Crystal Rain

by Tobias S. Buckell

  He crouched and grabbed a rung. Why this angle? Climbing straight up presented no problem, but here the ladder lay almost horizontal. John studied it for a second, well aware of the different ways the hook on his left hand would get in the way.

  To lope across the unsteady ladder he kept his hook folded into his chest, straining across with just one arm and his legs. He only missed a rung with a foot once and instinctively hooked a rung with his left arm to prevent falling. He reached the undercarriage fairly quickly, grabbed the bamboo side rails, and pulled himself into the small basket.

  The whole undercarriage was bamboo, he noticed.

  He turned around to help Oaxyctl, watching the five-foot-long spears on the mongoose-man’s back warily.

  “What is that anyway?” John asked about the long handle with the notch at the end. “I haven’t seen anything quite like that.”

  Oaxyctl took the spears off his back. He used the leather strap to tie them to a bamboo rail. “Atlatl. You launch darts with it. It triples the length of your throw.”

  He busied himself securing his pack. Then he used the cloth straps on the chair to buckle in. John copied him, though the buckle eluded him at first, as he had only one hand. Once he was strapped in, John looked up along the dirty fabric half a foot over his head.

  A wooden panel with brass dials and knobs swayed from the undercarriage’s struts above Oaxyctl’s head. Hoses and pipes led away from it.

  At the top of the stairs the airship had looked huge. Up close, all John could see above him was the dark expanse of airtight canvas, the light playing off the varnish over its side. All around the cavern, menacing dark edges loomed close, lit by the gap in the earth just big enough to fit the airship through.

  Hopefully they wouldn’t hit anything on the way out.

  Oaxyctl shifted, causing the undercarriage to squeak. Even though apparently designed for two, their thighs were still mashed close to each other. John’s pants had rips in several places, and it looked as if Oaxyctl had cut slits in his that allowed him to run faster.

  “Ready?” Oaxyctl asked.

  John nodded.

  Oaxyctl held a box with a single switch on it. A wire ran from it all the way to a cavern wall. He flipped the switch up and threw the box over the side. It clanked against the rocky sides.

  Sixteen ropes held the airship down. Several groaned from the strain of keeping the lighter-than-air vehicle tethered. They now snapped backward like whips in reverse.

  The airship rose into the air. The cavern lip moved past them and gave John a glimpse of the clearing once more. Then they rose over the trees, the wind blowing them into the highest branches, where startled monkeys howled at them in protest.

  A hot air gusted, free of the shade below. The airship skipped, then rose over a green sea that stretched before them, rolling all the way to the horizon’s edge until it met the blue skies.

  Oaxyctl leaned back after loosening the straps some. He grabbed a wooden handle on the end of a string and started yanking at it. Once, twice, three times.

  John craned around to look.

  Behind the undercarriage was a large wooden propeller blade with a flap behind it. Just like the propeller and rudder of a fast steamship, John thought. He’d seen a design like that in Capitol City. Oaxyctl yanked once more, and the engine roared to life.

  John recognized the stench quickly enough. He turned around.

  “Alcohol?” he yelled over the engine.

  Oaxyctl nodded. He grabbed a lever with a polished brass and cherry inlaid knob between his legs. When John looked backward again, the large flap behind the propeller waggled, then turned all the way to one side.

  “It doesn’t have too much fuel,” Oaxyctl said. “And we don’t have enough power to fight the wind. But it can help guide us.”

  The airship slowly changed direction, though the wind still blew them off course, and Oaxyctl kept looking out at the sun to line them up properly. They were getting blown back toward the Wicked Highs to the west, not going northeast toward Capitol City.

  “Will we be able to make it to Capitol City?” John asked as a cloud of blue-and-gold parrots burst from the treetops to flee before them.

  “There is a great wind high over the Great Mountains that blows east. We must climb higher into the air to find it. If your ears hurt, you pretend to chew.” The airship rose faster. “We don’t have air tanks with us, so watch your breath. We must be careful not to choke.”

