Skybreaker

by Kenneth Oppel

  “You seemed impressed enough with him last night,” I said. “‘Oh, Hal, do tell me about your thrilling adventures!’”

  Kate’s nostrils narrowed; her chin lifted. “I was just trying to be polite. Keep the conversation going. In case you hadn’t noticed, there was a little tension at the dinner table.”

  The lounge was big enough that we could talk in private if we spoke softly, but I still felt self-conscious with Nadira and Miss Simpkins in plain view. And I did not trust Kate to keep her voice low if we argued: it wasn’t her style.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just grumpy. I feel like I’m in a jail cell.”

  “It’s a comfy jail cell at least.”

  “Some of the inmates are quite charming,” I admitted.

  That made her smile. “You should try sharing bunks with Marjorie.”

  “Who has the top?”

  “Me. She’s worried she might have to go to the lavatory in the night, and doesn’t want to break her neck getting down the ladder. Which I told her was very unlikely unless I greased the rungs.”

  “I’m sure that reassured her.”

  “You seem very restless,” Kate said. “Your eyes are getting that darty look. You always say you’re happiest aloft.”

  “I know. But I feel like luggage.”

  “Why don’t you do some studying?”

  I thought of the textbooks I’d brought, the small lines of bickering numbers. “I will. Later.”

  “Hello over there, you two! Yoo-hoo!”

  We both turned to Miss Simpkins’s singsong voice. She was peering at us over the top of her needlework. “Whispered conversations in a parlor setting are considered a no-no in polite society. Kate, you know better than that.”

  Kate looked at me, exasperation smoldering in her hooded eyes. “I’m trying to hold my tongue,” she muttered.

  “Make sure you’ve got a good grip,” I said.

  “Nadira and I might wish to be included in your conversation,” Miss Simpkins said cheerily.

  “Not me,” said Nadira. “Sweethearts need time alone.”

  “Oh, heavens, they’re not sweethearts.” Miss Simpkins gave a brittle laugh. “Goodness, no.”

  Nadira turned to me, smiling, and there was something so conspiratorial in her gaze that I felt both intrigued and deceitful. I looked away.

  “I was just on my way to the control car,” I said. I could see that aboard the Saga, it was going to be near impossible to have a private conversation with Kate—much less a kiss. I started to wonder if Miss Simpkins’s main reason for coming was to keep Kate and me well apart.

  Leaving the lounge, I gave a great exhalation of relief, and made my way forward and down the ladder to the control car. Slater was at the rudder, with Jangbu at the elevator wheel. Jangbu smiled, but Slater did not look pleased to see me.

  “Anything I can do for you?” he asked.

  “Just looking for a change of view, if that’s all right.”

  “So long as we’re not too busy.”

  “You’ve plotted a gradual climb, I suppose.”

  “That’s right. I’m timing it so we’ll be at twenty thousand feet when we meet the Hyperion. About four thousand feet a day, nice and gradual to give our bodies time to acclimatize. In a ship like the Aurora you’re used to flying at a few thousand feet, no more. I hope you’re fit. The height takes its toll. After ten thousand feet, you’ll start feeling it.”

  He had a way of talking to me like he was teaching me a lesson, and it rankled. It made me want to shove back.

  “Why not just pressurize the crew quarters?” I asked.

  “No point,” Slater replied. “If we’re to board the Hyperion, our bodies need to be ready to work at twenty thousand feet. We stay all comfy in a pressurized cabin, we won’t last five minutes when the hatch opens and the air’s thin as pauper’s gruel.”

  He was right. I gave a grunt, wishing I hadn’t tried to be so clever. Better to keep quiet than have Slater correct me.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “The cabins are heated, and as we get higher, I’ll start pumping in a little oxygen. Not too much. I don’t want you getting reliant on it.”

  I decided it might be best to stay away from the control car when Slater was on watch. I’d rather take my lessons from a textbook, which I did dutifully dig out from my duffel bag when I returned to my cabin.

