Part 2

Chapter 9

Ever conscientious, Dr. Lash amassed a cart full of books and films about prairies and the American West a century and a half ago. It weighed on Titus that he felt no interest in these materials. Instead he took refuge in the children’s books. The best was the story of Tam Lin, dragged into Faerie and held as paramour by the Queen of Air and Darkness until Sweet Polly Plunkett rescued him. It was curiously comforting to read of another Englishman haled off into unspeakably strange realms. The tales were old, but Titus sardonically noted a modern taste in their selection. Heroines in his day waited modestly for rescue — they didn’t boldly seize Tam Lin and hang on while the evil Queen turned him into monsters and flames.

Behind the stoic façade he fretted like a kenneled hound. If they didn’t get away he’d murder someone, or take to drink! “Suppose you make a list, Titus,” Lash coaxed. “Of what you think you might like to bring on a camping trip.”

“The tour people have clothes for me.”

“Of course, but you’ll want more than clothing, won’t you? Your riding boots, for instance.”

Titus considered. “You mentioned snakes, I believe. I ought to bring a pistol. It’ll come in handy for Doomsters, too.”

“But Titus! You have no license for one.”

“License? People need a license here to own a firearm?” Titus could scarcely imagine such a lunatic practice.

“It’s necessary, Titus. Guns can be dangerous.”

“That’s the whole ruddy point of firearms! Do you regulate kitchen knives and forks, too?”

 ”No — but you need a license to drive a car or a motorcycle. Also to own a dog, a dangerous reptile, hold a tag sale, or light an open fire.” Titus was unable to keep his mouth from dropping open at this recitation. Lash went on with a touch of impatience, “This is a major metropolis, Titus. You can’t just wander around doing anything that seizes your fancy.”

Dear God, what a society! “My life is in danger,” he argued. “I need a weapon for self defence!”

“That’s the last thing you need, believe me. Nobody is going to assault you in person.”

“Cowards, I wish they would! It’s the principle of the thing. Do you realize how different the final Polar journey would have been, if only I’d had the sense to bring a pistol along?”

Lash’s thin cheeks turned pallid. “Titus, these wagon tours are nothing but tourist jaunts, I assure you. Desperate measures will never be necessary. We would never put you into a position where your life was in peril. And recall, Shell will be bringing Miranda — she would never endanger the child!”

Silently Titus cursed his own stupidity. Perhaps out in the West attitudes would be more relaxed. He turned the subject: “It’s a jolly long way to travel. Shall I go by train, or what?”

“Would you prefer that? Or would you care to try traveling by air?”

“Flying, you mean? In those vehicles that soar over the city?” The mere idea made his heart leap. “An absolutely ripping idea! I should enjoy that tremendously. In my time commercial flight was no more than a dream. Shall I have to take lessons?”

“No, no! We’ll just be passengers. It takes extensive training to become a pilot, and you also have to earn a — “

“A license,” Titus finished for him. This was the tamest, most milk-and-water society he could imagine. No smoking, no booze, no guns — surely the entire 21^st century could not be equally bloodless? If it was, he might as well cut his throat at once before he perished of galloping ennui. Even those thrice-damned Doomsters had let him down, lying low instead of taking another shot at him. He lay in bed at night and yearned not for the future but the past: for motorcycles sputtering and bucking underneath him, or the tap-tap of his sword-sheath against his left cavalry boot, or carbines glinting in the African sun, or Polar gales thrashing a fine icy fog off the white sastrugi. Larger than life, they called him? He was the same size as ever. It was the world round him which had shrunk and become tame.

But there were other accoutrements of civilized life besides guns. “Did my watch ever turn up, Lash? It was in my pocket at the Pole.”

Lash consulted his machine. “Every scrap was carefully preserved for study. If you were carrying it on the morning of March 17^th 1912, it’s around.”

Titus winced at the thought of those stinking rags being picked over by scientists. “Where?”

