The Cloud Hunters

by Alex Shearer

  There are sky-buses and sky-ferries to take you to all the isles in your local sector, and to other sectors too. But long-haul boats don’t come by so frequently, and they also cost a lot. So it’s best, if possible, to have transport of your own.

  Nobody has ever got to the end of all the sectors, or has even mapped them all. The sky just goes on and on. There’s no apparent end to it. You could travel all your life, I guess, and still find something new.

  Although we live in the sky, aeroplanes would be no good here. Jet engines would soon overheat and burn up in the heavy air. It would be like having syrup in them. Planes couldn’t go faster than the boats anyway, so what would be the point? The boats we travel in float on the air, carried by the wind and powered by the sun.

  There are no real continental land masses here, not like in the old world, and there are no oceans or seas at all, not one drop. There are just the islands, circling like satellites at different levels around a fiery core, floating like huge rafts on the heavy air – or bobbing like great flat-bottomed boats in an ocean of sky.

  The islands are mostly stable, but sometimes we lurch on the air currents or are battered by rogue thermals and magnetic storms. Then the islands shudder, as if hit by earthquakes. You can feel the ground tremble under your feet and hear the plates rattle in the kitchen cupboards. The motion can make you feel quite sick. But then the island settles again and the nausea soon subsides.

  The islands come in all sizes, large and small. Some are only a few hundred metres wide, while others would take days, or even weeks, to cross. Yet they’re still only islands. That’s all they are: islands in the sky. Even the tiniest of them will remain in place as long as its shape allows it buoyancy. But if it cracks or crumbles, or slips out of orbit and collides with an adjacent island, it can fall, and then it’s finished.

  Our dense atmosphere is rich in oxygen, but if you were a stranger our air would leave you gasping. Your lungs would struggle just to draw in breath. You’d pant and wheeze, and although the effort wouldn’t kill you (unless you had a weak heart) all you would be able to do would be to sit there, trying to inhale and exhale. You’d have the strength for nothing else. You’d be fighting all day, just for breath, until finally you got acclimatised – which might take a month, or even longer.

  People have breathed this air for generations, ever since the first settlers came. But it must have been hard for those early pioneers, when they first tentatively lifted the visors from their helmets and looked around them at this brave, new land. But us, their descendants and successors, we’ve adapted and evolved. We’ve got lungs like mountaineers.

  The temperate islands we inhabit are at the middle level. But there are others both above and below – the lower islands being hotter, the higher ones colder. It is said to snow up on some of the ones above, though I’ve never been to see it for myself. The temperate zone is a narrow band, in relation to the island world as a whole; just a thin strip of isles, suitable for habitation. The islands far below us are too hot, those high above too chilly. Their climates may have suited other life forms, but not us. We could ascend and descend within certain limits, but anything beyond that and we’d soon die.

  Different islands make for different people, and from different temperatures, different temperaments. Why it should be, nobody knows. But that’s how it seems to be. Some are bone idle, some are always busy, some are constantly at war, some wouldn’t swat an insect.

  There is a theory that once, long ago, all the islands were part of the one globe, but then the core erupted and the planet was shattered and blown up out into the atmosphere. Everything immediately changed, including the density of the air. The core remained but the fragmented pieces never fell back. They went into orbit and here we are.

  And then the colonisers came, from other, overcrowded, choked and polluted worlds. They settled the islands, one by one. There was room enough for everyone back then, and there still is. Even now many islands remain unoccupied – perhaps thousands of them.

  It might seem an odd way to live, upon a small island in the sky, but to me nothing could be more natural, for it’s all I’ve ever known.

  Some of the smaller isles are little bigger than gardens, and a few eccentric people choose to live by themselves on these tiny places, happy – or unhappy – to be on their own. Hermits and recluses set up there, and spend their lives in solitude.

  You can see these solitary individuals as you sail by, waving at you in a friendly way, or staring at you threateningly, with a slingshot or a crossbow in their hands, warning you not to get too near and not, for one second, to think of docking.

  But they are not always the sole occupants of these isolated clumps of rock. Sky-seals like to bask on them, too: big, fat, blubbery, balloon-shaped creatures, slow moving, with folds of baggy skin, tufts of whiskers and loud, ferocious roars. But they’re mostly threats and bluster. They’re too fat and lazy to do much, except slip from their rocks when a shoal of sky-fish passes, so that they can grab some easy pickings.

  8

  swimmers

  So Jenine did come to supper, and it was all very polite and civilised (not to say formal and strained, at least in the presence of my parents.) She even left her knife at home on the boat. She wasn’t allowed to carry it to school, anyway. But I had seen her at the dockside, and the knife was back on her belt then. Her mother and their tracker, Kaneesh, carried them too.

  ‘She seemed like a nice girl.’

  At least that was what my father said, after she had gone. My mother just seemed relieved that she hadn’t brought her knife along.

  ‘And I don’t know about those scars,’ she said. ‘Defacing a young girl like that.’

  ‘It’s tradition.’ My father shrugged. ‘You had your ears pierced,’ he pointed out.

  ‘That,’ my mother said, ‘is different.’

