454 Years Later

The Amazing Year 1877 AD

The Britannic Dominion of New Zealand

Collingwood – The Capital of the Nation

Friday December 15th

Chapter One

A New England

“We kept the Dutch out, that's the main thing! And the Prussians, that's the main thing too!” pronounced Mr Skilton Senior, waggling his finger, and frothing a little at the corner of his mouth. His Cornish accent so thick that it sounded, at times, a language almost separate from and not at all related to the Queen's own English. That ranting voice, a voice from another age, remained with Max as one of his clearest memories of his irascible grandfather.

As a natural consequence of growing up, Max had, at some point, finally come to see his grandfather as just a man. He had also, maybe at a similar point, stopped wondering who exactly his grandfather was mad at, and instead started wondering if he was just simply mad. A simple madness.

Mr Skilton Senior's ironic words, spoken in his unbalanced but triumphant tone, echoed across the years, and replayed themselves in Max's mind now.

Now... as he stood atop a lighthouse.

Ironic because one couldn't have two 'main things', but more so because as even the most basic recall of history showed; 'we' never tried to keep either the Prussians or the Dutch 'out', for they simply never tried to get 'in'.

On the other hand, we had tried very hard to keep the French out and they had done quite well at getting in, thank you very much. Not a fact that Mr Skilton Senior, himself a veteran of Trafalgar, ever mentioned.

Max gripped the handrail and drew the sea air deep into his lungs. Smelling, as he did, the ever present, yet not entirely unpleasant, scent of coal smoke.

All that wasn't quite accurate, reflected Max, the view before him rich with history. The Dutch had once tried to get in, they might have even been the first to attempt it.

"But it was the Tumata-kokiri, the local Māori of 1642 who repelled them," informed a second voice. This one from Max's more recent past. Dr Crocket, his History Tutor, for the entirety of his college career; "Thus, as Captain Abel Janzsoon Tasman departed, with four of his crew having 'departed' in a more permanent sense and having never had the pleasure of learning their actual title, renamed these blue waters..." now glistening in front of Max... "'Moordenaers Baij', Murderer's Bay."

“Over two hundred years ago” said Max out loud. Although the only creature that could possibly hear him was a seagull. That seagull, a Red Billed Gull, Chroicocephalus scopulinus to Max's Father, Professor Skilton, a speaker of better English, and for that matter; finer Latin, perched just along from Max, its webbed toes curled over the lighthouse's balcony handrail.

“Ironic” Max added but failed to provide his avian watcher with any further spoken musings. Instead, he removed his tweed sixpence cap and ran his fingers though his dark brown hair. Its length was, yet again, tested behind his head and found to be still too short to be tied back. It flopped forward once more to hang in front of his eyes. The slow growth was frustrating, but he let any annoyance he felt slip away, being too aware of the vanity of the situation, to allow himself to care deeply.

A new hair style for a new life.

He only had himself to blame for not starting the growing endeavour sooner.

Hopefully it will be long enough by February, when it will really matter.

“Ironic” he repeated, returning to his study of the outer bay and Cook Straight beyond, and the remembrance of Dr Crocket's words;

"Staten Landt - Nova Zeelandia - New Zealand. The Dutch escaped at least with naming rights. We honoured Tasman's legacy. The chance to use the preferred utopic idealism 'New England' having already been well wasted on an enterprise no longer even part of the Empire!" The history teacher had given this last comment with more than a hint of bitterness. But he had recovered a more appropriate tone almost at once and chuckling continued; "Of course Captain Cook did in-turn rob our Scottish allies in the south of the chance to call their new settlement 'New Caledonia' by giving that handle to some tropical islands in the south-west Pacific!"

The Scots went with Dùn Èideann, Edinburgh to Max and anyone else of more a English ancestry; Dunedin.

The wind ruffled Max's too-short-hair as he waited.

He only had to endure until February, not at the top of the lighthouse, but at home, through Christmas and holidays… until his new life could begin in earnest.

He had plotted this path years earlier and held to it for the entirety of his college career. However, he had only just navigated the intersection which stepped him from the side trail of his daily life, into the main road of ambition, an hour ago.

Max Skilton would be a famous Archaeologist.

And at once he had to push away the voices that mocked his aspiration. A skill he had spent a lifetime practising. Reactively he embraced his desire, a desire that had him presently standing, as it often did, on the platform atop the city's most prominent piece of Egyptian architecture, Collingwood Port Lighthouse.

