Aeon Eleven Read online

  “Do you know how much it costs for a fighter plane to take off, fly around and land again?” He didn’t wait for Papa to answer. “A bit more than a million dollars. Then it is out of commission until any parts that have been vibrated out of working order are fixed. It costs more, of course, if they happen to fire one of those missiles. They prefer to send out their planes when they know there’s a good reason.”

  “That is what the satellites are for,” said Papa. “They have cameras and computers that can count the spots on a cheetah.”

  “Ah, but no one has said ‘we do not need you, we have satellites.’” He tapped a screen with a knuckle. “Perhaps if there is cloud cover, satellite angels go blind.”

  “So do you.”

  “No. We have many sensors, and large, powerful computers. We can see through clouds or oceans or walls.” He swiveled around again to look at us. “We can carry good equipment, because there are no vibrations to hurt it. We stay up for very long times, not just for a plane, but even a long time among airships. That’s because we have Death-Eye. There are maybe a hundred Spiders, but Death-Eye is our own angel, special for us.”

  The captain glanced up when he said that, but I already knew Death-Eye was walking on top.

  Everything sounds different on a working airship. There’s no sound of traffic or birdsong or even wind, since the captain preferred to “air steer” by raising or lowering the ship until he hit an air current heading in the right direction. The biggest differences, though, were the sounds of the ship itself. When Death-Eye walked on top, the whole ship grunted; when he went up or down a cable, it muttered and hummed.

  Later that same evening, not long after the lights came on, Mama came out of the bedroom-box where she’d been with Manu. She looked around at the bright room and the people sitting in chairs and at the table. She laughed and came over to Papa and me.

  “I was thinking that I’d have to stay hiding with Manu until we arrived in Yamoussoukro, but maybe not.”

  “He is calmer now.” Papa said. “I knew he would be.”

  “It is that the windows are all reflections,” she said. “Now it is night, he cannot see how high we are.”

  Mama glanced around at the people in the room. Everyone was looking at her. People always look at Mama because she’s always so happy and pretty.

  “Please,” she said, “little Manu has a great fear of tall places. Please do not mention that we are flying, that we are so high.” Death-Eye nodded and she smiled at him. When she turned to Ms. Goldblum, though, the woman shook her head so sharply that her short blond hair lifted sideways.

  “Nope, not me. Why would you tell that kid we’re on the ground when we’re not?” She frowned. “He knows where he is.”

  “Yes, he does,” replied Mama. “I do not lie to my children and I am glad that you believe truth is best. But when they can do nothing about a thing, a frightening thing, I do not call attention to it. That would be cruel, yes?” Mama held her hand, palm up, toward the woman. “You are a good woman, I know, and I think you agree with me.”

  Ms. Goldblum’s frown increased. “I won’t say anything about the height to him.”

  The captain tilted his head to one side. “I hesitate to mention that children who stay up late become unhappy, and loudly so.”

  “During the day, we’ll sleep.”

  “Oh come now, Adanech,” said Papa. “If he sees we are high but never fall, he will learn not to be afraid.”

  “Like you know when to be afraid, smart guy?” Ms. Goldblum’s eyebrow’s pinched together. “You trust too much; you don’t ask questions. At least you do what you’re told.”

  Papa looked shocked and the captain laughed.

  “You don’t know me,” said Papa. “I make decisions, that’s what I do. That’s what I’m paid to do, every day.”

  “If you had even the slightest hint of what world you’re in, you would have kissed this ship when we pulled you in.”

  “I am only trying to say,” said Papa, turning away from her to address the others, “that my son can learn not to be afraid. When he sees Mr. Death-Eye here….”

  Death-Eye pointed to his own chest. “Am Mario.”

  Papa continued, “…sees Mr. Mario not falling, he will learn that he won’t fall.”

  Ms. Goldblum rubbed her head. “But he will. That’s what Spiders do. They crawl around and fix things until one day they fall and die.”

  “Oh.” Mama looked at Death-Eye. “Oh, that’s not good.”

