Ian Watson - Slow Birds.pdf - Ian Watson - margozap

Slow Birds

by Ian Watson

Ian Watson, a graduate of Oxford University, lives with his wife and

daughter in North Hamptonshire, Great Britain. He has taught in Japan

and Tanzania. His first science fiction novel, The Embedding, won the

French Prix Apollo and was runner-up for the John W. Campbell

Memorial Award; his second novel in the field, The Jonah Kit, won the

British Science Fiction Association Award. He is also the author of The

Martian Inca, Alien Embassay, Miracle Visitors, God's World, and

Chekhov's Journey. His most recent novel, The Book of the River, the first

volume of a triology in progress, was serialized in The Magazine of

Fantasy and Science Fiction. He is a member of the Campaign for

Nuclear Disarmament and of the growing British organization BAND

(Book Action for Nuclear Disarmament).

Ian Watson is the British regional director of the Science Fiction

Writers of America and the European editor of the SFWA Bulletin.

Slow Birds was nominated for the 1983 Nebula for best novelette.

It was Mayday, and the skate-sailing festival that year was being held at

Tuckerton.

By late morning, after the umpires had been out on the glass plain

setting red flags around the circuit, cumulous clouds began to fill a

previously blue sky, promising ideal conditions for the afternoon's sport.

No rain; so that the glass wouldn't be an inch deep in water as last year at

Atherton. No dazzling glare to blind the spectators, as the year before that

at Buckby. And a breeze verging on brisk without ever becoming fierce:

perfect to speed the competitors' sails along without lifting people off their

feet and tumbling them, as four years previously at Edgewood when a

couple of broken ankles and numerous bruises had been sustained.

After the contest there would be a pig roast; or rather the succulent

fruits thereof, for the pig had been turning slowly on its spit these past

thirty-six hours. And there would be kegs of Old Codger Ale to be cracked.

But right now Jason Babbidge's mind was mainly occupied with checking

out his glass-skates and his fine crocus-yellow hand-sail.

As high as a tall man, and of best old silk, only patched in a couple of

places, the sail's fore-spar of flexible ash was bent into a bow belly by a

strong hemp cord. Jason plucked this thoughtfully like a harpist, testing

the tension. Already a fair number of racers were out on the glass, showing

off their paces to applause. Tuckerton folk mostly, they were—acting as if

they owned the glass hereabouts and knew it more intimately than any

visitors could. Not that it was in any way different from the same glass

over Atherton way.

Jason's younger brother Daniel whistled appreciatively as a Tuckerton

man carrying purple silk executed perfect circles at speed, his sail

shivering as he tacked.

"Just look at him, Jay!"

"What, Bob Marchant? He took a pratfall last year. Where's the use in

working up a sweat before the whistle blows?"

By now a couple of sisters from Buckby were out too with matching

black sails, skating figure-eights around each other, risking collision by a

hair's breadth.

"Go on, Jay," urged young Daniel. "Show "em."

Contestants from the other villages were starting to flood on to the glass

as well, but Jason noticed how Max Tarnover was standing not so far

away, merely observing these antics with a wise smile. Master Tarnover of

Tuckerton, last year's victor at Atherton despite the drenching spray. . . .

Taking his cue from this, and going one better, Jason ignored events on

the glass and surveyed the crowds instead.

He noticed Uncle John Babbidge chatting intently to an Edgewood man

over where the silver band was playing; which was hardly the quietest

place to talk, so perhaps they were doing business. Meanwhile on the

green beyond the band the children of five villages buzzed like flies from

hoop-la to skittles to bran tub, to apples in buckets of water. And those

grownups who weren't intent on the band or the practice runs or on

something else, such as gossip, besieged the craft and produce stalls.

There must be going on for a thousand people at the festival, and the

village beyond looked deserted. Rugs and benches and half-barrels had

even been set out near the edge of the glass for the old folk of Tuckerton.

As the band lowered their instruments for a breather after finishing The

Floral Dance, a bleat of panic cut across the chatter of many voices. A

farmer had just vaulted into a tiny sheep-pen where a lamb almost as

large as its shorn, protesting dam was ducking beneath her to suckle and

hide. Laughing, the farmer hauled it out and hoisted it by its neck and

back legs to guess its weight, and maybe win a prize.

And now Jason's mother was threading her way through the crowd,

chewing the remnants of a pasty.

"Best of luck, son!" She grinned.

"I've told you, Mum," protested Jason. "It's bad luck to say 'good luck'."

"Oh, luck yourself! What's luck, anyway?" She prodded her Adam's

apple as if to press the last piece of meat and potatoes on its way down,

though really she was indicating that her throat was bare of any charm or

amulet.

"I suppose I'd better make a move." Kicking off his sandals, Jason sat to

lace up his skates. With a helping hand from Daniel he rose and stood

knock-kneed, blades cutting into the turf while the boy hoisted the sails

across his shoulders. Jason gripped the leather straps on the bowstring

and the spine-spar.

"Okay." He waggled the sail this way and that. "Let's go, then. I won't

blow away."

But just as he was about to proceed down on to the glass, out upon the

glass less than a hundred yards away a slow bird appeared.

It materialized directly in front of one of the Buckby sisters. Unable to

veer, she had no choice but to throw herself backwards. Crying out in

frustration, and perhaps hurt by her fall, she skidded underneath the slow

bird, sledging supine upon her now snapped and crumpled sail.

