The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  In a well-coordinated reich, her first contacts should have been the airship’s captain and officers of the watch. But what reich in all the world’s history had ever been well coordinated? Besides: Trust no one. Confide fully in no one. There is no true honor among thieves, or anyone else. This was the code of Ilna Junge von Cruewell, and she broke it for no one except Valkyrie.

  Chapter 2

  “The question naturally concerns us all, ‘Wouldn’t another dirigible glut the market? Check, Hindenburg II and Cygnus are showing good profits, but how many more potential airship passengers can there be? Seeing that most reality perceivers still prefer faster, cheaper, or privater transport, while only certain specialized brands of fantasy perceivers take to any kind of air travel.

  “It’s beyond dispute that not all fanciers are perceptionally equipped to travel by flying machine. The short historical era of the original passenger dirigibles—the Intermission between Acts 1 and 2 of the Last Great War—attracts few voluntary residents, and no other realistic world from the Upper Paleolithic to 2076 C.E., when NTC launched the Hindenburg II, includes the concept of anything comparable in sheer bulk to a giant dirigible that is at the same time capable of being flown through the air. Yes, the majority of fanciers still see our dirigibles as great cloudbanks floating overhead.

  “But we should bear in mind the sizable minority of the fantasy-perceiving population who have reconstructed for themselves mythical, speculative, theoretical, science-fictional, folkloric, and outright fantastical versions of standard reality. The generation now in its full middle-age height of purchasing power contains a percentage by no means to be coughed at of such fanciers, and the studies of White and Harris, Numberwig, Social Polygraph Associates, and Nielsen Families Inc. all suggest that such double-fantasy worlds are again on the upswing. ... While it may be true that [such fanciers] can, at need, perceive ordinary airplanes as airships, magic carpets, mystical clouds, flying islands in the sky, and so on, our profit margins on the airships in current operation indicate that, given the choice and the right kind of print brochure, enough of those who can afford it will opt for real dirigibles, to continue showing us profits.

  “Nor should we forget our success in filling up any otherwise unbooked space with reality-perceiving passengers. Social Polygraph Associates, White and Harris, Nielsen Families, and Harvard Studies, among others[,] all indicate a rise in taste for more leisurely travel, even among realizers. ... Even without fare hikes for regular passengers, the difference between regular and standby or special-service rates will still satisfy standby and special-rate passengers that they are getting a bargain, even while NTC turns a comfortable operating profit margin by carrying them. And of course the frequent presence among the passengers of extra medics, clerics, entertainers, athletes, and authors further enhances the attraction of airship travel for well-breaded reality perceivers as well as for fanciers. We have not yet suffered any appreciable tapering off in the boost to standby and special-rate applications that began when we enticed that famous non-flier Al Everymind to take to the air for the first time ever—in Cygnus—twenty-seven months ago. ...

  “After all, gentle M.’s of the Board, what is our whole business based upon, if not the lure of genuine, authentic conveyances not only to true, full-fledged fantasy perceivers but also to that large class of, in Al Everymind’s words, ‘fanciers for a holiday’? When we found that Hindenburg II was actually attracting the element who like to (pretend to) live dangerously, we upped business by overemphasizing our ship’s similarities to the original Hindenburg, backing two new screenshows about the twentieth-century tragedy—a documentary and an Emmy-winning drama with Magda Barrymore and Douglas Burton, Jr.—and winking at the rumor that the second Hindenburg was illegally filled with hydrogen instead of helium. When we launched Cygnus with an ad campaign playing up his similarities to the LZ-127, the old Graf Zeppelin with his perfect safety record, we found virtually a whole new market without cutting into that of the Hindenburg II: travelers who want the romance without the spice of pretended danger. ...

  “It is therefore the considered opinion of this Committee that a third NTC airship, loosely based on the design for the aborted LZ-130, combining the ultimate in twenty-first-century luxury and safety, would find plenty of passengers to show his own profit margin without cutting into the business of either Hindenburg II or the comparatively cozy Cygnus.

