It was sometime around June or July or maybe even August that Ella (airship captain: I mentioned her earlier) took me up in her ship that one time. It was a clear day, plenty warm, and there was only a little bit of a breeze, so everyone—Ella an' me included—figured it would be just the perfect one to go on up, an' to let loose the mooring lines, an' float free for a while. As we walked on down the docks that day (my Papa was at work at the time, doin' construction on the big city clock tower, an' he didn't know that I'd snuck out to go hang around with Ella that day; it was always easy to get out when he wasn't there), well, as we walked, ery'one around us, they waved hello, an' how do you do, an' they'd reach down to pet Rusty, an' every once in a while, one o' them, an' these were big tough guys, mind you, but they were real good at heart, every once in a while, one of them would reach out to ruffle my hair.
Well, we finally got to her airship, and there she was, up above, quivering gently in the light wind. And, boy, she was a sight. A real beautiful one, too. Now, she—her name was Majesty, and so was written on her right and left flanks, in looping gold letters—was one of the prettiest airships I'd ever seen (and, truth be told, probably ever will). The Majesty was mostly wood, but her gasbag was, well, it looked like canvas, to tell the truth, but to the touch, it was much lighter, much more resilient, and, well, airtight, but that's beside the point. She was a good ninety yards long, in total, and maybe another thirty across. Well, she had this canopy, too, this golden-brown time-worn leather-like canopy. It was strung up (Ella did it herself, with my help, that is, with mine and Rusty's) over the main deck area, and it turned out to be real nice, cause as it turned out, when the weather was rotten an' somethin' needed fixin' on deck, it was a real good thing to have around. See, the canopy was strung over the main deck, an' behind that deck (the canopy covered them, too) were the engines. Now these were huge copper things that t' tell the truth were far too bulky to be that practical, but practicality wasn't exactly Ella's concern when it came to the Majesty. Sure, she wanted her to work just fine, but there was somethin' about the way she looked, too, that mattered to Ella. Somethin' about the appearances that just had to be kept up in her mind. The Majesty was real beautiful, yes, an' I came to love her over time, though I suppose I hated her too. That day that we went up, well, it was the last for a long time that we were safe.
See, first Ella went up (she always went first), and then Rusty (he always went second, an' she pulled him up with a little pulley), and then it was me. See, the only was up was by climbin' this long rickety rope ladder that frightened me half to death at first, but that was before I got used to it. So I climbed all the way up, up to the Majesty's lower deck, through the little hatch to get inside, and then there we were, and Ella was pulling up the mooring lines, an' we were floatin' free. Well there was a complication, you see. There's always a complication.
We didn't expect to go far, that day. We sure didn't want to, anyway. Ella figured we'd be blown a couple o miles away (an' she steered us out of the docks, see, so we didn't bump into any of the other airships moored there), an' then we'd go right back an' climb down, an' I'd be back at the house before anyone knew I was gone (except for Ella, that is, but she and I had an agreement: she'd take me up, and I'd help her fix up the Majesty—I always was handy with mechanics, an' the Majesty could certainly use a bit of maintenance now and then—and neither of us would say a thing about the whole arrangement). Now, you see, none of it happened as expected. No sir, it went far beyond that, and the whole thing got right well out of our hands. And that, as it turned out, was a problem. A big one.
See, we went up, and she steered us away from the docks, and set the Majesty on some self-regulating type mode so she wouldn't start up an' fly us all the way to the Asian Wastelands, and all was well and good for a short while, an' we went up on deck, an' looked out, held onto the railing, an' admired the mountains, an' the long waving grass, an' didn't mind a thing in the world. Well, we went back down inside for lunch awhile later, an' there we were again, sittin' in the dining hall at first, at that big old mahogany table of hers that really was too heavy for the Majesty, but according to Ella, had 'sentimental value.' Well, just a little bit later, we decided it was far too formal for just the two of us (I mean, we weren't too good of friends, but she was nice to me, and she'd let me come up in her airship after all, hadn't she?), so we went to the main room, where we sat on the rubber-linen (Ella said it had been developed just special for the military men out there fighting the war, said it was real good for covering up bullet holes in blimps an' zeppelins and whatever other war machines they flew out there that had a gasbag), well we sat on that rubber-linen carpet in there that covered up the hard cold metal floor.
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The Mechanical War
Phiêu lưu"Papa said that the war would end soon. Said that we'd get milk and butter and cream and crisp red apples right off the tree. That the skies would clear and planes would stop passing by so often. But Papa was wrong. The skies never cleared, and I ne...
