Chapter 3
Gary was pleasant company, if quiet. He started by showing us to the 'aft lounge', a crescent-shaped room under the ship's stern, or tail. Petra held his hand, looking around at everything. She seemed rather taken with this strange, somewhat gloomy man. That worried me, but we were only beginning to understand how much more perceptive she was than the rest of us…
Our eyes were drawn to the big curve of windows, but Gary led us to the forward, or front, side of the room and a large glass case holding something we all recognized instantly — a zeppelin! It was only a yard long, but otherwise identical to the ship we'd seen above us, and then felt ourselves lifted into. I felt a little strange, looking at the outside of something while knowing I was inside it.
I saw a lot of details I'd missed in our short walk across that web-choked clearing. It was shaped like a long tube, over six inches wide, with a rounded nose and a tapered tail with four blades, like an arrow's fletching. Most of the top half was covered with thousands and thousands of tiny square bluish-black dots. Along the side, four rods stuck out with short tubes about an inch across and half an inch long attached to the ends. Looking into the fronts of these, I could see tiny, spidery bars inside them. Behind the last one, a longer, thinner tube with a sort of large collar around the front was attached by a wider support piece. I presumed there was a matching set on the other side, where we couldn't see them.
There was a long, flattish bulge along the bottom, from behind the nose to the beginning of the tail, a little over two-thirds of the total length. When I peered closer, I could see tiny windows and realized that everywhere we had gone inside the ship was in that bulge. A row of miniscule windows curved around the back of the bulge, reflecting the shape of the large windows around us, and I got my first real appreciation for the sheer size of it. If I could see myself there inside the small zeppelin, I'd be tinier than an ant.
At the bottom of the case was a shiny brass plate with large black letters: ZX-701 (1:300)
Rosalind's voice was hushed, awed. "The Zealanders made this. We thought the Old People were like gods, but we had no idea, none at all…this ship is a wonder, a miracle, but one made by people. What else could we do, if we weren't held back by fear, and hate?"
"And intolerance," Gary said quietly. "If they see that you're different…there's no greater sin than to be different."
Petra smiled up at him. "Don't be sad, Mister Gary. Everybody here likes you."
"Not everybody, but I do have friends here." He smiled back at her, a little. "If we're going to be friends, you should just call me Gary, okay?"
"Okay, Gary." Her smile brightened. "And we're already friends!"
His face relaxed into a genuine smile, and I saw that he was younger than I'd thought, probably in his early twenties. "I'm glad to be your friend, Petra. I'll try to be a good one."
"You'll be a really good friend, I just know it!"
He got more serious. "Well, you have to remember that good friends tell you when you do something wrong, or make mistakes. We don't do it to be mean, and it doesn't mean we think you're a bad person. We always think you're a good girl, and we're trying to help you do better. Try not to be upset with your brother, or Rosalind, or the other people who care about you when they have to tell you that you've made a mistake. Can you remember that?"
She was looking at him, wide-eyed. We had never explained things to her in quite that way, and it seemed to be making a big impression on her. She said solemnly, "I'll remember."
He smiled again. "Good girl. You'll probably make more mistakes, and we'll have to tell you about them, because you have something very special. None of us has ever heard of anyone with a mind-voice as powerful as yours. Right now, it's kind of too big for you, and you have a hard time controlling it. Sometimes you forget, and it hurts people. That's something you need to work on, but don't ever, ever think it means that your power is a bad thing. Anything that's very powerful can cause damage and hurt people if it's misused — but when you learn to control it, and use it properly, you can do important, wonderful things, and help a lot of people."
This glimpse of my little sister's potential future left us all a trifle awed. She responded by flinging her arms around his waist and saying, "I'll try, Gary. I'll try really hard!"
He patted her back, a little awkwardly. "I know you will, Petra. You're a good girl, because you want to help people, not hurt them."
I recovered my voice next. "That's…we never thought to explain it to her that way. I think it'll help her a lot. Thanks."
"I'm glad to help."
Rosalind asked, "How do you know all that?"
Gary replied cautiously, "I have some experience with…dangerous gifts."
"What kind of experience?" Rosalind pressed him.
