Wings

by Terry Pratchett

  "I want to make it absolutely clear," said Angalo slowly, as a great feathery head explored the waterweeds a few inches away, "that if you're suggesting that we ride on a geese -"

  "A goose. One geese is a goose."

  "You can think again. Or compute, or whatever it is you do."

  "You have a better suggestion, of course," said the Thing. If it had a face, it would have been sneering.

  "Suggesting we don't ride on them strikes me as a whole lot better, yes," said Angalo.

  "I dunno," said Masklin, who had been watching the geese speculatively. "I might be prepared to give it a try."

  "The Floridians have developed a very interesting relationship with the geese, " said the Thing. "The geese provide the nomes with wings, and the nomes provide the geese with brains. They fly north to Canada in the summer, and back here for the winter. Geese like nomes. Geese that carry nomes are steered to better feeding grounds, and find that their nests get protected from rats and other creatures. Geese are bright enough to learn that geese with nomes around have a better life. And the names get free transport and a warm place to sleep. It's almost a symbiotic relationship, although, of course, they're not familiar with the term."

  "Aren't they? Silly old them," Angalo muttered.

  "I don't understand you, Angalo," said Masklin. "You're mad for riding in machines with whirring bits of metal pushing them along, yet you're worried about sitting on a perfectly natural bird."

  "That's because I don't understand how birds work," said Angalo. "I've never seen an exploded working diagram of a goose."

  "The geese are the reason the Floridians have never bad much to do with humans," the Thing continued. "As I said, their language is almost original nomish."

  "Yes, and I still don't understand that," said Masklin. "I mean, nomes ought to speak the same language, yes?"

  "No. You remember that I told you once that nomes used to be able to talk to humans, and taught them languages?"

  "Yes?" said Masklin.

  "And then the humans changed the language, over hundreds of years. Names who lived near humans changed too. But the Floridians never had much to do with humans, so their form of the language is still very much as it used to be."

  Shrub was watching them carefully. There was something about the way she was treating them that still seemed odd to Masklin. It wasn't that she hadn't been afraid of them, or aggressive, or unpleasant.

  "She's not surprised," he said aloud. "She's interested, but she's not surprised. They were upset because we were here, not because we existed. How many other nomes has she met?'"

  The Thing had to translate.

  It was a word that Masklin had only known for a year.

  Thousands.

  The leading tree frog was trying to wrestle with a new idea. It was very dimly aware that it needed a new type of thought.

  There had been the world, with the pool in the middle and the petals around the edge. One.

  But farther along the branch was another world. From here it looked tantalizingly like the flower they had left. One.

  The leading frog sat in a clump of moss and swiveled each eye so that it could see both worlds at the same time. One there. And one there.

  One. And one.

  The frog's forehead bulged as it tried to get its mind around a new idea. One and one were one. But if you had one here and one there...

  The other frogs watched in bewilderment as their leader's eyes whizzed around and around.

  One here and one there couldn't be one. They were too far apart. You needed a word that meant both ones. You needed to say... you needed to say...

  The frog's mouth widened. It grinned so broadly that both ends almost met behind its head.

  It had worked it out.

  . . . mipmip... ! It said.

  It meant: One. And One More One!

  Gurder was still arguing with Topknot when they got back.

  "How do they manage to keep it up? They don't understand what each other's saying!" said Angalo.

  "Best way," said Masklin. "Gurder? We're ready to go. Come on."

  Gurder looked up. He was very red in the face. The two of them were crouched either side of a mass of scrawled diagrams in the dirt.

  "I need the Thing!" he said. "This idiot refuses to understand anything!"

  "You won't win any arguments with him," said Masklin. "Shrub says he argues with all the other nomes they meet. He likes to."

  "What other nomes?" said Gurder.

  "There's nomes everywhere, Gurder. That's what Shrub says. There's other groups even in Floridia. And - and - and in Canadia, where the Floridians go in the summer. There were probably even other nomes back home! We just never found them!"

