Last Plane to Heaven (22 page)

Someone—or something—had been hunting airships out in the airbands, pulling the stricken vessels to their deaths among the clouds. The disruption to communication, trade, and migration was impossible to ignore.

Shadow was coming, the laborers whispered in their dormitories and refectories, but Sarita placed little faith in such rumors. The fears of small people everywhere could speak louder than any voice, and with less reason. Legends were just that: legendary.

If not Shadow, though, it was something. New and aggressive pirates. An invasion from distant airbands.
Something
.

And in the midst of it all, her city was dying.

The Skymistress passed quickly through a cleaner hallway and into the elegant dining room where affairs of state were often conducted, and even occasionally settled. The table awaited. Oil cups and troughs were set on one side for Tock, plates under domes on the other side for Meat.

It was set for three, she noted sourly. She would not escape Panjit this evening.

Of course this is not our original home. How could it be? Were the bones of our first fathers and mothers made of the air? Why do we have words for “dog” and “horse,” and even paintings of them, when no one in recorded history has ever seen such fabulous creatures?

The question isn't where we came from. Somewhere else, obviously. The question is, where are we going?

—Binyan the Wanderer, Sermon at Port Ruin

I sit in a gilded room with two Meat. We are surrounded by statues of heroes of yore, and a carpet thick enough to bury corpses in encloses our feet. History and art and money reek about me. Amid their glory, I ignore the Meat blood still crusted in the joints of my right hand. They dine in the fashion of their kind. Steaming food is clutched in their soft, clever fingers and shoveled into their pursed, damp maws. I try to imagine what it would be like to have teeth. Excrescences of bone within one's jaws. Brittle, fragile, hard and sharp.

Much like Meat themselves.

The important Meat who met me at the dock ignores me. He pretends attention and respect to the woman he sits with. Even I, a simple Tock, can see she has no use for him. She does not bother to hide her corresponding lack of respect.

She
I must focus on. She is the Skymistress. It was her order that permitted
Entwhistle
to dock at the Lesser Port of Grand Reserve. It is her forbearance that permits us to take on supplies even now in advance of our letters of credit and our limited funds.

The Skymistress has a name, but Meat always has names. They never seem to last long enough to earn them. Still, I attend to her. She is at least polite to me. The Skymistress meets my eye, when she is not looking at her glistening, crumbling food. She listens to my mumbled words. She seems interested.

Too interested, perhaps.

Finally she places her little stabbing fork down at the left side of her plate and her dull knife down at the right. “Captain Jakesia,” the Meat says in that clear, strong tone of voice Meat always uses to announce something unpleasant. “I must ask a difficult question. In the interests of my island.”

“Ask.” I am not long on courtesy, but then I am not long on much of anything these days.

“What became of Captain Armature? Who did such terrible damage to your ship?”

“
Entwhistle
is airworthy,” I say almost automatically. A sky court might find differently, especially if I were ever heard to express fears contrary to that basic sentiment.

“I do not seek to … challenge … you.” She leans forward, her hypertrophied chest glands straining against the curdled red of her robes. “We live in a time of adversity. Especially here on Lesser Grand Reserve.” That earns the Skymistress a hard look from her Meat companion, the important one that I have already come to dislike in a most collegial manner. I grudgingly admire the way she simply ignores his hostility.

“We were attacked,” I say. Truthful but unhelpful. That is usually best with important Meat.

“Stupid Tock.” The other Meat's impatience practically spills across the table. “Her language facilitator is on the blink.”

I meet his eye and hold him with my gaze. I am Tock, I do not need to blink. In time, he does. “There is nothing wrong with my language facilitator, you ignorant dolt. I am merely parsimonious with my words.”

“Attacked by who, then?”

“Whom,” I correct him. “Attacked by
whom
.”

The Skymistress bursts into noise that after a moment I recall is Meat laughter. It has been a long time, and very little is amusing to me anymore. “Panjit,” she says with a bright smile, laying one hand upon his arm, “you will not best this one.”