“In Cambridge, at the Scott Polar Research Institute. I could show you the preliminary studies. Everything’s been photographed and measured. Ah, here’s a preliminary report — they’ve extracted all the dust from your clothing for analysis. Are you sure you want to disrupt their research? The final report is going to be fascinating — they’re highly-respected scientists.”

“I don’t care if they’re the Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s not a sodding artifact for study. It’s my watch, and I’m not done with it yet. I want it back.”

Lash sighed. “You have a point...Yes, the watch is listed. But to get it back you may have to go to Cambridge. You can imagine they’re all a-quiver to meet you.”

“To get their hooks in me, actually.” Titus could foresee what that would be like. The historians would interview him until he dropped. His letters, memories, and mentions in the other members’ writings would be discussed, chewed over, analyzed, and held up to the light for hidden meanings. He would return to the past right enough, but not as a living man — only as an artifact to be studied. Silently he resolved to evade it for as long as possible.

He could have shouted for joy when the departure day finally dawned. It was so early the sun had not quite risen, and the narrow stripe of sky visible between the glass city towers was colorless. His meagre dunnage easily packed into a small sausage-shaped case. Titus tossed it into the front seat of the taxi, reflecting with pleasure on how natural modern motoring came now. At the back, Lash struggled with a huge orange sacklike suitcase that sagged as he tried to heave it into the boot. Titus fixed a commanding eye on the taxi driver, who was idling near the front of the vehicle. “You! Look nippy with the bag!” It was gratifying when the driver leaped to obey.

“I hope Shell will meet us all right,” Lash said when they were safely on their way.

Titus fastened his seat belt. “At the terminal, or dock, or whatever it is?”

“Airport. It’s always challenging to travel with Miranda.”

“I’d wondered why you’ve come for the ride — so she wouldn’t be burdened with two deadweights.”

“Not at all, Titus, you’re no trouble! But until you’re familiar with public places a little more, it’s better to have another man as a companion, wouldn’t you agree? It took you some moments to master the kitchen faucet. If during the course of the journey you were to feel the, ah, call of nature, you could not ask Shell or Miranda to — “

“Too right,” Titus said, much struck. “Admirable forethought! That aspect never occurred to me.”

Lash smiled. “Well, it’s my allotted task, after all.”

The taxi was speeding like fun over a high long bridge. The tremendous arching structure soared carelessly above the river below, carrying the taxi on its long smooth spine. It was better than the elephant he’d ridden in India, better than a motorcycle. On the other side of the water the city spread and spread. The metropolis seemed as limitless and inexhaustible as the ocean. Even the airport was enfolded within it, a place of smooth concrete pathways for winged vehicles. Titus pressed his nose to the glass to get a glimpse of them.

The sun was on the point of rising, the eastern sky washed with primrose light. And there, high up, was a sight that made a shiver of awe trail down Titus’s spine: a new star! No, not merely a star, a constellation, a close complex grouping of celestial bodies moving with visible speed across the heavens. For a moment he was gobstruck, with the dumbfounded wonder that aborigines felt when presented with a camera. The moderns meddle with the stars, he reminded himself, gulping. They’ve talked to the unknowable beings who live there. “Lash, what stars are those? The bright ones.”

“Aren’t they pretty? Like jewels. It’s the Space Station, and three or four of its support vehicles and shuttles. When you’re in luck you can see a smaller light moving away from the cluster — that’d be either an orbital shuttle or an earthbound vehicle on its rounds.” Lash spoke with pride, but no excitement. To him this was commonplace!

The taxi disgorged them in front of an enormous low building. Lash flung first his bag and then Titus’s into a kerbside chute. Titus decided not to ask why they could not carry their own luggage onto the plane. Instead he followed Lash through the big glass doors.

Inside was thronged. Was there nowhere in America where one could experience solitude? Obedient to Piotr’s orders, Lash kept one hand on Titus’s elbow through the crowded wide corridors and interlocking glassed-in lounges. Titus immediately lost his bearings. The familiar sense of overload was beginning to steal over him when they halted at a high desk, one of many they had passed.