  He pulled the Abbot to his feet.

  "And we haven't got a lot of time left," he added.

  "I'm not going up on one of those things!"

  The geese gave Gurder a puzzled look, as if he were an unexpected frog in their waterweed.

  "I'm not very happy about it either," said Masklin, "but Shrub's people do it all the time. You just snuggle down in the feathers and hang on."

  "Snuggle?" shouted Gurder. "I've never snuggled in my life!"

  "You rode on the Concorde," Angalo pointed out. "And that was built and driven by humans."

  Gurder glared like someone who wasn't going to give in easily.

  "Well, who built the geese?" he demanded.

  Angalo grinned at Masklin, who said: "What? Dunno. Other geese, I expect."

  "Geese? Geese? And what do they know about designing for air safety?"

  "Listen," said Masklin, "They can take us all the way across this place. The Floridians fly thousands of miles on them. Thousands of miles, without even any smoked salmon or pink wobbly stuff. It's worth trying it for eighteen miles, isn't it?"

  Gurder hesitated. Topknot muttered something.

  Gurder cleared his throat.

  "Very well," he said haughtily. "I'm sure if this misguided individual is in the habit of flying on these things, I should have no difficulty whatsoever." He stared up at the gray shapes bobbing out in the lagoon. "Do the Floridians talk to the creatures?"

  The Thing tried this on Shrub. She shook her head. No, she said, geese were quite stupid. Friendly but stupid. Why talk to something that couldn't talk back?

  "Have you told her what we're doing?" said Masklin.

  "No. She hasn't asked."

  "How do we get on?"

  Shrub stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled.

  Half a dozen geese waddled up the bank. Close up, they didn't look any smaller. "I remember reading something about geese once," said Gurder, in a sort of dreamy terror. "It said they could break a human's arm with a blow of their nose."

  "Wing," said Angalo, looking up at the feathery gray bodies looming over him. "It was their wing."

  "And it was swans that do that," said Masklin, weakly. "Geese are the ones you mustn't say boo to."

  Gurder watched a long neck weave back and forth above him.

  "Wouldn't dream of it," he said.

  A long time after, when Masklin came to write the story of his life, he described the flight of the geese as the fastest, highest, and most terrifying of all.

  People said, Hold on, that's not right. You said the plane went so fast that it left its sound behind, and so high up there was blue all around it.

  And he said, That's the point. It went so fast you didn't know how fast it was going, it went so high you couldn't see how high it was. It was just something that happened. And the Concorde looked as though it was meant to fly. When it was on the ground it looked kind of lost.

  The geese, on the other hand, looked as aerodynamic as a pillow. They didn't roll into the sky and sneer at the clouds like the plane did. No, they ran across the top of the water and hammered desperately at the air with their wings and then, just when it was obvious they weren't going to achieve anything, they suddenly did; the water dropped away, and there was just the slow cr
eak of wings pulling the goose up into the sky.

  Masklin would be the first to admit that he didn't understand about jets and engines and machines, so maybe that was why he didn't worry about traveling in them. But he thought he knew a thing or two about muscles, and the knowledge that it was only a couple of big muscles that were keeping him alive was not comforting.

  Each traveler shared a goose with one of the Floridians. They didn't do any steering, as far as Masklin could see. That was all done by Shrub, who sat far out on the neck of the leading goose. He never found out how she steered. Maybe by orders in some language the geese and the geese nomes shared. Maybe by little movements. Maybe (according to Angalo) by some sort of Science. It was a mystery. But then - he told himself - Shrub probably wouldn't know how to drive a truck. She'd probably be very impressed, he told himself. That made him feel a bit better.

  The ones behind Shrub's bird followed their leader in a perfect V shape.

  Masklin buried himself in the feathers. It was comfortable, if a bit cold. Floridians, he learned later, had no difficulty sleeping on a flying goose. The mere thought made Masklin's hands sweat.

