Last Plane to Heaven (25 page)

The schoolroom was floored with split bamboo, harvested from the precious stands that grew alongside some of the cisterns. The biggest problem with bamboo wasn't starting the seedlings—the stuff grew like fire on oil. It was hoarding enough soil to root the plants in. Still, over time, Ortinoize had managed to grow enough of the tough, wiry plant for its own needs, and to trade up to Clings-Too-Low for things they could not make or find for themselves, and occasionally for some little bit of magical something from far away, or even outside.

Attestation sat with his haunches pressed into the irregular grooves of the floor, at the back of the room where he could watch the seventeen other students while Sammael made laborious notes on a painted wall with a scrap of precious chalk. It was the only reason he was still in school—someone had to train to be the next teacher, and even Sammael himself would tell you he was getting too old, that the descent through life that had led him from mythical, magnificent Canada to grubby little Ortinoize was almost over.

The schoolroom had an unusually high ceiling by village standards, and so Sammael, and whoever had taught before him, had hung up there various articulated skeletons and stuffed skins of animals and plants. It had always struck Attestation as odd to sit beneath a flight of badgers and snakes and several unidentifiable stranger creatures, but they could hardly be left in the cubbies that lined the walls, for the younger children would surely play the old bones and furs to ruin. Besides, they smelled funny on the days when the damp was strongest.

Everyone but the teacher sat on their own little mat. Sammael had a stool he rarely used, preferring to stand when he spoke, and preferring speech to silence. Today they were practicing letters—just the alphabet for the youngers, and sentence exercises for the olders.

Reading and writing had come naturally to Attestation, and he'd digested every one of the four English and French books that Ortinoize had to boast in the tiny library cupboard at the front of the schoolroom. There were two other books as well, one in an alphabet Sammael had said was Cyrillic, and one that probably hadn't been made by humans at all for it was all the wrong size and proportions and the letters within looked like entrails of birds. Sometimes Attestation liked to handle that last, to touch its leather-and-metal cover and wonder who'd made it and what sort of light their days had been filled with.

Otherwise he'd read
Rienzi, Last of the Roman Tribunes
;
Le Grand Meaulnes
; the
U.S. Army Field Manual 5-488—Logging and Sawmill Operations
; and
The Two Towers.
Each moldy, waterworn book had inspired him all the more to want to fly, because only in flight could he reach for Orthanc or imagine a logging camp.

That
was why he'd stayed in school, as his friends had gone out to apprentice as cliff foragers or smallsmiths or bamboomen.

That and the small paper sack Sammael had shown him years ago—paper, common as muck outside the pit but inside more precious than the glowing khilain coins—the paper sack that floated in the air when heated from beneath.

A thing that weighed more than the air itself could still be made to fly. That had been the greatest lesson he'd ever learned. It was one Attestation very much wanted to repeat on a larger scale. His own scale.

The Labors of a Man

At twenty-six, Attestation was still unmarried, though he knew a bit more about giggling and slurping and the salty scents of sex. He was now the oldest person sleeping in Marma's Cave, chaperone and supervisor to the never-ending churn of children that passed through his care as teacher. When Sammael had finally passed away, of a bloody infection of the lungs that no one could fathom how to cure, Attestation had inherited not only the old man's post as teacher, but also his permanent bachelorhood.

Still, he had his work. He'd argued for the establishment of paper-making from the bamboo—a discussion that had taken two years of village council meetings before grudging permission had been given. Attestation had made it his business to account for both raw materials and production. One part in four he kept aside for copying out the old books before they fell apart—
Rienzi
especially was in poor condition—one part in four he kept aside for his own experiments and teachings, and two parts in four went up to Clings-Too-Low to be traded onward.