Titus stood well back as Lash slid his left hand underneath what looked like a large kitchen tap. A ticket popped out from a console underneath. “Not I,” he declared. “Suppose it’s rigged again?”

“Never in an airport, Titus. That would be a federal crime.” Lash did it again, extracting a second ticket, and guided him to a nearby seating area.

“It’s less of a crime to kill me out in the street?”

“Well, yes — the draconian penalties for interfering with air travel date back to the beginning of this century. The history of the combat against air piracy and terrorism would fascinate you, Titus, the way it’s driven the development of wrist chips and universal ID — “

“Some other day, perhaps,” Titus said hastily. This sensation of being tracked by a hidden foe was intolerable. He was a hunter, not the prey! And how odd, that air terminals were something of a sanctuary. The only analogue that came to mind was fox hunting, where one could not shoot a fox — an arbitrary rule, but immutable as the laws of the Medes and the Persians. “How shall we find Shell in all this huggermugger?”

“She’s meeting us here,” Lash said. “Sit down and keep an eye out for her, would you? I’m just going to check the status of our flight.” He took out his little machine.

Titus felt sure that gaping at the view marked him as a hayseed. But he couldn’t resist. The window extended from floor to ceiling, giving a fine view of the endless concrete pavement outside. The silvery vehicle passing seemed large as a whale and about the same shape. Only when it turned did he see the sleek triangular profile, swept back into broad wings as wide as the vehicle was long. Not a whale: a manta ray, perhaps. The windows were tiny, mere freckles set into the flanks of the thing, and inside he glimpsed faces. Then size fell into perspective. It was huge, bigger than an ocean liner. Impossible to believe that so enormous a structure could leave the earth, and yet there one went, gliding past in the sky above. The wings looked nothing like the canvas-and-strut arrangements of the planes that Titus knew. And no propellers! How did the thing move itself then? Another huge class of things that he didn’t know and probably would never grasp!

He surveyed the crowd as Lash had asked. Still no sign of Shell. But surely that was a familiar hock-bottle silhouette just emerging from a side lounge? So many new faces had poured into his life these past few weeks that Titus had to think for a moment. This plump matronly partridge was surely the Doomster advocate who had been sitting at the table in the plaza. And yes, there was the son who had inherited her unfortunate physique, following behind and carrying the baggage.

Without thinking about it Titus leaped to his feet and followed. It had been rather a mistake to try to bullock his detractors, more productive of heat than light. Surely reasoned argument would put paid to this nonsense now and forever? And it was safe enough, if airports were a sanctuary. “Madam, a word,” he called, catching up.

At the sight of him the pear-shaped young man almost dropped a bag. “God, it’s him again!”

She flushed pink, but didn’t slow down. “Captain Oates, I’m not going to be persecuted by you!”

“Persecuted? That’s like your sauce, when it’s your lot gunning for me!” But damn it, he was not going to get diverted into a tirade. “All I’d like to do is talk to other members of your organization. You happen to be the only one I recognize by sight.”

“We’re in the phone book,” she snapped, picking up her pace.

“The what?” He had to stretch his legs to keep up. Why would they use unfamiliar terms? He would have to ask Lash —

“Wait.” She halted in her tracks so abruptly that both he and the lad swept right past her. “What you were saying in the plaza...Would you really? Come with me, to an executive meeting maybe?”

“Certainly. I said I would, and a man’s word is his bond.”

“It’s a wonderful idea!” She gazed at him as if he was the prize she’d pulled from a Christmas cake.

A slow thinker, but Titus reminded himself that women could not have a man’s natural gift for affairs. “At any convenient time,” he said magnanimously.

“Right now would be perfect!”

The plump youth stared open-mouthed at his mother. “Ma, are you sure about this?”

“Don’t nag, Roger,” she said, taking out her machine. “I want to link to Steve right away.”

“You might mention to Lash the change in plan,” Titus suggested. How easily one became accustomed to the convenience of chattering to any person from a distance at any moment!

