The Brazilians bragged on the Gil—its lift and handling characteristics; the strength and resilience of the redundant graphene cells; their prowess as navigators, able to find fair winds where no algorithm predicted. Etcetera gave every sign of being delighted, spoke knowledgeably about the ships that preceded the Gil, wonderful things coming out of Thailand, where airships were different in some important, highly technical way she didn’t understand.
The kids arrived in time for food, though judging from the food already smudged around their faces they had been introduced to a kitchen fabber somewhere in the ship’s deeps. She collected jammy kisses from both, resisted the urge to clean their faces with spit, was introduced to new friends, a range of ages and genders. An older boy named Rui—old enough to have a bit of a mustache, an Adam’s apple, and a mix of self-assuredness with kids and awkwardness with adults—told her in accented English how great her boys were and how he would teach them all they needed to be fliers. She thanked him in absolutely awful Portuguese, prompted by the implanted bud. He smiled and blushed and ducked his head in a way that made her want to take him home and raise him.
“You boys ready for lunch?” Gretyl asked, coming up with a fan of plates bearing scop meat-ite skewers that smelled amazing, garnished with feijoada and heaps of hydroponic vegetables. The boys looked guiltily at one another, and Gretyl instantly clocked the sweet, sticky stuff around their mouths.
“Looks like you’ve already had dessert. Hope that doesn’t mean you think you’re not going to eat lunch, too.” Gretyl was the family disciplinarian. If it was up to Iceweasel, the kids would eat ice cream and candy three meals a day. She’d join them. Gretyl kept them from dying of malnutrition. Her word was law.
The boys nodded and took plates. Rui took in all the salient details of their family arrangements and led the kids to a spot at the table, promising they’d eat every bite.
Gretyl handed Iceweasel one of the remaining plates and they found a spot at a table, surrounded by crew members who joked and made them feel at home.
“This is amazing food,” Iceweasel said, chasing the last curly carrot with her forkchops.
“We got new starter cultures from Cuba,” a crewwoman explained. She was beautiful, tall, with a shaved head, a wasp waist and wide hips, and skin the color of burnt sugar. Iceweasel and Gretyl had both snuck looks at her when they thought the other wasn’t looking, then caught each other. Her name was Camila. Her English was excellent. “You program it with lights during division-cycle, causes it to express different flavor-and texture-profiles.”
“It’s incredible,” Gretyl said.
“We’ll give you some to take when you go. The Cubans eat like kings.”
There was white pudding for dessert, made with the last of the ship’s supply of real coconut and tapioca cultured from Cuban scop. Neither Gretyl or Iceweasel had enough experience of tapioca to say whether it was faithful, but it was just as tasty as lunch and Camila assured them that even a tapioca farmer couldn’t tell the difference.
“Do you need any more crew?” Iceweasel said, jokingly. “I want to eat like this every day.”
Camila looked grave. “We have no more crew berths, sorry to say.” She contemplated the crowded tables. “It’s something we’re arguing about. It’s a good crew, a good ship. Some of us want to bud off a new one, start another crew. We’ve got something so wonderful, it should grow. Others say there’s something in the chemistry of this group, and if we split up, it would go. The children are growing, many of them think they will be aerialists. We’ll need more ships.”
“Is that why you’re heading to Ontario?”
Camila nodded. “The zeppelin bubble was a long time ago, but there’s still many comrades there who know how to build and want to help. Your Etcetera has been putting us in touch with others. He’s a hero to many, for his valor with the Better Nation.”
Now Iceweasel and Gretyl looked grave. Neither of them talked about that day often, though it was a rallying cry for walkaways all over the world, eventually. Camila understood.
“What a time to be alive. If we do make another ship, we should call it The Next Days of a Better Nation.”
“That’s a terrible name for a ship,” Etcetera said. His voice was tinny and clipped from the acoustic properties of their table, which he used for a speaker.
“No one asked you, dead man,” Iceweasel said.
“‘Better nation’ talk needs to die in a fire. We’re not doing nations anymore. We’re doing people, doing stuff. Nations mean governments, passports, borders.”
Camila rapped on the table with her knuckles. “There’s nothing wrong with a border, so long as it isn’t too rigid. Our cells hold in the lift gas, they make borders with the atmosphere. My skin is a border for my body, it lets in the good and keeps out the bad. You have your borders, like all sims, which keep you stable and running. We don’t need no borders, just good ones.”
They were off, arguing intently, a discussion familiar to the aerialist world. It turned into jargon about “airspace priority” and “wind immunity” and “sovereign rights of way,” lost on Iceweasel and Gretyl. They bussed their plates into a hopper that slurped them out of their hands, made sure that Rui made good on his promise to get the boys to eat their protein and veg. Lay down in each other’s arms in their hexayurt for a nap. It had been a busy couple of days.
Gretyl nuzzled her throat. “No leaving me for hot Brazilian aerialists.”
Iceweasel arched her neck. “It’s mutual.”
They were asleep in minutes.
[iv]
The zepp took just over a day to reach Toronto, circling to avoid the city’s exclusion zone, trailing aggro drones that zoomed up to the portholes to scan them and take pictures. The winds over Lake Ontario sucked. They had to rise and sink and putter and bumble for most of the rest of a day until they caught a breeze that’d take them to Pickering. Everyone agreed that it was the best place for a landing, far from paranoid zottas holed up in Toronto, insistent their nation had plenty of days to go before it was ready to make way for another, better or not.
They touched down amid a crowd: aerialists and onlookers who helped stake down the guy-lines and fix the ramp in place (making “safety third” jokes, but ensuring that it was solid before anyone descended the gangway).
The Limpopo reunion party hit the ramp blinking. Seth staggered under the weight of Etcetera’s cluster, which he wore in eleven chunks about his body—wristbands, a backpack, a belt, bandolier-slung bricks, some rings. The aerialists followed, led by the children, Jacob and Stan among them, wearing fresh-printed air-pirate gear, head scarves, and blousy shirts and tights patterned with photo-realistic trompe l’oeil chain mail. They collected hugs and complicated handshakes and kisses from their new friends, and returned them with gusto, speaking more Portuguese than they had any right to have acquired in such a short journey.