14 - You've Got My Word On That, Wing-Brother

The temperature had plunged as the sun went down, prompting Werfas and Kyrus to take a few minutes from their lessons; to be honest, worrying at their problem of how to steal something so large and valuable and probably rare, as a flying machine from the Prime owner.  They each picked a window and cranked the shutters closed against the suddenly frigid wind.

“I mean it might take years for someone to actually find out all we need,” Kyrus said, sitting down again and looking at his stack of notes with all the possible problems he could think of.  He put his hand on an identical stack, that Hara had left when she’d said she wasn’t feeling well and went off to lie down.  “I mean, Haraklez thought of as many other  problems and you even more.”

Werfas lifted his sticky teacup up off the desk, gently pulled the stuck page from the bottom before setting both down so they wouldn’t get bonded together again.  “Maybe we’re looking at the wrong problem,” he said and picked up his pen, dipped it in the inkwell in the table and started doodling on the smooth stone table top.

Kyrus peered at the sketches before going to refresh the tea pot from the kettle.  “What do you mean?  I mean it’s pretty straightforward.  We need to get off the planet, we don’t know how to build our own flyer, so we go to someone who has one and steal it.  It’s better that the fellow who owns the flyer is also an enemy who’d kill us all, as soon as look at us.”

Werfas spooned more honey into his tea, while Kyrus chose the raghnall chutney.  “It’s a little like trying to start a warbird farm with a stranger walking onto the breeding ground and try to tame the herd bull, too big to ride and half-crazy with must, with a bag of wigglers and a kid’s training saddle.  It won’t work.  He’ll just get his head nipped off.”

“Yeeees???”  Kyrus turned it over in his head.  “I suppose.”

“Well, what if we found out there’s a machine that could get the message off planet... to whom, I don’t know... or how... Do we need to actually send someone up, personally?”  His idea overrode Kyrus saying “You know, all we need is plans for a flyer, not a flyer itself.”

They stared at each other, each hearing what the other proposed.  “You know...” Kyrus said slowly.  “Both of those ideas could be hunted down in the code, rather than have people go to Xanadu and try to learn how to fly one of those things and then steal one.”

“We could look for the code for both those machines... if the thing I’m thinking of even exists... and build our own.”

“Hara’s already found a coded teaching manual out of the monsterous mess da grabbed.”

“Too bad it’s a teaching manual on how to set up an automatic cattle feeding system.”

“What's a cattle, anyway?" Kyrus waved it off as unimportant.  "An earthan animal of some kind, I suppose, but Ilax already said it’s got some ideas that will make feeding warbirds a lot safer for people, especially the ones that are half wild.  The zon nearly wet themselves with delight when they figured out what it was.”

“But that was because it implied a hundred things about its power source, and what Prime’s people are using for fuel.”

“It means that pumping water won’t be up to people walking them day and night. Ilax says that will free people up to do things that a pump can’t do... like think.”

“That’s a wonderful thought.”

“But Prime... he tried to set things up so that everybody running the place... our ancestors... had to turn themselves into machinery as dumb as a pump.  Why would an Emperor want that?  Why would you want to rule over people who were that stupid?”

“Hmmm.  Da and Ilax both told me that smart, thinking people don’t easily put up with being ruled by someone who just says ‘I’m Emperor, obey,” Kyrus said and drew overlapping circles on his top page.  “You have to be smarter than they are and you have to convince them that you’ll take the job and do it right.”

“So you think Prime was just being lazy and getting people to trade away their smarts?”

“Not their smarts.  Just their education.”

“Same thing at the bottom,” Werfas said and laid his pen down.  “If you never learn how to write something convincing... like an argument... to someone else, then you don’t know how to organize your own thoughts well.  The zon say you need to learn how to discuss things and think, or you’re at the mercy of anyone who actually can do those things better than you.”

“Hmmm.”

“So, do we want to go with our bright ideas straight to your da and stepda?  Or do we want to think about it some more?”

“I want to talk it over with Hara." Kyrus said, and coughed. "I mean, I’ll bet they’ve already thought of this, surely.”

“Yeah, I mean if a couple of kids can think this up, surely someone else is working on this.  Wing brother... we three are a good team anyway.  Everybody says we mander together like bushies’ hunting pods.  If we stumble across anything we can't handle then we'll tell your da straightway, though.”  He looked concerned.  “I want you to promise me that.”

“You've got my word on that, wing-brother.”