Bram Möller's Arc

Chapter 9 of 63

The rival's gray hull was gone from the sky when Bram finally looked up from the manifest. The dock crew rolled his airship into the lee of the harbor shed. His envelope sagged against its lines, the seam bulged and gray. It would not lift again. The next leg of the route left at dusk, and he had nothing to fly. He walked the apron until he found the harbor's small inn, timber walls dark under frost, lamps burning in the windows. He took a table near the stove and spread his chart flat. Two more stops on the route. No airship. No time to buy one. The door banged. Dr. Cassandra Vex came in first, red hair wet with melt, fog cutter slung on her hip. She dropped into the chair across from him without asking. "You made it," she said. "You still owe me the second half." "I know." "Your envelope?" "Done." She nodded once, unsurprised. "Then you're done too. Unless you find a bag." A second man followed her in, tall, thin, a white coat under a heavy parka. He knocked his shoulder on the door frame and caught his glasses before they fell. Vex did not turn. "This is Omondi," she said. "He owes me a favor. He builds test envelopes at the university depot. Small ones. Prototype work." Dr. Kamau Omondi set a canvas roll on the table and unrolled it with careful fingers. Inside lay a folded silver skin, thin as paper, ribbed with fine brass wire. "Half the volume of yours," he said. His voice was quiet and pleased. "But the lift ratio is very good. Very good. I have not flown it in weather like this." "Will it hold to the next stop?" Bram asked. "To the next stop, yes. After that I do not know." Bram looked at Vex. "Price." "What you owe me. Nothing more. He wants flight data. Your owl gives it to him at every landing." He thought about it for a breath. His hand still would not close. His route was not finished. "Done." They worked through the afternoon in the shed. Omondi checked seams and knocked a wrench off the gondola twice. Vex rigged the harness herself. Bram cut the old envelope free and watched it collapse onto the boards like a wet sheet. The mechanical owl watched from a rafter, brass eyes tracking every move, steam ticking from its vents. At dusk the new skin filled. It was smaller. It was strange. It rose. Bram climbed into the gondola and clipped the owl to its perch. Vex tossed him the mooring line herself. "One stop," she said. "Then you find me again." "I will." He lifted off the apron into gray light, the harbor shrinking below, the route still open ahead of him on a bag he did not trust and had not chosen.