He said, a little evasively, "Hey, I'm not supposed to be boring you by talking about myself. Is there anything you want to know about the ship?"
I asked, "How big is it?"
Rosalind giggled. "Trust a man to ask that."
He pointed to a printed list inside the case, below the zeppelin's nose. "There's the specification table…" His words trailed off, then he said, "But it probably wouldn't mean much to people who've never seen a zeppelin before."
We looked at him expectantly.
"Uhum." He fixed his eyes on the list. "Okay, it's two hundred and eighty-five meters long and the main body is forty-eight meters in diameter—"
"What are meters?" I asked, confused.
He looked at us helplessly, then called out plaintively, "Harvey? They don't know what a meter is. Help!"
Somebody, presumably the red-haired man, answered, "They're probably using feet, gallons, pounds and whatnot." He addressed all of us. "A meter is a little more than a yard. If you just think yards, it should be close enough for most purposes."
I asked, "So the ship is two hundred and eighty-five yards long?"
"A little more. I worked it all out a while ago. The ZX-701 is almost exactly nine hundred and thirty-five of your feet long, and a hundred and fifty-seven feet, six inches in diameter." His thought-shapes were clear, precise, and much easier to understand than his words.
"Thanks, Harvey." Gary chuckled ruefully. "You should wait and ask him all the technical questions. I can only answer the simple ones."
Petra asked the simple question on all our minds. "How does it fly?"
He looked down at her, amused. "Of course you'd ask that one. It's a simple question, but it doesn't have a simple answer." He corrected himself. "Well, actually, it does, but it takes a lot of explaining. The simple answer is, it floats in the air."
That didn't make sense to me, but I'd play along. "How?"
"That's what takes the explaining. You know how a boat floats on water." We all nodded after a few seconds. "It floats because the air inside the boat weighs a lot less than the water outside."
That made even less sense. "Wait a minute. Air doesn't weigh anything."
He chuckled again. "That's what I used to think, but I was wrong. I was surprised how much it weighs. Over a kilogram per cubic meter at sea level."
I was confused again. "That's…a yard…but, what's a kilogram?"
Gary called for help again. "Harvey? How much does air weigh, in Labrador?"
Harvey replied, "Well, one-point-two-three kilograms per cubic meter at sea level…" There was a long pause, then, "About two pounds per cubic yard, give or take. And before you ask, hydrogen…around a seventh of a pound, I think. Good enough?"
"Thanks again. Don't mean to keep bugging you."
"No worries. Cleaning the lift doesn't take a lot of thought."
He returned his attention to us. "So, the boat floats because air is lighter than water. There's a gas called hydrogen, that's lighter than air. The lift chamber," he pointed upwards, "is mostly full of hydrogen, and some air, just enough to lift the ship's weight."
I had so many questions about that I didn't know where to start. Rosalind said, "But, a boat floats on top of the water."
"Where's the top of the air?" Gary asked. "I don't understand all the details myself, and I'm not so good at explaining things. Harvey knows a lot more, and explains it better. He really wants to show the ship off to you, so could you wait until he can tell you?"
Petra didn't seem to be following any of it, but she didn't seem concerned either. We were inside it, and it was flying. Obviously, it worked. I envied her, just a little. I settled on a question. "How much does this zeppelin weigh?"
He said hesitantly, "I think it's about three hundred and eighty tons, right now."
Rosalind and I were both speechless. After a long minute I forced out, "You're telling me…this ship weighs three hundred and eighty tons…and it's floating in the air."
He nodded. "That's right. It can even carry more." He pointed to the 'Specifications' list. "I told you the lift chamber is not completely full of hydrogen. It can carry another fifty-five tons, as high as twenty-five hundred meters."
Once I got my brain around three hundred and eighty tons, another fifty-five was easier — like swallowing an apple whole would be easy compared to swallowing a twenty-pound pumpkin. My brain felt like it had swallowed a twenty-pound pumpkin.
I thought we had learned so much, listening in on Michael's school in Kentak. None of us had ever imagined there was so much more to know. Rosalind and I looked at each other, almost despairing of ever being anything but unlettered primitives to the Zealanders. We'd thought Yvonne was arrogant and condescending, when she first got close enough for us to communicate directly; now we could see that she had been understating the vast gap between their knowledge and ours.
