Bram Möller's Arc

Chapter 34 of 63

Three days later Bram sat up on the depot bench and put his boots on the floor. Sigrun watched him from the doorway with her arms crossed but did not stop him. The witness sheet was filed. The signature was in the ledger. What he did not have was an airship. The prototype lay grounded on the mountainside. His own envelope was scrap. Without a bag over his head on the field, the next impossible run would go to someone else, and his name would stop where the ink had dried. Omondi came in from the yard with grease on his cuffs and a rolled drawing under his arm. He tripped on the door sill, caught himself on the counter, and set the drawing down flat. "I have been thinking," he said. "The prototype's crown seam is finished. But the lower panels are intact. The gores are good. If we cut it down and re-stitch to a smaller bag, you have a courier envelope. Not a climber. A runner." Vex leaned over the drawing. Her red hair was still flattened from her cap. She traced the seam lines with one gloved finger. "You lose a third of the lift." "He does not need to climb passes," Omondi said. "He needs to answer a call and land on time." Bram looked at the sketch. The shape was squat, tight, built for weather rather than altitude. "Whose bag is it?" "Mine," Omondi said. "The data you brought me is worth more than the fabric. Consider the salvage yours." Vex snorted. "He means he wants his name on the tail." "I want my name on the tail," Omondi agreed. They worked in the depot loft for two days. Vex ran the stitching frame. Omondi cut the panels and dropped his shears twice. Bram sat at the bench with his bandaged hand and fed the seams straight, checking every stitch by eye. The mechanical owl perched on the rafter above them, steam curling from its vents, and clicked whenever a gore ran crooked. On the third morning they carried the folded envelope out to the field and inflated it against a test mast. The fabric filled. The seams held. It was smaller than any bag Bram had flown, and it sat low and tight on its lines like a fist. He climbed the ladder one-handed and put his palm on the crown. No hiss. No give. "She'll answer a call," Vex said from the ground. Bram came down the ladder. He shrugged into his cracked leather jacket and buttoned the fur collar up against the wind. "Then I'm on the field again." Omondi grinned and pushed his glasses up. "You are on the field. You are not yet on the route." A runner came across the yard from the depot office with a folded slip in his hand. He held it out to Bram without a word. Bram broke the seal and read it once. Then he read it again. "What?" Vex said. "They're opening the winter long-haul," Bram said. "Bids close at dusk."