Two and a half years earlier, 6 Maia 1895 A.D.
The Raw: Pilkinson’s Air Base II
Two and a half years ago, 80 Squadron had had a better posting than Fostercy: Pilkinson’s Air Base II, near Pilkinson’s Shadowtown. Crispin arrived in spring, one of five recruits dropped off by a troop carrier on its way to Shadowtown. He’d only been free of Chressamo a week, and had spent most of that in trucks being shuttled here and there, north and south: a speck of dust on the game board of the Raw, wafted in the wind of much larger pieces being moved about. On the night of Maia 6 he was finally on his way to join 80 Squadron, trying not to fall asleep as the troop carrier jounced over the Raw. The other recruits destined for 80 Squadron—four boys several years younger than Crispin—were out cold, oblivious to the teeth-jarring jolting of the flatbed. They were fresh out of boot camp. Later Crispin discovered that they had had no idea what kind of posting they were getting; all they had been told was that they were joining a QAF squadron in a noncombat capacity. In this respect Crispin was better off. He had been given a rigger’s job because he was actually a daemon handler, not because he had failed to pass the tests that would have sent him into combat.
He felt at once physically alert and mentally exhausted. His body was still sore from the sadistic attentions of the Chressamo guards, Freeman and Drown, with whom he had become exceedingly familiar. For twenty days he had been holding off sleep, keeping what he feared at bay; he slept only when he was too exhausted to keep it up any longer. He did not know he was wasting his energy—the visions had deserted him, and would leave him in peace until he was once again forced into confrontation with his own mortality two and a half years later.
He had had a good five hours of sleep in the canteen in Arvant’s Shadowtown yesterday morning, so he sat up straight in the dark among the snoring boys, who were as yet so new to daemon handling, and so poorly trained, that they could not feel the daemon beneath them, feel it straining and shuddering every time it had to pull the troop carrier over a rise. It was old. Surprising that its driver hadn’t detected how close it was to death. Or perhaps not so surprising. The few army handlers with whom Crispin had spoken had revealed in their conversation, whether voluntarily or unknowingly, the small extent of their expertise.
The wind blowing through the slatted sides smelled of dust. It licked over Crispin’s newly shaved scalp like a big animal’s breath. Spring had lasted perhaps four days. How different from everywhere else in Ferupe, where spring was a prolonged taste of paradise! But the Raw was not in Ferupe: its weather and the rhythm of its seasons were those of the plains of Kirekune. For four days the rain had been torrential and the sunlight slopped over one’s hands like melted butter and the ground smelled wet. Even the carrion-crow voices of the women of Shadowtown had seemed to soften in response to the softening of the air. The hills had changed color, red earth and dark green scrub giving way to a blanket of pale green. But now, on the fifth day, although the blanket was still in place, it was starting to look dusty. The air was drying out and the winds were whispery and laden with shadows even at midday.
The nights were worse. The troop carrier labored loudly.
Leaving aside his personal fears, Crispin was irrationally afraid that if he stopped listening to the daemon, if he stopped encouraging its faltering will, it might lose heart altogether and strand them in the middle of the Raw. He resolved to stay awake all night.
But a resolution is merely a resolution when you’re very tired. The next morning he woke with a jolt to see the other boys sitting up, their uniforms rumpled, questioning each other with their eyes. The truck had stopped. Apparently the old daemon had made it to its destination, after all. Outside, hoarse voices shouted over the roar of the wind.
“No use hanging about, here we are,” said one of the four recruits, and they all slipped out from under the tarp that had been serving as a tailgate. Crispin followed more slowly. In the entrance of a vast barn, the officer who’d ridden in the truck cab was haranguing two tired-looking men in camouflage-patterned fatigues. Inside the open doors of the barn were two airplanes, the first Crispin had ever been close to. He took his place in the line of recruits. The machines were gigantic and weather-beaten. They looked as if every piece of them had been replaced at least once. One had a broken propeller: a fellow in black fatigues was standing on a ladder replacing a blade. The other was broken open below her nose, flaps hanging down as if she were laying an egg. A pair of human legs and feet showed beneath the flaps.
The scene was a far cry from the dance of the dragonflies a thousand feet up. But to Crispin it was even more thrilling. It was all he could do to yell his name without a trace of emotion. A short, dark man in a leather jacket strolled around the barn. As he went inside to talk to the riggers, he saw Crispin—not the line of recruits, as Crispin well knew by this time, but Crispin in the line—and he checked. His gaze sought Crispin’s and held it. Then he went into the barn.
But Crispin had seen his face. Intelligence itself; and the hands, the confident, nonchalant walk.
Was he a pilot? Crispin wondered as the officer rounded on him and lambasted him for staring. Did they all look like that?
