Wings (4 page)

"Thing?" Masklin repeated.

"I am monitoring communications."

"It often does that when it's feeling bored," said Masklin to Gurder. "It just sits there listening to invisible messages in the air. Pay attention, 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.

TRAVELING HUMANS: Large, nomelike creatures. Many humans spend a lot of time travelling from place to place, which is odd because there are usually too many humans at the place they're going to anyway. Also see under Animals, Intelligence, Evolution, and Custard.

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

The sound of Masklin's and Gurder's voices echoed up and down the pipe as they scrambled over the wires.

"I thought he was taking too long!"

"You shouldn't have let him go off by himself! You know what he's like about driving things!"

"I shouldn't have let him?" "He's just got no sense of - which way now? We're been searching for ages."

Angalo had said he thought the inside of a plane would be a mass of wires and pipes. He was nearly right. The nomes squeezed their way through a narrow, cable-hung world under the floor.

"I'm too old for this! There comes a time in a nome's life when he shouldn't crawl around the inside of terrible flying machines!"

"How many time have you done it?"

"Once too often!"

"We are getting closer," said the Thing.

"This is what comes of showing ourselves! It's a Judgement," declared Gurder.

"Whose?" said Masklin grimly, helping him up.

"What do you mean?'

"There has to be someone to make a judgement!"

"I meant just a judgement in general!"

Masklin stopped. "Where to now, Thing?"

"The message told the giving-out-food humans that a strange little creature was on the flight deck," said the Thing. "That is where we are. There are many computers here."

"They're talking to you, are they?"

"A little. They are like children. Mostly they listen," said the Thing smugly. "They are not very intelligent."

"What are we going to do?" said Gurder.

"We're going to-" Masklin hesitated. The word "rescue" was looking up somewhere in the sentence ahead.

It was a good, dramatic word.

He longed to say it. The trouble was that there was another, simpler, nastier word a little farther beyond.

It was "how"?

"I don't think they'd try to hurt him," he said, hoping it was true. "Maybe they'll put him somewhere. We ought to find somewhere where we can see what's happening." He looked helplessly at the wires and intricate bits of metal in front of them.

"You'd better let me lead, then," said Gurder, in a matter-of-fact voice.

"Why?"

"You might be very good at wide-open spaces," said the Abbot, pushing past him. "But in the Store we know all about getting around inside things." He rubbed his hands together.

"Right," he said, and then grabbed a cable and slid through a gap Masklin hadn't even noticed was there.

"Used to do this sort of thing when I was a boy," he said. "We used to get up to all sorts of tricks."

"Yes?" said Masklin.

"Down this way, I think. Mind the wires. Oh, yes. Up and down the elevator shafts, in and out of the telephone switchboard -"

"I thought you always said kids spent far too much time running around and getting into mischief these days?"

"Ah. Yes. Well, that's juvenile delinquency," said Gurder sternly. "It's quite different from our youthful high spirits. Let's try up here." T

hey crawled between two warm metal walls. There was daylight ahead.

Masklin and Gurder lay down and pulled themselves forward.

There was an odd-shaped room, not a lot bigger than the cab of the Truck itself. Like the cab, it was really just a space where the human drivers fitted into the machinery. There was a lot of that.

It covered the walls and ceiling. Lights and switches, dials and levers. Masklin thought, if Dorcas were here, we'd never get him to leave. Angalo's here somewhere, and we want him to leave.

There were two humans kneeling on the floor. One of the giving-out-food females was standing by them. There was a lot of mooing and growling going on.

"Human talking," muttered Masklin. "I wish we could understand it."

"Very well," said the Thing. "Stand by."

"You can understand human noises?"

"Certainly. They 're only nome noises slowed down."

"What? What? You never told us that! You never told us that before!"

"There are many billions of things I have not told you. Where would you like me to start?"

"You can start by telling me what they're saying now," said Masklin. "Please?"

"One of the humans has just said, 'It must have been a mouse or something,' and the other one said, 'You show me a mouse wearing clothes, and I'll admit it was a mouse.' And the giving-out-food female said, 'It was no mouse I saw. It blew a raspberry at me (exclamation).' "

"What's a raspberry?"

"The small red fruit of the plant Rubus idaeus."

Masklin turned to Gurder. "Did you?"

"Me? What fruit? Listen, if there'd been any fruit around I'd have eaten it. I just went 'thrrrrrrrrp.'"

"One of the humans has just said, 'I looked around and there it was, staring out the window.'"

"That's Angalo all right," said Gurder.

"Now the other kneeling-down human has said, Well, whatever it is, it's behind this panel and it can't go anywhere.'"

"It's taking off a bit of the wall!" said Masklin. "Oh, no! It's reaching inside!" The human mooed.

"The human said, 'It bit me! The little devil bit me!' " said the Thing, conversationally.

"Yep. That's Angalo," said Gurder. "His father was like that too. A fighter in a tight corner."

"But they don't know what they've got!" said Masklin urgently. "They've seen him, but he ran away! They're arguing about it! They don't really believe in nomes! If we can get him out before he's caught, they're bound to think it was a mouse or something!"

"I suppose we could get around there inside the walls," said Gurder. "But it'd take too long." Masklin looked desperately around the cabin. Besides the three people trying to catch Angalo there were two humans up at the front. They must be the drivers, he thought.

"I'm right out of ideas," he said. "Can you think of anything, Thing?"

"There is practically no limit to what I can think of."

"I mean, is there anything you can do to help us rescue Angalo?"

"Yes."

"You'd better do it, then."

"Yes." A moment later they heard the low clanging of alarms. Lights began to flash. The drivers shouted and leaned forward and started doing things to switches.

"What's going on?" said Masklin.