  “Is there still room in this world’s skies for additional passenger dirigibles? Our competitors think so…but only NTC has the resources to build and launch Daedalus and Dvorchac’s proposed Palace of the Skies. It is this Committee’s recommendation that we go ahead with the plans at once.”

  —Confidential Committee Report (signed M.E.,

  Chairperson), Nostalgic Transport Corporation files.

  (N.B. The Palace of the Skies was subsequently built,

  but not in time for Angela’s and Corwin’s honeymoon;

  and if it had been, they might still have opted for the

  “comparatively cozy” Cygnus.)

  * * * *

  So far as Corwin could see, the only reason Cygnus should lift off at seven a.m. was to give those passengers who habitually slept late (e.g., himself) an opportunity to admire the sunrise. Such an exercise always tended to imbue normally nocturnal souls with a sense of wholesome virtue and clean living. Today, it would also provide the airship passengers an excuse to spend part of their first morning aboard napping in their staterooms. By all accounts, they would be unable to plead airsickness as their reason for retiring. The primitive dirigibles of the twentieth century were famous in their day as the smoothest transportation ever devised by human ingenuity; and the intervening years had produced no vehicle to rival that particular claim, until the advent of their copycat successors, the new NTC lighter-than-air ships.

  Then the young husband reflected that, while he could retire immediately after either breakfast or luncheon on the legitimate pretext of having had a broken night’s sleep, his bride could not. She was up with the aurora every morning. Though surely in their present circumstances a few forced yawns, daintily half-hidden; a simulated drooping of the eyelids; a delicate shrug or two as of barely restrained muscular twitches of fatigue…a small charade, however transparent, might be forgivable.

  Nevertheless, on reaching the airfield, even Corwin Poe decided that today’s sunrise was compensation in itself for his unwonted matutinal exertion. As was the spectacle of the “Taut Melon” being walked slowly out, dwarfing the attendant ground crew like Gulliver rolled forward captive by the ingenious if overly optimistic Lilliputians.

  Cygnus could, of course, have been ushered forth from his yawning hangar at any hour of the day or night. But perhaps at no other time this year, or even this lifetime, would the heavens have lent so happy a play of curdled crimson luminescence over the airship’s silvery skin.

  Corwin felt that he was in an extended fit of total reality perception and, for once, euphoric about it. Although the Venerable Edgar’s sportive forays into speculative fiction allowed airships a place in Corwin’s personal world, no fantasia could have equaled the standard reality of the NTC Cygnus looming against the roseate dawn.

  By the pressure of Angela’s hand in his, he surmised that she also was enjoying the scene in its reality. It could hardly have been bettered in even her world: the great silver finger to trace its name in the mutable clouds; the immense pillar of classical simplicity that by its apparently recumbent position and the majestic leisure of its progress soothed the heartbeat even while stirring the blood; the streamlined melon a full hundred feet wide by seven hundred and seventy-six long (except when seen from certain angles, a very long and thin melon indeed); the ultimate phallic symbol ...

  Since within varying bounds most fanciers could perceive weather as it fit their worlds and moods, and since anyone who had bought passage should be eager to begin the journey, and therefore dispose
d to perceive congenial weather, the sunrise alone ought to be worth the early rising for all of them congregating here in companionable privacy on the roped-off terrace at the field’s edge. Corwin spared a glance or two around at their fellow passengers.

  A slender woman with long hair that appeared to be tinted green stood holding her long-fingered hands spread open to the eastern sky. Her expression was rapt, though her long-lashed eyelids looked closed. Beside her, a slightly taller woman, thin and dark, actually appeared disinterested as she stifled her yawns. Not far from this pair, a pleasantly rotund, sandy-bearded man of approaching middle age, while not attempting to stifle his yawns, was gazing up with his eyes open wider—proportionately—than his mouth. These three were clad in the height of fancy-class fashion: simple beige tunics and trousers. The man wore a purple vest as well, and the garments of the green-haired damsel were embellished with long, curving lines, perhaps embroidery.

