Wings

by Terry Pratchett

  Hoom-zoom-boom-foom?

  Boom!

  "Can you understand it, Thing?" said Masklin.

  "Yes. The one with the sign is here to take our human to a hotel. It's a place where humans sleep and are fed. All the rest of it is just the things humans say to each other to make sure that they 're still alive."

  "What do you mean?" said Masklin.

  "They say things like 'How are you' and 'Have a nice day' and 'What do you think of this weather, then?' What these sounds mean is: I am alive and so are you."

  "Yes, but nomes say the same sorts of things, Thing. It's called getting along with people. You might find it worth a try."

  The bag swung sideways and hit something. The nomes clung desperately to the insides. Angalo clung with one hand. He was trying to keep his place in the book.

  "I'm getting hungry again," said Gurder. "Isn't there anything to eat in this bag?"

  "There's some toothpaste."

  "I'll give the toothpaste a miss, thanks."

  Now there was a rumbling noise. Angalo looked up. "I know that sound," he said. "Infernal combustion engine. We're in a vehicle."

  "Again?" said Gurder.

  "We'll get out as soon as we can," said Masklin.

  "What kind of truck is it, Thing?" said Gurder.

  "It is a helicopter."

  "It's certainly noisy," said Gurder, who had never come across the word.

  "It is a plane without wings," said Angalo, who had.

  Gurder gave this a few moments' careful and terrified thought.

  "Thing?" he said, slowly.

  "Yes?"

  "What keeps it up in the -" Gurder began.

  "Science."

  "Oh. Well. Science? Good. That's all right, then."

  The noise went on for a long time. After a while it became part of the nomes' world, so that when it stopped the silence came as a shock.

  They lay in the bottom of the bag, too discouraged even to talk. They felt the bag being carried, put down, picked up, carried again, put down, picked up one more time, and then thrown onto something soft.

  And then there was blessed stillness.

  Eventually Gurder's voice said: "All right. What flavor toothpaste?"

  Masklin found the Thing among the heap of paper clips, dust, and screwed up bits of paper at the bottom of the bag.

  "Any idea where we are, Thing?" he said.

  "Room 103, Cocoa Beach New Horizons Hotel," said the Thing. "I am monitoring communications."

  Gurder pushed past Masklin. "I've got to get out," he said. "I can't stand it in here anymore. Give me a leg up, Angalo. I reckon I can just reach the top of the bag."

  There was the long, drawn-out rumble of the zipper. Light flooded in as the bag was opened. The nomes dived for whatever cover was available.

  Masklin watched a hand taller than he was reached down, close around the smaller bag with the toothpaste and flannel in it, and pull it out.

  The nomes didn't move.

  After a while there came the distant sound of rushing water.

  The nomes still didn't move.

  Boom-boom foom zoom-boom-boom, choom zoom hoooom...

  The human noise rose above the gushing. It echoed even more than normal.

  "It... sounds like it's... singing?" whispered Angalo.

  Hoom... hoom-boom-boom boom... zoom-hoomboom HOOOooooOOOmmm. Boom.

  "What's happening, Thing?" Masklin hissed.

  "He has gone into a room to have water showering on himself," said the Thing.

  "What does it want to do that for?"

  "I assume he wants to keep clean."

  "So is it safe to get out of the bag now?"

  " 'Safe' is a relative word."

  "What? What? Like 'uncle,' you mean?"

  "I mean that nothing is totally safe. But I suggest that the human will be wetting himself for some time."

  "Yeah. There's a lot of human to clean," said Angalo. "Come on. Let's do it."

  The bag was lying on a bed. It was easy enough to climb down the covers onto the floor.

  Hoom-hoom booOOOOM boom...

  "What do we do now?" said Angalo.

  "After we've eaten, that is," said Gurder firmly.

  Masklin trotted across the thick carpet. There was a tall glass door in the nearest wall. It was slightly open, letting in a warm breeze and the sounds of the night.