"It is possible that the humans are startled that they are no longer flying this machine," said the Thing.

"They're not? Who is, then?" The lights rippled smoothly across the Thing.

"l am."

One of the frogs fell off the branch, and disappeared quietly into the leafy canopy far below. Since very small light animals can fall a long way without being hurt, it's quite likely that it survived in the forest world under the tree and had the second most interesting experience any tree frog has ever had.

The rest of them crawled onward. They were going to have the most interesting experience any frog ever had anywhere, one which would go down in frog history and be remembered for... maybe even for minutes.

Masklin helped Gurder along another metal channel full of wires. Overhead, they could hear human feet and the growling of humans in trouble.

"I don't think they're very happy about it," said Gurder.

"But they haven't got time to look for something that was probably a mouse," said Masklin.

"It's not a mouse, it's Angalo!" "But afterward they'll think it was a mouse. I don't think humans want to know things that disturb them."

"Sound just like nomes to me," said Gurder.

Masklin looked at the Thing under his arm.

"Are you really driving the Concorde?" he said.

"Yes."

"I thought to drive things you had to turn wheels and change gears and things?" said Masklin.

"That is all done by machines. The humans press buttons and turn wheels just to tell machines what to do."

"So what are you doing, then?"

"I," said the Thing, "am being in charge."

Masklin listened to the muted thunder of the engines.

"Is that hard?" he said.

"Not in itself. However, the humans keep trying to interfere." "I think we'd better find Angalo quickly, then," said Gurder. "Come on." They inched their way along another cable tunnel.

"They ought to thank us for letting our Thing do their job for them," said Gurder solemnly.

"I don't think they see it like that, exactly," said Masklin.

"We are flying at a height of 55,000 feet at 1,352 miles per hour," said the Thing.

When they didn't comment, it added, "That's very high and very fast."

"That's good," said Masklin, who realised that some sort of remark was expected.

"Very, very fast." The two nomes squeezed through the gap between a couple of metal plates.

"Faster than a bullet, in fact."

"Amazing," said Masklin.

"Twice the speed of sound in this atmosphere," the Thing went on.

"Wow."

"I wonder if I can put it another way," said the Thing, and it managed to sound slightly annoyed. "It could get from the Store to the quarry in under fifteen seconds."

"Good job we didn't meet it coming the other way, then," said Masklin.

"Oh, stop teasing it," said Gurder. "It wants you to tell it it's a good boy - Thing," he corrected himself.

"I do not," said the Thing, rather more quickly than usual. "I was merely pointing out that this is a very specialised machine and requires skilful control."

"Perhaps you shouldn't talk so much, then," said Masklin.

The Thing rippled its lights at him.

"That was nasty," said Gurder.

"Well, I've spent a year doing what the Thing's told me and I've never had so much as a 'thank you,'" said Masklin. "How high are 55,000 feet, anyway?"

"Ten miles. Twice as far as the distance from the Store to the quarry."

Gurder stopped. "Up?" he said. "We're that far ?" He looked down at the floor.

"Oh," he said.

"Now, don't you start," said Masklin quickly.

"We've got enough problems with Angalo. Stop holding on to the wall like that!" Gurder had gone white.

"We must be as high as all those fluffy white cloud things," he breathed.

"No," said the Thing.

"That's some comfort, then," said Gurder.

"They 're all a long way below us."

"Oh." Masklin grabbed the Abbot's arm.

"Angalo, remember?" he said.

Gurder nodded slowly and inched his way forward, holding on to things with his eyes closed.

"We mustn't lose our heads," said Masklin. "Even if we are up so high." He looked down. The metal below him was quite solid. You needed to use imagination to see through it to the ground below.

The trouble was that he had a very good imagination.

"Ugh," he said. "Come on, Gurder. Give me your hand."

"It's right in front of you."

"Sorry. Didn't see it with my eyes shut." They spent what seemed like ages cautiously moving up and down among the wiring, until eventually Gurder said, "It's no good. There isn't a hole big enough to get through. He'd have found it if there was."

"Then we've got to find a way into the cab and get him out that way," said Masklin.

"With all those humans in there?"

"They'll be too busy to notice us. Right, Thing?"

"Right."

There is a place so far up there is no down. A little lower, a white dart seared across the top of the sky, outrunning the night, overtaking the sun, crossing in a few hours an ocean that was once the edge of the world.

Masklin lowered himself carefully to the floor and crept forward. The humans weren't even looking in his direction.

I hope the Thing really knows how to drive this plane, he thought.

He sidled along toward the panels where, with any luck, Angalo was hiding.

This wasn't right. He hated being exposed like this. Of course, it had probably been worse in the days when he used to have to hunt alone. If anything had caught him then, he would never have known it. He'd have been a mouthful. Whereas no one knew what humans would do to a nome if they caught one.

He darted into the blessed shadows.

"Angalo!" he whispered.

After a while a voice from behind the wiring said, "Who is it?" Masklin straightened up.

"How many guesses do you want?" he said in his normal voice.

Angalo dropped down.

"They chased me!" he said. "And one of them stuck its arm -" "I know. Come on, while they're busy."

"What's happening?" said Angalo as they hurried out into the light.

"The Thing is flying us."

"How? It's got no arms. It can't change gears or anything -"

"Apparently it's being bossy to the computers that do all that. Come on."

"I looked out the window," bubbled Angalo. "There's sky all over the place!"

"Don't remind me," said Masklin.

"Let me just have one more look -" Angalo began.

"Listen, Gurder's waiting for us and we don't want any more trouble -"

"But this is better than any truck -"

There was a strangled kind of noise.

The nomes looked up.

One of the humans was watching them. Its mouth was open and it had an expression on its face of someone who is going to have a lot of difficulty explaining what they have just seen, especially to themselves.