  “Am okay,” he said to her with a shy smile. “No fall.”

  “Maybe not you,” said Ms. Goldblum. “With you, there’s actually a good chance you’ll get shot instead.” She crossed her arms in front of her, uncrossed them, and then suddenly went over to her bedroom box, slid open the door and crawled in. She looked out. “That eye of yours? There’s no way you’ve got depth perception. Gunman or lineman, either way, don’t save for retirement.”

  She slid the door closed. It smacked shut with a loud crack.

  Papa stared at the little door and then turned to the captain. “I think she must be difficult to work with.”

  “She is an extremely observant woman. That’s what she’s paid to do, every day,” the captain said. He glanced at his watch, then went and tapped on another small door. “Goldblum’s gone to ground,” he said loudly. “Shift change in half an hour.”

  He turned back to Papa and winked. “But mostly we don’t talk to her much.”

  Mama was still looking at Death-Eye. He fidgeted a little under her gaze, glancing away and back again. He reached into his pocket and offered her a piece of gum.

  “Am okay,” he repeated.

  “That’s a goat.”

  I pointed at something else on the screen. Ms. Goldblum said, “That’s another goat.” She hadn’t even looked.

  Her large monitor displayed a confusing mess of grays, dark and light. I’d noticed there were little white marks, like grains of rice, scattered throughout it. Only they weren’t rice, apparently they were goats.

  The airship carried no entertainment, beyond a few worn decks of cards, to capture the interest of a ten-year old. My mother and Manu slept during the day and only came out after sunset; my father read the news and took naps. The first few days were a desert of boredom, but then I realized that against all expectation, Ms. Goldblum not only didn’t mind answering questions, her opinion of me rose the more I asked. When Papa told me to quit pestering her, she snapped at him not to poison me with his “culture of ignorance.”

  “That one’s too big to be a goat,” I said, pointing to an unusually large white speck. “Is it a cow?”

  “No cows down there.” She pushed a button and the monitor flashed a video image of the ground. “Mmm. That’s three goats. Go figure.”

  “Why don’t you keep the real picture on?” I asked. “So you can see what things are?”

  “‘Cause I don’t care what things are. I’m only interested in what’s there that wasn’t there earlier. The closer our current scan is to previous scans, the darker the wash. So unless a goat is standing in exactly the same place as previous image pickups, it shows as white. Rocks don’t show up at all. Grass moves a little, so it’s gray.”

  “How often do you take pictures?” I asked. I could tell she thought it was a good question because she almost looked at me. She never looked at anyone when she talked.

  “Us? Not often. Maybe every month or two. We correlate our info with satellite data to stay accurate.”

  “So what are those?” I pointed to a larger, bright white blur beginning to come into view on the edge of the screen. There were similar smudges nearby, about the same size but fainter.

  “Don’t know.” She flickered the video again, and I saw it was a car stopped on a road. She suddenly got busy, turning other monitors on and punching buttons.

  “It’s a car,” I told her, trying to be helpful.

  “Yes, it is.” She nodded. “So are the others, only they�
��re hidden off road. Looks like they’ve been hidden for a few days. Dead, hidden cars are not good. Captain?”

  Normally she called him Gabriel. When she said “captain,” he looked up quickly.

  “Don’t know for sure yet,” she said, “but I think we’ve got pirates.”

  I stared harder at the screen, trying to see what she saw. “Really? Where?”

  “Ah, now that is interesting,” he said, and turned back to his screen. “I will check the local news net.” Papa opened his eyes and yawned.

  As the images slowly crawled from the edge of the screen, two bright white dots appeared at the edge. They weren’t like the rice spots. I started to point them out, but she’d already seen them and flicked the video.

  “Well now, those must be the passengers. Looks like they think they’ll just walk the rest of the way. Well, they can try. The nearest civilization is more than 70 kilometers away, through pirate territory to boot.” She pushed down a little black lever and said, “Deadeye, you should come in.”

  She shook her head and made a face. “Idiots. They shouldn’t have driven alone in the first place. What do they think trains are for?”

