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Sea Changes An Environmental Fantasy by Liorah

Sea Changes

An Environmental Fantasy

By Liorah

Chapter Five — The Journey West

Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

– Ariel, The Tempest

As promised, the run-up to Sa’aan’s release from the hospital was routine. Although the tiny incisions still itched a little, the staff Healer had accelerated the formation of collagen and connective tissue deep in the wounds, stitching the edges of the dissected tissue together without the formation of keloids or disfiguring misalignment, so all that was left was minor discomfort until the blood supply to the affected parts was fully restored. The microsurgeon had assured her that any scarring would be almost invisible to the naked eye.

The implants appeared to be working properly, although the keyboard and remote interfaces were still giving her a little trouble, but she’d been assured that that would all become easier over time, as new neural pathways were established and properly mapped in her cortices. Already she’d been able to move one of her land mobiles around the pool, checking her internal sense of its orientation by looking at it with one eye, while overlaying its video and sensor feed onto the image field of the other eye. She’d left handling sub-fields and transparent overlays until later, as she had a lot to get used to.

Before she actually had them, ocular implants had sounded like loads of fun, but now she realized that it took a lot of work to master them. Then she thought that maybe the many extra features and increased flexibility built into hers made them more difficult to control than the ordinary sort.

It’ll all come out in the wash, she thought, as she turned her attention to the work crew putting together her travel tank. If she’d thought the therapy pool was cramped, the travel tank looked almost skin tight, since it was intended only to float her weight and keep her skin hydrated. It was constructed of a clear plasteel, polished until it was like window glass. The roof and walls of the pavilion had already been removed, the equipment either cleared away or packed for travel, and the crane and cradle intended to lift her from the pool and into the tank were already in place, just waiting for the finishing touches, pumping in the water, and the arrival of the airship.

The whole process fascinated her, partly because she missed having hands, but also because it seemed so well-rehearsed, although she knew that this was the first time this task had ever been done, since she herself was one of a kind. ‘Sui generis,’ as Dad would say. Her teachers had told her that she’d gained some sort of telekinetic power, but so far she’d only been able to shuffle some ping pong balls across the surface of a table. As with many Chimes abilities, they expected it, and the others they’d detected, to gain in strength and usefulness as time went by. She hoped so, as she wanted to be able to interact with the things around her without the aid of a remotely-controlled robot.

Just then, she heard the propellers of what must be the airship coming up fast from behind her. She swiveled her nearest eye toward the sound and saw it, huge against the bright sky, descending toward her pool. Suddenly, everything started happening at once, the crew with the lifting cradle dropped one edge into the water and used long poles to maneuver it beneath her, while she used her fins and flukes to lift as much of her weight out of the water as possible, to allow the cradle to easily pass under her belly.

They motioned to the crane operator, who swung the boom over the pool while the airship engines whined in reverse to brake its forward motion. Then down came the crane hook toward the lifting rings of the cradle, two wire ropes dangling and moving like snakes in the rush of wind from the airship propellers overhead. They clipped on and lifted her out of the water — it felt almost like flying — and down again into the travel tank. As she was lowered, other members of the crew were filling the tank with fresh salt water, and hooking up the recycling and æration pump and filtration system so it wouldn’t turn nasty over the duration of the flight across the continent.

Then the whole process was repeated with a hook and wire rope harness that dropped from the airship, which were quickly attached to the travel tank and she was hoisted rapidly into the sky, higher than she’d ever been without anything under her to stand on, as if she were on a giant glass swing moving out over the edge of a cliff. She could see for miles all around her, as far as the brilliant blue sea to the south and east of Tallahassee, and inland toward the low green hills of northern Florida.

She could see the open cargo hatch of the airship above her, the opening appearing to grow larger as she was rapidly drawn upward and towards it, and then she was inside the belly of leviathan, while unseen machinery below her swung the hatch doors shut and the roar of the propellers quieted and the rumble of the engines became more prominent.

Just as she’d been assured by Mr. Jefferson, the two forward sides of the hold had been replaced with large sheets of transparent plasteel, and there were even large plasteel panels let into the deck beside her on either side, so she could see below, and the entire front of the hold was similarly transparent. So she still had a bird’s eye view of the wide, wide world as yet another work crew, these in blue hardhats while the crew below had worn green, rushed around fastening the travel tank to the deck of the hold, which already had several shipping containers in place near the rear. Glancing upward, she could see that the same hoist which had lifted her tank could move back and forth on rails that ran the full length of the hold, and from side to side on a strong track, presumably to allow items to be placed at any point in the hold.

Looking around, she saw that Mr. Jefferson, in a gold hardhat, and Leana, her mother, and Nakia, each with white hardhats, were well back from the work area, toward the very front of the hold. Leana waved.

“Hey, flygirl! I’ll bet you had more fun coming aboard than I did!” Leana was almost as excited as Sa’aan was, “We had to take a flivver to the ærodrome and then just climbed up a portable staircase and plopped into our seats like a ride on the subway, although the view was much better, being real life instead of a vid that repeats every time you take the same trip. The seat harnesses are simpler than the ones they use in the subway too, so I reckon they aren’t worried about running into anything in the middle of the air.”

Sa’aan replied, “Wei, Jie-jie!. Hello, Mr. Jefferson, Ms. Inconnu! This is just fantastic! Do you travel this way all the time, Mr Jefferson?”

Mr. Jefferson laughed out loud, and then answered, “Not really, little lady, although I’ve done it often enough before. Our top speed is around forty knots, or forty-six miles per hour, or seventy-four kilometers per hour, depending on your favorite measurement. I can’t justify spending that much time in the air for just sightseeing. But I have to admit that I look forward to this little vacation, and having the excuse of a special transportation problem to justify the expense just adds shoyu to the rice. And now, if you’ll please excuse me, Ms. Inconnu and I have some details to discuss.”

