Free A Web of Air by Philip Reeve Page B

Weasel kicked into the sky with one big beat of his scruffy wings, soared easily after it and snatched it in his beak. Another wingbeat carried him back to the veranda, where Arlo took the model from him and laid it down carefully on the table. Arlo sat down on one of the wicker chairs, or rather he perched on it, pulling his knees up to his chin and wrapping his bare toes around the edge of the seat.
    “It’s just a model. But if it were built full size, with an engine – a lightweight engine – then a person could ride on it. He could fly.”
    He looked at her, daring her to disagree. She said, “Dr Collihole thought that it was impossible. He’s an Engineer I know, in London. He says that if we are ever to fly then we must concentrate on making balloons. I went up in the balloon he built.”
    “Gas or hot air?” asked Arlo, as if balloons were commonplace things.
    “Hot air. There was a brazier on board.”
    “How far did you fly?”
    Fever wasn’t sure. She had been terrified and exhausted and she had slept through most of that historic flight. “It must have travelled twenty miles.”
    Arlo Thursday bobbed his head like a pigeon. “Balloons are no use. Clumsy. Easy to get up, but hard to steer, and impossible to bring down where you want them. They make you a slave to the wind. Heavier-than-air is the answer. Aëroplanes, like the Ancients used.”
    Fever nodded eagerly to show that she too knew something about the Ancients. “Dr Collihole studied one. Well, the remains of one. It wasn’t much more than a stain in the earth, but you could see how big it had been, and the shape, like a giant bird. But he could never understand how they got the wings to flap.”
    “They don’t need to.” Arlo Thursday peeked at her through his overgrown hair. She had the feeling that he didn’t really want to talk to her but couldn’t stop himself. He said, “When I was a boy I used to watch the angels and long to fly like they did. Look at them…” He pointed out into the sky where dozens of the grubby creatures wheeled, keeping watch for dropped snacks in the streets below. “They hardly move their wings at all. You saw Weasel just now. He flapped once to lift himself, again to change direction, but most of it was just gliding. That’s the way I made my first models. The angels were happy enough to let me draw and measure them. They aren’t quite as bird-brained as most people think. I learned everything from them.”
    Fever picked up the model aircraft. She turned it in her hands, running her fingers over the leading edges of the wings, feeling the roundness there, the way they tapered. There was something about that shape that must help the machine rise, and keep it in the air.
    “What about the engine? Could you make one light enough for the machine to carry?”
    Arlo Thursday shrugged. “I know nothing about engines. I’m Maydan; we don’t have them here, except for a couple of weeks each year when you travelling folk bring your barges over. But I had a friend in Thelona, a man called Edgar Saraband; he wrote to me about flying machines. I made some models for him; some designs. He was clever with engines. He thought he could build one small enough to fly with…”
    “Did he succeed?”
    “Yes. From what I’ve heard, his machine flew. But then…”
    He paused. Fever waited for more, but no more came. She dimly remembered that name, Saraband. Remembered AP flapping his newspaper at her somewhere in the rust-country, sometime early in the summer, saying, “Here, Fever; this will interest you; ’tis most scientific…” There had been a story about a rich Thelonan who had built a “flying machine”, only it had not so much flown as fallen. She’d paid no attention at the time. Newspapers were full of stories like that.
    “Are you planning to make a full-scale machine?” she asked.
    Thursday’s face changed. It was as if blinds had been lowered behind his eyes. “No,” he said.
    “Why