Flight (39 page)

Feeling the crew pressing forward, Prissi
raised her eyes and looked into the darkest crowd of faces she had
seen since leaving Burundi.

She winced. She groaned. She stumbled. She
limped. The crew first moved back, then, moved forward two steps,
and, finally, halted. Just as Prissi was widening her grateful
smile and deciding on her next move, she noticed the focal point of
the eyes of the crowd shift from her to something behind her.

As she turned her head, her two assailants
landed. Without hesitation, they began shouting, “Stop! Stop her!
She stole our money.”

Hands from the crowd began reaching out
toward Prissi. Caught between the crew and her orange enemies,
Prissi fought off the urge to fly away. She started to say
something in English before catching herself as she remembered the
ship’s flag.

“M’aide, s’il vous plait!”

The words exploded out of her like buckshot,
propelled by the force of her losses—her mother, her father, and,
suddenly, and totally unexpectedly, Africa. Despite the danger she
was in, Prissi leaned forward to recapture the warmth and smells of
Africa coming from the clutch of crew before her:coconut,
groundnut, mwambe beef, harissa, sweat. A two meter tall woman with
a pocked face and grease-stained hands stepped toward Prissi.

From behind, a winger’s hand reached out.

“Hey, she’s a thief. You saw what she did.
He’s hurt.”

Prissi felt a hard hand grab the arc bone of
her wing.

The woman sailor stepped around Prissi and
put her hand on top of the winger’s hand. She began speaking
rapidly, but the thug just shook his head in incomprehension. Still
holding tight to Prissi, he took a step back. Prissi leaned forward
to break his grip. The imposing woman barked something in a
language Prissi thought might be Daho-doo. A half-dozen of the
woman’s shipmates stepped forward to confront the wingers. Not
liking the odds, the man holding onto Prissi released her with a
hard slap to her shoulder.

“Later, friend, later.”

Seconds later, the wingers were in the air
flying north and Prissi was fighting the kind of exhaustion that
made her want to slide down on the sun-warmed rusty steel deck to
take a nap. Instead, she forced herself to make friends of her
rescuers. Just before Customs came on board to check for contraband
and lock IX-monitors on their ankles so that the crew could go
ashore, a hyper-alert Prissi fluttered off the tanker and onto the
quay. As she waited out of sight while Customs did its duty, she
developed her plan.

As soon as the agents had flown off, Prissi
went back on board. Being Africans, no one in the crew had wings,
and no one had a mypod; however after asking around, she was
directed to a junior officer who had a sat-phone. She used the
ancient relic to call the EX-LAM market and was overwhelmed with
relief and gratitude when she heard Jiffy Apithy’s voice
answer.

When Jiffy was hesitant to do as she
asked—either from fear or because he was still angry with her from
what he thought was a racist remark she had made—Prissi offered him
the key-code to her apartment. Since she didn’t see how she would
ever be able to go back, she told him that he could take what he
wanted. Prissi read his hesitation before agreeing as embarrassment
that his cooperation had to be bought.

An hour after nightfall, the tall woman who
had befriended Prissi, whose name she had learned was Safiatou, and
three other sailors waited until a dilapidated hack, painted a
blackish-green color that reminded Prissi of an overly ripe
avocado, slalomed up and hovered ten centimeters above the battered
asphalt. Prissi ran down the gangplank sandwiched between two pairs
of her new friends. When they got to the cab, the Africans yanked
open the back doors and piled in but Prissi took an extra moment to
keep from damaging her wings as she got in the front. The hack
accelerated away from the quay like a newly commissioned ambulance
drive and sped down 9th Avenue. At 21st Street, the cabbie,
whipping around the corner, split a handholding couple like an
unstable atom, running to the opposite sides of the street. When
the cab crossed 7th Avenue, Prissi yelled. The driver slammed on
the brakes. Prissi shoved money at the sailors, salaamed them, and
ejected herself from the cab into the writhing smoke rising from
the front of the moldering cab.

