Building an Escape Route

Building an Escape Route

Summer – Four Years Later

The sun was a bright tear in the sky, blurry and uneven as it directed its rays towards Montressor’s every rock and plant and luckless inhabitant alike. Stretched out on the Old Benbow’s roof, Jim shaded his eyes and muttered a few colourful curses at the heat, safe in the knowledge that his mother was too busy downstairs to hear. It was his lunch break—a few minutes into twelve o’clock—and he had crawled out onto the roof to eat a bowl of purps by himself, away from the inn’s customers and their insistence that, because he worked there, he spend even his lunch hour serving them.

He had clambered out with another purpose as well.

Stretched out to his right, held in place by four heavy stones—one for each corner—lay a solar sail. A bright yellow solar sail. His pride and joy. Scavenging along the canyons that stretched out to the south of the Benbow, he had come across two solar surfers in varying stages of crash landing, misuse, and general abandonment. He had carted them home without a shred of guilt, hauling them up the stairs to his room in a clatter of bumps and skids and whistled snatches of song. They were his most prized possession, even with their missing booster rockets and their damaged pedals and their rust and their peeling paint.

The sails were the most satisfying part. Stretched out to their full length, they measured a good seven by five feet. Because they were not constructed of scaling, solar plates, it was just a matter of sewing and cannibalistic patching in order to bring the fabric back to a serviceable whole. The only remaining problem was charging them up.

Jim had flipped open a newspaper that morning, with an hour to go before breakfast would be served to the first customers of the day. The sharp, acrid smell of eggs and purps and swürtzberry and pancakes and fried Acadian potatoes wound its way across the Benbow as Jim sat hunched at his place, absentmindedly forking waffle squares into his mouth and combing the newspaper’s advertisements. Flexible whalebone corsets, Magic Rub stain remover, lunar clock repairmen, hover-bicycles for the busy family of five, solar equipment.

"Here we are," he muttered, folding the paper in two. He ran his finger along the flashy, empty words of the ad and stopped at the listed price. His face fell. Six hundred and ninety-five credits for a new solar battery pack. Jim’s entire allowance, so impressive last time he had counted it out, amounted to forty-three credits, all in coin. Deflated, he pushed the newspaper away.

It wasn’t until his mother had switched on the air-conditioner and flipped on her customer wooing sign, Air conditioning inside! Come in from the heat, that Jim got his idea. There were record-breaking temperatures outside. Enough sunlight to stock the town’s generators for the coming winter and possibly till next spring as well. Surely enough sunlight to charge up one measly seven by five feet solar sail.

So it was done. Jim turned his head and gave the sails a loving smile. A hot, finicky wind picked at them, and they rustled slightly, as if sharing in Jim’s enthusiasm. He had to shade his eyes from the glare they produced. But even after they had left nothing but bright green, fuzzy triangles in his eyes, he still loved them. He couldn’t wait to try them out.

"And," he murmured to the sky, "find myself a suitable booster rocket."

* * *

A crash and a yowl of pain greeted Jim as he knocked on Dr. Doppler’s door. It was 9.32 in the evening. The inn had closed for the night, and Sarah had sent Jim to Doppler’s with a covered casserole of warm leftovers.

"The poor man starves himself up at that observatory of his," Sarah said. "And what’s the use of letting good food go to waste?"

Jim didn’t mind running the errand. It gave him a chance to be outside, where he could keep an eye out for any discarded hardware. As he heard the crash and the doctor’s cry, he pushed open the door—always left unlocked in the statistically safe upper-class neighbourhood Doppler lived in—and peered inside. A cloud of thick grey smoke blew out to meet him, lined with the sharp, chemical smell of packing crates and new plastics. Jim coughed.

Doppler’s voice drifted out. "Jim? Is that you?" A thump and a scuttle followed the words. The doctor emerged from the cloud of smoke, wafting away at the grey tendrils with one hand, attempting to wipe his glasses clean with the other. He peered at Jim for a few seconds, large eyes blinking behind his glasses.

The boy stood awkwardly, one leg rising to scratch at the back of his calf. He wore the white tunic and knee-length breeches of a kitchen help, made his own by a short, light blue jacket, rolled up to the elbows, and a pair of scuffed, black mules. His hair was a bit too long for the doctor’s tastes, hanging down to the boy’s shoulders, but at least the child had the decorum to hold it back in a ponytail. His bangs appeared to be in an eternal state of mussed morning hair.

Satisfied at length that the boy before him was indeed Jim, Doppler straightened. "Well then, it is you," he announced, grandly. "What brings you to my humble yet currently quite un-presentable abode?"