“Of course, Captain. Don’t worry about it.”

“But Ma, we’re going to Toronto!”

“Not any more we’re not, Roger dear. Find us a taxi, would you?”

The youth led them through the airport maze to an exit where the driverless taxis waited in a long queue. They climbed into a passenger compartment and sped off. At the further side, the woman dived into her little machine the way one would into a book. Doubtless when the meeting was arranged she would be free to converse. Titus eyed the plump youth, hunched beside him in the middle seat as if he wished devoutly to be elsewhere. Insist on human status, he reminded himself. “You know I’m Oates, of course. What’s your name?”

“Sorry — Brabazon. Roger Brabazon.”

Titus called to mind the dissolute marriage practices of the modern era. “And your mother here is Mrs. Brabazon?”

“No, she’s Rena Zonderman. Look — is there any way you can get back to 1912?”

“They said it was impossible.”

“That’s what they always say. But are you sure? Because if it really is impossible, then...”

He seemed unwilling or unable to finish the thought. “I was in a damn tight place when I stepped out of 1912,” Titus recalled. “I’d as lief not pick up precisely where I left off.”

“You’re in a damn tight place now.”

Titus stared in astonishment. There was nothing dangerous about riding in taxis as long as he kept his hands away from the door latch. But before he could demand more information Mrs. Zonderman prodded her machine until it squawked. “I’m surrounded by idiots. Wasn’t it one of you British history guys, who said that great plans should leave room for improvisation?”

“Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington,” Titus offered.

“You see?” she told her machine crossly. “Exactly what I’ve been saying.”

“You mean you have him there?” it demanded in horrified tones. Disgusted, she folded the device shut without answering.

“You can’t compare yourself to the Iron Duke,” Titus said indulgently. “He was Napoleon’s nemesis, the greatest general Britain’s ever produced.”

Mrs. Zonderman had turned her attention to the taxi’s little passenger control panel, pressing buttons with an assured hand. “Well as a matter of fact, I think the comparison’s very apt. I’m obliged to you for the name — I’ll have to look the Duke up. Would you step out of the car now, Captain?”

“Certainly. Have we arrived?”

“We’re just switching cars. After you.”

The motor halted and the door at his elbow popped open. Courteously Titus stepped out. Without wasting a second the door slammed shut again and the vehicle accelerated, speeding away into traffic. In an eyeblink it was gone.

“What the devil?” Titus stared after it, his mouth dropping open in astonishment. Where were the other two going? Wasn’t there supposed to be another motor? He looked round, taking in his surroundings. He was standing on a strip of concrete less than eight inches wide. To either side of him huge motors whipped by, as big as locomotives and faster, the roar of their engines like continuous thunder. The wind of their passage battered at him like blizzard gales. He had spoken to Lash blithely of perfect balance, the mental ability to stand tiptoe on top of a fence post. Now he had to demonstrate it. He closed his mouth against the hot dust thrashed up by thousands of passing tyres, very carefully not moving an inch, and gulped.

Lash had alluded to modern rules of the road — that traffic was organized in lanes, for instance. Titus counted the lanes on this roadway. There were twenty-five in one direction, parting to flow past his island the way a river in full spate would surge round a rock. Somewhere nearby must be twenty-five lanes heading the other way. Perhaps above or below — other roadways soared overhead and swept to the right or the left, curving up or diving down, carving the daylight into slabs and slices. The rhythmic glassy flicker from the windscreens as they arrowed through a shaft of morning sunlight was faster than his pulse, almost hypnotic. Was this even real? It would have made a convincingly horrid nightmare. But this could not be nightmare. It was beyond any dream he could imagine.

Titus pushed aside all questions for later consideration. Ride each fence as it comes, and the fence now was to get to safety. To stay here for any length of time was impossible. It was too narrow to even sit down. A motor with a wide load might speed by at any instant. And even a momentary loss of footing would bring him tumbling under the whizzing wheels — there would be no amiable crowd of city pedestrians to haul him to safety.