  I didn’t really see why. Less visible, maybe. Not so drastic, perhaps. But it was pretty much the same thing.

  Jenine didn’t say a lot, not while my parents were there. Nor did she seem all that impressed by anything. But when I showed her my room, her eyes opened wide at the sight of all the stuff. Yet I still had the feeling that she wouldn’t have wanted to live there, and that she wouldn’t have swapped her bedroll on the deck, or her hammock under the canopy, for all my furniture and gadgets.

  After we had eaten, we sat outside a while, then walked down to the cliff edge to see the view. She stood on the very tip of the land, quite unafraid of falling. Beneath her was the safety net, but she didn’t seem to like the look of it, as if it might cramp her style. So we walked around the coast until we came to a warning sign, which read: DANGER: EXPERIENCED SKY-SWIMMERS ONLY. There was no net to catch you here, just the emptiness of space beneath you.

  She perched on a rock and peered down.

  ‘Come on, Christien,’ she said. ‘Join me. What are you waiting for?’

  I was waiting for the giddiness in my head to go away.

  ‘Well? Are you scared?’

  I couldn’t let her think that, so I joined her at the edge. I peered down into the vastness.

  Beneath us, countless kilometres away, was our sun. Between us and it were hundreds of thousands of islands, all orbiting at different levels. Some were so far away they were little more than spots to the eye. And when you tilted your head back and looked upwards, there were thousands more islands, up above.

  Jenine was standing on the very edge of the rock: her heels on land, her toes in space. I grew afraid that she would fall and not be able to save herself. She would panic and forget how to swim. And she would fall and fall, down into the sun, and burn up like a match, leaving a thin trail of smoke and fragments of ash. To fall is instant cremation. Or maybe I would dive after and heroically save her.

  ‘I wouldn’t do –’ I began.

  ‘You wouldn’t do what?’

  ‘Well – I mean – I’d be careful.’

  She smiled at me, pretended to totter.
/>   ‘You worried?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, you are. What are you worried about?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m not worried about anything.’

  ‘Did you say you had a water pool?’

  ‘That’s right. I did.’

  We left the shore and walked to the house. I wound back the canopy which covers the pool in order to stop evaporation. It was just under half full. My father had said he would top it up when the price of water fell, or when some rain came. But it was still deep enough to swim in, if not to dive into. We got changed and splashed around for a while and swam a few lengths. Then we lay on the inflatable beds and floated on the water, feeling the warm air on our backs.

  ‘Jenine,’ I said.

  ‘Umm?’

  ‘What will you do when the term ends and the long holiday comes?’

  ‘We’ll go hunting.’

  Of course I knew that. But I wasn’t asking for information. I was asking in order to lead up to something.

  ‘How far will you go? Just out for the day?’

  ‘No. Further. Much further.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  She moved her head around on the pillow of the inflatable so that she could see me.

  ‘Why,’ she asked, ‘do you want to know? Why are you friendly to me, Christien? What are you after?’

  I shrugged – which isn’t so easy to do when you’re lying on a plastic bed in a swimming pool.

  ‘Nothing. I’m not after anything. I just like you. I just ask things because I’m curious. No harm in that, is there?’

  ‘No, I suppose not. No harm at all.’

  She drifted up to what would have been the deep end if the pool had been full, then she paddled back with little flicks of her fingers and toes.

  ‘So where will you go?’ I persisted. ‘Where will the long trip take you?’

  ‘We sail past the Forbidden Isles usually,’ she said. ‘And on to the Isles of Dissent.’

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘We take them water, of course,’ she said. ‘It’s what we always do. Once or twice every turning. With the water we bring them, and what they make for themselves, they can last till we come again. They rely on us,’ she said. ‘Not many other people will go there. Just Cloud Hunters.’

  ‘Why not? Why won’t anyone else travel there?’

  ‘They’re afraid.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of their neighbours. The Forbidden Islanders nearby.’

  ‘But you’re not afraid?’

  ‘Of course we are. But we’re careful.’

  ‘But you still go, and take water to the Dissenters?’

  ‘If we didn’t . . .’ Then she trailed off, turned away from me and seemed to doze in the sun.

  I flicked water at her.

  ‘Hey!’

  She splashed me back, soaking me completely. Girls are like that. Their retaliation is always over the top. They don’t just get you back, they get you back tenfold.

  ‘Hey!’ I said. ‘What did you do that for?’

  ‘You did it to me.’

  ‘That was only a drop.’

  ‘Well, that was a big drop. It’ll teach you not to do it again.’

  ‘I wanted you to finish,’ I said.

  ‘Finish what?’

  ‘What you were saying.’

  ‘What was I saying?’

  ‘About the Isles of Dissent – you said no one else would go there, and if you didn’t take them water. But you didn’t say what would happen to the islanders without your water.’

  She looked at me through half-shut eyes, scrunched up against the light.

  ‘They’d die, of course,’ she said. ‘Of thirst. Little by little.’

  I left her in peace for a while, then I paddled around to get next to her.

  ‘Jenine,’ I said. ‘What’s it like to go cloud hunting?’

