The dozen warriors converged on the Bridge. They wielded branches hacked from cow-trees, their miraculous meat buds smashed away. To Allel, watching from above, the crude clubs were symbols of the depressing symmetry of humanity’s rise and fall.
The Bridge was a gleaming parabola plastered with teepees. From the teepees defending warriors emerged, grubby and yelling, brandishing rocks and clubs. Blood splashed over the seamless carriageway. But soon it was hard to separate the two sides, but Allel could see that as before the attackers were being driven away.
The breeze picked up and the great balloon over her creaked into motion, its stitched bark straining. The canvas sling chafed her armpits, and she tended the alcohol burners clustered like berries just above her head. The balloon wallowed in the air. Soon its load would be lighter, she thought, uncertain of her feelings.
Her shadow drifted over the melee, touching fighters, men and women alike, who wriggled together like blood-soaked termites. They looked up in fear or anticipation. She took a small alcohol lamp, one of a cluster tied to her belt. She lit the lamp, cut its cord with her stone knife, and dropped the lamp delicately into the defenders’ muddled line. The lamp flared into flame; a toy man ran screaming, his shirt a torch. Another lamp, and another. Cries of anger sailed up at her, followed by whirling clubs. No weapons could reach her, and she dropped her lamps. Then the defenders’ line broke and the battle surged across the Bridge. Teepees crumpled, and old folk screamed. Allel thought she heard her mother shout in triumph.
Her lamps gone, Allel dropped the pouch and the balloon rose further. She stared up at the Shell’s complex tapestry and waited for a breeze to take her home.
She found the teepee’s air filled with her mother’s sweat and dirt. Boyd’s left wrist was a stump of torn blood vessels and shattered bone. It had been cauterized; now Lantil bathed it with milk and tears. Boyd took Allel’s forearm in a grip that pulsed with pain. “Daughter! Your damn bag of smoke worked…”
Allel tugged gently, wanting only to be released. “Yes. And now you’ll have to help me build a real machine to cross the Gap.”
Lantil pushed at Allel’s chest, his liver-spotted hand fluttering like a bird. “You should be ashamed to speak to her that way. Can’t you see she’s hurt?”
But Allel kept her gaze locked with her mother’s.
Slowly Boyd grinned. “Won’t give up, will you? Determined to prove me wrong. All right. On one condition.”
“What?”
“Take me, too. I’ve done my job here; maybe I want to see the Shell people, too… ah…”
The pain silenced her. Lantil pulled his daughter’s blood-spattered head against his chest.
Allel loosened her mother’s grasp, and went to her pallet to start her plans. She lay with her face to the bark wall.
The whole village turned out for the launch. They nudged each other and pointed out panels on the balloon which they themselves had helped stitch, forgetting Boyd’s five years of bullying.
Impeded by their harnesses, Boyd and Allel labored at the bellows-like fuel pumps. The great bark envelope filled slowly, throwing swollen shadows in the flat morning light. Allel eyed the low Sun warily. They’d timed their flight to avoid a collision — fantastic though such a prospect seemed. But, she had reasoned doggedly, the Shell was behind the Sun. They were going to fly to the Shell. Therefore they could hit the Sun, and had to navigate to avoid it.
Her harness twitched twice, as if coming awake — and then, with a surprising surge, lifted her. The ground tilted away. People gave a ragged cheer and children chased the balloon’s shadow. Boyd roared and waved her good hand at them. Her crippled arm was lashed to the rigging. “We’re off, daughter!” she bellowed.
The landscape opened out and swallowed up the huddled villagers. To the north the Atad river curved into view, and beyond the site of their old home Allel could see the glaciers prowling the horizon.
She felt she was floating into a great silent box. The balloon’s throat occluded the Shell’s upside-down clouds. She hoisted herself into the rigging to tend the burners, prizing the stubby wicks from the resin-soaked barrels of alcohol. Gritty sweat soaked her eyes. She’d insisted they both wear quilted coats despite Boyd’s protests; she remembered the frozen ice-blue bird she’d found on Hafen’s Hill on another summer day, five years ago.
And sure enough, not many minutes later the dampness at her neck chilled and dried. Her breath caught and soon grew labored. “Even the damn air has a Gap here,” growled Boyd. “But you know, this harness isn’t chafing so much as it did.”
Allel, too, felt oddly light; she had a sensation of falling. But they rose smoothly into blue silence. Soon they were miles up; clouds dissolved as they passed into them. Their world collapsed to a Shell-like map, shutting them out; above and below became symmetrical and Allel’s stomach lurched.
Their rate of ascent slowed. The breeze in the rigging grew softer. The craft lumbered, unstable.
“What now?” demanded Boyd uneasily. “Watch the burners.”
“Yes. I wonder if — ah. The burners! Quick!”
The balloon was collapsing.
They worked grimly, dragging themselves into the rigging and cutting away the burning wicks. The envelope crumpled over the doused lamps.
And Boyd was upside down.
Or Allel was.
Her harness was slack. The components of their balloon drifted in a jumble. Boyd thrashed in the air as if drowning — but there was no up to kick towards. Fear showed beneath her pale scars.
But Allel understood.
“It’s the middle of the Gap!” Allel yelled, exhilarated by her mother’s discomfiture. “The Shell dwellers live upside down. Up for us is down for them. Did we think we’d fly up and bump against the Shell like a ceiling? This is the place where up and down cross over!” Warm air spilled from the balloon and brushed her face. Ground and Shell were enormous parallel plates that careened identically around her. She laughed and swooped.
But their equilibrium in the weightless zone was unstable, and soon invisible fingers clutched at them. Wind whistled in the tangled rigging and their harness grew taut again. “We’re falling back!” Allel cried in disappointment. Boyd struggled to keep her good arm free.
Now air resistance roughly righted them. The balloon opened out like a parachute but scarcely slowed their fall.
Boyd roared above the wind: “We’ve got to light the burners!”
They hunted for flints and cupped their hands around the wicks to keep out the snatching breeze. Heat roared up. Boyd thrust at the fuel pumps while Allel scrambled precariously into the tangled rigging to drag at the neck of the envelope, trying to trap all the warmed air.
Their descent slowed a little. Allel’s arms ached and her hair whipped at her forehead. The ground exploded into unwelcome details, rivers and hills and trees and pebbles—
She rolled on impossibly hard earth, grass blades clutching at her face. Her blood was loud in her ears. The balloon folded as if wounded.
In a sunlit meadow, mother and daughter lay amid the ruins of their bark spaceship.
Sunlight scoured her eyes. Allel sat up, blinking, pushing at the knotted remains of her harness. She was surrounded by cool grass and flowers; a brook led to a stand of cow-trees and the horizon was made up of heather-coated hills.
And, as it had always done, the Shell curved over it all like a great blue tent.
Boyd slept peacefully in a tatter of the balloon. Allel hesitated for some minutes, vaguely fearful of her mother’s reaction. Then she found a remnant of a shattered burner and woke her mother with a cup of brook water. Boyd sat up clumsily, favoring her bad arm.