Later he was to realize that that had been Flight Captain Anthony Vichuisse himself. Although one can almost never remember the first time one sets eyes on a dear friend, or an enemy—there is usually only a haze of early impressions—with Vichuisse it was different. The moment when Crispin first locked gazes with the man who was to be his benefactor remained crystal-sharp in his memory.
Avril—Okandar 1893 A.D.
The Raw: Pilkinson’s Air Base II
Crispin’s greatest fear had been that his coworkers would detect his lack of military experience. But he needn’t have worried. No one asked where the new recruits had come from, let alone what sort of training they’d had. Just as soon as they could be issued fatigues and shown their lockers in the ground crew’s barracks, they were thrust into the brutal routine of the ground crew. For a couple of weeks it was nothing but manual labor and carrying slops and falling into their bunks at night. At last Lieutenant Holmes, leader of the day shift, got around to testing their skills. He ordered each of the five to diagnose a daemon that was acting up. The other four had no idea how to begin, and were summarily assigned to older riggers who would show them the ropes. Crispin assessed the problem in a matter of minutes. The daemon was a thirty-foot beauty, and she was dying for the very simple reason that her cell had been made about a foot too narrow. After additional oak planks, dearly obtained, had been hammered onto the ends of the cell to enlarge it, and the daemon was made to clamber back in, her fury flowed out at Crispin like a proof of his ability.
He grinned at Holmes. His hands were sweating. He had been afraid—needlessly—that two weeks of toil had made him forget the trick of getting inside a daemon’s head. But he had feared the same thing before, and been wrong. if anything, this time the empathy had come more easily.
Holmes squinted at him. “Civvy handler, were you?”
“Truck driver, sir,” Crispin said radiantly.
“What on earth’d ya want to join up for?” Holmes asked testily, and made Crispin second-in-command of the night shift.
That was the first day of a horrible half-year.
The rest of the riggers understandably resented Crispin’s having been placed in a position of authority without his having proved himself. After a month or so, he would have given anything to be demoted. But it was not to be. As Holmes had implied, none of the other riggers had had anything to do with daemons in civilian life; Crispin had a reputation to live up to. The other riggers’ attitude toward the daemons was mistrustful and fearful at best, sadistic at worst. To them, Crispin’s gentler approach proved that he was a sissy. In order to refute this assumption, he would have had to talk louder, boast bigger, walk with more of a swagger, and curse daemons more creatively than anyone else. For several months, during which he irretrievably damaged his reputation among the ground crews, he refused to walk the walk or talk the talk. Gibes, raspberries, and racial slurs followed him around. But he pretended, burning inside, that it didn’t matter. He was still of the naive opinion that doing one’s job was the important thing.
But the night shift was a closed community. There was no escape. One was either hated or liked; there was no such thing as keeping to oneself. Smithrebel’s had been no preparation: the backdrop of the circus was a tapestry of new faces and new places. If you didn’t want to get up close and personal with your fellows, you didn’t have to. And Crispin’s unique status—as a circus baby, a truck driver, and a performer—had enabled him to remain an outsider, a changeling without friends of his own age.
Here, he was constantly reminded he was an outsider, and derided for it. He thought he was slowly going crazy. For three months he hadn’t seen daylight. The night shift got up late in the afternoon, when sunset was already blazing across the sky; they went to sleep at dawn. The advantage was that they didn’t have to work in the blistering heat of the Raw summer. The disadvantage was that they had very little contact with the pilots or the rest of the ground crew. The airplanes in the hangars were their children. Gleaming glass and scrubbed floors were their pride. The work was not hard, once you got used to it, and they had the first, best helpings of the rations they prepared for everyone on base. On their rare days off, they knew no greater pleasure than consuming brandy until they were woozy enough to sleep for twenty-four hours straight. They were really just military janitors. Crispin would have gone crazy if not for the demogorgons in the Gorgonettes he tended. Their sugary hatred fortified him every night. It kept him on his toes.
He knew now that his hope of becoming a pilot had been a greenie’s dream. The transition from groundsman to flyer was simply not possible. He might know the cockpit of a Gorgonette as well as Flight Captain Vichuisse himself, but in the night shift world, Gorgonettes existed only on the ground. Crispin’s one remaining ambition was to do his job better than anyone else. In this, he surprised in himself a streak of perfectionism. Lieutenant Biggins, the boss of the night shift, said the shift had not been so efficient since he could remember. With Crispin and Greengage, the oldest man on the shift, sharing the duty of checking all the daemons on base, and the rest of the shift getting the maintenance work out of the way, all of them were generally finished with their duties by 3:00 A.M., and had the rest of the night to sit around smoking and waiting for the patrol to return. In the event that a victorious (or more often defeated) mission limped in late, the shift would spring into action and have the planes taxied into the hangars, the daemons fed, and repairs under way in less than an hour.
Crispin thought he gave his orders with the right touch of no-nonsense discipline. It stunned him when he found out that the shift considered him stuck-up and demanding.