I trace my fingertips in the remaining pool of my machine oil, a lovely 000 light vegetable base. “No, leave that to the rat bastards. They bested us all too well.”

She leans close again, pressing her glands against the table edge so that the other Meat's eyes slide sideways despite his hostile focus to me. “Who are the rat bastards?”

Now there is a question. I take another long, hard look at her assistant Meat. He is a dangerous fool, but the Skymistress holds the lines of power here. Also, I have little left to lose. Armature is dead,
Entwhistle
is stricken.

“The rat bastards are servants of Shadow,” I say. “They sail in small ships, some of them just wings without gasbags. They live hard and close to the wind. They come from the east and antispinward. They attack ships far out in the airbands, or traveling within the clouds. I have never heard of one attacking an island or a port or a city.”

That is the longest string of words I have spoken since before Armature went over the rail with three rat bastard lances in his chestplate.

“They prey on trade,” the Skymistress says in a thoughtful voice.

“Your trade is gone anyway,” I observe. “Your slips are idle, and most lie long unused.”

Unexpectedly, the other Meat speaks. “Too many believe our grease mine has failed.”

I know a state secret when I hear one. “Your port is dying,” I tell them. “My airship is dying. Will you repair me?”

“Will you bring back our trade?” snarls the other Meat. The Skymistress stares him to silence before returning her attention to me.

“I thank you for the information.” Her voice is grave. “Our crews are diminished, but we can still provide repair parties and supplies.”

Grudging honesty forces answering words from me. “Payment may be slow.”

She spreads her hands. “Where would we cash your credit draft?”

That provokes a chuff of steam and a wheeze from me. Laughter, indeed.

Disgusted, the other Meat rises from the table and leaves with great ceremony. His exit is clearly intended to provoke us, or possibly make a point.

“Your life would be improved by killing him,” I tell her.

“Unfortunately, he is the best of those remaining to me.” She sighs and sags a bit in her chair. Becomes more human, more like me, in that moment. “Will they come in time, these rat bastards?”

I opt for the truth. “Come the Shadow, comes the rat bastards. In the darkness, they will shit in your halls and shatter your windows and howl from the tops of your towers.”

“Shadow is just a rumor.” Her voice is uncertain.

“Shadow is the end of all things. They are just its servants and heralds.”

She watches me a little while. Then: “You are very angry.”

I shrug. Human is as human does. “No one craves their ending. Meat ages and dies. Tock can fail without proper maintenance or too far from fuel and grease. But Shadow? Shadow is the failing of the entire world, the dying of the light.”

The Skymistress is aghast. “How do you know?”

“Because of the coming of the rat bastards. This has all happened before. It will all happen again.”

“How do you know
that
?”

I tell her my deepest secret, one that runs back to my Maker and my very making. “Because I remember the last time.”

Her voice drops to almost nothing. “How old are you?”

“Older than the light itself.”

With that I rise and begin my walk back to
Entwhistle
. It won't matter soon. The Lesser Port of Grand Reserve is dying, as surely as the light is dying. As surely as I am going to fail.

If Tock could cry, I would weep.

Meat and Tock

Hand and clock

Rise and walk

Meat and Tock

Tock and Meat

See and greet

Have a treat

Tock and Meat

—Children's rhyme

Skymistress Sarita returned to the observation deck of the Eastmost Tower, trailed by two silent servitors. The best of her household were gone. A few more departed with every one of the increasingly infrequent sailings.

Soon, the Lesser Port of Grand Reserve would have too few people to maintain the docks and keep the island's businesses running and supplies moving. The grease mines wouldn't matter then. The people would continue to shelter a while—there were still springs, and granaries, and orchards—but without grease, and money, there was no trade. Without trade, there were no new supplies.

