Wings

Terry Pratchett

Summary

Somewhere in a place so far up there is no down, a ship is waiting to take the nomes home -- back to wherever they came from. With their home in a quarry under threat, one nome -- Masklin -- knows that they've got to find a way of contacting this ship.

It means going to Florida (wherever that is), then getting to the launch of a communications satellite (whatever that is). A ridiculous plan. Impossible. But Masklin doesn't know this so he tries to do it anyway. And the first step is to try and hitch a ride on a new kind of truck, a truck with wings -- Concorde...

He doesn't want to cause any trouble. He only wants to steal one of those space shuttle things. But when you're only four inches high in a world full of humans, things have a nasty habit of getting rather complicated...

Quotes

AIRPORTS: A place where people hurry up and wait.

From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome
by Angalo de Haberdasheri

And there's Angalo. He doesn't believe in Arnold Bros but he likes to think Arnold Bros exists just so that he can go on not believing in him.

I thought jet planes were just trucks with more wings and less wheels.

Thing: "How can I be of assistance?"
Masklin: "Find Grandson Richard Arnold, 39."
Thing: "This will take a long time."
Masklin: "Oh."
Thing: "I have located a Richard Arnold, aged thirty-nine. He has just gone into the first-class departure lounge for flight 205 to Miami, Florida."
Masklin: "That didn't take a very long time."
Thing: "It was three hundred microseconds. That's long."

"This building is full of computers," said the Thing.

"What, like you?"

The Thing managed to look offended. "They are very, very primitive," it said. "But I can understand them. If I think slowly enough. Their job is to know where humans are going."

"That's more than most humans do," said Angalo.

Nomes live ten times faster than humans. They're harder to see than a high-speed mouse.

That's one reason why most humans hardly ever see them.

The other is that humans are very good at not seeing things they know aren't there. And, since sensible humans know that there are no such things as people four inches high, a nome who doesn't want to be seen probably won't be seen.

And there were the frogs.

Very, very small frogs.

They had such a tiny life cycle it still had trainer wheels on it.

And this had been the way things were for as far back as the frogs could remember [Footnote: About three seconds. Frogs don't have good memories].

Masklin: "We aren't going to steal a plane. We're just going for a ride on one, I hope."
Angalo: "Wow!"
Masklin: "And we're not going to try to drive it, Angalo!"
Angalo: "All right. But suppose I'm on it, and the driver becomes ill, then I expect I'll have to take over. I mean, I drove the Truck pretty well--"
Gurder: "You kept running into things!"
Angalo: "I was learning. Anyway, there's nothing to run into in the sky except clouds, and they look pretty soft."
Gurder: "There's the ground!"
Angalo: "Oh, the ground wouldn't be a problem. It'd be too far away."

"You must be properly inside. Where the planes go, the air is thin."

"I should hope so," said Gurder, stoutly. "That's why it's air."

"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."

"Why not?" said Gurder.

"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."

"There are also many computers on this plane," said the Thing.

"Well, that's nice," said Masklin vaguely. "You'll have someone to talk to, then."

"They are quite stupid," said the Thing, and managed to express disdain without actually having anything to express it with.

[The map] had been in a pocket diary, and the names of the faraway places written on it were like magic -- Africa, Australia, China, Equator, Printed in Hong Kong, Iceland...

They stared at the branch. There wasn't just one flower out there, there were dozens, although the frogs weren't able to think like this because frogs can't count beyond one.

They saw lots of ones.

They stared at them. Staring is one of the few things frogs are good at.

Thinking isn't. It would be nice to say that the tiny frogs thought long and hard about the new flower, about life in the old flower, about the need to explore, about the possibility that the world was bigger than a pool with petals around the edge.

In fact, what they thought was: "._._.mipmip._._.mipmip._._.mipmip".

There was a polite beeping from the Thing. "You may be interested to know," it said, "that we've broken the sound barrier."

Masklin turned wearily to the others.

"All right, own up. Who broke it?"

There were human feet out there. Female human feet, by the look of it. They usually were the ones with the less practical shoes.