“Shit,” he said to Biggins. “What am I doing wrong? I don’t fucking like ordering people about. But I’ve gotta do it. And nobody’s gonna pull their weight if I stop yelling at them.”
Biggins considered him from the other side of a tire they were changing. “Can’t pretend you’re comfortable doing it, then,” he said. His eyes were kind. When Biggins was killed a year and a half later in a fire-strafing attack, Crispin, although they had long since lost touch, felt genuine grief. “They know you’re not being real, Kateralbin. That’s why they think you’re stuck-up. I’ve been with this squadron since before you were born; I’m for the triple pension, me; but I’ve learned a thing or two. You gotta come down off your high horse, lad.”
“Real,” Crispin mused. “Mmm.” The jack slipped, and he almost lost two fingers. “Damn it!”
He had to keep his past a secret if he was not to throw away the gift that Colonel Sostairs, back at Chressamo, had given him in return for Rae: anonymity. If the night shift knew he had come from Chressamo, life would be unbearable. So how was he to share the reminiscences about Home by means of which the riggers got to know each other?
Be real. It was impossible.
As it happened, his luck changed not by any doing of his own, but by his rotation to third-in-command of the day shift.
The day shift consisted of twenty men as opposed to eleven. The work varied more, and was more demanding. As a result the riggers had less time for petty rivalries. Soon Crispin realized that so far he had only seen the very worst that military life could bring out in men. The day shift, only dimly aware of his reputation as a civvy handler, treated him with indifference rather than distrust. For the first time he was able to become friendly with some of the other men.
And it was a relief to be on a normal schedule again. The mere sight of the sun—even though it was now the cruel orange autumn sun, under which men and trees withered alike—filled him with exuberance.
Not that he spent much time out in the sun. He commonly spent up to twelve hours a day in the crudely built hangars, working with the Gorgonette daemons on which the efficiency of the squadron depended. He could not have said what drove him to work until his fingers were numb. It was a compulsion far more demanding than love for the poor, hateful giants. Something to do not just with the power under his hands, but with the autumnal crackle that had come in the air, and with the whole, bitter, wind-flattened sweep of the Raw. Something he was catching from the day-shift men and from the pilots, who commonly had to be helped out of the cockpits, they were so drained. The awareness, finally, that he was in the middle of a war. Us versus them! For the first time in his life, he was part of an us. A tiny but essential part of Ferupe’s defense machine.
Maybe his newfound enthusiasm for life was the thing that attracted Vichuisse to him. Crispin’s first sight of the captain remained clear in his memory. But for the life of him he couldn’t remember the first time the captain spoke to him. Had Vichuisse been pointing out the damage to his beautiful, metal Cerdres 500, stumbling with weariness as he circled the craft, Crispin two respectful paces behind? Had they encountered each other in some less orthodox setting? “Good work, Kateralbin.” “Thank you, sir!” At first, Crispin had not hated the captain. “Keep it up.” And Vichuisse might have touched his cap to the tall, shambling groundsman.
Crispin knew only that before he had been on the day shift a month, it seemed as if he and the captain had always been acquaintances. Whenever their paths crossed, Crispin was aware of Vichuisse’s eyes on him. A couple of times he found humiliating little gifts on his bunk: chocolate or brand-name cigarettes. Such things could have come from no one else. It was this last which made him seek out old Biggins, on the night shift, and ask in a roundabout, embarrassed way whether it was possible Vichuisse was looking for a boy. Everyone knew that the captain’s last favorite, a lieutenant named Savoy, had been transferred to another squadron by Westanthraw himself, commandant of the Lovoshire Parallel: the liaison had become too public.
Biggins eyed Crispin in a way that made him flush. “It’s not that.” He reached out and rubbed Crispin’s shaved head affectionately. “You numbskull.”
“People are noticing,” Crispin said, trying to defend himself. “Pretty soon everyone’ll think it’s that, even if it isn’t—and as far as I’m concerned, it never will be!”
Biggins put his spatulate, broken-nailed thumbs to his lips. “If it was a matter of keeping your job, would you?”
“No! No... I don’t know,”
“Well, it isn’t,” Biggins said. “I may not see the captain that often, but I hear the stories, same as everyone else, and I’ve looked in on him from time to time, just to see his face. Could’ve stabbed him in his sleep as he lay slumped over his desk in that pretty-pretty office, me, a dozen times.” Crispin stared in surprise. “And I can tell you he’s not that easy a man, not so easy to make out. You’re jumping to conclusions, Kateralbin. It’s something else he wants from you.”
“But what’s that?” Crispin begged.
Biggins shrugged. “Damme if I know. Your tangle, not mine, m’lad. You’re not on my shift anymore.”
And with that Crispin was left with no other choice than to try to confront Vichuisse. The gossip was getting to be more malicious than joking. If the shift decided he was a favorite of the captain—the captain!—he would lose the few friends he had.
