Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
Something flew past him, low over his head. A flash of pale fur, a huge span of wing. I blinked and squinted and looked up and saw a winged sky, dozens and dozens of cloud cats, streaming past the ship, heading for the island. They were flying low over the Aurora’s spine, wheeling around her flanks and skimming beneath her belly, as if curious about this huge airborne thing.
Szpirglas must have seen the shine of amazement in my eyes, for he too lifted his face to look. A huge group of them wheeled over the fins, and I could feel the wind from their mighty wings as they passed. I couldn’t help laughing aloud in delight at this glorious turbulence. The sight of so many of them! It was what Kate’s grandfather had seen from his balloon. Not birds, he’d written. Amazing creatures.
One of the cloud cats dipped lower than the rest, and its rear claws, maybe unintentionally, struck Szpirglas on the shoulder. His feet went out from under him, and he skittered down along the elevator flap headfirst. The safety line was plucked from his fist, and this time he did not regain it. He shouted out and tried to clutch at the fin’s edge, but he was too late.
Down he went, spinning through the air.
And I thought: his boy. Theodore. His poor boy.
The cloud cats saw him and dived for him all together, predators locking onto prey. One snatched him up in its claws, slowing him for a moment before dropping him again, while another took a bite from his neck. And so they volleyed Szpirglas among themselves, tearing at him and feeding off him as he fell.
Szpirglas’s safety line danced before my face. I lifted my broken hand to it and tried to take it, but my grip was so weak I was afraid I would not be able to hold it. With a grunt I released my good hand and grabbed hold as well. To this day I do not know exactly where I found the strength, but I hauled myself along the rope, hand over hand, up to the ship’s back. Maybe it was just my will to live, or maybe concern for the ship and all aboard her, or maybe it was my father’s spirit, still free in the air, passing through me and shunting me along, guiding me back on course.
Before I lowered myself into the crow’s nest hatch, I looked once more at the cloud cats wheeling high, and there, at the edge of the flock was ours, Kate’s and mine. The one with the crimped wing, the one that fell. She skirted along the outside of the group and then was absorbed into it, and she was finally one of them.
But the island and its mountain were coming up fast. The Aurora was too low, and I was sure we would not clear the peak. The weight of both Szpirglas and me on the elevators must have tipped the ship even lower into its fatal course.
There was no one at the controls.
It all passed in a blur: I lurched down ladder after ladder, staggering forward along the catwalks to the control car. I ran into the great glass sweep of the bridge. As I’d feared, it was empty. Through the front windows I saw the island and her gaunt mountain, looming large. We would surely crash. The array of controls hummed and glowed expectantly around me. For a moment I froze, but then I imagined the captain’s voice in my head: Take her up five degrees, Mr. Cruse.
I did not think of anything else, not Bruce, not Kate.
I seized the elevator wheel and turned gently, watching the inclinometer on the console before me, but also feeling the ship’s floor beneath my bare feet, knowing instinctively how steep our climb needed to be. I wanted all her engines, but saw from the board we only had two, and no time to mess with starting up the others.
I increased our pitch a little more, and I could see the island peak slowly dropping away beyond the bridge’s wraparound windows. But would we be fast enough?
Mind the engines, Mr. Cruse, I imagined the captain saying. The climb was a steep one on only two engines, and I was careful to watch the gauges to make sure she did not overheat carrying such a load.
I rushed to the rudder wheel next and turned her so we began to swivel away from the mountain. I glanced over at the gas boards. We still had almost full lift, a little leakage from cells two and three, from Szpirglas’s bullets no doubt, but that was not urgent business right now.
It would be a close call. I angled the ship as much as I dared and turned her hard over, and then there was nothing more I could do. I watched out the windows and saw the mountain coming. We were close enough to see the texture and color of the stone, and we were turning and climbing, turning and climbing, and at last the nose of the ship pulled clear.
“That’s my girl,” I told the ship.
We would not crash.
“Put her on a heading of one six five, Mr. Cruse, please.”
“Very good, sir,” I muttered to myself before I realized I was no longer imagining the captain’s voice. I turned and saw him standing in the doorway with the first officers and Baz, and Kate was there too, hurrying toward me with the biggest, nicest smile I’d ever seen.
“Sir!” I said, giving him a salute. “Sorry, but she needed bringing up, sir. The mountain.”
“Very good, Mr. Cruse.” The other crew came in and started taking up their positions and duties, and I stood back from the rudder wheel, but the captain looked at me and said simply, “Carry on, Mr. Cruse. Take us to our new heading, please.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Thank you, Mr. Cruse. Miss de Vries has told us everything. We’ve just trussed up three pirates, and I gather you’ve taken care of all the others?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very good, then.” He put his hand on my shoulder as I completed the turn. “There we are. Straighten out. Excellent. You were born to it, Mr. Cruse, no question. You’re flying now.”
