Flight

by Neil Hetzner

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Destruction

  It had been a day since Prissi had been unhooked from her medical ganglia. After Prissi was free, Olewan had helped her to sit up and get her feet planted on the floor. After taking several minutes to gather her strength, finally, she stood, took a step and then another. At first, she was wobbly. The first half-dozen steps were done with Olewan’s dry twisted fingers holding Prissi’s elbow in a tight grip. But, after that, using more will than skill, she had managed to walk four times across her room and back by herself. She finished her walk, eased into her bed and fell deeply asleep.

  The next morning after she had finished her breakfast, Prissi agreed to go outside with Olewan. Half-way to the door, Prissi winced and slumped. The old woman grabbed her arm and whispered encouragements, none of which reminded Prissi of Ms. Tronce’s blandishments. Once they were through the door, the ancient woman let go. Prissi took over steadying herself for several more steps by trailing a hand along the cool walls of the hall. After getting some confidence, Prissi paid less attention to the walls and more to the end of the corridor where muted sunlight painted a pale yellow patch on the floor of the lobby. That shimmering patch drew Prissi forward like a trumpet vine draws hummingbirds. She suddenly realized just how much of the time since spring break began that she had spent away from the sun. In Africa, the sun was every day. Its presence lifted and lightened the death, poverty and disease that were everywhere. Prissi realized how much she counted on the sun when she saw those weak rays at the end of the hall. She felt like the days in this place, the days underground in the subway, even the hours spent in the Gramercy Arms basement and the library had blanched her, like asparagus.

  Prissi picked up her pace. Her weakness itself seemed to weaken with each step she took. She was more than half-way down the long corridor when the sunlight on the floor was replaced by a pulsing shadow and a thunderous pounding.

  Prissi came to a sudden stop when Olewan grabbed her sleeve.

  “In here.”

  Olewan snapped a door handle and pushed Prissi into a pitch black room.

  “Stay here.”

  As Prissi listened to the old woman shuffle away, she was reminded of lying in bed in her darkened dorm room on Sunday mornings at Dutton listening to the herd of hungry girls shuffling in their Drylons to the dining hall for brunch.

  The pounding stopped and shouting began. After a few seconds, another pounding began, a different pounding, one that Prissi could feel through the bottom of her feet. Seconds later, Prissi heard glass being smashed. That was followed by a slapping sound which she recognized as footsteps running down the hall. Hiding in the dark was getting to be too hard. Prissi put a hand in front of her trying to find the door.

  As Olewan had scuttled toward the door, she had expected to see a furious Mortos. He had been to the Bury the day before talking about a hostage, a good friend of the girl’s, who he would trade for a guarantee from Olewan that she would produce twenty-four centaur clones and teach Mortos how to care for them. The old scientist had brushed aside the centaur’s proposals with the same asperity she would have had for any ridiculous self-indulgence. It wasn’t until later, sitting in the shadows looking at her own clone rhythmically raise and lower the worn blanket covering her chest that Olewan considered her own self-indulgence.

  Olewan wanted to live. Forever and ever. With her daughter. Gift from the forgiving gods. She wanted to live. She wanted the crystals that would allow her to live.

  Even before she was close to the door, Olewan was screaming at the centaur. She was sure that Mortos had stolen the crystals and her future when he found the girl. Olewan’s rage, that the leader of the centaurs might be withholding the means for her to live another two hundred years with the girl whose elbow she had just held, caused Olewan’s vision to fracture into faceted images, like an insect’s, as she approached the door.

  It wasn’t until her hand, made unsteady from the chemistry of her wrath, reached for the door handle that Olewan saw that it was more than just Mortos on the other side of the filthy glass of the narrow sidelight to the heavy metal door.

  The old crone’s hand was quaking as her fingers grasped the handle. She shrieked, “What do you want?”

  Even though Mortos’ low drone was muffled by the door, his message was clear.

  “Want a future. Like humans. Like you.”

  Olewan peered through the door.

  “Give me the crystals.”

  “What? What crystals?”

  “The ones you stole.”

  “Didn’t steal. You’re the thief. Steal our future. We have Bird Bob. Girl’s friend. Here to trade.”

