Against the Day (4 page)

“Say, Randolph,” called Darby, “you
look like you’re going over to meet a girl!”

As his bantering tone, however, was
not unmixed with manly admiration, Randolph chose not to respond to the
innuendo
with
the
pique
it
would otherwise have merited,
instead riposting, “I had not been aware that fellows of your years recognized
any distinction between the sexes,” drawing from Lindsay an appreciative
chuckle, before promptly returning to moral seriousness.

“About the fringes,” Randolph
reminded the libertygoers, “of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition,
are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take
advantage of the unwary. I will not dignify it by naming that sinister quarter
where such dangers are most probably to be encountered. The very vulgarity of
its aspect, particularly by night, will speak for itself, disinclining all but
the most reckless of their wellbeing to linger in contemplation upon, much less
actually investigate, the unprofitable delights offered therein. A word to the
wise
. . .
or, in this case
. . .
hrrumph, hmmm, howsoever
. . .
good liberty, boys, I say, and good
luck.” Wherewith Randolph saluted, turned, and vanished soundlessly into the
great fragrant darkness.

“You have the watch, Suckling,”
Lindsay advised before departing. “You know the penalties for falling
asleep—be sure that you impress them upon your watchmate Counterfly, who
inclines, I suspect, toward sloth. Perimeter check once every hour, as well as
a reading of the tension of the gas within the envelope, corrected, I need
scarcely add, for the lower temperatures of the nighttime.” He turned and
strode away to join Miles, while Pugnax, whose tail had regained its customary
animation, was left to scout the bounds of the encampment, searching for
evidence of other dogs and their humans who might seek unauthorized entry.

Darby, left solitary in the glow of
the watchfire, applied himself, with his customary vivacity, to the repair of
the main hydrogen valve whose mechanical disruption earlier had nearly spelt
their doom. That unpleasant memory, like the damage beneath Darby’s nimble
fingers, would soon be quite un

made
. . .
as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some
boys’ book of adventures
. . .
as if
that page of their chronicles lay turned and done, and the order “Aboutface”
had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days,
toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again
. . . .

He had just completed his repairs
when, looking up, he noticed Chick Counterfly by the fire, brewing a pot of
coffee.

“Care for some?” Chick offered. “Or
don’t they let you drink this stuff yet?”

Something in his tone suggested that
this was only the sort of friendly teasing a fellow Darby’s age had to expect
and put up with. “Thanks, wouldn’t mind a cup at all.”

They sat by the fire for a while,
silent as a pair of drovers camping out on the western prairie. Finally, to
Darby’s surprise, “I sure do miss my Pop,” Chick confided, abruptly.

“I guess that must be awful tough for
you, Chick. I don’t think I even remember mine.”

Chick gazed dolefully into the fire.
After a moment, “Thing is, I believe he would have hung on. If he could have.
We were partners, see? Always had something going. Some swell little
moneymaker. Not always to the sheriff’s liking, but enough to keep beans in the
pot. Didn’t mind all the midnight relocations, but those smalltown courtrooms,
I never could get used to them. Judge’d take one look at us, up went that
hammer, whiz! we were usually out the door and on the main road before it came
back down again.”

“Good exercise, I bet.”

“Well, but it seemed like Pop was
starting to slow down some. Wondered if it was me somehow. You know, the extra
trouble or something.”

“Sounds more like it was all that
Chinese foofooraw you mentioned,” said Darby, “nothing you caused. Here, do you
smoke these?” lighting up a species of cigarette and offering one to Chick.

“My GreatAunt Petunia!” exclaimed
Chick, “what is that smell?”

“Say, it’s cubebs. Medicinal use
only. No tobacco allowed on board, as you might recall from your Chums of
Chance Membership Oath.”

“Did I swear off? I must’ve been all
confused in my mind. No tobacco! Say, it’s the goldurn Keeley Cure around here.
How do you people get through your day?”

Suddenly what sounded like a whole
kennelful of dogs began to bark furiously. “Pugnax,” explained Darby, noting
Chick’s alarmed expression.

“Him and what else?”

“Just ol’ Pugnax. One of his many
talents. Guess we’d better go have a look.”

They
found Pugnax up on his feet, clenched and alert, watching the outer darkness
intently—from what the boys could tell, poised to launch a massive
counterassault on whatever was now approaching their perimeter.

“Here you go,” called an invisible
voice, “nice doggy!” Pugnax stood his ground but had ceased barking, apparently
judging the visitors nasally acceptable. As Darby and Chick watched, out of the
evening came a giant beefsteak, soaring in an arc, slowly rotating, and hit the
dirt almost exactly between Pugnax’s front paws, where he regarded it for a
while, a single eyebrow raised, one would have to say, disdainfully.

“Hey, anybody home?” Into the
firelight emerged two boys and a girl, carrying picnic baskets and wearing
flight uniforms of indigo mohair brilliantine with scarlet pinstripes, and
headgear which had failed to achieve the simpler geometry of the wellknown
Shriner fez, being far more ornate and, even for its era, arguably not in the
best of taste. There was an oversize spike, for example, coming out the top,
German style, and a number of plumes dyed a pale eclipse green. “Howdy, Darb!
What’s up and what’s down?”

Darby, recognizing them as members of
Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C., a club of ascensionaries from Oregon, with whom
the Chums of Chance had often flown on joint manœuvres, broke into a welcoming
smile, especially for Miss Penelope (“Penny”) Black, whose elfin appearance
disguised an intrepid spirit and unfaltering will, and on whom he had had a
“case” for as long as he could remember. “Hello, Riley, Zip
. . .
Penny,” he added shyly.

