David Gerrold - The Flying Sorcerers

“The spell we used on Purple the day we destroyed his black egg?”

“That’s the one.”

I shuddered. I remembered it well. After just a few sniffs of it, Purple had gone into the village and done the family-making thing with my wife. Repeatedly.

“I wonder,” said Shoogar. “I wonder…”

“Well, we must go back,” I said. “You must show them the proper herbs to chew — there isn’t another magician in the region. There will be chaos —”

“Go back?” said Shoogar. “You are jesting. You will not bring this craft down to the ground again until the airgas gets tired of working and sneaks out of the balloons. Besides, we are moving strongly north —”

He was right, of course. I left him at the railing and moved to another part of the boat. It swayed sickeningly under my every step. Wilville called across to Orbur, “I think we should put the keel back on!”

“Me too!” he answered.

“No,” said Purple, “all you need do is rearrange the rigging. Spread it our farther at the bottom. It will give the hoist a wider stance .”

“The who a what ?” they called.

He sighed. “Never mind.”

The wind was strong this high in the sky. Idiot’s Crag had shrunk to a spear of black on the horizon. Below us the sea was many colors. Spots were brown and opaque with mud. In some places reefs showed through. There were groves of submerged trees as well, spines of mountain rock, and even a tall cairn to Musk-Watz. You could see them all sticking out of the water. There were churning whirlpools and vast rippling tides, and the surface of the water was gray and foamy.

Purple was sighting against the sun and marking something on a skin which had been stretched across a framework. Strange lines speared out from the center of the skin to its edges. “It’s a direction-telling spell,” explained Purple.

We re headed almost directly east.”

“I could have told you that,” I said.

“Huh?”

I pointed below. “See that spine of land there? That’s the way we followed on our migration. It leads directly to the old village.”

“It does?” Purple leaned far over the edge and tried to follow it with his eyes. I feared for his balance, but even more I feared for Shoogar who watched us with eyes gleaming.

He straightened then. “Wilville, Orbur! We want to change course. Unsling your airpushers!”

They nodded and began to do so. First one of the bladed wheels swung down to hang a manheight below the precarious outrigger, then the other on the other side. I shuddered as I watched. I would not trade places with either of my sons. You would not get me out there, with nothing between me and the sea but empty air.

“We have to come about,” called Purple. Turn toward the west — left about ninety degrees.” I didn’t understand that last, but the boys apparently did. Wilville began back-pedaling while Orbur pedaled forward. Slowly the Cathawk turned in the sky. The red sunlight seeped through the rigging, and the shadows shifted across our face.

Purple watched carefully on his measuring skin. A small rod stuck up from the center, and he watched the position of its shadow. He called, “All right, stop!” He waited until both airpushers were still, then checked the shadow again. “Not enough,” he called, “another ten degrees.”

When we were finally pointed in the right direction he gave another order. “Quarter speed,” he called. The two boys began chanting and pedaling. They had removed the extra twist in the pulleys, so that the airpushers blew their wind sternward again and the boys faced in the direction they were going.

The chant was at a set rhythm, and they pedaled in time to it. Purple watched them for a while, then he peered over the side again. After a bit he said, “Ah.” He straightened. “We are on the right course. We are traveling parallel to that spine of land you pointed out, Lant. If the wind lets up at all, we will try to get directly over it”

He went to the back of the boat then and stretched out on a cot of aircloth over a wide frame. “You know, Lant,” he called, “if I didn’t have my responsibilities elsewhere, I might almost be willing to settle down here. This is a very relaxing way of life.”

“Oh, no, Purple,” I reassured him. “You would not be happy living with us. You had best return —”

“Fear not, Lant. That’s what I intend to do. But I tell you, I have truly enjoyed myself here.” He pounded himself on his stomach. “Look, I think I may have even lost a few pounds.”

“Have you looked behind you?” muttered Shoogar.

“Sh,” I hissed. “We are all going to be together for a very long time. At least try to get along.”

“With him?!!”

“You didn’t have to come, Shoogar!”

“I did too! How else can I ever —”

“Never mind! If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. At least so long as we’re in the air!”

Shoogar snarled at me and went forward to the front of the boat. I sank down tiredly on a pile of supplies and blankets.

For a while I watched my sons as they pedaled. It was a funny sight, a bicycle so high in the air — with no wheels at all, yet they were pedaling so steadily, I had to laugh. They glared at me, but kept chanting and pumping.

Above us the clustered windbags were like a distant roof. Large enough to be covering, but high enough so that they were not oppressive. It was a feeling like being sheltered, but also one of being strangely free.

Occasionally the boys rested — and then all was silent. That was the most peculiar thing about the airship. Once in the sky, it neither creaked nor shuddered. There were no sounds at all, except perhaps that of our own heartbeats.

We had stopped rising now. And a good thing too. The air was cold — almost biting. Purple pulled out some blankets and passed them around. Wilville and Orbur were wearing extra layers of clothing. It had been tied to their outriggers so they could pull it on as they wished. They also had water bottles and packs of hardbread. There was no need for them to come into the boat itself at all, if they did not wish to.

The last of the red sun finally seeped below the horizon.

“Are they going to pedal through the dark?” I asked Purple.

“Uh huh. As long as the wind keeps up, someone has to keep pedaling. You see, Lant, the wind is blowing us north-east. If we pedal west, then we cancel out the east and go only north. But the wind doesn’t stop at night, so neither can we. The only other choice is to land — and that means letting air out of the bags.”

“And you don’t want to do that, do you?”

“Right. We know the boat will float in water, but I’d rather not have to depend on it. Besides, even if we did come down on the sea, the wind might still push us. So we might as well stay in the air and keep pedaling all night. The boys know how to pace themselves. As long as we stay near that spine of land under the water, I won’t worry.”

In the dark the steady chanting and pumping was an eerie thing — coming, as it did, from outside the boat. Fortunately, the time till blue dawn was little more than an hour away — we would have naught but a brief flash of darkness at this time of year. Followed by seventeen hours of pure blue sunlight, an hour of double sunlight, and another seventeen hours of red sunlight. Then darkness again. Later in the year the darknesses would stretch, as would the times of double sunlight. The single-sun hours would shrink as the suns moved closer and closer in the sky — toward the inevitable red conjunction.

We pedaled on through the darkened sky.

Far to the east the horizon’s edge was limned by a faint blue glow. Blue Ouells was sneaking up behind it, soon to shout and leap and flash brightly over the edge.