When We Have Wings

by Claire Corbett

  The days on and above Heavener were serene, hushed in the sun of late summer. It was hard to stay vigilant during the still, sun-struck days. Hard in the sunlight to believe in the threat of a lone, dark Wild. Every flight was still a patrol and no Audax member, except for Jay, was ever alone. But they saw nothing. Even Jay, even Niko, relaxed a little.

  And three times the heat from the valleys below Heavener had risen up all at once into glass-off, lifting them into golden evenings of perfect bliss. Glass-off was the only time Jay permitted Peri to fly with Hugo and she treasured each second floating silently with him on the warm clear sea of air.

  Peri was not sure she agreed with Raf that glass-off was better than sex, though the choice was exquisitely hard. Fortunately, she did not have to choose, though with Jay so dedicated to ensuring their security, she had precious few minutes alone with him. He would pull her away into private spaces he’d found away from the others—he knew the bush around them so well—but Peri’s joy at being in his arms was tinged by fear; what if they were surprised by a Wild while they were alone and so vulnerable? Jay must have felt pressed by the same fear, for there was none of the leisurely exploration of their first time together; now their sex was urgent and quiet, with Jay’s hand fastened over her mouth. Whether he was more concerned that they would be heard by a Wild or by other members of Audax, she didn’t know, but it was agonising, exquisite not to be able to make a sound; all her sensations and emotions swelled in her like the pressure of expanding air on a bubble until she could almost burst.

  During the days, Peri practised her flying with the group. The appearance of the Wild had drawn them all together and now she felt truly part of Audax. The feeling of extending her body grew exponentially in the group, as if they were one body, immensely larger and more powerful, extending round them in three dimensions.

  Peri revelled in the companionship of the other fliers. The sense of belonging accelerated her abilities more than anything else. Except for Havoc, whose expertise she’d paid for, no other fliers had ever flown with her before Audax except, a few times, Luisa.

  With the strength of the group buoying her up, Peri began to feel the abilities that Finch had spoken of: her sense of their height from the ground, airspeed, the subtleties of air pressure, changing weather. Even the horizon. She could not have explained, would not have been able to say how high she was or exactly what the air pressure was, but she could feel it and adjust her flying.

  Peri flew with Jay and Shaheen as often as possible, though it was hard to study the falcon, she was so swift, her turns and dives so sharp, her wings so long and slender compared to Peri’s.

  She listened for the watery clink of Shaheen’s bells every waking moment, the bells that by their shifting rhythms and volume told her what the falcon was doing: preening, bathing, waiting-on, landing, plucking and eating another bird; most often, by their silence, the activity predators are best at—nothing at all. Many years later Peri would feel the chime of those bells was still imprinted on her being as one of the most intense pleasures of that time, a live thread tying her to the huntress.

  ‘You need to learn pigeon tactics,’ said Jay one day. He’d taken Peri, Leto, Raf and Phoebe up and worked them hard, putting them into fast dives and turns, pushing them to the edge of their abilities. Shaheen flew with them, diving so fast she winked in and out of their field of vision, an arrow of night released under the sun.

  ‘Peregrines can stoop on a pigeon at over ninety metres per second. A pigeon can never outfly a peregrine. But often they do escape. Today I’ll teach you how.’

  High in the cloudless azure above Heavener they flew, the ridge lying so far below them it was just a wrinkle of dark green fringed with tawny stone scored here and there by silver glints of river. That afternoon, the thrill and rush of it, was, Peri often thought later, along with realising she was Hugo’s mother, the bright high point of her entire life. Whatever happened to her in future, it could never be surpassed.

  She saw, they all saw, Jay as he truly was, in his full glory as a Raptor. He stooped on them out of the sun, like a falcon, and they learned to dip one wing and veer to either side, plunging away from his dive, then fold their wings into a W and drop like stones. Then they soared up and around behind him, trying to gain height. Again he’d arrow above them and again he’d dive and they’d roll and drop, until they perfected it.