He chose a time toward the end of the shift, when most of the men had left the hangars. On days when Vichuisse was not flying, he often came into the hangar anyway, late in the afternoon, as if his kite was a mistress whom he could not neglect. Crispin contrived to save the Cerdres 500 for this hour. It was a couple of weeks before Vichuisse arrived on his own. But finally Crispin found himself face-to-face with him over the smooth bulge of the Cerdres’s windshield.
Crispin was standing on a stepladder; Vichuisse was on the ground. Deliberately, Crispin climbed down the ladder. Something in his manner must have told the captain that things were not as usual. The captain remained still, with a mocking smile on his face, as Crispin walked around the nose of the Cerdres and saluted. “Evening, Captain!”
“Evening, Kateralbin. How’s my love?”
Crispin blinked twice. Then he realized. “She’s doing good, sir. Props running smoothly now. You shouldn’t have any trouble.”
“Was there something else, Kateralbin?” Vichuisse said, still smiling.
“There was.” Crispin looked down at the captain from his greater height. For some reason Sostairs’s tale about the QAF squadrons’ height requirement flashed through his mind. He shoved his hands into his pockets. It was a gesture of extreme disrespect. Vichuisse stiffened. “Why did you have those things left on my bunk, Captain?”
Later he would wonder if his forwardness had in fact pushed the captain to decide what he wanted of Crispin. It must have been so. There was no other explanation for the way things had turned out.
“You’re a smoker,” Vichuisse said easily. “Nothing worse than going without a cigarette when you want one.”
“True, sir. But that’s not it at all,” Crispin said stubbornly.
Vichuisse glanced around. Only his eyes moved; the smile remained fixed. There were eleven other planes in the hangar. Their props moved lazily in the wind that blew through the huge open doors. “Have you ever flown, Kateralbin?”
“Never had the chance.”
“Would you like to?”
Would he? Suddenly he was choking on old, half-decayed dreams. But of course Vichuisse was only ragging him. “I haven’t the training, sir.”
“Why should you need training? You’re so much brighter than the rest of the boys. Brighter than a good many of my pilots, even. Don’t you think so?”
“That would be presumptuous of me, sir!”
“But you think so. Don’t you? You think you’re better than the rest of us.”
The captain was already accusing Crispin, instead of Crispin accusing him. Such was the inertia of the hierarchy. With an effort Crispin recovered his self-possession. He met the captain’s gaze. “I firmly believe I could fly a loop as well as any of them. ‘Cept maybe yourself, of course.” The minute the boast was out he wanted to take it back. But Vichuisse was smiling hugely now as if he had got what he was after.
“Could you? Could you, really? Well why don’t we find out?”
“But, sir—”
“No buts!” Vichuisse spun around. He was walking briskly toward the doors, and Crispin had to follow. His blood pumped with anxiety as he followed the little, trim figure out of the hangar—the doors ought to be closed, but obeying Vichuisse was more important—and across the muddy beginning of the runway, past the second and third hangars, to Hangar Four, the smallest, which stood right beside the barracks. Here the ground crew kept planes that needed complete rebuilding, or which were awaiting replacement daemons. Vichuisse gestured for Crispin to open the big doors. Trying not to grunt with effort, he heaved them wide and propped stones against their sills. Wings and beaks and bright eyes waited in the shadows inside.
Pilkinson’s Air Base II was in the middle of a vacant stretch of plain. All that saved it from complete exposure to the enemy was the scattering of pine forest around the barracks. Many times Crispin had heard the pilots grousing about the short runway. It seemed that if your kite was a few pounds overweight, or you didn’t lift off in time for some other reason, you got tangled in the trees before you could gain height. Indeed, the pines down at the far end of the runway were so badly damaged that it must have happened many times. They stood like splintered matchstick sculptures against the violet twilight.
“Your machine,” Vichuisse said with mock gravity, indicating the interior of the hangar.
Crispin looked inside the hangar. Then at Vichuisse. Then back at the two airplanes that hulked inside. One was the ancient, broken-down Blacheim bomber which the squadron had had for donkey’s years, it was said, since before they were phased out of bombing and became a purely defensive outfit. The other was a Gorgonette which had been shot to pieces shortly before Crispin joined the day shift. Its pilot had been dead five minutes after landing. The Gorgonette had still had its daemon, but its wings and fuselage were in tatters. Lieutenant Holmes had given it up as a bad job; Crispin thought differently. Working on his own time, using unwanted scrap lumber, he had repaired the sorry wreck. Did Vichuisse know about that? Was he being punished? The daemon was utterly ungrateful, of course—didn’t know him from the Queen—and if it did, it hated him for putting its prison in working order again. He could feel it glowering at him from inside its cell, inside the bulky machine, in the shadows. “Which one, sir?” he asked Vichuisse with a dry mouth.