  A human would have heard the click and buzz of crickets and other small mysterious creatures whose role in life is to sit in bushes all night and make noises that are a lot bigger than they are. But nomes hear sounds slowed down and stretched out and deeper, like a record player on the wrong speed. The dark was full of the thud and growl of the wilderness.

  Gurder joined Masklin and squinted anxiously into the blackness.

  "Could you go out there and see if there is something to eat?" he said.

  "I've a horrible feeling," said Masklin, "that if I go out there now there will be something to eat, and it'll be me."

  Behind them the human voice sang on.

  Boom-hoom-hoom - BOOOooooMMM womp...

  "What's the human singing about, Thing?" said Masklin.

  "It is a little difficult to follow. However, it appears that the singer wishes it to be known that be did something his way."

  "Did what?"

  "Insufficient data at this point. But whatever it was, be did it at a) each step on life's highway and b) not in a shy way."

  There was a knock at the door. The singing stopped. So did the gushing of the water. The nomes ran for the shadows.

  "Sounds a bit dangerous," Angalo whispered. "Walking along highways, I mean. Each step along life's sidewalk would be safer."

  Grandson Richard, 39, came out of the shower room with a towel around his waist. He opened the door. Another human, with all his clothes on, came in with a tray. There was a brief exchange of hoots, and the clothed human put down the tray and went out again. Grandson Richard, 39, disappeared into the shower room again.

  Bub-buh hub-hub boom hoOOOOmm...

  "Food!" Gurder whispered. "I can smell it! There's food on that tray!"

  "A bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich with coleslaw, " said the Thing. "And coffee. And orange juice."

  "How did you know?" said all three nomes in unison.

  "He ordered it when be checked in."

  "Coleslaw!" moaned Gurder ecstatically. "Bacon! Coffee!"

  "And orange juice," said Angalo. "Hah!"

  Masklin stared upward. The tray had been left on the edge of a table.

  There was a lamp near it. Masklin had lived in the Store long enough to know that where there was a lamp, there was a wire.

  He'd never found a wire he couldn't climb.

  Regular meals, that was the problem. He'd never been used to them. When he'd lived Outside, he'd got accustomed to going for days without food and then, when food did turn up, eating until he was greasy to the eyebrows. But the Store nomes expected something to eat several times an hour. The Store nomes ate all the time. They only had to miss half a dozen meals and they started to complain.

  "I think I could get up there," he said.

  "Yes. Yes," said Gurder.

  "But is it all right to eat Grandson Richard's sandwich?" Masklin added.

  Gurder opened his eyes. He blinked.

  "That's an important theological point," he muttered. "But I'm too hungry to think about it, so let's eat it first, and then if it turns out to be wrong to eat it, I promise to be very sorry."

  Boom-boom whop whop, foom boom...

  "The human says that the end. is now near and he is facing a curtain," the Thing translated. "This may be a shower curtain."

  Masklin pulled himself up the wire and onto the table, feeling very exposed.

  It was obvious that the Floridians had a different idea about sandwiches. Sandwiches had been sold back in the Store's Food Hall. The word meant something thin between two slices of damp bread. Floridian sandwiches, on the other hand, filled up a
n entire tray and if there was any bread it was lurking deep in a jungle of cress and lettuce.

  He looked down.

  "Hurry up!" said Angalo. "The water's stopped again!"

  Boom-boom hoom whop boom whop...

  Masklin pushed aside a drift of green stuff, grabbed the sandwich, hauled it to the edge of the tray and pushed it down onto the floor.

  Foom boom boom HOOOOooooOOOOmmmmmWHOP.

  The shower room door opened.

  "Come on! Come o«!" Angalo yelled.

  Grandson Richard, 39, came out. He took a few steps, and stopped.

  He looked at Masklin.

  Masklin looked at him.

  There are times when Time itself pauses.

  Masklin realized that he was standing at one of those points where History takes a deep breath and decides what to do next.