Prissi hopped twice then began beating her
wings. As she flew past the EZ-LAM Market, Jiffy Apithy came
running out. Just east of 5th Avenue, Prissi landed. A second
later, breathing heavily, Jiffy caught up. He grabbed her hand and
they ran another half-block before darting down a narrow opening. A
dozen steps down the alley, a tall shadow loomed out of even deeper
darkness. Prissi heard the sound of grating metal. The sound was so
similar to yesterday’s noises when she and Jack, hiding beneath a
liquor store bulk-head, had been attacked by the blue jay wingers,
that Prissi involuntarily pulled back. Jiffy yanked her forward,
then dropped her hand as he slapped skin with the shadow—an
all-black apparition except for a double row of perfect white
teeth. The trio hurried down a set of steps into a basement dimly
lighted by a lumenaid. They hurried across a dank empty space.
Through a door, through a room, through a door, darker, into a
third room. A roughly framed hatch in the floor was pulled and held
open by their faceless helper. Jiffy went first. Prissi, suddenly
claustrophobic, forced herself to follow. Down a rickety ladder
into molasses black spider web-riven air. Into a space so
constrained Prissi caught and snapped the tips of some of her
feathers.

After the third time a wing caught, Prissi
swore and, finally, Jiffy spoke.

“We don’t get many wingers.”

Down another ladder. Swaying over
nothingness. To a landing no bigger than a hotel towel. And then, a
short walk along a tunnel shored up with salvaged bits of metal and
wood. The air was hot, still, stale, and, so devoid of oxygen that
Prissi’s chest began to heave. The weight of the earth above her
and the buildings above that bent her shoulders. However, despite
her worry that she might suffocate, or be crushed, some part of
Prissi, a big part she suddenly realized, felt much safer. There
was no way that the men could follow her down the torturous route
of her escape.

Another ladder, this one both rickety and
missing rungs, and, finally, Prissi’s feet touched down on the
smooth concrete of an abandoned subway line.

As the globally warmed waters around
Manhattan had risen, as the island of Manhattan city began to fade
and lose businesses and population, as the proportion of wingers
increased, as the expense of keeping the subway tunnels and tracks
in some kind of repair soared, as the avenues and streets of the
island became less congested after the banning of private cars,
station after station of New York City’s underground transportation
had been mothballed and abandoned. Most of the system in lower
Manhattan had been closed down and boarded up and abandoned—except
for the kinds of travelers and residents who couldn’t, because of
poverty, insanity, lack of proper credentials or a conflict with
those responsible for public safety, live above ground.

As they walked above the old subway tracks,
now submerged under a meter of pus colored water, Jiffy told Prissi
that he was hoping to find his friend, Benny. Benny, the youngest
son of a family from Jiffy’s father’s Malawi village, had snuck
into the Noramican paradise by jumping off as ship as it was moving
up the Hudson for a night berthing. After swimming to the
unpatrolled New Jersey shore, Benny had made his way back to
Manhattan on a ferry. After resisting and escaping a hawk who had
questioned him about his V-ZA status, Benny had gone underground.
He had been living in the subway for five months. Jiffy said that
his friend was caught in the same snare that held so many other
aliens. He needed money to pay for forged papers and id chips, but
it was difficult to make much money when one was living mostly
underground. Benny hadn’t been into the EZ-LAM for almost two
weeks, but the last time he had surfaced, the refugee had told
Jiffy that he was camping with a group of ten other African
illegals, south of the Union Square station. He was desperate to
get above ground. It wasn’t safe. He and the people he was living
with had been forced to travel in groups because of a wilding of
thirty or more zies, all, apparently, either under- or
over-medicated. Two of the Africans Benny had been living with had
been assaulted and one had died from his injuries.

Although Jiffy’s information chilled Prissi,
she understood why her guide hadn’t said anything about the dangers
until they were right before them.

As they walked out of the feeble glow of the
widely spaced phosphors into thick, still black space, the skin on
Prissi’s neck would prickle and her feathers would puff. When they
passed back into the sickly green glow, her physical symptoms would
abate. When she whispered to Jiffy what was happening to her, he
giggled nervously and told her that if they were going to have a
problem, it would be very, very obvious. Zies were not known for
the subtlety of their behavior.

Prissi came to understand what Jiffy meant
when, after walking along a narrow section of concrete where her
feathers scraped the oozing side of the tunnel, they heard shouts
and screams, arguing and laughter. Coming around a curve, the
tunnel opened up into the large, better lighted space of what once
had been the Astor Place station.