He smiled at Sa’aan and then turned to Nakia and began a quiet conversation as they gained altitude and the ground dropped away.

Sa’aan then tried out one of her new toys, a BioLync interface which had a special circuit to sample her natural voice down into the ordinary human range which she was just now mastering; she placed a group call to her mother and Leana, and then said, “Hi, Mom! Hi, Leana! Neat trick, huh?”

Leana looked up and started walking toward the tank.

“Sa’aan?” His mother seemed surprised, “How nice to hear from you directly at last! I’ve missed being able to talk to you. But how is it possible?” She followed Leana to the tank, off to one side, and rested her hand on the clear panel, as if to stroke Sa’aan’s side.

Sa’aan said cheerily, “It’s one of the gadgets Ms. Inconnu provided, to allow me to ‘talk’ to almost anyone without special effort. It basically samples my natural voice down into a standard range. Since I can speak in a range almost higher than you can hear, my end of the conversation is mostly inaudible to all of you, but if we had a dog on board it would probably be going crazy. It’s basically a magic trick, but it seems very effective. I can adjust the range if this doesn’t sound right. I have it set for a low contralto, so people don’t get confused but still seems ‘realistic.’ You don’t have to use the BioLync, though. I can hear perfectly well.”

His mother walked toward the front of the tank and stared into one eye. “No, it’s perfect. I’ve missed you so much in Vancouver, but we’ve tried to arrange everything to make you feel at home.” She began to cry. “I’m sorry, my darling child, but of all the possible futures I imagined for you, this wasn’t one I’d ever thought of.”

Sa’aan crooned to her mother, wishing that she still had arms to reach out and hug her, a hand to place at the back of her head to soothe her, “Hush. Mommy. It’s OK, really. It’s not what I’d expected, either, but I knew right away, as soon as I experienced that moment with the orcas, and with Leana and Nakia and even Mr. Jefferson, that something strange was happening, and that I was a part of it all, that I was at the center of it, and that all would be well. I didn’t fully understand it, even then, and I certainly don’t understand now. I even forgot the feeling for a while, because it was so far outside my experience, but now I’ve remembered again. I don’t know exactly where I’m going, but I do know that I’m on the path to freedom, and not just for myself, for all of us, and I know that love is at the heart of it. I love you, Mommy, and will love you forever. Whatever the future may bring us all, it will all be perfect.”

Her mother leaned her head against the plasteel tank and wept, while Leana came up behind her and hugged her close, “I wish I had your faith, my darling, but all I can see is separation and loss right now. I can’t even touch you any more!” she cried.

“But you will, Mommy, and soon. My powers are growing every day. I can already touch little things with my mind, and the more at home I become within this body the more my powers will grow. Just think, when I was a little boy, I dreamed of growing up big and strong and impressing you with my courage. But that was just a boy’s childish dream. Now I’m becoming a woman, just like Leana and you, and I’m strong and big far beyond my boyish dreams. Now is the time you have to stand aside a little and let me impress you with my courage. I’m growing up, dearest Mommy.”

“Oh! My darling boy, my dear daughter!” she cried, “You put me to shame!” She lowered her head and continued weeping.

“No, Mommy, you taught me well, and I learned this lesson at your knee. I’m your child and all that I am is part of you. Look at me closely; I’m all of one self and haven’t changed entirely. The same little boy who rode off wobbling and unsteady down the street on his first bicycle is here before you now. I’m letting go of fear. Just as I shouted back to you then, not so many years ago, ‘I’m flying!’ And here I am, flying.”

Leana added, her arms still wrapped around her mother, “She’s right, Mom. Whatever it was we experienced that day was all good. I think we each perceived whatever it was differently, but it was all good; I know that. I’m changed too, not as radically, but I changed inside. Surely you’ve noticed.”

Sa’aan reached out tentatively with her developing telekinetic power, half afraid since she’d never done this before, except with ping pong balls, stroking her mother’s hair lightly, smoothing it, “See, Mommy? It’s starting already. All will be well, and very well, you’ll see.”

Her mother looked up again and smiled tentatively, “The two of you are so very sure of yourselves, and I suppose you must be right; but I just wish I could see it as clearly as you seem to.”

Sa’aan said, “You’ll see, Mommy. You’ll see. Look! Out the left window, you can see the Floridian Islands already, off in the distance. We must be pretty high up now. Did you ever think that you’d see something like that with your own eyes? Did you ever imagine such an adventure?”

Leana turned and spoke aloud, “Mr. Jefferson? How high up are we now? We can see islands off in the distance.”

He turned, looked, and said, “About two thousand meters, my dear. There’s an altitude and heading display at the front of the hold and your BioLyncs can access the airship’s information channel if you’d like a running commentary, a chart of our course, and instantaneous estimated arrival times at each of our waypoints. I think the big island is Lafayette Island, and the one to the east of it is Elim Church Key. I can ask the navigator if you’d like a definitive answer.”

“That’s OK, thank you,” Leana said and then turned back to her mother. “You see, Mom? We’re heading into the biggest adventure you could ever imagine. We’re seeing things that we never would have seen in our lives. I know you and Dad didn’t feel it, but Campanella felt like a trap to me, cut off from the real world by our weather Elementals and stuck up in a mountain fastness like Shangri-La, the land that time forgot, where nothing ever changes, except for the silly tourists who come and go, and life goes on and on as it did in 2100, or even before. When we left home, I almost worried that we might shrivel up and die like Maria did in Lost Horizon.”

Sa’aan looked at her sister with new respect. She understood now what she’d meant by her comment about being out of the ‘cushy, climate-controlled cage’, on that afternoon with the orcas.

Leana continued, “The title of the book, and of the movie, was sardonic in a way, because the European adventurers run away from a world in which horizons exist  — while you’re flying the horizon is almost infinite, just as it is for us today — but they crash into a tiny place surrounded by mountains, and the infinite horizons they fled from are lost and can no longer be seen.”

