The Bromeliad Trilogy

by Terry Pratchett

  "No."

  "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?"

  "No. 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 nomes 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 tha
t 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.

  Masklin shrugged. "Well, the Thing says we don't have to get on it, we just have to put the Thing on it."

  Angalo pushed himself up on his elbows. "You mean we don't get to ride on it? I was looking forward to that!"

  "I don't think it's like the Truck, Angalo. I don't think they leave a window open for anyone to sneak in," said Masklin. "I think it'd take more than a lot of nomes and some string to fly it, anyway."

  "You know, that was the best time of my life, when I drove the Truck," said Angalo dreamily. "When I think of all those months I lived in the Store, not even knowing about the Outside..."

  Masklin waited politely. His head felt heavy.

  "Well?" he said.

  "Well, what?"

  "What happens when you think of all those months in the Store not knowing about the Outside?"

  "It just seems like a waste."

  Pion curled up and started to snore. Angalo yawned.

  They hadn't slept for hours. Nomes slept mainly at night, but needed catnaps to get through the long day. Even Masklin was nodding.

  "Thing?" he remembered to say, "wake me up in ten minutes, will you?"

  7

  SATELLITES: They are in space and stay there by going so fast that they never stay in one place long enough to fall down. Televisions are bounced off them.

  From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome

  by Angalo de Haberdasheri.

  It wasn't the Thing that woke Masklin up. It was Gurder.

  Masklin lay with his eyes half closed, listening. Gurder was talking to the Thing in a low voice.

  "I believed in the Store," he said, "and then I found out it was just a – a sort of thing built by humans. And I thought Grandson Richard, 39, was some special person and he turned out to be a human who sings when he wets himself –"

  "Takes a shower!"

  "And now there's thousands of nomes in the world! Thousands! Believing all sorts of things! That stupid Topknot person believes that the going-up shuttles make the sky. Do you know what I thought when I heard that? I thought, if he'd been the one arriving in my world instead of the other way around, he'd have thought I was just as stupid! I am just as stupid!... Thing?"

  "I was maintaining a tactful silence."

  "Angalo believes in silly machinery and Masklin believes in, oh, I don't know. Space. Or not believing in things. And it all works for them. I try to believe in important things, and they don't last for five minutes. Where's the fairness in that?"

  "Only another tactful and understanding silence suffices at this point."

  "I just wanted to make some sense out of life."

  "This is a commendable aim."

  "I mean, what is the truth of everything?"

  There was a pause. Then the Thing said: "I recall your conversation with Masklin about the origin of nomes. You wanted to ask me. I can answer now. I was made, I know this is true. I know that I am a thing made of metal and plastic, but also that I am something which lives inside that metal and plastic. It is impossible for me not to be absolutely certain of it. This is a great comfort. As to nomes, I have data that says nomes originated on another world and came here thousands of years ago. This may be true. It may not be true. I am not in a position to judge."

  "I knew where I was, back in the Store," said Gurder, half to himself. "And even in the quarry it wasn't too bad. I had a proper job. I was important to people. How can I go back now, knowing that everything I believed about the Store and Arnold Bros. (est. 1905) and Grandson Richard, 39, is just... is just an opinion?"

  "I cannot advise. I am sorry."

  Masklin decided it was a diplomatic time to wake up. He made a grunting noise just to be sure that Gurder heard him.

  The Abbot was very red in the face.

  "I couldn't sleep," he said shortly.

  Masklin stood up.

  "How long, Thing?"

  "Twenty-seven minutes."

  "Why didn't you wake me up!"

  "I wished you to be refreshed."

  "But it's still a long way off. We'll never get you onto it in time. Wake up, you." Masklin prodded Angalo with his foot. "Come on, we'll have to run. Where's Pion? Oh, there you are. Come on, Gurder."

  They jogged on through the scrub. In the distance, there was the low mournful howl of sirens.

  "You're cutting it really fine, Masklin," said Angalo.

  "Faster! Run faster!"

  Now that they were closer, Masklin could see the shuttle. It was quite high up. There didn't seem to be anything useful at ground level.