He considered waving down a passing car. Did anyone offer lifts to hitchhikers any more? None of the huge segmented cargo vehicles thundering past had drivers, and the smaller passenger motors were obviously also being managed by machine. Autopilots, that was the term — the only way that millions of vehicles could speed along inches apart at over a hundred miles per hour without smashups. Occasionally he glimpsed an automobile passenger reading or consulting a little machine, never watching the road. Anyone who happened to glance idly up would think nothing of a man, a workman perhaps, standing in the roadway.

Obviously the thing to do was to nip smartly across the road to the verge. Traffic was dense but not impenetrable — there were occasional gaps between the vehicles. He could choose his moment and make a dash for it. There were fifteen lanes to the left, but only ten lanes to the right, so that was the best direction to go. He breathed down a deep gulp of the hot fume-laden air, plucking up his courage. There was no time to waste in dizziness and chronal distress. He had done this before, with Shell and Lash flanking him to either side. He could do it again. He had trodden more difficult paths in his day.

Now! He stiffened the sinews and ran, dodging neatly across one, two, six, eight lanes of traffic as sweet as a fox threading through a hedge before the hounds. But as he raced towards the kerb a towering goods vehicle towing two waggons hooted its horn at him, so that he nearly jumped out of his skin. Only an instant’s loss of timing in his dance with peril, immediately recovered, but that was enough. A motor whizzed by too close, nearly nipping his toes. The blast of its passage blinded him. Something struck him a glancing blow and snagged his garments. He was jerked off his feet before the flimsy modern cloth tore away, and rolled over and over breathless and bruised to safety on the narrow pavement.

Titus huddled on the gritty surface, gasping. By God, that had been as close a squeak as he ever cared to have! And when he sat up he found that it had all been for naught. This strip of pavement was perhaps twice as wide as his former perch and edged with a low wall. When he dragged himself up to look over, there was nothing beyond but another roadway crossing at an angle far below. It too teemed with vehicular traffic. And beyond that was another, and then another. There was no way out of this deadly maze on foot.

At least this new pavement was wide enough to sit on. Titus licked the blood off his scraped knuckles and picked embedded gravel from his knees, all the while expressing his feelings in the most dry and picturesque emergency vocabulary he could muster. His shirt had been ripped asunder, and a jagged triangle had been torn from one side of his trousers — some protrusion on the motor must have caught a pocket. All the fly buttons had taken the opportunity to scarper as well. When he staggered to his feet his tattered garments showed little inclination to follow. He had to hold his grimy trousers up with both hands. His tatterdemalion appearance would make a cat laugh.

Suddenly the humour of the situation did strike him. He sat on the low wall and sniggered at his plight. Debagged, alone and helpless! It reminded him of the elaborate boarding school japes in the Stalky stories. And as he laughed the solution came to him — a schoolboy prank to extricate himself from a schoolboy dilemma.

The task was to signal to the infrequent observers that he needed rescue — to communicate. He stood up and turned his back on the highway, gazing nobly out over the wall at the tangle of roadways below, and folded his arms. Unsupported, the remnants of his trousers immediately gave up the unequal struggle with gravity. They collapsed round his ankles, leaving his bare arse exposed to the winds. It was a pity he had no watch. Otherwise he could time exactly how long a man could do a moon job on passing traffic in this era, before some scandalized passenger glimpsed his bum and tattled into a little machine.

He was still chuckling at his own cleverness when a vehicle passed, slowed down, and stopped with a squeal of tyres. POLICE was stenciled prominently on the rear panel, and ominous red and blue lights flashed in echelon on the roof. A frowning uniformed officer emerged. “Mister, what in hell are you playing at?”

Titus hitched his trousers up again. “Good day, constable,” he said cheerily. “Before you bring me up before the Beak, I wonder if you would oblige me by contacting Dr. Kevin Lash of the PTICA-TTD. I last saw him in a lounge at the airport, waiting for a flight to Wyoming. And if you happen to have a spare belt on hand, I should be most grateful.”

