The White Bull (12 page)

Grim military men, whose names and faces I scarcely knew, were now in charge. Minos was not due home for at least another month. The de facto military government, taking over after the defection of both royal princesses, did not want to assume responsibility for judging me. My son and I were both confined under strict house arrest, our movements restricted to the workshop and their living quarters.

All of the ordinary entrances and exits of this small domain were promptly walled up—I tried to comfort my son by pointing out that the masonry was rough and temporary-looking. Icarus brightened somewhat after he had been convinced that this was not all some rather excessive punishment visited upon us both because he had played hooky once too often.

A continuous guard was also established. One servant only was allowed us, the maid Thorhild. No one else was allowed in or out of our quarters, and any conversation with the prisoners was forbidden. Food was slid in to us through a tiny door, and garbage slid out, and the water continued to flow through the plumbing I had designed.

Now at last I had plenty of time and privacy in which to work. Now at last I could let Icarus see what I was doing, and even set the lad to work helping me.

What materials ought I to use, from which to sculpt the thousand channels in each wing? Offhand I could not have said. The names of the proper materials had not been included in the lesson seared into my brain; but the qualities those materials were required to possess had not been omitted. The substance at hand that most closely matched the requirements for the interior of the wings was wax, wax mixed with certain vegetable fibers, and sealed inside a sheathing of fine, thin leather. Fortunately for my project Minos had never been stingy; my workshop was well-stocked for a truly bizarre variety of projects, and by the favor of the gods everything I would need for this one was on hand.

I began by weighing and measuring both my son and myself. Then I cleared my workbench of the false start I had made on my own; then I began to work hard, in sunlight by day, and lamplight by night.

When I had the basic fabric of one large wing completed, and had pierced it with a hundred cunning perforations of the thousand that it must ultimately have, I strapped it firmly onto my left arm and shoulder and gave my arm a quick push downward through the air, as if I were a desperate bird. For just a moment my arm was halted in mid-air by a responding pressure; for just a moment it seemed to me as if the limb had rested upon something solid and ready to be climbed. In a state of considerable excitement I resumed my labors.

Days passed; how many, I did not notice. One clouded night, when at last there were four wings finished, with a thousand tiny channels cut through each, I decided that we were ready for a real trial. It was very difficult for one person to put the wings on himself unaided, and we had to assist each other. Then we climbed up and out through the secret skylight above the secret workshop, and stood upon the low roof of the House. Ordering Icarus to wait, I drew a deep breath and, encouraged by the results of my limited indoor trials, launched myself headlong from the edge of the roof out over a ravine. Beating my wings, at first almost in a panic, I mounted steadily into the sky.

There was a frantic initial awkwardness to be overcome, the breathless feeling that at every moment I was about to fall. But my confidence increased with every wingbeat, every moment of success, and before I had caused the lights of the House to revolve three times below me, I had started to learn to relax like a good swimmer. With each stroke the air beneath my wings felt alternately as supportive as springy tree branches, and as buoyant as sea water.

When I glided back to the roof and landed, Icarus was waiting for me, clamoring as vociferously as he could in an enforced whisper for his own chance to try. Next we plunged together from the edge of the roof, and beat our way completely around the palace at perhaps ten times the height of a man, before I decided that we had flown enough for one night, and that we had better quit before we were seen.

Hie following night was cloudy too. Mounting together once more into the air, we flew a greater distance, going as far from the palace as Heraklion and the edge of the ocean, rising as high as birds, until what looked like a great part of the northern shoreline of the island was vaguely visible, picked out by the dots of fires in fishing villages and isolated seashore camps and cottages.

It was so quiet in the air that we could talk to each other almost in whispers.

"Father, we could just keep going, right now. To anywhere we wanted."

"One night soon, Icarus, we'll do just that. But there must be a few days left before the earliest time when the king and queen could possibly come back. And there are a few more preparations we must make."