Rosalind's thoughts were bleak as she sent, "How will we ever learn even the least part of all this? We shall be useless for anything more than scrubbing floors and carrying water."
Gary said, kindly, "You'll learn the same way all of us did, one thing at a time." He added, "And, uh…we don't carry water. It's pumped into our houses, in pipes."
Rosalind threw her hands up. "Augh! You see? I didn't even know that!"
I jested, "Well, he didn't say they don't scrub floors." It fell flat as Rosalind gave me a very empty look. I might have to pay for that, later. Even Petra seemed a bit put off.
Gary decided a change of subject was in order. "Anyway, that's what holds the ship up." He pointed to the rods and tubes. "Those are what makes it go. They're motors, with propellers inside, that pull air in the front and push it out the back, making the ship move forward. They can be reversed, and it can go backward, but it's a lot harder to control that way. Harvey can explain why."
I pointed to the tail and said, "It's the blades, right? It would be like shooting an arrow backward."
He nodded. "You're right. I didn't think of that. Just like an arrow." He pointed to the longer tube near the tail. "That's one of the engines. We use those when we want to go faster than the main motors can, or when there's not enough electricity available to use them. The solar cells," he waved his hand at the zeppelin's top, "generate electricity from sunlight. It runs the motors, and some of it is stored in batteries to run the motors at night. We used the engines most of the way here, to go fast enough to get here in time to rescue you, and used up almost all the fuel for them. If you want to know more about any of that, you'll have to ask Harvey later."
That was a lot to take in all at once. I asked, "What's electricity?"
Gary said apologetically, "Way too big a subject to get into now. It powers everything on this ship except those engines, and I don't know how to explain it. Maybe Harvey does."
Petra had become bored with all our talk and was gazing wistfully at the windows. Gary noticed. "Let's have a look outside, and see where we are."
We followed Petra's mad dash to the nearest windows, and agreed with her wondering "Oooooooh…" as we looked across a land that seemed to stretch on forever. To our right, the green woods and meadows of Fringes country reached almost to the horizon, where it turned darker. I suspected we were seeing the distant Badlands. To our left, the woods ran for only a short distance before they were replaced by fields, most green, a few yellowing with early-ripening grain, with only small patches of woods in between. We saw tiny houses and barns, grayish-brown roads and a few streams. Far to our right was a larger river, possibly the one we had crossed on our way to the Fringes cave-village.
Gary pointed off to our right. "Look."
It took me a minute to see what he meant, but there was something long, dark and blurry lying across the trees several miles away. Rosalind asked, "What is that?"
He chuckled. "It's our shadow."
I looked, and tried to understand. The zeppelin's shadow was enormous, covering dozens, scores of trees. It was bigger than our house back in Waknuk, bigger than the stables, almost as big as some of the fields. And we were inside the ship that made it, floating high above the ground, with rooms and beds, bathrooms and kitchens, and a huge room that existed for no other purpose than for people to relax and look out as the world drifted by below.
The windows were angled outward at their tops, allowing us to see straight down if we cared to lean forward a little. It made me a touch dizzy, so I only tried it once. Petra had her face practically stuck to the glass. "I can see the whole world," she said wonderingly.
I turned to Gary. "I know it's not the whole world, but how far can we see?"
"I'd think about a hundred kilometers from this altitude," he said thoughtfully. "Maybe a hundred and fifty."
I groaned. "More of those meter things. Those are going to be hard to get used to."
"They probably will, but everything in Zealand is measured in meters and grams." He thought of something. "You could ask Harvey to write down some conversions to those yards and pounds you're used to. That should help."
That was a very good idea. I said, "I'll do that. In fact, I'll do it now. Harvey?"
There was a short delay before he answered, "Mite busy. What d'you need?"
"Oh. Sorry. I just…had another run-in with those meters. How many miles can we see from here?"
"Um. Miles." He considered the question. "At this altitude, I'd say close to a hundred."
"Wow." I'd never gone a hundred miles in my life, unless we'd come that far to the Fringes. "Thanks, Harvey. Hey, Gary said you could write some of that down for us later, some, uh, conversions."
