Skyscape (40 page)

His face was gleaming with sweat, despite the cold. “Curtis Newns was an artist from the time when people thought there was a separation between the artist and the rest of us, just as people used to think there was a difference between priest and supplicant.” The needle glittered. The chemical in the hypodermic squirted, a thin probe like a hummingbird's tongue.

The place was icy cold and there was a hole in his side.

Bishop had that sick look again. Patterson got tired of looking at a face like that. It was time to move fast, and Bishop was unsteady.

After the shot he didn't feel the wound at all. It had started to hurt, and so something out of the department of analgesics was just the ticket.

“Do you remember,” Patterson continued, turning to Bishop, “the other plan, the one I talked about a long time ago? The one we decided wouldn't be fair, but a lot more fun.”

The painting was wrecked. He was sick at the sight. Well, maybe you could find an art restorer to do a Frankenstein on it, but it was agony to see it the way it was now. They would just have to repair it. That was all—just spend a few dollars. It was simple, really.

Once he had done his show right after a technician had suffered a coronary, actually turned blue, impervious to Patterson's efforts, which were vigorous and sufficient to bring anyone back to life who wasn't determined to head toward the Light on a permanent basis. And Patterson had done the show, helping a set of triplets reconcile themselves to their abusive drunkard dad. A good show, higher than usual in the ratings.

He couldn't keep his hands from shaking. Jesus, she was a dangerous woman. He had been almost ready to start
loving
this woman. She was there against the wall, big-eyed and panting. He was going to do the world a favor.

“I think you should go lie down,” said Bishop, his voice sounding strained. “I'll call someone.”

Patterson was incredulous. Bishop never expressed hesitation, always thought the way Patterson wanted him to think.

“Don't worry,” said Patterson. He spoke sweetly, the way you'd talk to a boy. “We'll carry on just the way we always have. You and I, Bishop. I think, and you act. Remember that. We'll want to call London, talk to the people who were restoring
Skyscape
when it was burned. Tell them we need their professional services, only this time no barbecue.”

Patterson gave Margaret a smile. A really good one, love-at-first-sight quality, the kind he had given Loretta Lee when they met, the woman looking like something out of a catalog,
for the man who has everything
. At least Loretta Lee had understood a little bit about what he had in mind, the way he thought, the way he really was.

He told Margaret, “You wanted to leave, all the while. Even now that's what you want. You want to go away and get help. So that's what you are going to do. No need to worry. Everything's fine. I'm going to fly you out of here. No, don't be afraid. Look at her, Bishop—she's afraid. The poor little woman thinks you and I are going to hurt her. And we're not. We are just going to help her get exactly what she wants.”

He shouldn't have swung at her. That gave her a hint how he felt, broke the professional surface just a little too obviously.

The woman held the knife. She didn't say a word. This had never happened on the show. If it had, he would have loved it. Blood on his shirt, each breath making a funny noise. A body mike would have picked up that sound, broadcast it, and everyone would have seen him with a wound, carrying on like it didn't bother him at all.

45

Margaret felt like a woman naked against a wall, stripped before a crowd.

Odd, thought Patterson, how a homicidal woman can look so sexy.

“Margaret,” he said, in his most reassuring voice. “Take it easy—we're friends here.”

Fortunately, thought Patterson, the muscles weren't stiffening, although he was feeling something like an out-of-body sensation. Maybe he was slipping into shock. It was almost pleasant.

Margaret held herself against the wall of the studio. You could see her eyes not making sense of what they saw. It was really enough to break your heart, to see how frightened she was.

Patterson put his hands out in the classic pose of looking completely harmless, patting the air. He continued this pantomime until he got close.

Margaret made a cut through the air. Patterson shrank back a step, shrugging: hey, what's the problem? He held both hands up.

She had a good grip on the knife. That was the problem. She was good with it, too, kept her balance despite herself, stayed centered.

Bishop unsnapped something at his belt. He produced a can of Mace, held it out like bug spray in front of him and said that he didn't want to use it. Which was putting it mildly, thought Patterson.

