The Bromeliad 2 - Diggers

Chapter 15

II. Thus ended the journey of the Cat, and thenomes fled, looking not behind.

-From the Book of Nome, Stranger Frogs I, v. II.

Dorcas clambered down awkwardly onto the Cat's oily deck. It was empty now, except for the bits of string and wood that the nomes had used.

They've dropped things just any old way, he thought, listening to the distant chattering of the nomes. It's not right, leaving litter. Poor old Cat deserves more than this. There was some sort of excitement going on outside, but he didn't pay it much attention.

He bumbled around for a bit, trying to coil up the string and push the wood into neat piles. He pulled down the wires that had let the Cat taste the electricity. He got down on his hands and knees and tried to rub out the muddy footprints. The Cat made noises, even with the engine stopped. Little pops and sizzles, and the occasional ping.

It was going to sleep again. Sleeping was something cats did a lot of, he'd heard. Dorcas sat down and leaned against the yellow metal. He didn't know what was going on. It was so far outside anything he'd ever seen before that his mind wasn't letting him worry about it. Perhaps that thing up there is just another machine, he thought wearily. A machine for making night come down suddenly.

He reached out and stroked the Cat. "Well done," he said.

Sacco and Nooty found him sitting with his head against the cab wall, staring vacantly at his feet. "Everyone's been looking for you!" Sacco said. "It's like an airplane without wings! It's just floating there in the air! So you must come and tell us what makes it go ... I say, are you all right?" "Hmm?"

"Are you all right?" said Nooty. "You look rather odd."

Dorcas nodded slowly. "Just a bit worn out," he said.

"Yes, but, you see, we need you," said Sacco insistently.

Dorcas groaned and allowed himself to be helped to his feet. He took a last look around the cab. "He really went, didn't he?" he said. "He really went very well. All things considered. For his age."

He tried to give Sacco a cheerful look.

"What are you talking about?" said Sacco.

"All that time in that shed. Since the world was made, perhaps. And I just greased him and fuelled him up and away he went," said Dorcas.

"The machine? Oh, yes. Well done," said Sacco.

"But-" Nooty pointed upward.

Dorcas shrugged.

"Oh, I'm not bothered about that," he said. "It's probably Masklin's doing. Perfectly simple explanation. Grimma is right. It's probably that flying thing he went off to get."

"But something has come out of it!" said Nooty.

"Not Masklin, you mean?"

"It's some kind of plant!"

Dorcas sighed. Always one thing after another. He patted the Cat again.

"Well, I care," he said.

He straightened up, and turned to the others. "All right," he said. "Show me."

It was in a metal pot in the middle of the floating platform. The nomes craned and tried to climb on one another's shoulders to look at it, and none of them knew what it was except for Grimma, who was staring at it with a strange quiet smile on her face. It was a branch from a tree. On the branch was a flower the size of a bucket.

If you climbed high enough, you could see that, held within its glistening petals, was a pool of water. And from the depths of the pool little yellow frogs stared up at the nomes. "Have you any idea what it is?" said Sacco.

Dorcas smiled. "Masklin's found out that it's a good idea to send a girl flowers," he said. "And I think everything's all right." He glanced at Grimma.

"Yes, but what is it?"

"I seem to remember it's called a bromeliad," said Dorcas. "It grows on the top of very tall trees in wet forests a long way away, and littlefrogs spend their whole lives in it. Your whole life in one flower.

Imagine that. Grimma once said she thought it was the most astonishingthing in the world."

Sacco bit his lip thoughtfully.

"Well, there's electricity," he said. "Electricity is quite astonishing."

"Or hydraulics," said Nooty, taking his hand. "You told me hydraulics was fascinating."

"Masklin must have got it for her," said Dorcas, ignoring them. "Very literal-minded lad, that lad. Very active imagination."

He stared from the flower to the Cat, looking small and old under the humming shadow of the ship. And felt, suddenly, quite cheerful. He was still tired enough to go to sleep standing up, but he felt his mind fizzing with ideas. Of course there were a lot of questions, but right now the answers didn't matter; it was enough just to enjoy the questions, and know that the world was full of astonishing things, and that he wasn't a frog. Or at least he was the kind of frog who was interested in how flowers grew and whether you could get to other flowers if you jumped hard enough. And just when you'd got out of the flower, and were feeling really proud of yourself, you'd look at the new, big, wide endless world around you. And eventually you'd notice that it had petals around the horizon. Dorcas grinned. "I'd very much like to know," he said, "what Masklin has been doing these past few weeks."