“That’s it!” Sa’aan blurted out, “That’s part of what I felt that day! We have to be connected to the world. As Chimeræ, we share our genetic material and appearance with so-called animals. We’re all in this together and the world is working toward balance, with us or without us. Now I see what you meant as well, Leana! If we live inside a cage like Campanella, not even sharing our weather with the world, we’re abandoning the world to its fate in favor of our own comfort.”

“Exactly!” Leana said with a dismissive snort, “In Shangri-La, you can have peace and tranquility, you can live almost forever, but you can’t ever have a real life, because the minions of the dictatorial ‘Lama’ prevent it, and for every child born there someone has to die or leave, because there are no new houses. You’re stuck, as was Maria, in Shangri-La like a fly in amber, as if it were Superman’s Kandor, the toy city in a bottle that no one can ever leave. What kind of paradise is it that has armed guards posted at the borders to keep people in? Or out? What kind of life is it that has no horizons, no hope for the future, and nowhere to go? What kind of heartless ‘spirituality’ is it that chuckles at the certainty of cruel death for all of the Tibetan ‘porters’ — poor simpletons who strangely know next to nothing about the environment they live in, their own home, because only the clever white men could possibly know anything about the dangers of avalanche — of death for Maria and George, as long as the ‘fair-haired white boy,’ Robert, returns to Shangri-La?”

“In Shangri-La, you can’t heal the world as a whole, you can’t really do anything; all you can do is exist like a slug and contemplate your own navel. Even when Maria, the real heroine of the story, tries to persuade the others to escape, even when she dies as a martyr to freedom, knowing all the while that she’s walking to her death, but at the same time trying to free herself and the others from the tyranny of the crazy missionary priest, from the profoundly selfish idea of Shangri-La — which falsely elevates a cruel and callous indifference to the misery of the world to ‘mature wisdom’ while scorning compassion and action — the two dumb brothers don’t get it, village idiots both, nostalgic for their tidy little racist gated community that keeps the colored riffraff away from their white ‘betters.’ ”

Sa’aan said, “Like the Purists, the few that are left anyway, who hate the Chimed people, especially the hybrids, and act as if the ‘animals’ are too disgusting for the ‘real human beings’ to associate with.”

“Just so. Like the Purists, both of these contemptible brothers in the story try to escape from the present and retreat into the past. They abandon their hard-won freedom, their power to do good, and even their power to fail, at their earliest convenience. George finds real life too terribly difficult and kills himself, while Robert runs right back into the dead womb of Shangri-La as soon as he has the chance. Both are cowards, both run away from life, both refuse to live as free human beings, and both disappear from the real world forever.”

“You know,” their mother laughed, “I read that book not so long ago and don’t recall seeing it in quite that way. But that’s how it should be, I think. The longer I live, the happier I am to have children who challenge me every day to look at life as if I were young again. Thank you, Leana, Sa’aan. I’ll try not to be an old kosha and look toward the future with more enthusiasm. I’ll be much better by and by.”

Leana laughed as well. “You see, Mom? You’re sounding younger already! You actually used a modern slang word properly in context!”

And at that, all three laughed together.

Leana and Sa’aan’s mom wandered off to look out the windows, while Sa’aan did the same from her prominent position in the middle of the hold. It looked like they were still over Western Florida, headed toward Louisiana Bay, and the hills around Tallahassee had faded into marshlands and a skirt of islands and sandbars at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. They weren’t high enough to see the curvature of the Earth, but it could be inferred from the round rim of sea horizon to the south, and the slightly bumpy rim of the coastal plain and piedmont to the north.

The airship crew had finished tidying up, replaced the tools and cables in storage lockers at the side of the hold, cleared the deck of debris, mopped up the water which had sloshed over the side of the tank during loading and lift off, and had disappeared into the upper regions of the airship. Mr. Jefferson waved his passengers toward the seats placed at one side of the hold, next to a plasteel window, saying, “If anyone is a little nervous about heights, they might want to sit in one of the seats on the aisle, but the view from the window seats is spectacular and there are enough for all. The seats are fully reclining, so they’re fairly comfortable for sleeping and I expect most of you will want to nap from time to time. The restrooms are located behind the aft bulkhead and are clearly marked, as well as a single facility for disabled access, which brings us to the rest of the official announcements.” He made a wry face, “Don’t blame me, folks, I have to say this when I have passengers aboard.”

He took up a position near the small group and began, “Can I have your attention, please? The Federal Aviation Authority has asked that we make this announcement: Please fasten your seat belts whenever you’re seated, and remain seated as much as possible, as the airship may experience turbulence without warning. Likewise, if the captain has to maneuver suddenly to avoid other aircraft or large birds, the cabin may tilt suddenly. This happens very rarely, but it could happen on this flight, so please keep your wits about you and know where you plan to grab a handhold if the airship does something you don’t expect. In the event of an emergency, the Captain will ask you to take your seats and fasten your seatbelts.” Here, he held up a tiny seatbelt as a prop, inserting the tongue into the buckle several times, in case anyone didn’t know what a seatbelt looked like or what it did. “Please comply with these instructions immediately because they’re issued for your safety. In case of a water landing, there are Coast Guard-rated survival suits and life preservers in the clearly marked lockers on the aft bulkhead,” he gestured behind his audience in stylized manner, pointing to a row of three lockers outlined in fluorescent yellow and black, identified on their doors as ‘SURVIVAL SUITS, LARGE;’ ‘SURVIVAL SUITS: SMALL;’ and ‘LIFE PRESERVERS’ in glowing white bioluminescent letters against black. “Beside each of the two cargo doors,” he gestured again, using the same hand motions, with three fingers used as a pointer, “one on either side of the hold, is a clearly-marked yellow handle that can be pulled to open the door and automatically release an emergency exit chute.” These too were outlined, but in fluorescent red against black, and identified as ‘PULL FOR EXIT.’ The doors themselves were labeled ‘CAUTION! CARGO DOOR’ in the same bioluminescent white against black, with the opening itself outlined in bioluminescent blue, obviously designed to make orientation easy, even in total darkness and confusion. Beneath each caution was a smaller sign suggesting that opening the door in flight should only be performed by crew members equipped with safety harnesses properly attached to the marked tie-off points provided on each side of the door. “When the door is open and the exit chute deployed, you’ll be able to see a green lever to release and inflate the life rafts. One or more crew members should be present to handle these tasks but it’s possible for anyone of normal strength to perform them on their own. If you feel that you are not able to perform these tasks, please ask someone to perform them for you. It’s impossible for the airship itself to sink, as it has more than ample passive flotation, but the hold might conceivably flood with water, so it’s important to exit immediately when advised to do so. And that concludes our mandatory safety instructions.”