  John settled farther back into his seat. The horizon seemed to move farther back, but at the same time he could see more of the land all around him. A curl of smoke in the distance rose from Joginstead.

  The next time he leaned over the bamboo rail and peered down, John sucked in his breath. He could no longer see branches, just a smooth carpet of green.

  “How high are we?” he asked.

  “Very high,” Oaxyclt said. “High enough that if you fall, maybe you’d have a few seconds to flap your hands hard and pretend to fly.”

  John didn’t find that funny.

  They gained height slowly, still getting blown sideways and west. Oaxyctl began to turn the airship to face the mountains. John frowned. The Wicked Highs rose, an impassable wall before them. The air rushed them toward the jagged peaks and valleys. John could see where the trees stopped and bare rock poked into the air.

  “How much have you flown machines like this?” John asked. They weren’t too far up that he couldn’t look down and see that they were moving quickly over the ground toward the Wicked Highs.

  “Enough to know what I’m doing,” Oaxyctl said.

  The air played with them. John’s stomach lurched as the airship dropped down, then rose up. It shook several more times, the air stirring them up as they approached.

  “It will get rougher,” Oaxyctl said.

  And it did. One drop, the airship being shoved down against its will, almost convinced John he would die dashed against the side of the mountains in this contraption.

  “Just hold on.” Oaxyctl spun dials on the panel above him. Hoses leading from thick tanks lashed to the carriage’s underside hissed. The airship rose faster. “Near these mountains at this time,” Oaxyctl explained loudly, “the winds seem to be sucked in just above the surface of the land. Then they rise right up the side of the mountain, and then higher in the air they go the other way. We can use that.”

  The winds were changing, bearing their airship up the mountain’s side. This was like sailing, in a way, John thought. But you could go up and down as well.

  Oaxyctl jockeyed them higher, and when they rose as high as the Wicked Highs’ top peaks, the wind changed and they flew quickly eastward, as Oaxyctl had predicted. So now they were sweeping in the right direction: mostly east. Eventually they needed to turn north to aim for Capitol City, but at least they were being blown away from the Azteca.

  Everything smoothed out, and as they flew away from the mountains, Oaxyctl stopped the engine.

  Off to the north by the coast, a thick pall of smoke rose. A burning Brungstun. John looked away from it with burning eyes, looking east at the long expanse of thick-jungled land.

  There was hope in this direction.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  John watched tall clouds heavy with water drop down toward the airship, blocking out light. Waves of chilly wind gusted over John and Oaxyctl and shook the airship. They both shivered in the undercarriage. Compared to the massive clouds that spread in all directions and towered up into the sky, they were nothing more than a small dot.

  It rained softly for an hour. Rivulets trickled down the sides of the airship to form a miniature waterfall of concentrated raindrops that soaked them. John looked up at the dripping panel above Oaxyctl and hoped someone had waterproofed it.

  Eventually the steady drenching ceased. Water randomly dripped down off the gasbag to fall far down to the ground. John shook himself to get the pockets of water on his lap off and kept shivering.

  “Will you be okay
?” Oaxyctl asked.

  “It’s cold,” John said.

  Oaxyctl nodded. He adjusted dials and the airship lowered. “I can’t go too far down or we’ll lose our wind. But let’s warm up.”

  The sun appeared: long shafts of a welcome golden light beamed at the ground as the shower clouds dissipated. Oaxyctl maneuvered them low enough that the cold didn’t pierce John’s skin to his bones. The wind wasn’t as strong. John couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked as if they were moving over the ground at a more leisurely pace.

  If he had a sextant, he could tell for sure, though the beginnings of a mental map were suggesting itself to his mind’s eye, as it usually did whenever John traveled. He looked around for anything he could adapt to make sightings with, but saw nothing. He took off his shirt and wrung it out over the edge, then laced it to the bamboo handrail to dry off. The lowest edge of the gasbag’s rope net swung near him.