  A few paces beyond them, a red-haired, red-bearded man in black tunic and trousers, and a still-youthful woman in the long black cassock and white collar of a Catholic priest were showing the sunrise all the respect it deserved. The madre must be at least part realizer. Like most churches, the Catholic still required its potential clerics to achieve substantial scores in reality perception on their Standard Tests, though Corwin forgot whether current Church Law put the reality minimum at forty-nine percent or fifty-one.

  The second time he glanced at the black-clad duo, the man was standing posed with both arms raised above his head as though reaching for the sunrise. His whole body seeming to rise and fall with the deepness of his breathing, he lowered his arms slowly and gracefully, crossing them at last over the large silver medallion on his chest, to adopt the posture of an Egyptian mummy. The madre eyed her neighbor with a slight frown, while Corwin wondered whether he himself were blinking back into selective fantasy perception.

  He glanced over his other shoulder. There stood the obersturmbannfuehrerin at military ease, her dog at her side, the dawn zephyrs gently stirring their hair, the glow ensanguining their forms. They stood only a few paces away, so that Corwin could glimpse the reflected cloudbanks miniaturized in Dr. Junge’s dark glasses. She appeared to be smiling. Hers was one of those smiles that twitched the corners of the mouth slightly downward. At any rate, he thought that her expression was not dissatisfied. He returned his full attention to the sunrise, the airship, and Angela’s fingers in his.

  The immense and buoyant melon was brought to hovering rest, the rampwalk rolled into place and secured. Access to the original airships, Corwin believed, had been by rope ladder; but only the most diehard passengers would have insisted on that authentic a touch, and they would have opted for Hindenburg II. Had the weather been inclement, those about to board Cygnus would have ridden the entire way across the field to the ship in a fully enclosed walkway; but when the heavens were dry, boarding via open ramp formed part of the pleasure. Today even members of the ground crew could be seen throwing glances at the sunrise, which was only now beginning to fade.

  “Guten Morgen,” said a baritone voice. The passengers turned to see a tall blond man who had come up from somewhere behind them. He wore a gray uniform with a moderate amount of gold trim, and his friendly demeanor dispelled any sudden uneasiness generated by what one might have termed the stealth of his arrival.

  “Guten Morgen,” said the obersturmbannfuehrerin, less as though returning his greeting than as though correcting his pronunciation. Alone of them all, she seemed not to have turned around. No, not quite alone: the green-haired woman stood equally unmoving.

  “Let me introduce myself,” the newcomer went on pleasantly. “First Officer Lance ffellowes Flier of the NTC Cygnus, your host for the embarkation.”

  “The first officer in person!” Angela murmured in Corwin’s ear. They were much of a height. “I expected one of the stewards, didn’t you?”

  “Let us expect the world in general to surprise us,” he whispered in return, purposely tickling her ear with his breath.

  The rampwalk led to a sliding panel near the front of the promenade deck some twenty feet behind its point of juncture with the main gondola. A small woman in peach-colored uniform waited to collect their tickets, comparing each face in turn with the three-centimeter-square portrait instagraphed at the time of sale on the rectangles of recycliplastic. This ticket collector’s own features were pure Oriental, which must increase her value to the Nostalgic Transport Corporation. In the last several generations, since America had earned its Melting Pot reputation in a blending as well as a mixing sense, “racial pureblood” specimens were growing ever more rare. Her uniform was ungarnished save for two Chinese ideograms in gilt pinned near the left shoulder; and as the passengers stepped aboard she kept tally of them on a tiny abacus, smiling and nodding the while. First Officer Flier entering last, she looked at him with slightly lifted eyebrows and said, “Here are only eight.”

  “We’re picking up two at New Acropolis,” he said in reminding tones.

  “Yes, but nine were to board here. Not eight, not ten, but nine,” she reminded him in return.