The captain’s laugh showed that he was not amused. “The Gorgonette, of course. Did you think I would send you up in the Blacheim? I’m not completely ignorant of the intricacies of the transformation engine—I am aware that without a daemon there’s nothing doing. And the daemon of that heap of junk must have got thin enough five years ago to slip out the exhaust pipe. No, I should like you to test-fly the Gorgonette. I am aware that you have been working on it. If it fails you, it is no one’s fault—and no one’s loss—but your own.”
Crispin started into the hangar. He stopped and looked at Vichuisse. “I never did anything to you, sir,” he pleaded one last time.
“Never did anything,” Vichuisse echoed. Then he turned on Crispin a smile so warm and radiant it made him take a step back. “I believe you’re looking a gift horse in the mouth, Kateralbin! I thought you were brighter than that! No?” His tone made it obvious that for Crispin to contradict him would be inadvisable, if not fatal.
Crispin went to the Gorgonette and automatically began to check it over.
“None of that.” Vichuisse’s voice cut through his blue funk. “I haven’t got all day.”
“But we always check the kites before takeoffs,” Crispin protested.
“Get a move on!” Vichuisse was still giving orders.
Scarcely aware of what he was doing, Crispin boosted himself up into the cockpit and strapped himself in. He had no helmet, or even goggles, no parachute; his rigger’s overall was completely inappropriate, and his toolbelt got in the way. He unfastened it and dropped it over the side of the cockpit. It was difficult to swing the cockpit shell closed on his own. Suddenly it crashed down, nearly braining him, and through the glass he saw Vichuisse resting a long pole against the wall. The captain gestured impatiently.
Crispin sent a quick prayer to the Queen if she was listening, wrapped the whipcord around his fist, and jerked. The big daemon growled disconsolately as it stirred from sleep. In a remarkably short time it was purring and straining at the cord. It was powerful, hungry, and tired of inactivity. Its name was Toeleris. How did he know that?
Don’t think about it. He maneuvered the Gorgonette out of the hangar. On the muddy downslope to the runway, it nearly ran away with him. That forced him to get the hang of the controls in a hurry. It was not that different from driving a truck—the Gorgonette felt about the same weight as a Dunlap ten-wheeler—although of course everything would change once he got up in the air. If he ever did get up in the air. The cockpit was a cell of unbearable noise. The self-starting props were whirring around at top speed. He was dimly aware of Vichuisse watching from outside the hangar as he turned the Gorgonette and geared the daemon for takeoff, doing everything by instinct, copycatting what he had seen the pilots do—he had no idea what half the dials were for, only the stick, landing gear, and whipcord. Thank the Queen it was a time of day when no one much was about—the afternoon patrol would not be returning for an hour or so. If anyone was watching, they must think him crazy. He thought himself crazy. The Gorgonette was a junk heap. His heart was beating so hard he was afraid he would pass out. Dizziness made his vision go jerky as the daemon, knowing its job better than he did, put on speed, and the Gorgonette’s wheels tore up the ground and the pines loomed larger and larger, darker and darker.
And there was that horrible moment when he was convinced he was not going to make it—
And then the magical bounce that took him into the air, the engine coughing and the wind screaming around the cockpit, leaving his stomach and his worries and Vichuisse all on the ground.
The sky received the Gorgonette like a mother receiving a prodigal child.
Crispin never forgot that first flight, short and unadventurous though it was. The twilit sky grew huge around him and the land shrank and shrank until he saw how insignificant Pilkinson’s Air Base II really was, just a clutch of shacks in a copse on the roiling desolation of the Raw; and there was the meandering gray line of the road to Shadowtown, and far off to the west, the antlike activity of the front. And away and above to the south, a formation of kites, Kirekunis from the look of them, flying serenely home.
Bank. Circle. Mustn’t get too high!
A small figure on the runway beneath was jumping and waving its arms for him to come down.
Landing was far harder than taking off. He lost his nerve and circled twice more before he actually came in to the runway. By the time he taxied to a halt, he had realized there was a lot still wrong with the Gorgonette. The daemon might be willing, but something clanked ominously in the transformation engine, and one of the props was wobbling as it spun. He hadn’t rebuilt the wings properly, either. The starboard ailerons were not working, so that it had been impossible for him to bank right when he was in the air. He came to a halt at the beginning of the runway, shut down the engine, and unwrapped the whipcord from his right hand, wincing.
Vichuisse was standing by the slowing port propeller. He helped Crispin to the ground.
In the air Crispin had been perfectly calm, but now he was shaking all over and wet with sweat. His fingers would not work when he tried to buckle the toolbelt Vichuisse handed him back on. Hopelessly, he let it fall to the ground and raised his gaze to meet the captain’s.
Vichuisse smiled.
Crispin blinked.
The smile grew broader. Teeth showed. “Congratulations, Kateralbin.” Vichuisse stepped forward and held put his hand.
