. We've made the effort, we've seen the airport, we've nearly got stepped on dozens of times. Now let's get back to the real world."

"What do you think, Gurder?" said Masklin.

The Abbot gave him a long, despairing look.

"I don't know," he said. "I really don't know. I'd hoped ..."

His voice trailed off. He looked so downcast that even Angalo patted him on the shoulder.

"Don't take it so hard," he said. "You didn't really think some sort of Grandson Richard, 39, was going to swoop down out of the sky and carry us off to Florida, did you? Look, we've given it a try. It hasn't worked.

Let's go home."

"Of course I didn't think that, " said Gurder irritably. "I just thought that ... maybe in some way ... there'd be a way."

"The world belongs to humans. They built everything. They run everything. We might as well accept it," said Angalo.

Masklin looked at the Thing. He knew it was listening. Even though it wasjust a small black cube, it somehow always looked more alert when it waslistening.

The trouble was, it only spoke when it felt like it. It'd always give youjust enough help, and no more. It seemed to be testing him the wholetime.

Somehow, asking the Thing for help was like admitting that you'd run outof ideas. But ...

"Thing," he said, "I know you can hear me, because there must be loadsof electricity in this building. We're at the airport. We can't findGrandson Richard, 39. We don't know how to start looking. Please helpus."

The Thing stayed silent.

"If you don't help us," said Masklin quietly, "we'll go back to thequarry and face the humans, but that won't matter to you because we'llleave you here. We really will. And no nomes will ever find you again.

There will never be another chance. We'll die out, there will be no morenomes anywhere, and it will be because of you. And in years and years tocome you'll be all alone and useless and you'll think 'Perhaps I shouldhave helped Masklin when he asked me,' and then you'll think 'If I had mytime all over again, I would have helped him.' Well, Thing, imagine allthat has happened and you've magically got your wish. Help us."

"It's a machine!" snapped Angalo. "You can't blackmail a machine!"

One small red light lit up on the Thing's black surface.

"I know you can tell what other machines are thinking," said Masklin.

"But can you tell what nomes are thinking? Read my mind, Thing, if youdon't think I'm serious. You want nomes to act intelligently. Well, I amacting intelligently. I'm intelligent enough to know when I need help. Ineed help now. And you can help. I know you can. If you don't help usnow, we'll leave right now and forget you ever existed."

A second light came on, very faintly.

Masklin stood up, and nodded to the other.

"All right," he said. "Let's go."

The Thing made a little electronic noise, which was the machine'sequivalent of a nome clearing his throat.

"How can I be of assistance?" it said.

Angalo grinned at Gurder.

Masklin sat down again.

"Find Grandson Richard Arnold, 39," he said.

"This will take a long time, " said the Thing.

"Oh."

A few lights moved on the Thing's surface. Then it said, "I have locateda Richard Arnold, aged 39. He has just gone into the departure lounge forFlight 205 to Miami, Florida."

"That didn't take a very long time," said Masklin.

"It was three hundred microseconds," said the Thing. "That's long."

"I don't think I understood all of it too," Masklin added.

"Which parts didn 't you understand?"

"Nearly all of them," said Masklin. "All the bits after 'gone into.'"

"Someone with the right name is here and waiting in a special room to get on a big silver bird that flies in the sky to go to a place called Florida," said the Thing.

"What big silver bird?" said Angalo.

"It means jet plane. It's being sarcastic," said Masklin.

"Yeah? How does it know all this stuff?" said Angalo, suspiciously.

"This building is full of computers," said the Thing.

"What, like you?"

The Thing managed to look offended. "They are very, very primitive," it said. "But I can understand them. If I think slowly enough. Their job is to know where humans are going."

"That's more than most humans do," said Angalo.

"Can you find out how we can get to him?" said Gurder, his face alight.

"Hold on, hold on," said Angalo, quickly. "Let's not rush into things here."

"We came here to find him, didn't we?" said Gurder.

"Yes! But what do we actually do?"

"Well, of course, we ... we ... that is, we'll ..."

"We don't even know what a departure lounge is."

"The Thing said it's a room where humans wait to get on an airplane," said Masklin.

Gurder prodded Angalo with an accusing finger.

"You're frightened, aren't you?" he said. "You're frightened that if we see Grandson Richard, 39, it'll mean there really is an Arnold Bros. andyou'll have been wrong! You're just like your father. He could neverstand being wrong, either!"

"I'm frightened about you," said Angalo. "Because you'll see thatGrandson Richard, 39, is just a human. Arnold Bros. was just a human too.

