The Children of the Sky

Jefri just shrugged, but she noticed that he was quick to use the freed space to get close to a porthole. After a moment, he spoke: “It’s all clouds down there, but we’re still heading south. So much for the theory that Tycoon’s headquarters is on the East Coast. I think—”

He was interrupted by the sound of something rolling down the main corridor. A moment later the door bolt lifted—but the door itself remained shut. Whoever was in the corridor tapped politely, emitting chords that Ravna recognized as a cheerful request to enter.

Jefri turned on his knees, crawled to the door, and slid it open. Outside stood a small-bodied foursome, dressed all in blue capes, surely a uniform. The creature stepped back a little fearfully, but then—perhaps because Jefri’s eyes were at its own level, or perhaps because it was putting on a brave front—two of it pushed forward with a tray of food. “Twenty-three minutes. Twenty-three minutes, okay?” The words were spoken with Geri Latterby’s voice, but they sounded like rote repetition. This creature scarcely seemed a torturer.

The food came in soft wooden bowls and consisted of overcooked vegetables and curd soup. Ravna guessed that it had been carefully chosen by someone with a secondhand knowledge of human diet. It tasted so good. Strange that in the clutches of Tycoon she was eating better than in all the time since the kidnapping. She lost herself in the food for a moment. When she looked up she noticed the Jefri had already finished and was watching her intently. Had he said something to her?

“Um. So what do you think is going to happen in twenty-three minutes?” said Ravna. They take us off to interrogation? They come back for the dirty plates?

“Dunno. But till then, let’s check out the view.” He returned to his porthole. Ravna downed the rest of her breakfast, then went to the other window. The sun was out of her face now. She could see clear sky above unending, brilliant clouds. Many kilometers away, a thunderhead broke the horizon. Details were lost in the distorted window glass, another example of what happened when Tycoon customized Oobii’s design.

Abruptly, the engine noise increased and she felt a chilly breeze.

“Jefri!” Somehow he had managed to open his port! Now she noticed the metal clasps and hinges.

“Hei, the benefits of low tech,” he said.

“Um.” Of course, it should be safe. They weren’t more than three thousand meters up, with an airspeed of only a few dozen meters per second. She popped the other tiny hatch and pulled the glass inwards. The engine sound became a buzzing roar, and eddies of frigid air blasted around the cabin. But the view was utterly clear. She stared into the cloud deck, seeing detail within detail.

Jefri looked down as steeply as he could. “I figure they’re taking us to the Choir!”

For a moment, Ravna’s mind looked out much farther than the physical windows. So Nevil had been conspiring with just about every one of the Domain’s antagonists. Who was villain-in-chief?

“Wow.” Jefri’s voice was muffled by the wind, but it brought her back to the physical view. The thunderhead was closer now, its tower a maze of light on dark, its anvil climbing out of sight above them. Flying with Pilgrim on the antigravity skiff, Ravna had come much too near such things. Pilgrim loved to fly right into the vertical drafts of great storms.

The pitch of the engines changed. The ship was angling away from the storm, but losing altitude at the same time. Soon the cloud deck had become fog, curling up to them. The turbulence grew.

“I hope these people know what they’re doing,” said Ravna.

“Maybe that was what the steward pack meant when it said ‘twenty-three minutes.’”

Yes, a courteous warning.

The clouds closed darkly around them. They motored along for some minutes. Still descending? The clouds had come into their cabin. She felt tiny droplets of moisture condensing on her face and eyelashes. Outside, lightning flashed electric blue, diffused by the dense mist. The deck tilted as thunder crashed. Their breakfast bowls were scattered all over the cabin.

The lightning gradually diminished and after some minutes the airship broke through the bottom of the clouds. There were still more clouds below, but they were scattered flotsam in the grayish-green depths. A steady rain ricocheted off the hull. The turn and descent had brought the other airship into view. It was pacing them, perhaps a thousand meters away, but it was almost invisible except when silhouetted by the glow of distant lightning. Jefri was silent for some time, just watching the other craft.

•  •  •

In the hours that followed, the thunder and lightning were more distant, but the airship was not the stable platform of before. It rode up and down like a boat on ocean swells, except that this motion was much more arbitrary and abrupt.