"How can I be of assistance?" it said.
Angalo grinned at Gurder.
Masklin sat down again.
"Find Grandson Richard Arnold, 39," he said.
"This will take a long time," said the Thing.
"Oh."
A few lights moved on the Thing's surface. Then it said, "I have located a Richard Arnold, aged 39. He has just gone into the departure lounge for Flight 205 to Miami, Florida."
"That didn't take a very long time," said Masklin.
"It was three hundred microseconds," said the Thing. "That's long."
"I don't think I understood all of it too," Masklin added.
"Which parts didn't you understand?"
"Nearly all of them," said Masklin. "All the bits after 'gone into.'"
"Someone with the right name is here and waiting in a special room to get on a big silver bird that flies in the sky to go to a place called Florida," said the Thing.
"What big silver bird?" said Angalo.
"It means jet plane. It's being sarcastic," said Masklin.
"Yeah? How does it know all this stuff?" said Angalo, suspiciously.
"This building is full of computers," said the Thing.
"What, like you?"
The Thing managed to look offended. "They are very, very primitive," it said. "But I can understand them. If I think slowly enough. Their job is to know where humans are going."
"That's more than most humans do," said Angalo.
"Can you find out how we can get to him?" said Gurder, his face alight.
"Hold on, hold on," said Angalo, quickly. "Let's not rush into things here."
"We came here to find him, didn't we?" said Gurder.
"Yes! But what do we actually do?"
"Well, of course, we... we... that is, we'll..."
"We don't even know what a departure lounge is."
"The Thing said it's a room where humans wait to get on an airplane," said Masklin.
Gurder prodded Angalo with an accusing finger.
"You're frightened, aren't you?" he said. "You're frightened that if we see Grandson Richard, 39, it'll mean there really is an Arnold Bros. and you'll have been wrong! You're just like your father. He could never stand being wrong, either!"
"I'm frightened about you," said Angalo. "Because you'll see that Grandson Richard, 39, is just a human. Arnold Bros. was just a human too. Or two humans. They just built the Store for humans. They didn't even know about nomes! And you can leave my father out of this too."
The Thing opened a small hatch on its top. It did that sometimes. When the hatches were shut you couldn't see where they were, but whenever the Thing was really interested in something it opened up and extended a small silver dish on a pole, or a complicated arrangement of pipes.
This time it was a piece of wire mesh on a metal rod. It started to turn, slowly.
Masklin picked it up.
While the other two argued he said, quietly, "Do you know where this lounge thing is?"
"Yes," said the Thing.
"Let's go, then."
Angalo looked around.
"Hey, what are you doing?" he said.
Masklin ignored him. He said to the Thing, "And do you know how much time we have before he starts going to Florida?"
"About half an hour."
Nomes live ten times faster than humans. They're harder to see than a high-speed mouse.
That's one reason why most humans hardly ever see them.
The other is that humans are very good at not seeing things they know aren't there. And since sensible humans know that there are no such things as four-inch-high people, a nome who doesn't want to be seen probably won't be seen.
So no one noticed three tiny blurs darting across the floor of the airport building. They dodged the rumbling wheels of luggage carts. They shot between the legs of slow-moving humans. They skidded around chairs. They became nearly invisible as they crossed a huge, echoing corridor.
And they disappeared behind a potted plant.
It has been said that everything everywhere affects everything else. This may be true.
Or perhaps the world is just full of patterns.
For example, in a tree nine thousand miles away from Masklin, high on a cloudy mountainside, was a plant that looked like one large flower. It grew wedged in a fork of trees, its roots dangling in the air to trap what nourishment they could from the mists. Technically, it was an epiphytic bromeliad, although not knowing this made very little difference to the plant.
Water condensed into a tiny pool in the center of the bloom.
And there were frogs living in it.
Very, very small frogs.
They had such a tiny life cycle, it still had training wheels on it.
They hunted insects among the petals. They laid their eggs in the central pool. Tadpoles grew up and became more frogs. And they made more tadpoles. And each eventually died, and sank down and joined the compost at the base of the leaves, which, in fact, helped nourish the plant.
And this had been the way things were for as far back as the frogs could remember.2
Except that on this day, while it hunted for flies, one frog lost its way and crawled around the side of one of the outermost petals, or possibly leaves, and saw something it had never seen before.
It saw the universe.
More precisely, it saw the branch stretching away into the mists.
And several yards away, glistening with droplets of moisture in a solitary shaft of sunlight, was another flower.
The frog sat and stared.
"Hngh! Hngh! Hngh!"
Gurder leaned against the wall and panted like a hot dog on a sunny day.
Angalo was almost as badly out of breath, but was going red in the face trying not to show it.
"Why didn't you tell us!" he demanded.
"You were too busy arguing," said Masklin. "So I knew the only way to get you running was to start moving."
"Thank... you... very much," Gurder heaved.
"Why aren't you puffed out?" said Angalo.
"I'm used to running fast," said Masklin, peering around the plant. "Okay, Thing. Now what?"
"Along this corridor," said the Thing.
"It's full of humans!" squeaked Gurder.
