Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (5 page)

Alma handled the refueling this time, and somehow charmed the fuel truck operator into servicing them first, but even so it was almost forty minutes before they could get the engines started again. Being a passenger was something to be endured, even when he trusted the other pilot. He stretched out in the wicker seat, trying not to pay attention to every shift and jostle as the Terrier made its way onto the runway. He could see the flagman as Mitch turned for take-off, the go-flag held up and out, and then the engines picked up speed and the Terrier rumbled forward. He felt the tail lift, and then the ride evened out as the plane left the ground. He glanced out the window, watching the ground drop away, then made himself slump further in his chair and close his eyes. Might as well try to rest, he told himself, and didn’t expect to manage it.

He drifted off to sleep after a bit, an uneasy doze that broke every time the Terrier dropped a few feet. The air was choppier now, probably because they were over the Sierras, but he refused to look. He hadn’t been a passenger since — well, since right after the War, and he’d realized right away that it was a bad idea. That was the end of 1918, or maybe the beginning of 1919, and the details were a blur, just the panic remaining. He turned his mind firmly away, shifted to a more comfortable position against the thin cushions. He must remember to tell Alma to replace them before they carried passengers, he thought, and drifted off again.

He dreamed he was back in France, back in the air, crouched in the back cockpit of the Salmson 2 as they circled over the German lines. He knew what was coming, and he pounded on the fuselage behind Robbie’s cockpit, trying to get his attention, banging and pointing to the gun the size of a house that was slowly, inexorably lining up on them. They were so low he could see the Germans frantically turning their aiming wheels, could see the blue-striped shell that they were manhandling into the breech. Machine gunners had seen them, too, were standing up in their holes to fire at them. He tried to return fire, but he couldn’t depress the Lewis gun far enough, and wasted ammunition firing at nothing. And still Robbie flew slowly on, while the giant gun tracked them, mouth open to swallow them —

He jerked awake, aware in an instant of his surroundings, and that the Terrier was steady in flight. The light had changed: they were chasing the sun now, flying into evening, and he glanced surreptitiously at Jerry, hoping he hadn’t noticed. The other man seemed to be drowsing, too, his book face down on the fold-out table, and Lewis leaned back again. The sound of the engines was like a drug, dragging him back into sleep.

This time, he was back in the shattered wood behind the German lines. It was probably the only scrap of unshelled land for miles, barely enough to land in, surrounded by trees that had been blasted in some earlier offensive. A few of them were starting to send up green shoots, and a part of him knew that was wrong, just as it was wrong for it to be night, without moon or stars to light his way.

There was something out there, he knew suddenly, something hungry, and he rummaged in the cockpit until he found a signal flare. He lit it, and the stark light cast a sputtering circle around the damaged plane. Robbie was unconscious in the forward cockpit, and he knew he needed to get him out, drag him into the back so that he could fly them home, but the thing that circled outside the light was just waiting for its chance. He drew his revolver with the other hand, put his back against the fuselage, but the thing came around again, so that he turned, gasping, only to see empty air. Something moved at the edge of his vision, a shadow crawling like gas; he flung himself around, revolver ready, but the thing had moved, was behind him again.

And then a dog barked, high and distant, and then another and another, baying now like hounds in a pack. The moon broke through the clouds, and he snapped awake, gasping for breath.

Jerry looked at him, one hand in his pocket. “You all right?”

“Yeah.” Lewis shook himself, shaking away the residue of the dream. It was just a nightmare, nothing to do with the other dreams. It was just a lesson: never fall asleep while flying. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

M
itch brought the Terrier into Grand Central in the thickening dusk, just before the moment where the tower might have waved them off while they got the field lighted up. They taxied up to the brand new terminal, stucco so white it almost seemed to glow, tower jutting against the purple sky, and Mitch insisted on unloading them before he took the plane to the rented hangar space. Alma wasn’t sorry to have the chance to freshen up — a movie star could arrive at the Roosevelt grubby and sweating, but not an ordinary mortal — and she wasn’t surprised to find that the Ladies’ Lounge had a dressing room. She left Jerry and Lewis at the coffee shop and lugged her suitcase up to the second floor. The attendant didn’t seem surprised to see her, just shuffled off and came back with a damp washcloth and a towel that actually looked as though it would do some good. Alma washed her face and hands gratefully, and ran her wrists under the cold water until she felt almost human again.

