When We Have Wings

by Claire Corbett

  Kohn sighed. ‘You’ve met Avis?’

  ‘Yes. She was under a lot of stress.’

  Kohn grimaced. ‘She’s always like that.’

  ‘Oh. You mean—there was a vacuum? Peri filled it?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  What did she mean? What really went on in that house? The risk you take, I guess—if you outsource your whole goddamn life, you can’t be too surprised when you find someone else living it for you, can you? Still, Peter was Kohn’s colleague, her friend, and I’d assumed she would see Peri as monstrous, entirely to blame, for what had happened. That she did not think so was surprising. I wanted to ask if she knew about the bargain between Peri and the Chesshyres, but if I spilled the beans on that deal Chesshyre really would kill me. I edged as close to discussing it as I dared.

  ‘Do you know their doctor, Dr Eliseev? Didn’t you ever wonder why Peri was able to nurse Hugo?’

  Kohn fixed a piercing stare on me, then turned away. That she would not answer this seemed unfathomably sinister to me just then, as if she must know much more than she would tell me. We were at the end of the corridor and I blinked in the sudden sunlight as I came out of the exit and found myself at the broad end of the prow again. Storm clouds had been torn into grey shreds far overhead and were streaming away and the meadow was heaped with white so dazzling it hurt my eyes.

  ‘Oh, this is great,’ said Kohn. ‘I’ve been so looking forward to this.’ Her low voice was now pitched higher with excitement as she stared out over the field of ice, the meltwater rushing over the edges of the prow exactly as promised by the billboard.

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  ‘Indescribable. You have to see it.’

  Kohn splashed her way across the wet field and for the second time I walked through that meadow, now slushy with ice and rain. Kohn headed for the northern side of the prow and as I neared where she was standing, leaning almost over the edge, I could hear the rushing as the water streamed over and fell into the sky. Water seeped into my shoes. I edged as close as I dared, not wanting to slip. What could be so wonderful that Kohn was beckoning me so urgently?

  A gust of wind blew a pane of droplets back up into the air above us, thinning it to vapour. This shawl of water billowed right over us, dropping in sheer veils of crimson and gold and sea-green and blue and purple, the water unravelled into pure blazes of colour by the shafts of the afternoon sun. I’d never seen anything like it. A net of indigo unrolled at our feet then sheared itself into azure ribbons. We stood still, wrapped in this whirl of colour spinning over us and falling away down the flank of Cloud City, the dye washes running iridescent over the paper-white tower.

  We said nothing, we made no move, we just stood together so close I could feel Kohn’s breath on my cheek, waiting for the earth to turn, to alter the angle of the sun’s rays and switch off this shimmering rainbow scurry.

  Through the transparent falling sheets of colour I could see the enormous chessboard on the ground below us again. ‘What is that?’

  ‘That? That’s a house thermal generator. Did you know, Peter is considered the best house thermal designer in the world?’

  ‘I have to ask—’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Kohn. ‘A house thermal is a thermal that appears consistently in the same place. So, if you’re clever, you can design a spot that will have properties, such as that alternating light and dark with the dark boundary, which will generate consistent thermals. Naturally Peter’s designed for a few house thermals to take up residence around this site.’

  The light vanished from the water. My feet were numb. I backed away from the edge.

  Kohn caught up with me. ‘Peter is brilliant, you know. I hope you can see that.’ At last, we were heading for the lifts. So, was this her answer to my questions about the Chesshyres? Not to judge Peter by ordinary standards? Was she afraid my investigations would harm him?

  As we waited for the lift, Kohn looked at me in the way Chesshyre had when I went to his house; she wanted to see this space through my eyes. ‘You’re the first non-flier to set foot up here,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised Peter brought you here.’

  So was I, believe me, so was I.

  ‘It’s overwhelming,’ I said.

  ‘You managed. You even enjoyed it, a bit.’

  I smiled at that. Lady, you don’t know the half of it.

  She smiled back. Was this woman, this flier, this senior partner of the firm, flirting with me? It had been so long since that happened I told myself I couldn’t read women anymore. I was misinterpreting simple friendliness.

