"That's because I don't understand how birds work," said Angalo. "I'venever seen an exploded working diagram of a goose."
"The geese are the reason the Floridians have never bad much to do withhumans," the Thing continued. "As I said, their language is almostoriginal nomisb."
"Yes, and I still don't understand that," said Masklin. "I mean, nomesought to speak the same language, yes?"
"No. You remember that I told you once that nomes used to be able to talkto humans, and taught them languages?"
"Yes?" said Masklin.
"And then the humans changed the language, over hundreds of years. Nameswho lived near humans changed too. But the Floridians never had much todo with humans, so their form of the language is still very much as itused to be."
Shrub was watching them carefully. There was something about the way shewas treating them that still seemed odd to Masklin. It wasn't that shehadn't been afraid of them, or aggressive, or unpleasant.
"She's not surprised," he said aloud. "She's interested, but she's notsurprised. They were upset because we were here, not because we existed.
How many other nomes has she met?'"
The Thing had to translate.
It was a word that Masklin had only known for a year.
Thousands.
The leading tree frog was trying to wrestle with a new idea. It was very dimly aware that it needed a new type of thought.
There had been the world, with the pool in the middle and the petals around the edge. One.
But farther along the branch was another world. From here it looked tantalizingly like the flower they had left. One.
The leading frog sat in a clump of moss and swiveled each eye so that it could see both worlds at the same time. One there. And one there.
One. And one.
The frog's forehead bulged as it tried to get its mind around a new idea.
One and one were one. But if you had one here and one there ...
The other frogs watched in bewilderment as their leader's eyes whizzed around and around.
One here and one there couldn't be one. They were too far apart. You needed a word that meant both ones. You needed to say ... you needed to say ...
The frog's mouth widened. It grinned so broadly that both ends almost met behind its head.
It had worked it out.
... mipmip ... ! it said.
It meant: One. And One More One!
Gurder was still arguing with Topknot when they got back.
"How do they manage to keep it up? They don't understand what each other's saying!" said Angalo.
"Best way," said Masklin. "Gurder? We're ready to go. Come on."
Gurder looked up. He was very red in the face. The two of them were crouched either side of a mass of scrawled diagrams in the dirt.
"I need the Thing!" he said. "This idiot refuses to understand anything!"
"You won't win any arguments with him," said Masklin. "Shrub says he argues with all the other nomes they meet. He likes to."
"What other nomes?" said Gurder.
"There's nomes everywhere, Gurder. That's what Shrub says. There's other groups even in Floridia. And-and-and in Canadia, where the Floridians go in the summer. There were probably even other nomes back home! We just never found them!"
He pulled the Abbot to his feet.
"And we haven't got a lot of time left," he added.
"I'm not going up on one of those things!"
The geese gave Gurder a puzzled look, as if he were an unexpected frog in their waterweed.
"I'm not very happy about it either," said Masklin, "but Shrub's people do it all the time. You just snuggle down in the feathers and hang on."
"Snuggle?" shouted Gurder. "I've never snuggled in my life!"
"You rode on the Concorde," Angalo pointed out. "And that was built and driven by humans."
Gurder glared like someone who wasn't going to give in easily.
"Well, who built the geese?" he demanded.
Angalo grinned at Masklin, who said: "What? Dunno. Other geese, I expect."
"Geese? Geese? And what do they know about designing for air safety?"
"Listen," said Masklin, "They can take us all the way across this place.
The Floridians fly thousands of miles on them. Thousands of miles, without even any smoked salmon or pink wobbly stuff. It's worth tryingit for eighteen miles, isn't it?"
Gurder hesitated. Topknot muttered something.
Gurder cleared his throat.
"Very well," he said haughtily. "I'm sure if this misguided individual is in the habit of flying on these things, I should have no difficultywhatsoever." He stared up at the gray shapes bobbing out in the lagoon.
"Do the Floridians talk to the creatures?"
The Thing tried this on Shrub. She shook her head. No, she said, geesewere quite stupid. Friendly but stupid. Why talk to something thatcouldn't talk back?
"Have you told her what we're doing?" said Masklin.
"No. She hasn't asked."
"How do we get on?"
Shrub stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled.
Half a dozen geese waddled up the bank. Close up, they didn't look any smaller. "I remember reading something about geese once," said Gurder, in a sort of dreamy terror. "It said they could break a human's arm with a blow of their nose."
"Wing," said Angalo, looking up at the feathery gray bodies looming over him. "It was their wing."
"And it was swans that do that," said Masklin, weakly. "Geese are the ones you mustn't say boo to."
Gurder watched a long neck weave back and forth above him.
"Wouldn't dream of it," he said.
A long time after, when Masklin came to write the story of his life, hedescribed the flight of the geese as the fastest, highest, and mostterrifying of all.
People said, Hold on, that's not right. You said the plane went so fastthat it left its sound behind, and so high up there was blue all aroundit.
And he said, That's the point. It went so fast you didn't know how fastit was going, it went so high you couldn't see how high it was. It wasjust something that happened. And the Concorde looked as though it wasmeant to fly. When it was on the ground it looked kind of lost.
The geese, on the other hand, looked as aerodynamic as a pillow. Theydidn't roll into the sky and sneer at the clouds like the plane did. No, they ran across the top of the water and hammered desperately at theair with their wings and then, just when it was obvious they weren'tgoing to achieve anything, they suddenly did; the water dropped away, andthere was just the slow creak of wings pulling the goose up into the sky.
Masklin would be the first to admit that he didn't understand about jetsand engines and machines, so maybe that was why he didn't worry abouttraveling in them. But he thought he knew a thing or two about muscles, and the knowledge that it was only a couple of big muscles that werekeeping him alive was not comforting.
Each traveler shared a goose with one of the Floridians. They didn't doany steering, as far as Masklin could see. That was all done by Shrub, who sat far out on the neck of the leading goose. He never found out howshe steered. Maybe by orders in some language the geese and the geesenomes shared. Maybe by little movements. Maybe (according to Angalo) bysome sort of Science. It was a mystery. But then-he told himself-Shrubprobably wouldn't know how to drive a truck. She'd probably be veryimpressed, he told himself. That made him feel a bit better.
The ones behind Shrub's bird followed their leader in a perfect V shape.
Masklin buried himself in the feathers. It was comfortable, if a bitcold. Floridians, he learned later, had no difficulty sleeping on aflying goose. The mere thought made Masklin's hands sweat.
He peered out just long enough to see distant trees sweeping by much toofast, and stuck his head down again.
"How long have we got, Thing?" he said.
"I estimate arrival in the vicinity of the launch pad one hour fromlaunch."