  Over the next thirty-six hours, I tried to play the part of the contented passenger, and it was not so bad. The meals were excellent. I worked at my studies. Staring out the windows, I saw Persia give way to India, and caught sight of Madras before our view became the blue creases of the Indian Ocean. We would not see land again until we crossed the northwest coast of Australia.

  Sometimes I made out the sleek outlines of other airships, well below us, for we were already far above normal cruising altitudes. Often the view was obscured by wispy cirrus and thicker nimbus. Outside, it was getting close to zero, but the cabins were heated to a comfortable temperature. So far I’d felt no signs of altitude sickness, nor had anyone else, including Miss Simpkins, whom I expected would be the first to complain. Slater’s acclimatization program seemed to be working well.

  Kate was always busy. Despite being trapped with Miss Simpkins in such close quarters, she couldn’t have been more buoyant. At meal times she was full of questions for Slater: our speed and bearing, the weather reports, the state of the engines, the capacity of the cargo holds. Quite a little sky sailor she’d become. Now that she had her ornithopter’s license, I suppose these things held more interest for her.

  Mid-morning of our third day, I was taking a break from my studies, paging through a Paris newspaper in the hopes of improving my French. I was struggling through an article about the Aruba Consortium, and understanding every third word or so. Apparently they had been drilling for Aruba fuel in the South Seas and had just found a new, vast reserve. Now they were spending billions to extract it. After that, the language got more complicated, and I couldn’t follow it. I glanced up at the photograph—the usual picture of a row of smug, suited men in top hats, looking like they’d just eaten a big greasy meal.

  “I think I saw him,” said Nadira, passing behind my chair. She pointed at the newspaper photograph. “The frail old gentleman with the bushy eyebrows—he was talking with Rath in the heliodrome!”

  “Really?” I said. “He was thin, wearing a camel hair coat?”

  She nodded. “I remember those eyebrows.”

  “Who is he?” Kate asked, coming over.

  I glanced at the photo caption. “Says here, George Barton. He’s on the Board of the Aruba Consortium.”

  “It seems most unlikely,” commented Miss Simpkins, looking up from her needlework, “that a fine gentleman from the Aruba Consortium would be associating with the likes of John Rath.”

  “I agree,” said Kate. “It’s not a very clear photograph. Are you sure, Nadira?”

  She stared long and hard. “Well, not entirely. But those bushy eyebrows…”

  “Those are very fashionable now,” Kate said. “All the old richies are doing it. The bushier the better.”

  “I think they’re fake half the time,” murmured Miss Simpkins.

  “Oh,” said Nadira. “I just caught a glimpse of him, really.”

  Kate lost interest in the matter and went back to her camera. Miss Simpkins sewed. Nadira found a newspaper and settled down. It was very hard to believe that Rath could have anything to do with the Aruba Consortium, but I couldn’t help remembering something he’d said to me at the Ritz, about how he worked for some of the finest people in Paris. A lot of rubbish, probably.

  “Aren’t you surprised we haven’t seen cloud cats yet?” Kate asked after a moment.

  “Well, not really,” I said. “I sailed three years without seeing any. Besides, they may not inhabit these skies at all.”

  “I sincerely hope not,” said Miss Simpkins. “Horrid creatures in my opinion.”

  Kate ignored her c
haperone, as though her words were nothing more than the dripping of a leaky tap.

  “I do hope we spot a few,” Kate said. “I’ve been working on a little theory over the past few months.”

  I knew she wanted me to ask. “About what?”

  “Well, the sea, as we all know, is simply teeming with life. Why shouldn’t the sky be the same?”

  “Not quite as many fishies, last I checked,” said Nadira, without looking up from her newspaper.

  “Ah, but if the sky can sustain a large predator like the cloud cat, surely there must be other creatures aloft.”

  “But the cloud cats seemed to find most of their food at sea level,” I pointed out. “Fish and birds.”

  “That’s just where we happened to observe them. Anyway, birds and fish might only be part of their diet.” She paused significantly. “The sky may hold more surprises than we think, especially at the higher altitudes.”