No matter that the structure beneath him was only loosely based on the Lighthouse of Alexandria and that it was, in its entirety, a nasty example of the English trend of folly building. Made of Murderer's Bay Cement and pressed with rudimentary faux hieroglyphs around the base, it was as close as Max could currently get to the ancient world.

It was a poor second and Max had long given up on both studying the hieroglyphs, they repeated every seven, and lampooning a beacon's architects, for the original Pharos of Alexandria was built by the Greeks.

Those city architects, being also the builders of the Dominion's capital, had given high priority, for obvious reasons, to the construction of lighthouses. But unlike the highly functional lights on Farewell Spit, Pillar and Kahurangi Points, the Egyptian served little practical purpose. Although it did blaze proudly each night from dusk till dawn, and must therefore, in the least, bring a lighthouse keeper and an oil merchant a happy little income.

What the light house did provide Max Skilton with was a million-pound view.

And it was a day for views, for vastness and new horizons.

Near where the sea should meet the sky in a crisp line, there was instead a long tracery of humps and sand dunes marking the location of the encircling sand bar; Farewell Spit. Max searched the end of the spit for its lighthouse, the more useful twin of the one beneath his feet. A task that quickly proved too much for unaided eyes. A telescope would have served, but he had no such implement.

However, his study of Farewell Spit was only cursory, for he was aware of a greater presence. Beyond the distant sand dunes, on the far side of Cook's Straight, stood a bank of white clouds, and within these clouds hid Maoriland.

Max peered at the top of that white haze for a long moment, letting his eyes relax, move in and out of focus, seek and then again not stare too hard. Then he found it, floating in the blue just above the white; the faint, snow covered cone of Mount Taranaki.

He was entranced for a time, for that single giant was, and only on the clearest of days, all that the Northern Isle ever showed of itself. In this and every other way was the mysterious lost land of the Māori almost completely hidden from the eyes of the Dominion's capital. Max looked for that mountain as often as he was on the lighthouse, and he was more than a little grateful that it had shown itself on this Day of Days.

He stretched his arms wide then, as if to embrace the entire world, and smiled to himself.

Freedom.

Max was, at times of his own choosing, a sentimental thing, and he had lingered that afternoon over the saying of farewells to his old teachers and classmates. At their final assembly the boys had all stood to their feet and wholeheartedly applauded their Masters. It had been a spontaneous but well felt action. Few students could have made it that far without the eventual development of some sort of adult warmth and manly appreciation for the gentlemen who had guided them though those years of schooling.

The teachers had risen in a line to receive their thanks. Then they had returned it by way of their own clapping hands and the salute of an occasional nodded head in a particular student’s direction. When the ranks finally broken, they had all shaken hands and wished one another 'all the best', a sentiment punctuated with patting on the back and the occasional gripping of a shoulder.

Then it was done, and Max was glad. At last, and for the final time he had strolled out though the high front gates of Rockville Grammar School, and in celebration boarded the first train for the city.

Half an hour later the Valley Line's 3:15pm had deposited him at Haven Station, in the city, but down by the waterfront. The quayside was served by the Lewis Street Cable Car, and in moments the red painted box had carried him up and into the heart of the Capital City, his city.

"Anything young sir?" the gentleman behind the counter in the Cable Car Terminus News Agency had inquired of Max. Max had paused from perusing the racks of copy to indicate a pile of pedestalled toffees within the glass cabinet.

"A bag of those thank you."

"As you please."

Max's search had been singular in focus and apparently in vain.

"You don't have the latest Von Tempsky?" he'd asked needlessly, for he could see that they did not, and nor were any of the earlier editions still in stock. The agent shook his head.

"Steamer is late from Melbourne."

Max had shrugged his acceptance and paid for the toffee. He knew well that that the rag was printed on the other side of the Tasman sea. It wouldn't do to let the late delivery of his favourite Penny Dreadful tarnish his day. The outlandish antics of the flamboyant Captain Von Tempsky, as he battled his way up the Miskito Coast and into Nicaragua, would have to wait.

Sucking a toffee, he had joined the busy flow of side-walk traffic and wandered Orion Street to the University. As his Father's place of employment, Queen Victoria University was well known to Max, he had visited often over the years. And although Professors Skilton's office was across Orion Street in the National Museum's Ornithology department, Max had always found reason to slip away and explore the greater campus. At the main gates he stood back to behold the grand buildings.