  ‘You’re rolling away just like a fighter jet peeling off from a formation,’ said Jay, ‘and you’re making your slower speed work for you. If I’m diving faster on you and you use the pigeon roll and drop, then at my greater speed I’ll overshoot and you can come around behind me and start gaining height.’

  ‘That pigeon’s dead,’ Jay would laugh as he swiped them in passing, their dives not sharp or steep enough. ‘That pigeon made it. Till the next hunt,’ was the highest praise they earned from him. He didn’t stop driving them until they had all escaped him several times.

  Yes, the days above Heavener were glorious. But the nights were another matter.

  Every night, as the gloom solidified between the trees and, after the expansiveness of glass-off or the day’s flying, the space collapsed in on them, the fliers were too keyed up to sleep. The threat of the Wild crept closer and they drew in on themselves and each other.

  Niko mostly talked politics, describing what he thought had to be done in the City. ‘I’ll start publishing the Diomedea material soon so people will understand what is really going on. We have to organise our knowledge, refine it, share it. If we don’t change what’s going on there, in the City, then you won’t be able to just continue on your chosen path out here. What future will there be in Flight at all?’

  Jay was shaking his head. ‘You talk about knowledge but they have to feel it for themselves in their bodies. No point talking about it.’

  ‘That’s nice for you,’ said Niko, looking at the rest of the group, ‘but it won’t change anything. What exactly is it you think you’re becoming?’

  ‘That’s the point,’ said Jay. ‘I don’t know yet. No-one does.’

  ‘It’s obvious,’ said Leto, ‘that our new abilities have nothing to do with language. They must be located in different areas of the brain.’

  ‘That would make sense,’ said Niko, ‘as they’re mostly spatial abilities. We’re learning how to deal with three-dimensional space and also with different senses of time and speed. Language gets in the way of that.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to say,’ said Finch. ‘Looking at readouts on a watch pulls you out of the state where you can do it yourself. It’s like trying to ride a bicycle by following a set of printed instructions: it’s impossible. Your body has to learn it and take over.’

  ‘I guess it’ll be easier for kids,’ said Peri. ‘They’ll learn it in the same way as learning to walk.’

  ‘Up to a point,’ said Niko. ‘The basics, yes. But real Flight, what we’re doing, is not equivalent to learning to walk; it’s more like elite athlete training. What I wonder, though, is whether you can just add all these abilities on without paying a price.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Jay.

  ‘Well, maybe you sacrifice processing power elsewhere.’

  ‘You think we’re turning Wild?’ said Leto.

  The discussion petered out and they were quiet for the rest of the evening. Peri lay and looked up at the stars, the words Finch had said days ago—it felt like months ago—running through her mind: Wings are heavy unless you give something up.

  Every night as Peri lay with Hugo nestled into one wing and tried to banish her fears for long enough to fall asleep, a strange sensation invaded her body; as if she were falling from a long, long way up, just as she had plunged from the height of the storm. The feeling was beyond her control. It was as if she was reliving all the Flight of the day—up, down, around—going over the exact configurati
on of her flying, reliving it body and mind, the process no more conscious or willed than her blood pressure, the Flight pattern twining itself into the very fibres of her muscles. There it was, whenever she needed it, part of her. The learning was so intense, the repatterning of her mind so deep, it continued even while she slept.

  Peri’s anxiety over Hugo was a constant white noise in her mind, like the rushing of the water over Heavener’s cliff edge. She’d decided what she was going to do. She had rights but rights were no use if she weren’t alive to claim them.

  Two days before Peri had to leave Heavener, Niko, the Pale Male himself, dropped a bombshell on her. He found her playing in the river with Hugo and beckoned her out onto the sand. Peri felt dizzy with apprehension as she sat down with Hugo, setting him up next to her with a mound of sand and an array of pebbles to play with. What could Niko want? He’d never before sought her out.

  ‘You still planning on leaving us soon?’ Niko began.

  Peri nodded.