  He peered out just long enough to see distant trees sweeping by much too fast, and stuck his head down again.

  "How long have we got, Thing?" he said.

  "I estimate arrival in the vicinity of the launch pad one hour from launch."

  "I suppose there's absolutely no possibility that launches have anything to do with lunches?" said Masklin wistfully.

  'Wo."

  "Pity. Well - have you any suggestions about how we get on the machine?"

  "That is almost impossible."

  "I thought you'd say that."

  "But you could put me on, " the Thing added.

  "Yes, but how? Tie you to the outside?"

  'Wo. Get me close enough and I will do the rest."

  "What rest?"

  "Call the Ship."

  "Yes, where is the Ship? I'm amazed satellites and things haven't bumped into it."

  "It is waiting."

  "You're a great help, sometimes."

  "Thank you."

  "That was meant to be sarcastic."

  "I know;'

  There was a rustling beside Masklin and his Floridian co-rider pushed aside a feather. It was the boy he had seen with Shrub. He'd said nothing, but just stared at Masklin and the Thing. Now he grinned, and said a few words.

  "He wants to know if you feel sick."

  "I feel fine," Masklin lied. "What's his name?"

  "His name is Pion. He is Shrub's oldest son."

  Pion gave Masklin another encouraging grin.

  "He wants to know what it is like in a jet," said the Thing. "He says it sounds exciting. They see them sometimes, but they keep away from them."

  The goose canted sideways. Masklin tried to hang on with his toes as well as his fingers.

  "It must be much more exciting than geese, he says," said the Thing.

  "Oh, I don't know," said Masklin weakly.

  Landing was much worse than flying. It would have been better on water, Masklin was told later, but Shrub had brought them down on land. The geese didn't like that much. It meant that they had almost to stand on the air, flapping furiously, and then drop the last few inches.

  Pion helped Masklin down onto the ground, which seemed to him to be moving from side to side. The other travelers tottered toward him through the throng of birds.

  "The ground!" panted Angalo. "It was so close! No one seemed to mind!"

  He sagged to his knees.

  "And they made honking noises!" he said. "And kept swinging from side to side! And they're all knobbly under the feathers!"

  Masklin flexed his arms to let the tension out.

  The land around them didn't seem a lot different from the place they'd left, except that the vegetation was lower and Masklin couldn't see any water.

  "Shrub says that this is as close as the geese can go," the Thing said. "It is too dangerous to go any farther."

  Shrub nodded, and pointed to the horizon.

  There was a white shape on it.

  "That?" said Masklin.

  "That's it?" said Angalo.

  "Yes."

  "Doesn't look very big," said Gurder quietly.

  "It's still quite a long way off," said Masklin.

  "I can see helicopters," said Angalo. "No wonder Shrub didn't want to take the geese any closer."

  "And we must be going," said Masklin. "We've got an hour, and I reckon that's barely enough. Er. We'd better say good-bye to Shrub. Can you explain, Thing? Tell her that - that we'll try to find her again. Afterward. If everything's all right. I suppose."

  "If there is any afterward," Gurder added. He looked like a badly washed dishcloth.

  Shrub nodded when the Thing had finished translating, and then pushed Pion forward.

  The Thing told Masklin what she wanted.

  "What? We can't take him with us!" said Masklin.

  "Young names in Shrub's people are encouraged to travel," said the Thing. "Pion is only fourteen months old and already he has been to Alaska."

  "Try to explain that we're not going to a Laska," said Masklin. "Try to make her understand that all sorts of things could happen to him!"

  The Thing translated.

  "She says that is good. A growing boy should always seek out new experiences."

  "What? Are you translating me properly?" said Masklin suspiciously.

  "Yes."

  "Well, have you told her it's dangerous?"

  "Yes. She says that danger is what being alive is all about."

  "But he could be killed!" Masklin shrieked.

  "Then he will go up into the sky and become a star."

  "Is that what they believe?"