They were called slow birds because they flew through the air—at the

stately pace of three feet per minute.

They looked a little like birds, too, though only a little. Their tubular

metal bodies were rounded at the head and tapering to a finned point at

the tail, with two stubby wings midway. Yet these wings could hardly have

anything to do with suspending their bulk in the air; the girth of a bird

was that of a horse, and its length twice that of a man lying full length.

Perhaps those wings controlled orientation or trim.

In color they were a silvery grey; though this was only the color of their

outer skin, made of a soft metal like lead. Quarter of an inch beneath this

coating their inner skins were black and stiff as steel. The noses of the

birds were all scored with at least a few scrape marks due to encounters

with obstacles down the years; slow birds always kept the same height

above ground—underbelly level with a man's shoulders—and they would

bank to avoid substantial buildings or mature trees, but any frailer

obstructions they would push on through. Hence the individual patterns of

scratches. However, a far easier way of telling them apart was by the

graffiti carved on so many of their flanks; initials entwined in hearts,

dates, place names, fragments of messages. These amply confirmed how

very many slow birds there must be in all—something of which people

could not otherwise have been totally convinced. For no one could keep

track of a single slow bird. After each one had appeared—over hill, down

dale, in the middle of a pasture or half way along a village street—it would

fly onward slowly for any length of time between an hour and a day,

covering any distance between a few score yards and a full mile. And

vanish again. To reappear somewhere else unpredictably: far away or close

by, maybe long afterwards or maybe soon.

Usually a bird would vanish, to reappear again.

Not always, though. Half a dozen times a year, within the confines of

this particular island country, a slow bird would reach its journey's end.

It would destroy itself, and all the terrain around it for a radius of two

and a half miles, fusing the landscape instantly into a sheet of glass. A flat,

circular sheet of glass. A polarized, limited zone of annihilation. Scant

yards beyond its rim a person might escape unharmed, only being

deafened and dazzled temporarily.

Hitherto no slow bird had been known to explode so as to overlap an

earlier sheet of glass. Consequently many towns and villages clung close to

the borders of what had already been destroyed, and news of a fresh glass

plain would cause farms and settlements to spring up there. Even so, the

bulk of people still kept fatalistically to the old historic towns. They

assumed that a slow bird wouldn't explode in their midst during their own

lifetimes. And if it did, what would they know of it? Unless the glass

happened merely to bisect a town—in which case, once the weeping and

mourning was over, the remaining citizenry could relax and feel secure.

True, in the long term the whole country from coast to coast and from

north to south would be a solid sheet of glass. Or perhaps it would merely

be a checkerboard, of circles touching circles: a glass mosaic. With what

in between? Patches of desert dust, if the climate dried up due to

reflections from the glass. Or floodwater, swampland. But that day was

still far distant: a hundred years away, two hundred, three. So people

didn't worry too much. They had been used to this all their lives long, and

their parents before them. Perhaps one day the slow birds would stop

coming. And going. And exploding. Just as they had first started, once.

Certainly the situation was no different, by all accounts, anywhere else in

the world. Only the seas were clear of slow birds. So maybe the human

race would have to take to rafts one day. Though by then, with what would

they build them? Meanwhile, people got by; and most had long ago given

up asking why. For there was no answer.

The girl's sister helped her rise. No bones broken, it seemed. Only an

injury to dignity; and to her sail.

The other skaters had all coasted to a halt and were staring resentfully

at the bird in their midst. Its belly and sides were almost bare of graffiti;

seeing this, a number of youths hastened on to the glass, clutching

penknives, rusty nails and such. But an umpire waved them back angrily.

"Shoo! Be off with you!" His gaze seemed to alight on Jason, and for a

fatuous moment Jason imagined that it was himself to whom the umpire

was about to appeal; but the man called, "Master Tarnover!" instead, and

Max Tarnover duck-waddled past then glided out over the glass, to confer.

Presently, the umpire cupped his hands. "We're delaying the start for

half an hour," he bellowed. "Fair's fair: young lady ought to have a chance

to fix her sail, seeing as it wasn't her fault."

Jason noted a small crinkle of amusement on Tarnover's face; for now

either the other competitors would have to carry on prancing around

tiring themselves with extra practice which none of them needed, or else

troop off the glass for a recess and lose some psychological edge. In fact

almost everyone opted for a break and some refreshments.

"Luck indeed!" snorted Mrs. Babbidge, as Max Tarnover clumped back

their way.

Tarnover paused by Jason. "Frankly I'd say her sail's a wreck," he

confided. "But what can you do? The Buckby lot would have been bitching

on otherwise. 'Oh, she could have won. If she'd had ten minutes to fix it.'

Bloody hunk of metal in the way." Tarnover ran a lordly eye over Jason's

sail "What price skill, then?"

Daniel Babbidge regarded Tarnover with a mixture of hero worship and

hostile partisanship on his brother's behalf. Jason himself only nodded

and said, "Fair enough." He wasn't certain whether Tarnover was acting

generously—or with patronizing arrogance. Or did this word in his ear

mean that Tarnover actually saw Jason as a valid rival for the silver

punch-bowl this year round?

Ian Watson - Slow Birds.pdf

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