Yet a turban was a turban, and some skepticism was inescapable. Ranjit Singh grinned broadly, his teeth bright in their dark surround. “Guru Nanak founded our religion over six hundred years ago,” he said. “In the fifteenth century. He wanted to reconcile Islam and Buddhism, but that did not last. For centuries, we were the bitterest of Islam’s foes.”
“He’ll take you to lunch,” said Barcano. He hesitated while he looked at them all with an inquiring lift to his eyebrows. When their nods said that, yes, they had not eaten, he went on. “Then he’ll show you how the controls work and check you out on Jumbo out there.”
He shook their hands. “Good luck,” he said, and he was gone.
“He has,” said their new guide, his voice soft with accent. “He has many things to do. You understand.”
Ranjit Singh led them then to the basement room, its walls lined with vending machines, that served as a staff cafeteria. As they entered, a small noise from behind the nearest machine caught Randy’s attention. She meeped, Muffy Bowen released the giant spider, and she dashed out of sight. In a moment she returned, carrying a small, grey mouse pierced by her fangs.
Ranjit Singh applauded with two claps of his hands. Then he bent, peered closer, and said, “It has only seven legs!”
“An accident,” said Tom Cross. “She does fine, doesn’t she?” When Ranjit Singh nodded agreeably, the two men pushed together three of the cafeteria’s small tables. Once they had their food, Ranjit Singh said, “Now, I must tell you a little bit first.”
Jim Brane raised a hand to indicate himself and Julia Templeton. “We’re truckers,” he said. “We know the basic principles.”
Ranjit Singh shrugged with an Oriental eloquence. “Of course you do. But I was not about to embark on such a lecture. We do not have the time.”
Freddy’s handcart was parked between Tom’s and Muffy’s chairs. Tom tucked into the pig’s mouth a quarter of a tuna fish sandwich whose pasty “fish” had apparently been grown in a vat. “Then…?” he said.
“Ah, yes.” Ranjit Singh finished prying the lid from a container of yogurt. He raised his head and flashed his brilliant grin at them. “These Bioblimps,” he said. “They are descended from ordinary domestic ones, of course. But they are not the same.”
“What do you mean?” asked Muffy Bowen.
“The ordinary ones,” he went on. “They are used to being around people. They have very little in the way of brains—they are just jellyfish, after all!—but still they know where their food comes from.”
Freddy belched and interrupted. “And the wild ones are used to finding their own food.”
“Exactly. If you unplug a tame one’s control computer, it will stay around for awhile, waiting for you to feed it again. With a wild one, you must tie it down, like those…” He indicated the corral invisible outside with a gesture. “Before you take off its reins. Its electronics.” He shrugged eloquently.
“Or it’s gone,” said Ralph Cross.
“Worse than that,” said Ranjit Singh. “If it is hungry.”
Muffy shuddered.
Tom imagined that it might have been a wild Bioblimp that pulled his mother from the ground, but he refused to show how the thought affected him.
The lessons in Bioblimp control did not take long. The airport’s captive Bioblimps were used only for moving heavy objects short distances, and for that limited purpose they gained all the propulsion they needed from the heavy Macks or other genimals to which they would be tethered. Just as when they had been wild and free, they had no propulsion systems of their own other than the ability to add hydrogen to, or remove it from, the contents of their gasbags, and thus to move up or down at will. They did not carry pods and their accompanying propellors.
Yet they did remain able to travel long distances. Like a hot-air balloon, a wild Bioblimp rose or fell until it found a wind that blew in the direction it wished to go, if “wished” was the proper word for a genimal with virtually no brain. And the control computers Peter Barcano’s people had installed in their captives were quite capable of managing such navigation. Nor was operating such a computer difficult. A simple toggle controlled movement up and down, while separate slides worked the tentacles. A built-in radio allowed the operator to talk to the airport’s traffic controllers.
At the corral, Ranjit Singh drew a touchpad remote from the breast pocket of his coverall and used it to command the largest Bioblimp, the one Peter Barcano had called “Jumbo,” to descend to ground level and dilate one cargo pouch. Tom Cross lifted Freddy from the cart and stepped forward to touch the wrinkled surface of the sphincter. “It feels,” he said. “Like rubber.”