  I can stay here, he thought. I can use the Thing to translate, and I can try to explain everything to him. I can tell him how important it is for us to have a home of our own. I can ask him if he can do something to help the nomes in the quarry. I can tell him how the Store nomes thought that his grandfather created the World. He'll probably enjoy knowing that. He looks friendly, for a human.

  He might help us.

  Or he'll trap us somehow, and call other humans, and they'll all start milling around and mooing, and we'll be put in a cage or something, and prodded. It'll be just like the Concorde drivers. They probably didn't want to hurt us, they just didn't understand what we were. And we haven't got time to let them find out.

  It's their world, not ours.

  It's too risky. No. I never realized it before, but we've got to do it our way.

  Grandson Richard, 39, slowly reached out a hand and said, Whoomp?

  Masklin took a running jump.

  Nomes can fall quite a long way without being hurt, and in any case a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich broke his fall.

  There was a blur of activity and the sandwich rose on three pairs of legs. It raced across the floor, leaking mayonnaise.

  Grandson Richard, 39, threw a towel at it. He missed.

  The sandwich leapt over the doorway and vanished into the chirping, velvety, dangerous night.

  There were other dangers besides falling off the branch. One of the frogs was eaten by a lizard. Several others turned back as soon as they were out of the shade of their bromeliad because, as they pointed out... mipmip... mipmip...

  The frog in the lead looked back at his dwindling group. There was one... and one... and one... and one... and one, which added up to - it wrinkled its forehead in the effort of calculation - yes, one.

  Some of the one were getting frightened. The leading frog realized that if they were ever going to get to the new flower and survive there, there'd need to be a lot more than one frog. They need at least one, or possibly even one. He gave them a croak of encouragement.

  Mipmip, he said.

  5

  FLORIDA (or Floridia): A place where alligators, longnecked turtles, and space shuttles may be found. A place that is warm and wet, and there are geese. Only foolish people think it is really an orange drink. Bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches may be found here also. A lot more interesting than many other places. The shape when seen from the air is like a bit stuck on a bigger bit.

  From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome

  by Angalo de Haberdasheri.

  Let the eye of your imagination be a camera...

  This is the globe of the world, a glittering blue and white ball like the ornament on some unimaginable Christmas tree.

  Find a continent... Focus.

  This is a continent, a jigsaw of yellows, greens, and browns.

  Find a place... Focus.

  This is a bit of the continent, sticking out into the warmer sea to the southeast. Most of its inhabitants call it Florida.

  Actually, they don't. Most of its inhabitants don't call it anything. They don't even know it exists. Most of them have six legs, and buzz. A lot of them have eight legs, and spend a lot of time in webs waiting for six-legged inhabitants to arrive for lunch. Many of the rest have four legs, and bark or moo or even lie in swamps pretending to be logs. In fact, only a tiny proportion of the inhabitants of Florida have two legs, and even most of them don't call it Florida. They just go tweet, and fly around a lot.

  Mathematically, an almost insignificant number of living things in Florida call it Florida. But they're the ones who matter. At least, in their opinion. And their opinion is the one that matters. In their opinion.

  Find a highway... Focus... Traffic swishing quietly through the soft warm rain... focus... high weeds on the bank... focus... grass moving in a way that isn't quite like grass moving in the wind... Focus ... a pair of tiny eyes...

  Focus... Focus... Focus. ... Click!

  Masklin crept back through the grass to the nomes' camp, if that's what you could call a tiny dry space under a scrap of thrown-away plastic.

  It had been hours since they'd run away from Grandson Richard, 39, as Gurder kept on putting it. The sun was rising behind the rain clouds.

  They'd crossed a highway while there was no traffic, they'd blundered around in damp undergrowth, scurrying away from every chirp and mysterious croak, and finally they'd found the plastic. And they'd slept. Masklin stayed on guard for a while, but he wasn't certain what he was guarding against.

  There was a positive side. The Thing had been listening to radio and television and had found the place the going-straight-up shuttles went from. It was only eighteen miles away. And they'd definitely made progress. They'd gone - oh, call it half a mile. And at least it was warm. Even the rain was warm. And the bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich was holding up.