Mr. Jefferson visibly relaxed and continued, “Please don’t be alarmed, folks. In all the time I’ve owned this business, we’ve never had an emergency landing, and statistics prove that airships are the safest form of travel, so I wouldn’t be overly concerned if I were you.”

“We’ll be traveling, weather permitting, almost directly west across the continent, to the San Diego Ærodrome in Canada, and will land and refuel there. Although much of our power is solar, of course, we do consume significant amounts of hydrogen at night and during cloudy weather. We’re bonded, so we won’t have to clear customs, although the local agents sometimes drop in to observe and ask a few questions. From San Diego, we’ll head up the West Coast to Vancouver, for a total air distance of a little more than 2800 nautical miles.”

Leana asked, “How long will the trip take?”

“It depends largely on the weather,” he answered. “If we were traveling in a dead calm, the trip would take just about three full days, including refueling time on the ground. But we expect to shave at least a day off that by using prevailing winds to boost our speed. On the other hand, if the winds were against us, it might add a day or more. We can’t safely fly in large storm systems, so we’ll land and anchor the airship if a storm blows up unexpectedly, but the current projections are good, and we expect to dock at Vancouver Ærodrome about this time the day after tomorrow.”

Her mother asked, “Why are we going all the way to San Diego first? Wouldn’t it make more sense to fly directly to Vancouver?”

Mr. Jefferson had obviously answered these questions many times before, because he answered with the same sort of ease and confidence that Sa’aan’s father displayed when he was ‘in the groove,’ “We do try to avoid flying over the Rocky Mountains, since alpine updrafts and shifting winds can cause large and uncomfortable motions of the airship. It’s true that we could save more than 700 nautical miles by flying as close to the beeline as possible, but the risks aren’t worth the slight savings in distance. Also, this particular airship isn’t rated for high-altitude travel and therefore isn’t pressurized, so we prefer to stay a little closer to the ground than the stratocruisers you’ve probably heard of. They’re used primarily as earth sciences or astronomical observation platforms — although a few are fitted as luxury liners for people with more free time and spare money than they know what to do with — and often stay up for months on end, whereas we have schedules to keep and cargo to carry, wherever we go. Our customers would prefer that we don’t dally about up in the sky while they’re waiting for a delivery,” he smiled.

“The other alternative would be to fly up and across the Great Plains, stop at Calgary Ærodrome for refueling, and then zigzag over the lower ranges of the Canadian Rockies near Sparwood, Cranbrook, and Creston, but that’s a dicey route at the best of times, and at the end of summer, what with the possibility of thunderstorms over the Plains, and then the chance of storms in the mountains, we prefer the southern route.”

“And by taking this path, we’ll be able to see the Grand Canyon. Y’all ought to know, that everybody ought to see the Grand Canyon from the air and not too many folks do nowadays, since air travel for passengers is limited by law. We have permission to go down to 200 feet, as a special favor to the lovely Ms. Sa’aan, and through the incomparable Ms. Inconnu’s special arrangement with Mexican air traffic control, because this will probably be her last chance to experience the real thing, unmediated by vid screens or other second-hand retellings of the physical experience.”

“I can’t imagine whose arm Nakia twisted to make this happen,” he said, “since we’ve never been able to go lower than one thousand feet on our own initiative and I’m pretty good at twisting arms myself. I imagine the tourists on the ground will love it, though. Not all that many people have ever seen a large airship close up.”

Sa’aan had never seen one at all, although now that she knew that airships usually avoided mountainous areas, she could guess the reason they didn’t visit Campanella. And now I’m in the belly of one, like Jonah, like Captain Ahab wedded to his great white whale. The irony of her situation wasn’t lost on her.

❦  ❦  ❦

After the initial excitement of traveling in an airship, boredom set in, as it does on almost any long trip in close quarters. Although nobody plaintively whined, ‘Are we there yet?’ the passengers got tired of standing by the plasteel windows or, for the daring, standing on the clear floor panels and staring straight down, as if suspended in midair. Leana dared, of course, and compared the leap of faith required to that of the famous firewalkers of Borneo. It was one thing, she said, to believe in physics, and quite another to trust it. Mr. Jefferson hardly noticed, and walked across the panels as if they were a piece of the floor, while her mother and Nakia walked up to the edge, but didn’t step over onto the clear surface. It was one thing, Nakia said, to trust physics and quite another to risk future death through sheer stupidity by ignoring the evidence of one’s senses in the present. Leana chuffed in irritation; she hated being made to look like a sagwa.