SIX MONTHS LATER
21
AT ANCHOR
It was difficult to get close to the skeleton. There was such a crowd of people around it, the men in their tall top hats and the women with an abundance of fruit and flowers and stuffed tropical birds sprouting from their wide-brimmed headwear. It was like being back in the jungle all over again, only smellier, with enough colognes and perfumes and toilet waters to choke an anaconda.
I had to wait quite a while for the crowds to thin before I could get near the display case. And there it was: the reassembled skeleton of the cloud cat. It seemed bigger than it had when Kate and I first discovered it in the tree. They’d built a wire frame for it, so it didn’t look crumpled anymore. It was poised and proud and alert, wings spread.
“It’s good to see you with your feet on the ground, Mr. Cruse.”
I turned and saw her. I must say I was a bit in awe of her after sitting in on her lecture. She’d stood there before her Lumière projector and showed her photos of the skeleton, explained them, and then described our encounters with the cloud cat in the middle of the Pacificus. When she answered questions from the audience, her voice never shook, and she rarely stumbled on her words or hesitated. Quite apart from that, she looked wonderful in a fitted striped suit with dark lapels, her hair chestnut and glowing.
“Hello,” I said. “You’re famous now.”
She laughed. “No, not really.”
“That was quite a round of applause.”
“Well, I’m popular with the general public,” she said wryly. “Most of the important scientists have stayed away. They think it’s a freak show. I’ve heard there’s one group already writing a paper claiming the whole thing’s a hoax.”
“How could they?” I asked indignantly.
“No amount of proof is enough for some people.” She shrugged. She seemed to be taking it very well.
We stood looking at each other, and I didn’t know how best to greet her. Six months ago, when we’d parted in Sydney, she’d given me a tight hug and cried, but now we were all grown up and composed. I would have liked another hug, but there were so many people around I felt self-conscious.
“Where’s Miss Simpkins?” I asked, for at the moment I could think of nothing better to say.
“Oh, she’s here somewhere.”
“I’m amazed she stayed on with you.”
“Well, we’ve come to an underst
“I hope you’re not making a habit of that,” I said. “Has she forgiven you for drugging her?”
“She does watch me quite carefully when I pour the tea,” Kate remarked. “Speaking of tea, why don’t we have some? We can go to the senior common room.”
“Does that mean you’re a senior someone now?” I asked, amazed.
“No, no. I just get a special pass during the exhibit. It’s very nice.”
She led me out of the exhibition hall and through long, high-ceilinged galleries filled with dead animals in glass cases. I’d never seen so many dead animals all in one place. It seemed the museum had one of everything that had ever walked, crawled, flown, or slithered across the planet. Then Kate turned down a dark, wood-paneled corridor and led me to the very end. There was an enormous door with a knob in the middle and a small brass button to one side. Kate pressed the button, and almost at once the door was opened by a steward.
“Good afternoon, Miss de Vries,” he said, opening the door wide. “Some tea?”
“Thank you very much, Roberts.”
It was a grand room, as Kate had promised, filled with light from an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. Polished wood and leather and brass gleamed everywhere. Old, important mustached gentlemen sat in armchairs reading the newspapers and sipping port and exhaling yellow cigar fumes up to the high ceiling fans. Several of the gentlemen looked up at Kate as she entered, but none of them acknowledged her, except to give a low grumble of distaste.
“Smoky old farts,” I muttered.
“As you can see, I’m wildly popular with the scientific community,” Kate whispered to me. “They don’t know it yet, but I’m going to have their jobs and offices before long.”
“I hope you do,” I said.
A warm spring breeze blew through the open French doors.
“Let’s sit outside,” I said.
We went out onto the terrace and sat down at a table and looked over the river. On the other side was the Champ de Mars and the Eiffel Tower.
“How are you enjoying Paris?” she asked me.
This is the way grown-ups talked, I thought and felt sad. We seemed uncomfortable with each other, now that we were in civilized clothes in a civilized room in a great city, ready to drink tea out of fine china.
“Paris is grand,” I said, “as grand a place as I’ve ever seen on earth.”
“On earth.”
“That’s right.”
“But aloft is still best?”
“Of course.”
She smiled. “Tell me about the Airship Academy.”
There’d been a hefty reward, it turned out, for information leading to the capture of Szpirglas and his pirates. Once we reached harbor, we were able to give the coordinates of their island to the Sky Guard. They’d sent a large detachment to the pirates’ base and captured the lot of them. I’d asked about Szpirglas’s son, and all they would tell me was that he’d been placed in an orphanage and was being taken care of. I hoped he was all right, that he still had someone to tell him wonderful stories.
My share of the reward was more than enough for tuition to the Academy, and thanks to letters of reference from Captain Walken, I had been offered a place starting in the spring term. The remainder of the reward money would take care of my mother and sisters while I was a student and sending back no salary from the Aurora. And there was even some money set aside, in a big brick bank in Lionsgate City. I’d never thought I’d have my own bank account.
“I’m learning a lot here,” I said, “though I kind of wish there was more flying and less sitting in the classroom.”
“Well, I hope you’re paying attention,” she told me rather severely.