Crispin shook it. It felt like the end of the world. There was no hint of displeasure in the blue eyes. For the first time that Crispin could remember, they looked kind. As Vichuisse gestured for him to kneel, he realized that this was the first time he had ever seen Vichuisse display the calm, oh-so-officerly poise he admired so much in the lieutenants, the demigods of the squadron. As a rule, Vichuisse was a sizzling, spitting enigma. A man to be feared. Not respected.
Crispin knelt in the mud, trying hard not to drop to his hands and knees. His thighs trembled.
Vichuisse tapped him gently on both shoulders with his boot knife. “By the power invested in me by our glorious Lithrea the Second, Queen Regnant, I authorize you to perform all the duties of a pilot of this squadron, the eightieth of the Lovoshire Parallel. I hereby relieve you of your duties as rigger-handler—though I by no means prohibit you from continuing to make your valuable expertise available to your erstwhile colleagues. Rise.”
Crispin rose, stumbling. Vichuisse steadied him. A small wind had started to blow, bringing a scent of cooking from the mess hall. It had been beautiful weather for flying, but if the wind got any stronger, the afternoon patrol would have a hard time getting onto the ground. Crispin scrutinized Vichuisse for signs of his usual sneering cruelty. Could this all be an elaborate joke, a phase of what Crispin had believed, even before Vichuisse ordered him to test-fly the Gorgonette, to be the captain’s vendetta against him? But Vichuisse had dubbed him pilot! Of course, no one had seen, no one could confirm the appointment—
“Pilot Kateralbin.” The captain jerked his head toward the base. “If I were you, I’d put up your machine before those fellows get the whole squadron out of bed to watch.”
Crispin turned and saw three riggers standing outside Hangar One. They were smoking and evidently regarding the scene with astonishment.
Crispin turned back toward the Gorgonette. He’d be lucky if he could get it into the hangar without it falling apart under him. Without his falling apart.
“Not Hangar Four,” Vichuisse called as Crispin swung clumsily up into the cockpit. “Hangar Two. Park it with Lieutenant Fischer’s other five. That way the riggers will know to give it a complete overhaul tomorrow—they’ll do a much better job working in concert than you were able to in your spare time.” The familiar, cruel note of laughter came into Vichuisse’s voice. “And in the morning, I’ll give you some personal landing lessons.”
0kandar 1893—Fessiery 1894 A.D.
The Raw: Pilkinson’s Air Base II
Pilot Kateralbin.
It was what he had hoped for. It was far more than he had dared to hope for.
And he was grateful, of course. He was grateful every minute of every day, as he apprehended the complexities of flying solo and in formation with Lieutenant Fischer’s crew. Yet he had to coach himself strictly in order to keep expressing that gratitude to Vichuisse. An unsilenceable voice inside him told him to steer clear of the captain, and when they did meet, to speak in the most formal terms—to widen the distance between them as much as possible. He didn’t really do you a favor, the voice said. Fischer’s crew was short a man anyway. You didn’t know that. Vichuisse simply chose the means of replacing that pilot which would be most amusing to himself; and cause everyone else the most bewilderment.
But Crispin’s sensible half kept him kowtowing to Vichuisse. And talking with him, when it could not be avoided, on a note of false conviviality. The captain seemed to think they were friends now. Sense told Crispin that this ought to be true. But he could not make himself like or trust the captain. Couldn’t Vichuisse detect how despicably false his manner was?
Apparently not.
But they didn’t encounter each other that much more frequently than before. And now Crispin had other things to think about. From the beginning, he was terrified that the other pilots in his crew looked down on him. Ground crew and pilots lived in two different worlds; he had not anticipated the difficulties of transferring from one to the other. His new world was smaller and narrower than any he had known before, though vast in terms of physical scope. Takeoff; flight; ENEMY; landing; food; sleep; and always, unceasingly, the kill tally sweepstakes, a game embittered by the competition between crews. Then there was the forced comradeship with one’s own crew—a scant five other men. The tension stemming from who was “friends” with whom seemed at first to be overpowering. But after the first few weeks, Crispin realized the pilots’ dependence on each other was largely emotional. In a defensive unit like 80 Squadron, the death toll wasn’t as high as it was in the outfits assigned to cover the front lines, and so the mix of personalities, remaining more or less constant over periods of months, became inextricably blended—like different colors of paint mixing to make a single shade of brown.
Crispin’s personal insecurity had made him standoffish and suspicious; but when he finally relaxed his guard, his crewmates accepted him without fanfare. It shocked him that they were willing to treat him no differently than they treated each other. They had not been shunning him; they had no time to spare for such pettiness. Crispin’s flying improved markedly, and he let out his breath in relief. He had found his groove again. He coaxed his crewmate Martinson, who was good at painting, to do a buxom black woman on his kite, and although it looked nothing like his mother, he christened the Gorgonette Princess Anuei. He affected a slight Kingsburg drawl. He walked with a slouch to disguise the natural lightness of step which came from his Lamaroon resistance to gravity. To his astonishment, he found himself becoming popular.
