Bram Möller's Arc

Chapter 12 of 63

The prototype climbed into thin black air. Bram leveled off above the ridge line and watched his instruments settle. The envelope skin held. The burner ran clean. For a moment he let himself believe the hard part was behind him. Then the owl chirped wrong. It sat on the brass control ring where he had set it, claws locked, steam ticking from its side vents. But the ticking had gone uneven. One vent puffed twice, skipped, puffed again. Its head jerked toward the window, then back to the ring, then toward the window again. The bird was trying to do three jobs at once. Grip the ring. Read the wind. Watch the rock faces sliding past in the dark. Bram knew the machine. He had wound it a thousand times. It could hold any one task for hours. Two, on a good night. Three was breaking it. Parisa saw his face. "What is wrong with your bird?" "Overworked," Bram said. "If it seizes, I lose pressure control and I lose my eyes out there." He nodded at the black glass. Without the owl calling distances, he would fly the prototype into a cliff inside ten minutes. He thought it through. He could not free the owl from the ring, because his own hand was needed on the manual vent the broken orchid demanded. He could not fly blind. He could not land here. He looked at the locked case at Parisa's feet, then at her hands. Steady hands. No gloves. "I need you," he said. "Come here." She crossed the gondola without asking why. He guided her palm onto the brass ring beside the owl's claws. "Feel that pulse? Keep it even. If it climbs, tell me. Do not squeeze." "I understand." He lifted the owl free. Its claws opened. He set it on the sill and tapped the plate above its eye. "Wind and rock. Only that." The owl's head steadied. One job. Its vents evened out. It called the first distance in a clean two-tone chirp. Left face, forty yards. Bram turned the wheel. They flew like that for an hour. Parisa's hand on the ring. The owl at the window, calling rock. Bram working the vent and the wheel with what he had left. The prototype held. The waystation lamps of his last stop rose out of the dark. He brought the bag down slow onto the pad. The skids kissed snow. He cut the burner. The owl hopped down onto his wrist and folded in. Its vents were quiet now. He had not lost it. Parisa took her hand off the ring and flexed her fingers. She did not look at him. She looked at the case. "One stop left," Bram said. "No," she said. "This is the stop. And now we need to talk about what I am carrying."