  But there were still almost eighteen miles to go.

  "When did you say the launch is?" said Masklin.

  "Four hours time," said the Thing.

  "That means we'll have to travel at more than four miles an hour," said Angalo gloomily.

  Masklin nodded. A nome, trying hard, could probably cover a mile and a half in an hour over open ground.

  He hadn't given much thought to how they could get the Thing into space. If he'd thought about it at all, he'd imagined that they could find the shuttle plane and wedge the Thing on it somewhere. If possible maybe they could go, too, although he wasn't too sure about that. The Thing said it was cold in space, and there was no air.

  "You could have asked Grandson Richard, 39, to help us!" said Gurder. "Why did you run away?"

  "I don't know," said Masklin. "I suppose I thought we ought to be able to help ourselves."

  "But you used the Truck. Nomes lived in the Store. You used the Concorde. You 're eating human food."

  Masklin was surprised. The Thing didn't often argue like that.

  "That's different," he said.

  "How?"

  "They didn't know about us. We took what we wanted. We weren't given it. They think it's their world, Thing! They think everything in it belongs to them! They name everything and own everything! I looked up at him, and I thought, here's a human in a human's room, doing human things. How can he ever understand about nomes? How can he ever think tiny people are real people with real thoughts? I can't just let a human take over. Not just like that!"

  The Thing blinked a few lights at him.

  "We've come too far not to finish it ourselves," Masklin mumbled. He looked up at Gurder.

  "Anyway, when it came to it, I didn't exactly see you rushing up, ready to shake him by the finger," he said.

  "I was embarrassed. It's always embarrassing, meeting deities," said Gurder.

  They hadn't been able to light a fire. Everything was too wet. Not that they needed a fire, it was just that a fire was more civilized. Someone had managed to light a fire there at some time, though, because there were still a few damp ashes.

  "I wonder how things are back home?" said Angalo, after a while.

  "All right, I expect," said Masklin.

  "D
o you really?"

  "Well, more hope than expect, to tell the truth."

  "I expect your Grimma's got everyone organized," said Angalo, trying to grin.

  "She's not my Grimma," snapped Masklin.

  "Isn't she? Whose is she, then?"

  "She's..." Masklin hesitated. "Hers, I suppose," he said lamely.

  "Oh. I thought the two of you were set to -" Angalo began.

  "We're not. I told her we were going to get married, and all she could talk about was frogs," said Masklin.

  "That's females for you," said Gurder. "Didn't I say that letting them learn to read was a bad idea? It overheats their brains."

  "She said the most important thing in the world was little frogs living in a flower," Masklin went on, trying to listen to the voice of his own memory. He hadn't been listening very hard at the time. He'd been too angry.

  "Sounds like you could boil a kettle on her head," said Angalo.

  "It was something she'd read in a book, she said."

  "My point exactly," said Gurder. "You know I never really agreed with letting everyone learn to read. It unsettles people."

  Masklin looked gloomily at the rain.

  "Come to think of it," he said, "It wasn't frogs exactly. It was the idea of frogs. She said there are these hills where it's hot and rains all the time, and in the rain forests there are these very tall trees and right in the top branches of the trees there are these like great big flowers called... bromeliads, I think, and water gets into the flowers and makes little pools and there's a type of frog that lays eggs in the pools and tadpoles hatch and grow into new frogs and these little frogs live their whole lives in the flowers right at the top of the trees and don't even know about the ground, and once you know the world is full of things like that, your life is never the same."

  He took a deep breath.

  "Something like that, anyway," he said.

  Gurder looked at Angalo.

  "Didn't understand any of it," he said.

  "It's a metaphor," said the Thing. No one paid it any attention.

  Masklin scratched his ear. "It seemed to mean a lot to her," he said.

  "It's a metaphor," said the Thing.

  "Women always want something," said Angalo. "My wife is always on about dresses."

  "I'm sure he would have helped," said Gurder. "If we'd talked to him. He'd probably have given us a proper meal and, and -"