back to index or warp factor 2
There had been a stowaway. She wasn't discovered until the
plane had been
standing for three days; it had landed at the start of the
November storm,
and nobody was going to walk the mile of rain-rivered runway just
to stare
at a robot. It couldn't take off until the sun shone again. Why
bother?
In truth, it hardly mattered. Whoever it had been had died within
days of
takeoff; a desparate gamble, brave, foolhardy, wrong. The
serviceman who
found her called the Commandant, who called the vicar from the
village, who
organised the funeral, right there by the plane, in the foot-high
rye grass
that ran from the puddly tarmac to the treeless blue horizon. The
robot
plane, her pall-bearer, stood not twenty feet away, exhausted,
recovering,
its scaly black wings underlining the early sun that would later
rise high
and tease it into the seasonless sky. That would be later; now
was still
morning, still November.
It was a blustery day, and the scant hair on the old priest's
head blew and
rippled like a patch of grass by a grey-pink stone. As the words
of the
Service For The Unknown caught the wind and scudded away, the
Commandant
looked away, down into the grave, at the black linen wrapped
around the
skeleton. Five years ago, she'd been alive. Desparate, hungry,
probably
alone, yet alive, a mother of children, still a child herself .
He'd heard
the men of the base talking last night in the mess; among them
was one
young engineer of a melancholic, poetic nature who had caught the
attention
of everyone. Normally, he was a quiet man; he had few friends and
those
were barely more than acquaintances who shared his work. He was
an
exceptional radio man, and, the Commandant thought, a poor
person. Ignored,
and happier that way, not someone who would move unless in
reaction; that
move would be the smallest possible, back to equilibrium.
Last night, last night was different. Everyone had been talking
about the
stowaway, where she had come from, who she might have been.
"I know," said the engineer, and blinked beneath his
dull-brown hair as the
conversation died around him.
"What?" asked someone.
"This afternoon, I woke up the robot and went through the
flight log. She
got on board in Kenya, five years ago, she died three days later
and nobody
checked the plane during the seven stops it made since. I know
this. I
might even be able to find her name."
"You can't tell all that from the log, mate," said the
fat farmer, who grew
most of the base's food and kept a small, genial pair of eyes on
the water
supply. "There's not that much detail."
"You can recreate it," said the engineer, staring at
his drink. "With the
weather records, and the ways of the wind, and the readings from
the
engines. The plane landed in the Kenyan desert, one night, long
ago, and
when it took off, it was heavier by sixty kilos. For a week, that
weight
was constant, and then it gradually reduced. It takes four days
for
decomposition to significantly reduce a body. It all fits. There
are things
I don't understand, though."
"Like what? Like how she got aboard?" The farmer asked
the question almost
out of duty, as if he had to, as if he was giving his name to a
policeman.
"I don't know, but there was a base close by. It had closed
by the time the
plane landed, but she could have worked there, or seen people
work there.
She must have known how to open the payload door. No, that's not
a puzzle,
it might even give me her name, if I can find the personnel
records. What I
cannot figure out, what really doesn't make sense, is how she
lived so
long."
"Three days isn't long, mate" said the farmer.
"It is at the cruising altitude. You die in half an hour, if
you last that
long. It took the plane a day to reach that, and for two more
days this
woman lived, in a tiny metal cocoon, cold as the moon and nearly
as dry,
looking at the great winds of the planet through an inch-wide
porthole. She
must have been near starvation, too, hardly fit to fly in an
airliner.
There is a mystery here."
Silence. Then a biologist, one of the foreign scientists who came
here when
their country failed, said "Perhaps she died at once, and
the altitude
slowed down the decomposition. That would make sense"
"I thought of that," said the engineer, "and the
weight loss afterwards
would be different. She died three days after takeoff, two days
too late. I
think her soul must still be there, disappointed that she never
made
heaven... Can you see it? Dying in the desert, praying to the
gods who had
taken the white men away, ready to become the dust of the ground,
when the
plane lands, nearby. It was a full moon, and there was no wind,
she could
have heard it before she saw it, and she could have seen it a
long way
away. That cold night, when the dark angel came for her..."
"You're not thinking straight," said the farmer, after
a while. "If she
worked at the base, she'd know what the plane was. She must've
missed the
first flyout, and thought that this had been sent back for her,
expected it
to fly her south, to safety and the people..."
"Maybe." said the engineer. "Maybe there was
something of both. It's easy
for us to sit here and say how it was, but there's more than
that. That
plane's been flying for half a decade, and she's been aboard.
Perhaps
that's what she wanted... God, it must be better than living down
here,
watching the world grow stranger, becoming an alien all the
while."
"Ah, you've been listening to the townies," said the
farmer, grinning and
signalling for another drink. "The base is a good place to
be, keeping
things going, and you don't want to be worried about that. We'll
get that
plane off the ground tomorrow, and it'll get the pictures down
again."
The engineer shrugged, and people around started talking again.
The Commandant remembered all this, and came back as the vicar
was
standing, head bowed in silence, over the grave in the November
breeze. The
priest looked up, eyes closed, and then said "Amen".
The eyes opened, the
vicar sighed and looked at the Commandant.
"Thank you, Padre", said the Commandant. "Burial
detail, carry on. Everyone
else, thank you for attending"
There were ten people there, and eight quietly walked back
towards the
buildings of the base. Two stayed to shovel the dirt over the
black-robed
skeleton in the cut in the ground. Overhead, the sun shone. The
robot plane
stirred, picking up enough solar power through its wings to
charge the
cells that ran the motors; its mechanical mind decided that if it
took off
now, it would be high enough to miss the clouds when they came.
With no
fuss, no messages to the long-derelict control tower, it fed
stored power
to the engines and gently took off, starting the slow climb to
home,
cruising altitude. It taxied down the damp tarmac.
"Watch out", one of the men said to the Padre, tugging
him by the sleeve.
The vicar said "Oh... thanks" and looked up; the black
aeroplane slowly
climbed into the sky above them, heading upwards.
(c) rg