The attendant pointed her to a changing room, and she dug her blue frock out of the suitcase and stripped out of shirt and pants. She stood for a moment in her bare feet and combinations, savoring the cooling air, then hastily pulled on stockings and pumps and slid the dress over her head. The matching cloche was dented; she pressed it out, and settled it to hide her untidy hair. Powder was pointless, with her complexion. Instead, she craned to see that her seams were straight, then clicked the suitcase closed, left a nickel in the attendant’s dish, and headed back down to the main lobby.

The men were waiting for her under one of the arches that gave onto the field, where the lights were strongest. Jerry tipped his hat at her approach, and Lewis put his hand to his cap in something like a salute, his glance appreciative. Mitch lifted his hat as well, set it onto the back of his head. He had his jacket over his arm

“We got lucky, Al. Nomie Jones is still running the rentals here.”

That was good news on all counts — Nomie had served with Gil, gave them a break on the hangar fee — and Alma nodded. “That’s good news.” There was an orchestra tuning somewhere, she realized, looked up the stairs to see lights and movement, and shook her head as she realized there was a restaurant there, apparently with a dance floor.

Lewis grinned. “Feels too much like work, doesn’t it?”

Alma nodded, and Jerry laughed. “Oh, come now, don’t you know this is where you go to see the stars? The ones who fly, anyway.”

“It’s still too much like work,” Alma answered.

Chapter Four

M
itch leaned back against the pillows and closed his eyes, while Jerry hunted around. He’d long since learned to tune out things that didn’t concern him, and Jerry’s search through his reference books was out of his league. Mitch was pretty cheerful about that. He’d never had any pretensions to academic brilliance.

Yes, he had a degree, and he’d earned it, but it was more the result of concerted effort than natural talent, a lot like some other things in his life. Mitch had learned a long time ago that everybody gets one good, golden talent if they’re lucky, to make of what they can. All the rest of life is hard work.

His talent was airplanes. The first day he’d been up he’d understood what to do, felt it all suddenly make sense in a way that nothing else before ever had. This was it. This was the thing, the beautiful thing that Mitchell Sorley was born to do. No more kind of sort of getting it, trudging along in the middle of the pack laboring to do what others did with rare grace. In the air he was reborn.

Gil had seen it. Lt. Colonel Gilchrist had given him the chance to shine.

Gil was pretty much the epitome of everything he was supposed to be, cool, laconic, and remorseless, meaning without remorse. You got the feeling there wasn’t anything that could throw him, anything that could possibly be bad enough to ruffle his feathers, much less break him. Nerves of steel, some guys said, but Mitch thought it was more like no nerves. It was less like a guy who reaches into a fire out of courage and more like the wounded with nerve damage who’ll touch something burning and never know it.

They’d just been transferred to Aviano in Northern Italy, the 24 planes in the squadron, to back up the ground war against the Austrian offensive around Venice, when he’d seen the picture, a slightly crumpled formal portrait of a woman with long dark hair, a secret smile and the high collared shirtwaist of a decade ago. He’d asked the exec, Browning, if she was Gil’s wife. Browning had been there from the beginning, since they were back in the States, and he gave Mitch a hard look. “She’s dead,” he said shortly. “Her and the baby both. Leave it alone.”

He had, of course. He’d never said a word to Gil about it. But he filed it away, the thing that made Gil cold in the air, taking the kind of chances man and machine couldn’t bear. The French called it sang froid. Mitch thought it was more like not caring. Gil had picked Mitch up when he’d had to ditch, and Mitch had his tail the first time things went pear-shaped over the Piave River.

And then there was Alma. She was an ambulance driver with the corps, an Army brat who’d grown up at various posts all over the west, the motherless daughter of an Army Sergeant whose benign neglect had translated into remarkably checkered experiences. She spoke a little Navajo and a great deal of Spanish, knew how to break a horse and set a leg, could find her way with nothing but a compass and the stars, and was utterly and completely confounded by the niceties of behavior expected of civilized women. Mitch thought her father had done her no favors, not that he would have said it. There wasn’t much a decent young woman could do that she was fit for.