  With a mighty shiver John wrapped his arms around himself and rubbed his skin real hard to warm up.

  “Food?” Oaxyctl offered. He opened his pack and dug around. Oaxyctl had more jerky. But he also had some chewy, stale johnnycake and a small jar of honey. They dipped the johnnycake in the honey as if it were dessert and sipped at the canteen as they passed over a swatch of land shaped in squares. Farmland out in the middle of the jungle. Some group forging into the virgin land.

  “Do you think about your family much?” John asked, looking out for some familiar landmark. Right now every hour in the wind was an hour away from the coast most familiar to him.

  “My wife.” The wind lessened and Oaxyctl twisted dials. Hoses hissed. “I think about her.” They slowly rose. The wind picked back up.

  “My wife’s name was Shanta.” It hurt John to use the word was. He realized he had started to bottle up the black scar, his loss, into the middle of himself. Words like was were a first step.

  What scared John was how easy it came to him. Some long-forgotten instinct allowed him to cauterize his emotions. What kind of person could do that as a matter of fact? Someone who had lived a rough life, John thought. Maybe that was why he had no memories of it.

  He shivered. Not because of cold, but a sense of dread that settled in on him. A small figment of the past, and not returning in some hazy, forgotten dream.

  “Necahual,” Oaxyctl said, after the long moment’s silence.

  John shook himself. “I’m sorry?”

  “Necahual was my wife’s name. It’s a common one. It means ‘survivor.’” Oaxyctl smiled. “And for her, appropriate. She could sniff out positions that would help me earn respect with a second sense I admired. I wonder sometimes what she is doing now.”

  John smiled as well. It was hard to picture the hardened warrior, once bloodthirsty worshiper of human sacrifice, as having a family life.

  “Do you have children?” John asked.

  “Children …” Oaxyctl paused to check the dials above him. He cleared his throat. “No.” He bit his lip. John wondered what emotions Oaxyctl struggled with. “Didn’t have time for children before I had to cross the Great Mountains.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.” Oaxyctl dug around in his pack and pulled out a dirty blanket. His fingers turned white as he pulled the knot loose that bound the blanket into a small, tight package. “Here. Wrap this around your neck and head, it should keep you warm while we fly.”

  John did so, then chuckled.

  “What?” Oaxyctl asked.

  “You suddenly seem to have a soul.”

  Oaxyctl looked at him. “After saving your life, John deBrun, it would make no sense to let you die.”

  John blinked and bit his lower lip. “True. I owe you much.” He settled into his seat as best he could. More questioning advice from his deepest instincts bubbled up. Did he really trust this man?

  Yes. Of course.

  Okay, the tiny instinct guided him. Next he needed shelter, water, food, sleep. Act strongly only after sleep. The mind without sleep is not geared for survival, he thought to himself.

  The words and concepts made sense.

  “Would you mind if I took a nap?” John asked.

  Oaxyctl shook his head.

  They flew on into the clear skies, moving with the wind over the land. Occasionally a bump would force John to unconsciously grab something with his good hand.

  Something shook John awake. His eyes fluttered open, and he realized that his good hand clutched the straps holding him in. They chafed hard against his chest.

  The airship dropped suddenly, shaken by the air. John felt as if his chest had been shoved under several feet of water; he had to suck at the air to get rid of the suffocating feeling.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. Wind buffeted them again.

  Oaxyctl had a strained look on his face. “We’re being followed.”

  John looked around. Many miles behind them a larger craft followed, though John squinted to make it out. Oaxyctl had sharp eyes.

  “I’ve climbed as high as I dare,” Oaxyctl said. “I have some length on them, but they gain on us.”

  “Why don’t you use the engine?”

  “It won’t do us much good, not enough fuel, and we need that fuel to navigate when we get lower to the ground.”

  “Damnit, what do we do?”

  Oaxyctl tapped a dial. “For now we try going higher.”

  The airship lay over on its side like a ship as more wind hit them. Oaxyctl led the lighter-than-air machine even higher in search of faster winds. John hoped he could handle that sort of tossing.

