14

V. There is nothing that can be in our way, for this is Big John, that Laughs at Barriers, and says brrm-brrm.

From The Book of Nome,
Big John Chap. 3, v. V

IT WAS A very old shed. It was a very rusty shed. It was a shed that wobbled in high winds. The only thing even vaguely new about it was the padlock on the door, which Big John hit at about six miles an hour. The rickety building rang like a gong, leaped off its foundations, and was dragged halfway across the quarry before it fell apart in a shower of rust and smoke. Big John emerged like a very angry chick from a very old egg and then rolled to a stop.

Grimma picked herself up from the plank and nervously started to pick bits of rust off herself.

“We’ve stopped,” she said vaguely, her ears still ringing. “Why have we stopped, Dorcas?”

He didn’t bother to try to get up. The thump of Big John hitting the door had knocked all the breath out of him.

“I think,” he said, “that everyone might have been flung about a bit. Why did you want it to go so fast?”

“Sorry!” Sacco called up. “Bit of a misunderstanding there, I think!”

Grimma pulled herself together. “Well,” she said, “I got us out, anyway. I’ve got the hang of it now. We’ll just . . . we’ll just . . . we’ll . . .”

Dorcas heard her voice fade into silence. He looked up.

There was a truck parked in front of the quarry. And three humans were running toward Big John in big, floating bounds.

“Oh dear,” he said.

“Didn’t it read my note?” wondered Grimma aloud.

“I’m afraid it did,” said Dorcas. “Now, we shouldn’t panic. We’ve got a choice. We can either—”

“Go forward,” snapped Grimma. “Right now!”

“No, no,” said Dorcas weakly, “I wasn’t going to suggest that . . .”

“First gear!” Grimma commanded. “And lots of fast!”

“No, you don’t want to do that,” Dorcas murmured.

“Watch me,” said Grimma. “I warned them! They can read, we know they can read! If they’re really intelligent, they’re intelligent enough to know better!”

Big John gathered speed.

“You mustn’t do this,” said Dorcas. “We’ve always kept away from humans!”

“They don’t keep away from us!” shouted Grimma.

“But—”

“They demolished the Store, they tried to stop us escaping, now they’re taking our quarry and they don’t even know what we are!” said Grimma. “Remember the Gardening Department in the Store? Those horrible statues of garden ornaments? Well, I’m going to show them real nomes. . . .”

“You can’t beat humans!” shouted Dorcas, above the roar of the engine. “They’re too big! You’re too small!”

“They may be big,” said Grimma, “and I may be small. But I’m the one with the giant truck. With teeth.” She leaned over the plank. “Everyone hang on down there,” she shouted. “This may be rough.”

It had dawned on the great slow creatures outside that something was wrong. They stopped their lumbering charge and, very slowly, tried to dodge out of the way. Two of them managed to leap into the empty office as Big John bowled past.

“I see,” said Grimma. “They must think we’re stupid. Take a big left turn. More. More. Now stop. Okay.” She rubbed her hands together.

“What are you going to do?” whispered Dorcas, terrified.

Grimma leaned over the plank.

“Sacco,” she said. “You see those other levers?”

The pale round blobs of the humans’ faces appeared at the dusty windows of the shed.

Big John was twenty feet away, vibrating gently in the early-morning mist. Then the engine roared. The big front shovel came up, catching the sunlight. . . .

Big John leaped forward, bouncing across the quarry floor and taking out one wall of the shed like ripping the lid off a can. The other walls and the roof folded up gently, as if it were a house of cards with the ace of spades flipped away.

The digger careered around in a big circle, so that when the two humans crawled out of the wreckage, it was the first thing they saw. Throbbing, with the big metal mouth poised to bite.

They ran.

They ran almost as fast as nomes.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” said Grimma in a satisfied voice. “Now, where did the other human go?”

“Back to the truck, I think,” said Dorcas.

“Fine,” said Grimma. “Lots of right, Sacco. Stop. Now forward, slowly.”

