The next time they prepared to fly the Manessa Kwi, right after lunch, flight preparations went much more smoothly. The flight plan had already been made, the five students remembered most of their pre-flight procedures, and they were fresh from a relaxing hot spring soak and a hearty meal.
Ilika decided it was time for a slightly new experience. “Rini, cancel all information channels except visual. Sata, cancel flight plan display.”
Mati turned and looked at Ilika with narrowed eyes.
“The flight objective is to fly by visual references to a suitable landing place,” he went on, “to be decided by the steward, somewhere close to Port Town. Since you don’t have a chart and flight plan to follow, Mati, you will probably be tempted to stay near the ground, but you will actually be able to see more and make better decisions if you fly high.”
Mati took a deep breath, activated her flight control, and began her ascent.
Everyone studied their visual displays, the only information coming from the watch station.
“Help me out, guys,” Mati pleaded. “Down river, right?”
“Yeah,” Boro confirmed. “We passed several farms.”
“Then the river angled south,” Sata remembered, “and the road went straight west to the north-south road.”
“And the town was north of there,” Kibi finished. “We could use the beach near the cave . . . if the tide is out.”
Mati followed Ilika’s advice and took the ship up high so she could see
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 253
well. With help from her shipmates, she easily found the coast.
Kibi chuckled. “Oops, high tide! Let’s look at the bushy area north of town, where the trail to the beach goes through. Ilika, how small can you make Manessa?”
“Small enough to easily hide in those bushes,” he assured, tapping at the little control pad on the arm of his chair.
Mati began her descent, then remembered the danger. “Boro, give me level two thrusters, please.”
“Warming up . . . ready.”
“See that little clearing in the bushes north of the trail, near those rocks?”
Kibi asked.
“Yes . . .” Mati slowed her forward speed while descending carefully.
Everyone was quiet while their pilot made the final approach. She was a little too careful, and lost all motion twice, but eventually coaxed the ship down and extended the landing struts.
“Shut-down procedures,” Ilika ordered, and they could feel the engines fall silent. “Rini, you are in command of the team going into town.”
“Um . . . we need a couple of rucksacks, and a few coppers and silvers.”
A quarter hour later, Rini, Kibi, Boro, and Sata were ready in boots, cloaks, packs, and bracelets. Ilika opened the main hatch and the four filed out.
The captain enjoyed the looks of astonishment as they turned and gawked at their ship.
Finally Rini said, “Oh . . . let’s go!” They wound their way through the bushes, still shaking their heads.
“What’s
their problem?” Mati asked, leaning on the steward’s console.
“I’ll show you,” Ilika said with a smile.
After hobbling outside with his help, she too had trouble closing her mouth. The Manessa Kwi had shrunk to a shiny ball not much larger than the hatch itself.
Mati hurried back inside, just to be sure it was still there. “Rini told me you said the inside was . . . somewhere else. You were serious, weren’t you?”
“Mati, I would never lie to any of you.”
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Mati and Ilika enjoyed their time together, sitting on nearby rocks and watching seagulls wheel in the air. They chatted about visual reference flying, and about the thieves who had once surrounded them near this very place.
Mati felt the bracelet on her arm, and realized how far she had come from the early days of their journey, struggling every day to learn to read and do arithmetic.
When they grew tired of sitting on rocks, they poked around in the bushes, looking for anything of interest. A snake slithered away and dashed into a hole. Some dark purple berries were past their prime, but still edible. A dog or fox had once come this way to die, and had left its bones behind.
“I probably wouldn’t have lived very long if I’d stayed a slave,” Mati admitted. “If I get my knee fixed, I can live a pretty normal life, can’t I?”
“I think you will like your life in the Transport Service, but it’ll be far from normal. Being a slave . . . or a goatherd’s wife . . . is closer to normal. A deep-space response ship pilot is a very, very rare thing.”
Mati smiled at her captain.
Ilika and Mati could see that the expedition had been quite successful even before anyone spoke. Mati was especially curious about the wooden box Rini carried.
“Good news!” Kibi announced as she bounded up the four steps after removing her boots. “Kit found a home!”
Mati grinned. “Fantastic! No more sleeping in the graveyard?”
“Almost none,” Sata replied. “He didn’t understand that someone else had paid for his bread and sweet biscuits . . .”
“. . . so he kept bringing the baker mussels and clams and things . . .” Kibi added.
“. . . and they finally got so fond of him, they invited him to stay with them and work at the bakery . . .” Sata continued.
“. . . and there he was, stoking the oven when we arrived!” Kibi concluded.
Rini glowed with happiness. “He remembered us and gave us all hugs.”
“But what about the graveyard?” Mati pressed as they gathered in the passenger area.
“The baker says he still disappears about one day a week,” Boro explained.
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 255
“He has no idea where Kit goes, but we do.”
“Any problems?” Ilika asked after all the exciting news was shared.
“One nosy guard on the way out of town should be waking up about now,”
Rini said with a slight cringe. “I did it this time. I thought it was going to be hard, but when someone was standing in the way of getting back to the ship
. . . and you and Mati . . . all of a sudden it was pretty easy.”
Mati smiled with embarrassment.
“The old healer died last summer,” Boro reported with a note of sadness.
Ilika was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry. He was a good man.”
Kibi nodded slowly. “No other problems. We stayed in pairs. Having those bracelets is great for self-confidence. When you act like you own the place, people naturally respect you.”
Ilika
nodded.
“We got a bunch of dried fish, clams, squid, seaweed, and a few spices we didn’t have,” Sata announced, pulling stuff out of a rucksack and stacking it on the galley counter.
“What’s in the mystery box?” Ilika finally asked.
Rini hovered over it protectively. “This just came off a ship from another land, and it cost us four silver pieces.” He carefully opened the top and lovingly pulled out something round wrapped in a piece of cloth. “We get to share one piece. The rest are for the sisters at the monastery.”
Kibi got a cutting board and knife from the galley as Rini unwrapped the treasure, a piece of rough-skinned golden fruit that none of them had ever seen before.
Mati grinned. “It looks like Manessa!”
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Rini carefully sliced the fruit into six wedges. The skin released a pungent aroma with each cut that made their mouths water.
“The merchant said you can eat a little of the skin,” Boro explained, “but the really good part is inside.”
As each of them touched tongue, then teeth, to the juicy flesh, their taste buds were overwhelmed by the delicious sweet-tart flavor of the mysterious fruit.
“Mmmmmm . . .” they all said at once, and then started laughing as the juice squirted all over the table and each other.
Deep Learning Notes
VFR or Visual Flight Reference piloting uses only what can be seen with the eyes. It is generally limited to daytime and good weather, but some night VFR
flying is possible over lighted highways. Also, some forms of bad weather allow VFR flying, such as rain, and some do not, such as fog.
Mati learned that the possible life-paths she was leaving behind (slavery and goatherd’s wife) were “normal,” and deep-space response ship pilots very rare.
If you ever find yourself wishing you were “normal,” you might want to pause and remember that the most normal, average person in the world today is a rice farmer in China who probably can’t read or write.
Today, in many countries, child labor laws would forbid a six-year-old to work in a bakery. In the medieval culture of the story, do you think Kit was better off before or after joining the baker and his family?
What was the mysterious golden fruit in the wooden box? Why would none of them have ever seen it before?
