The Dark Design

"It'll take too much time, too much material," a man said .loudly. His speech was that of a native of Maine. There was something, or was it just her overactive imagination, of the shriek of the wind in rigging, the creaking of rope and wood in a rolling ship, the thunder of surf, the flapping of sails, in his voice? Imagination, of course.

"Stop that, Jill," she told herself. If Firebrass had not called him Zeke, she would not now be imposing open-sea-sailing-ship images. on the voice. He would be Ezekiel Hardy, captain of a New Bedford whaler, killed by a sperm whale off the coast of Japan-1833?- and he had convinced Firebrass that he would make an excellent helmsman or navigator for the airship. After suitable training, of course. Firebrass must really be hard up for a crew if he signed on an early-nineteenth-century whaling ship skipper. The man had prob­ably never even seen a balloon, maybe not even a steam-driven riverboat.

The grapevine had it that Firebrass had had little success so far in finding experienced airshipmen. Men, of course. Always men. So, he had accepted candidates who seemed most likely to benefit from training. Airplane pilots. Balloonists. Sailors. Meanwhile, the word had spread up and down The River for 60,000 kilometers, perhaps 100,000, that Firebrass wanted lighter-than-air men. Al­ways men.

What did Firebrass know about building and flying a gasbag? He may have journeyed to Mars and Ganymede, orbited Jupiter and Saturn, but what did that have to do with dirigibles? David Schwartz, it was true, had designed and built the first truly rigid dirigible. It had also been the first to have a structure and skin made completely from aluminum. This was in 1893, sixty years before she had been born. He'd then started to build a better airship-in Berlin, 1895?-but work had stopped on it when Schwartz had died-January, 1897?

She was not sure now. Thirty-one years on The River had dimmed much of memories on Earth.

She wondered if Schwartz knew what had happened after he had died. Probably not unless he'd met some gasbag freak, a layman Zepfan. Schwartz's widow had carried on his work, and yet no book Jill had read had bothered to note her first name or her maiden name. She was only Frau Schwartz. She had gotten the second ship built, despite being only a woman. And some male jackass had flown the aluminum ship (which looked more like a thermos bottle than anything else), had panicked, and had wrecked it.

All that was left of Schwartz's dream and his wife's devotion to it was a crumpled mass of silvery-looking metal. So much for dreams in a high wind when a big phallus, lilliputian brains, and mouse courage were at the controls. Now, if the jackass had been a woman, her name would have been recorded. See what happens when a woman leaves the kitchen? If God had intended...

Jill Gulbirra trembled, a hot ache in her chest. Get hold of yourself, she murmured. Cool does it or you blow it.

She started from her reverie. While she had been dreaming of Frau Schwartz's dream, she had allowed the canoe to be carried down-River. The fire had become smaller, and the voices fainter, and yet she had not noticed. Better bloody watch out, she told herself. She had to be ever alert, or she would never convince the powers-that-be that she was qualified to be one of the airship crew. To be captain?

"There's plenty of time!" Firebrass thundered. "This isn't any government-contract, low-fund, high-pressure project! It'll be thir­ty-seven years or more before Sam gets to the end of The River. It'll only take two-maybe three-years to complete the beast. Mean­while , we'll use the blimp for training. And then we' re off, heigh ho for the wild blue yonder, the misty sea of the north pole, where no Santa Claus, but somebody who's given us gifts that make Saint Nick look like the world's worst tightwad, lives! Off to the Misty Tower, the Really Big Grail!"

The fourth man spoke up now. He had a pleasant baritone, but it was evident that English was not his natal speech. What was it? It sounded like a French accent in some ways but... Yes, of course. That could be Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, if she could believe what she had heard at about hundredth hand. It just did not seem possible that she would soon be talking to him. Perhaps she wouldn't be, since there were so many phonies on The River.

There was silence for a moment, the silence that only the River-valley knew-when people kept their mouths shut. No birds, no animals (especially no barking dogs), no mechanical monsters roaring, bellowing, buzzing, screeching, no tooting horns, no whooping or screaming sirens, no shrieking brakes, no loud radios, no blaring loudspeakers. Only water lapping against shore and then a splash as a fish leaped out and fell back. And the crackle of wood in the fire.

"Ah!" Firebrass said. "Smooth! Better'n anything I ever had on Earth! And free, free! But when, when will the airmen show up? I need more men with experience, real gasbaggers!"

Schwartz made a smacking sound-Jill could see the bottle tilted above his lips now-and he said, "So! You are not so unworried!"

The canoe touched shore, and she got out of it without tipping it. The water was up to her waist, but the magnetically sealed cloths kept the cold liquid out. She waded closer and lifted the long, heavy canoe, moving forward until she was on shore. She let the craft down and dragged it until its entire length was out of the stream. The bank was only about 30 centimeters above the water level. She stood for a moment, pla

"Oh, I'll get them eventually," Firebrass was saying.

She stepped closer, sliding her feet over the short grass. .

"I'm the one you're looking for," she said loudly.

The four whirled, one almost falling and grabbing another. They stared, their mouths and eyes dark holes in paleness. Like her, they were covered with cloths but theirs were brightly colored. If she had been an enemy, she could have put an arrow into each one before they could grab their weapons--if they had such. Then she saw that they did have guns, placed on the edge of the mushroom top of the grailstone.

Pistols! Made of iron! So, it was true!

Now she suddenly saw a rapier, a long, steel sharp-pointed blade, in the hand of the tallest man there. His other hand brushed his hood back and revealed a long, dark face with a big nose. He had to be the fabled Cyrano de Bergerac.

Cyrano reverted to seventeenth-century French, of which she could understand only a few words.

Firebrass. pushed his hood back, too.

"I almost crapped in my britches! Why didn't you warn us you were coming?"

She lowered her hood.

Firebrass stepped closer and looked keenly at her. "It's a woman!"

"Nevertheless, I'm your man," Jill said.

"What'd you say?"

"Don't you understand English!" she said angrily.

Her displeasure was more at herself. She had been so excited, though pretending to be composed, that she'd reverted to her Toowoomba dialect. She might as well have spoken in Shakespearean English for all they understood. She repeated, in the standard Midwestern American she'd learned so painstakingly, "Nevertheless, I'm your man. My name, by the way, is Jill Gulbirra."

Firebrass introduced himself and the others, then said, "I need another drink.''

"I could use one myself," Jill said. "It's a fallacy that alcohol warms you up, but it does make you think you're warmed up."

Firebrass stopped and picked up a bottle-the first glass Jill had seen for years. He handed it to her and she drank the scotch without wiping the mouth of the bottle. After all, there were no disease germs on The River. And she had no prejudices about drinking from a bottle that had been in the mouth of a half-black. Wasn't her grandmother an aborigine? Of course, abos were not Negroes. They were black-ski