Mayor Drasscol held the bar with both hands and spun it every which way, carefully examining it. He looked pleased, hopeful.
“We’re preparing a ship, sir,” one of the twins told him.
“Good.” He handed the bar to the twin. “You should leave right now. If they have the other map, then they already have a head start on us.”
Michael put a hand over his stomach, anticipating the feeling that would come. “I’m getting sick of boats,” he said.
“Not that kind of ship,” the twin said. “We’re going to the airfield.”
They rode to the airfield in luxury, in the back of a stretched town car with an interior of real, polished hardwood. The ride was silent and smooth and Michael watched the punch rod balance steadily across one of the twin’s knees. The car rolled to a graceful stop and the twin nearest to the door threw it open. “That’s our ride,” he said, jousting his chin toward an airship in the middle of the field.
They filed out, first the twins, then Debora. Michael got out and took a few paces before looking back. “Are you coming?”
Stanley still sat inside the car. “No, I won’t be joining you. I’ve got quite a lot of work to be done.”
“You’re making a new mayoral watch, aren’t you? You don’t believe we can recover it?”
Stanley shook his head. “Forget about the watch. This has nothing to do with the watch anymore.”
“Speaking of watches…” Michael approached the car and stood outside the open door. “You said you would tell me sometime why you wear that old broken watch.” Stanley gave him a blank stare and pulled the door shut. Deep inside the glass Michael could see the reflection of the airship and the three figures crossing the field to it. Then with a hum the window lowered.
Stanley admired the broken watch face on his wrist. He ran his finger tip over the cracks. “Watches are a mockery,” he said. “We make believe we can decide where we’re going to be and when.” He looked up, but not at Michael, he seemed to look past him into the open sky. “Sometimes I think there must be gears that turn the heavens themselves, turns everything, even our fate. This is a monument,” he said holding his arm up, showing the destroyed watch. “My epiphany came at one twelve in the morning. Perhaps in the future we can exchange stories, but for now there is some place you need to be.” He pounded on the hardwood and the car started its smooth motion forward.
The airship was modest in length but stood almost as tall as it was long, making it appear stout and larger than it actually was. It was the color of pale stone, worn and weathered by its service, and repaired with little regard for aesthetics, looking more like it had been pieced together haphazardly. Its name, Aggregate, was stenciled on the side of both the blimp and the hull. As they approached, a door lowered like a castle’s draw bridge making a ramp that ushered them up inside.
While the outside of the Aggregate was largely neglected, the inside was grandiose. A wide corridor ran the length of the ship ending with enclosed viewing platforms on the far ends. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, tremendous works of art lined the walls, broken only by the occasional fine piece of furniture and a series of french doors that had to be at least twelve feet tall. Michael let out an impressed whistle. He could hardly believe his eyes.
Two staircases led to the upper levels, as well as the open deck on top. Michael and Debora followed the twins up to a floor with a maze of hallways. They went through them turning left and right until they came to a door with a brass label marked as the conference room. Inside, a table took up most of the space. They sat in the uncomfortable chairs surrounding it and waited.
“Captain Regat fought in the war for the delta,” a twin said. This very ship ran eighteen successful missions under his command. He is somewhat of a legend as you probably know.”
“Wait a minute,” Debora said, “he fought in the war of the delta? How old is Captain Regat?”
“He’s been around for quite a while,” the twin admitted.
“Seriously, he must be a hundred and something, at least.” The twin bobbled his head to indicate that she was probably not far off.
The other twin leaned forward. “He is still in surprisingly good form considering his many years of battle; he’d still be serving today if he didn’t lose his legs; he gets around on two wooden sticks, does pretty well with them in fact, and he’s proud of it, so don’t act as if you can tell. As a result, he can be a little uncouth, so don’t be startled by his demeanor either.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “They say he hasn’t been off this ship in years.”
The door on the opposite side of the room swung open and Michael and Debora snapped upright in their seats, more from fright than respect. In strolled Captain Regat himself.
