The aircraft was a little arrowhead-shaped sliver of a thing with a large open cabin. Kabe thought it looked more like a small motorboat than a proper plane. He guessed it was big enough to take about eight humans. He weighed the same as three of the bipeds and Ziller was probably almost the mass of two so they should be under its maximum capacity, but it still didn’t look up to the task. It wobbled very slightly as he stepped aboard. Seats morphed and rearranged themselves for the two non-human shapes. Feli Vitrouv swung into the lead seat with a sort of clacking noise from the stowed wing fins, which she flicked out of the way as she sat. She pulled a control grip from the cockpit’s fascia and said, ‘Manual please, Hub.’
‘You have control,’ the machine said.
The woman clicked the grip into place and, after a look around, pulled, twisted and pushed it to send them gently backing out and away from the platform and then racing off just above the tops of the ground trees. Some sort of field prevented more than a gentle breeze from entering the passenger compartment. Kabe reached out and poked it with one finger, feeling an invisible plastic resistance.
‘So, how is all of this cheating?’ Feli called back.
Ziller looked over the side. ‘Could you crash this?’ he asked casually.
She laughed. ‘Is that a request?’
‘No, just a question.
‘Want me to try?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Well then, no; I probably couldn’t. I’m flying it, but if I did anything really stupid the automatics would take over and haul us out of trouble.’
‘Is that cheating?’
‘Depends. Not what I call cheating.’ She angled the craft down towards a group of blimp trees in a large clearing. ‘I’d call it a reasonable combination of fun and safety.’ She turned back to glance at them. The craft wriggled fractionally in the air, aiming between two tall ground trees. ‘Though of course a purist might say I shouldn’t be using an aircraft to get to my blimp in the first place.’
The trees rushed past, one on either side, very close; Kabe felt himself flinch. There was a hint of a thud and when he looked back Kabe saw a few leaves and twigs whirling and falling in their slipstream. The craft bellied down towards the largest blimp tree, aiming close in underneath the curve of the gas sac where the giant tentacle roots joined together and merged into the dark brown bulbous pod of the banner reservoir.
‘A purist would walk?’ suggested Ziller.
‘Yup.’ The woman made a sort of tapping-down motion with the grip and the craft settled onto the roots. She stowed the grip control in the panel in front of her. ‘Here’s our boy,’ she said, nodding up at the dark black-green balloon blotting out most of the morning sky.
The blimp tree towered fifteen metres over them, casting a deep shadow. The gas sac’s surface was rough and veined and yet still looked thin as paper, giving the impression of having been sewn together, clumsily, from giant leaves. Kabe thought it looked like a thunder cloud.
‘How would they get here in the first place, to this forest?’ Ziller asked.
‘I think I see what you’re getting at,’ Feli said, jumping out of the craft and landing on a broad root. She checked her harness points again, squinting at them in the semi-darkness. ‘Most of them would come by underground,’ she said, glancing round at the blimp tree and then up at the ruby light sifting through the ground trees. ‘A few would power-glide,’ she added, frowning at the blimper, which seemed to be stretching, tautening. Kabe thought he detected sounds coming from the banner reservoir. ‘Some would take an aircraft,’ she went on, then flashed a smile at them and and said, ‘Excuse me. I think it’s time I got into place.’
She took a pair of long gloves from the belly pack and pulled them on. Curved black nails half as long as her fingers extended from their tips when she flexed them, then she turned and clambered up the side of the reservoir pod until she was at its lip, where the springy material curled under the blimp. The tree was creaking loudly now, the gas sac expanding and becoming taut.
‘Others might come by ground car or bike, or boat and then walk,’ Feli went on, settling down in a crouch on the lip of the reservoir. ‘Of course the real purists, the sky junkies, they live out here in huts and tents and survive off hunting and wild fruits and vegetables. They travel everywhere on foot or by wing and you never see them in town at all. They live for flying; it’s a ritual, a … what do you call it? A sacrament, almost a religion with them. They hate people like me because we do it for fun. Lot of them won’t talk to us. Actually, some of them won’t talk to each other and I think some have lost the power of speech alto— Whoo!’ Feli turned away as the blimp suddenly parted company with the banner reservoir and rose into the sky like a giant black bubble from a vast brown mouth.
Beneath the gas sac, attached to it by a thick mass of filaments, rose a broad green streamer of tissue-thin leaf, eight metres across and webbed with darker veins.
Feli Vitrouv stood, flicked out the claws in her gloves and flung herself at the mass of filaments just under the blimp, thumping into the great curtain of leaf and making it shudder and ripple. She kicked at it with her feet, and more blades punctured the membrane. The blimp hesitated in its ascent, then continued up into the sky.
Released from the shadow of the blimp, the air around the aircraft seemed to lighten as the huge shape swept into the still brightening sky with a noise like a sigh.
‘Ha ha!’ shouted Feli.
Ziller leant over to Kabe. ‘Shall we follow her?’
‘Why not?’
‘Flying machine?’ Ziller said.
‘Hub here, Cr Ziller,’ said a voice from their seats’ headrests.
‘Take us up. We’d like to follow Ms Vitrouv.’
‘Certainly.’
The aircraft rose almost straight up, smoothly and quickly, until they were level with the black-haired woman, who had twisted so that she faced out from the banner under the blimp. Kabe looked over the side of the craft. They were about sixty metres up by now, and gaining height at a respectable rate. Looking right down, he could see into the blimper’s base pod, where the reams of banner leaf unfolded from their reservoir and were hauled rippling into the air.
Feli Vitrouv smiled broadly at them, her body being pulled this way and that as the banner leaf flapped and ruffled in the roaring wind of the plant’s ascent. ‘Okay there?’ she said, laughing. Her hair flew about her face and she kept shaking her head.
‘Oh, I think we’re fine,’ Ziller shouted. ‘And you?’
‘Never better!’ the woman yelled, looking up at the blimp and then down at the ground.
‘To go back to this thing about cheating,’ Ziller said.
She laughed. ‘Yes? What?’
‘This whole place is a cheat.’
‘How so?’ She flicked one hand and hung dangerously by a single arm while her other hand, claws stowed, brushed her hair away from her mouth. The movement made Kabe nervous. If he’d been her he’d have worn a cap or something.
‘It’s made to look like a planet,’ Ziller shouted. ‘It’s not.’
Kabe was watching the still rising sun. It was bright red now. An Orbital sunrise, like an 0 sunset, took much longer than the same event on a planet. The sky above you brightened first, then the rising star seemed to coalesce out of the infrared, a shimmering vermilion spectre emerging out of the haze line and then sliding along the horizon, shining dimly through the Plate walls and the distant abundances of air and only gradually gaining height, though, once it had properly begun, the daylight lasted longer than on a globe. All of which was arguably a gain, Kabe thought, as sunset and sunrises often produced the day’s more spectacular and attractive vistas.
‘So what?’ Feli had both hands anchored again.
‘So why bother with this?’ Ziller shouted, indicating the blimp. ‘Fly up here. Use a floater harness—’
‘Do it all in a dream, do it all in VR!’ She laughed.
‘Would it be any less false?’
‘That’s not the question. The question is, Would it be any less fun?’
‘Well, would it?’
She nodded vigorously. ‘Abso-fucking-lutely!’ Her hair, caught in a sudden updraught, swirled above her head like black flames.
‘So you only think it’s fun if there’s a certain degree of reality involved?’
‘It’s more fun,’ she shouted. ‘Some people blimp jump as their main recreation, but they only ever do it in…’ Her voice was lost as a gust of wind roared around them; the blimper shuddered and the aircraft trembled a fraction.