  ‘That is for the best. You must be frightened. You’re the only one of us who’s actually seen the Wild.’

  ‘Scariest thing I’ve ever seen.’

  Niko picked up a leaf and began shredding it. ‘Strange to be so frightened by the existence of a few Wild,’ he said. ‘But they are terrifying. You wonder, how does it happen? Well, I wonder that. All the time. Why do you think I’m so interested in finding out more about Flight research, especially the things they’ve been hiding from us?’

  Niko must be thinking of his friend. Hoshi, that was her name, wasn’t it?

  ‘What do they become? We don’t know which props we’re knocking away from our own humanness. We should be afraid. We have no idea what we’re doing.’

  ‘You went ahead with the treatments,’ said Peri.

  ‘I didn’t know what I was getting into,’ Niko replied. ‘I am not sure I’d do it all again, to be honest.’

  ‘But you’re here,’ said Peri. ‘Out of all of us, you’re the strategist, the politician.’

  ‘Ha. Well, I’m the one that knows something about it. The rest don’t have a clue. They will though. They’ll realise soon enough the world has no place for them the way they want to be. They believe they are becoming something other; not ordinary humans but not Wild either.’

  ‘Jay said you couldn’t forget what you were. What were you?’

  Niko laughed. ‘Powerful. That’s what I was.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Peri.

  ‘And,’ said Niko, ‘the reason I’m here is this: now that I’m a flier, I’m going to become a real flier. I will not just sit around, like so many in the City do, with wings as my latest executive toy. I’m not going down that road. And I am going to change the way some things are done. Flight is a powerful dream but sometimes dreams should stay dreams. Now it’s up to people like me, to the fliers we train out here, to make the reality worth it.’

  Niko picked up a slender twig bearing a cluster of leaves and white waxy berries and he handed this to Hugo, whose eyes lit up, his mouth forming a perfect O of astonishment. Peri wanted to laugh and yet tears sprang to her eyes. Hugo was still so easy to amaze. He was surrounded by branches and leaves here on Heavener and yet he reacted to Niko’s offered twig as if he’d been given a precious gift. Well, maybe he had.

  ‘What I want,’ said Niko, ‘is to take the knowledge we’re generating here, combine it with proper research and refine it, standardise it, teach it, make Flight Gyms effective. Otherwise we’ll lose what we’re learning here. There are unscrupulous operators throughout the system—doctors who are not fliers, instructors who’ve never flown outside the City. Most importantly, if we want to be real fliers, we will be fliers in the world. We can’t ignore the degradation of the wilderness, the air, the seas. There is no Flight without becoming part of those things. The pressure on our energy reserves, like our dwindling fuels, and on our energy harvesting—that is, renewable energy—is extreme. As a result, what we can do in ourselves, such as flying, is going to grow more and more important. Flight began as an extreme sport and status symbol for the very rich but it’s not going to stay that way. It’s too useful.’

  ‘You’ve a lot of work to do.’

  ‘I’m not doing it alone,’ said Niko. ‘There are a few of us scattered around. These documents we’ve liberated may help. That’s why I’ve come to speak to you. There are things I’ve found out about the history of Flight that directly affect you.’

  Niko scrolled a document up on the slick, then passed it over to Peri. ‘Have a look at that. I only found it in among other material last night.’

  Peri read for a moment, shaking her head. Then she froze and read the same few paragraphs over and over. She looked up at Niko, stunned. The sun was behind them and Niko’s spiky silver hair was lit up into a corona around his head.

  ‘I see your association with Diomedea goes back some time,’ said Niko. ‘Your family name is Almond, isn’t it?’

  Peri nodded.

  ‘Read that passage again. It describes Liam Drake Almond as one of Diomedea’s early prototypes, one of their star subjects on the Chenomorphae Project.’

  Peri stared at the document but it dissolved into a meaningless swarm of marks. Her eyes refused to focus. She put the slick down. ‘Liam Drake Almond was my father?’

  ‘From what I’ve read here, yes.’

