The four of them left the office. Diamond kept close to the Master, unsure about their destination but happy to be moving again. Distance was being covered. Surely Father was getting closer with every step.
“I can’t believe we’re going to Bright River,” Seldom said.
“Inside a fletch,” said Elata.
Diamond didn’t know what a fletch was, or a river, and he wanted to ask. But then the hallway ended, and they had to climb inside a tiny room. An old man wearing a gray and white uniform stood against the back wall. He looked at them without noticing anything. “Destination?” he asked.
“The hanger,” said Nissim.
“Shut the door yourself,” said the man.
Nissim dragged down a wooden grating, and the man pulled a switch and pushed one blood-colored button, something about those various motions causing the entire room to leap upwards.
“Is this a fletch?” Diamond asked.
Seldom laughed. “No.”
They started to rise faster, and Diamond felt his legs working. To Elata, he said, “I’m heavier.”
“We’re going up,” she told him.
He knew their direction, but how this was tied to his weight was another mystery.
They passed a big room. People were standing on the far side of the grating, but they vanished before he could have a good look at them. Then he saw different floors, some with long hallways and others with big offices full of sitting people, and there were other offices where nobody was visible. The final stretch had nothing to see but smooth dark wood, and then the elevator shook hard and stopped beside the largest room of all, endless and noisy and smelling badly. Someone screamed a harsh, unfamiliar word. Other men laughed. The old man behind them said, “Hanger,” and motioned for Nissim to raise the door.
A young man was sitting on a tall stool. Diamond recognized the soldier’s uniform and the soldier’s bearing—a wooden stiffness to his posture beneath a hard suspicious face that would fit on any toy warrior.
“Passes,” the man demanded.
Nissim handed him every piece of paper.
The soldier flipped through the stack and wrote in one corner, and pointing with his free arm, he gave the papers back.
That arm had to be followed. Nissim walked fast, Diamond remaining close. The hanger was huge and full of busy men and curses and fumes and filthy tools and racks of clean tools that were older than any man. The ceiling was remote, and the far wall had giant doors, as many opened as closed. Full-sized blimps hung in the air outside, tethered to landings and one another. But more impressive were the little blimps that sat indoors—sleek, arrow-shaped machines with wings and elaborate tail fins and windows on the nose and propellers that seemed too large for their bodies.
“Those are fletches,” Seldom said.
“Fast, fast, fast,” Elata said.
But the ships were stationary, and some couldn’t move now. Men in red uniforms were tearing apart engines and tinkering with fuel lines, and they were talking to one another with rough, familiar voices, and when the little parade walked past, they would stop working to watch. Some were curious why three children were here. The obvious answer was to supply entertainment, which was why one fellow showed them his back as they approached, and then for no obvious reason, screamed in agony.
Diamond jumped.
The mechanic turned towards him, holding his prosthetic arm with his surviving hand. Fake wooden fingers were clenched in a fist. His stump was short and hidden inside the floppy sleeve of his shirt. “Oh, damn. Creators, damn you! Look what you’ve done to me, bastards!”
Other mechanics laughed. Nissim shook his head, smiling but not smiling. “Come on,” he told the children.
Seldom laughed and jumped. “I wasn’t fooled.”
“You were,” Elata said.
“I wasn’t.”
Diamond stared at the fake limb. He wasn’t smiling or upset, just curious. He stared until its owner took offense, stepping forward to tell him, “You are a funny looking critter.”
The boy nodded.
“What’s so interesting here?” the man asked.
Diamond tugged on the finger that was bitten off this morning. Then because he was curious, he asked, “Will it grow back?”
“Will what grow back?”
Diamond touched his own bicep.
“That’s a damn stupid question,” the man decided. Then a big grin filled his face, and he started swinging the fake arm over Diamond’s head: once, and again, hard enough to make the air whistle, and then a third time, vainly trying to make that odd little boy flinch.
TEN
The fletch wore the name Happenstance, and painted above its name was a young woman dressed in feathers and gauze and nothing else. Diamond stared at the woman while Nissim spoke to the pilot. Official papers would need study, but that wouldn’t be enough. The pilot insisted on knowing the real story. Crossing his arms, he waited for any excuse to refuse these unwelcome orders. Nissim put on a smile and pointed at Diamond, and with the first mention of the father’s name, the pilot uncrossed his arms, blinking quickly. Nissim continued talking. Then the pilot waved him off and ran to Diamond, kneeling low, shoving his vast nose close to the boy’s face.
With an astonished, well-meaning voice, he said, “You should be dead. You should be yesterday’s rain. And do you know why you’re not lost forever?”
Diamond shook his head.
“Thank me,” the pilot said. “The day you were born, I sacrificed not one but two royal jazzings. Which nobody else did, and I did that because I think that much of your good father. Do you understand me?”
Diamond nodded, understanding nothing.
“And look at you now. Always the runt, but I can tell you’re a sturdy runt, which isn’t a bad way to be. That’s what I was when I was a half-done.”
The pilot was smaller than most men, and despite thousands of days of life, he still seemed boyish. Up he jumped, and clapping his hands, he shouted to his crew, “Time to fly. File the route to Bright River.”
His men seemed rather less enthusiastic. But they moved when prodded, and since they knew what to do, the result was inevitable. The ship’s two bladders were topped off with gaseous hydrogen, alcohol was poured into the main fuel tank, and the engines were adjusted to match the midday level of oxygen. Before long, Diamond and the others were sitting inside a little cabin tucked inside the ship’s belly. Everything about the Happenstance was lightweight and sleek. The chairs were stiff rubber frames and little else. The walls were fabric, windows taut sheets of transparent rubber. But the engines sounded massive, igniting with purposeful roars that shook everything and everyone. Seldom squealed his approval. Elata tugged at Diamond’s arm and leaned close, shouting, “I’ve never ridden in a fletch before.” The pilot walked around the outside of the ship, studying the propellers and fabric and the roaring racket. Then he came through the cabin, taking the trouble to yell a few words to the Master.
“We’ve got a leak in the right bladder. Somewhere. We can’t find it, but there’s stink mixed in the gas, and if something smells foul, you come get me.”
“Maybe you should make a sacrifice to fix it,” said Nissim.
But the pilot wouldn’t play along. “Sacrifices don’t work with machinery,” he shouted. “Only with people, and then, only if you’re lucky.”
The Happenstance’s belly dragged against the slick hanger floor before passing through the nearest open doorway, and then it began to fall, gaining speed as the engines roared even louder.
“I feel lighter now,” said Diamond.
Elata sat beside him. “That’s because we’re falling,” she said, explaining nothing. Seldom giggled as the world moved fast around them. Nissim sat in front of Elata, and he turned to watch Diamond. It was as if he had never looked at the boy before. He was ready to say something or ask some fresh important question. But conversation was impossible. The engines were louder than ever, the air seemingly tearing apart as the fletch finally earned enough lift above its wings, beginning its quick muscular climb over the green canopy.