Wings

by Terry Pratchett

  Thousands of them looked down now as something round and shiny drifted around the Earth.

  It had Arnsat-1 painted on its side, which was a bit of a waste of paint since stars can't read.

  It unfolded a silver dish.

  It should then have turned to face the planet below it, ready to beam down old movies and new news.

  It didn't. It had new orders.

  Little puffs of gas jetted out as it turned around and searched the sky for a new target.

  By the time it had found it, a lot of people in the old movies and new news business were shouting very angrily at one another on telephones, and some of them were feverishly trying to give it new instructions.

  But that didn't matter, because it wasn't listening anymore.

  Masklin galloped through the scrub.

  They'd argue and bicker, he thought. I've got to do this quickly. I don't think we've got a lot of time.

  It was the first time he'd been really alone since the days back when he'd lived in a hole and had to go out hunting by himself because there was no one else.

  Had it been better then? At least it had been simpler. You just had to try to eat without being eaten. Just getting through the day was a triumph. Everything had been bad, but at least it had been a kind of understandable, nome-sized badness.

  In those days the world ended at the highway on one side and the woods beyond the field at the other side. Now it had no kind of boundaries at all, and more problems than he knew what to do with.

  But at least he knew where to find electricity.

  You found it near buildings with humans in them.

  The scrub ahead of Masklin opened out onto a track.

  He turned onto it, and ran faster. Go along any track, and you'd find humans on it somewhere.

  There were footsteps behind him. He turned around, and saw Pion. The young Floridian gave him a worried smile.

  "Go away!" Masklin said. "Go on! Go! Go back! Why are you following me? Go away!"

  Pion looked hurt. He pointed up the track and said something.

  "I don't understand!" shouted Masklin.

  Pion stuck a hand high above his head, palm downward.

  "Humans?" Masklin guessed. "Yes. I know. I know what I'm doing. Go back!"

  Pion said something else.

  Masklin lifted up the Thing. "Talking box no go," he said helplessly. "Good grief, why should I have to speak like this? You must be at least as intelligent as me. Go on, go away. Go back to the others."

  He turned and ran. He looked back briefly, and saw Pion watching him.

  How much time have I got? he wondered. Thing once told me the Ship flies very fast. Maybe it could be here any minute. Maybe it's not coming at all.

  He saw figures looming over the scrub. Yes, follow any track, and sooner or later you find humans. They get everywhere.

  Yes, maybe the Ship isn't coming at all.

  If it isn't, he thought, then what I'm going to do now is probably the most stupid thing any nome has ever done anywhere in the total history of nomekind.

  He stepped out into a circle of gravel. A small truck was parked in it, with the name of the Floridian god NASA painted on the side. Close by, a couple of humans were bent over a piece of machinery on a tripod.

  They didn't notice Masklin. He walked closer, his heart thumping.

  He put down the Thing.

  We used to talk, he said. Well, maybe it's time to try again.

  He cupped his hands around his mouth.

  He tried to shout as clearly and as slowly as possible.

  "Hey, there! You! Hu-mans!"

  "He did what?" shouted Angalo. Pion ran through his pantomime of gestures again.

  "Talked to humans." said Angalo. "Went in a thing with wheels'?"

  "I thought I heard a truck engine," said Gurder. Angalo pounded a fist into his palm. "He was worried about the Thing," he said.

  "He wanted to find it some electricity!" "But we must be miles from any buildings!"

  said Gurder.

  "Not the way Masklin's going!" Angalo snarled. "I knew it would come to this!" Gurder moaned.

  "Showing ourselves to humans! We never used to do that sort of thing in the Store! What are we going to do?"

  Masklin thought, Up to now, it's not too bad. The humans hadn't really known what to do about him. They'd even backed away! And then one of them had rushed to the truck and talked into a machine on a string. Probably some sort of telephone, Masklin thought knowledgeably.