  And not pass out for lack of air.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Azteca airship chasing them looked larger than their own courier airship. John guessed its gasbag to be easily twice the size of theirs. Highly stylized terra-cotta-colored feathers ornamented the nose, and a pair of propellers jutted out from the sides of the canopy.

  Three sharp cracks spat through the air. John instinctively ducked, then looked upward.

  Oaxyctl nodded. “They’re trying to drop us out of the sky. They don’t want us to get north with any reports on where they are.” Oaxyctl turned around and yanked on the cord. The motor coughed and spluttered, but did not start. “We’re too high. We need to drop our altitude.”

  More shots pierced the wind’s low roar. Oaxyctl grimaced and worked a lever. John heard hissing, not from the hoses, but from farther up on the gasbag. They dropped.

  John turned around and looked. The Azteca airship followed.

  The sound of wind passing them picked up, and John’s stomach flip-flopped. They were falling fast.

  “How much air did you let out?” John asked.

  “Helium.” Oaxyctl twisted dials and the hoses leapt to life. Condensation ran along the bottom of the black rubber tubes leading under the carriage to the tanks strapped underneath. Oaxyctl yanked on the cord behind him again. Once, twice, three times. On the fourth try the alcohol engine cleared its throat and groggily roared to life.

  Oaxyctl pushed the lever throttle on the panel above him as far forward as he could. They both turned around to look through the blur of the propeller. “Where’d he go?” Oaxyctl peered around.

  John looked up at the stained canvas above him. Oaxyctl followed his gaze. “Damn.”

  They heard another series of shots. A bullet whizzed past, too close. Oaxyctl unbuckled the straps holding him into his seat.

  “What are you doing?” John asked.

  “Going up the side to see where they are.”

  John shook his head. “You have to fly this thing.” They’d fallen far out of the sky, and even with more gas in the airship, he could feel them still dropping. He yawned to pop his ears. “Do we have a gun of any sort?”

  “There is no way I’ll let you go up there.” Oaxyctl pointed at John’s hook. “I don’t know who’s more dangerous, you or them.”

  John grabbed a strap on his wrist and popped it off. He ignored the smell of unwashed skin as he pulled the res
t of the straps loose to remove his hook.

  “You could die,” Oaxyctl said.

  “We stand the best chance of surviving this way.” John tried to keep the nervousness out of his voice. Heights never bothered him. But he’d never been on rigging in the middle of the sky.

  And what was in Oaxyctl’s deep, calculating eyes? John couldn’t tell. But after furrowing his thin eyebrows, Oaxyctl nodded. “Here.” He reached down beneath his seat and forced open a first aid box. He pulled out a flare gun and a cartridge of flares.

  John wrapped the gun and ammo in his shirt and tied the bundle in on itself with a knot. “Just don’t make any sudden movements, okay?”

  Oaxyctl nodded. He didn’t look happy about this in the slightest. John would have thought anyone would be relieved to stay in the undercarriage, but Oaxyctl looked more nervous than John did.

  John unstrapped himself from the chair. He wrapped a foot around the rail and leaned out. He looked down, saw the world far below his knees, and looked right back up at the distant and safe horizon. He grabbed the rope net swaying from the gasbag with the outstretched fingers of his right hand.

  John held his breath and wrapped his good wrist around the thin rope. He hopped forward and hung in the air by one securely wrapped hand.

  He let his legs dangle out and pushed his left arm up through netting until he hung from his elbow. Then with his right, John pulled himself up. Once he had his legs hooked into the netting, he could scramble up; he’d done this on ships’ masts without a hook before.

  John followed the pregnant curve of the airship up toward the sky.

  The wind rushing past the sides of the machine pulled at him, but it didn’t tug hard enough to startle him. What did make him jump were the sounds of three more gunshots. John crabbed his way along the netting and looked up to see the Azteca airship above them. Someone leaned over the side to point a rifle.