  “Not everyone is as distrustful as you,” said Papa. She rubbed her nose but didn’t say anything.

  The ship made a little hum as Death-Eye lowered himself onto the balcony. He detached the ascenders and moved his patch from his forehead to his eye before he came in. He smiled down at me and I smiled back. He looked at Ms. Goldblum’s screen and said, “Eh?”

  The captain said, “They contacted the police at Greenfield Station a short time ago. It seems their front tires were blown.”

  Ms. Goldblum said, “Both front tires? Oh yeah. These guys are in big trouble.”

  “You are most likely right,” the captain nodded at her. “There have been some disappearances, it seems. Dunkwa has sent a sheriff. In a helicopter.” He tilted his head. “ETA is a little under 30 minutes.”

  “Pirates on dry land?” asked Papa. “I don’t think you understand the word. What do these ‘pirates’ do?”

  “It is not my word,” said the captain. “As for what they do, it varies by the level of sophistication or desperation of the individual. They nearly all set traps to catch unlucky travelers. Some will return the victims for money, some will simply kill everyone and take what they can find in the vehicle. A few will kill only the men, and sell any women or children. But of course, there is help on the way. Perhaps the sheriff will arrive in time?” It was a question to Ms. Goldblum.

  “Mmm,” she said, looking at all her screens, twisting dials to make the image on the screen pull away and move around. “Ah, not today. Enter the villains from upstage right.” She pointed to a white patch, kind of squarish, moving down from the upper part of the screen.

  “Ah, too bad,” said the captain. “Too close. That’s fifteen minutes away, maybe ten.”

  Death-Eye raised his eyebrows, and glanced from the captain to Ms. Goldblum. He rubbed the edge of his eye patch with a fingertip and looked sad.

  “Well, what are you going to do?” demanded Papa.

  “I do not plan to do anything,” responded the captain, his voice low and steady. “My ship is not built for this sort of rescue. We have excellent camouflage ability: radar blockers, luminescent and matte dynamic emulators. We even have little lights on the skin to make us look like a starry sky. We are hard to notice…if you are not aware we are overhead. If someone is looking for a camouflaged airship, though…there we are. We are not invisible. And if someone wants us dead, Jawara, it only takes one missile. Many, many bullets, but only one missile.”

  He shook his head. “I do not want a reputation among pirates as an enemy. As long as desperate men do not understand us, or what we do, they will not see us as a threat. They will leave us alone.”

  “If you watch those people be killed,” Papa said, waving one hand at the monitors, “you will be a murderer yourself.”

  “Ah, no. Murder is a legal term,” said the captain, tapping his chin with a finger. “And it is not a simple thing, to look at something and know what it is. Yes, I think those are pirates, coming to kill the innocent people. What if they are not? Perhaps they are biologists. Maybe they are out studying wildlife in the veldt and have heard the car’s distress signal. They could be rushing to help.”

  “Doubtful,” muttered Ms. Goldblum. She twiddled the dials some more. After a few seconds she said softly, “Oh, shit. God stand between them.”

  “What?” said Papa. He was trying to push himself up in the inflated chair, but couldn’t.

  “I found children.” She stood up and changed to another chair, father down. Death-Eye made a soft sound and stared at the screens as Ms. Goldblum started typing at a keyboard. “They’ve hidden two kids off the road. They’re hard to see: I can’t tell if they’re under scrub, or partly covered. Shit. That’s why the adults are heading down the road. It’s a distraction.” She rubbed her forehead. “Might work. Morons. Driving kids across hell and gone. Damn them.”

  She pushed a button and pulled a memory tab out of a slot. Without looking at anyone she held it up in her fingers. “There are four guys in that jeep.”

  I was surprised at what happened next. The captain leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. He said, “Four it is, then, if you must. It has to be all four.” I didn’t understand what he meant.

  Death-Eye took the little plastic tab from Ms. Goldblum. She stood up and started to leave but the captain said, “Mind your station.” She came back, turned all her monitors off and then went straight to the bathroom. I heard her lock it.