The grey stones before him were neatly pointed with a cream mortar, mixed to match in colour the high arches and window surrounds. Modern in construction, but Gothic in influence, the University buildings were worthy of The Dominion and indeed their royal namesake.

It was none of these stirring observances however that had held Max in check today. He'd stayed off to savour the moment. He could, after all, have done this whole process by post, like his peers all across the Dominion were presently doing. But he had wanted to be there in person. For to him this had been no small thing to be done by a little white letter in the mail. He had wished to step himself bodily into the portal and physically pass through to the new world beyond.

Then, bowing his head forward a little, he walked between doors large enough to permit a traction engine.

He then waited in the busy enrolment office for half an hour. Finally, when one of the three big iron administration machines became available Max had quickly taken a seat, before pausing to read the brass nameplate; Babbage Express Computator - 1876. Made in England.

"Only the best at Vic," he'd muttered to himself.

He used the small bronze keys to quickly clack in his student number and his subject choices for the following year; #CS107 Classics - #MS173 Māori Studies - #LL120 Latin... Then after the last key stoke, he had listened with some satisfaction to the myriad small gears whizzing and clicking his orders behind the black painted iron panel. After a long moment the machine produced a slim newsprint slip, on which, in careful machine script, were recorded his subjects. Rising, he gave his seat to the next would-be student in line and moved to the enrolment counter.

A stern looking clerk worked within the office, fussing at her tasks, her small eyes hard behind round glasses, a mouth not recovered from tasting grapefruit. She noticed Max waiting, after what felt like too long a time, and while proceeding to attend him retrieved a second paper slip from her own machine. Reading the paper she announced;

"Maximilian Skilton?"

Above their heads a network of spinning metal rods, junctured by brass cogs, crossed the ceiling, passing datum, turn by rotation, from the three student machines to the one in the clerk's office.

"Good afternoon," confirmed Max.

She silently read the list of his subject choices from the paper in her hand.

"Professor Skilton's boy?" she asked without looking up.

"Indeed," he answered.

"Not studying Ornithology?" She had looked at him then, sceptically from over top her spectacles.

Sceptacles.

"Not this year," Max had answered matter-of-factly, glancing at the bun that gathered her grey hair atop her head, while she studied the slip a moment longer.

"Elective?"

Max's heart had taken an involuntary jump at the question. He knew the answer, in fact it would be true to say that he was more sure of it, than he was of any of the real subject choices that had made it onto the paper slip in black ink. He had known for over five years. Right from that night his Father, The Professor, had taken him to see two dazzling French Sword-masters perform at 'His Lordship's, more formally known as 'Lord Nelson's Public House', on Cuthbert Street.

"Fencing," he answered after a pause.

The Professor had spoken with Max at some length about the University's policy on supported extracurricular options.

"Electives are the faculty's attempt to fill the gaps in their prospectus, that in less pioneering settings would be occupied by subjects of a more refined nature, those generally fitting loosely under the descriptor of 'Arts'," he had announced to Max one evening in the sitting room. Immediately puzzled by his Father's sudden and unexpected instruction, Max had lain his book aside to listen, one part intrigued, the other suspicious. "For our University has, by necessity, a bent toward more practical subjects, the sort of disciplines that would help build our young Dominion in an objective, immediate and literal 'bricks and mortar' sense."

"I see."

"Indeed. This neglect of the Arts, it could be said, is due simply to the economics of demand and supply. Still..." this next said with finger waving in the air... "...the University desires to see balance in its students, that being after all the sign of a healthy individual… and civilization… and has to this end devised a number of elective options. Therefore, choose well young Max, for your own betterment." At that point Max had wondered at his Mother's involvement in the talk. He was sure that she would wish to steer him away from the very decision which he had just formalised. His Father finished by adding that; "Electives are non-credit classes with the sole purpose of enriching the life of the individual student, the college and by natural extension the wider Dominion." Retrieving his newspaper, The Professor let his monologue trail off with a list of possible choices; "...diverse topics such as music, chess, painting, tennis, archery, sailing, theatre, philately, dancing..."

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"I beg your pardon?" said the enrolment lady.

"Fencing," Max repeated. "Sword fighting."

Her old lips seemed to get a new touch of citrus then and as if controlled by a draw string sucked further in, most disapprovingly. Still, she scanned a list of elective options with a bony finger, and finding Fencing included, possibly to her surprise, remarked;

"You look the type."

"I'll take that as a compliment," responded Max.

"You shouldn't," she muttered, while silently reading a note on her page. "It says here that you are to take your measurements to Whitwell's Outfitters on Copenhagen Street. They will have a uniform ready for you in the new year."