  She raised her head and put her hands under her chin.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘What’s anything like? What’s it like to live in a big house by the coast and have your own water pool?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s like what it’s like, I suppose. It’s what you’re used to, what you know. But that’s not what’s interesting, is it? It’s what you don’t know, that’s the interesting part.’

  ‘Umm,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’ Then she rolled off the bed and swam to the steps.

  I’d still been hoping that she might invite me to go along with them one weekend. But she didn’t take the hint. Perhaps I hadn’t been obvious enough. Maybe I needed to do a little underlining.

  Jenine’s mother came to collect her later. I don’t know why she felt it necessary. Jenine was quite capable of making her own way home, and I’d have gone with her anyway. Perhaps her mother was just curious. My father answered the door. He greeted her warmly and invited her in. But she refused politely and said that she ought to be taking Jenine back, as they had an early morning start ahead of them.

  My mother came to say hello. Standing next to Carla, she looked like a house-cat next to a tiger. (Not that we have any here, but I’ve seen pictures.) One was domesticated and one was wild, and each seemed wary of the other; yet they were of the same species, if but distantly related. But they were polite enough. My mother is fond of saying that all you need to be is polite. She thinks it will get you out of anything.

  Jenine said goodbye and she and Carla walked off together. They didn’t look back, not once. I watched until they were out of sight. They looked like two tigers, mother and cub, loping along, both lithe and slender, moving with feline grace.

  As they walked away, two sky-fins came into view, about five or six hundred metres above, gambolling and frolicking. They swam off to the left and a few minutes later a sky-shark appeared. It seemed to be tracking them, and it headed in the same direction. If it found them, then the following morning the land beneath would be flecked with blood.

  Next week at school, Jenine didn’t say a word about the visit. And as for taking hints, I realised that I could give her a hundred and she would never take any one of them. If there was something that I wanted, I would simply have to ask for it outright.

  ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get,’ my father used to say. ‘And even when you do ask, you don’t always get. But at least you’re in with a chance, aren’t you?’

  I disagreed with him on a lot of things, but I agreed with him on that.

  9

  the forbidden isles

  The Forbidden Isles – I’d better briefly tell you about them. They’re a string of islands to the east of the Main Drift, just beyond the Islands of Night. (The Main Drift is our major highway; it’s a sky-road that can take you almost anywhere.)

  The next thing I’ll say about the Forbidden Isles is that they didn’t get their name for nothing. And the third thing I’ll tell you is that if you don’t have to go there, you don’t want to.

  And if you do want to, you must be mad – as mad as the Forbidden Islanders. And that’s saying something. Because they’ve got every variety of patented insanity there; there’s one kind for every island and an island for every one.

  The islands aren’t ‘forbidden’ in the sense that you may not go there. You can go whenever you please, just as long as you strictly observe the local customs. But, if you don’t, it’s at your own peril, and you may never get to leave.

  It’s true that a handful of the Forbidden Isles admit no visitors at all. And it is obvious which ones they are. Their coastlines are bordered with floating sky-mines. Bash into one of those and your ship will be smithereens. Bits of you will be turning up a thousand kilometres away.

  But generally speaking, the Forbidden Isles are called ‘forbidden’ because of what is prohibited there. Or, conversely, because of what is strictly insisted upon. Or sometimes both.

  In the Northern Forbidden, for example, women must never cut their hair; it must always be long enough to cover their ears. In the Southern Forbidden a
ll men must be clean shaven and never sport beards. The punishment for Northern women trimming their hair is to have their ears chopped off. The punishment for Southern men growing beards is to have their noses sliced. Most people (especially short-haired women and bearded men) try to avoid these islands. And so it goes on similarly elsewhere. There are islands where men must always cover their heads and where women must not – sitting right next door to islands where women are forbidden to wear hats of any kind, and men must go bare-headed.

  The Forbidden Isles are not famous for tolerance either. They’re home to all the bigotry and weirdness you can think of. Yet anybody can land on them, who is prepared to take their chances or who is willing (at least temporarily) to conform.

  The main chance you take is that you might not get away again. For you could all too easily be swept up in one of their quarrels, or be arrested for a spy, to spend the next twenty years in a cell the size of a large dustbin. And they’ll think they’re treating you kindly if they give you bread and water every other day, and allow you use of the prison toothbrush once a month; the toothpaste ran out long ago. The punishments for contravening local customs can be severe, including being tied to posts on the tops of hills and being left there for the sky-sharks.

  The inhabitants of any one Forbidden Isle never seem to agree, almost as a matter of principle, with the views, practices or opinions of their neighbours. In fact, they go to war with each other on a regular basis. (None of them seems to forbid that.)

  They are the most aggressive and intolerant people in the whole system. No other sector is like it, or as dangerous. In a world where there is space and an island for everyone, the Forbidden Islanders cannot seem to stomach the idea that anybody else could be entitled to be different.

  In fairness, visitors are usually given plenty of warning of knowing what they are letting themselves in for. There are notices up in every port and harbour, defining local customs. You can’t miss them. They’re there telling you that women should remove all headgear or that men must put some on, or whatever it might be. And these are more than quaint local customs; these are matters of life and death.