Stephen Baxter by Traces

Author:Traces
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-01-04T11:22:46+00:00

‘Why, Bill?’

Bill Frost straightened up from the gondola, kneading the muscles at the base of his spine; the coals of his pipe glowed. ‘Why what?’

‘Why fly?’

With one hand resting against the flank of his machine, Bill looked across the fold of the Bay, to the north. ‘Well, I’ll tell you, then,’ he said. ‘It was many years ago. I was quite a young lad still, but already in the trade. I was working up at Hean then, too, as it happens.

‘I’d just cut a plank of pine, and I was carrying it, see, across the front of Hean. Suddenly there was a wind—a gust, really, straight up off the Bay. Well, it picked up that plank, with me clinging to it, and lifted us both straight up into the air, I swear by five or six feet or more. And then it let me down, as gentle as you like.’

He turned to Jimmy, his eyes deepened by the gloom. ‘So there you are. I’ve flown once already, you see. And it was such a bloody marvellous feeling, I said to myself, “Why, I want to do that again”.’ He slapped the solid flank of his machine. ‘And that’s what this is all about.’

Jimmy shook his head. ‘But, Bill, you don’t know anything about flying. You don’t have any scientific education.’

‘Neither did that plank, I reckon,’ Bill said. ‘And neither do the seagulls that wheel around the Bay. You don’t need science to fly. All you need is a wind to lift you, and a way to catch the wind. And I knew I had the hands, the craft to do it.’ He smiled. ‘So this machine is part seagull, and part furniture, you see. Just like me, I suppose.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’m as scientific as you like. I’ve got a Patent, you know.’

‘You’re joking.’

Bill looked shocked. ‘Never. And there’s my letter from the War Office. Do you want to see?’

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