To Sa’aan, the difference between the pieces of the floor — or deck she supposed — were inconsequential. Just being here was a leap of faith. She was completely helpless, out of her depth you might say, and profoundly dependent on the kindness and care of others. Without the protection of the tank, she would slowly asphyxiate as the weight of her body collapsed her lungs, and without the refrigeration unit and cooling water around her body, her own body heat would eventually bring on heatstroke and death. As they flew on into the sunset, the drone of the engines and the endless flat waters, salt marshes, and coastal plains of Western Florida and Louisiana Bay all blurred together, causing most of the passengers to slouch in their seats, napping, or to recline them fully and sleep. But the airship flew on through the sky as if held within an invisible subway tube, resembling in its way a tiny humming moon orbiting the Earth beneath.

Sa’aan actually needed no sleep in the human sense, and indeed couldn’t sleep entirely lest she drown, even in her travel tank, but could allow one of her brains to sleep and dream while the other stayed awake, so she spent her time thinking about the journey while the others dozed. She thought of a quote from an early American writer, Henry David Thoreau, that her civics instructor had used to illustrate his exposition of Manifest Destiny:

“Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down.”

The passage continued,

“We dream all night of those mountain-ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which were last gilded by his rays. The island of Atlantis, and the islands and gardens of the Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear to have been the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in mystery and poetry. Who has not seen in imagination, when looking into the sunset sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, and the foundation of all those fables?”

She remembered her sister referring obliquely to the same quote, which was understandable, since they’d had the same civics teacher, not to mention their Classics professor father, and here in front of her were those same Hesperidean gardens, the cloud-topped towers and mountains glowing red and gold, promising something as yet unimaginable to her, but its outline becoming gradually clearer as they arrowed toward the clouds.

Eventually, night fell and they hummed along in darkness, punctuated from time to time with the lights of a solitary farm or the transport carriers clustered around a harvestbot, or the massed lights of a city. Sa’aan used her BioLync to access the airship’s information channel when she saw a warm glow in the sky which turned into a large city, radiant with light and motion, contrasting with the thinnest sliver of the waning moon high in the clear night sky. She picked up the map and audio commentary in time to hear that it was the seaside resort town of Santa Anna, Tejas, the largest Mexican city east of the San Antonio River, and that they’d been traveling for a little less than ten hours. She was pleased that her ocular implants worked so easily and well, another barrier in her new life falling away as the miles fell behind her.

❦  ❦  ❦

Leana eventually stirred in one of the seats, which she’d reclined to make a narrow bed. Out the windows, Sa’aan could see hills and sharp canyons, dry and sere in the early morning light. Leana walked up to the ladies room and disappeared inside, reëntering the hold after a few minutes and walking over to where Sa’aan floated, unblinking.

“Hi, Mei-mei. Did you have a good night? Where are we? Is there any breakfast?”

“Hi Jie-Jie. I’ve been fine but I don’t know about the breakfast. I imagine they’ll have something like the box dinners last night. I don’t plan to eat because, despite the filters and ærators in this little tank, I don’t fancy the idea of relieving myself in my bathwater. I have enough body mass now that a few days of fasting won’t do me any harm. As clever as they were in designing this thing, I don’t believe they thought that part out all that thoroughly. They had a better water flow in the therapy tank, and much better filtration, plus a ready source of fresh water of course, but I can hardly wait to be in open water.”

“Eeew! I don’t think I want to know that much detail, although I’m really, really sorry. And here I was just complaining to myself about the Spartan toilet facilities.”

“It’s OK. I planned for this when they told me how long the journey would be, and I’m supposed to get a change of water in San Diego. But I’m so glad that Mr. Jefferson offered us this ‘express’ trip, not only because of the views and the excitement of being up in the air, but because a trip by freighter through the NorthWest Passage would have been pure misery, weeks in this narrow tank instead of days. As for our location, the sun is rising behind us and we’ve just left the Tejas flatlands. There’s a huge narrow lake below us in a winding valley…,” Sa’aan used her BioLync interface to simultaneously access the airship’s information channel again and continued without pause “…named Ute Lake, famous for a substantial fishery as well as a source of water for the surrounding communities, including Albuquerque, Nuevo Mexico a little south and west of here. We’re nineteen and a half hours out of Tallahassee with about five hours before we get to the Grand Canyon, currently to the northwest of us. So, seeing as how we’re in vaquero country, let’s see if’n we can rustle you up some grub.”

She used the BioLync interface again to call Mr. Jefferson, who’d gone up to the ‘bridge’ to do some work late yesterday afternoon and hadn’t reappeared. He answered right away.

“Good morning, Miz Sa’aan, I trust you had a comfortable night.”

“And a good morning to you, sir. My sister was wondering if she could have some breakfast, and I imagine the others will be ready soon.”

“Of course. I’ll have the crew start the preparation, and I’ll be down directly. Please ask Leana to be patient.”

“I’ll do that, Mr. Jefferson, and thank you so much for all you’ve done for me and for my family.”

“The pleasure is all mine, dear lady. I gained much from our shared experience that day, both in wisdom and in power. I’ll be forever in your debt.”

“Even so, thank you so very much. I’ll tell everyone that a little nosh is coming soon. Bye for now.”

“A skosh more than a nosh, as you put it, but goodbye for the moment, my dear.” He disconnected.

She addressed her sister again, “Well, Mr. Jefferson said they’d start preparing breakfast, and it sounds like it’s going to be a little more than the box meals you had last night.”

“Jing-tsai!,” she replied. “They were good, but it would be nice to have a proper meal as well. I’ll start moving around the hold and making annoying noises so everyone will wake up in time to eat.” She smiled at Sa’aan’s eye, and winked.

“That sounds like a great idea. If it doesn’t work, I could splash a little water on them. That ought to get them up.” She laughed mentally, and could feel her sister respond in kind.

“Please! Not just yet. Mom’s much worse than I am when she gets wet and I don’t know how Nakia might take it, considering her ancestry. We’ll save that for a last resort.”