His own mother would have been dumbfounded and then felt terribly sorry for her. But then his mother was used to getting food on the table three times a day for ten people, baking two pies a day for dinner and breakfast, curing cheese and pickling a hundred quarts of vegetables every summer. She’d sent four boys off to college to better themselves, and all of them had. Mitchell was the oldest, Trinity College class of 1915. Well, he supposed it was called Duke University now, but it had still been Trinity when he’d graduated. He’d gone straight into service, charging off to France as soon as he had the sheepskin in his hand. Frank was class of ’18, and he was a surgeon now. Charles was class of ’19, and he was a minister. Howard was the baby, class of ’24, and he’d just finished law school and gone home to Winston-Salem to set out his shingle. And Grace and Evelyn were both married. There were ten grandchildren between them all, and Mitchell the only one not settled down.

The bed gave as Jerry manhandled the case of books onto it, and Mitch opened one eye. Nope. Didn’t need help. Just that abstracted look Jerry got when he was thinking hard, his gold framed glasses creeping down his nose.

Jerry had been an artillery officer, a Classicist who never got tired of walking the footsteps of the Caesars, and certainly never shut up about it, not for ten minutes. He’d been with the artillery defending Venice, a rotten job actually. Much more so than providing air cover, though it hadn’t been until Vittorio Veneto in October that he’d been wounded, in the same battle as Gil, less than a month before the Armistice. Alma’d probably saved his life, stopping the bleeding, though ultimately she hadn’t saved his foot. It had to come off a year later anyhow.

By that time Alma and Gil were married, and so Jerry had come to stay with them. Easier all around for everybody that way.

Jerry plopped himself on the side of the bed. “What do you think of Segura?” he asked.

Mitch opened his eyes. “He’s a good pilot,” he said cautiously.

“I mean in other senses.”

Mitch blew out a long breath. So many minefields there. “I don’t really know yet,” he said cautiously. “He’s strong. I couldn’t tell you what kind of mix he has, but he’s got some pretty serious power behind it. He’s air, which is a good thing. I had a look at his discharge papers. May 25th is his birthday.”

Jerry snorted. “You know the solar position isn’t definitive.”

“Well, unless you want to ask him what time he was born and where, it’s what we’ve got.” Mitch looked at him seriously. “You know Alma wants him in.”

“I’m reserving judgment,” Jerry said. He raised a placating hand. “I’m not saying no.”

“I didn’t say you were,” Mitch said. He hesitated, but it had to be said. “It’s not like replacing Gil.”

“In any sense?” Jerry’s mouth was tight.

“That’s Al’s business, not ours.”

“I’m just saying it will be a problem,” Jerry said. “If it turns out that he’s not good material. Or if he spooks.”

Mitch nodded. There was nothing he could say that wasn’t too stark, too cruel.

“Besides,” Jerry said, “It’s not like it was back during the war and right after. We haven’t pushed ourselves in years.”

Since Gil stopped pushing, Mitch thought. Since Gil was too sick. Maybe he should push, maybe he should try harder to get Jerry and Al going, to work the boundaries again. It had been dispiriting, a cart with three wheels teetering along out of balance, the absence of Gil a continual wrong note. But there had to be structural things that would fix that, even if Jerry insisted it wasn’t proper form. A tripod has three legs and stands.

“Well,” Mitch said, “Let’s see what Henry’s got for us. And hope it doesn’t bite.”

“It won’t,” Jerry said grimly. “Not me at any rate.”

L
ewis lay in the dark of their seventh-floor room, listening to Alma’s slow breathing beside him, wondering if she was really asleep, or if she just couldn’t bring herself to talk right now. He’d wanted to ask questions, to make love, to celebrate this unexpected holiday, a fancy hotel in Los Angeles and no real obligations. But it had been too awkward, signing the register at the desk downstairs while Alma tried not to look at him. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Segura, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA. While Alma tried not to look like she was afraid someone she knew would suddenly pop out of nowhere in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles and say, “My goodness, Alma! When did you and Lewis get married?”