The Bromeliad 3 - Wings

Chapter 2

Concorde: It goes faster than a bullet and you get smoked salmon. - From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri.

Squeezing through a gap in the humans-walking-onto-planes pipe wasn't as hard as coming to terms with what was on the other side.

The floor of the sheds in the quarry had been bare boards or stamped earth. In the airport building it was squares of a sort of shiny stone.

But here ... Gurder flung himself face down and buried his nose in it.

"Carpet!" he said, almost in tears. "Carpet! I never thought I'd see you again!"

"Oh, get up," said Angalo, embarrassed at the Abbot acting like that in front of someone who, however much of a friend he was, hadn't been born a Store nome.

Gurder stood up awkwardly. "Sorry," he mumbled, brushing himself off.

"Don't know what possessed me there. It just took me back, that's all.

Real carpet. Haven't seen real carpet for months."

He blew his nose noisily. "We had some beautiful carpets in the Store, you know. Beautiful. Some of them had patterns on them."

Masklin looked up the pipe. It was like one of the Store's corridors, and was quite brightly lit.

"Let's move on," he said. "It's too exposed here. Where are all the humans, Thing?"

"They will be arriving shortly."

"How does it knoisV Gurder complained.

"It listens to other machines," said Masklin.

"There are also many computers on this plane," said the Thing.

"Well, that's nice," said Masklin vaguely. "You'll have someone to talk to, then."

"They are quite stupid," said the Thing, and managed to express disdain without actually having anything to express it with.

A few feet away the corritlor opened into a new space. Masklin could see a curtain, and what looked like the edge of a chair.

"All right, Angalo," he said. "Lead the way. I know you want to."

It was two minutes later.

The three of them were sitting under a seat.

Masklin had never really thought about the insides of aircraft. He'd spent days up on the cliff behind the quarry, watching them take off. Of course, he'd assumed there were humans inside. Humans got everywhere. Buthe'd never really thought about the insides. If ever there was anythingthat looked made up of outsides, it was a plane.

But it had been too much for Gurder. He was in tears.

"Electric light," he moaned. "And more carpets! And big soft seats!

They've even got antimacassars on them! And there isn't any mud anywhere!

There are even signs'."

"There, there," said Angalo helplessly, patting him on the shoulder. "Itwas a good Store, I know." He looked up at Masklin.

"You've got to admit it's unsettling," he said. "I was expecting ...

well, wires and pipes and exciting levers and things. Not somethinglike the Arnold Bros. Furnishings Department!"

"We shouldn't stay here," said Masklin. "There'll be humans all over theplace pretty soon. Remember what the Thing said."

They helped Gurder up and trotted under the rows of seats with himbetween them. But it wasn't like the Store in one important way, Masklin realized. There weren't many places to hide. In the Store there wasalways something to get behind or under or wriggle through.

He could already hear distant sounds. In the end they found a gap behinda curtain, in a part of the aircraft where there were no seats. Masklincrawled inside, pushing the Thing in front of him.

They weren't distant sounds now. They were very close. He turned hishead, and saw a human foot a few inches away.

At the back of the gap there was a hole in the metal wall where somethick wires passed through. It was just big enough for Angalo andMasklin, and big enough for a terrified Gurder with the two of thempulling on his arms. There wasn't too much room, but at least theycouldn't be seen.

They couldn't see, either. They lay packed together in the gloom, trying to make themselves comfortable on the wires.

After a while Gurder said, "I feel a bit better now."

Masklin nodded.

There were noises all around them. From somewhere far below came a series of metallic clanks. There was the mournful sound of human voices, and then a jolt.

"Thing?" he whispered.

"Yes?"

"What's happening?"

"The plane is getting ready to become airborne."

"Oh."

"Do you know what that means?"

"No. Not really."

"It is going to fly in the air. 'Borne' means to be carried, and 'air'

means air. To be borne in the air. Airborne."

Masklin could hear Angalo's breathing.

He settled himself as best he could between the metal wall and a thick bundle of wires, and stared into the darkness.

The nomes didn't speak. After a while there was a faint jerk and a sensation of movement.

Nothing else happened. It went on not happening.

Eventually Gurder, his voice trembling with terror, said, "Is it too late to get off, if we-?"

A sudden distant thundering noise finished the sentence for him. A dull rumbling shook everything around them very gently but very firmly.

Then there was a heavy pause, like the moment a ball must feel between the time it's thrown up and the time it starts to come down, and something picked up all three of them and slid them into a struggling heap.

The floor tried to become the wall.