“That’s ‘Captain’ to you.” She held
up a sleeve to display four gold stripes, at whose edges could be seen evidence
of recent needlework. The Bindlestiffs were known and respected for granting
the loquacious sex membership on a strictly equal footing with boys, including
full opportunities for promotion. “Yeahp,” Penny grinned, “they gave me the
Tzigane
—just
brought the old tub in here from Eugene, got her berthed down past that little
grove of trees there, nobody worse for wear.”

“Wwow! Your first command! That’s
champion!” He found himself shuffling nervously, and with no idea what to do
about his hands.

“You better kiss me,” she said, “it’s
tradition and all.”

Even with the chorus of hoots it
evoked from the other boys, Darby found the fleeting brush of her freckled
cheek against his lips more than worth the aggravation. After introductions,
Chick and Darby brought out folding camp chairs, the Bindlestiffs opened their
baskets of delectables, and the colleagues settled down to an evening of
gossip, shop talk, and skystories.

“Coming in over ‘Egypt,’ downstate
Illinois to you, Darb, we caught us an upriser off a cornfield by Decatur,
thought we’d be onto the dang moon by now—’scuse me”—pausing to
sneeze—“icicles o’ snot down to our belt buckles, goin all blue from the
light of that electric fluid, ’s whirlpoolin round our
heads—ahhpffeugghh!”

“Oh, Gesundheit, Riley,” said Zip,
“but last time you told that one, it was strange voices and so forth—”

“We’d picked up a little galvanic
halo ourselves by the time we got here,” said Chick, “what with the speed and
all.”

“Aaw that’s nothin,” cried Riley,
“next to dodgin tornadoes all day! You boys want real electricity, git on out
to Oklahoma sometime, get a treat for your ears into the bargain that will
sure’s hell drownd out any strange voices in your neighborhood.”

“Speaking of voices,” said Penny,
“what have you heard about these
. . .
‘sightings’
that keep getting reported in? Not just from crews up in the air but sometimes
even from civilians on the ground?”

“You mean aside from the usual,”
Darby said, “fata morgana, northern lights, and so forth?”

“Different,” Zip in a low, ominous
voice. “There’s lights, but there’s sound, too. Mostly in the upper altitudes,
where it gets that dark blue in the daytime? Voices calling out together. All
directions at once. Like a school choir, only no tune, just these—”

“Warnings,” said Riley.

Darby shrugged. “News to me.
Inconvenience,
we’re only the runts of the Organization, last at the trough, nobody ever
tells us anything—they keep cutting our orders, we follow ’em, is all.”

“Well we were over by Mount Etna
there back in the spring,” Penny said, “and you remember those Garçons de ’71,
I expect.” For Chick’s benefit, Darby explained that this outfit had first been
formed over twenty years ago, during the Sieges of Paris, when manned balloons
were often the only way to communicate in or out of the city. As the ordeal
went on, it became clear to certain of these balloonists, observing from above
and poised ever upon a cusp of mortal danger, how much the modern State
depended for its survival on maintaining a condition
οf
permanent siege
—through the systematic
encirclement of populations, the starvation of bodies and spirits, the
relentless degradation of civility until citizen was turned against citizen,
even to the point of committing atrocities like those of the infamous
pétroleurs
of Paris. When the Sieges ended, these balloonists chose to fly on, free
now of the political delusions that reigned more than ever on the ground,
pledged solemnly only to one another, proceeding as if under a worldwide,
neverending state of siege.

“
Nowadays,” Penny said, “they’ll fly
wherever they’re needed, far above fortress walls and national boundaries,
running blockades, feeding the hungry, sheltering the sick and persecuted
. . .
so of course they make enemies
everyplace they go, they get fired at from the ground, all the time. But this
was different. We happened to be up with them that one day, and it was just the
queerest thing. Nobody saw any projectiles, but there was
. . .
a kind of force
. . .
energy we could feel, directed
personally at us
. . . .
”

“Somebody out there,” Zip said
solemnly. “Empty space. But inhabited.”

“This making you nervous, Chick?”
teased Darby.

“Nawh. Thinking about who wants that
last apple fritter there.”

eantime Miles and Lindsay were off to the Fair. The horsedrawn
conveyance they had boarded took them through the swarming streets of southern
Chicago. Miles gazed with keen curiosity, but Lindsay regarded the scene with a
peevish stare.

“You look kind of glum, Lindsay.”

“I? no, not at all—beyond an
unavoidable apprehension at the thought of Counterfly with full run of the ship
and no one to supervise him, I am as cheerful as a finch.”

“But Darby’s there with him.”

“Please. Any influence Suckling could
exert on a character that depraved would be negligible at best.”

“Oh, but say,” reckoned the
kindhearted Miles, “Counterfly does seem a good skate, and I bet you he’ll soon
get the hang of things.”

“As MasteratArms,” muttered Lindsay,
perhaps only to himself, “my own view of human nature is necessarily less hopeful.”

At length the car deposited them at a
streetcorner from which, the conductor assured them, it would be but a short
walk to the Fairgrounds—or, as he chuckled, “depending how late in the
evening, a brisk run,” and went on its way in metaltometal clangor and
clopping. At a distance the boys could see in the sky the electrical glow of
the Fair, but hereabouts all was in shadow. Presently they found a gap in the
fence, and an admissions gate with something of the makeshift about it, lit by
a single candlestub, whose attendant, a scowling Asiatic midget of some sort,
though eager enough to take their proffered fiftycent pieces, had to be pressed
by the scrupulous Lindsay for a duly executed receipt. The diminutive sentinel
then held out his palm as if for a gratuity, which the boys ignored.
“Deadbeats!” he screamed, by way of
 
introducing them to the quatercentennial celebration of Columbus’s
advent upon our shores.