The crews of 80 Squadron were identical organisms. This was the secret of their teamwork in the air. And yet the squadron was far from a harmonious unit. Eighty Squadron had a reputation for being something of a grab bag of pilots: a ragtag assemblage of human odds and ends. More, perhaps, than in other units, each of its men was an individual.
And each man wanted individual glory.
The kill.
It was on everyone’s minds all the time.
The competition for glory.
And farther off, though not so far that they dared not think about it, the pension, the honorable (and lucrative) discharge. As old Biggins had said once, provoking derisive laughter among the riggers, none of whom would have dreamed of risking their lives in the air, no matter what the payoff: “They makes the kills, the Queen gets the bills . “
But it was, of course, far more likely that the pilots would be killed first. It was almost impossible to survive a Kirekuni fire-tracer hit, much less an “own goal” of Ferupian screamers. In the short term they had only one dream: the kill. Perhaps because of his compulsion to prove himself, Crispin came to be more obsessed by it than any of the others. His crewmates teased him about it. There was an edge of bitterness in their voices. But on New Year’s Eve, when the Queen’s Greeting was read aloud and the tallies announced in the mess, Lieutenant Fischer commended Crispin. In two and a half months on the crew, he had shot down twenty-nine Kirekunis.
Crispin was ridiculously flattered. The truth was that the snob in him was utterly in awe of Fischer. Their lieutenant was a quiet, commanding man of thirty from the eastern domain of Ishane. He had the dark hair and fair skin of the heartlands. His ancestors, he told his crew, had in fact come from the heartlands, though for generations they had been squires to platinum-headed easterners. Fischer had a grain-trade fortune and a wife awaiting his discharge; he would not even need a pension. He had joined the QAF for the love of adventure.
But on a stormy morning in Fessiery of the new year, Fischer was smeared like marmalade across a hill in the Raw, shot down along with another man of their crew, two men of Keinze’s, and four KE-111s. The wreckage was spectacularly complete. There was no piece of an aircraft larger than a man’s hand: all eight were reduced to the same silvery jam. High above, fleeing for home, Crispin could hardly see for tears. All that anchored his concentration was the knowledge that it wouldn’t do Fischer any good for Crispin to follow him down. When he climbed out of his Gorgonette back at Pilkinson’s II, he saw that his three surviving crewmates, Potter, Harrowman, and Dupont, were crying, too, which only made it worse. The pines moaned in the wind. Ankle-deep mud lapped around the barracks. They tracked it across the floor when they went inside.
Later in the day they collected themselves for the eulogy, composed long before Fischer’s death by Lieutenants Keinze and Festhre and read with a conspicuous lack of emotion by Vichuisse. Afterward they stood in the rain, sharing their outrage. Vichuisse had deadpanned the thing—made a joke of it! How dare he? Fischer had not been an easy man to know—but he had been their lieutenant! He had been Fischer! How dare Vichuisse?
And that night Crispin was wakened from a pitch-black, dreamless sleep by a night-shift groundsman bringing a summons from the captain himself. “Better not take too long about it either, Pilot,” the boy said, dripping, watching Crispin struggle with his boots. “He’s in a mighty mood. Cackling like a bloody jackdaw.”
Crispin wondered vaguely how the boy dared speak to him like that. Then he remembered he had known him a lifetime ago when he worked the night shift. The weasel’s name was Simmons, Smithson, Shitson... something like that. “Get lost, Shit... Simmons,” he said. “Captain Vee’s a skunk who should have been a policeman, not a pilot. You know it, I know it. Is there anything else? No. Get rid, then.”
Gasping with delight, Simmons scuttled out. Crispin sat for a minute, his head in his hands. Then he slogged through the mud to the door at the far end of the mess hall. He knocked. If any response came, he could not hear it; the night was loud and wet. He went into the little entryway and removed his coat and boots. Another mackintosh was hanging beside Vichuisse’s. Crispin’s heart rose slightly.
But when he went in, he saw no sign of anyone else. Vichuisse sat in his big leather chair with his toes on the grate of a blazing fire. As Simmons had said, he was cackling. He stopped when he heard Crispin come into the office, and looked around the wing of his chair. “Ah! Kateralbin... Close the door, there’s a good fellow, its difficult enough as it is to keep the place warm. Sit down.”
Another chair, less sumptuous, had been drawn up to the fire. Crispin eyed the bottle of brandy on the side table with longing, but when Vichuisse offered it to him, he shook his head.
“Cocoa then?... No? I suppose you’re wondering why I got you out of your bunk.” Vichuisse laughed. Crispin could not see the joke. The captain poured himself another tumblerful of brandy and took a long swig.
