Free The Angel's Cut by Elizabeth Knox

you’re desperate and dizzy, there’s a danger you’ll find the tube blocked andyou’ll have to do something drastic like biting the tube in two below the ice. Then you’re left with a short tube and have to keep your head down throughout the rest of the flight, which is mighty uncomfortable. Anyhow—we solved that problem by installing a small heater in the cockpit. Which, unfortunately, means more weight.’ He shrugged.
    Xas said that creatures with wings had trouble flying at high altitudes because there was less resistance, less air for their wings to clutch on the downbeat.
    The man leaned nearer. ‘Did you say “creatures with wings”? What creatures? Bats? Bugs? But you mean birds.’
    Xas didn’t acknowledge the peculiarity in his wording, though it had led this proud deaf man to question what he thought he’d heard and Xas had the impression that this wasn’t something he did very often. He said, ‘When geese fly at altitude they go in a V formation, the strongest one going first and the rest benefiting from its and the others’ turbulence.’
    â€˜I didn’t know that.’ The man seemed genuinely interested. ‘At higher altitudes even a propeller will run out of air. But we haven’t reached that limit yet. We don’t yet know how high we can go—what the actual atmospheric limits are. The object now is to fly as high as possible in order to fly as far as possible, in the lightest possible craft, that uses the least possible fuel. So you see—it’s all about possibility. This aircraft’s engine is modified to run on tetraethyl-lead, which doesn’t freeze. Now—’ he said ‘—a bird on a long journey must refuel as it goes. It catches its dinner. Right?’ He kept his head inclined toward Xas, eyeinghim sidelong. ‘By the way, why did you say “creatures with wings”? Are you some kind of foreigner?’
    â€˜I said birds . Birds can fly enormous distances close above the sea. That’s one way they conserve energy. The air moves slower over the sea. An albatross gets lift at the crest of each wave, on the slower, denser air there, then dives into accelerating air along the troughs of waves. It can go like that, sharply up, then slowly sliding down, for thousands of miles.’ Xas tried to explain what he knew about albatrosses, what he’d seen when he had travelled among them, riding down the air before the dark blue, foam-streaked faces of the Southern Ocean’s towering waves. He knew another trick for long-distance flight, but couldn’t explain it to the man, since it was only available to angels. An angel, invulnerable, could find a storm cell and rise inside it, up among the lightning and giant hailstones then, with an extra effort, escape the top and fly away in a long shallow glide, letting down over tens of thousands of feet, and thousands of miles.
    The man said, ‘Sometimes I have impractical dreams in which I try to design an aircraft that can make the same minute adjustments to the air that a bird’s body can.’
    Xas noticed that this was the first time he had volunteered the personal pronoun in relation to these experiences of flight. He’d talked of problems having to be solved or having been solved without once saying ‘I’. Xas hadn’t been able to tell if he was a designer, engineer, or test pilot. Now he thought perhaps the man was all three.
    â€˜I’ll tell you why,’ the man went on. ‘Why I have my impractical dreams. Have you ever made a parachute jump?’
    Xas nodded. As ‘The Indian’ he’d had to wear a parachute to perform his soaring stunts. His fellow wing-walkers would have thought it very odd if he’d trusted to skill and timing alone, and there had been times when he’d missed and had to pull the ripcord.
    â€˜I’ve jumped too,’ the man said. ‘A parachute