He didn't even wait to catch his breath. Experience had taught him that it was when you stopped to catch your breath that things caught you.

"You're not supposed to eat it like that," said Gurder severely. "You're not supposed to shove it all in your mouth and cut off whatever won't fit."

Little dishes of strange wobbly stuff tasting of pink turn up in nearly every meal on aeroplanes. No one knows why. There's probably some sort of special religious reason.

"I'm too old for this! There comes a time in a nome's life when he shouldn't crawl around the inside of terrible flying machines!"

"How many times have you done it?"

"Once too often!"

"What are we going to do?" said Gurder.

"We're going to--" Masklin hesitated. The word "rescue" was looming up somewhere in the sentence ahead.

It was a good, dramatic word. He longed to say it. The trouble was that there was another, simpler, nastier word a little further beyond.

It was "How?"

"Used to do this sort of thing when I was a boy," [Gurder] said. "We used to get up to all sorts of tricks. ... Oh, yes. Up and down the lift shafts, in and out of the telephone switchboard..."

"I thought you always said kids spend far too much time running around and getting into mischief these days?"

"Ah. Yes. Well, that's juvenile delinquency," said Gurder sternly. "It's quite different from our youthful high spirits."

"Human talking," muttered Masklin. "I wish we could understand it."

"Very well," said the Thing. "Stand by."

""You can understand human noises?"

"Certainly. They're only nome noises slowed down."

"What? What? You never told us that! You never told us that before!"

"There are many billions of things I have not told you. Where would you like me to start?"

"I don't think humans want to know things that disturb them."

"Sound just like nomes to me," said Gurder.

"We must be as high as all those fluffy white cloud things," he breathed.

"No," said the Thing.

"That's some comfort, then," said Gurder.

"They're all a long way below us."

"What's happening?" said Angalo, as they hurried out into the light.

"The thing is flying us."

"How? It's got no arms. It can't change gear or anything--"

"Apparently it's being bossy to the computers which do all that."

Gurder had gone red. He prodded Maskliner. "Do you expect me to believe," he said, "that Richard Arnold, the grandson of Arnold Bros (est. 1905) has holes in his socks?"

"That'd make them holy socks," said Angalo.

[The frogs] crawled onward. They didn't know the meaning of the word "retreat." Or any other word.

"Very clever idea, though."

"What is?"

"Asking the questions when people arrive. If anyone was coming here to do some subversive overthrowing, everyone'd be down on him like a pound of bricks as soon as he answered 'Yes'."

"It's a sneaky trick, isn't it," said Angalo, in an admiring tone of voice.

-- The nomes encounter American customs

"No, we don't want to do any overthrowing," said Masklin to the Thing. "We just want to steal one of those going-straight-up jets. What are they called again?"

"Space Shuttles."

"Right. And then we'll be off. We don't want to cause any trouble."

"The man with the sign is here to take our human to a hotel. It's a place where humans sleep and are fed. All the rest of it was just the things humans say to each other to make sure that they're still alive."

"What do you mean?" said Masklin.

"They say things like 'How are you?' and 'Have a nice day' and 'What do you think of this weather, then?' What these sounds mean is: I am alive and so are you."

"Could you go out and see if there is something to eat?' he said.

"I've a horrible feeling," said Masklin, "that if I go out there now, there will be something to eat, and it'll be me."

"What's the human singing about, Thing?" said Masklin.

"It is a little difficult to follow. However, it appears that the singer wishes it to be known that he did something his way."

"Did what?"

"Insufficient data at this point. But whatever it was, he did it at a) each step along life's highway and b) not in a shy way..."

"But is it all right to eat Grandson Richard's sandwich?" Masklin added.

Gurder opened his eyes. He blinked.

"That's an important theological point," he muttered. "But I'm too hungry to think about it, so let's eat it first, and then if it turns out to be wrong to eat it, I promise to be very sorry."