“Can we sort of stop this and just go, now? Please?” pleaded Dorcas.

“The humans’ truck is in the way,” said Grimma, reasonably enough. “They’ve stopped right in the entrance.”

“Then we’re trapped,” said Dorcas.

Grimma laughed. It wasn’t a very amusing sound. Dorcas suddenly felt almost as sorry for the humans as he was feeling for himself.

The humans must have been having similar thoughts, if humans had thoughts. He could see their pale faces watching Big John lurch toward them.

They’re wondering why they can’t see a human inside, he thought. They can’t work it out. Here’s this machine, moving all by itself. A bit of a puzzler, for humans.

They reached some sort of conclusion, though. He saw both truck doors fly open and the humans jumped out just as Big John—

There was a crunch, and the truck jerked as Big John hit it. The knobbly wheels spun for a moment, and then the truck rolled backward. Clouds of steam poured out.

“That’s for Nisodemus,” said Grimma.

“I thought you didn’t like him,” said Dorcas.

“Yes, but he was a nome.”

Dorcas nodded. They were all, when you got right down to it, nomes. It was just as well to remember whose side you were on.

“May I suggest you change gear?” he said quietly.

“Why? What’s wrong with the one we’ve got?”

“You’ll be able to push better if you go down a gear. Trust me.”

Humans were watching. They were watching, because a machine rolling around by itself is something that you do watch, even if you’ve just had to climb a tree or hide behind a hedge.

They saw Big John roll backward, change gear with a roar, and attack the truck again. The windows shattered.

Dorcas was really unhappy about this.

“You’re killing a truck,” he said.

“Don’t be silly,” said Grimma. “It’s a machine. Just bits of metal.”

“Yes, but someone made it,” said Dorcas. “They must be very hard to make. I hate destroying things that are hard to make.”

“They ran over Nisodemus,” said Grimma. “And when we used to live in a hole, nomes were always being squashed by cars.”

“Yes, but nomes aren’t hard to make,” said Dorcas. “You just need other nomes.”

“You’re weird.”

Big John struck again. One of the truck’s headlights exploded. Dorcas winced.

Then the truck was pushed clear. Smoke was billowing out from it now, where fuel had spilled over the hot engine. Big John backed off and rumbled around it. The nomes were really getting the hang of him now.

“Right,” said Grimma. “Straight ahead.” She nudged Dorcas. “We’ll go and find this barn now, shall we?”

“Just go down the lane, and I think there’s a gateway into the fields,” Dorcas mumbled. “It had an actual gate in it,” he added. “I suppose it would be too much to ask you to let us open it first?”

Behind them the truck burst into flames. Not spectacularly, but in a workmanlike way, as if it were going to go on burning all day. Dorcas saw a human take off its coat and flap uselessly at the fire. He felt quite sorry for it.

Big John rolled unopposed down the lane. Some of the nomes started to sing as they sweated over the ropes.

“Now, then,” said Grimma, “where’s this gateway? Through the gate and across the fields, you said, and—”

“It’s just before you get to the car with the flashing lights on top,” said Dorcas slowly. “The one that’s just coming up the lane.”

They stared at it.

“Cars with lights on the top are bad news,” said Grimma.

“You’re right there,” said Dorcas. “They’re often full of humans who very seriously want to know what’s going on. There were lots of them down at the railway.”

Grimma looked along the hedge.

“This is the gateway coming up, is it?” she said.

“Yes.”

Grimma leaned down.

“Slow down and turn sharp right,” she said.

The teams swung into action. Sacco even changed gear without being asked. Nomes hung like spiders from the steering wheel, hauling it around.

There was a gate in the gateway. But it was old and held to the post with bits of string in proper agricultural fashion. It wouldn’t have stopped anything very determined, and it had no chance with Big John.

Dorcas winced again. He hated to see things broken.