  Death-Eye went over to the door, and I thought he was going outside, but instead he opened a tall, thin cupboard between the door and the window. He pushed his eye patch up onto his forehead, then took a little box that rattled and put it in his pocket. Next he picked up the rifle and a small metal cylinder and snapped them together. He took out a little screen smaller than his hand and plugged it into the side of the gun. He slid the plastic memory tab into the side of the screen, and in a few seconds a green light began to blink.

  When he started to leave, Papa said, “Can you really do something from this high?”

  He stopped and turned. He looked at Papa with both eyes and then at the gun. He lifted the rifle with its little screen, as if to see how heavy it was, and shrugged. He glanced up, just for a moment.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Ah, Jawara, you should not pester my Spider,” said Captain Bhengu. “He is a busy man.”

  Death-Eye put on an oxygen canister and left the cabin. Papa told me not to watch him walk around on the balcony but to get the cards so we could play a game.

  “I am glad you understand how these things are done, my friend,” said the captain. He was still leaning back with his eyes closed. “Good.”

  We listened to Death-Eye move on the balcony for a while. Instead of getting the cards, I climbed up next to Papa and he held me close. After a while the captain spoke again.

  “Do you know why I call him Death-Eye?” he asked conversationally. “My crew, they do not say it right. They call him Deadeye because he is very good with a gun. It is an old phrase for one who never misses the target, yes? They tell me I am saying it wrong.” He laughed. “But that is how he was introduced to me, many years ago. I was in the airport when an old woman pulls my sleeve. She points to a very tall young man and tells me I should hire him to work on my airship. ‘Do not be frightened of his eye,’ she says to me, ‘he is a man of good heart and strong soul.’”

  Outside I heard two rocks being struck together four times. The captain only paused for a second before continuing.

  “She tells me that when the Death God wishes to have a window to the living world, he chooses the kindest, most gentle soul being born, and trades him eye for eye. So I should be quick to hire him, she says, because I know that he is kind and good…and god-touched… that everything he sees, Death keeps s
afe.”

  The Spider came in with his eye patch still pushed up and walked across to the captain’s office. He closed the door, and a moment later the curtains slid across the windows. The captain smiled.

  “So I hire him to fly with me. Later I find out that the old woman is only his grandmother worrying that he will not get a job. She has as many stories about his blue eye as she has chances to think them up. Still, I very much like the story as she told it to me.”

  “It is a good tale,” agreed Papa. His arm around me in a quick hug.

  “It is better than that.” The captain opened his eyes and leaned forward. “Much better and much truer than that.”

  That’s when Ms. Goldblum walked out of the bathroom, flinging the door open like she was angry at it. She crossed her arms over her chest, and flickered her gaze over the room without actually looking at anyone. “Fine,” she announced. “I’d kill for a cup of tea. Who else wants some?”

  When we finally arrived in Yamoussoukro Military Port, there was an ambulance waiting on the tarmac to take Papa to the hospital. I’d meant to say goodbye to everyone, but at the end they were all so busy that I didn’t have a chance to do it properly. People kept moving around and doing things and suddenly Papa was in the ambulance and Mama was saying we had to go.

  Instead of leaving, I ran. I ran all the way around the bottom of the airship as it swayed and grunted until I saw the Spider standing at a place where a cable was tied to a big metal loop that stuck out of the ground. When he saw me, he smiled and pulled the eye patch down over his eye. I went over to him. I wanted to hug him goodbye, but I wasn’t sure how. He was so tall.

  Solemnly he pulled a packet from his shirt pocket and offered me a piece of gum, but instead of taking it I pulled on his sleeve. He bent down a little, and I pulled some more until he bent down a little further.

  I was so embarrassed that my skin was prickly all over. To my own surprise instead of giving him a hug, I reached up and tugged off his eye patch. The elastic stretched as it came off his head and ruffled his curly hair, and suddenly I was looking at the pale, pointy center of the ice-blue eye.