“Don't,” said Patterson.

Margaret made another lunge with the knife, and almost got Patterson again.

“Don't squirt that in here, for God's sake,” said Patterson.

Margaret was quick with the knife, whipping it through the air so close he heard the pretty whistle it made.

Bishop squirted the Mace.

The effect stunned all three of them. Margaret was down on the floor, blinded. Patterson was almost blind himself, the entire vision/reflex package paralyzed. It was worse for Margaret, but they were all crawling.

They got out into the hall, a tangle of arms and legs and tears. Bishop held her out in the hall and Patterson gave her a shot of sodium pentothal. At least, that's what he hoped it was, but it was hard to get visual confirmation of any object, out there in the freezing corridor, the whites of Margaret's eyes red from the Mace, her face a mask of tears and mucus. Patterson hurt her a little bit more than he had to with the needle, probing the cephalic vein right there on the surface.

She was yelling. She hung onto everything they passed, furniture, posts, even dragged a Navajo rug for awhile. They dragged her down one hall after another, and finally got her out by the swimming pool.

Bishop held her. Patterson plunged his head into the water to clear it, and he felt a lot better. It was amazing, though, how suddenly you could feel so tired.

Margaret was feeling the full effect by then, her mouth agape, arms and legs all over the place.

“You aren't really going to do it,” said Bishop. “Are you? You're just playing around, right?”

“Don't think, Bishop.”

“I have to know you aren't really going to do it.”

Take her up there and lose her, you mean? No, Bishop, you pathetic little shit, I'm going to give her a chance to land on her feet from five thousand feet up. That shouldn't be much of a problem for this little lady, should it?

“Don't do that to her, Dr. Patterson,” said Bishop. The man started to beg. “Do like you did with Loretta Lee and with—”

Until Patterson's eyes burned into Bishop, and Bishop couldn't stand it any more. Bishop shut up.

They worked hard, leaning into the hangar door until it opened all the way. They wheeled the Ryan out. The sky was changing color, stars starting to fade. It happened while you watched, It was dawn.

Patterson was up in the forward cockpit with Curtis Newns's knife, sawing away at the safety belt, nylon high-test knit that made the same squeak against the steel that a ligament makes.

The knife was going blunt, and the belt was tough, or both. He only had to cut through one, and he was thankful for that. When he had the buckle strap cut away, he threw it out of the plane and half fell out of the fuselage.

Margaret was moving around. They had put her in a nice place over by the garage, with a folded-up tarp for a pillow. She was crawling around like a beetle in the growing light but not going far.

Patterson was having little breaks in his consciousness, frames cut out of the film. He hated to repeat himself. “You're doing fine, Bishop.”
Fine for a guy so catatonic with guilt before I met you that you would have starved yourself to death
. “Just do what I tell you.”

Bishop apparently thought that Patterson meant do
only
what he was told to do, because the mechanic stood there as Patterson gasped, trying to lift Margaret off the asphalt.

She planted an elbow in his mouth, groggily, only half-aware. She was a small, shapely woman but just now she weighed enough to make him put her down for a second. “Don't bother helping me,” said Patterson sarcastically. “I can do this all by myself.”

They got her into the forward cockpit, and she sank down so you could barely see one hand sticking up out of it.

Patterson climbed into the rear cockpit, and it was a real act of will to make it all the way up and in, feeling the way he did.

Jesus, it felt good to be there, fastening the safety belt with a hand that was greasy with blood, so much blood that Patterson had to consider whether the endothoracic fascia had been damaged. No wonder he was feeling light-headed. His neck was puffy, and his breath sounded like wind in an underground cavern.
Hey, what's a collapsed lung to Red Patterson?

Bishop chocked the right wheel. He called, “Switch off.” Patterson called out, in response, “Switch off,” and advanced the throttle halfway. Bishop pulled the wooden prop through several times to prime the engine. Then Bishop set the prop, stepped back, and called “Contact.”