After the profits on the third trade trip with the bamboo paper, even Redoubtable had ceased to argue with Attestation about the use of bamboo. For the first time in a dozen years they'd been able to afford the little green-gray tablets that could cure some diseases and ease the course of others. “Antibiotics,” Attestation had explained, drawing on his shaky recollection of Sammael's only somewhat less shaky knowledge of medicine. Save a few lives, make a little bit of money, and you could be as ornery and strange as you wanted.

At least until it came to finding someone to slurp and giggle with.

So he wrote out the books page by careful page, imagining forest stands and hordes of ravening orcs. More quietly, he made larger paper sacks and experimented with the sharp-scented alcohol flames that could heat them enough to send them rising about his schoolroom without setting fire to either sack or room. Twine to tether them, though it would need to be rope if he ever flew himself. Braziers to contain the fire, though they needed to be light enough to not weigh the balloon down, and sturdy enough not to melt. A sling for the dolls he placed in them as passengers, while he dreamt of larger slings meant for even a man of modest stature such as himself.

All the while his small store of khilain coins glowed and grew, his own shares from the bamboo paper trade hoarded against the costs of those things he could not make or beg for himself.

*   *   *

Attestation had finally secured one of the upper rooms, nearly at the top of Ortinoize's crack in the pit wall. It was too far from water for most people, and the endless winds circling up and down the pit seemed to find their way into his aerie more than one might prefer. Still, it was an unusually large room, and had the signal virtue that he could remove the ceiling, as no one dwelt above him. In effect, he had a platform lashed and chained to the rock walls from which he could launch his test balloons. And he had enough room to weave his bags-of-air.

He'd even managed to capture some lantern-plant seeds, and carefully monitored their life and growth, observing as closely as he could following the methods old Sammael had taught when Attestation was himself a boy. Make notes, take measurements, sketch—at least he had the paper for that.

Redoubtable and some of the other elders grumbled at the amount of precious paper Attestation used in his projects, but he simply pointed out that without his projects there would have been no paper, and the slight but ever-growing surplus of wealth in both khilain coins and actual traded-for luxuries would not exist either.

They'd even strengthened the trade in organic scraps and night soil to further boost the bamboo growth. Even Attestation, usually indifferent to his reputation in the village, had balked at being called Shit Slinger, which nickname had emanated from Clings-Too-Low in a fit of what passed for khilain humor.

But now he had a room with the flats and trays and presses needed to make paper from the bamboo pulp pounded farther down in the village. He had knives—even three of infallen steel!—to cut and sculpt his paper and his little dowels. He had several clever little tables with vises and braces so he could bend rods and clamp glued-together bits effectively.

In return for all this, he was only required to teach the children and occasionally be clever about paper-making. Well, and put up with the odors of the chemicals used in the paper process, but Attestation figured in time his nose would either grow used to the stench or simply give out. He did not care so much.

His current project was a bag-of-air that would support forty kilograms aloft. That was enough to send a small child plus the required brazier and ropes and so forth, but still only about half of what Attestation reckoned he'd need to take himself into the air. He was no nihlex to simply fly with wings gracefully given by God, nature, or evolution, depending on whom you believed. Still he did what he could, eating lightly and exercising frequently to keep his body lean and light.

Attestation stood in the middle of the lithe framework, making adjustments and wondering for the thousandth time how the lantern-plants filled their bags-of-air without tiny braziers. They were not hot when they grew as rooted plants. Neither did their bags-of-air have any warmth on the rare occasions he could catch one bumping its way up the pit wall. But when flame was added to a lantern-plant they burned so quickly it was an explosion more than a fire.

Hydrogen, he thought to himself, but that was just a chemical word from old Sammael. Neither the nihlex nor the khilain nor the humans of the pit could trade him that chemical. Not like sulfur or mercury or charcoal that came up and down the pit in tiny, precious baskets worth their weight in paper. And sometimes more.

But hydrogen, well, it might as well have been air for all he could do to capture it.

“Attestation.”

