The UPS truck gnashed its gears, reversed, and drove away leaving the crate and several packages on the porch. Ike hauled them indoors and opened the largest one, the crate.
“Unless I missed something,” Ike said, “this is our drone.”
Sam shook her head. “It looks like a big model airplane. My brother used to put them together only his were made out of balsa wood and some of them had a rubber band motor. Is that Styrofoam?”
“It is, among other things.”
“So, we ask for a drone to put eyes on the ranch and this is the best that Garland can do?”
“You didn’t think he was going to commandeer a Predator, did you?”
“I hoped. So what do we do with this Cracker Jack toy?”
“Give me an hour with the manual and I will let you know. In the meantime, why don’t you locate the source of the chatter? Five will get you ten it is the New Star Ranch.”
Sam packed up her gear and drove off after assuring Ruth and Ike she would be back for lunch, so if they had plans that required complete privacy, they should act accordingly. Ruth told her to shut up.
“She has a point, though, Ike.”
“What. You want to romp? Now?”
“No…yes, but that’s not what I meant. What the heck was Charlie thinking and how can that flimsy thing possibly solve your problem?”
“Patience. According to the book this is a technological marvel. Why don’t you unpack the rest of the boxes? I gather we have real estate in town and agents on their way to help us. We will need to get them settled when they arrive and by then I hope we will have something for them to do besides pretend to be looking for fracking sites.”
Ruth tackled the rest of the boxes and Ike studied the drone manual. After an hour he’d unpacked all of the components and began to assemble it. Completed, it appeared much larger than either thought. Sam returned with her map and an expression that indicated she’d been successful.
“You were right. The signals are coming from and going to the New Star Ranch. Where did that thing come from?
“Good. That ‘thing’ came out of the crate. Not much of a toy now, is it?”
In fact the assembled aircraft did not look like what any of them had imagined. It had a wingspan of nearly five feet and with its propulsion unit mounted high on its dorsal surface, it resembled a flying shark as much as it did a plane.
“You’re going to launch that over the ranch? They’ll see it in a minute and probably shoot it down.”
“Wait, wait for it….” Ike opened what appeared to be a briefcase but which revealed a panel that looked like the binnacle of an airplane cockpit. He flipped a few switches and the whole underside of the aircraft changed color. More than color, it seemed to sprout feathers. “Behold the wonders of nanotechnology.”
“Where did they come from?”
“This stuff is not my long suit but apparently the underside of the unit is covered with an ultrafine network of micro filaments or tubes which can respond to signals sent to them somehow. During the day, the underside of the thing looks for all the world like a large turkey vulture. That’s its name, by the way, the Vulture. The Air Force and the CIA have the Predator, we have the Vulture.”
“Should I be impressed?”
“Yes, you should. Not only that, but it is programmed to circle like one of those birds. The problem with the earlier models of this kind of drone was that they looked like a bird, but that’s all. They simply flew in circles. It wasn’t long before the people on the ground caught on. This one banks and sails like a real bird. If you watch it through binoculars, for example, even the feathers seem to flutter in the air current and when it banks, according to the book, they flare as they would with a bird. Now watch.”
Ike flipped another switch and the feathers disappeared and the underside turned sky blue. “If you were watching it with binoculars, it just disappeared from view.”
“And at night?”
Ike flipped another toggle and the drone turned matte black.
“Holy crap. I want one of those,” said Sam.
“I’m impressed. Wow, think of the possibilities,” Ruth said. “You could have a dress made with that stuff. Someone comes to your party in the same outfit, you flip a switch and you have completely new dress.”
“Umm, yeah, I guess that could work.”
“Or you could change the color of your car to match your shoes. The applications are limitless.”
“Now you’re being sarcastic.”
“You noticed. But, you heard it here first, that will be but a few of the civilian applications that some guy with perfect teeth and hair will flog on TV and sell a million dresses, cars, hats, you name it. It is a brave new world we are entering, kiddies.”
Sam grinned. “Okay. So what kind of payload can it carry and for how long?”