On the wrong side of the tracks, that is, on
their side, was a subterranean village. Hovels constructed of both
badboard and goodboard hugged the tunnel wall. Two dozen
chairs—everything from a webbed beach chairs and mangy loungers to
a worn red velvet banquette—were surrounding a large fire pit
holding a small fire.

Less than half of the chairs were occupied;
however most of the others, though empty, had clusters of people
hovering close to them. From the cacophony of words and noises
coming from the villagers, Prissi assumed that this was the wilding
of zies Jiffy’s friend had warned him about.

As Prissi and Jiffy edged further into the
light, the sounds of the villagers grew louder and more agitated
until the air was torn by a sound like the howl of a rabid dingo.
Immediately the villagers grew still.

The source of the howl, an impossible being,
a being which looked to be made from two sets of parts, beat his,
her, its fists in the air with glee. Above was a tiny head that was
all angles—razor sharp cheekbones and a long chin that came to
sharp point. Long, licorice twist arms with pencil length fingers
extended out, Messiah-like, from a cadaverous chest. Below the
pinched waist was a butt as big as a loveseat and thighs, which if
they had been haunches of beef, would have fed a community
barbeque.

“Guests, everyone, guests. Even a grill baby.
Best behavior, all.”

The being rolled forward in a way that
reminded Prissi of an old-fashioned upright vacuum sweeper. From
the high pitch of the voice, Prissi thought the speaker might be a
woman.

Jiffy started forward. Prissi grabbed his
shirt.

“Wait.”

Prissi stepped in front of Jiffy as the
villagers, moving forward in a single group like a glob of
bacteria, began to sing in a dozen different keys, “We welcome you
today. We welcome you to play. We see. We say….”

Suddenly and with the eerie simultaneity off
a bacteria quorum language command being followed, the group surged
forward.

“…We hope you like to pray.”

Immediately, Prissi spun and shoved Jiffy
toward the edge of the platform.

“Jump.”

“I can’t.”

Prissi knocked Jiffy off the platform into
the curry of water.

A half-second later, hands grabbed at her.
She felt feathers being torn from her wings as she pushed herself
off the platform and began flapping. Her right wing wouldn’t move
because one of the zies, with a pie crust pale and featureless face
surrounding a pair of over-electrified eyes, was holding on. She
beat her left wing, but instead of going up, she started tipping
head-first into the poisonous canal.

Prissi screamed, “Header.”

Jiffy looked up, then, as he spread his feet,
Prissi used her right leg to kick herself free from the pie-faced
crazie. She stretched her left leg forward, stepped on Jiffy’s head
and launched herself into the air. As Prissi flew across the subway
stream to the platform on the other side, the zies ran back to the
center of their village. They grabbed bottles and rocks and metal
poles and headed back to attack Jiffy.

“Run.”

The boy’s twiggy legs began thrashing through
the water.

Prissi made a sweeping turn back toward the
end of the station platform from where they had emerged seconds
before. As she neared the tunnel entrance, she made a sharp turn
and began flying back as fast as she could. Looking ahead she saw
the zies at the edge of the platform easily keeping pace with
Jiffy’s churning efforts to escape. As Prissi watched, her friend
was hit in the back with a bottle, prodded with a pole and hit in
the head with a rock. He fell forward and his head disappeared
under the water. Prissy shouted his name. He struggled up. She
screamed, “Grab me.”

At the last moment, coming up behind him,
Prissi swept past Jiffy with one of her legs passing over each of
his shoulders. He grabbed her ankles. She pounded her wings harder
than she ever had in her life. Jiffy was pulled forward in the
water like a giant lure. A bottle bounced off the teener’s right
wing. Despite the pain it left, she kept up her efforts. At the far
end of the station platform, Prissi flew into the murky tunnel.
Behind her she heard the zies cry, “Over! Over!”

Thirty meters inside the tunnel, Prissi
veered toward the steel rails which separated the narrow walkway
from the sludgy canal. She dropped her right wing and slammed
against the rail. Holding onto the rail with one hand, she reached
down for Jiffy with the other.