  When he hadn't moved, one of the humans had fetched a box out of the back of the truck and crept toward him as if expecting Masklin to explode. In fact, when he waved, the human jumped back clumsily.

  The other human said something, and the box was cautiously put down on the gravel a few feet from Masklin.

  Then both humans watched him expectantly. He kept smiling, to put them at their ease, and climbed into the box. Then he gave them another wave.

  One of the humans reached down gingerly and picked up the box, lifting it up in the air as though Masklin was something very rare and delicate. He was carried to the truck. The human got in, and still holding the box with exaggerated care, placed it on its knees. A radio crackled with deep human voices.

  Well, no going back now. Knowing that, Masklin very nearly relaxed. Perhaps it was best to look at it as just another step along life's sidewalk.

  They kept staring at him as if they didn't believe what they were seeing.

  The truck lurched off. After a while it turned onto a concrete road, where another truck was waiting. A human got out, spoke to the driver of Masklin's truck, laughed in a slow human way, looked down at Masklin, and stopped laughing very suddenly.

  It almost ran back to its own truck and started speaking into another telephone.

  I knew this would happen, Masklin thought. They don't know what to do with a real nome. Amazing.

  But just so long as they take me somewhere where there's the right kind of electricity.

  Dorcas, the engineer, had once tried to explain electricity to Masklin, but without much success because Dorcas wasn't too certain about it, either.

  There seemed to be two kinds, straight and wiggly. The straight kind was very boring and stayed in batteries. The wiggly kind was found in wires in the walls and things, and somehow the Thing could steal some of it if it was close enough. Dorcas used to talk about wiggly electricity in the same tone of voice Gurder used for talking about Arnold Bros. (est. 1905). He'd tried to study it back in the Store. If it was put into freezers it made things cold, but if the same electricity went into an oven it made things hot, so how did it know'?

  Dorcas used to talk, Masklin thought. I said "used to." I hope he still does.

  He felt light-headed and oddly optimistic. Part of him was saying: That's because if you for one second think seriously about the position you've put yourself in, you'll panic.

  Keep smiling.

  The truck purred along the road, with the other truck following it. Masklin saw a third truck rattle down a side road and pull in behind them. There were a lot of humans on it, and most of them were watching the skies.

  They didn't stop at the nearest building, but drove on to a bigger one with many more vehicles outside. More humans were waiting for them.

  One of them opened the truck door, doing it very slowly even for a human.

  The human carrying Masklin got out of the truck.

  Masklin looked up at dozens of staring faces. He could see every eyeball, every nostril. Every one of them looked worried. At least, every eyeball did. The nostrils just looked like nostrils.

  They were worried about him.

  Keep smiling.

  He stared back up at them, and still almost giggling with repressed panic, said, "Can I help you, gentlemen?"

  9

  SCIENCE: A way of finding things out and then making them work. There is a lot more Science than you think.

  From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young No
me

  by Angalo de Haberdasheri.

  Gurder, Angalo, and Pion sat under a bush. It gave them a bit of shade. The cloud of gloom over them was almost as big.

  "We'll never even get home without the Thing," said Gurder.

  "Then we'll get him out," said Angalo.

  "That'll take forever!"

  "Yeah? Well, that's nearly as long as we've got here, if we can't get home." Angalo had found a pebble that was almost the right shape to attach to a twig with strips torn off his coat; he'd never seen a stone ax in his life, but he had a definite feeling that there were useful things that could be done with a stone tied to the end of a stick.

  "I wish you'd stop fiddling with that thing," Gurder said. "What's the big plan, then? Us against the whole of Floridia?"

  "Not necessarily. You needn't come."

  "Calm down, Mr. To-the-rescue. One idiot's enough."

  "I don't hear you coming up with any better ideas." Angalo swished the ax through the air once or twice.

  "I haven't got any."

  A small red light started to flash on the Thing.

  After a while, a small square hole opened up and there was a tiny whirring sound as the Thing extended a little lens on a stick. This turned around slowly.

