Free Skyland by Aelius Blythe Page A

could be
blown up now, eh?"
    "I need to... I need to go..."
    "No grandpa, you don't."
    "My wife... I need to get my wife.
She's–she's back–back at the–"
    "No old man, come now drink some tea."
    "My wife is back at the–at the shop..." He
looked up at the professor. "I need to go get her... I need
to..."
    The chair maker looked up from his elbow and
the tugging hand to the face that was addressing him. The
professor's face look odd. Lopsided. The broken glass of one lens
of his glasses distorted his eye, just a bit and the crack bisected
it. The chair maker stared at the odd face under the glasses. The
eyes were tense, the lips pinched up, almost pouting, in a strange
expression.
    "Look..." said the professor, "I'm sorry to
tell you, but I don't think she made it."
    "Who?"
    "Your wife. I don't think she made it."
    "Made what? She's just back... back at the
shop..."
    "Yes, and I don't think she'll be going
anywhere soon."
    "No she's waiting... I have to get
back..."
    "No grandpa, I'm sorry but I think she's ah,
gone into the Sky. I'm sorry, but–"
    "No, we weren't going on the ships...
she–she didn't want to, you know. We were going to stay... and
watch. One's leaving today, you know."
    "Right."
    The chair maker looked away from the odd
face of the professor.
    I should really be getting back.
    He picked up the tea, watching the little
ships land one after another in the reflection. He really ought to
be polite, he thought. After all he was a guest in... someone's
home. So he drank the cold tea. In a few gulps it was gone and so
were the little ships in the reflection. He put the cup back on the
window sill and looked at the empty china, now dull and rough.
    Behind him a woman's voice and the
professor's went on, incoherent, babbling.
    "Did you come from the interior?"
    "Yes. Well, I did. The university."
    "Which one?"
    "City. Chemical sciences division. I thought
the lab would be a bad place to stay in all the chaos."
    "Yes of course."
    "I was going through one of the older
neighborhoods on my way out when I picked up the grandpa."
    "Is he yours?"
    "No. Just saw him through a door – him and
his... wife, what was left of her anyway."
    "Poor thing."
    "He was just sitting there in the rubble of
his shop, letting it burn around him."
    The chair maker looked out at the ships –
the big ones sitting on the docks. There were fewer of them now. He
dug back in his memory to try to remember how many had left so far.
He counted them on his fingers. There was one the day before, then
there was one today. It was hard to remember. He was getting so
old!
    But where did the black bullet-ships come
from? He shook his head. He couldn't keep up with the technology of
the city. When there was barely any fuel to work by or money to
import it, the rich youngsters of the city interior zoomed around
in personal planes filled with imported fuel. You'd think there
hadn't been a hundred-year drought over most of the planet!
    One ship zoomed overhead. He flinched.
    Why?
    He looked back to the professor, to the
broken lens in his glasses.
    broken glass... broken glass...
    Another ship zoomed overhead, closer than
the others. The chair maker looked out the window. Out the
window...
    The window... the window was broken...
shattered...
    The window was perfectly in tact. The glass
was smooth, the frame open to the sandy air. But unbroken. The
chair maker leaned against the window frame. His hip brushed
against the china cup and it fell to the ground, breaking against
the hard-packed dirt.
    Shattered... shattered glass...
    The tinkling china, the shards spread out on
the floor, the sharp edges sticking up from the dirt... The chair
maker knelt down.
    One broken piece of the cup dug into his
knee.
    His lip wobbled and he didn't know why.
    What...
    Behind him the woman's voice babbled on,
incoherent, irrelevant. "Oh grandpa. Don't worry about it, old man.
Let me help you up." The professor's voice wove through hers,
wobbly, lopsided like his face