  ‘What happened to him? What is the Chenomorphae Project?’

  ‘You know about AIRPA?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘AIRPA is the defence agency tasked with blue-sky research, the most out-there projects. They fund the weird, cutting-edge stuff, like one of my all-time personal favourites, weaponising bees. Talk about stinger missiles. Chenomorphae was fairly tame, for them. Through AIRPA, the Department of Defence funded Diomedea to undertake the research. Put simply, the subjects enrolled in Cheno- morphae were Raptors. The first ones. Project aims were to investigate extreme applications of the first Raptor treatments to enable military fliers to operate in environments and at heights thought impossible for fliers. This included development of true bird navigational abilities. Any and all data harvested during the project were considered valuable.’

  ‘What happened to my father?’

  ‘It was an extremely experimental project that exposed its participants to unprecedented risks.’

  I knew only the other Raptors had the slightest idea what I was going through and even then only the ones in my intake. They change the techniques and treatments, refine them, all the time.

  ‘What happened, Niko?’

  ‘A number of subjects died early. You know Raptor treatments shorten life. But Almond is not recorded as an early death. He disappeared.’

  I’ll pay the price.

  ‘Disappeared.’

  ‘After that is recorded in the project notes there is no further mention of him. Raptor treatments include extremely high doses of Zefiryn over the long term. Both Raptor treatments and overuse of Zefiryn are associated with disappearances.’

  ‘Oh god. You mean they turn Wild.’

  ‘Possibly. We just don’t know.’

  That filthy, stinking creature. Hungry. Alone. It could be her father. He could be like that.

  ‘Peri, did you ever try to track down your parents when you came to the City?’

  Peri put her head in her hands. Her shoulders trembled. ‘I thought about it.’

  ‘But you put it off. Of course you did. Why would you feel bad about that? You were just starting your life.’ Niko glanced at Hugo, who was mouthing the branch Niko had given him. ‘You were very busy. And you had sound reasons to fear you weren’t going to find out anything good. No, what I meant is that you might have found out things about Liam Almond’s earlier life, but once he entered the Chenomorphae Project, it was all classified. You wouldn’t have discovered a thin
g about what happened to him.’

  Still with her head in her hands, Peri said, ‘My mother? Is there anything about her?’

  Niko put his hand on her shoulder. ‘No mention.’

  Closed in by a whirl of feathers, suffocating, bursting above her, a grey storm. Then they flew away. Left her. No proof. Her nightmare didn’t mean her mother had been a flier too. Did it matter? Her father had disappeared and her mother had left her. Somewhere unsafe. Don’t move. You’ll fall.

  ‘The real reason I’m telling you this is that Diomedea has been tracking effects of the project on children of participants in Cheno- morphae.’

  Peri brought her head up. ‘Why? Why did they think there would be effects? Did they do germline engineering?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of. Still, you can see it was the responsible thing for Diomedea to do. Even without germline engineering, you could be affected by the treatments: drug exposure, epigenetic effects and so on.’

  ‘So you think I might be affected? By my father’s Raptor treatments?’

  I won’t live as long as you.

  ‘I think you already have been. Your progress in the short time you’ve been with Audax is remarkable. Have you noticed? You’ve learned more in a few days than most Audax fliers grasp in months. Perhaps you’re aware that Phoebe and Leto and the others don’t like you much. Not because they don’t trust you. It’s because the only Audax flier better than you is Jay.’

  Jay. ‘Was Jay part of Chenomorphae?’

  ‘No, but all the Raptor programs are descendants of it, one way or another. Peri, Jay knows he doesn’t have all the time in the world. I wish I could reassure you that that won’t be a problem for you. I think your chances are much better than Jay’s; after all, you were just exposed through your father, you didn’t actually undergo Raptor treatments yourself. But the fact is, we don’t really know and that’s the reason I pushed Audax into doing this raid; if Diomedea knows more about the effects of the treatments and what turns fliers Wild, they must be made to share it.’