"Very good," answered Max.

"Good afternoon then Master Skilton."

"Good afternoon."

After which Max pulled his cap back on and headed immediately for Copenhagen Street. He moved through the streets with ease, darting behind chugging stream gurneys, dodging earnest and fast marching accountants and lawyers, avoiding a pack of brawling Irish miners, and bypassing the piles of coal that had been unceremoniously dumped on the pavement and not yet cleared into cellars to await combustion in the city’s fireplaces and domestic engines.

With a bounce in his step, he had also enjoyed the city’s small pleasures; noting the latest in men's hats and jackets, tipping his own hat to ladies, glancing into barber shop windows to see gentlemen sitting in rows to have their moustaches and hairlines trimmed, savouring the smells coming from bakeries and cake shops, and catching headlines shouted by street corner newspaper boys. It was good to be free and at large in the city.

Having found Whitwell's Outfitters on Copenhagen Street and been subjected to a series of measurements, Max had made his way back to Orion Street. There he’d sprung onto the foot plate of a crowded steam tram as it rumbled by, somewhat serendipitously. Lots of good types were out and about; nice dark suits, bowlers and stove pipe top hats, ladies; in bonnets, hoop skirts and sporting round parasols.

Shortly he had alighted once more, now opposite the Parliament Buildings, where suited public servants newly relieved of their week’s responsibilities and about their Friday distractions, spilled down the front steps. Max hadn't given them or the buildings many columned, neoclassical façades a second glance, but turned away to climb steep Swiftsure Street. Here on the terraced hillside above its government buildings, the colony's politicians, army captains and industry barons made their homes.

He’d marched on, his eyes only drawn to the occasional ornate wooden homes that broke the pattern of stone, cement, and brick. Unlike in the busy main street below he did not feel entirely comfortable in this quiet, guarded part of town, but passed quickly knowing that all around him, behind high gables, hung sash windows and heavy drapes the rich and powerful moved through the stations of their domestic lives, surrounded by panels of Rimu and imported Kauri.

At the summit, the cobbles of Swiftsure Street, became the turf of the Lighthouse Park.

The Red Billed Gull on the handrail next to Max gave a sudden loud and somewhat impatient sounding squawk. Max eyed it doubtfully, before the similarly sharp note of a steam whistle drew his attention to the harbour below, where a coal scow pulled away from the main quay, a trail of dark smoke rising quickly from its single funnel.

“Coal for the French?” asked Max, of the gull, knowing, as he did, that the black fuel could reach almost anywhere in the Dominion by the rail network, and thus this load was probably on its way to the French capital 'Akaroa' at Port Louis-Philippe, on Banks Peninsula, where no English rail went. “And at grossly inflated prices if the Governor had his way. No?” The gull appeared to study the boats below for a moment, before it shuffled its red, webbed feet a step or two on the handrail. “Look, look! Is this what you are waiting for?” continued Max, pointing below.

A Royal Navy dreadnought had also set out and now followed in the coal ship’s wake. The crew of the former would be pleased for the warship’s company, as rumours of various 'hit and run' privateers operating out of Freeport had made the front pages of the papers lately.

“Hengist Class,” Max informed the bird, after counting the guns aboard the warship. If his memory served him right, she would be either the HMS Belligerent or Pacific Defiant. Like most young men his age he knew such things. Despite the reported dangers the two ships wouldn't keep company for long, for the Hengist, whose hull would have been laid down on the other side of the world in either Plymouth or Portsmouth, would be making, with all hands and guns, straight to London, with a hold full of Taitapu gold.

A couple of smaller Navy Ironclads and several other trade vessels remained at dock, while a recently unloaded coal train began puffing back off the wharf. An on-shore breeze carried the comforting smell of coal smoke up the steep sea bluff to Max.

The Red-bill cocked its white head to one side and eyed the sky for a moment. Max looked the other way again. The docks beneath them were expansive and had been evolving to cope with all the outgoing coal, gold and iron, and incoming settlers, for over forty years. The big ocean facing guns that bristled the cliff side between the wharf below and lighthouse above, were however, relatively recent additions. Almighty 'Armstrongs' they had been cast in haste at the Royal Arsenal Woolwich and Elswick Ordnance Works, to be shipped south at the command of the Governor. But the great black 'breech loaders' had not been installed to ward off the French of Akaroa, nor the Natives of Maoriland, or even Freeport Pirates, but to counter the ever present 'Russian Threat'. A title the papers had, somewhat sensationally, given to any flexing of The Tzar's muscles that manifested itself in the movement of his Pacific Feet from its home port in distant Vladivostok.

