Bram Möller's Arc

Chapter 17 of 63

Bram climbed the scree to Omondi's tender with the last package under his arm. The wind had shifted while he worked over the pilot. It came harder now, from the north, and it carried the smell of wet iron that meant snow. He looked up. The sky above the ridge had gone the color of slate. The storm that had killed the missing pilots was coming back. Omondi met him at the tender's basket, pushing his glasses up with a gloved thumb. "The hawk is uneasy," he said. "It will not settle on the perch." Behind him the storm-tracking hawk gripped a strut, wings half-open, head snapping toward the ridge. Its compass-marked feathers ruffled against the wind. "How long?" Bram asked. "Forty minutes. Maybe less." Omondi glanced at the ridge line. "You will not walk out in that. No one walks out in that." Parisa stepped down from the tender basket, coat pulled tight, dark hair whipping across her face. She had refused to stay at the waystation. She held the dented brass compass in her palm, lid open, needle steady. "You brought her," Bram said. "She would not stay," Omondi said. "She said the compass points somewhere useful." Parisa held the compass out. The needle did not swing to north. It pointed along the ridge, southeast, toward a dark seam in the rock Bram had passed on the way up. "The pilot said he sheltered in a cut before the fall," she said. "He drew it for Sigrun. It is close." Bram looked at the seam. Then at the sky. The tender could not lift three of them and outrun the storm. He had seen Omondi's basket labor with two. "Take the package," he told Omondi. "Fly it to the last stop. You have the hawk. It will read the front for you." Omondi's mouth opened. "Bram—" "You can fly it. Light load, tailwind ahead of the storm. Land and stay down." Bram pressed the package into his arms. "My route ends when that box is delivered. Not when I carry it." Omondi held the package against his chest. He nodded once, then climbed into the basket and vented ballast. The tender lifted. The hawk shrieked and beat after it. Bram turned to Parisa. "Show me the cut." They ran the ridge with the wind at their backs. Snow began before they reached the seam—fine, then thick. The cut opened between two slabs, deeper than it looked, floored with dry gravel. Bram pulled her in after him. He wedged his pack against the mouth to break the wind. The mechanical owl, still clipped to his belt, hissed steam and folded its wings against his hip. The storm hit the ridge above them and roared over the slabs. Inside the cut it was cold, and quiet, and alive. Bram was off the ridge. His delivery was not.