  Olewan looked at the ancient winger. The craggy-faced man was leaning on a stick. A worn rope was tied over his shoulders and under his wings before being attached to the neck of Portos. Something about the man’s face enraged Olewan as much as the centaur’s lies and demands.

  “The crystals!”

  Caught up in his own rage, Mortos rose up and smashed his front hooves on the cracked concrete in front of the door. The centaur’s back hooves lashed out, and, if Bob Tom hadn’t anticipated what was coming and stumbled sideways, they would have destroyed the riverman. When Mortos realized that he had almost killed what he had come to trade, he let loose with a tangle of noise twisted from strands of rage, frustration and remorse. The centaur reared up again and battered his hooves against the massive door. The door dented, but did not give.

  From the other side, Mortos heard a muffled cry, “The crystals. The crystals.”

  The centaur didn’t have any crystals. All he had was the old man. He continued his assault except that his anger had so robbed him of reason that after three or four more strikes against the door, his right hoof slipped off target. It smashed through the wire-reinforced glass of the sidelight and became wedged in a trap of glass and wire. The centaur reared back in fury at the pain, a move which only served to set his hoof tighter in its trap. Blood streamed from the deep gashes in his fetlock and followed the fault lines of the fractured glass to make a crimson web.

  The centaur’s torso writhed violently, seemingly willing, like a mink in a trap, to severe its hoof to regain its freedom. On the other side of the glass, Olewan stood frozen in shock except for her eyes which darted from the twisting, jerking hoof to the rivulets of blood to the hundreds of small pieces of tempered glass strewn across the floor like spilled treasure.

  After an interminable two seconds, the old woman shrieked, “Stop! Stop!” in a way that seemed like a command to the hoof itself rather than the centaur. In an uncanny echo Olewan heard, “Stop!” screamed from beyond the door and also from behind her.

  Bob Tom’s jerk on his rope was so unexpected by Portos, whose attention was riveted on his leader’s dilemma, that he staggered forward the two paces the riverman needed.

  Working himself under the trapped right leg of the centaur, very well aware of the danger the flailing second leg presented, Bob Tom reached up and wrapped his hands around the bleeding leg and began pushing upward in an attempt to free it. The groan of Bob Tom’s efforts, as he struggled against the weight of the centaur’s leg, were drowned out by the anguished sounds the centaur himself was making. Bob Tom pushed and strained, but he couldn’t quite get Mortos’ leg up high enough to where the hole in the window widened. After the days of the quest, followed by two days of little water, less food, and an untended broken foot, the riverman could feel his strength quickly fading. Some of the gain Bob Tom had made getting the leg free was lost when Mortos, his own strength flagging from the loss of blood and loss of anger’s quick burst of energy, had his back legs falter. Bob Tom reset his feet and pushed up with all of his might. The centaur’s leg moved a little, but not enough.

  “Help.”

  The riverman wondered why the centaur he was chained to didn’t come to his leader’s aid, but Portos could do nothing to help. A decade of arthritis had crippled his shoulders so that his hands could barely reach his mouth
to feed himself.

  Bob Tom groaned and shoved, but nothing happened except that the broken edges of glass seemed to cut even more deeply into the horse’s flesh. The ancient riverman pushed with what he knew would be his last effort given how badly his knees and arms were shaking. Suddenly, his task became easier. The leg moved upward, first a centimeter and, then, two more. Bob Tom saw a wild-haired something, man, boy, simian, on the other side of the blood streaked glass. Another centimeter. Bob Tom looked up and saw that another three or four centimeters would be enough. He took a deep, hopeful breath and pushed, but nothing happened. Too much of his strength was gone. The anguished howl of the centaur shocked him. He pushed again. Nothing. Nothing. Then, something. The leg rose and rose and rose until it was centered in the hole. He heard a voice scream, “Now.”

  A force pushed the wounded hoof back through the window. Bob Tom started to scramble sideways to get out of harm’s way as the dripping red leg came crashing down, but froze when he realized that there were two faces on the other side of the streaked and mottled window. The wild-haired boy had been joined by a wan-skinned, fierce-faced girl.