Or two humans. They just built the Store for humans. They didn't even know about nomes! And you can leave my father out of this too."

The Thing opened a small hatch on its top. It did that sometimes. Whenthe hatches were shut you couldn't see where they were, but whenever theThing was really interested in something it opened up and extended asmall silver dish on a pole, or a complicated arrangement of pipes.

This time it was a piece of wire mesh on a metal rod. It started to turn, slowly.

Masklin picked it up.

While the other two argued he said, quietly, "Do you know where thislounge thing is?"

"Yes, " said the Thing.

"Let's go, then."

Angalo looked around.

"Hey, what are you doing?" he said.

Masklin ignored him. He said to the Thing, "And do you know how much timewe have before he starts going to Florida?"

"About half an hour."

Nomes live ten times faster than humans. They're harder to see than ahigh-speed mouse.

That's one reason why most humans hardly ever see them.

The other is that humans are very good at not seeing things they knowaren't there. And since sensible humans know that there are no such things as four-inch-high people, a nome who doesn't want to be seenprobably won't be seen.

So no one noticed three tiny blurs darting across the floor of theairport building. They dodged the rumbling wheels of luggage carts. Theyshot between the legs of slow-moving humans. They skidded aroundchairs. They became nearly invisible as they crossed a huge, echoingcorridor.

And they disappeared behind a potted plant.

It has been said that everything everywhere affects everything else.

This may be true.

Or perhaps the world is just full of patterns.

For example, in a tree nine thousand miles away from Masklin, high on acloudy mountainside, was a plant that looked like one large flower. Itgrew wedged in a fork of trees, its roots dangling in the air to trapwhat nourishment they could from the mists. Technically, it was anepiphytic bromeliad, although not knowing this made very little difference to the plant.

Water condensed into a tiny pool in the center of the bloom.

And there were frogs living in it.

Very, very small frogs.

They had such a tiny life cycle, it still had training wheels on it.

They hunted insects among the petals. They laid their eggs in the central pool. Tadpoles grew up and became more frogs. And they made more tadpoles. And each eventually died, and sank down and joined the compost at the base of the leaves, which, in fact, helped nourish the plant.

And this had been the way things were for as far back as the frogs could remember*.

[* About three seconds. Frogs don't have good memories.]

Except that on this day, while it hunted for flies, one frog lost its way and crawled around the side of one of the outermost petals, or possibly leaves, and saw something it had never seen before.

It saw the universe.

More precisely, it saw the branch stretching away into the mists.

And several yards away, glistening with droplets of moisture in a solitary shaft of sunlight, was another flower.

The frog sat and stared.

"Hngh! Hngh! Hngh!"

Gurder leaned against the wall and panted like a hot dog on a sunny day.

Angalo was almost as badly out of breath, but was going red in the face trying not to show it.

"Why didn't you tell us!" he demanded.

"You were too busy arguing," said Masklin. "So I knew the only way to get you running was to start moving."

"Thank ... you ... very much," Gurder heaved.

"Why aren't you puffed out?" said Angalo.

"I'm used to running fast," said Masklin, peering around the plant.

"Okay, Thing. Now what?"

"Along this corridor," said the Thing.

"It's full of humans!" squeaked Gurder.

"Everywhere's full of humans. That's why we're doing this," said Masklin.

He paused, and then added, "Look, Thing, isn't there any other way we can go? Gurder nearly got squashed just now."

Colored lights moved in complicated patterns across the Thing. Then it said, "What is it you want to achieve?"

"We must find Grandson Richard, 39," panted Gurder.

"No. Going to the Florida place is the important thing," said Masklin.

"It isn't!" said Gurder. "I don't want to go to any Florida!"

Masklin hesitated. Then he said, "This probably isn't the right time to say this, but I haven't been totally honest with you."

He told them about the Thing, and space, and the Ship in the sky. Around them there was the endless thundering noise of a building full of busy humans.

Eventually Gurder said, "You're not trying to find Grandson Richard, 39, at all?"

"I think he's probably very important," said Masklin hurriedly. "Butyou're right. At Florida there's a place where they have a sort of jetplane that goes straight up, to put kind of bleeping radio things in thesky."

"Oh, come on," said Angalo. "You can't just put things in the sky! They'd fall down."

"I don't really understand it myself," Masklin admitted. "But if you goup high enough, there is no down. I think. Anyway, all we have to do isgo to Florida and put the Thing on one of these going-up jets and itcan do the rest, it says."