“It says here it can carry a HiDef TV camera and transmitter and at night, a night vision unit. It can fly around for eight hours before it needs refueling. Charlie says if we need really close-in stuff, they will reposition a satellite for us, but there would be a ginormous hassle to do that so we’re not to ask unless we have something really big.”
“There is more space in there.”
“Yeah. The manual says it can carry a small explosive charge. I guess it would be rigged to go if it were to fall into the hands of the wrong people.”
“Or a small bomb?”
“That, too, I guess.”
“So now what?” Ruth asked.
“Now we fuel this bird up, set it to Vulture mode, enter the geographic coordinates and launch. Later this evening we can bring it back and reconfigure it for a night run.”
“One problem,” Ruth said. “What about our nosey oafs? Mightn’t they be watching? And won’t seeing this thing buzz off the property give them the heebie-jeebies, not to mention a very bad impression of who we are?”
“Point taken. We need to secure the perimeter. Charlie sent us some cameras and a monitor in that box over there. Let’s take a walk.”
***
Ike studied the monitor. It had taken him a few minutes to adjust to its relatively small size. The camera in the bird, now circling the New Star Ranch a few miles away, held steady and in focus irrespective of the maneuvers the “bird” made. Ike guessed there were servos that kept the camera pointed and focused as the platform shifted its position in the sky.
“What did you expect to see?” Ruth had fixed sandwiches and passed one to Ike.
“Anything from a herd of cattle to a battalion of tanks. I don’t know, really. The place is just too odd not to study. I would love to search one of those barrack-like buildings.”
“Could the Vulture swoop down for a closer look?”
“It could, but I don’t want to draw attention to it just now. Up close only an idiot would think it’s a big bird.”
“So you got nothing.”
“Not nothing, but what I do have, I don’t know how to interpret. There are men down there. They move around like they have things to do. You know, working and so on. Then there seem to be some young people there as well. A fair number. It’s like a camp. But boys only.”
“Any women?”
“Oh, yeah. No girls, though.”
“Hey…”
“I mean there are women, a number of them. Not as many as the men, but they are there. What I meant was, there don’t seem to be any female children.”
“And?”
“And…I don’t know. Why boys and no girls? I don’t like asymmetry.”
“If I had any idea what that meant, I’d be impressed. What does it mean, anyway?”
“Look, you have men. You have women. Normal arrangement only more of the former than the latter. That would be an acceptable ratio on a ranch. Okay, you have children. One expects a similar ratio of boys and girls. Not true here. I don’t see any young girls at the ranch, just boys. I want to know why.”
“Okay, here’s a flash, Sheriff. At the distance you are scanning, you couldn’t distinguish boys, young males, from girls. Not if they are in jeans and checked shirts, have short hair, and wear Nikes. I know you think you can but you can’t. Those things that obsess men, the bumps and curves, don’t appear until later. You could have all girls, for all you know.”
“You might be right and you might not. If I am correct and there’s even a disproportionate number of boys to girls, I bet it’s important.”
“You have a very suspicious mind. Okay, let’s say you’re right. How about they are running a boys’ camp?”
Sam looked up from studying the screen. “I thought I read that the militia group there had a young people’s subunit called the pioneers…something…Young Pioneers. That could be them.”
“There you go, Sherlock, the Mystery of the Too Many Boys solved
“Okay, that would explain it. And yes, I do—have a suspicious mind, that is. Hand me a beer, will you?”
“Here you go. Okay, enough with the gender issues, real and imagined. I’ve been thinking about my nano dress.”
“Your what?”
“The dress that is made with those micro fiber things that can change color and do stuff like make the Vulture disappear, that nano dress.”
“Okay, the theoretical dress. What about it?”
“How would it work if it disappeared, you know, went blank? Is it like Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility? Would I disappear too? That would certainly be convenient at times. Or would I be standing there in my panties? Or just wearing a dull white dress?”
“And you need to know this why?”
“It would make a difference if and how much I spend on underwear, that’s why.”
“Eat your sandwich.”