“And it smells like a zoo,” said Freddy. “A zoo in heat.”
Ranjit Singh looked at the pig and wrinkled his nose deliberately, as if to say, “You should talk.” Tom laughed silently, to himself alone, for though both he and Muffy were so used to Freddy’s distinctive animal aroma that they rarely noticed it, they did know it was there.
Aloud, Ranjit Singh said, “That is not surprising. They needed elephant genes to make the tentacles strong, after all.”
Kimmer Alvidrez stepped into the pouch, flexed her knees, and bounced. “Like an air mattress,” she said. She pushed at the walls, forcing them to part and reveal the spaciousness of the pouch. “But we’ll have to hold the walls apart, or we’ll suffocate. A stick would help. And there’s not much light.”
The light was indeed dim, for it was limited to what entered through the pouch’s opening and filtered through the Bioblimp’s tough tissue. But it was enough to show the control board hanging from the inner wall of the pouch, as well as a few bits of rubbish that littered the pouch’s floor.
The Bioblimp’s tether was a strong cable fastened to a collar cinched tight around the base of one of the genimal’s tentacles; its other end clipped to a sturdy ring-bolt on the corral fence. Once everyone was aboard, Ranjit Singh relocated the snaphook on the end of the cable to a stanchion some distance outside the enclosure. Then, while Ralph and Tom Cross held the pouch’s walls apart with their extended arms, he showed them all how the controls worked and invited them to try their hands. Ralph Cross shook his head. Tom looked at Jim Brane, as did Muffy and Kimmer. Jim in turn turned toward his mate, Julia Templeton, who simply said, “Go ahead.”
Jim grinned as broadly and, in the dimness, as brightly as Ranjit Singh could possibly have managed. He stepped forward, laid his hands on the control board, and began to practice. Within twenty minutes, he was wrapping tentacles around a growling Tige, lifting the Mack a dozen feet into the air, and lowering him gently to the ground again.
Jim performed the exercise twice more, increasing the altitude of the lift each time, until Tige was suspended a hundred feet above the Earth. The Mack was no longer growling, but his head was cocked toward the open pouch. He seemed to eye his master with less than perfect trust. “Very good,” said Ranjit Singh. “Excellent. You are ready. Now, when you no longer need the beast…” He pointed at a switch set on the side of the panel. “Flip this, and the computer will bring it back.”
“You don’t want it loose, huh?” said Freddy with a snort. “I can see why.”
The next step was to fit Tige into the Bioblimp’s other pouch. Unfortunately, the Bioblimp, though big, was not quite big enough. Jim lowered the genimal until its side was flat upon the ground—its mouth had to be kept free to breathe—and dilated the pouch sphincter as far as it could go. Julia then tried to back the Mack into the pouch. When Tige proved unable to fit, Jim used the Bioblimp as a crane to lift the Mack’s cab from his back.
The process was apparently entertaining, for a small crowd was gathering. Most of the onlookers wore the coveralls and decorative emblems of jet-handlers and other airport workers. A few wore the sleeker attire of executives.
No one noticed when one of the latter bent his head to listen to his shorter companion’s urgent words, nodded, and pointed one hand, cupped as if to conceal some small ob
ject, toward the Bioblimp. Nor did they notice when the skin lining the pouch they were in, not far from the control panel, flicked much like the skin of a dog that had just been bitten by a flea, nor when the two executives turned and left the scene.
Without his cab, Tige had no trouble backing into the pouch, though he was still so long that his head, tongue lolling, had to hang half out of the pouch. The cab, its weight borne by the Bioblimp’s tentacles and steered by human hands, squeezed into the pouch with the controls. “There,” said Jim.
Tom Cross and his father looked at each other, rolled their shoulders, and grinned. “And it’s holding the walls apart,” said Tom. “Instead of us.”
“It’ll still be pretty crowded,” said Kimmer Alvidrez.
“I don’t mind,” said Franklin Peirce. He grinned at Kimmer, though he made no move to cross the pouch to be closer to her.