"All?" said Angalo.

"It can't be harder than stealing a truck," said Masklin.

"You're not suggesting we steal a plane?" said Gurder, by this time totally horrified.

"Wow!" said Angalo, his eyes lighting up as if by some internal power source. He loved vehicles of all sorts-especially when they were traveling fast.

"You would, too, wouldn't you?" said Gurder accusingly.

"Wow!" said Angalo again. He seemed to be looking at a picture only he could see.

"You're mad," said Gurder.

"No one said anything about stealing a plane," said Masklin quickly. "We aren't going to steal a plane. We're just going for a ride on one, I hope."

"Wow!"

"And we're not going to try to drive it, Angalo!"

Angalo shrugged.

"All right," he said. "But suppose I'm on it, and the driver becomes ill, then I expect I'll have to take over. I mean, I drove the Truck pretty well-"

"You kept running into things!" said Gurder.

"I was learning. Anyway, there's nothing to run into in the sky except clouds, and they look pretty soft," said Angalo.

"There's the ground^

"Oh, the ground wouldn't be a problem. It'd be too far away."

Masklin tapped the Thing. "Do you know where the jet plane is that's going to Florida?"

"Yes."

"Lead us there, then. Avoiding as many humans as you can."

"And where does the orange juice come into all this?" said Gurder.

"I'm not too sure about the orange juice bit," said Masklin.

It was raining softly, and because it was early evening, lights were coming on around the airport.

Absolutely no one heard the faint tinkle as a little ventilation grille dropped off an outside wall.

Three blurred shapes lowered themselves down onto the concrete and sped away, toward the planes.

Angalo looked up. And up some more. And there was still more up to come.

He ended up with his head craned right back.

He was nearly in tears.

"Oh, wow!" he kept saying.

"It's too big," muttered Gurder, trying not to look. Like most of the nomes who had been born in the Store, he hated looking up and not seeing a ceiling. Angalo was the same, but more than being Outside he hated not going fast.

"I've seen them go up in the sky," said Masklin. "They really do fly.

Honestly."

"Wow!"

It loomed over them, so big that you had to keep on stepping back and back to see how big it was. Rain glistened on it. The airport lights made smears of green and white bloom on its flanks. It wasn't a thing, it was a bit of shaped sky.

"Of course, they look smaller when they're a long way off," Masklin muttered.

He stared up at the plane. He'd never felt smaller in his life.

"I want one," moaned Angalo, clenching his fists. "Look at it. It looks as though it's going too fast even when it's standing still!"

"How do we get on it, then?" said Gurder.

"Can't you just see their faces back home if we turned up with this?" said Angalo.

"Yes. I can. Horribly clearly," said Gurder. "But how do we get on it?"

"We could ..." Angalo began. He hesitated. "Why did you have to ruin everything?" he snapped.

"There's the holes where the wheels stick through," said Masklin. "I think we could climb up there."

'Wo," said the Thing, which was tucked under Masklin's arm. "You would not be able to breathe. You must be properly inside. Where the planes go, the air is thin."

"I should hope so," said Gurder, stoutly. "That's why it's air."

"You would not be able to breathe," said the Thing patiently.

"Yes, I would," said Gurder. "I've always been able to breathe."

"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You gets lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."

"Why not?" said Gurder.

"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."

Masklin waded through the puddles on the concrete so that he could see down the far side of the aircraft. Some way away a couple of humans wereusing some sort of machines to load boxes into a hole in the side of theplane. He walked back, around the huge tires, and squinted up at a long, high tube that stretched from the building.

He pointed.

"I think that's how humans are loaded onto it," he said.

"What, through a pipe? Like water?" said Angalo.

"It's better than standing out here getting wet, anyway," said Gurder.

"I'm soaked through already."

"There are stairs and wires and things," said Masklin. "It shouldn't be too difficult to climb up there. There's bound to be a gap we can slip in by." He sniffed. "There always is," he added, "when humans build things."

"Let's do it!" said Angalo. "Oh, wow!"

"But you're not to try to steal it," said Masklin, as they helped the slightly plump Gurder lumber into a run. "It's going where we want to go anyway-"

"Not where I want to go," moaned Gurder. "I want to go home!"

"And you're not to try to drive it. There's not enough of us. Anyway, I expect it's a lot more complicated than a truck. It's a-do you know what it's called. Thing?"

"A Concorde."

"There," said Masklin. "It's a Concorde. Whatever that is. And you've got to promise not to steal it."