There was another battery of Armstrongs on Mt Burnett, above New Brighton, what the Māori call Pakawau. And although the Russians were currently back banging away at their old Turkish foes, everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before that little fracas would cool off again and their greedy eyes would once more begin roaming the globe, looking for a weak spot in the Empire's iron armour.

Therefore on the first Wednesday of the month the gun crews at the Mount Burnett battery would run out their guns, and at the command of their captains send shells screaming out across the bay. Occasionally they would manage to land a shot near the distant floating targets or even at times of extra precision strike one of the white painted boards, erected for the purpose, from atop a pontoon.

Max had heard that 'The Firing' had become a bit of an event with university students, and that on that first Wednesday many of them would wander up from the city to spread blankets on the grass of the Lighthouse Park and have picnic lunches. While they ate and relaxed, they would watch for the puff of white smoke near the top of the mountain, a moment later the corresponding splash of the shell far out to sea, and then, as it reached them, listen to the unearthly sound of the shot's passage across the sky.

Max straightened his back. The gull yawned. Max waited.

Far out to sea, not long having rounded the end of Farewell Spit, certainly in range of the big guns, there was the small, dark shape of an inbound ship with a square-rigged sail. Although it was still too far off to see any detail, the sail itself was a slight oddity for such modern times. Canvas was the reserve of pleasure yachts, coastal hookers, and larger trading ships from steam-less Maoriland. Max assumed that the newcomer was of the latter class and gave it little more consideration. Outdated but unremarkable.

His companion sea gull gave another sudden squawk, then unceremoniously plunged off the handrail and dived away. Max, wondering what he had done to offend or bore, watched its downward flight, once around the lighthouse, and then hovering above the figure of another young man who had just then emerged from the top of Swiftsure Street.

Dickie Pearse, recognisable by his bob of black curly hair, made his way across the park's sun browned grass to the base of the lighthouse. Upon mounting the spiral stair, he disappeared from view. A couple more gulls began circling the tower.

Two minutes after, Dickie rose, slightly out of breath, from the stair hole in the platform floor. He carried a brown paper bag.

“Oh, hello Max,” he announced, upon finding him leaning against the rail. “I didn't expect anyone. What are you spying on?”

Master Pearse, two years Max's senior, wore a dark jacket and pants with matching waistcoat. He seldom bothered his dark hair with a hat and a thin moustache always graced his top lip.

“Maoriland,” replied Max indicating the horizon with a lazy sweep of his hand. Dickie joined him at the rail.

“Ah yes. There it is,” agreed Dickie, a moment later, when he had located the white cone of Mount Taranaki above the distant clouds. “Mount Egmont,” he added in a flat provocation. Max snorted. "After one of his chief sponsors in the Admiralty, if I recall correctly. The 2nd Earl of Egmont.”

“Didn't last long, did it?” Max reflected in an understated way that was usual for him, before turning his back on the faint mountain and giving his full attention to Dickie.

“No,” Dickie replied with a chuckle.

When he wasn't studying or pottering in his workshop Dickie worked for Max's father in the National Aviaries. Max knew the reserved, some would say eccentric, young man as well as any. He enjoyed his company, but found him both stimulating and because of the said eccentricity, somewhat frustrating, in equal measure.

“It always boggles me to think that no Englishman has set foot on the Northern Isle in over thirty years.”

“Correction...” said Dickie, resting his elbows on the rail and continuing to watch the mysterious land to the north “...no honest Englishman has officially set foot on the Northern Isle for over thirty years. It’s said that all sorts of freebooters, Spaniards, Frenches, Norwegians, Confederate renegades, and the like, make regular visits there all the time."

The sea gulls gathering around the top of the lighthouse were beginning to set up a loud squawking.

“I've heard the same," said Max. "However, The Professor says..."

"I do wish you would stop calling your own Father The Professor," interrupted Dickie. Max ignored him.

"...he says that the faculty at the University, are in negotiations with the Whanganui Māori about some sort of field trip over there next year. Imagine that!"

“Don't know that I would be keen for a sabbatical over there...” replied Dickie with a shrug “...end up getting your head whacked off, shrunk, and sold to the French for one of their museums! Have you enrolled yet?”

