The God of the Hive Read Online Free PDF Page B

glass cover.
    In the end, Mrs Ross herself pulled the prop for us, yanking it into life while her son oversaw operations from the top of the stone wall. Estelle’snose was pressed to the glass that covered our passenger compartment, watching the ground travel past, first slowly, then more rapidly. She shot me a grin as the prop’s speed pushed us back into our seats; I grinned right back at her, and pushed away thoughts of Icarus and his wings.
    Then we tipped up, took a hop, and were airborne. Estelle squealed with excitement when the wind caught us. She exclaimed at the houses that turned into sheds and then doll-houses, the horses receding to the size of dogs and then figurines, a motorcar becoming a toy, and a man on a bicycle who became little more than a crawling beetle. We rode the wind up and up over the town, then Javitz pulled us into a wide circle and aimed back the way we had come, roaring lower and lower. The houses, animals, and figures grew again as he prepared to buzz over the Ross rooftop—and then I glimpsed the man on the bicycle, only he was not simply a man, he was a man with a constabulary helmet, and he was standing on the Ross walkway craning up at us.
    Five minutes later and he’d have caught us on the ground.
    Estelle kept her face glued to the glass, her bony knees balanced on my thighs. I tucked most of the fur coat around her, and tried to ignore the frigid air brushing my neck and taking possession of my toes. It was less than forty miles to Thurso as the crow flew—although slightly longer for a Bristol Tourer that kept over land for much of the time. In any event, under less than an hour we would be trading our hubristic mode of transportation for the safety of a train, to begin our earth-bound way southward, towards civilisation and the assistance of my brother-in-law. Who would surely have reasserted his authority by then.
    We approached Thurso as we had left it, over the coast-line between the town and Scotland’s end at John o’ Groats. The wind was powerful, but nowhere near as rough as it had been when we fought our way north. From time to time, Javitz half-rose in his cockpit to peer at the ground past the high nose of the ’plane, making minor corrections each time.
    Unbidden, a thought crept into my mind: Would it be irresponsible of me to turn over the duties of nurse-maid to Javitz—just for the day—while I returned to the islands to see what could be done about Brothers? Clearly, the pilot had friends in the area. And he seemed to knowbetter than I how to communicate with children. Yes, I had promised Estelle’s father that I would watch over her; but surely removing the threat of Brothers would offer a more complete protection? Or was this merely what I wanted to do, and not what I should do?
    We had shed altitude as we followed the coast-line south. Before the town began, Javitz throttled back, correcting his course a fraction each time he stood to examine the terrain. We were perhaps a hundred feet from the ground, and even I in my seat could glimpse the approaching harbour, when a sinister chain of noises cut through the ceaseless racket: a slap, a gasp, and an immediate, high-pitched whistle.
    Javitz had been half-standing, but he dropped hard into his seat and wrenched at the controls, slamming the aeroplane to the side and making its mighty Siddeley Puma engines build to a bone-shaking thunder.
    Estelle shrieked as her head cracked against the window. I grabbed for her, pulling her to my chest as her cries of fear mingled with the engine noise and the untoward whistle of air. Then in seconds, the sideways fall changed and everything went very heavy and terribly confusing. I was dimly aware of something raining down on my arm and shoulder as—I finally realised what the motion meant—we corkscrewed our way upwards. Glass , I thought dimly, falling from a shattered window. I pulled the protective fur coat up around the cowering child and shouted words of