  The lift opened its doors and I stepped in, though not with as much relief as I’d anticipated. Much of my fear had drained away after the confrontation with Chesshyre on the bridge.

  ‘Actually, I need someone like you,’ Kohn said. ‘How would you like to attend SkyNation? As a guest of Kohn Chesshyre Li?’

  I stared at Kohn. So she did want something from me. But what? And why? Such an invitation was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Even fliers had trouble getting into SkyNation, I knew. You had to have contacts. Now I had contacts.

  ‘I thought SkyNation was only for fliers.’

  Kohn shook her head. As the lift flashed into the mixed zone its floor turned opaque. ‘SkyNation is mostly for fliers. It’s not just a party; it’s a laboratory, where we test out different ways of how fliers can live. What does being a flier mean? Does it mean merely being able to fly? It’s not that simple.’ Now Kohn sounded like Ruokonen. ‘But my difficulty is that this year I’ve had to seek planning permission for SkyNation because for the first time it’s being held above the CBD. One permit condition imposes a quota of non-fliers in attendance which I’m not even close to filling. Peter couldn’t care less; he’s above worrying about that sort of thing. I’m the one that has to deal with the department. Most non-fliers turn to water just at the idea of SkyNation, though I’ve found a few climbers and even a construction worker or two with no fear of heights. You’ve coped up here today so I think you’d do well.’

  ‘Really? Maybe. Depends when it is,’ I said.

  ‘Starts two weeks from Friday.’ Kohn handed me an irregular palm-sized slick, depthless and blue, a piece torn from the sky. ‘You’ll need that to get in. It’s keyed to me. Without it even I won’t be able to help you. People out there would do a lot to get their hands on one of these. Keep it safe.’

  The lift slowed. We’d reached level thirty.

  ‘Thank you, Ms Kohn,’ I said as she left the lift.

  Before the doors closed she said, ‘Please, call me Halley.’

  More proof of that mercurial flier nature. Did I really want to spend time up in the sky with such impulsive, crazy people?

  Perhaps I did. When it reached the ground I bounded out of the lift. I wanted to run and jump the way a child does for joy, wonder, relief. Instead I walked quickly towards the light rail, head up, looking into the sky, out into the rain which was whirling around in great blowy gusts again, even more pleased with myself than when I’d entered Cloud City. This was an extraordinary chance to learn more about fliers, close-up. I owed that much to Thomas.

  As I stared up at the sky I noticed a dark figure circling above Cloud City. It was so high, it must be enormous to look that big from the ground.

  Of course I shouldn’t have felt so pleased. Hugo wasn’t back yet, a Raptor was shadowing me, and I was disregarding my cardinal rule: things can always get worse.

  At the entrance to the light rail I checked the sky again. Not many fliers up there, weather wasn’t good enough, but that one large flier seemed to have followed me. Unless he was circling so high it just seemed that way. I was at a serious disadvantage; he was just a big spot to me but at that height, if he was on Zefiryn, he’d be able to see me and everyone else on the street with the clarity of an eagle. Was I being f
ollowed? I felt like a rabbit cowering under the threat of a hawk.

  During the trip home to 80 Metre Road Station, I made notes on the work I’d done that day, keeping a small window open on my slick which showed me the signal from Hugo’s tracking device.

  After ten minutes or so during which I’d been engrossed in my notes, I glanced at the signal window again. Then I banged the slick and shook it. Shit. Something wrong with the screen. It showed the signal going haywire, zigzagging, darting. I enlarged the window but that was no help. The dot representing the tracking device zoomed nonsensically about the screen. I opened other windows but they were working fine.

  No, no, no, no, no fucking way, I muttered to myself. I shook the slick again but the signal did not settle.

  I wiped my palms on my knees and pounded the heel of my hand against my forehead as if that would clear my thoughts. If the slick wasn’t playing up then what the hell was happening to the tracking device? No way could Peri have discovered it. As I watched the signal’s mad dash the horrifying thought forced its way to the forefront of my mind: what I was seeing represented reality. Something terrible was happening to Peri and Hugo.