  They began a hushed consultation in which phrases like “ten minutes behind schedule already” and “reputation for individual attention” were just audible. Perhaps Corwin’s mood was pretersensitive, but he seemed to feel a tense undercurrent. Friction between members of the crew would be a less than auspicious omen. He hoped that the present interchange represented the apex of rough relations amongst those NTC personnel to whom the passengers had entrusted their safety.

  He turned away to the nearest window, where his bride was reabsorbed in watching the sunrise. Phoenix-like, it had blazoned forth anew from its own fading cloud-embers. The slanting panes of smooth steelglass, though designed more for observation of terrestrial than celestial regions (most of the latter being obscured by the huge balloon overhead), nevertheless offered a good view of the horizon.

  Nor was the view from here of the promenade deck to be despised: almost a hundred and forty meters—about four hundred and fifty feet—of crystalline glass, translucent steelplas pane dividers, nikaline floorsheets and a gently bulging ceiling of lightly corrugated silver, all aglow at the moment with rosy reflection. Turning from the window, Angela gestured at the promenade’s narrow expanse and whispered, “Bright corridor!” in accents of delight. He sensed that she might have gone skipping down it, posing him the riddle of whether or not to skip with her; but just in time the first officer cleared his throat for an announcement:

  “As you may have understood, M’s, we are still lacking one of the passengers who was to have come aboard with you. I have just queried via my personal phone, and the Nostalgia City accommodations computer reports nobody of that passenger’s name registered last night at any authorized public lodgings within a sixty-kilometer radius. Under the circumstances, it would be unfair to the rest of you to delay departure any longer, so—”

  “Wait a sec, here!” said the stout man with full, sandy beard and purple vest. “Don’t we all get a vote in cases like this? Oz bodikins, I’m sure we’re none of us in that much hurry.”

  “Are you a personal friend of the missing passenger, M. Gillikin?” the first officer inquired, a shade too courteously. “Have you some information that we do not?”

  “Well, no, I wouldn’t know the party from a Winkie, but—”

  “In that case, M., I’ll have to overrule your request,” Flier cut in politely. “Our last two passengers expect us to pick them up on schedule at New Acropolis, Ohio.”

  His statement elicited an excited if restrained murmur among those already assembled, and Angela gave Corwin’s hand a sudden extra squeeze.

  Without saying anything more either to confirm or deny the rumor that M.’s Juno and Jove Olympian would be the ones coming aboard at New Acropolis, the first officer allowed the buzz a few seconds before he coughed for silence and, receiving it, went on
: “Since they are not yet with us, we can hardly take it upon ourselves to call a vote that would affect them as well as everyone else. If our missing passenger shows up within the next few minutes, we may be able to lower the rope ladder for her. If not, NTC will honor her ticket on the next suitable means of transport to her destination.”

  There was a momentary pause, as if to emphasize the first officer’s authority, and then Obersturmbannfuehrerin von Cruewell said, “Offizier Flier. Do you yourself give the command, ‘Schiff Hoch’?”

  His eyebrows, pale on tanned forehead, went up slightly. “Jawohl, Obersturmbannfuehrerin, that is my duty and privilege today.”

  “Give it in English,” she told him. “Your German is very bad.”

  Several mouths fell open, including Angela’s. Flier himself seemed to make the quickest recovery. “The crew understands me well enough in either language, Major,” he said, nodded to the passengers as a group, and stepped aside.

  The Oriental woman coughed and resumed the official reception. “Honorable M.’s, I am your hostess for this cruise. My name is Peach Ming Blossom. I am a registered nurse and also a petty officer, but the callers I prefer are ‘Miz Ming’ and ‘Stewardess,’ because we are old-fashioned here in many ways. Only in very nice ways, we hope you will find. In the name of the Reformed States of North America and the Nostalgic Transport Corporation, I welcome all of you aboard the NTC Cygnus, our proud silver swan of the cloudline skies. Now if you will follow me through the stateroom corridor to the lounge ...”