There was the usual argy-bargy and delay while frantic messages winged back and forth through the little machines, but eventually it all ended as Titus knew it must, in a short ride back to the airport. When they pulled up at an entryway he saw familiar faces in the throng.

“Titus!” Shell leaped to the rescue with Miranda in tow, clamping his arm in a grip so strong he blinked. “You’re hurt!”

“He’s ours, we’re in charge!” Lash exclaimed. “Officer, whatever the problem is, I can explain everything!”

His self-congratulatory mood vanished when Titus saw that it was Miranda’s impaired behavior that turned the tide. The police officer looked from Titus, holding his battered trousers up with both hands, to the child swaying from one foot to the other, and his tone became one of lofty kindness. “Ma’am, traveling with two disabled persons is going to call for more manpower than you got. You have to keep them under your control. Did you download the regulations that apply to air travel with persons of diminished capacity?” Only Lash’s pleading expression kept the hot words between Titus’s teeth.

In the end they were saved by their flight’s imminent departure — it had already been held up while Titus was returned to the fold. Titus was accustomed to seeing his mode of travel, the locomotive or ship or whatever. It was disappointing to board through a tube, so that nothing could be seen of the jet-wing itself at all. He might have been walking down a rather narrow and curving corridor in the bowels of the airport building. And the travelling compartment was enormously large but very low in the ceiling, packed with rows of seats full of passengers who gaped at his rags. “Where does the driver sit?” Titus demanded, balking.

“Come along, don’t block the aisle,” Lash said.

“Miranda gets the window seat,” Shell said grimly. “You are sitting right here between Kev and me, where we can keep hold of you. Kev is going to lend you his belt, to keep you decent. And I have safety pins for your shirt, and a first-aid kit. Let me patch up your shins before Sabrina goes ballistic.”

“Titus, what happened?” To Shell Lash added, “He was sitting beside me all snug and tight, and then he vanished.”

Titus told the entire story, distracted by Shell’s ministrations — she hardly needed to roll up his trouser leg to wipe off the blood, the fabric was so raveled. Lash’s little machine glowed softly. His words were somehow being shared with the rest of the TTD. But it was important that they be caught up — Lash had been obliged to reveal their names and business to the police officer, and for certain the news would leak out. So he made his account clear and complete, recounting every word of the conversation with young Brabazon and Mrs. Zonderman. “I still don’t understand where it went sour,” he concluded. “It was a damned odd place to change vehicles.”

“Shell, this time they’ve blown themselves wide open.” Lash’s pale face flushed with excitement. “It’s attempted murder.”

“Come now, Lash,” Titus protested. “Letting a man out of a motor is hardly malicious.”

“Letting you out, on a major freeway interchange? Titus, don’t you see? You couldn’t find a tidier way to kill someone who can’t manage modern traffic, if you worked at it with both hands for a week.” Shell folded the unused sticking plasters back into her first-aid box with an unfaltering hand, but fury had dashed the color from her cheeks. “Look at your injuries — it’s a miracle you weren’t killed. It’s like tossing a child or a dog out onto the highway!”

“Deliberately putting Titus into peril.” Lash clicked busily away at his machine. “Oh, we’ve got them now. Probably not on legal grounds — “

Shell blew out an indignant breath. “What more evidence can the police possibly need?”

“Well, he has been known to open a moving car’s door before, Shell. She’ll just say it was his own idea. But at least Rick can spin this so that we get the moral high ground.”

Titus slumped in his seat, aghast. Another attempt on his life, such an important and vital event, and he had not even noticed! Mrs. Zonderman had mentioned the plaza, where he had brashly invited her to take a shot at him — a suggestion that in retrospect was like offering a lioness the first bite. Presented with a chance-met opportunity she had frozen onto it as cleverly as Napoleon or Wellington, coming to an immediate decision and swiftly developing an ideal murder method. And not an iota of proof — she hadn’t touched him, and he had opened the door with his own hand. Never, under any circumstance, would he ever underestimate a female again. “A child or a pet indeed,” he said bitterly. “And not a bright one either. Dear God, this is unbearable. I’d be better off dead in the blizzard.”