As she'd promised, repair crews were about
Entwhistle
. In truth, the dock masters were glad enough of the work. It was something to do. The airship was listing slightly in her slip even as men and women swarmed over the rigging and along the decks. Hoses snaked from the gasbag to pumps brought out on trolleys.

A cold wind picked at her hair and made her eyes water. It blew from antispinward. She thought hard on Jakesia's words about the rat bastards and the coming of Shadow. The actual darkness might be a nursery tale to frighten children, but surely Lesser Grand Reserve was falling into its own Shadow.

Metaphor or not, the Shadow was real.

“What if I just boarded the ship and sailed away with them?” she asked the wind.

Meat and Tock usually did not mix in crews. The demands of everything from watchstanding to what was required of each sailor were too different. Tock did not sleep, and were hideously strong by the standards of ordinary men. They could sail with half the complement of a Meat ship.

But any ship would take passengers for the right fee, under the right circumstances. Any ship would take
them
on.

“Alfons,” Sarita said aloud.

Her servitor stepped forward. “Skymistress?”

“How many persons remain on this island?”

“A moment, please.” He retreated indoors, searching for records.

Her old steward would have simply known.

She watched
Entwhistle
and listened to the wind a while. Eventually Alfons came back. Bald, stooped, one eye drooping, he was at least sharp of mind. “One thousand and one hundred natural persons, Skymistress, and six hundred and forty made persons. That is the current estimate.”

“Of which we could put perhaps forty aboard
Entwhistle,
” she said. “It will take fifty more like her to carry everyone away.” And long before that the great steam engines and electrical generators and water pumps that maintained life on the island would fail for reduced maintenance and lack of tenders. Were fifty more airships ever going to call at the Lesser Port of Grand Reserve?

“They are unlikely to pay for the services we provide,” Alfons said lugubriously. “You may as well demand forty passages as compensation.”

Something in his voice caught her attention. “Would you go?”

“No, Skymistress.” He protested loyalty, but she knew he did not mean it.

Nobody did. What was there to be loyal to? The city was dying. And Shadow was coming.

Sarita wondered what had become of her loyalty. Evaporated under Panjit's ambitious glare and the burgeoning decay of the port city in her charge. Nothing remained but old habit, it seemed.

She watched the horizons of air eastward and antispinward a while, looking for the swirling dots of a flight of rat bastards, or some other harbinger of Shadow. All Sarita saw were storm clouds trading lightning in the distance. All she heard was the lonely voice of the wind.

“We shall be ground as dust.” Her words slipped out aloud once more.

Alfons spoke, so close to her elbow that she startled slightly. “Every grain breaks upon the grindstone, Skymistress. That is the fate of grain.”

“We are more than wheat and chaff,” she replied, but did not believe herself.

There must be people in the world beyond simply Meat and Tock. They are rarely seen. Legends, to most of us. But the sky is infinite. There are always more islands floating in the airbands. How can there not be both angels and orangutans somewhere? It would be stranger if there weren't.

—Binyan the Wanderer, Sermon at Port Ruin

I stare across my deck. My hand is clean, finally. It took a wire brush and a foolish degree of patience, but I am clean. Even rat bastards have mothers. How different is that from me cherishing memories of my Maker?

Those other memories, from the beginning, when the light first came back—those I do not cherish.

The deckhands assemble. Bosun Shimwater nods to me. All are accounted for.

“We are ready to sail soon,” I call out. “We have taken on no cargo. There may be passengers, though perhaps not once I have seen the Skymistress again.”

They all stare at me, eyes bright and marbled with expectancy, servomechanisms whining slightly as weights shift, eddies of steam emerging from odd vents. Tock is never so still as Meat can be, because Tock never sleeps. We move or we die.

I pause, considering my next announcement. “Captain Armature had plans, but he is lost to us.
Entwhistle
is a ship without home port or purpose. Too many of us were lost as well. Her boilers are sound, her gasbags tight, her engines strong, but her heart is broken.