  A year ago, I would have contradicted her. I would have told her that in all my years watching the sky, I had seen no signs of life apart from brave seafaring birds. But after discovering the cloud cats with her, I could no longer make easy assumptions. Still, with Kate I always thought it best to argue, just to stay in practice if nothing else. She liked a good debate, and I wanted her to think me clever.

  “It gets awfully cold up high,” I reminded her, “and there’s not much oxygen. Or water. Every living thing needs water. They don’t call it Skyberia for nothing.”

  “True,” Kate said, “but just think of the deep sea. Granted, it never goes below freezing, but when you think about it, it’s a far less hospitable place than the sky. Remember the discoveries Girard recently made in his bathysphere?”

  I recalled the stories and photographs in the newspaper: the intrepid French explorer in his striped bathing suit, standing beside his odd, spherical submarine. Its metal hull was several feet thick, fitted with reinforced portholes and lamps and motors that enabled it to be lowered to the sea’s blind depths.

  “He discovered things we never imagined,” Kate went on. “A fang-tooth fish that lives at a depth of sixteen thousand feet. The pressure down there is over seven thousand pounds per square inch. Imagine that. You’d be squashed into meringue. Girard found sea spiders at four miles below the surface. There’s no light and not much oxygen down there. I don’t see why airborne creatures couldn’t live at high altitudes. Certainly they’d have to adapt in ways we hadn’t thought possible.”

  “It’s a very intriguing idea,” I said to Kate.

  “Hmm,” said Nadira, looking at her newspaper.

  “I’m hoping Grunel has some interesting specimens aboard the Hyperion,” Kate continued. “It would help my research no end. And imagine if he had a cloud cat! It would be even more proof. Those stodgy old men at the Zoological Society would think twice before accusing me of jumbling up some panther and albatross bones.”

  Nadira looked up. “It’s a strange kind of loot to risk your neck over.”

  “Well, I already have lots of the other kind,” Kate said. Apologetically she added, “Not that I earned it. It was just luck of the draw.”

  “I don’t remember getting a draw,” Nadira said wryly.

  I laughed. “I guess we missed it. So what will you do with all your newfound riches?”

  Nadira said nothing for a moment, and I worried I’d overstepped.

  “I want to strike out on my own.”

  “You mean leave your family?”

  “But isn’t your community awfully close-knit?” Kate asked.

  “There’s no one community,” Nadira said. “There are four nations of Roma: the Kalderash, the Machacaja, the Lovari, and the Churari, and a dozen other groups besides. They’re all different.”

  “I see,” said Kate sheepishly.

  “Anyway,” Nadira went on, “the truth is, my own people don’t even consider me a Roma.”

  “Whyever not?”

  “My mother married a gadjo. An outsider. And if your father’s not a Roma, his children can’t be either. My mother was considered impure.”

  “Was it terrible, growing up like that?” Kate asked.

  “It would have been worse if my father’s work hadn’t taken him away for long stretches. He started out as a merchant airshipman, and then he began working with John Rath, and his work became more unsavory. After he left us, my mother remarried, to a Roma, but we were always considered beneath the others. That’s why my mother’s in such a hurry to marry me off. Because of my mixed blood, she knows there won’t be many takers.”

  Nadira was so pretty, it seemed hard to believe.

  “Do you have no say in the matter?” Kate asked.

  “None.”

  “Quite sensible,” said Miss Simpkins, glancing up from her sewing. “Marriage is far too important a matter to be left to the young.”

  “My mother would agree with you,” Nadira said. “That’s why I’m already betrothed.”

  “You are?” I said, feeling an unexpected pang.

  “I’m getting married in three days.”

  “You’re not!” Kate exclaimed.

  “Well, no, because I won’t be there, will I.” She smiled mischievously.

  “You ran away!” I said, with surprise and admiration.

  “Oh! This is scandalous!” Miss Simpkins said, but she had put down her sewing and was leaning forward in her chair.

  “If you saw the man I’m supposed to marry,” Nadira said, “you’d run too. He has very bad teeth. He is also old enough to be my grandfather.”

  “I’m completely sympathetic,” said Kate.

  “Unless I marry, and become a wife and mother, there’s no future for me back home,” Nadira said. “That’s why I need Mr. Grunel’s gold.”