  By the time I reached my flat the signal had blinked on and off several times, then disappeared completely.

  Havoc’s basic rules of flying:

  1. Try to stay in the middle of the air.

  2. Do not go near the edges of it.

  3. The edges of the air can be recognised by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there.

  [Raptors] . . . are much less numerous than ravenous quadrupeds; and it seems wisely provided by nature, that their powers should be equally confined and limited as their numbers; for if, to the rapid flight and penetrating eye of the Eagle, were joined the strength and voracious appetite of the Lion . . . no artifice would evade the one, and no speed could escape the other.

  —Thomas Bewick, The History of English Birds

  Peri had never felt so purely exhilarated as she did when leaving Janeane’s. Leaving the Venice, she’d been full of nervous anticipation. Escaping from the City had meant running on adrenaline, in fear for her life, certain she could hear the wingbeats of her pursuers at every turn.

  Now Peri was heading into the unknown. Today her new life began. I have my wings, she told herself, with deepening excitement, and I have you, Hugo, and I have my freedom, even though it meant lying to Zeke and Janeane about returning to the City. That should give us a few days’ head start, though.

  It was discouraging, then, on the very first morning of this new life to be shocked awake from her old nightmare: left high and alone in the City night, frozen until the sun baked her skin to the heating metal below her. Don’t move. Wait. You’ll fall. I’d so hoped I’d left all that behind. No such luck.

  Peri’s steady wingbeats rowed her through the sky, the strong strokes bringing her wings right up to meet tip to tip above her and right down to touch below her. She kept her arms by her side. Sheer giddy pleasure to skim through air, transparent blue and gold. Look, little man, at the sky sailing those puffy ships of cloud above us.

  Hugo was wrapped in his cloudsuit against the cool air, protected with hat, mittens, soft jacket, such a warm bundle secure against her. He faced away from her, looking out into the sky. Can you see how beautiful it is, little man? He was enjoying himself, babbling and cooing with pleasure in his baby way. As they headed towards the coast, a large flock of red-tailed black parrots flew up, squawking, in front of them, then sheared off to left and right around them, converging again ahead. Hugo gasped and laughed. ‘Awk! Awk!’ he crowed after them.

  When Zeke Fowler found us, Hugo, I was so frightened because I thought I was going to end up like Luisa. He must understand why I couldn’t come back.

  Zeke asked me what kind of life I was condemning you to but the point is I know what I’m saving you from. He doesn’t know anything about fliers and you don’t either, poor little man, but I do. I’m one of them. I think I always was right from the start, long before I got my wings. I know what the treatments do, the ruthlessness and determination you need to make them work. Nothing but perfection works for fliers. But you are perfect! If your parents can’t see that then they’re not really parents, are they? You can’t think I’ve taken you from your mother and father—they were already leaving you behind, Hugo.

  A shadow fell on them, making Peri shiver as a heavy cloud moved between her and the sun. She looked over her shoulder but saw no-one behind her. Was Zeke telling the truth about a Raptor coming after them? If someone was following her right now, it would still appear as if she were heading for the City. Even if a Raptor shadowed them from afar, they should be safe. As long as they kept heading south.

  The final threshold was the large river delta a few hours away. If she kept flying south, she kept her promise to Zeke. But if she turned at the delta and flew upriver, into the hazardous dry heart of the continent, heading for Ash’s like she’d planned, then she sealed her fate and Hugo’s. At that moment she’d know if she really was being followed. At that moment the Raptor would strike. If she could only outfly him for a little while, she’d have one critical advantage: she knew where she was going, thanks to Janeane’s information and contacts. She’d prepared, stocking up on energy strips and water. A Raptor would be reckless to follow her, unprepared, on such a dangerous flight over hot, barren country.