Harvey sent, "Good idea. I'll do that, tonight or tomorrow. Now, if I don't get back to work this will take all night."
"Thanks again, Harvey."
A hundred miles. We probably could see as far as Waknuk from here, but it would be too tiny to actually see, and I had no idea which direction to look. It could be behind any part of that huge sweep of farmland. I suddenly realized that since we were in the back of the zeppelin, it was pointed away from Waknuk, and wondered, "Why are we pointing away from Waknuk? Aren't we going there tonight?"
Gary reassured me, "The wind's blowing us towards Waknuk, more or less, and we don't want the ship drifting back there. If they see it, that might make our mission tonight harder, or more dangerous for the people we're trying to rescue. We're facing into the wind, running the motors just fast enough to keep us pretty much in one place."
My brain felt stretched out of shape again. "This zeppelin is almost a thousand feet long, it weighs three hundred and eighty tons, and it just…drifts with the wind. Like a dandelion seed."
He chuckled. "It might seem strange, but yeah, that's about it."
Eventually I tired of that grand vista and returned my attention to the zeppelin. Petra had led us to the right-hand end of that great curve of windows, and I looked up and a little forward around the outside to one of the 'engines' Gary had told us about, the 'port' one. It looked a lot bigger in real life, about fifteen feet long and four wide, with that collar around the front being about five feet long and ten or twelve feet wide. I wondered what it was like here when those engines were running.
I looked around the room. A curve of seats or couches started a few feet to our left, following the windows most of the way round. Other seats and tables were grouped behind them, with about a dozen Zealanders sitting alone or in small groups, looking outside as we were or buzzing with thoughts, or reading unfamiliar-looking books with colorful pictures on their covers. A few looked curiously at us, but seemed to understand that we were not ready to meet a whole slew of new people and begin socializing while the rescue mission loomed so large in our thoughts.
Soon even Petra's interest in the great, wide world was satisfied, and Gary conducted us to the other exit from the aft lounge. Rosalind fell in beside me and took my hand, so it seemed I was forgiven my failed joke — at least provisionally. We followed him through a set of doors and into a room filled with long shelves and absolutely packed with books, more books than I had thought existed in the whole world.
Rosalind squeezed my hand. "Wait until Michael sees this!"
I warned her, "Let's not tell him about it until after the rescue mission. It would take both of your father's great-horses to drag him out of here!"
She said piously, "Even if he abstained, knowing it's here would only torment him. We must spare him that!" We both laughed, Rosalind leaning against me. I might have just redeemed myself.
Petra was looking around without much interest. Her experience of books was limited to the Bible and Nicholson's Repentances, both of them far too dry and stuffy for a seven-year-old. I was sure that somewhere in this marvelous treasure-trove of knowledge were books that would engage her interest, fire her imagination and make an eager reader of her. After the conclusion of tonight's mission, we could begin planning that one.
Gary smiled at us. "As you've clearly guessed, this is the ship's library. There are some ten or twelve thousand books here, whatever Steven and Harvey could scrounge up that nobody minded them taking. There's room for a lot more, and if this zeppelin gets put into regular service, the rest of the shelves will no doubt be filled and a librarian will be available, to help you find what you want, or need. For now, you'll just have to wander the shelves and pick up whatever catches your interest. There's a log, there, to write down your name and which books you take, and mark them returned when you bring them back."
He led us back out, a short distance forward down the hall, and through another set of doors into a large open room with many strange things. The first thing I noticed was three pairs of people fighting in one corner. They all wore large…things on their heads. Two had bulky things on their hands, too, and were circling and punching at each other. Michael had seen 'boxing' in Kentak and this looked much like he had described it, but he hadn't said anything about them kicking each other. One suddenly spun around, his leg shot out and knocked his opponent down violently. He stopped and helped the man up. There were two men fighting with long sticks with large round ends, and a man fighting a woman! They all seemed quite serious.
Gary said, "This is the ship's gym. There are weights, punching bags, pedal machines, sparring mats and a number of other things available. A lot of people stop in here a couple of times a week. There's a dedicated head through that door, with eight showers instead of the usual two."