Jim held out the casserole, which Doppler took with a great show of delight. As he carefully removed the lid, taking in deep, noisy breaths as he sniffed out the contents, Jim’s attention was caught by the packing crate standing in the centre of Doppler’s living room. It lay tipped on its side, a crowbar wedged along the top and several boards lying scattered about the floor. Jim noticed one had a rather nasty nail sticking out of it, and he imagined this had been the cause of Doppler’s yowls. But why all the smoke?

The doctor noticed Jim’s curiosity. He set the casserole down on top of a newspaper-laden coffee table and picked his way among the boards. He patted the top of the crate with a brisk little twitch of his wrist and seemed inordinately proud of whatever was in there. A smile had stretched out across his face, accentuating his many wrinkles at the same time that it made him appear younger.

"This, my young Jim, is a marvellous invention." He paused for effect, his chest puffing out under his bright green dressing gown. "It is a hygrothermograph."

When no reaction greeted his words, Doppler’s shoulders slumped. Jim could do nothing but blink and scratch the top of his head. He slid a gaze at the crate again, trying to make out what was inside. It looked square and big and cumbersome. It certainly didn’t look marvellous. Still, he didn’t really want to hurt Doppler’s feelings.

"That’s, um, great," he said weakly.

Doppler straightened with the sniff of the wounded. "Well, it is great. This hygrothermograph is going to regulate the temperature and humidity of my personal, astrophysics archives. I’m afraid several nasty and perturbing things are starting to develop consciousness in there, what with all the mould. I can’t think why I didn’t get a hygrothermograph before now. It’s disgraceful."

As he spoke, he took up the crowbar again, ripping away several new boards. With a grunt and a heave that sent him sprawling, he finally removed the last one. Jim bent down and looked into the box. The hygrothermograph was indeed square and big and quite possibly cumbersome. He grinned as he envisioned the doctor dragging it towards his archival library. He was willing to bet several of the doctor’s many personal knick-knacks would be knocked aside, shattered, bent, and squashed.

"Well, Jim," the doctor said now, picking himself up from the floor. "Now you’ve seen it, I hope you’re more suitably impressed."

"Yeah, doc," he said. "Every boy should have one of these."

The doctor directed a dry, humourless chuckle towards the boy’s sarcasm and crossed the living room. He disappeared into an adjoining room, where the sounds of cabinets being opened and closed began to drift out. Doppler’s voice drifted out soon after.

"Before you leave, my boy, would you mind doing me a small favour?"

Left alone, Jim had uncovered his mother’s casserole and helped himself to a hearty spoonful. At the sound of Doppler’s words, he swallowed quickly and replaced the lid. Wiping away the evidence from his lips, he garbled out an affirmative to Doppler’s question. He fervently hoped it had nothing to do with hauling that hygro-thing around.

"I’ve left a crate by the door," the doctor continued. "It’s an old lawn mower I’m sending to the Deuterium’s junkyard. The booster’s shot, I’m afraid. So much for its so-called ninety-day warranty. It’s downright flabbergasting, how many downright pernicious lies some vendors are willing to saddle on the unwary, uninitiated buyer. Preposterous. Simply preposterous!"

The doctor’s rant continued in varying degrees of volume, but Jim hadn’t heard a single word. Only one word had stood out, bouncing along Jim’s head with growing giddiness: booster. Jim ran a hand over the lawn mower’s crate and smiled. He could kiss Doppler. Bless him and his hygrothermograph.

A crash rang out, accentuated by the sound of shattering china, and before Doppler’s cursing had reached truly floral proportions, Jim had shouldered the crate and had backed out the door.

* * *

A brisk wind whistled across the canyon, racing along the ground as it raised a thin red cloud of pebbles and dead grass and dust. Jim stood at the edge of the canyon’s lip, gazing down. The canyon spread out into wide curves and bends below him, pathways from an invisible river dipping and curving as they swelled up or flattened out, stretching out into the horizon. Jim could just make out the roof of the Benbow in the hazy, sun drenched distance.

It was the weekend. No school. His twelfth birthday. Permission from mom to go out and enjoy himself and then come home to cake and his present. Jim smiled. He had already fashioned out his own present. It stood behind him, bright yellow sails straining in the wind, polished silver body reflecting the harsh summer light, poised and ready for its triumphant voyage.

It had taken Jim two full weeks to coax Doppler’s booster back to health. It was now strapped onto the back of the surfer, operational by means of a single pedal. The surfer’s original back pedals, meant for the extraction and retraction of the solar sails, were no longer operational. But this suited Jim. Although he would first swallow a bucketful of fur snails than admit it, he knew he wasn’t ready yet to pilot the surfer without sails. That would come later, after his first few test runs with this bright yellow prototype.