FLORIDA (or FLORIDIA): A place where may be found ALLIGATORS, LONG-NECKED TURTLES and SPACE SHUTTLES. An interesting place which is warm and wet and there are geese. BACON, LETTUCE AND TOMATO SANDWICHES may be found here also. A lot more interesting than many other places. The shape when seen from the air is like a bit stuck on a bigger bit.

From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome
by Angalo de Haberdasheri

This is a bit of the continent, sticking out into the warmer sea to the south-east. Most of its inhabitants call it Florida.

Actually, they don't. Most of its inhabitants don't call it anything. They don't even know it exists. Most of them have six legs, and buzz. A lot of them have eight legs and spend a lot of time in webs waiting for six-legged inhabitants to arrive for lunch. Many of the rest have four legs, and bark or moo or even lie in swamps pretending to be logs. In fact, only a tine proportion of the inhabitants of Florida have two legs, and even most of them don't call it Florida. They just go tweet, and fly around a lot.

Mathematically, an almost insignificant amount of living things in Florida call it Florida. But they're the ones who matter. At least, in their opinion. And their opinion is the one that matters. In their opinion.

"It's always embarassing, meeting deities," said Gurder.

"You idiot!" shouted Angalo.

"Me?" said Masklin hotly. "How should I know? Is it my fault? Did I miss a sign at the airport saying 'Welcome to Florida, home of large meat-eating amphibians up to twelve feet long'?"

"If it is alligators," said Gurder, trying to look noble, "I shall show them how a nome can die with dignity."

"Please yourself," said Angalo, his eyes scanning the undergrowth. "I'm planning to show them how a nome can run away with speed."

The meal was some sort of a liazrd. Masklin quite enjoyed it ... The other two ate it only because not eating it would be impolite, and it probably wasn't a good idea to be impolite to people who had spears when you didn't.

As a form of transport, the goose leaves a lot to be desired.

"I don't understand you, Angalo," said Masklin. "You're mad for riding in machines with whirring bits of metal pushing them along, yet you're worried about sitting on a perfectly natural bird."

"That's because I don't understand how birds work," said Angalo. "I've never seen an exploded working diagram of a goose."

Gurder was still arguing with Topknot when they came back.

"How do they manage to keep it up? They don't understand what each other's saying!" said Angalo.

"Best way," said Masklin.

"Geese? Geese? And what do they know about designing for air safety?"

Gurder: "Do they have smoked salmon on [Space] Shuttles?"
Angalo: "No, they don't. I remember reading about it in a book. They eat out of tubes."
Gurder: "What, toothpaste?"
Angalo: "No, not toothpaste. Of course not toothpaste. I'm sure not toothpaste."
Gurder: "Well, what else do you know that comes out of tubes?"
Angalo: "Glue?"
Gurder: "Doesn't sound a good meal to me. Toothpaste and glue?"
Angalo: "The people who drive the space jets must like it. They were all smiling in the picture I saw."
Gurder: "That wasn't smiling, that was just probably them trying to get their teeth apart."

SATELLITES: They are in SPACE and stay there by going so fast that they are never in one place enough to fall down. TELEVISIONS are bounced off them. They are part of SCIENCE.

From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome
by Angalo de Haberdasheri

"Is it dead?" said Gurder.

"It can't die! It's existed for thousands of years!"

Gurder shook his head. "Sounds like a good reason for dying," he said.

Pion, who had disappeared into the scrub, came back dragging a lizard.

"Ah," said Gurder, without any enthusiasm. "Here comes lunch."

"If the Thing was talking we could tell Pion you can get awfully tired of lizard, in time," said Angalo.

"In about two seconds," said Gurder.

Beyond the top of the sky was the place the Thing had called the universe. It contained -- according to the Thing -- everything and nothing. And there was very little everything and more nothing than anyone could imagine.

...it was often said that the sky was full of stars. It was untrue. The sky was full of sky. There were unlimited amounts of sky and really, by comparison, very few stars.

Masklin looked up at dozens of staring faces. He could see every eyeball, every nostril. Every one of them looked worried. At least, every eyeball did. The nostrils just looked like nostrils.