He led us through the room, back to the hallway on 'our' side of the ship, the port side. There were two of these 'passageways' leading from the meal-room to the aft lounge, with people's rooms 'outboard' from them, and shared amenities like the heads, library and gym between them. Gary pointed to a closed door with no light showing through its window. "That's the store. It's closed now, because there's only one store-keeper and she has to sleep, eat and have some time to herself. You've seen the laundry, and there's a tailor shop next to it but nobody aboard to run it. This ship was planned as a complete, self-contained community to make extended voyages lasting a year, or even longer."
I chuckled. "Is there anything this ship doesn't have?"
He grinned back. "A swimming pool. That much water sloshing around would raise hell with the ship's stability — and don't even think about what would happen in a storm! There's a spa, with two hot tubs, but they can only be filled when the weather's calm."
Not all of that made complete sense to me, but my brain was already feeling unpleasantly full and I didn't press him for more details. We walked a moderate distance forward, then stopped. Gary said, "That's about all the time we have right now. Things are going to be busy until we get your friends aboard. These are your rooms, right? Twenty-eight through thirty-four?"
Rosalind nodded. I asked, "Why are they all even numbers?"
"Odd numbers are on the starboard side," he explained. "That way, you instantly know which side of the ship a room is on. Michael should be back soon, and then we can start mission prep."
Petra suddenly seemed troubled by something. She caught hold of Gary's arm and asked plaintively, "If David kills someone tonight, that doesn't mean he's a bad person, does it?" His efforts to divert her attention during supper must not have been entirely successful.
We all looked at each other with resignation. Gary suggested, "Let's not discuss it here in the passageway."
I looked at Rosalind. "My room?" She nodded again. I opened the door marked 28, we all entered, and Rosalind closed it. Rosalind, Petra and I all sat on the bed, and Gary sat sideways on a chair at the small table, facing us. Like those in the meal-room it was attached to the floor, only free to move a short distance forward and back.
Gary looked a question at us, and I nodded. He said, "Killing someone is a bad thing, but that doesn't always mean you're a bad person. Sometimes you have to do bad things, to prevent even worse things. Like…spankings. Are spankings a good thing?"
Petra giggled. "No! They're very very bad!"
"They are," he agreed. "But if a child does terrible, naughty things, and keeps on doing them no matter what you say to him, what can you do about it?"
Petra said reluctantly, "You have to spank him."
"You have to spank him every time he does naughty things, until he learns not to do them."
Petra nodded glumly. She had rarely needed spankings, and we could see her gaining a new perspective on them.
Gary continued. "Grown-up people are kind of hard to spank."
Petra giggled again. "Daddy would spank Uncle Angus, if he could." That made Rosalind giggle too, and me laugh. I could almost see that…
Now he looked very serious. "When adults do bad things, they usually do very bad things indeed, and it's hard to make them stop. Some of them hurt and kill other people, because they want to take what those people own, or just because they hate them."
Petra suddenly looked devastated. "Like us. Those men wanted to kill us. Why did they hate us?"
I answered her, "Because we're Mutants. They were told, by people they trusted to tell them the truth, that Mutants are evil, and that meant we were evil. They were told that killing us was a good thing. We had to stop them."
"Because you're different," Gary corrected me. "They were told those things, but they wanted to believe them. They wanted a reason to drive you out, hunt you down and kill you. It's all because we're different. Don't ever doubt that, or forget it." He spoke with a kind of fervent intensity, as of a subject singularly important to him. It made me a little uncomfortable, and Rosalind too, I thought.
He went on in a calmer tone, "When somebody does, or is going to do, a bad thing, sometimes we have to do something bad to stop them. Sometimes we have to kill them. That's what soldiers do, or policemen. When there are no soldiers or police around, you might have to do it yourself." He concentrated on her and his voice was intense again as he said, "You have the right to stop someone from killing or hurting you and your friends, and that doesn't make you a bad person."
Petra nodded solemnly, and Rosalind put her arm around her and told her, very seriously, "I had to kill one of those men three days ago, Petra. He would have killed us, or told the others where to find us. I think I'm still a good person."
Petra was surprised, and a little shocked. "I didn't know that."