“Oh no, Titus!”

“It’s not so bad as that,” Shell chimed in almost in the same breath. “I really do know what I’m talking about on this, Titus, so believe me, okay? It’s not you, in there, that has a problem.” Her forefinger tapped briskly on his chest. “And it’s not us either, out here. The problem is here, in the space between.” She flapped a plump competent hand in the air between them. “You just have to learn to make the right noises, to connect, to get through to other folks.”

“In other words, everything I’ve learnt in my life is useless, and I have to shovel it over the side and begin again.”

“But Titus, you did connect. Beautifully! You did so great, I’m proud of you — got the attention of the highway patrol to rescue you, as smart as if you’d lived here all your life. I wish you could’ve seen poor Kev’s face, when the State Highway Patrol linked.” She giggled at the memory so that he had to laugh too. After all, he had not done so badly, to escape with his life! She glanced past him, at Miranda. “It is a big jump, I know. But bigger ones have been made. And not only by the Fortie Project.”

“All’s well that ends well,” Lash sighed. “Out in Wyoming the Doomsters won’t get another chance at you. You’ll have some elbow room and peace.”

And less opportunity to get into trouble, Titus reflected sardonically. But damned if he was going to repine. Shell was right — others had it worse. None of these irritations mattered now that the flight was starting. The connecting tubes fell away and their vehicle began to trundle slowly along. There was far less engine noise than he would have guessed, nothing like the diesel clatter of a sledge or a motor. He held his breath, looking forward to a sudden skyward leap, but let it out slowly again when it became plain that he was getting ahead of the horse. The ascent was going to be gradual, with a long run-up.

Still his stomach was tense with anticipation. How could the other passengers be so calm? At the end of their row, Lash had taken out some papers. Shell was consulting her machine. Even the child was uninvolved, counting the magazines and pamphlets crammed into the seat pouch. Flying is commonplace, he reminded himself. They do this every day. Even Miranda has done this before. And Shell flies to — was it Texas? every other week to work with the Fortie teams. “When do you have to go back to training?”

“Oh, that’s over, Titus,” she replied absently. “I get eight weeks off to do family stuff, and then we spend September gearing up for take-off.”

“Take-off? You mean, leaving?”

Shell gave him a look of astonishment. “Titus, you’re maximal and beyond. Everyone’s been saying that the Amity Star blasts off in October.”

“Of this year?”

“Yes, Titus. It’s been scheduled for a decade. You can not-listen better than any man I know.”

Titus would have retorted that he hadn’t been here ten years ago, but another thought struck him. “Then this is your last summer here. Because you’ll be gone for years, maybe — “ Hastily he caught back the word ‘forever.’ She was still clicking away at the little machine, and he realized the idea was nothing new to her.

Lash looked up from his paperwork. “Could you be discreet, Titus?”

Titus recalled he was supposed to be going into hiding. More quietly he said, “You shouldn’t be spending these last days dragging a stranger like me round. You should be devoting the time to your family and friends.”

“Don’t fret about it, Titus. All part of the job, and I’m spending the time with Miranda too. How can you call yourself a stranger, after I’ve talked the New York State Highway Patrol out of arresting you for indecent exposure?” She gave him a smiling glance.

“I wouldn’t presume to count myself among your friends, Shell.”

She laughed. “That’s so — so British! Of course you’re a friend, Titus. And Miranda, if all you’re going to do is play with the magazines, maybe you could switch seats so that Titus could look out the window.”