The field on the other side was brown soil. Corrugated earth, the nomes called it, after the corrugated cardboard you sometimes got in the Packing Department in the Store. There was snow between the furrows. The big wheels churned it into mud.

Dorcas was half expecting the car to follow them. It stopped instead, and two humans in dark-blue suits got out and started to lumber across the field. There’s no stopping humans, he thought glumly. They’re like the weather.

The field ran gently uphill, around the quarry. Big John’s engine thudded.

There was a wire fence ahead, with a grassy field beyond it. The wire parted with a twang. Dorcas watched it roll back and wondered whether Grimma would let him stop and collect a bit of it. You always knew where you were with wire.

The humans were still following. Out of the corner of his eye, because up here there was altogether too much outside to look at, Dorcas saw flashing lights on the main road, far away.

He pointed them out to Grimma.

“I know,” she said. “I’ve seen them. But what else could we have done?” she added desperately. “Gone off and lived in the flowers like good little pixies?”

“I don’t know,” said Dorcas wearily. “I’m not sure about anything anymore.”

Another wire fence twanged. There was shorter grass up here, and the ground curved—

And then there was nothing but sky, and Big John speeding up as the wheels bounced over the field at the top of the hill.

Dorcas had never seen so much sky. There was nothing around them, just a bit of scrub in the distance. And it was silent. Well, not silent at all, because of Big John’s roar. But it looked the kind of place that would be silent if diggers full of desperate nomes weren’t thundering across it.

Frantic sheep ran out of the way.

“There’s the barn up ahead, that stone building on the horiz—” Grimma began. Then she said, “Are you all right, Dorcas?”

“If I keep my eyes shut,” he whispered.

“You look dreadful.”

“I feel worse.”

“But you’ve been outside before.”

“Grimma, we’re the highest thing there is! There’s nothing higher than us for miles, or whatever you call those things! If I open my eyes, I’ll fall into the sky!”

Grimma leaned down to the perspiring drivers.

“Right just a bit!” she shouted. “That’s it! Now all the fast you can!”

“Hold on to Big John!” she shouted to Dorcas, as the engine noise grew. “You know he can’t fly!”

The machine bumped up on a stony track that led in the general direction of the distant barn. Dorcas risked opening one eye. He’d never been to the barn. Was anyone certain there was food there, or was it just a guess? Perhaps at least it’d be warm. . . .

But there was a flashing light near it, coming toward them.

“Why won’t they leave us alone?” shouted Grimma. “Stop!”

Big John rolled to a halt. The engine idled in the chilly air.

“This must lead down to the road,” said Dorcas.

“We can’t go back,” said Grimma.

“No.”

“Or forward.”

“No.”

Grimma drummed her fingers on Big John’s metal.

“Have you got any other ideas?”

“We could try going across the fields,” said Dorcas.

“Where would that take us?” said Grimma.

“Away from here, for a start.”

“But we wouldn’t know where we were going!” said Grimma.

Dorcas shrugged. “It’s either that or paint flowers.”

Grimma tried to smile.

“And those little wings wouldn’t suit me,” she said.

“What’s going on up there?” Sacco yelled up.

“We ought to tell people,” Grimma whispered. “Everyone thinks we’re going to the barn—”

She looked around. The car was closer, bumping heavily over the rough track. The two humans were still coming the other way. “Don’t humans ever give up?” she said to herself.

She leaned over the edge of the plank.

“Some left, Sacco,” she said. “And then just go steadily.”

Big John bounced off the track and rolled over the cold grass. There was another wire fence in the far distance and a few more sheep.

We don’t know where we’re going, she thought. The only important thing is to go. Masklin was right. This isn’t our world.

“Perhaps we should have talked to humans,” she said aloud.

“No, you were right,” said Dorcas. “In this world, everything belongs to humans, and we would belong to them, too. There wouldn’t be any room for us to be us.”

The fence came closer. There was a road on the other side. Not a track, but a proper road with black stone on it.