Rosalind agreed. "It happened while you were asleep, and we didn't tell you about it."
She was confused, some. "Why?"
Rosalind looked, and sounded, distant. "We didn't want you to fret, and…I was ashamed, a little. I'd never imagined myself killing someone before. It was so fast…he was there, following our trail, he saw me, I shot. It wasn't until after, that I really knew I'd done it." She frowned. "Then I had to hide the body. In a way, that was harder than killing him."
Gary nodded. "It bothers you. You wish there'd been another way. That's good. It's when killing becomes easy for you, that you've got to worry." He returned his attention to Petra. "I've killed people, too. More than one. All of them had done very bad things, and would have done more if they lived. I'm a soldier now, most of the time, and it's my job to stop dangerous people from hurting others. Some of them won't stop unless I kill them." He sighed. "Sometimes, I think it is too easy for me. I have to be careful. I have to remember why I'm doing what I do."
Petra looked at him for a long moment, then said quietly, "You're still my friend, and I still think you're a good person."
He smiled, looking greatly relieved. "Thank you, Petra. That means a lot to me."
She asked him anxiously, "So when I forget, and hurt people…"
Gary smiled reassuringly. "If you don't mean to hurt them, if you're sorry about it, and if you really want to work at not doing it again, you can still be a good person. I think you're a good person, and you're still my friend."
We sat there a little longer, then he stood up. "Well, there are things I have to do. Mission prep waits for no man." He opened the door, then turned back to me. "Helga will call you when we're ready for you." Then he was gone.
Michael got back a few minutes later. Cleaning the lift had involved lowering it to about ten feet below the zeppelin, then lowering themselves after it on harnesses and ropes until they were underneath. He gave me an impression of how it felt to hang in the sky with nothing below him but air, and laughed about how all their tools had to be tied to them. They sprayed the stuck-on webbing with 'solvent' and scraped it off, then wiped away the residue with rags. Harvey told him the plastic was 'biodegradable' — a few months' exposure to sun and weather would cause it to crumble and dissolve into the ground. Within a year little would remain to mark the Battle Of The Fringes but the bones of horses, and men…and poor Sophie…
Everything hit me all at once, and I grieved for my childhood friend, for how she had lived, and how she had died, simply for being born with a couple of extra toes. I wondered if that could really be how God intended for people to treat one another. Rosalind comforted me, and Michael tactfully took Petra out, closed the door and left us alone. I felt a shifting then, and under-Rosalind was there, pushing her harder sister-twin aside to do what only she could do…
Neither of us knew how long we sat there before we pulled apart a little, my shirt and her dress both soaked with our tears. Our minds were still wrapped tightly together as we looked into each other's eyes and finally, irrevocably left Waknuk and everything it stood for behind forever.
We had all thought it for years, felt it, almost-believed it, but in that moment we both knew, to the bottoms of our souls, that the things we had been taught were lies. That Sophie, Petra, Rosalind and I, Michael and Rachel, Mark, Sally and Katherine, my uncle Gordon, the Zealanders, all we Mutants, were not monsters, not soulless abominations spawned by the Devil to corrupt the Earth, but only people, innocent human beings born with something different about us. We hadn't asked to be different, didn't deserve to be hated, hunted down, tortured and murdered. The men doing those things were not acting on God's behalf, but only for themselves, out of their own fear and hate for what they didn't want to understand. They were the monsters, not us.
Helga called a few minutes later. "David, you and Michael have some things to learn before the mission. Come here and we'll get started." She sent a remarkably complex thought-shape, and I knew where she meant.
I untangled my arms, and my mind, from Rosalind's and stood up. "Rosalind…"
She smiled, a little sadly. "I know, David. You have to get ready to rescue our friends. If there's not time to see me before you leave, I understand. Take my love with you, and come back to me." Clearly, under-Rosalind was still in ascendance.
I choked up, smiled and nodded to her, and left our room. The way was forward, through the meal-room and into a part of the ship I hadn't yet seen. I found the right door and stepped into the 'ready room' to find Michael already there with Yvonne, Helga, Gary and two other Zealanders sitting around a large table. On it were over a dozen unfamiliar objects, and two of the strange guns I had seen before.