When after each flight we landed and crawled back into the workshop through the secret skylight, I found that the wings had somehow been warmed by their labor in the cool night air. And strain my thought as I might at the problem, I still had neither the words nor the ideas to make it clear to myself in my own mind just
how
they worked. That had not been part of the teaching.

Continued experiments indoors, in the daytime when the light was good, allowed us to see some puzzling things. A strong push down, with one completed wing, and you could sometimes see a vapor-puff as big as a pumpkin appear as if by magic in the beaten air, and fly off rearward, spinning gently. Icarus extending a hand into one of these puffs said that it felt quite cool.

Food and water and gold, in very small quantities, we were going to carry at our belts. We would wear a minimum of clothing, no more than loincloths, to save weight. My plan was to take wing just before dawn, and follow the northern coastline of Crete away from the onrushing sun, veering to the northwest when we came to the western end of the great island. The sun would be up by then, and the small island of Antikythera, and larger Kythera, must lie straight ahead of us. We ought to be able to reach Kythera in no more than a few hours' flight, if anything like the speed we had been able to attain at night could be sustained by day. I saw no reason why it should not be so.

We would be able to stop and rest, if necessary, somewhere on Antikythera or Kythera. After that, if all went well, the western coast of mainland Greece would serve as our guide, until we were far enough north and felt confident enough to strike out straight west over the Ionian Sea in the direction of southern Italy and Sicily.

On the island of Sicily ruled King Cocalus, who had long expressed his admiration of my work, and who had repeatedly invited me to come to work for him whenever I liked.

"Must we leave before dawn, father?"

"I think we must. Our servant will still be sleeping, and it will be safer. Now get some sleep."

… and I, the father, who cared more for my son than anything else I then possessed, dreamt of the flight before it happened.

I had not yet paid the price, but I knew that it would come. In my dream, squinting into the rising sun, feeling its touch already warm, I absently marked the dull sheen of its rays upon the wings of Icarus, and waited for the breath of wind that would come to help us rise among the gulls.

The real dawn overtook us just as I had planned, while we were passing westward over the northern coastline of Greece. It revealed to our eyes a beautiful daytime high-altitude world that we had never seen before.

For a brief period Icarus became very sportive with his wings, climbing and diving and trying to turn somersaults, urging his more cautious father to join in the fun. Momentarily tempted, I did an acrobatic twist or two. Then, after I had recovered from a temporary accidental plunge, I urged my son to greater caution.

We saw a few low-flying birds, who veered away from us crying in alarm.

We saw some people on the beach or in the water, fisherfolk up early, pointing at us and crying out in fear or admiration or perhaps both. Only the swifter runners below, racing on smooth sand, were able to keep up with the two flying figures in the sky.

One of those scampering figures had a bow slung on its back, and I, taking what I thought was prudent alarm, urged my son to a somewhat higher altitude. Now, being as I thought somewhat beyond bowshot, we resumed speed in a horizontal direction.

"Father, look there!"

A bronze-bright speck, glinting in the early sun, was darting toward us from the east, moving along the beach, outpacing running dogs with ease. Fisherfolk fell back as if in fear as the bright dot passed. In a few moments I was sure that the figure was that of Talus, coming at a run along the coast to overtake us. Perhaps someone had seen us rising on wings from the palace; perhaps the Bull still lived, to give his metallic servant orders, or perhaps the Bronze Man was capable of taking revenge upon his own initiative.

Though it seemed we must be safe from him at the distance we had attained, I did not in the least like the sight of that purposeful onrush, whatever authority had ordained it. "Higher, son. And we had better turn more out to sea."

Scarcely had we altered course in that direction when something, a missile of some kind flying too fast for me to see it, sang past us through the air.

"Faster, Icarus! Out to sea. And higher!"

Glancing back I saw the bronze arm, almost invisible with distance, draw back and then flash in a twinkling movement. A breath later, something, another invisible projectile, came whining straight between our airborne bodies.

