“I thought this hot-air balloon was the only kind of flight vehicle on Earth.”
“Hrm?”
Pilau was watching the little shape up above them in the sky. Some kind of airplane. He thought it was a jet.
“There’s a plane over there,” he said.
“Ah. Is there?” Kila wasn’t looking at it, just gazing off into the distance. “I see planes often in this place. You have not seen them?”
“No… I haven’t seen them.” Pilau was terribly near-sighted without his glasses, and his glasses were uncomfortable. He made a note that glasses would no longer be optional on Earth from now on.
“They have cars, so they should have planes as well, shouldn’t they? I know you have seen the cars.”
“It’s a completely different type of technology. Of course, you’d have no reason to know that... or care.”
“Correct, I did not know that.”
She looked relaxed, for her, anyway- she was standing stiffly straight with her hands clasped behind her back. If she was tense she’d be pacing. She didn’t seem to mind the other passengers. She didn’t even seem bothered that he was muttering to her about the oodities of Earth. She was usually so paranoid about things like that even though the humans never seemed to care.
She always did seem to like high up places. He’d read up on her homeworld (or maybe ‘planet of origin’ was more accurate, he doubted she thought of it as home), and it was covered in carnivorous plants, none of which could fly. If she was used to thinking of the ground and trees as the only sources of danger, maybe being suspended in the air was just fine. Great, even.
Had she noticed he was clinging to the nearest rope for dear life? She couldn’t know he was clinging with both of his left hands. The hologram visually edited out one of them.
“What are you looking at?” he ventured.
She gestured vaguely at the fairgrounds below.
“Anything in particular?” he asked.
“No, not really.”
He looked around. There were more balloons around them, sitting in the air like bubbles.
This was technology so archaic that it felt as if it should be something you only heard about in those ‘weird facts about history’ shows and only saw in person when you went to backwater places like Earth. Earth was like a nature preserve for the technologically unadvanced.
Actually, he knew hot-air balloons went up over the FibreCorp sponsored lake just across from his lab every other Founding Day. He had seen them from the windows and thought they looked like death traps. Back on Mirentia, he would never have set foot on one. Here on Earth, he had thought they were the only form of flight available. That was what had intrigued him enough to make him want to go up in one, and now he had just seen a jet passing by. He felt betrayed.
Why had Kila agreed to do this? He had thought she didn’t do anything just for fun. She only did things with him because she had decided she was his chaperone, and he had expected her to veto the balloon instead of going along with a bemused shrug.
If he glared at her calm profile he wasn’t thinking about how far away the ground was- until of course he started to think that she was insane for not thinking about it- and that made him think about it again. Earthlings had only very basic space travel, and still used cell towers, and he’d thought he could go up in a hot air balloon and not die?
Rationally, he knew that a simpler form of technology was usually safer, but he couldn’t get the phrase ‘death trap’ out of his mind.
“Hey! Scared of heights?”
He jumped and gasped. In his mind he had nearly gone over the edge with his involuntary jerk of surprise, and he clutched the rope even more tightly. (In reality, the wall of the basket was high enough that he could barely see over it and it would be difficult to fall out even if he wanted to.)
The speaker was a sympathetic-looking woman who had almost certainly mistaken him for a child. It was inconvenient being three feet tall on a monospecies planet where the natives reached five to six feet in adulthood.
“No, I’m not scared of heights,” said Pilau. “I’m doing fine. Thanks. You can go back to enjoying your ride. We’re fine.”
She gave him the awkward smile that meant he had been rude, and turned away. He hadn’t meant to give offense. If she took offense anyway, that was her problem.
Why was Kila so calm? “Do they have hot air balloons where you’re from?” he muttered.
“No, they do not,” she said.
She wasn’t looking around at the people and she wasn’t hissing at him not to mention planets, and certainly not to utter the word ‘Jukani’ although not a single person around would know the name of her planet or attach any meaning to it. He always thought she was a little annoying. Now she wasn’t keeping an eye out. What if she had been right all along? What if the oh-so-helpful bystander asking if he was scared of heights was a government agent? He’d never think she was annoying for being so hypervigilant again.
Okay, he definitely would think she was annoying, but he’d think so a little more fondly.
The wind shifted and the balloon swayed. He gasped and jerked again, and this time he noticed some resistance from his jacket, which had snagged on something.
No, it wasn’t snagged on anything. Kila had a tight hold of his sleeve. Her other hand was still tucked into the small of her back, and she had no grip on the basket. She would just fall out along with him if he fell out, but it was a nice thought. He supposed.
He didn’t know what she was thinking.