Read Online Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks - Free Book Online Page B

at thedark black-green balloon blotting out most of the morning sky.
    The blimp tree towered fifteen meters over them, casting a deep shadow. The gas sac’s surface was rough and veined and yet still looked thin as paper, giving the impression of having been sewn together, clumsily, from giant leaves. Kabe thought it looked like a thunder cloud.
    â€œHow would they get here in the first place, to this forest?” Ziller asked.
    â€œI think I see what you’re getting at,” Feli said, jumping out of the craft and landing on a broad root. She checked her harness points again, squinting at them in the semi-darkness. “Most of them would come by underground,” she said, glancing around at the blimp tree and then up at the ruby light sifting through the ground trees. “A few would power-glide,” she added, frowning at the blimper, which seemed to be stretching, tautening. Kabe thought he detected sounds coming from the banner reservoir. “Some would take an aircraft,” she went on, then flashed a smile at them and said, “Excuse me. I think it’s time I got into place.”
    She took a pair of long gloves from the belly pack and pulled them on. Curved black nails half as long as her fingers extended from their tips when she flexed them, then she turned and clambered up the side of the reservoir pod until she was at its lip, where the springy material curled under the blimp. The tree was creaking loudly now, the gas sac expanding and becoming taut.
    â€œOthers might come by ground car or bike, or boat and then walk,” Feli went on, settling down in a crouch on the lip of the reservoir. “Of course the real purists,the sky junkies, they live out here in huts and tents and survive off hunting and wild fruits and vegetables. They travel everywhere on foot or by wing and you never see them in town at all. They live for flying; it’s a ritual, a … what do you call it? A sacrament, almost a religion with them. They hate people like me because we do it for fun. Lot of them won’t talk to us. Actually, some of them won’t talk to each other and I think some have lost the power of speech alto—Whoo!” Feli turned away as the blimp suddenly parted company with the banner reservoir and rose into the sky like a giant black bubble from a vast brown mouth.
    Beneath the gas sac, attached to it by a thick mass of filaments, rose a broad green streamer of tissue-thin leaf, eight meters across and webbed with darker veins.
    Feli Vitrouv stood, flicked out the claws in her gloves and flung herself at the mass of filaments just under the blimp, thumping into the great curtain of leaf and making it shudder and ripple. She kicked at it with her feet, and more blades punctured the membrane. The blimp hesitated in its ascent, then continued up into the sky.
    Released from the shadow of the blimp, the air around the aircraft seemed to lighten as the huge shape swept into the still brightening sky with a noise like a sigh.
    â€œHa
ha!”
shouted Feli.
    Ziller leaned over to Kabe. “Shall we follow her?”.
    â€œWhy not?”.
    â€œFlying machine?” Ziller said.
    â€œHub here, Cr. Ziller,” said a voice from their seats’ headrests.
    â€œTake us up. We’d like to follow Ms. Vitrouv.”
    â€œCertainly.”
    The aircraft rose almost straight up, smoothly and quickly, until they were level with the black-haired woman, who had twisted so that she faced out from the banner under the blimp. Kabe looked over the side of the craft. They were about sixty meters up by now, and gaining height at a respectable rate. Looking right down, he could see into the blimper’s base pod, where the reams of banner leaf unfolded from their reservoir and were hauled rippling into the air.
    Feli Vitrouv smiled broadly at them, her body being pulled this way and that as the banner leaf flapped and ruffled in the roaring wind of the plant’s ascent.