"Hurry, Icarus! Twist and turn in flight!"

"Father—I—"

Then it was as if the Sun himself had stabbed us. The atmosphere around us wavered, and I think we both cried out in the intense heat. An almost invisible lance of power had struck at us. Something like a violet afterimage danced in the air between us and the Bronze Man. But the pain and the burning reached us only erratically. Our dodging in midair kept the weapon from being focused on us long enough to do real damage.

We labored on. The violet burning came again, but not quite as intense as before. I was beginning to think that we were safe, when, breaking the silence of mid-flight, there came a sound. In a moment I realized that this had been the muffled impact of some small missile tearing right through one of Icarus's wings, near the strapped root where it met the boy's shoulder.

I cried out my son's name, and he responded bravely. His own flesh was undamaged, and he could still fly, though now more slowly. Turning from right to left, trying to get my own wider pinions and larger body between my son and those deadly missiles, I did my best to urge Icarus on.

We continued to make steady headway out from shore. The next rock came more weakly, being visible through the upper portion of its trajectory and descending past us at an angle. The hurling machine, now standing up to its ankles in the waves, was working at the extreme limit of its range.

The wind, I thanked the gods, was in our favor, helping to carry us away from shore. The last rock thrown after us by Talus must have fallen into the sea some distance behind and below us, and I never heard its passage.

"Thank all the gods! You can still fly?"

"Yes, father." The boy sounded frightened but game.

"Then on, straight on. We dare not turn back."

I was concerned that Icarus with his damaged wing had some trouble in holding to a straight course, but I was reassured that my son was still able to maintain altitude.

Time passed. A grayish rock-speck of an island, uninhabited, waterless, useless except in the most immediate emergency, passed beneath us. We conferred in low, calm voices. If we were to stop upon that speck of land to rest, we would have to try to take off again from somewhere on its nearly level surface, scarcely above the level of the sea. And in my mind's eye I could visualize bronze Talus commandeering a boat, and rowing after us with inhuman speed and endurance. We decided that we should not stop.

The tiny island passed behind us.

From the look of the waves below, I thought that there might still be a mild breeze behind us, helping, pushing us toward our destination. But the only motion I could feel in the air was in the opposite direction, as we flew through it. When I thought upon the matter, I realized that this was logical.

Now a much larger island, one that could only be Antikythera, was coming clearly into our view ahead. There must, I thought, be Cretan settlements upon this isle; certainly there were patches of green, and some of them looked like cultivation.

Icarus now had to struggle continually to stay on course, as his right wing began to betray him more and more. Looking as carefully as possible at the constantly moving surface of the wing, I saw what turned my spirit dim within me. The hole made by Talus's missile was gradually tearing farther open, a little and a little more.

"Head this way, son. This way!"

"I can't, father—I—can't—fly straight—any more—" The child was laboring fiercely with his arms, running out of breath with which to talk. Panic was growing in his dark eyes, as he fiercely struggled to keep himself airborne.

In desperation I tried to fly close above my son, to help him somehow from above. But our hands were all but helpless, with our arms bound into wingstraps as they were. As I flew closer to my son I saw how the wax was starting to melt and run out of Icarus's right wing.

Next I flew underneath my son, and tried to offer support from that direction. But the necessary feat of balance appeared to be impossible to coordinate in midair. His feet that would have rested on my back slipped off, fell free, again and again.

Icarus's weakness was forcing him to fly lower and lower. Meanwhile another speck of land had appeared out of the sun-dazzling sea. It was closer than Antikythera, much closer. Now, tantalizingly, it was almost within reach.

"Father! Help! Help—"

My son's feet, that I had been trying to balance on my back in flight, slipped free one final time. Spinning out of control entirely, the boy's body plummeted away from me. Falling and falling. Shrinking and shrinking. By all the gods, and were we still so far above the water? Falling, like a bird struck in flight by a hurled stone, he splashed at last into the dark sea.