The nomes hung on to one another, stared into one another's faces, and screamed.

After a while, they stopped. There didn't seem much point in continuing.

Besides, they were out of breath.

The floor very gradually became a proper floor again, and didn't show any further ambitions to become a wall.

Masklin pushed Angalo's foot off his neck.

"I think we're flying," he said.

"Is that what it was?" said Angalo weakly. "It looks kind of more graceful when you see it from the ground."

"Is anyone hurt?"

Gurder pulled himself upright.

"I'm all bruises," he said. He brushed himself down. And then, because there is no changing nomish nature, he added, "Is there any food around?"

They hadn't thought about food.

Masklin stared behind him into the tunnel of wires.

"Maybe we won't need any," he said, uncertainly. "How long will it take to get to Florida, Thing?"

"The captain has just said it will be many hours," said the Thing.*

[* An hour lasts nearly as long as half a day, to a nome.]

"We'll starve to death!" said Gurder.

"Maybe there's something to hunt?" said Angalo hopefully.

"I shouldn't think so," Masklin said. "This doesn't look a mouse kind ofplace."

"The humans'll have food," said Gurder. "Humans always have food."

"I knew you were going to say that," said Angalo.

"It's just common sense."

"I wonder if we can see out a window?" said Angalo. "I'd like to see howfast we're going. All the trees and things whizzing past, and so on?"

"Look," said Masklin, before things got out of hand. "Let's just wait fora while, eh? Everyone calm down. Have a bit of a rest. Then maybe we canlook for some food."

They settled down again. At least it was warm and dry. Back in the dayswhen he'd lived in a hole in a bank Masklin had spent far too much timecold and wet to turn up his nose at a chance to sleep warm and dry.

He dozed.

Airborne.

Air ... born ...

Perhaps there were hundreds of nomes who lived in the airplanes in thesame way that nomes had lived in the Store. Perhaps they got on withtheir lives under the carpeted floor somewhere, while they were whiskedto all the places Masklin had seen on the only map the nomes had everfound. It had been in a pocket diary, and the names of the faraway placeswritten on it were like magic-Africa, Australia, China, Equator, Printedin Hong Kong, Iceland... .

Perhaps they'd never looked out the windows. Perhaps they'd never knownthat they were moving at all.

He wondered if this was what Grimma had meant by all the stuff about thefrogs in the flower. She'd read it in a book. You could live your wholelife in some tiny place and think it was the whole world. The troublewas, he'd been angry. He hadn't wanted to listen.

Well, he was out of the flower now and no mistake.

The frog had brought some other young frogs to its spot among the leavesat the edge of the world of the flower.

They stared at the branch. There wasn't just one flower out there, therewere dozens, although the frogs weren't able to think like this becausefrogs can't count beyond one.

They saw lots of ones.

They stared at them. Staring is one of the few things frogs are good at.

Thinking isn't. It would be nice to say that the tiny frogs thought longand hard about the new flower, about life in the old flower, about theneed to explore, about the possibility that the world was bigger than a pool with petals around the edge.

In fact, what they thought was ... mipmip ... mipmip ... mipmip.

But what they felt was too big for one flower to contain.

Carefully, slowly, not at all certain why, they plopped down onto the branch.

There was a polite beeping from the Thing.

"You may be interested to know," it said, "that we've broken the sound barrier."

Masklin turned wearily to the others.

"All right, own up," he said. "Who broke it?"

"Don't look at me," said Angalo. "I didn't touch anything."

Masklin crawled to the edge of the hole and peered out.

There were human feet out there. Female human feet, by the look of it.

They usually were the ones with the less practical shoes.

You could learn a lot about humans by looking at their shoes. It was about all a nome had to look at, most of the time. The rest of the human was normally little more than the wrong end of a pair of nostrils, a long way up.

Masklin sniffed.

"There's food somewhere," he said.

"What kind?" said Angalo.

"Never mind what kind," said Gurder, pushing him out of the way.

"Whatever it is, I'm going to eat it."

"Get back!" Masklin snapped, pushing the Thing into Angalo's arms. "I'll go! Angalo, don't let him go!"

He darted out, ran for the curtain, and slid behind it. After a few seconds, he moved just enough to let one eye and a frowning eyebrow show.

The room was some sort of food place. Human females were taking trays of food out of the wall. Nomish sense of smell is sharper than a fox's; it was all Masklin could do not to dribble. He had to admit it, it was all very well hunting and growing things, but what you got wasn't a patch on the food you found around humans.