As it turned out, splashing wasn’t necessary. Leana’s movements, not terribly startling, soon had everyone up, more or less refreshed, and looking again at the landscape, which had become much more interesting. They were flying over desert buttes and canyons, interspersed with the rich green ribbons of narrow river canyons, and the occasional reservoir, when Mr. Jefferson arrived with two of the crew, who efficiently brought out a table, covered it in white linen, and laid out a nice buffet. There were bowls of fresh fruit, dispensers of cereals, baskets of bagels, pan dulce, and Vienna rolls, together with various spreads, two covered platters with hot tortillas, and two hot pans for Crêpes, omelets and other egg dishes, efficiently prepared by one of the crew. Mr. Jefferson waved expansively at the small feast. “Y’all can see,” he said, “we’re not so far from civilization, even way up here in the middle of the air.”

“It’s marvelous, Richard,” Nakia enthused, and it looks so delicious! But you didn’t have to go to such trouble!”

“It’s actually not much trouble, other than carrying it down from the galley, and I didn’t plan it. This is the crew’s home, seven days on, seven days off, for a large part of their lives, and they try to have at least two full meals a day with a great variety of foods. As you’ve seen, there are long periods of boredom associated with freight hauling, and nice food helps pass the time. The company provides a food allowance, and it’s up to the crew to decide how to spend it, with each crew member taking it in turn, or sometimes as pairs, to plan and prepare the meal. They have quite a competition to prepare the nicest meals in rotation, so the meals are usually excellent. I’ve shared crew meals that rival those served at the best restaurants down on the ground, as I’m sure you can tell from this example. All I did was provide an extra bit of money, to cover the cost of our meals, and whichever member of the airship’s company whose turn it was planned and shopped for the meal on their own, to make a pleasant surprise for the rest of the crew as well as ourselves. Our breakfast today was planned and served by Relief Captain Aziz, here preparing a perfectly authentic dish of huevos rancheros, and Relief Navigator Lopez, who’s handling the rest of the service. Many hats are worn by all on an airship, and we don’t stand much on ceremony. Today’s lunch, in fact, was planned and will be prepared by myself, so even the company owner isn’t exempt from the rotation of chores while aboard. We’ll have to see how it turns out, shan’t we?” He grinned broadly and winked outrageously at the assembled passengers.

“We can hardly wait,” Nakia replied.

After they’d finished eating, most of Sa’aan’s party wandered around the hold, from plasteel window to floor portal and back again, exclaiming at the bright red and orange and yellow, and even lavender colors of the cliffs and peaks below. Once, they passed right by what looked like an extinct volcano, gigantic in extent, with a central peak, and it turned out to be Valles Caldera, and not extinct at all, but alive with an active array of geothermal vents, hot springs, and fumaroles scattered around the base and crater of the ancient eruptions.

Later, they passed over a forbidding landscape of broken rock and lava, the Zuni-Bandera lava field, according to the information channel, last active not more than three thousand years ago. They deduced from this that the entire area had at once been very dangerous, the site of massive eruptions and lava flows that were staggering to contemplate as they flew over it, mile after mile of it, for hours.

And then they saw Glen Cañon, off in the distance, a huge slash in the landscape that angled in from the right, and then they were over the canyon, following it as it twisted and wound through the rocky plateau, when suddenly the sound of a gong focused their attention away from the windows and back toward the front of the hold, where the table was now covered in red linen and Mr. Jefferson was holding forth at the center of yet another feast.

As they walked toward the table, they could see that the various dishes had little signs off to the side describing them. A large covered pot of soup was labeled ‘Corn and leek bisque,’ and an open salad bowl and ice evidently contained ‘Baby California spinach tossed in warm balsamic shallot vinaigrette with yellow pear tomatoes, and Guatemalan queso blanco.’ A covered chafing dish held ‘Raviolli Fiorentina with southern beetroot and gravy’ while several ice buckets contained what looked like champagne, with iced dishes of strawberries, grapes, and other fruit around them. The little sign read, ‘Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame Champagne Brut, vintage 2266, served with coolhouse strawberries and assorted fruits.’ On a separate platter, there were elegant and dainty cubes of decorated chocolate labeled ‘Petits fours aux noix.’ In the center of the presentation was a large bowl of flowers — roses, several kinds of lillies, freesias, red cockscombs, trachelliums, hypericums, ferns and other greens.

Sa’aan’s mother exclaimed, “Mr. Jefferson, Richard, you’ve surpassed yourself this time. This is just delightful, even if we only stand and admire it!”

“One’s first trip over the canyon deserves a memorable meal,” he said modestly, “and I took special pains to ensure it.

Leana asked, “I know what petits fours are, but what does ‘aux noix’ mean?”

“Ahh!” he sighed, “a fellow admirer of the ‘eat dessert first’ school of dining. ‘Aux noix’ is ‘with nuts’ to you, black walnuts in this case. It’s a recipe passed down from my great-grandmother, and very tasty indeed. Very memorable, unlike many of the insipid petits fours one encounters in ordinary establishments. The champagne is a favorite of mine, and ’66 was a very good year. The strawberries and fruits were actually grown in Georgia, but sheltered by specially insulated coolhouses to prevent dehydration and loss of flavor from the heat of summer. They’re quite delicious, the equal of anything you’ll find in the Yukon or Baffin Bay. But please, welcome to my table.” At that, he gave a slight but courtly bow to all the ladies, ever the Southern gentleman.

Two of the crew stood by with large serving carts, and as he served out the various dishes he asked them to place them on the carts rather than balance them precariously. When they’d each made their selections , the carts were trundled off to their seats, which had been arranged with a swiveling tray alongside, so they could dine comfortably and still see the river below.

The food was delicious, and the champagne superb, according to everyone but Sa’aan, who was necessarily abstemious. Even Leana thought so, and she didn’t usually care all that much for the taste of wine. All too soon, the meal was over, down to the last petit four, and Mr. Jefferson asked them all to rise and come to the forward window, pouring out a fresh glass of champagne for each. Just ahead, the canyon walls rose sharply and the river, once not far below the rim, fell away into a chasm cut deeply into the Earth.