“I don't think that happens anymore," chuckled Max in response. "I think the French caught wind of the fact that there really weren'tt that many headless chiefs. Guess it was good money for the head-hunters while it lasted. Yes Sir, I've just enrolled.”

“Very tidy. What papers are you taking?”

Max withdrew the printed slip from his waistcoat pocket and read it aloud.

“Anthropology, Archaeology, Classics, History – Ancient, History – Modern, Latin, Māori Studies.”

Dickie nodded as he digested the list.

“Majoring in Archaeology the following year then?”

“That is the plan. You?”

“Hmm, just the usual. Let us see. Textiles, Mechanical Engineering, Aeronautics, Ornithology, Physics, Chemistry, with a bit of a look in on Electrical and Steam Engineering.”

“Ah...” began Max “...I mean, shouldn't you be majoring in something by... you know just one of those?”

Dickie bit back a laugh, not taking his eyes from the horizon.

“Should be, I guess. But I'm doing it for the education, more than the degree.”

Max shook his head and held back a laugh. Dickie certainly had all the characteristics of the proverbial 'eternal student'.

“If I'm honest Max...” he went on “...I can't really afford it. I'm doing most of it for audit.”

It wasn't a very English confession, but that was Dickie, not at all worried by such conventions. It seemed that degrees or even discretion about the state of one’s personal finances meant little to him, compared to his ever ongoing, earnest and obsessive; studying, learning, tinkering and inventing.

“I see. Father not paying you enough to feed his birds?”

“Ha! No, he pays fine. But the petroleum man gets most of that. You pay a fortune for a drop of the stuff.”

Max raised an eyebrow. Most people thought petroleum was an expensive dead-end. The modern world was powered by steam.

"That ship out there has a strange shaped sail," continued Dickie, noticing the incoming boat for the first time. Max glanced at the boat again. It was closer now, but still held little interest for him.

“I guess," he remarked, before changing the subject. "Anyway. What brings you up here?”

“This,” replied Dickie, opening the brown bag, and producing a crust of bread. Max thought it might be a late lunch, but Dickie held the bread out over the edge and at once five gulls swooped in to flap and glide an arm’s length in front of them. The bravest was the first to be fed, as it darted forward and took the bread from Dickie's fingers. After which Max was offered a crust.

“Feeding the birds?” he asked.

“Watching them.”

Then the two young men fed and watched the birds. The gulls hovered on the upward wind, eating and in turn watching the boys. Their round eyes, a black dot in white, never missing a single crumb.

Then the bread bag was empty. At which point Dickie lead them around the circular platform to view the city. The scavengers glided away.

Now, instead of a wharf and a blue bay, the square grid streets of the capital city stretched out beneath their feet. Ten or more blocks of stone and wood, cobble and concrete, grey Salisbury Slate roofing, metal and steam, flesh and bone. The steeples of old St Cuthberts and new St Albans thrust like twin knives above the rest, while beyond them, at the city's edge, a dozen smoking chimney stacks vied for more earthly, industrial dominance.

“Look at those fools,” said Dickie pointing out a cigar shaped dirigible airship rising slowly out of the city.

“Aeronauts,” said Max, a little taken-aback by the young inventor’s criticism. “What of it? I thought you were keen on all that.”

“Aerodynamics certainly. Aeronautics maybe. I admit I'm being a little harsh, it is the best we have...” a nod toward the dirigible, “...but you saw these gulls, they don't need great balloons of gas and hot air attached to them.”

“Sure. They have wings,” responded Max, as he followed Dickie toward the spiral stair.

“Yes and they have Aerodynamics!” replied Dickie, as he began his descent.

“What is this? Aerodynamics? There is no such thing,” quipped back Max at hearing the unfamiliar term.

“Yes there is. It just hasn't been discovered yet,” Dickie called over his shoulder.

“Right.”

“Anyway. Those Presbyterians down south have got these great Albatross, you know Coleridge, the Ancient Mariner, that have a wingspan of 9'6, 9'7 feet. But here is the thing... they have massive bodies... but thin wings. Great long, thin, wings. It's all about the shape not the size!”

They reached the ground. Max felt a little underwhelmed, as was often the case when talking with Dickie. He knew there was something amazing, at least to Dickie, that he was supposed to be understanding, but wasn't.

“Sorry Dickie. It's not really my thing.”

“Yeah well, you're not the only one," confirmed Dickie "Archaeology you reckon?”

Max nodded. “Well, here is a bit of sad news from the city that might be more in your direction.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Sorry to say, but Old Marino has died.”