Bram Möller's Arc

Chapter 62 of 63

The bag climbed off the harbor mast with the fuel gauge at half and the crew running on the fumes of one bad night. Bram had slept two hours in the office chair. Cora had slept less, hunched over her seam with a needle until dawn. Omondi had not slept at all. He stood at the tension gauge now with a cup of black tea in his hand and a small tremor in his wrist. Bram watched the tremor and did not say anything about it. An hour west, the wind turned. Cross gusts hit the bag from the north face and pushed them off line. Bram corrected with the wheel and felt the vent handle slip a half turn in his cramping fingers. The bag yawed. The crown seam creaked once above them. "Hold the ring," Bram said. Cora set the mechanical owl on the brass ring and locked its claws. The owl gripped. Steam pressure steadied. But the wheel still fought Bram's hand and his eyes had started to blur at the edges. Omondi read the gauge and read it again. "Climb load. We are at climb load in level flight." "Gust stack," Bram said. "It will pass." It did not pass. The next gust hit and Omondi's tea cup jumped off the crate and shattered. He grabbed for the tension bar and missed it and grabbed it on the second try. Cora saw the miss. She looked at Bram. "You're going to crash us," she said. Not loud. Flat. "All three of us. I can see it from here." Bram opened his mouth to argue and could not find the words fast enough. That was the answer. He leaned on the wheel and scanned the ridge line for the marks in his journal. Two miles ahead, a rock spur with twin pins. He had used it once, years back, to wait out a front. "Moor," he said. "The twin pins on the south spur. We put down and we sleep." Omondi released the tension bar and his shoulders dropped an inch. Cora sent the compass hawk ahead to check the wind at the spur. It came back inside ten minutes with steady readings and a clear approach. Bram brought the bag in slow. Omondi ran the north line to the upper pin. Cora ran the south. Both pins took. The bag settled against the rock and the crown seam stopped creaking for the first time all morning. Bram sat down on the crate where the tea cup had broken. He looked at Cora and at Omondi and at the empty sky ahead where Kesh was pulling further away by the hour. "Four hours," he said. "Nobody flies. Nobody stitches. Nobody argues." Cora nodded and lay down under the mast with her coat over her face. Omondi was already asleep against the anchor rope. Bram closed the journal on his knee and let his eyes shut. Kesh would have the next harbor by dusk. The bag was still on the ground. But the bag was still whole, and the crew was still alive to fly it.