One of the females put the last tray on a trolley and wheeled it past Masklin. The wheels were almost as tall as he was.

As it squeaked past, he jumped out of his hiding place and leapt onto it, squeezing himself among the bottles. It was a stupid thing to do, he knew. It was just better than being stuck in a hole with a couple of idiots.

Rows and rows of shoes. Some black, some brown. Some with laces, some without. Quite a few of them without feet in them, because the humans had taken them off.

Masklin looked up as the trolley inched forward.

Rows and rows of legs. Some in skirts, but most in trousers.

Masklin looked up farther. Nomes rarely saw humans sitting down.

Rows and rows of bodies, topped with rows and rows of heads with faces at the front. Rows and rows of- Masklin crouched back among the bottles.

Grandson Richard, 39, was watching him.

It was the face in the newspaper. It had to be. There was the little beard, and the smiling mouth with lots of teeth in it. And the hair thatlooked as though it had been dramatically carved out of something shinyrather than grown in the normal way.

Grandson Richard, 39.

The face stared at him for a moment, and then looked away.

He can't have seen me, Masklin told himself. I'm hidden away here.

What will Gurder say when I tell him?

He'll go mad, that's what.

I think I'll keep it to myself for a while. That might be an amazingly good idea. We've got enough to worry about as it is.

Thirty-nine. Either there've been thirty-eight other Grandson Richards, and I don't think that's what it means, or it's a newspaper human way of saying he's thirty-nine years old. Nearly half as old as the Store. And the Store nomes say the Store is as old as the world. I know that can't be true, but ...

I wonder what it feels like to live nearly forever?

He burrowed farther into the things on the shelf. Mostly they were bottles, but there were a few bags containing knobbly things a bit smaller than Masklin's fist. He stabbed at the paper with his knife until he'd cut a hole big enough, and pulled one of them out.

It was a salted peanut. Well, it was a start.

He grabbed the packet just as a hand reached past.

It was close enough to touch.

It was close enough to touch him.

He could see the red of its fingernails as they slid by him, closed slowly over another packet of nuts, and withdrew.

It dawned on Masklin later that the giving-out-food female wouldn't have been able to see him. She just reached down into the tray for what she knew would be there, and this almost certainly didn't include Masklin.

That's what he decided later. At the time, with a human hand almostbrushing his head, it all looked a lot different. He took a running diveoff the trolley, rolled when he hit the carpet, and scurried under thenearest seat.

He didn't even wait to catch his breath. Experience had taught him thatit was when you stopped to catch your breath that things caught you. Hecharged from seat to seat, dodging giant feet, discarded shoes, droppednewspapers and bags. By the time he crossed the bit of aisle to the food- place, he was a blur even by nome standards. He didn't stop even when hereached the hole. He just leapt, and went through it without touching thesides.

"A peanut?" said Angalo. "Between three? That's not a mouthful each!"

"What do you suggest?" said Masklin, bitterly. "Do you want to go to thegiving-out-food female and say, there's three small hungry people downhere?"

Angalo stared at him. Masklin had got his breath back now, but was stillvery red in the face.

"You know, that could be worth a try," he said.

"What?"

"Well, if you were a human, would you expect to see nomes on a plane?" said Angalo.

"Of course I wouldn't."

"I bet you'd be amazed if you did see one, eh?"

"Are you suggesting we deliberately show ourselves to a human?" Gurdersaid suspiciously. "We've never done that, you know."

"I nearly did just now," said Masklin. "I won't do that again in ahurry!"

"We've always preferred to starve to death on one peanut, you mean?"

Gurder looked longingly at the piece of nut in his hand. They'd eatenpeanuts in the Store, of course. Around Christmas Fayre, when the FoodHall was crammed with food you didn't normally see in the other seasons; they made a nice end to a meal. Probably they made a nice start to a mealtoo. What they didn't make was a meal. "What's the plan?" he said, wearily.

One of the giving-out-food humans was pulling trays off a shelf when amovement made it look up. Its head turned very slowly.

Something small and black was being lowered down right by its ear.

It stuck tiny thumbs in small ears, wagged its fingers, and stuck out itstongue.

"Thrrrrrrrrp," said Gurder.

The tray in the human's hands crashed onto the floor in front of it. Itmade a long, drawn-out noise that sounded like a high-pitched foghorn, and backed away, raising its hands to its mouth. Finally it turned, very slowly, like a tree about to fall, and fled between the curtains.

When it came back, with another human being, the little figure had gone.

So had most of the food.