Mr. Jefferson raised his own glass in a toast, “Ladies, the Grand Canyon, ancient of days, lies before you as very few have seen it except in vids and photographs,” as they swept over the rim and stared down toward the river far below. The scale of the canyon was immense, almost beyond comprehension, and their own airship, which had seemed so huge when they’d boarded it in Tallahassee, seemed more like a child’s toy balloon, carelessly let slip from a tiny hand, and adrift on the wind above a landscape fit only for giants. “To friendship,” he concluded, “and to dear friends.”

All those standing drank.

Sa’aan, alone in her tank, looked on and out and down, breathing at long intervals, eyes squinted against the light, her pupils moving separately, or focusing directly ahead, as she gathered in the prodigious panorama around her.

❦  ❦  ❦

By the time they arrived in San Diego, it was late in the afternoon.

The ærodrome stood out from the surrounding desert as a dozen widely spaced rings of concrete around a dozen mooring masts thrust up into the sky like a strange orchard of orderly jackstraws. At a few, other airships swung captive, bows headed into the prevailing wind. Their own airship made a one hundred and eighty degree turn and sailed slowly toward a mast without a current tenant and dropped two long lines from the nose, easily visible well in front of the forward window of the hold as they fell twisting toward the ground far below, where a heavy tractor soon snagged them both and immediately handed off one to a second tractor, which took it and moved off to one side. The two tractors immediately began winching in the nose of the airship, centering it and bringing it down to the docking connector on the mast, both at the same time, in a graceful choreography of efficient coördination only possible for monomaniacal AIs, quite limited in their general repertoire but autistic savants in their dedicated field.

Leana had gone to a plasteel window and looked out, without comment, but her mother had remained seated, reading something on her BioLync, explaining in response to a crewman’s question that she’d been in San Diego before and hadn’t been impressed the first time.

When the connection was made, the tractors let go of the ropes and they were rapidly pulled back up into whatever recess they’d fallen from. Shortly thereafter, the crew came down in their hardhats and opened the cargo door at the left side of the hold. Quickly, they scrambled down a stair which had evidently been rolled up to the door before it had opened and began hauling an insulated hose laying at the edge of the concrete landing ring in toward the airship, to which they connected it with a dull metallic sound. One of the crew than turned a valve and Sa’aan could hear the hissing of gas as it flowed through the hose into the ship. Despite the thick insulation, the hose gathered a fog of condensation around it which instantly froze into a crust of snow. But the crew had already rolled out another large hose, this one affixed to a large cylindrical subway tank balanced on a local transport truck, and connected it to a fitting at the front of Sa’aan’s tank.

She supposed that this was her promised change of water and, in fact, one of the crew, the one she now recognized as Relief Captain Aziz, assured her that this was so, and told her that she begged her pardon for the unceremonious intrusion, but they had only a limited amount of time on the ground to handle all the necessary tasks before their departure. Ærodromes, it seemed, charged by the hour for ‘parking’ in addition to their other service charges so the airship was in almost constant motion from the time they left their own base in Virginia until they returned at the end of a voyage. The blue hardhat crew took hold of yet another, larger hose handed up from below by a yellow-hat crew she supposed worked for the aerodrome, snaked it across the deck and connected it to another fitting at the rear of the tank. Once the connections were made, a bluehatted woman she didn’t recognize went over every hose and fitting, testing them and making small notations on a palmtop as she went along, evidently checking every step, and then gave the order to open two valves, one on each end of the tank, which began the process of completely replacing the stale water in the travel tank with fresh water, evidently impelled by a powerful pump, since she could feel the rapid current on her skin. She took this opportunity to void her bladder and colon, which was a relief in several senses. While this was going on, two more bluehats rigged an extension of the overhead crane track through the door, moved the same winch that had lifted her on board through the opening and into the space above the landing pad, and started offloading what looked like a bin of recycling materials, and then a smaller drum of liquids that she presumed was waste to be processed separately. Then the same crewmembers performed the operation in reverse, uploading a small refrigerated container which they quickly hauled up into the interior of the hold, and almost without pause unhooked from it and wheeled it onto a lift from whence it rose smoothly into the mysterious upper decks of the airship. She guessed that it was fresh food to replace that eaten on the voyage, or perhaps just fresh local specialties.

Soon enough, they were done, the valves closed and the hoses disconnected from her tank, and the flurry of activity was gone as if it had never been. Then, suddenly, the connector on the mooring mast released and they were bobbing upward, lifting toward the sky as the engines roared and the airship came under power again, not quite the ceremonious international entry, with customs officials and formal documents, that Sa’aan had foreseen.

Welcome to Canada, she thought to herself.

Dinner that night was another boxed meal, although Mr. Jefferson apologized on behalf of the crew for the lack of enough free hours between their activities on the ground and time for supper to prepare a proper meal.

For a long time they traveled parallel to the invisible shore off to her left, but eventually approached the beach toward what she saw on the BioLync channel was Palos Verdes Island, separated from what remained of the city of Long Beach for almost fifty-five years now, following the rapid collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.

And then they were over the ocean, the enormous expanse of the Pacific opening up before her like coming out of a dense forest onto an open plain, grey-green water as far as the eye could see, the Channel Islands clustered at the edge like a few boulders half-buried in a sea of grass. For the first time since her journey began she felt safe, sheltered by the immensity of cool water below her, the promise of life-giving buoyancy and the safest of safe havens.

After a while, Leana and her mother came over to the tank and stood beside her as they all gazed out into the vast watery horizon and the reddening sun crept lower in the cloudless sky. Neither of them said a word, awed both by the ocean and the unspoken knowledge that here in front of them was the true dividing line between their own lives, tied to the land, and her future life, the life for which her transformed body was designed, cradled by salt water and nourished by the sea.