  "Yes. They believe that the operating system of a nome starts off as a goose. If it is a good goose, it becomes a nome. When a good nome dies, NASA takes it up into the sky and it becomes a star."

  "What's an operating system?" said Masklin. This was religion. He always felt out of his depth with religion.

  "The thing inside you that tells you what you are," said the Thing.

  "It means a soul," said Gurder wearily.

  "Never heard such a lot of nonsense," said Angalo cheerfully. "At least, not since we were in the Store and believed we came back as garden ornaments, eh?" He nudged Gurder in the ribs.

  Instead of getting angry about this, Gurder just looked even more despondent.

  "Let the lad come if he likes," Angalo went on. "He shows the right spirit. He reminds me of me when I was like him."

  "His mother says that if he gets homesick be can always find a goose to bring him back, " said the Thing.

  Masklin opened his mouth to speak.

  But there were times when you couldn't say anything because there was nothing to say. If you had to explain anything to someone else, then there had to be something you were both sure of, someplace to start, and Masklin wasn't sure that there was anyplace like that around Shrub. He wondered how big the world was to her. Probably bigger than he could imagine. But it stopped at the sky.

  "Oh, all right," he said. "But we have to go right away. No time for long tearful -"

  Pion nodded to his mother and came and stood by Masklin, who couldn't think of anything to say. Even later on, when he understood the geese nomes better, he never quite got used to the way they cheerfully parted from one another. Distances didn't seem to mean much to them.

  "Come on, then," he managed.

  Gurder glowered at Topknot, who had insisted on coming this far. "I really wish I could talk to that nome," he said.

  "Shrub told me he's quite a decent nome, really," said Masklin. "He's just a bit set in his ways."

  "Just like you," said Angalo.

  "Me? I'm not -" Gurder began.

  "Of course you're not," said Masklin, soothingly. "Now, let's go."

  They jogged through scrub two or three times as high as they were.

  "We'
ll never have time," Gurder panted.

  "Save your breath for running," said Angalo.

  "Do they have smoked salmon on shuttles?" said Gurder.

  "Dunno," said Masklin, pushing his way through a particularly tough clump of grass.

  "No, they don't," said Angalo authoritatively. "I remember reading about it in a book. They eat out of tubes."

  The nomes ran in silence while they thought about this.

  "What, toothpaste?" said Gurder, after a while.

  "No, not toothpaste. Of course not toothpaste. I'm sure not toothpaste."

  "Well, what else do you know that comes in tubes?"

  Angalo thought about this.

  "Glue?" he said, uncertainly.

  "Doesn't sound like a good meal to me. Toothpaste and glue?"

  "The people who drive the space jets must like it. They were all smiling in the picture I saw," said Angalo.

  "That wasn't smiling, that was probably just them trying to get their teeth apart," said Gurder.

  "No, you've got it all wrong," Angalo decided, thinking fast. "They have to have their food in tubes because of gravity."

  "What about gravity?"

  "There isn't any."

  "Any what?"

  "Gravity. So everything floats around."

  "What, in water?" said Gurder.

  "No, in air. Because there's nothing to hold it on the plate, you see."

  "Oh." Gurder nodded. "Is that where the glue comes in?"

  Masklin knew that they could go on like this for hours. What these sounds mean, he thought, is: I am alive and so are you. And we're all very worried that we might not be alive for much longer, so we'll just keep talking, because that's better than thinking.

  It all looked better when it was days or weeks away, but now when it was -

  "How long. Thing?"

  "Forty minutes."

  "We've got to have another rest! Gurder isn't running, he's just falling upright."

  They collapsed in the shade of a bush. The shuttle didn't look much closer, but they could see plenty of other activity. There were more helicopters. According to Pion, who climbed up the bush, there were humans, much farther off.

  "I need to sleep," said Angalo.

  "Didn't you sleep on the goose?" said Masklin.

  "Did you?"

  Angalo stretched out in the shade.

  "How are we going to get on the shuttle thing?" he said.