The captain was an impossibly old, stick-figured man. He was tall and rigid and moved like he was made of lumber. His barbed beard poorly hid a pink scar that ran the length of his jaw.
“I have rules aboard,” he said, “try not to have to learn them.” They heard the creaking of his joints and the tapping of his wooden legs as he paced along the wall. Michael leaned back in an attempt to peek below the table at whatever held the captain up, but couldn’t see anything from his angle.
Regat stopped behind a chair and rested his hands on its back. With a grin he pulled a flask from inside his coat and set it on the table. “Do you know what’s in here?” Nobody ventured the obvious guess. “It’s my drink, and I take it seriously. I have never put anything to my lips that wasn’t older than myself, and that is getting hard to come by- and mightily expensive.” He put the flask back into his coat and leaned forward over the table. “So don’t ya interrupt my drinkin’.”
He exited through the door he came in.
“What, no tour?” Michael said.
The captain left them on their own and Michael took the opportunity to give himself his own tour, walking the length of each level and peaking into whichever doors would open. He finished his exploring in a sitting room, a long rectangular den somewhere below the conference room. He dropped himself into a plump burgundy leather seat and it creaked like new. It probably was new, at least never used. On the other side of the room was a row of tall oval windows that showed blue sky. He contented himself to watch a light wisp of cloud drift by. Its shape morphed into a completely new cloud as it passed from window to window, each time being reframed as something different than before.
He was like one of those clouds, he realized, a completely different thing than his ancestors who ran the leather mill in the delta. His hand went to his thigh and rested on the book in his cargo pocket. He pulled it out and let it fall open in his hands. No wonder Stanley Post and Mayor Drasscol chose him to hunt down the complicator and stop Glen from using it- his entire family had played a major role in protecting the complicator for generations. Maybe it was Michael’s fate.
The door clicked and Debora leaned halfway in. “There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.” She had a pair of brown leather goggles on her head that blended into her hair.
“It’s a big ship,” Michael said.
“Come up to the forward deck, you should see this. It’s amazing.”
“I don’t know. There are some interesting things going on with this cloud.” He pointed with the book, but the cloud that was there had already drifted past. He looked back to the door and Debora was gone too. He slipped the book back into his cargo pocket and hoisted himself out of the noisy seat. He checked his watch and then made his way to the upper deck where he found the twins and Debora standing at the front.
Beneath them, the quarry stretched for miles in every direction. Trees had crept up around its edges and covered over the higher ground, but most of the quarry was still cold, dead rock. Shadows from tall jagged ridges hid the bottom of the narrower valleys, but where the valleys were wider, jotted outlines could be seen along the canyon floors. The Aggregate must have been moving faster than Michael realized; he saw their own shadow slide across a pool of blue water turni
ng it dark black.
“Can you believe all that was taken out bit-by-bit, by the hands of men?” one of the twins said. “In ancient times, we would be on the side of a mountain right now.”
“Where are we going to land?” Michael asked.
The other twin looked at him gravely, his identical face impossible to distinguish from his brother’s. “It’s hard to tell, but it will be somewhere down there,” he said with a chuckle. Michael remembered the bland joke from the mayor’s board room and wondered if it was just that one who had the streak of sarcastic humor, if he had finally determined a trait to distinguish the two. He faked a smile, looked down and saw no level ground big enough for the Aggregate. When he looked up the twin slapped a pack into his chest.
“What’s this?”
“An elevator in a backpack, what do you think it is?”
“Oh, I’m not jumping,” Michael said. Everyone was already putting on their packs and tightening the straps. The twins stepped off one after another and disappeared below. “Guys, I can’t jump, come back.”
Debora fashioned the goggles over her face to keep the wind out of her eyes and poised at the rail.
“This is crazy, I can’t believe you’re going to do this,” Michael said.
“Mr. Bandolier,” she said in her office voice, “you really don’t know me at all.” She tied her hair into a hasty bun that only vaguely resembled the secretary Michael knew. “Enjoy your jump,” she said, bending her knees to leap. She paused. “Oh, don’t jump from the front, you’ll be run over by the ship.” Then she was gone.
Eleven