  She was right. If she were to leave her family and make her own way, she would need plenty of money. An unmarried young woman would find it very difficult to secure reputable work, or a place to live. And as a gypsy, things would be even harder.

  “Well, I think this is very loose behavior altogether,” said Miss Simpkins. “You’re a very bold girl.”

  “I was thinking of settling in Paris, actually,” said Nadira. “Buying a nice place on the river maybe. We could be neighbors.”

  Miss Simpkins started sewing with renewed vigor.

  “And what about you?” Nadira asked me. “What will you do with your share of the loot?”

  “Buy a new school uniform,” I said decisively.

  She laughed. “And then what?”

  “Well, it depends how much is left over, doesn’t it?”

  “More than you know what to do with!” she said, eyes alight.

  “Oh, I’d buy my mother and sisters a house. A really splendid house up in the hills of Point Grey, with a view of the water and mountains. My mother wouldn’t need to work anymore. I’d have an eminent doctor cure her rheumatism. I’d hire someone to help her keep house. They wouldn’t have to make their own clothes. I would buy them a new-fangled motorcar if they wanted!”

  “But you must want things for yourself too.”

  “Just to keep flying,” I said, but I was lying. I wanted more than that, and felt ashamed of how much. I daydreamed about money all the time now. I would buy myself clothes like the ones Hal Slater wore. They were bound to make me look less like a boy. I would become manly. I would not endure Miss Simpkins’s peevish looks and comments about my unsuitability. I would not suffer the humiliation of having Kate pay my way. If I failed at the Academy, I could buy a ship and a crew to call me captain. Money would conjure my happy future like a genie’s lamp.

  AIRBORNE ZOOLOGY

  Later in the afternoon, I was hunched over my physics text, trying to train my equation to perform like a troupe of circus monkeys—without much success. As I rubbed out my pencil scratchings for the third time, Kate bustled into the lounge carrying a glass flask and looking windblown and flushed and altogether pleased with herself.

  “What’ve you got there?” I as
ked.

  “Oh, just a few specimens,” she said, heading for her table.

  Miss Simpkins looked sharply up from her book. “What do you mean, specimens?”

  Kate sat down and began examining her flask through a magnifying glass. “This voyage has given me the perfect opportunity to test my theory. So I rigged up a net.”

  “A net?” I said.

  “Just outside my porthole. I waited thirty minutes and now I’ve got my first specimens.”

  “What exactly do you have in there, Kate?” Miss Simpkins demanded.

  “Come see,” she said, delighted. Miss Simpkins came no closer, but Nadira and I certainly did. Even without the magnifying glass, I could see plenty of activity inside the flask. Nadira and I bent close, our heads almost touching.

  “Spiders?” I said in surprise.

  “Yes,” said Kate. “Those down at the bottom are still in some kind of frozen torpor, but these others seem perfectly happy.”

  They were scuttling around inside the glass. Some looked familiar enough, but others were odd, spindly looking things, with smaller bodies and longer legs than I was used to seeing.

  “But they don’t live up here,” Nadira said. “They’re just getting blown around by the wind.”

  “Well, some of them,” said Kate. “Which is fascinating in itself. They’re light enough so that the wind can carry them, probably for thousands of miles. They could cross oceans. Colonize new continents! I don’t think anyone’s considered the spread of insect habitats by such means. But some of these other ones are very odd indeed.”

  Kate tapped on the side of the glass, directing our eyes toward a spider I hadn’t noticed yet.

  “Are those wings?” I said in amazement.

  “Spiders don’t have wings,” Nadira said. “It must be something else.”

  “I think it’s a winged spider,” said Kate. “I’m not completely sure. Arachnids really aren’t my specialty. But if it is, no one’s identified it before. And look at some of these other insects.”

  There were many. They were bizarre-looking things, with compact little armored bodies and multiple sets of sturdy wings. Their coloring was muted, all silvers and grays and milky whites. To blend in with the sky and clouds, I supposed. Nothing wants to get eaten. It amazed me to think of insects flying at such an altitude, assisted by powerful tailwinds.