  Then the Thing spoke.

  "Where," it asked, "is this place?"

  It tilted the lens up and there was a pause while it surveyed the face of the human looking down at it.

  "And why?" it added.

  "I'm not sure," said Masklin. "We're in a room in a big building. The humans haven't hurt me. I think one of them has been trying to talk to me."

  "We appear to be in some sort of glass box," said the Thing.

  "They even gave me a little bed," said Masklin.

  "And I think the thing over there is some kind of lavatory, but look, what about the Ship?" "I expect it is on its way," said the Thing calmly. "Expect? Expect? You mean you don't know?" "Many things can go wrong. If they have gone right, the Ship will be here soon."

  "If they don't, I'm stuck here for life!" said Masklin bitterly. "I came here because of you, you know."

  "Yes. I know. Thank you."

  Masklin relaxed a bit.

  "They're being quite kind," he said. He thought about this. "At least, I think so," he added. "It's hard to tell."

  He looked through the transparent wall. A lot of humans had been in to look at him in the last few minutes. He wasn't quite certain whether he was an honored visitor or a prisoner, or maybe something in between.

  "It seemed the only hope at the time," he said lamely.

  "I am monitoring communications." "You're always doing that."

  "A lot of them are about you. All kinds of experts are rushing here to have a look at you."

  "What kind of experts? Experts in nomes?" "Experts in talking to creatures from other worlds. Humans haven't met anyone from another world, but they've still got experts in talking to them."

  "All this had better work," said Masklin soberly. "Humans really know about nomes now."

  "But not what nomes are. They think you have just arrived."

  "Well, that's true."

  "Not arrived here. Arrived on the planet. Arrived from the stars."

  "But we've been here for thousands of years! We live here!"

  "Humans find it a lot easier, really, to believe in little people from the sky than little people from the Earth. They would prefer to think of little green men than leprechauns. "

  Masklin's brow wrinkled. "I didn't understand any of that," he said.

  "Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter." The Thing let its lens swivel around to see more of the room.

  "Very nice. Very scientific," it said.

  Then it focused on a wide plastic tray next to Masklin.

  "What is that?"

  "Oh, fruit and nuts and meat and stuff," said Masklin. "I think they've been watching me to see what I eat. I think these are quite bright humans, Thing. I pointed to my mouth and they understood I was hungry."

  "Ah," said the Thing. "Take me to your larder."

  "Pardon?"

  "I will explain. I have told you that I monitor communications?"

  "All the time."

  "There is a joke, that is, a humorous anecdote or story, known to humans. It concerns a ship from another world landing on this planet, and strange creatures get out and say to a gas pump, garbage can, slot-machine, of similar mechanical device, 'Take me to your leader.' I surmise this is because they are unaware of the shape of humans. I have substituted the similar word 'larder,' referring to a place where food is stored. This is a humorous Pun or play on words, for hilarious effect."

  It paused.

  "Oh," said Masklin. He thought about it. "These would be the little green men you mentioned?"

  "Very - wait a moment. Wait a moment."

  "What? What?" said Masklin urgently.

  "I can bear the Ship."

  Masklin listened as hard as he could.

  "I can't hear a thing," he said.

  "Not sound. Radio."

  "Where is it? Where is it, Thing? You've always said the Ship's up there, but where?"

  The remaining tree frogs crouched among the moss to escape the heat of the afternoon sun. Low in the eastern sky was a sliver of white. It would be nice to think that the tree frogs had legends about it. It would be nice to think that they thought the sun and moon were distant flowers - a yellow one by day, a white one by night. It would be nice to think they had legends about them, and said that when a good frog died its soul would go to the big flowers in the sky.

  The trouble is that it's frogs we're talking about here. Their name for the sun was... mipmip... Their name for the moon was... mipmip... Their name was everything was... mipmip... and when you're stuck with a vocabulary of one word it's pretty hard to have legends about anything at all.