Climbing aboard, he inhaled sharply. The booster had three speeds. Earlier, he had coasted easily along the canyon’s bottom, the booster firing at its slowest speed, performing admirably well for the heart of a lawn mower. Jim intended to increase to its second speed now, just to get him off the ground and clear the tops of the canyon’s edges. Then he’d switch to the third speed. He gripped the safety bar circling the sails tightly. His knuckles had gone white.

Battling down a growing sense of apprehension, Jim placed his foot against the pedal. Carefully, he oriented the tip of the surfer towards the edge of the lip, measuring the distance between himself and the nearest outcropping of rock. Give or take two hundred feet. He could clear it. With a murmured prayer, he brought his foot down firmly on the pedal.

The wind was knocked out of him. One instant, he was still. The next, he was streaking forward, everything blurring into red and pink and white. Dust slapped into his face, a few pebbles striking his cheeks. Battling to keep his balance, he straightened, his hands gripping the safety bar for dear life. The solar sails fluttered out beside him in a shivering flash of sunlight. Dipping, Jim caught an air current. With a growing grin, he watched as they plumped out, straining against the wind and the speed.

The motion steadied the surfer somewhat. Blurred landscapes began to take on forms and shapes, racing past at a brisk pace. Jim could feel his heart begin to beat faster. Shifting his weight, he nudged the surfer to the left. It responded with a fluid, graceful motion, and it was all Jim could do not to burst out in tears. It was really happening this time. He had made it.

He circled about a few times before he decided his body was ready for the speed increase. Bracing himself against the new blast, he jammed his foot down on the pedal. His hair blew out behind him, slapping at his back and coming free from its ponytail. The canyon became a blur once more. Only this time it wasn’t frightening at all. It was a rush. A pure, unadulterated rush. Swooping, Jim turned a corner, delighting in the way the surfer responded to his movements, almost as if it were an extension of him and they were both one with the rock faces. Closing his eyes, he let out a loud, long shout of joy.

It echoed back towards him at the same time he felt the sails go slack. Eyes wide in disbelief, he watched as the telltale silvery colour of the solar charge drained away, the sails no longer responding to the wind or Jim’s frantic manoeuvres. Almost at the same time, he remembered the booster. It was still firing at full speed. He’d crash once the sails fully slacked. In a rush of barely controlled panic, he reached back for it with his foot, frantically jamming his boot down on the pedal.

The action, abrupt and clumsy, brought the surfer to a sudden, jerky stop. In one fluid movement, it pitched forward, sails folding over it, booster guiding it straight towards the ground, Jim shooting forward in a huddle of arms and legs and a scream that seemed to go on and on and on.

He tasted blood as he rolled to a standstill on the ground. Every nerve along his body burned, his palms raw and bleeding, a gash running up his right leg. He felt blood on his cheek, and he reached up towards his eyes, panicked. Everything seemed to be shifting before his vision. The blue sky and the red canyon and the brown dirt broke up into little squares of colour, blurring away, replaced by a shrill hum that echoed inside Jim’s head. Alarm shot up his spine and he closed his eyes.

Breathe, Jim. Just breathe.

Slowly, the shock wore away. It left Jim feeling limp and broken and embarrassed. Tears burned on his cheeks and he cursed. His feet shook as he pulled himself up. It was a while before he could steady himself. Bringing up his hands, he covered first one eye, then the next. Nothing wrong there. He felt for all of his teeth, found blood along his gums, but nothing cracked or loose or missing. As he ran his itching palms over his face, he felt the blood on his cheek again. He could feel a gash there, running just below his cheekbone. He hissed as his fingers came in contact with it.

I must look like a mess.

With a spasm of sadness and regret, he saw the remains of the surfer. The booster had clattered off, still rolling as it lay on its side. The front had been bent out of shape, the safety bar twisted and snapped. And the sails. The sails hung in tattered rips, impaled by the safety bar, fluttering in the wind. Bright yellow.

With a sigh, Jim looked up at the impassive blue skies. Overhead, wheeling about in the wind, a stray mantabird swooped and cried out. It beat its wings against the sun and then dipped out of sight, leaving Jim alone.

Author’s Note:

28 February 2003. Not much to say this time around. Only one thing. Hygrothermographs do in fact exist. They are equipment used by archives in order to measure temperature and humidity and air quality. In short, exactly what Dr. Doppler said. This story was, after all, born during LIS [Library Information Science] lectures, so it was only fitting that library equipment pop up for a cameo. In actuality, they're rather on the teeny tiny side, but the law of 70/30 has transformed them into old-fashioned behemoths here.

A somewhat pitiful sketch of Jim as we envision him at twelve can be found here, for the curious ones.

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