Gliding Flight. Anne-Gine Goemans

the robot man absolutely refused.

      ‘Thith ith no toy,’ he said. Very carefully he placed the golden eagle on the ground and pulled the wings out further. Gieles saw that the feathers had been painted with the utmost precision. There must have been a thousand of them. The robot man stroked the wings, then took the remote control out of the trunk.

      ‘Golden Eagle ith ready,’ said the robot man, lifting the bird up over his head again with one hand.

      ‘Make sure you stay away from the runways,’ warned Willem Bos as the robot man ran onto the field. Gieles watched a plane taxi by. Maybe he was seeing things, but he could have sworn that the passengers were craning to look out of the little windows. Willem Bos and the other bird controllers chuckled at the scene before them. There stood his father—big, secure and completely relaxed. Gieles wanted so much to be able to stand like that someday.

      ‘You know who he reminds me of?’ said the man with the moustache. Now the robot man was running back in their direction. ‘That environmental bunch that came here and cut holes in the fences. They were just as lanky and nervous.’

      ‘Maybe he’s an activist, too,’ Willem Bos suggested.

      ‘Or a terrorist,’ said his colleague. ‘With a bird as a thuithide bomber.’ He burst out laughing.

      They made a few more jokes about the lisping robot man, and just when they thought his technology had let him down, the invention took to the skies.

      The majestic wings whooshed like windmill blades. The yellow-tinted body gained altitude with ease. Once it was high enough, the bird began gliding through the atmosphere. Anyone who didn’t know better would have sworn that the golden eagle was scanning the earth for cadavers.

      The robot man had his bird fly toward a pole mounted with runway lights. A kestrel had settled on one of the lamps. A kestrel was one bird you didn’t want in an airplane engine. Recently a Boeing 747 had crashed in Belgium because of a kestrel. No fatalities, but the plane had snapped like a dry twig. The kestrel looked up at the unfamiliar assailant, gauged its chances and fled.

      The golden eagle drove off a couple of seagulls, six partridges, a group of magpies and dozens of starlings. The bird controllers began to reassess their opinion of the robot man.

      ‘Can I give it a try?’ asked Willem Bos after an hour. A few drops of rain had fallen and no one felt like getting drenched.

      ‘Thertainly not,’ said the robot man. His nostrils had become one big imploding nerve. His eyes shot back and forth from the golden eagle to the bird controller. ‘I’m the only one who can handle the controlth.’

      ‘What a load of crap,’ said Willem Bos. ‘Even a kid can make this trinket work.’

      The rain put an end to their discussion. ‘The bird’s getting wet,’ warned one of the bird controllers.

      ‘Rain ith no problem!’ cried the robot man.

      It began to rain harder. The controllers ran to their cars for shelter. Gieles stood beside his father, who remained outside.

      The robot man made his bird fly even higher. Gieles threw back his head and peered into the sky as the rain streamed down his face. The golden eagle must have been at least sixty metres off the ground. Its wings glided on the wind.

      ‘Too high!’ shouted Willem Bos. ‘You’re going too high! You’re losing control!’

      The robot man set off at a run and went after his bird, which was no longer flying in a straight line but lurching dangerously in the direction of the runway. Airplane headlights could be seen approaching in the wet airspace. Willem Bos took off in pursuit.

      ‘GOLDEN EAGLE: LAND IMMEDIATELY’ came the announcement from the speakers in the service car. ‘FINAL WARNING. GOLDEN EAGLE: LAND IMMEDIATELY.’

      The robot man did not respond. Leaping like a gazelle, he tried to catch up with his invention. But it was impossible. One of the bird controllers stepped out of his service car with a flare gun. He stood with his legs astraddle and aimed at the golden eagle, which was buzzing the edge of the runway threateningly. Gieles screwed up his eyes against the brightness of the approaching airplane lights. He followed the flare as it raced toward its target. But the golden eagle banked to the left, away from the bang and the smoking powder. The bird floated on outstretched wings as if it were borne up by an immense updraft. Suddenly it plunged forward and began losing altitude. Its mechanical body came spinning downward. The robot man jerked at the remote in an effort to regain control.

      Panting and leaning over with his hands on his thighs, Willem Bos watched the gyrating bird. Just as the tyres of the airplane hit the asphalt, the golden eagle crashed into the grass. The robot man ran up and hurled himself onto the bird. There was little left of it. Its styrofoam body had broken in two, spewing out its metallic entrails of screws and wires. There were nasty tears in the wings. The yellow beak and head were shattered beyond recognition.

      Moving with great strides, Willem Bos approached the robot man. Gieles had never seen him like this before. His father did not anger easily.

      ‘You imbecile!’ he roared, planting a hiking boot on one of the wings. ‘You’ll have everybody after you now, asshole! The entire airport!’

      Then he turned around and walked away.

      The soaking wet robot man stared at his bird, his nose frozen in a painfully inhaled grimace. Gieles sat down next to him and picked up the shattered head. He placed all the parts in one of the battered wings. Then using a detached piece of string he tied the eagle up into a manageable package.

      Gieles fervently hoped it wouldn’t rain on the day of his rescue operation.

      Rain was disastrous.

      -

      6

      That night Gieles dreamed about the crashed golden eagle. But instead of a bird’s head, the creature had long black hair and a head that looked like his mother’s. He woke up in a daze. It was only six o’clock.

      Gieles began to worry that Expert Rescue Operation 3032 might not be safe. He calculated his chance of success at ninety percent, provided the geese listened to him. And that was the problem. They followed after him when they were supposed to stay put, and stayed put when they were supposed to take off.

      On the other hand, Captain Sully’s chance of success couldn’t have been more than one percent. But he was well prepared. He had things under control. The captain followed the landing instructions, even when the runway had turned to water. He stuck to his schedule. Gieles had to have a schedule, too.

      He paced back and forth in his insulated room until the solution presented itself. Then he grabbed the partition from the junk corner and turned it over.

      Perfect. With a black felt-tip he wrote out the schedule on the back of the wooden partition.

      ‘May: train for stay command

      June: train for up/down command

      July: train for all commands—stay/up/down

      August 7, 11:40 a.m.: Mom comes back’

      Gieles looked at the outline with satisfaction. This afternoon, after school, he’d work on training the geese and finish the letter to Moullec.

      He got dressed and went to the kitchen. Uncle Fred was reading the newspaper.

      ‘What a brouhaha with that robot yesterday,’ he said, taking a sip from a mug with a picture of DC-2 on it. There was a jagged crack running through the plane. Why the coffee didn’t leak out was a mystery.

      ‘I can understand why your father blew his stack, but it really was tough luck for the inventor, too. I heard he had worked a long time on that bird.’

      ‘Three hundred and fifty hours,’ said Gieles as he spread peanut butter on a piece of bread.

      Uncle Fred pushed the newspaper towards Gieles. It was the free regional paper that came every