  The leading frog, however, was dimly aware that there was something wrong with the moon.

  It was growing brighter.

  "We left the Ship on the moon?" said Masklin. "Why?"

  "That's what your ancestors decided to do," said the Thing. "So they could keep an eye on it, I assume."

  Masklin's face lit up slowly, like clouds at sunrise.

  "You know," he said, excitedly, "Right back before all this, right back when we used to live in the old hole, I used to sit out at nights and watch the moon. Perhaps in my blood I really knew that, up there -"

  'Wo, what you were experiencing was probably primitive superstition," said the Thing.

  Masklin deflated. "Oh. Sorry."

  "And now, please be quiet. The Ship is feeling lost and wants to be told what to do. It has just woken up after fifteen thousand years."

  "I'm not very good at mornings myself," Masklin said.

  There is no sound on the moon, but this doesn't matter, because there is no one to hear anything. Sound would just be a waste.

  But there is light.

  Fine moondust billowed high across the ancient plains of the moon's dark crescent, expanding in boiling clouds that went high enough to catch the rays of the sun. They glittered.

  Down below, something was digging itself out.

  "We left it in a holey said Masklin.

  Lights rippled back and forth across all surfaces of the Thing.

  "Don't say that's why you always lived in holes," it said. "Other nomes don't live in holes."

  "No, that's true," said Masklin. "I ought to stop thinking only about the -"

  He suddenly went quiet. He stared out of the glass tank, where a human was trying to interest him in marks on a blackboard.

  "You've got to stop it," he said. "Right now. Stop the Ship. We've got it all wrong. Thing, we can't go! It doesn't belong to just us! We can't take the Ship!"

  The three nomes lurking near the shuttle launching place watched the sky. As the sun neared the horizon the moon sparkled like a Christmas decoration.

  "It must be caused by the Ship!" said Angalo. "It must be!" He b
eamed at the others. "That's it, then. It's on its way!"

  "I never thought it would work." Gurder said.

  Angalo slapped Pion on the back, and pointed.

  "See that, my lad?" he said. "That's the Ship, that is! Ours!"

  Gurder rubbed his chin, and nodded thoughtfully at Pion.

  "Yes," he said, "That's right. Ours."

  "Masklin says there's all kinds of stuff up there," said Angalo dreamily. "And masses of space. That's what space is well known for, lots of space. Masklin said the Ship goes faster than light goes, which is probably wrong, otherwise how'd you see anything? You'd turn the lights on and all the light would drop backward out of the room. But it's pretty fast."

  Gurder looked back at the sky again. Something at the back of his mind was pushing its way to the front, and giving him a curious gray feeling.

  "Our Ship," he said. "The one that brought nomes here."

  "Yeah, that's right," said Angalo, hardly hearing him.

  "And it'll take us all back," Gurder went on.

  "That's what Masklin said, and -"

  "All nomes," said Gurder. His voice was as flat and heavy as a sheet of lead.

  "Sure. Why not? I expect I'll soon work out how to drive it back to the quarry, and we can pick them all up. And Pion here, of course."

  "What about Pion's people?" said Gurder.

  "Oh, they can come too," said Angalo expansively. "There's probably even room for their geese!"

  "And the others?"

  Angalo looked surprised. "What others?"

  "Shrub said there were lots of other groups of nomes. Everywhere."

  Angalo looked blank. "Oh, them. Well, I don't know about them. But we need the Ship. You know what it's been like ever since we left the Store."

  "But if we take the Ship away, what will they have if they need it?"

  Masklin had just asked the same question.

  The Thing said, "01001101010101110101010010110101110010."

  "What did you say?"

  The Thing sounded tetchy. "If I lose concentration, there might not be a Ship for anyone, " it said. "I am sending fifteen thousand instructions per second."

  Masklin said nothing.

  "That's a lot of instructions, " the Thing added.

  "By rights the Ship must belong to all the nomes in the world," said Masklin.

  "010011001010010010 -"