Patterson set the ignition switch and called, “Contact,” retarding the throttle to just above idle and pulling the stick back to keep the tail down when the engine started. Bishop stepped forward and pulled the prop down hard and the engine coughed, starting. It ran rough at first, then smoothed out as Patterson advanced the throttle.

Patterson had another tiny blackout, another loss of continuity with the general march of events. Margaret was stirring in the passenger seat in front of him. He didn't have much time.

Taxiing a vintage plane like this, a tail-dragger, meant that he had to lean out of the cockpit and taxi down toward the strip in a series of S's. It didn't hurt very much to lean out like that, but he did begin to wonder about the severity of his wound.

He didn't have much feeling in his fingers. By the time he reached the beginning of the runway he was aware of a leak in his side, through his ribs, every time he took a deep breath. The engine was going to be warm before long. He checked the wind sock, a flaccid thing on a pole, and ran the engine to full RPM, checked the magnetos, pulled the throttle back to idle.

And then he saw her.

It was wonderful, but it also gave him the feeling that things weren't right. There was a figure in the very early dawn, close, at the edge of the landing strip, a person he immediately recognized. He was delighted. It was madness, he knew. He should be angry to see her staggering along, but he couldn't help it; he was pleased to see her.

Loretta Lee looked awful. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to call out to her that she looked terrible, her hair stringy and her face blistered but that she looked wonderful to him. It was a miracle to see her there, finding her way toward him, and he gave her a wave, trying to climb from his seat.

When Loretta Lee started shooting it didn't make any sense for a second. The little thirty-two caliber automatic made pops he couldn't hear because of the sound of the engine, and there was the smoke-ring effect of the gun.

She was missing, one bullet snapping through the air like spit way ahead of the plane. You could actually see the bullet for a fraction of a second, a flash in the early sun.

He fell back into the leather upholstery, the smell of years of engine oil surrounding him in what he knew was the safety and power of the aircraft.

Margaret was struggling, slowly, out of her seat. Patterson moved the controls quickly from stop to stop to make sure there was nothing binding. Then they were rolling, and this was always the most exciting time, heading off down the runway thinking
we're off
.

Maybe he lost consciousness for an instant. The aircraft lurched in a subtle, awkward way. Loretta Lee was on the wing of the plane. The plane wasn't sounding good. The engine wasn't as warm as it should have been, and they were not that far off the ground, Patterson flying badly, the aircraft yawing, working to stay in the air.

Were they far enough off the runway so that when Loretta Lee let go it would kill her? She was on her belly, inexorably slipping off of the wing. She called something to Margaret and Margaret called back, but Patterson was sure they couldn't hear each other over the sound of the engine.

Loretta Lee slithered gradually off the wing, the silvery, doped surface nothing to hang on to. Margaret was half in, half out of the plane. She hung on, fighting now to get back in, fighting to stay where she was.

Loretta Lee skittered down the wing, about to fall off. Margaret was about to spill out of the cockpit. They were nearly out of runway when the plane touched down again, Patterson working to slow it just enough so Loretta Lee would let go. He didn't want to hurt Loretta Lee. He wanted Loretta Lee to be safe and happy.

Margaret had one sensation: they were going up, fast. Then they were hesitating. They were falling back again, the wheels bouncing off the runway. The engine was loud. She had to let go and hit ground now, as the surface tore along beneath her.

Did she let go, Margaret wondered? Did she let go, and let the airplane leave her behind, or did she dream it, as she dreamed the sunlight, the asphalt, the color of stones?

Patterson must have lost something somewhere, lost consciousness again for another moment, because when he was aware again they were in the air. The engine torque was pulling the plane to the left, and the warm air of the land was lifting them, the aircraft sweeping upward.

46

Patterson let the Ryan slip sideways, banking again. He applied the rudder and the tail of the plane swung out, and there was that faintly sickening feeling of altitude being lost. The plane was about to stall. The altimeter was spinning downward. Patterson arrested the fall, and got the white hands of the dial to begin crawling upward again.