“We’d have more room if I’d put the van back on this morning,” said Jim Brane. “But if I’d done that, we’d have to leave it behind now. It wouldn’t fit.”
As, the show over, the bystanders dispersed, Julia said to Jim, “I’ll meet you at the Farm.” She and Ralph Cross headed for her own Mack.
Muffy Bowen and Kimmer found seats within the truck cab. With them, Tom Cross set the pig. Peirce positioned himself near the pouch’s opening, where he could watch the outer world. Then, while Randy explored the Bioblimp’s cargo pouch, Jim released the tether and lifted their craft into the air. A brief conversation with the airport tower told him at what altitude the wind he wanted blew, and they were on their way.
“We’re going the wrong way!” cried Tom. The ground level wind was scudding them in the direction almost exactly opposite to the one they wanted.
“I know!” Jim’s fingers stabbed the controls as he tried to hasten their rise, while the others stared out the pouch’s open sphincter. They were passing the end of one of the airport’s runways when Kimmer pointed. A Robin was just taking off. “Is that…?”
“It can’t be,” said Tom. “They couldn’t know we came to the airport, and if they did, they would be arriving, not leaving.”
Freddy snorted from his position in the cab. “You’re an optimist.”
The proper wind, once they reached its level, blew steadily and did not veer. The ride was so smooth and quiet that the once-wild Bioblimp’s passengers hardly knew they were traveling. It was also far cooler than it had been on the ground, and the genimal itself remained docile, responding precisely as it should to Jim Brane’s hands on its controls. They reached the Farm without further incident.
Landing was what gave them trouble. Jim’s first attempt to make the Bioblimp moor itself to the white-painted fence near Tige’s and Blackie’s barn missed by a hundred meters. He began their descent in good time, but near the ground the wind changed direction and swept them over all the Farm’s buildings and across the field behind them. He managed to stop only by seizing a tree with the Bioblimp’s tentacles.
“Well, we’re down,” said Tom.
Jim held up one hand. It was shaking. “I don’t dare go up again. There might not be a wind that would take us back there.”
In the cab, Muffy Bowen pointed as if she could see through the side of the pouch. “I think I saw a fence.”
“Walk it,” said Kimmer Alvidrez. “Or let the truck out, and be towed.”
Jim walked it. He used the Bioblimp’s tentacles to seize another tree, closer to the fence. He let go of the one he had first grabbed. He repeated the process, and when he reached the fence, he moved tentacle over tentacle along it until he was where he had wanted to be in the first place. By then, most of the Farm’s staff and all the truckers on the premises had gathered outside the barn to watch his progress. Julia and Ralph Cross were in front of the crowd, and both of them were grinning. At Julia’s feet was a large insulated chest and a pile of what looked like blankets and sleeping bags.
“Just what we need,” said Kimmer as Tige greeted the crowd with a friendly bark and Jim’s face turned pink. “Get in here, Julia,” he yelled. “Let’s go.”
The crowd laughed as if it were a single person, and Jim blushed even pinker. When the noise died down, Tom called to his father, “You sure you want to stay?”
Ralph Cross nodded and waved. “Good luck,” he called. “And bring her back.”
“We’ll try.” Tom thought he could see wetness in his father’s eyes, and his own throat felt tight. He waved back.
Jim fingered the controls. One tentacle curled at Julia’s feet; she stepped into its crook, wrapped one arm around its upright portion, and was drawn toward the pouch. A second tentacle noosed itself around the supplies she had gathered and drew them after her. Jim then had the Bioblimp release the fence, and they were rising, blowing this way, that way, until finally they moved into a zone where the wind was blowing eastward.
The suburban landscape over which they passed was awash with green. Even where the houses—ancient structures of brick and stone and wood, newer ones shaped from pumpkins and squash and other gengineered plants—were thickest, there were trees and lawns and parks. But everywhere the human stamp could be seen, in towns and suburbs, near farms, along the sides of greenways, the green was striped and splotched with a lighter green and speckled with creamy blossoms.
“Honeysuckle,” said Julia Templeton. Jim Brane nodded his agreement. “It’s everywhere. We see a lot of it when we’re driving.”