There were paintings on the walls and the paper-heaped desk was equipped with blotter, inkwell, and granite pen holder. A tiny stained-glass head of the Queen hung in front of the blackout shutter; it would catch the sun in the mornings. Probably the only metal in the room was the nib of the fountain pen. Vichuisse’s illusion of luxury was just that. All the furnishings were tattered or repaired. Through the door on the other side of the room, Crispin could see the scarred bureau and the narrow bed. Someone’s green pullover lay on the pillow. Was Vichuisse’s guest concealed in there? Crispin could hear no sound. On the foot of the bed was a coverlet which looked as though it had been lovingly embroidered over a period of years. By whom? Vichuisse’s mother? Did Vichuisse have a mother? Crispin had never heard of his having a wife. The motley decor gave off an indefinable impression of sadness. Crispin had heard that ever since he was appointed, the captain had carted every single bit of furniture in these two rooms around to every base where 80 Squadron was posted.
Vichuisse tapped Crispin on the knee. “Staring around! It’s not as if you’ve never been here before! Eh? And it’s only by your own choice that you’re not less of a stranger to these humble quarters.” By the time Crispin figured out the convoluted syntax of that remark, Vichuisse was leaning forward, his eyes gleaming brilliantly. “But I didn’t get you here to make passes.”
“Acknowledged, sir,” Crispin said stiffly.
“Do you think I’m drunk?” Vichuisse said. “I’m not.”
He smelled, indeed, of alcohol, but also of something else, something metallic. Crispin’s skull prickled with fear. How absurd that he, the Lamaroon giant, should be so wary—no, call it what it was, afraid—of the good-looking but distinctly murine little captain. Afraid. Absurd, but true.
“I have two pieces of news for you, my dear fellow,” Vichuisse said. “Curious? The first thing is that we’re being moved to Fostercy Air Base.”
Vichuisse picked something up off the floor that looked like a map of the entire Raw war front, all nine hundred miles of it, folded back to show the Lovoshire Parallel. That brown streak is the Waste, so that must be Shadowtown, Crispin thought—and that, there, must be Pilkinson’s II. Maps were highly classified things: Crispin had only seen one since he was recruited. Yet illiterate, he couldn’t decipher the lettering. Vichuisse’s forefinger indicated a tiny blue star about four inches to the right of Pilkinson’s II. “Fostercy Air Base. Isolated, true, but that’s the point, I believe—I am not told much. You know that in cooperation with Seventy-eight Squadron at Pilkinson’s I, we’re supposed to protect Shadowtown. Well, we’re not doing it well enough. Several ground-strafing forays have gotten through recently. So Commandant Smythe is switching us with Ninety-two Squadron.”
What did this mean? The rain smacked the window hard. The fire crackled. Crispin’s feet were drying out.
Vichuisse shook his head. “Fostercy is not a sought-after assignment, Kateralbin. Ninety-two Squadron was there for eleven years before this switch. We’ll have to do awfully well if we ever want to get moved again. I’m counting on you to boost our tallies, my boy.”
Crispin made a meaningless demurral. Had Vichuisse got him out of bed to tell him something the rest of the squadron would know in a few days?
The tips of Vichuisse’s fingers were steepled together now, his elbows resting on the arms of his chair. The metallic smell grew stronger as he leaned back into the embrace of the leather. “I dislike having to bring this up so soon after poor Gerald’s death. But there it is, a captain’s duty. It is, as you know, customary to bring in new appointees from outside whenever a lieutenant is killed, but this time I do not believe it will be necessary. Your crew is already disarrayed, and with the additional trial of the move to Fostercy ahead, I see no need to burden you with an untried leader. So without further ado—get out of that chair, man! Kneel! One has to do these things properly—”
And Vichuisse made Crispin the new lieutenant of what had been Fischer’s crew.
“I will simply have two new regulars sent to Fostercy. Does that sound acceptable, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir,” Crispin breathed, still kneeling.
“I expect you are wondering why I choose you over the others,” Vichuisse said with satisfaction as Crispin levered himself off his knees and sat down, queasily. “You should be aware that it is not just because I find you congenial. It is because you are different.”
That refrain will follow me all the days of my life! Crispin thought through the roaring in his ears.
For a moment Vichuisse seemed discomfited. Then he gave his cackling laugh. “To elaborate would be to violate one of the mysteries of authority.”
“Of course I’m tremendously grateful... whatever your reasoning,” Crispin managed. “I’ll endeavor—to do—my best—to carry on Fischer’s legacy.”
He wanted to punch the wall, to kick the merry little fire into a rain of sparks. Even more he wanted to punch Vichuisse. His heart was pounding. His grief for Fischer had been superseded.
30,000 feet and still a-counting ,
The attack on my plane is steadily mounting
They killed my buddy, but I’m supposed 2 feel nothing
How can I live 4 love?
— The Artist Formerly Known as Prince