"I don't know when I last had smoked salmon," said Gurder happily.

"Mmmph," said Angalo.

"You're not supposed to eat it like that," said Gurder severely. "You're not supposed to shove it all in your mouth and then cut off whatever won't fit. Whatever will people think?"

" 'Sno people here," said Angalo indistinctly. " 'Sjust you an' Masklin."

Masklin cut the lid off a container of milk. It was practically nome-sized.

"This is more like it, eh?" said Gurder. "Proper food the natural way, out of tins and things. None of this having to clean the dirt off it, like in the quarry. And it's nice and warm in here too. It's the only way to travel. Anyone want some of this" -he prodded a dish vaguely, not sure of what was in it-"stuff?"

The others shook their heads. The dish contained something shiny and wobbly and pink with a cherry on it, and in some strange way it managed to look like something you wouldn't eat even if it was pushed onto your plate after a week's starvation diet.

"What does it taste like?" said Masklin, after Gurder had chewed a mouthful.

"Tastes like pink," said Gurder*.

[* Little dishes of strange wobbly stuff tasting like pink turn up in nearly every meal on all airplanes. No one knows why. There's probably some sort of special religious reason.]

"Anyone fancy the peanut to finish with?" said Angalo. He grinned. "No?

I'll chuck it away, shall I?"

"No!" said Masklin. They looked at him. "Sorry," he said. "I mean, you shouldn't. It's wrong to waste good food."

"It's wicked," said Gurder primly.

"Mmm. Don't know about wicked," said Masklin. "Never been very clear on wicked. But it's stupid. Put it in your pack. You never know when you might need it."

Angalo stretched his arms and yawned.

"A wash would be nice," he said.

"Didn't see any water," Masklin said. "There's probably a sink or a bathroom somewhere, but I wouldn't know where to start looking."

"Talking of bathrooms ..." said Angalo.

"Right down the other end of the pipe, please," said Gurder.

"And keep away from any wiring," volunteered the Thing. Angalo nodded ina puzzled fashion, and crawled away into the darkness.

Gurder yawned and stretched his arms.

"Won't the giving-out-food humans look for us?" he said.

"I don't think so," said Masklin. "Back when we used to live Outside I'msure humans saw us sometimes. I don't think they really believe theireyes. They wouldn't make those weird garden ornaments if they'd everseen a real nome."

Gurder reached into his robe and pulled out the picture of GrandsonRichard, 39. Even in the dim light in the pipe, Masklin recognized it asthe human in the seat. He hadn't got creases on his face from beingfolded up, and he wasn't made up of hundreds of tiny dots, but apart fromthat... .

"Do you think he's here somewhere?" said Gurder wistfully.

"Could be. Could be," said Masklin, feeling wretched. "But, look, Gurder... maybe Angalo goes a bit too far, but he could be right. MaybeGrandson Richard, 39, is just another human being, you know. Probablyhumans did build the Store just for humans. Your ancestors just moved inbecause, well, it was warm and dry. And-"

"I'm not listening, you know," said Gurder. "I'm not going to be toldthat we're just things like rats and mice. We're special."

"The Thing is quite definite about us coming from somewhere else, Gurder," said Masklin meekly.

The Abbot folded up the picture. "Maybe we did. Maybe we didn't," hesaid. "That doesn't matter."

"Angalo thinks it matters if it's true."

"Don't see why. There's more than one kind of truth." Gurder shrugged. "Imight say, you're just a lot of dust and juices and bones and hair, andthat's true. And I might say, you're something inside your head thatgoes away when you die. That's true too. Ask the Thing."

Colored lights flickered across the Thing's surface.

Masklin looked shocked.

"I've never asked it that sort of question," he said.

"Why not? It's the first question I'd ask."

"It'll probably say something like 'Does not compute' or 'Inoperativeparameters.' That's what it says when it doesn't know and doesn't want toadmit it. Thing?"

The Thing didn't reply. Its lights changed their pattern.

"Thing?" Masklin repeated.

"I am monitoring communications."

"It often does that when it's feeling bored," said Masklin to Gurder. "Itjust sits there listening to invisible messages in the air. Payattention, Thing. This is important. We want-"

The lights moved. A lot of them went red.

"Thing! We-"

The Thing made the little clicking noise that was the equivalent of clearing its throat.

"A nome has been seen in the pilot's cabin."

"Listen, Thing, we-What?"

"I repeat: A nome has been seen in the pilots cabin."

Masklin looked around wildly.

"Angalo?"

"That is an extreme probability," said the Thing.