They looked, and then the brilliant sun approached the horizon, rapidly flattening from a perfect disk into something just a little squashed, with wavy edges where once had been a perfect sphere, distorting into ever more baroque layers, alternately brighter and darker like a solar torte Genoise.

But as the twisted sun touched and then slid below the pristine horizon, the flattened layers disappearing one by one, just as the last tiny speck of it disappeared, there was a brilliant flash of green.

Leana turned to Sa’aan and said, “That was weird.”

Sa’aan answered, reflexively opening a BioLync connection so that her mother could hear her reply, “A Green Flash, and a small miracle. They’re very rare at this latitude. I can’t help feeling that it’s good luck.”

His mother spoke up, “Jules Verne thought so. He wrote a whole novel about them almost three hundred years ago, Le Rayon-Vert — The Green Ray, in which he has one of the characters read from a fictitious article in an equally fictitious ‘The Morning Post,’ « S’il y a du vert dans le Paradis, ce ne peut être que ce vert-là, qui est, sans doute, le vrai vert de l’ Espérance! » — ‘If there is a green in Paradise, it cannot but be of this shade, which is most surely the true green of Hope.’ I’d like to think so too.”

❦  ❦  ❦

The night passed slowly for Sa’aan, as she was anxious to arrive, longing to see the Georgia Strait, her parent’s new home on a hill above the water, and her pool. Her father had sent pictures, but she’d resisted the temptation to look at them, preferring to wait to savor the real experience rather than glancing at a vid. The pool opened, her mother had said, onto English Bay, only lightly sheltered from the winds off the sound, and a constant flow of fresh salt water was maintained by a large solar array and pump, separate from the house array and powerful enough to sweep any soil or debris out the inlet and on into the sound.

Vancouver Polyversity, her father’s new employer, was just up the road, closely associated with the University of British Columbia, and both campuses were located on the same hill, even shared some classrooms and professors, so her father planned to bicycle to work and was delighted to have a chance to associate with a broad range of academic disciplines. “Nothing like it,” he’d said in a BioLync conversation just before they’d left Tallahassee, “Colorado Polyversity was a little stodgy for my taste, and far too provincial. We even have an Asian Center on campus, which will be a wonderful opportunity to brush up on our Chinese and Japanese. I plan to audit a few classes myself.”

So she had a vision in her mind’s eye, and now only waited to see how closely the vision matched reality.

In the morning, the port-side watch, consisting of two Petty Officers named Wu and Pham, provided a breakfast of fresh spring rolls, sweet and savory congees, crullers, dim sum, and fresh fruit, including several kinds of melons. As usual, the three guests pronounced it delicious, and passed a pleasant hour snacking on dim sum and ‘fried devils’ dipped in congee.

By the time they were finished, the airship was sweeping in off the ocean and over the Olympic Peninsula, the high mountains on their left, as they passed over the low wooded slopes of the coastal range, giving way to farmlands in the valley and then onto the broad reach of Puget Sound. Most of the islands here rose steeply from the water, so the shorelines hadn’t changed to the extent they had in Florida and the other states bordering the Gulf, but Sa’aan noticed a few skeletal structures poking up from the water, either too worthless to move as the waters slowly rose or simply abandoned for more likely properties.

And then they were over the San Juan Islands, one of them named ‘Orcas Island’, as she noted on her windowed BioLync display, and then out over open water again, heading for a low wooded hill in the middle distance, just below a higher mountain she knew was located on the other side of English Bay.

And then they were there, angling sharply into the wind to hold the airship stationary over the domed house she saw below, gradually sinking downward toward the pool, whose outline she could see already. The pavilion, similar to that used for her therapy pool, had already been dismantled and there was a temporary mooring mast erected for the airship, to simplify the process of unloading. There were no tractors, however; that task was undertaken by the green hardhat crew, whom the airship crew had called the ‘chase crew.’ They were almost as skilled as the AI-driven tractors, and the ship soon swung at her mooring.

Since she knew what to expect, Sa’aan wasn’t surprised when the blue hardhats appeared on the heads of the crew, the passengers had been herded away from the action, and the travel tank was hooked up to the winch. With a little lurch, the winch took the strain and the hatch below her opened. The quiet hum of the propellers turned into a roar and her little tank was lowered rapidly and directly into the pool, the airship falling away above her. And suddenly she was floating free, the tank settling to the bottom beneath her, and with a flick of her powerful flukes she angled away from the hoisting cables and over to the side. She looked around curiously as the crew raised the travel tank and cradle, setting them into place on a concrete pad obviously prepared for them, although she sincerely hoped never to use either again. They then brought up the hoist and quickly lowered two large shipping containers, one at a time, the ones she’d noticed at the back of the hold, placing them on similar pads, and then disconnected from the mooring mast. For safety reasons, her mother, sister, and Nakia would have to wait to disembark at the Vancouver Ærodrome, about an hour away by subway and flivver, so she didn’t expect to see them for a while.

Her father was standing at the far end of the pool wearing a white hardhat that marked him as someone the green hats had to look out for. He looked a little lost in the midst of so much activity. They both waited for the activity to be over, and soon enough it was. The mooring mast was dismantled and packed away in the chase trucks, the pavilion cover re-erected, and silence settled over the pool.

Her father started walking toward her. He’d placed his hardhat on a small table next to the pool. She could feel everything, the motion of the water, the shifting play of the cool wind through the low plantings around the pool, the warmth where the air touched her dorsal fin, the lure of other people, at least the distant sounds they made going about their daily lives above her and farther up the shore, and even, in her imagination, the cool pull of the dark moon beneath her, on the other side of the Earth, balanced by the hot attraction of the sun almost directly overhead. “Well,” she said to her father, “I’m home.”

❦  ❦  ❦

 

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