  "I hope you've got a good plan, Thing," he panted, as the four of them dodged between the bushes, "because I'll never be able to get you all the way up there."

  "Do not worry. We are nearly close enough."

  "What do you mean? It's still a long way off!"

  "It is close enough for me to get on."

  "What is it going to do? Take a flying leap?" said Angalo.

  "Put me down."

  Masklin obediently put the black box on the ground. It extended a few of its probes, which swung around slowly for a while and then pointed toward the going-up jet.

  "What are you playing at?" said Masklin. "This is wasting time."

  Gurder laughed, although not in a very happy way.

  "I know what it's doing," he said. "It's sending itself onto the shuttle. Right, Thing?"

  "I am transmitting an instruction subset to the computer on the communications satellite," said the Thing.

  The nomes said nothing.

  "Or to put it another way... yes, I am turning the satellite computer into a part of me. Although not a very intelligent one."

  "Can you really do that?" said Angalo.

  "Certainly."

  "Wow. And you won't miss the bit you're sending?"

  "No. Because it will not leave me."

  "You're sending it and keeping it at the same time?"

  "Yes."

  Angalo looked at Masklin.

  "Did you understand any of that?" he demanded.

  "I did," said Gurder. "The Thing's saying it's not just a machine, it's a sort of – a sort of collection of electric thoughts that lives in a machine. I think."

  Lights flickered around on top of the Thing.

  "Does it take a long time to do?" said Masklin.

  "Yes. Please do not take up vital communication power at this point."

  "I think he means he doesn't want us to talk to him," said Gurder. "He's concentrating."

  "It," said Angalo. "It's an it. And it made us run all the way here just so we can hurry up and wait."

  "It probably has to be close up to do... whatever it is it's doing," said Masklin.

  "How long's it going to take?" said Angalo. "It seems ages since it was twenty-seven minutes ago."

  "Twenty-seven minutes at least," said Gurder.

  "Yeah. Maybe more."

  Pion pulled at Masklin's arm, pointed to the looming white shape with his other hand, and rattled off a long sentence in Floridian, or if the Thing was right, nearly original nomish.

/>   "I can't understand you without the Thing," said Masklin. "Sorry."

  "No speaka da goose-oh," said Angalo.

  A look of panic spread across the boy's face. He shouted this time, and tugged harder.

  "I think he doesn't want to be near the going-up jets when they start up," said Angalo. "He's probably afraid of the noise. Don't... like... the... noise, right?" he said.

  Pion nodded furiously.

  "They didn't sound too bad at the airport," said Angalo. "More of a rumble. I expect they might frighten unsophisticated people."

  "I don't think Shrub's people are particularly unsophisticated," said Masklin thoughtfully. He looked up at the white tower. It had seemed a long way away, but in some ways it might be quite close.

  Really very close.

  "How safe do you think it is here?" he said. "When it goes up, I mean."

  "Oh, come on," said Angalo. "The Thing wouldn't have let us come right here if it wasn't safe for nomes."

  "Sure, sure," said Masklin. "Right. You're right. Silly to dwell on it, really."

  Pion turned and ran.

  The other three looked back at the shuttle. Lights moved in complicated patterns on the top of the Thing.

  Somewhere another siren sounded. There was a sensation of power, as though the biggest spring in the world was being wound up.

  When Masklin spoke, the other two seemed to hear him speak their own thoughts.

  "Exactly how good," he said, very slowly, "do you think the Thing is at judging how close nomes can stand to a going-up jet when it goes up? I mean, how much experience has it got, do you think?"

  They looked at one another.

  "Maybe we should back off a little bit?" Gurder suggested.

  They turned and walked away.

  Then each one of them couldn't help noticing that the others seemed to be walking faster and faster.

  Faster and faster.

  Then, as one nome, they gave up and ran for it, fighting their way through the scrub and grass, skidding on stones, elbows going up and down like pistons. Gurder, who was normally out of breath at anything above walking pace, bounded along like a balloon.

  "Have... you... any – any... idea... how – how... close –" Angalo panted.

  The sound behind them started like a hiss, like the whole world taking a deep breath. Then it turned into... not noise, but something more like an invisible hammer that smacked into both ears at once.