Miranda was if anything more anxious to explore a new seat pouch, so the switch was made. Lost in thought, Titus didn’t appreciate the view at first. How could she call him friend? The puppy-like friendliness of the American character was proverbial — never backward in going forward, the saying went. But surely friendship called for more than one month’s acquaintance, even among Yanks. It is Shell herself who is rare, he decided. This quality was as she said, part of the job. Now that he came to think about it, he realized she was the only modern who didn’t crowd him — who instinctively kept the right distance. Being a Christ-almighty wonder at making friends was an incomparable gift in a person who was going to Tau Ceti to meet unknowable aliens.

A tug at his sleeve interrupted this train of thought. Miranda pointed at the window. “We’re in the air!” he exclaimed. He pressed his forehead to the plastic pane. A huge blue world had opened beyond, the sky clear and pure as glass. With a thrill of delight he realized that the white cottony surface below was clouds. He was seeing the tops of clouds! Not even eagles flew so high!

Since they were sitting towards the front of the vehicle, he could get a fine view of the wing. Its silvery metal skin gleamed in the sunshine almost too bright to look at. No method of propulsion was visible, and nothing within his sight moved. For all he could tell, the jet-wing utilized the same flight principles as a witch’s broom.

Through gaps in the clouds below he could see the earth beneath. It was hard to say what they were passing over, but the map Lash had showed him had not depicted any mid-American oceans, so Titus assumed it was land below. Shell was quite right. He had to start paying attention to what was going on around him. “The problem,” he told Miranda, “is like yours — distinguishing the important from the incidental.”

The child replied, “Seven.”

“Seven magazines, very good,” he interpreted, correctly he hoped.

When the jet-wing landed he began exerting attention immediately. “May I see the pilothouse, or whatever you call it?”

“The cockpit,” Lash said. “I don’t believe there’ll be time, Titus — we have to make our connecting flight.”

“The hop to Grizzly is on a smaller airplane,” Shell said. “You’ll have a better chance to see then.”

Titus kept this in mind, and when they climbed aboard the smaller plane demanded a tour. They were the only passengers, so he felt confident he wasn’t giving too much inconvenience. “And perhaps Miranda will like to see too?”

“I don’t think so, Titus. She’s getting over-stimulated.” Shell fastened Miranda’s seat belt. The child was trembling like an overdriven horse, visibly nearing the end of her resources. Shell herself looked little better. He would have remarked upon it, but nothing could be done, so it would be more polite not to notice.

This vehicle was very different from the jet-wing. For one thing it had true wings, just like the aeroplanes of his day. There were seats for a mere two dozen passengers. There were no stewards or stewardesses, but only a pilot and co-pilot. Titus went forward to peer into the cockpit, careful not to disturb the preparations for takeoff. What a lot of screens and switches! Was there nothing simple in this era? But the controls were not outrageously much more complex than those of a taxi. And I am sure I could drive their motors, Titus reminded himself. This is not out of my reach.

Even the flight felt simpler, closer to the way birds flew. Titus had a clear view of the pavement speeding along under them, and felt the wheels leave the pavement when they became airborne. And they soared not to the godlike heights, but at a more human level, close enough to make out a car on the one road. He could pick out very few signs of human habitation now. “It’s the Prairie Wilderness Area,” Lash told him. “No motors allowed.”

“Truly?” It sounded like deliberate insanity to Titus. To have motors fail due to extreme cold as they did in the Antarctic was one thing. But to bar them on a whim? “What for?”

“To keep the region pristine, of course.”

“Wouldn’t it be more productive to build houses, or plough the land and sow it to crops?”

“Titus, it’s a wilderness area,” Shell repeated, confused.

“But this is lunacy. Wilderness is for taming. It’s no good to anybody as wilderness.”

“Titus, think about it,” Shell persisted. “Would you want the entire world to be built over, like New York City?”

“Of course not. But that’s a very different thing from some nice productive farmland.”

“Shell, this argument is hopeless,” Lash interposed. “Titus, I advise you to not try and understand it now. Write it off as one of the peculiar things Americans do in this century. Some other day, you can read up on the entire history of the conservation movement.”

“You are surely a very odd race,” Titus agreed.

Copyright © 2008 Brenda W. Clough