He glanced up from his reverie to see his father at the door to the workshop. That was unusual. Redoubtable had somehow become an old man while Attestation wasn't paying attention, and rarely climbed above the relative luxury of Ortinoize's midlevels—close enough to water, far enough away from the soil pits that rooted their wealth of bamboo.

Stopping to take a longer look, Attestation found he was truly shocked. Redoubtable had always been a large man, but now he appeared slumped. His craggy face seemed to have melted to a field of bumps and crevices out of which ragged gray hairs sprouted. His father's mouth had rounded as well, as teeth had fallen away. Even the stout goat leather jerkins his father had once favored had fallen away in favor of a rumpled, stained robe that even Attestation would have been ashamed to wear. Only the banked furnace gleam in the old man's eyes had remained the same.

“Sir,” Attestation said, trying to stand up but bumping into the frame of his bag-of-air. “What brings you up this far?”

“The council will see you now.”

“Why?”

“Just come, boy,” growled Redoubtable. “I have climbed up to you. You can climb down with me.”

*   *   *

Following his father's slow, laborious efforts down the ladders and stairs and ropes of Ortinoize, Attestation reflected on what it might mean that Redoubtable had climbed so high to seek him. If the council had simply meant to bark at him again for using up too much bamboo, they would have sent a runner to act haughty and harass him until he descended to their meeting place in Pierre's Cave. If they meant to honor him in some fashion—as vanishingly unlikely as that was—they would have sent a runner to cajole him with flattery and perhaps a bit of fruit from the espaliered trees that grew along the outer edges of Ortinoize's crack.

But to send his father, the hetman of the council and second only to the mayor … Attestation could go weeks at a time without even seeing Redoubtable. In the years since his mother had passed away, there had not been much business between himself and his father.

Still he followed slowly down the winding, twisted passages, through people's sleeping areas and racks of gourds and little workshops. All the life of the village was bound in on itself like many vines growing together. He passed through squabbles and cooking and lovemaking and the quiet industry of the very busy and poor.

Eventually they reached Pierre's Cave, which always had a drier smell than the rest of the village due to the vaguely warm breeze blowing ever outward from fissures deep within. There was a reason the old men and women of the council had their chambers there—someday, Attestation knew his joints, too, would ache in the damp and cool of Ortinoize's springs.

And here they were, the council all met in session. Old Aoife, the mayor who'd been wife to the previous mayor and took his place when he'd slipped off the Adumbrate Bridge just outside. His father, the hetman. Councilor Fettle, who was also the village's whitesmith. Councilor Young Aoife, no direct relation to the mayor, who nursed the sick and practiced what medicine any of them could understand. And Councilor Unswerving, a small but angry man who'd never approved of Attestation's projects, though he was happy enough to count the coin that came from up-pit in exchange for their modest production of bamboo paper.

“Hello,” said Attestation, who saw no point in the rituals of formality.

“Sit,” said Old Aoife. She'd been beautiful once, even Attestation could see that in her eyes and the set of her face. Now she had that grace that came upon some of the old—he'd known it only from spending so much time with Sammael. It was almost the opposite of how his father had aged.

Attestation took the empty spot made for him on a mat between Unswerving and Redoubtable. “What is this?” he asked.

The mayor glanced around at her fellow councilors for a moment, as if seeking reassurance. Then she looked back at Attestation. “We are come to a hard time. Three of us on the council are old. Young Aoife tells us that Redoubtable will not live so much longer, with the crab disease in his bowels.”

He glanced sideways at his father, shocked. Yes, Redoubtable was old now, but the old man was like the pit itself—an eternal if abstracted fixture in Attestation's world. “I…” he began.

“Silence,” growled his father, who had never had time for pity in Attestation's life.

“I am naming Young Aoife mayor in my place,” Old Aoife went on. Unswerving stirred, murmuring something that Attestation had no trouble interpreting as objection. “We will call for another councilor by acclamation from the village to take her place. Fettle is willing to continue serving, as is Unswerving, but we will have you take your father's place as hetman.”