  Ash’s city, her final refuge, its buildings strung like white shells along an ocean she’d never seen, had always been remote. People had always escaped there, hoping to start their lives over, and with each passing year, as fewer and fewer planes had flown there and as the roads were allowed to crumble into ruin, it had receded more and more into inaccessibility. The ideal place to disappear.

  Had any other lone flier dared the journey Peri was about to attempt? She could have jumped out of her own skin, she was so young and strong and happy. Ready for the challenge ahead.

  The moment of truth will be when I turn inland.

  Peri gave Hugo a gentle squeeze. He gurgled and kicked his legs against her thighs. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me, Hugo. One day you’ll understand.’

  Peri had started out early that morning, before the sun was up, when all the world was cool and grey. Safest to get away from these hills before anyone could see her clearly against the burning sky. She would fly south of Pandanus and then out over the sea for as long as she could. Over the sea was safest, where there were fewer people.

  It was the land that entranced Peri as she flew south that morning. She exulted in its formal, industrial beauty, all senses heightened in her nervous excitement. She reckoned she was flying at about two hundred metres and from this height she could see the patterning of colour and texture: fields strict as tiles, squares of raw red earth ripped into furrows and laid next to rectangles of emerald pasture, the joins shocking as cuts.

  Peri knew the old farmhouse she flew over, with the ruts and tracks scratched over the earth around it like crossed-out scribblings on old paper, was the old Lane farm and the brown stream winding between hills was Fish Creek where she swam with turtles when she was a little girl. Low-lying patches of morning mist clung to the saddle of the low peak Janeane and her friends always called Gin Shop Hill, blurring the gap under dense white cobweb.

  Weak morning thermals rising from the darker fields and from the tin roofs of farm buildings surprised and delighted her. Blue thermals, Havoc called these, as they were not puffing out any clouds above them. ‘For every column of rising air, there’s an equal amount of sinking air,’ Havoc said. ‘Don’t worry about it; when you hit the sinking air you won’t drop ’cause it’s spread out over a larger area.’

  Some thermals detached themselves from the hot spot that generated them and floated downwind; Peri only knew she’d hit one when she was bounced upwards by one of
these invisible bubbles of rising air. The push thrilled her, the extra energy a gift.

  Acid-green pasture crumpled like silk next to rows of lavender bushes carved thick as stone. Clear sounds rose singly through warming air: the falling note of one crow, the cough of an old farm truck, the swoop into full volume chanting of cicadas.

  A dot moving over fields of burning gold startled her before she realised the black speck was her own shadow. She was so small against these vast fields; she and Hugo hung over this molten gold, seeming not to move at all, though she was flying swiftly.

  Finally, the fields gave way to roads and uneven scrubland covered in drab green. When she crested the last hills between her and the sea the sight took her breath away. Below her, turquoise ocean serpent- ined between white sandbanks and rolled blue and deeper blue to the horizon. The shallower water near the shore washed clear green, liquid glass, over parallel ridges of sand. The wind stirred the water and the shining green moved in the light, shimmering like an immense abalone shell with its fine silver and purple lines.

  Peri realised she was now too close to Pandanus. It wasn’t safe to fly low over the town but she dropped anyway. Here she was, a flier, just as she’d dreamed it, all those years ago. She had her wings. She was free. There was the curve of the main beach, looking from above like a wedge of yellow melon bordered with a green rind of trees and behind them the row of shops, even the Naxos Cafe, just as it was the day she’d left. It was a risk but she was so close, flying a little south of Pandanus, and she banked, coming around and lower over the Venice, which was scattered like a jumble of smashed crockery and torn paper heaped in ridges at the ocean’s edge. Hard to believe a world of suffering could be so small, so contained, from up here. All seemed quiet. She should be much higher and heading over the sea but she had to fly, just once, over the Venice. Black dots crawled over the paper dunes; people picking through the rubbish. What would they think if they saw her soaring above them? She wished Mama’lena was still down there, that she could imagine Mama’lena looking up at her. See, I did it. She dipped low over her old prison; she could imagine her younger self running along the sand beneath her, cheering. You can do it. She’d become the very thing that had sprung her free from the trap, the image of escape.