Airborn by Kenneth Oppel Page B

because she was so young.
    “You weren’t,” she said, delighted. “You’re pulling my leg!”
    “I’m not,” I said proudly. “My parents came over from Europe during the Great Immigration. Not on a ship like this, mind you. A freighter it was, all of us crammed in one atop another. My mother was pregnant, but I wasn’t due for another month, so they thought it safe. But I came early, halfway over the Atlanticus.”
    “Your poor mother,” Kate said. “Was she all right?”
    “She was, lucky for her. And I was too. One of the other passengers was a midwife and another a medical student, and together they managed things. Tiny I was, light as a feather.”
    “And you’ve been aloft ever since?” she said, those dark eyes on me, as if I was telling the most fabulous story from a fairy-tale book.
    “Well, only the last three years, really. But I grew up hearing all about it from my father. When we got to North America, it was hard for him to find work. We went all the way across the country till we landed in Lionsgate City, and he got a job there with the Lunardi line, started out on one of their cargo ships.”
    “Oh,” she said. “But he must’ve been away a great deal.”
    “He was. But he wrote us, and on shore leave he would be home with us. And he’d tell stories.”
    “Like what?” she asked.
    I took a breath. “He went everywhere. Saw all the wonders of the world it seemed. All I could think about when he came home was how much I wished I could go away with him.”
    “He must’ve been a good storyteller.”
    “A grand one.”
    “My parents weren’t much for stories,” Kate said. “I got all mine from books. And my grandfather. He told me stories when I was little, made-up ones when I was young and then real ones when I got older. He was a traveler too.”
    “Your parents aren’t?”
    “No. They gave me this trip as a birthday present. But they were both busy, so they sent Miss Simpkins along with me. Aren’t I lucky?” she said brightly.
    “She seems very dedicated.”
    “Yes, she’ll make a dictator a fine wife one day.”
    I laughed.
    “Mercifully, she does sleep a lot. The whole thing’s ridiculous anyway. Not that I needed a chaperone! What could happen to me on an airship? And I’monly in Sydney two weeks before I come back home.”
    She didn’t sound altogether happy about these arrangements. We were making our way slowly back toward the ship’s bow and the passenger quarters. Neither of us seemed in any hurry for the tour to end.
    “Tell me,” Kate asked, “at what altitude does the Aurora sail?”
    “Varies, miss. Right now we’re cruising at six hundred fifty feet.”
    “And will we keep to that for the entire crossing?”
    “If the winds hold. We might climb higher if the currents are more favorable elsewhere.”
    “How high?”
    “As much as four thousand feet. But the captain likes to fly so the passengers have a view.”
    How attentive her eyes were, taking this all in. It was rare I had such a keen listener, and I found it almost disconcerting.
    “And our speed?”
    “Seventy-five miles an hour when I last checked.”
    She nodded absently, as if pulling open drawers in her mind, searching for something.
    “Does the ship always follow the same route to Sydney? More or less?”
    I nodded. “We’d shift only for the winds or storm fronts.”
    I wondered if all these questions were brought on by fear of flying. I couldn’t quite believe that someone like her, with all her money, had never been on an airship before. Some people never do get used to their feet leaving earth.
    “You needn’t worry, miss,” I said. “The Aurora ’s as fine a ship as sails the skies. We’ve circled the globe a thousand times without mishap.”
    “Oh,” she said, “no, I’m not worried. Just curious. But the ship’s course is essentially the same?”
    “Well, it varies quite a lot, actually.” I liked to pore over the navigators’ maps during a crossing.