“I wonder,” said Tom. “I wonder how many people drink enough to change like my mother.” She wasn’t the first. The cops had made that clear. But how often did it happen? How often could it happen without some reporter splashing it all over the veedonews?
The flight over the great lake was as boring as anything Tom Cross had ever done. For hours, there was nothing to see except water, the occasional freighter or fishing boat, a jet bird in the distance, a Floater or Bioblimp wearing its badge of domestication—a roomy cabin for its crew and controls—slung below its mouth. Nor was there anything to do except eat.
The sun was low behind them, and the food and drink in the chest Julia had brought was nearly gone, when they finally saw land ahead. As the windswept them over the shoreline, Muffy Bowen leaned out the opening of their pouch, the map Ralph Cross had found in her hand, comparing reality and representation. Finally, she pointed downward and said, “There. That point. That bay. That stream. They match, and Pinkley has to be about twenty miles north of us.”
“Then let’s park, right there.” Tom’s finger aimed at a grassy meadow not far from the verge of the lake. “We’ll need light to explore the place. In the morning.”
Jim Brane promptly set the Bioblimp to falling toward the ground. When the trees around the meadow were within reach, he had the genimal extend a tentacle, anchor itself against the pressure of the wind, and draw itself close to the ground.
As soon as the ground was within reach, Tige scrambled from his pouch. Once free, he shook himself, scratched, barked, and leaned back upon his haunches to watch his human friends debark.
“Do we need this thing any more?” The speaker was Freddy. “My stomach is…”
Tom Cross sniffed. The air was thick with the smell of honeysuckle.
“See the flowers?” asked Muffy. Her voice held a combination of yearning and self-mockery which said that, though she still craved the honeysuckle drug, she was not about to give in. “A little wine will fix you right up.”
“No way!” said the pig.
“It’s all road from here on,” said Jim. “We can ride Tige.” He looked at his Mack, and the giant dog woofed as if in agreement.
“Then…” Soon the Mack’s cab was on Tige’s back once more. On the now-trampled grass of the meadow was the stack of bedding Julia had supplied. Randy had disappeared into the tangled mass of shrubbery and honeysuckle vines that flanked the meadow. Jim was reaching for the switch that would cause the control computer to guide the Bioblimp back to the airport.
Tom was at his frie
nd’s side. “Shouldn’t you have the tether fastened?”
“I’ll jump.”
“Wait a second!” cried Muffy Bowen from her position just outside the pouch. “We’ll need this thing to get back.”
Jim jerked away from the control panel as if he had touched a hot stove. “You’re right.”
“What’s that?” Tom stretched out a hand and touched the wall of the pouch, not far from the control panel. Near the end of his finger was a small, dark oblong. He grasped it, and it resisted his pull. “It’s fastened on.”
When it finally came loose, they saw that the oblong was but one end of a dart-like object. It had a long, barbed point that had been embedded in the Bioblimp’s hide.
Julia stepped into the pouch, drawn by the his unexpected words. When she saw what he had found, she said, “That looks like a homer. The police use them when they want to track…”
After a moment of silence, Tom Cross swore. “That mechin’ Robin Redbreast! BRA!”
Muffy poked her head into the pouch. “We were around the airport long enough.”
“Litter!” Tom grasped the device in both hands. When it would not break, he brought it sharply down on the edge of the control panel.
The device shattered. But Tom’s left hand bumped a switch on the panel. The panel’s various indicator lights died in unison.
Muffy leaped away from the Bioblimp as the pouch’s sphincter closed and opened twice in rapid succession. Outside, Franklin Peirce yelled, “It’s letting go! Get out of there!”
“You’ve turned off the computer!”
“Asshole!” screeched Freddy.
Two tentacles snaked into the pouch, wrapped around the three humans within it, and yanked them out, spilling them roughly onto the meadow’s grass. The Bioblimp lifted into the air. More tentacles tore the control computer loose and broadcast its pieces to the wind.
But the Bioblimp did not yet leave the scene. One tentacle still kept a grip on a tree branch. Others now snaked toward the humans on the ground, waving in the air as if uncertain of what choice to make from the menu before it. Finally, and abruptly, one tentacle snapped toward Peirce and grabbed the museum curator by one thigh.
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