Bram Möller's Arc

Chapter 13 of 63

Parisa's hand still rested on the case. Bram let her wait. He climbed out onto the pad and walked the length of the prototype envelope with a lantern raised. He had to see the damage before he heard anything else. The steam heat had saved the fabric from the freeze, but the reversed vent had cooked it. Along the crown seam, the weave had gone slack and dark. He pressed a thumb to it. The cloth gave like wet paper. One hard climb would open it top to bottom. He would not reach the last stop. He would not reach anywhere. Behind him, boots crunched snow. A short figure in a scarred canvas jacket came up the pad, red hair stiff with frost. Dr. Vex. The engineer who had put him in the air to begin with, and taken cash for it twice. Behind her, tall and stooped in a coat too thin for the altitude, came Dr. Omondi, the man whose prototype was rotting over Bram's head. Omondi carried a wooden crate against his chest and nearly went down on the ice. Vex caught his elbow without looking. "You are early," Bram said. "Your bird sent word," Vex said. She nodded at the owl on his wrist. "Two stations back. Flight data. He read the numbers and we came." Omondi set the crate down and knelt by it. "The heat exchange. I did not test it long enough. I am sorry, I am sorry." He opened the lid. Inside sat coiled patch cloth, a jar of resin, and a hawk. Grey and white, wings folded, compass rings printed across the feathers. Its eyes tracked Bram. "A patch will not hold a climb," Bram said. "It will hold level flight," Omondi said. "Resin cures in the cold. Twenty minutes. The seam becomes stiff, not strong. You cannot climb on it. You can only glide." Bram looked at the hawk. "And that?" "Storm reader," Vex said. "Finds the sink lines and the lift lines. You ride the air down instead of pushing through it. Your owl cannot do that job and the pressure job both. You saw that already." He had. He flexed the hand that had cramped on the vent for two days. They worked on the crown seam together. Omondi laid the patch. Vex brushed resin. Bram held the lantern close and counted minutes. The cloth stiffened under his hand. When they climbed back into the gondola, Parisa had not moved. The case sat between her boots. "We fly the last leg on a patch," Bram told her. "No climbs. We glide in on the wind the hawk finds. If the wind is wrong, we go down where it puts us, not where you want." She studied him. Then she lifted the case onto her lap and thumbed the lock. "Then you should know what is inside before we leave the ground."