SCIENCE: A way of finding things out and then making them work. Science explains what is happening around us the whole time. So does RELIGION, but science is better because it comes up with more understandable excuses when it is wrong. There is a lot more Science than you think.

From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome
by Angalo de Haberdasheri

"All kinds of experts are rushing here to have a look at you."

"What kind of experts? Experts in nomes?"

"Experts in talking to creatures from other worlds. Humans haven't met anyone from another world but they've still got experts in talking to them."

"They think you have just arrived."

"Well, that's true."

"Not arrived here. Arrived on the planet. Arrived from the stars."

"But we've been here for thousands of years! We live here!"

"Humans find it a lot easier to really believe in little people from the sky than little people from the Earth. They would prefer to think of little green men than leprechauns."

"What is that?"

"Oh, fruits and nuts and meat and stuff," said Masklin. "I think they've been watching me to see what I eat. I think these are quite bright humans, Thing. I pointed to my mouth and they understood I was hungry."

"Ah," said the Thing. "Take me to your larder."

Their name for everything was ".-.-mipmip.-.-.", and when you're stuck with a vocabulary of one word, it's pretty hard to have legends about anything at all.

"It says here that these jeans won a gold medal in the Chicago Exhibition in 1910," he said. "They've certainly lasted well."

"So that's the head human, is it? Is it some sort of extra-wise one, or something."

"I don't think so. The other humans around it are trying to explain to it what a planet is."

"Doesn't it know?"

"Many humans don't. Mistervicepresident is one of them."

-- Bet he spells "potato" with an "e", too

"All the way to Florida to be squashed under our own Ship," moaned Angalo. "You never really believed in it, did you? Well, now you're going to believe in it real hard!"

The human's expression froze.

"What did you say? What did you say?" said Masklin.

"I said, if he harms you in any way I shall explode and blow his head off," said the Thing.

"You didn't!"

"I did."

"You call that communicating?"

"I call it very effective communicating."

The Ship spoke, loudly.

To the humans, it must have sounded like a high-pitched chattering.

What it actually said was: "Sorry! Sorry! Is this a microphone? Can't find the button that opens the door ... let's try this one..."

"He wants to drive the Ship," it said.

"You're a machine! You have to do what you're told!" snapped Angalo.

"I'm an intelligent machine, and I don't want to end up very flat at the bottom of a deep hole," said the Thing.

"Thing, are you telling us you don't know the way back to the quarry?" said Gurder.

"That is correct."

"We're lost?"

"No. I know exactly what planet we're on," said the Thing.

"Flexible? Flexible? My mind's so flexible I could pull it out of my ears and tie it under my chin!" snapped Gurder.

This is a planet. Most of it is covered in water but it's still called Earth.

Some parts of the world had night while other parts had day. This, Gurder said, was bad organization.

"All right," said Masklin. "But you're not to fly down low again and try to read the signposts. Every time you do that, humans rush into the streets and we get lots of shouting on the radio."

"That's right," said the Thing. "People are bound to get excited when they see a ten-million-ton starship trying to fly down the street."

"Can't the Thing send a message to the Concorde drivers?" asked Gurder. "Something like, 'Don't worry, we haven't got any teeth and tentacles, guaranteed'?"

"They probably wouldn't believe us," said Angalo. "If I had teeth and tentacles all over the place that's just the sort of message I'd send."

"Follow the tracks," he said urgently. "And quickly!"

"Quickly? Quickly? Do you know how difficult it is to make this thing go slowly?"

"Can you get to it before they do?"

Angalo narrowed his eyes. "Listen, I think we can get to it before they do even if we go via Florida."

[Grimma] was muddy, her dress torn, her hair looked like it had been combed with a hedge, but she crackled with so much internal power that she was nearly throwing off sparks.

"You'd think one world would be big enough for all of us," said Grimma.

"Oh, I don't know," said Masklin. "Maybe one world isn't big enough for anyone."

"Where are we heading, Angalo?"

Angalo rubbed his hands and pulled every lever right back.

"So far up," he said, with satisfaction, "that there is no down."