Kaeru no uta ga
Kikoete kuro yo
Guwa…guwa…guwa…guwa
In the background, the sound of trucks passing on a road mixed with the high, thin drone of a supersonic transport overhead. Dogs barked in the distance and a woman called out. The children splashed in water and sang another round, voices sweet in unconscious harmony.
Ge ge ge ge ge ge ge ge,
Guwa guwa guwa
In his memories, Mitsu knew the building had whitewashed wooden walls and a roof of green iron. Paper lanterns ornamented with pen drawings of birds and flowers hung from the eaves. Inside the house, the floors were glossy dark redwood, with tatami mats and rice-paper screens between the rooms. An old man would be sitting in his study, short white hair lying flat against a sun-bronzed scalp. He would be reading, a book turned into the cool light slanting down between the closely spaced buildings. The study smelled of mold and paper and dust and ink.
Guwa…guwa…guwa…guwa, sang the children in the yard. They were playing with frogs.
On the comp display, another level of detail slowly appeared, etching images of tumbling, shattered mountains of ice and stone and iron ever clearer.
In his memories, Mitsu knew the street in front of the little house was black macadam, potholed and crumbling at the edges. He heard a delivery truck putter past and saw an enameled red panel with the word ASAHI painted in black and yellow. Thick green grass sprouted from every crevice along the sidewalks. The walls of the houses were tinged with moss and tiny blue flowers.
On this day, as the children splashed in the mud, making frog pens of twigs and glass jars from the kitchen, the sun was shining through heavy gray clouds, making the air sparkle and shimmer. To the east, a line of mountains rose, white shoulders gleaming with ice and snow.
The recording ended. After a short pause, the scratchy, keening sound of a bow scraping across taunt gut string emerged from the quiet silence. The shamisen wailed up into the sound of falling leaves. A hand drum began to tap in counterpoint. Mitsu settled deeper into his chair, letting the warm fabric carry the weight of his head. The strings and the drum lifted into summer wind and a reedy bamboo flute joined them, carrying falling rain.
A man's voice — deep, hoarse, rich as the rivers and streams beneath the Golden Mountain, melancholy with longing for a homeland lost beyond the sea — began to sing. One of the musicians coughed, almost covering the sound with the hem of his kimono.
Kimi ga yo wa,
Chiyo ni yachiyo ni,
Sazare ishi no
Mitsu could see his father sitting on the edge of the porch surrounding the garden, face shining in the light of the lanterns and lamps. The shamisen across his leg was a dark walnut color, faced with amber-tinted pine. In memory, the hands were nimble on the strings, while the porch roof and the house walls gave his graceful voice a full, mellow echo.
Iwao to nari te,
Koke no musu made
On the comp display, the ship continued to move in endless night, skin taut against the fabric of space, straining to hear the slow lilting song of gravity humming in the void.
Slot Canyon Twelve
After hiding in a cave for two days, Gretchen felt relieved to be airborne and mobile again. The Gagarin hummed around her, engines chuckling, broad wings spread wide, canopy whistling with the familiar, proper sound of air rushing past. The night around her was blessedly still and the ultralight made a slow, tight turn in the narrow confines of the canyon. Sheer rock walls drifted past, shining glassily in the glare of the wing lights. Gretchen had turned off the collision alarm — though the canyon was hundreds of feet wide, the turning radius of the Midge brought the wingtips almost to brushing distance on each circuit.
Below, the phosphor-bright illumination cast by Hummingbird's ultralight made the canyon floor a sharp jumble of black and white, boulders and sand. Gretchen could see twin coils of water vapor rising from the idling engines. The nauallis, however, was nowhere to be seen. The tunnel entrance was a void of darkness against the matte nothingness of the cliff.
The momentary vision swept away as the Gagarin continued its turn. Gretchen tried to maintain focus on the aircraft and keep her slow, spiraling turn going, but she was worried. The Mйxica had been inside too long for comfort. Feels like an hour, she grumbled to herself. How long, she suddenly wondered, would it take for the gray to make a copy of a single ragged crow?
The Gagarin arced around again, now at least a hundred meters from the canyon floor, and she caught sight of something bright out of the corner of her eye. Gretchen looked down and to the side, trying not to reflexively swing the aircraft to follow her eye movement, and saw the trapezoidal door now lit from within by a cold, pale light.
"Hummingbird!" Gretchen's voice spiked in alarm. "Let's go!"
A figure bolted out of the opening, cloak flying out behind him. A too-familiar radiance filled the doorway and in the cold sepulchral glare she saw the man hurl himself into the cockpit of the Midge and slam the door shut. Cold oily light spilled out onto the dust, lapping around splintered sandstone and granite. Both engines flared bright with exhaust and the Midge leapt forward, sand spewing away from the wheels.
Gretchen pulled back gently on the control yoke and Gagarin soared up into the dark, constricted sky. The overhanging cliffs on either side rushed in, but she adjusted nimbly, sweat beading in the hollow of her neck, sending the ultralight dancing higher. Through the transparent panel under her feet, Anderssen saw the other Midge dart up the canyon, lifting off only meters ahead of the advancing radiant tide.
The cold light cut off — a shutter slammed on an empty window — and Gretchen felt the air in the canyon heave with a sudden, sharp blast. A cloud of black smoke jetted from the tunnel mouth, drowning the queer light, and Hummingbird's Midge wobbled in flight as a shockwave rolled past.
Gretchen wrenched her attention back to the business of flying, narrowly dodging the Gagarin around a jutting outcropping. The airframe groaned, complaining at such rough handling, but the Midge swept past the obstacle and soared on down the canyon. Below her, Gretchen was peripherally aware of Hummingbird's ultralight straining to catch up.
The canyon behind both aircraft filled with a black, turgid cloud of dust and ash. The cliff-face above the tunnel shuddered, still rocked by the violence of the explosion and then — with majestic, slow grace — splintered away from the core of the mountain and thundered down into the canyon. More dust, ash and grit roared up with a flat, massive thump.
Gretchen heard the blow, and grinned tightly, fingers light on the stick. This business of flying at night, even with goggles, radar and the strobe-white glare of the wing lights was tricky business. I hope that's the end of the nasty dirty color, she thought peripherally, some tiny corner of her mind pleased to see something which had threatened her destroyed.
The odometer on the control panel began to count the kilometers as they flew on into the night. There was a long way to go before dawn roused the slot canyon to near-supersonic violence.