“Right or left?” said Grimma. “What do you think?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Dorcas, as the digger twanged through the fence.

“We’ll try going left, then,” she said. “Slow down, Sacco! Left a bit. More. More. Steady at that. Oh, no!”

There was another car in the distance. It had a flashing light on the top.

Dorcas risked a look behind them.

There was another flashing light there.

“No,” he said.

“What?” said Grimma.

“Just a little while ago you asked if humans ever gave up,” he said. “They don’t.”

“Stop,” said Grimma.

The teams trotted obediently across Big John’s floor. The digger rolled gently to a halt again, engine idling.

“This is it,” said Dorcas.

“Are we at the barn yet?” a nome called up.

“No,” said Grimma. “Not yet. Nearly.”

Dorcas made a face.

“We might as well accept it now,” he said. “You’ll end up waving a stick with a star on it. I just hope they don’t force me to mend their shoes.”

Grimma looked thoughtful. “If we drove as hard as we could at that car coming toward us—” she began.

“No,” said Dorcas, firmly. “It really wouldn’t solve anything.”

“It’d make me feel a lot better,” said Grimma.

She looked around at the fields.

“Why’s it gone all dark?” she said. “We can’t have been running all day. It was early morning when we started out.”

“Doesn’t time fly when you’re enjoying yourselves?” said Dorcas gloomily. “And I don’t like milk much. I don’t mind doing their housework if I don’t have to drink milk, but—”

“Just look, will you?”

Darkness was spreading across the fields.

“It might be an ellipse,” said Dorcas. “I read about them: It all goes dark when the sun covers the moon. And possibly vice versa,” he added doubtfully.

The car ahead of them squealed to a halt, crashed backward across the road into a stone wall, and came to an abrupt stop.

In the field by the road the sheep were running away. It wasn’t the ordinary panic of sheep ordinarily disturbed. They had their heads down and were pounding across the ground with one aim in mind. They were sheep who had decided that this was no time to waste energy panicking when it could be used for galloping away as fast as possible.

A loud and unpleasant humming noise filled the air.

“My word,” Dorcas said weakly. “They’re pretty damn terrifying, these ellipses.” Down below, the nomes were panicking. They weren’t sheep, every nome could think for itself, and when you started to think hard about sudden darkness and mysterious humming noises, panicking seemed like a logical idea.

Little lines of crawling blue fire crackled over Big John’s battered paintwork. Dorcas felt his hair standing on end.

Grimma stared upward.

The sky was totally black.

“It’s . . . all . . . right,” she said, slowly. “Do you know, I think it’s all right!”

Dorcas looked at his hands. Sparks crackled off his fingertips.

“It is, is it?” was all he could think of to say.

“That isn’t night, it’s a shadow. There’s something huge floating above us.”

“And that’s better than night, is it?” said Dorcas.

“I think so. Come on, let’s get off.”

She shinned down the rope to Big John’s deck. She was smiling madly. That was almost as terrifying as everything else put together. They weren’t used to Grimma smiling.

“Give me a hand,” she said. “We’ve got to get down. So he can be sure it’s us.”

They looked at her in astonishment as she wrestled with the gangplank.

“Come on,” she repeated. “Help me, can’t you?”

They helped. Sometimes, when you’re totally confused, you’ll listen to anyone who seems to have any sort of aim in mind. They grabbed the plank and shoved it out of the back of the cab until it tilted and swung down toward the floor.

At least there wasn’t so much sky now. The blue was a thin line around the edge of the solid darkness overhead.

Not entirely solid. When Dorcas’s eyes grew used to it, he could make out squares and rectangles and circles.

Nomes scurried down the plank and milled around on the road below, uncertain whether to run or stay.

Above them one of the dark squares in the shadow moved aside. There was a clank, and then a rectangle of darkness whirred down very gently, like an elevator without wires, and landed softly on the road. It was quite big.

There was something on it. Something in a pot. Something red and yellow and green.

The nomes craned forward to see what it was.