“Of course I’m paying attention!”
“This is not an opportunity you want to squander.”
“You sound like a blinking teacher!”
She smiled, rather pleased about that. “I’m just practicing being stern. I think you need to be stern for people to take you seriously. Especially in public debate.”
“I’m sure you’ll be terrifying,” I said.
Our tea arrived with a three-tiered platter of little sandwiches and scones and patisseries.
“On the island,” Kate said, pouring me a cup of tea, “you worried you’d never be able to be happy on the ground.”
I blushed to think of that moment in the cave when I’d panicked and all my fears had spilled out. But I was also surprised and pleased that she’d remembered a conversation we’d had so long ago.
“But you’re happy here,” Kate said, looking at me.
“As happy as I can be, at anchor.” I took a deep breath. “I’m getting better at standing still.”
It had not been easy. When I’d first started at the Academy there’d been many bad, sleepless nights. I missed my bunk on the Aurora, and Baz and Captain Walken and all the crew. I missed being in motion. And I missed my father, more acutely than I ever had before. There’d been plenty of times I’d been so lonely and miserable I’d wanted to quit and return to the Aurora. But then, unexpectedly, one night I’d dreamed of my father, even though I was landlocked. I was flying alongside the Aurora, and he’d come and joined me, and when I woke up that morning, everything was different. As long as I could still dream about him, I knew everything would be all right. I didn’t need to be aloft to find happiness. It could find me wherever I was: on the Aurora, or here in Paris, or back home with Mom and Isabel and Sylvia.
“I’m glad,” Kate said. She didn’t need to say it. Her eyes said it all for her: she really was happy for me.
“What about you?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m having a grand old time,” she said. “For now I get to be toasted and toured. I’ve got three more museums who want the skeleton this year.”
“You’ll be insufferable by then,” I said.
“Probably. Really, I need you to come along and smarten me up regularly.”
“And what do your parents think of all this?”
“I think they’re”—she paused and seemed a little bewildered—“I think they’re proud of me, you know.”
I smiled. “Very good, then.”
“Makes a nice change, doesn’t it? They’ve agreed to let me go to university next year.”
“That’s fantastic!”
“Well, I think they were rather forced into it after all this. Think how bad the press would be if it slipped out that all my dazzling promise was to be squished by brutish parents. It would embarrass my mother no end.”
“It looks like you’re to get everything you set your sights on,” I said.
“And you too,” she replied.
We clinked teacups.
“To us,” Kate said. “We’re fabulous.”
“Look,” I said, pointing at the sky. “She’s coming in now.”
“That’s not the Aurora, is it?” Kate asked.
“It is. She’s doing a transcontinental. All the way to the Siberian Sea, and then across to San Francisco. She’s been completely refitted since the fall. New engines and outer skin.”
We watched as the ship turned slowly and came in to dock at the top of the Eiffel Tower. The summit had been equipped with a special mooring mast, and now, from the upper observation deck, a long, articulated gangway swung up and locked with the Aurora’s underbelly. I could see passengers coming on and off.
I gave a sigh. “I just hope there’s a position on her when I finish here.”
“I’m sure Captain Walken will do everything he can.”
We fell silent for a moment, and I felt awkward again. On the island or the ship I’d never felt tongue-tied like this, and I hated it.
“I’m sorry I’ve had this so long,” Kate said suddenly. She reached into her purse and brought out my father’s compass.
&nbs
She flushed a little.
“Thank you,” I said, taking it back. Holding it again, I realized how much I’d missed it. But I was also sorry it would no longer be in her hands. I’d liked to think of her holding it, watching the needle spin north.
“Don’t want you veering off course,” Kate said.
And then suddenly we could talk again as we used to. We were just Matt and Kate once more, walking through the forest and whacking away ferns and watching out for devilish little red snakes. We talked about the Aurora and the pirates and the island. Neither of us mentioned the kiss in the forest, though I had thought about it often. Sitting across from her now, there was nothing I wanted to do more. But there she was in her suit and hat, so prim and newly famous and much more ladylike than I remembered her, and I just could not imagine it. I liked her better in her torn harem pants, her face streaked with dirt.
“He was really brave,” I said. “Bruce.”
She nodded gravely. “He was in a lot of pain, and he still kept going. I don’t like thinking about it.”
I remembered him often still. We couldn’t have escaped without Bruce to help us. What made it worse was that I’d felt resentful of him. And what made me saddest of all was that he died before he figured out what his dream was, what he most loved and wanted to do with his life.
“I’m going back, you know,” Kate said. “To the island.”
I wasn’t surprised. “When?”
“As soon as I can raise money for a proper expedition. The pirates are all cleared off now, they say. We’ll need to charter a ship. Will you come?”
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll fly you there myself, if you can wait two years.”
“I’d like that,” she said. “Tell me again how you saw all of them.”
She leaned against the table on her folded arms and listened attentively as I told her about the cloud cats flying around the ship, dozens and dozens of them.
“She rejoined her flock,” she said.
“Yes.”