"Everywhere's full of humans. That's why we're doing this," said Masklin. He paused, and then added, "Look, Thing, isn't there any other way we can go? Gurder nearly got squashed just now."
Colored lights moved in complicated patterns across the Thing. Then it said, "What is it you want to achieve?"
"We must find Grandson Richard, 39," panted Gurder.
"No. Going to the Florida place is the important thing," said Masklin.
"It isn't!" said Gurder. "I don't want to go to any Florida!"
Masklin hesitated. Then he said, "This probably isn't the right time to say this, but I haven't been totally honest with you."
He told them about the Thing, and space, and the Ship in the sky. Around them there was the endless thundering noise of a building full of busy humans.
Eventually Gurder said, "You're not trying to find Grandson Richard, 39, at all?"
"I think he's probably very important," said Masklin hurriedly. "But you're right. At Florida there's a place where they have a sort of jet plane that goes straight up, to put kind of bleeping radio things in the sky."
"Oh, come on," said Angalo. "You can't just put things in the sky! They'd fall down."
"I don't really understand it myself," Masklin admitted. "But if you go up high enough, there is no down. I think. Anyway, all we have to do is go to Florida and put the Thing on one of these going-up jets and it can do the rest, it says."
"All?" said Angalo.
"It can't be harder than stealing a truck," said Masklin.
"You're not suggesting we steal a plane?" said Gurder, by this time totally horrified.
"Wow!" said Angalo, his eyes lighting up as if by some internal power source. He loved vehicles of al
l sorts – especially when they were traveling fast.
"You would, too, wouldn't you?" said Gurder accusingly.
"Wow!" said Angalo again. He seemed to be looking at a picture only he could see.
"You're mad," said Gurder.
"No one said anything about stealing a plane," said Masklin quickly. "We aren't going to steal a plane. We're just going for a ride on one, I hope."
"Wow!"
"And we're not going to try to drive it, Angalo!"
Angalo shrugged.
"All right," he said. "But suppose I'm on it, and the driver becomes ill, then I expect I'll have to take over. I mean, I drove the Truck pretty well –"
"You kept running into things!" said Gurder.
"I was learning. Anyway, there's nothing to run into in the sky except clouds, and they look pretty soft," said Angalo.
"There's the ground!"
"Oh, the ground wouldn't be a problem. It'd be too far away."
Masklin tapped the Thing. "Do you know where the jet plane is that's going to Florida?"
"Yes."
"Lead us there, then. Avoiding as many humans as you can."
"And where does the orange juice come into all this?" said Gurder.
"I'm not too sure about the orange juice bit," said Masklin.
It was raining softly, and because it was early evening, lights were coming on around the airport.
Absolutely no one heard the faint tinkle as a little ventilation grille dropped off an outside wall.
Three blurred shapes lowered themselves down onto the concrete and sped away, toward the planes.
Angalo looked up. And up some more. And there was still more up to come. He ended up with his head craned right back.
He was nearly in tears.
"Oh, wow!" he kept saying.
"It's too big," muttered Gurder, trying not to look. Like most of the nomes who had been born in the Store, he hated looking up and not seeing a ceiling. Angalo was the same, but more than being Outside he hated not going fast.
"I've seen them go up in the sky," said Masklin. "They really do fly. Honestly."
"Wow!"
It loomed over them, so big that you had to keep on stepping back and back to see how big it was. Rain glistened on it. The airport lights made smears of green and white bloom on its flanks. It wasn't a thing, it was a bit of shaped sky.
"Of course, they look smaller when they're a long way off," Masklin muttered.
He stared up at the plane. He'd never felt smaller in his life.
"I want one," moaned Angalo, clenching his fists. "Look at it. It looks as though it's going too fast even when it's standing still!"
"How do we get on it, then?" said Gurder.
"Can't you just see their faces back home if we turned up with this?" said Angalo.
"Yes. I can. Horribly clearly," said Gurder. "But how do we get on it?"
"We could..." Angalo began. He hesitated. "Why did you have to ruin everything?" he snapped.
"There's the holes where the wheels stick through," said Masklin. "I think we could climb up there."
"No," said the Thing, which was tucked under Masklin's arm. "You would not be able to breathe. You must be properly inside. Where the planes go, the air is thin."
"I should hope so," said Gurder, stoutly. "That's why it's air."
"You would not be able to breathe," said the Thing patiently.
"Yes, I would," said Gurder. "I've always been able to breathe."
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You gets lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
Masklin waded through the puddles on the concrete so that he could see down the far side of the aircraft. Some way away a couple of humans were using some sort of machines to load boxes into a hole in the side of the plane. He walked back, around the huge tires, and squinted up at a long, high tube that stretched from the building.
He pointed.
"I think that's how humans are loaded onto it," he said.
"What, through a pipe? Like water?" said Angalo.
"It's better than standing out here getting wet, anyway," said Gurder. "I'm soaked through already."
"There are stairs and wires and things," said Masklin. "It shouldn't be too difficult to climb up there. There's bound to be a gap we can slip in by." He sniffed. "There always is," he added, "when humans build things."
"Let's do it!" said Angalo. "Oh, wow!"
"But you're not to try to steal it," said Masklin, as they helped the slightly plump Gurder lumber into a run. "It's going where we want to go anyway –"
"Not where I want to go," moaned Gurder. "I want to go home!"
"And you're not to try to drive it. There's not enough of us. Anyway, I expect it's a lot more complicated than a truck. It's a – do you know what it's called. Thing?"
"A Concorde."
"There," said Masklin. "It's a Concorde. Whatever that is. And you've got to promise not to steal it."
2
CONCORDE: It goes faster than a bullet and you get smoked salmon.
From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome
by Angalo de Haberdasheri.
Squeezing through a gap in the humans-walking-onto-planes pipe wasn't as hard as coming to terms with what was on the other side.
The floor of the sheds in the quarry had been bare boards or stamped earth. In the airport building it was squares of a sort of shiny stone. But here... Gurder flung himself face down and buried his nose in it.
"Carpet!" he said, almost in tears. "Carpet! I never thought I'd see you again!"
"Oh, get up," said Angalo, embarrassed at the Abbot acting like that in front of someone who, however much of a friend he was, hadn't been born a Store nome.
Gurder stood up awkwardly. "Sorry," he mumbled, brushing himself off. "Don't know what possessed me there. It just took me back, that's all. Real carpet. Haven't seen real carpet for months."
He blew his nose noisily. "We had some beautiful carpets in the Store, you know. Beautiful. Some of them had patterns on them."
Masklin looked up the pipe. It was like one of the Store's corridors, and was quite brightly lit.
"Let's move on," he said. "It's too exposed here. Where are all the humans, Thing?"
"They will be arriving shortly."
"How does it knows?" Gurder complained.
"It listens to other machines," said Masklin.
"There are also many computers on this plane," said the Thing.
"Well, that's nice," said Masklin vaguely. "You'll have someone to talk to, then."
"They are quite stupid," said the Thing, and managed to express disdain without actually having anything to express it with.
A few feet away the corridor opened into a new space. Masklin could see a curtain, and what looked like the edge of a chair.
"All right, Angalo," he said. "Lead the way. I know you want to."
It was two minutes later.
The three of them were sitting under a seat.
Masklin had never really thought about the insides of aircraft. He'd spent days up on the cliff behind the quarry, watching them take off. Of course, he'd assumed there were humans inside. Humans got everywhere. But he'd never really thought about the insides. If ever there was anything that looked made up of outsides, it was a plane.
But it had been too much for Gurder. He was in tears.
"Electric light," he moaned. "And more carpets! And big soft seats! They've even got antimacassars on them! And there isn't any mud anywhere! There are even signs!"
"There, there," said Angalo helplessly, patting him on the shoulder. "It was a good Store, I know." He looked up at Masklin.
"You've got to admit it's unsettling," he said. "I was expecting... well, wires and pipes and exciting levers and things. Not something like the Arnold Bros. Furnishings Department!"
&n
bsp; "We shouldn't stay here," said Masklin. "There'll be humans all over the place pretty soon. Remember what the Thing said."
They helped Gurder up and trotted under the rows of seats with him between them. But it wasn't like the Store in one important way, Masklin realized. There weren't many places to hide. In the Store there was always something to get behind or under or wriggle through.
He could already hear distant sounds. In the end they found a gap behind a curtain, in a part of the aircraft where there were no seats. Masklin crawled inside, pushing the Thing in front of him.
They weren't distant sounds now. They were very close. He turned his head, and saw a human foot a few inches away.
At the back of the gap there was a hole in the metal wall where some thick wires passed through. It was just big enough for Angalo and Masklin, and big enough for a terrified Gurder with the two of them pulling on his arms. There wasn't too much room, but at least they couldn't be seen.
They couldn't see, either. They lay packed together in the gloom, trying to make themselves comfortable on the wires.
After a while Gurder said, "I feel a bit better now."
Masklin nodded.
There were noises all around them. From somewhere far below came a series of metallic clanks. There was the mournful sound of human voices, and then a jolt.
"Thing?" he whispered.
"Yes?"
"What's happening?"
"The plane is getting ready to become airborne."
"Oh."
"Do you know what that means?"
"No. Not really."
"It is going to fly in the air. 'Borne' means to be carried, and 'air' means air. To be borne in the air. Airborne."
Masklin could hear Angalo's breathing.
He settled himself as best he could between the metal wall and a thick bundle of wires, and stared into the darkness.
The nomes didn't speak. After a while there was a faint jerk and a sensation of movement.
Nothing else happened. It went on not happening.
Eventually Gurder, his voice trembling with terror, said, "Is it too late to get off, if we – ?"
A sudden distant thundering noise finished the sentence for him. A dull rumbling shook everything around them very gently but very firmly.
Then there was a heavy pause, like the moment a ball must feel between the time it's thrown up and the time it starts to come down, and something picked up all three of them and slid them into a struggling heap. The floor tried to become the wall.
The Bromeliad Trilogy Page 29
