No Sign of Industrial Activity
"Life is good; then you’re shot
down.”
This quip, so timeworn in Air Corp
bars and barracks that it gnawed, now found itself in the mouth of an outsider,
the wagon’s driver, a dirty and decrepit goat.
His only passenger, the new pilot tagging a ride along with the cargo,
frankly stared. It galled him that the
old man sought response now after fourteen miles of gravel road, over which the
lieutenant had seen only the teamster’s back, the massive rumps of the horses,
the long grass into which the driver spit.
His spirit had sunk into that grass and that quiet. Gripping the handles of his kit bag, he
jerked his eyes away, thought of sliding off the buckboard and simply
walking. The old goat’s eye’s, however, pressed upon him, waited, and he briefly
glanced up at the face, the bristly beard, the yellowed teeth, the contorted
horns. With an inaudible grumble, he dug
into his pocket for the requisite tip.
He tossed it to the goat man and slid off the buckboard onto the solidity
of the tarmac.
He faced his new home, narrowing his
eyes at the airfield’s blatant bareness.
Two hangers of flat-faced sheet metal stood opposite a hut with antenna
and watchtower, which could only be the main control building, although he had
never seen one so small. A barrack stood
beyond. Stretching away to his left and
right ran the single airstrip. Downfield
stood the fuel tower. A windsock hung
limp. That was it. He wondered if anyone had considered
the impact of fresh paint or shrubbery.
“So little here,” the Lieutenant thought
aloud. “I wonder how often they get to
town.”
The driver picked up his luggage
from beside him.
“Light,” the driver said.
The pilot’s eyes fell back down to
his baggage. “Yeah.”It
was sparse as the field: a change of flight uniform, dress blues, a couple of
books.
“I’ll bring yer
things to the barracks,” said the old goat.
“You go on and meet your new commander, eh? Better watch out!”
“What? Some kind of martinet?”
The impish oldster smiled and leaned
in. “A female,” he bleated. “A hot one!”
The Lieutenant turned. As if his horizontally-barred
pupils and twisted horns were not disconcerting enough, he had to accentuate
his goat genes with that toothy grin.
The oldster ambled off with the Lieutenant’s bag, chuckling, but only
made it a few meters before turning to bellow one last barrage: “The legs! Don’t look at her legs in her office! She don’t like it!”
The Lieutenant winced at his
volume.
When he opened the door, he stepped
into the unmistakable smell of swine.
Immediately inside sat a radio pig.
He eyed the lieutenant and rubbed his snout.
“You the new pilot?” the pig
asked.
“Yeah – airfield commander?”
The radio pig threw up his trotter
in the direction.
“Don’t look at her legs.”
The lieutenant nodded. “Yeah: been warned.”
His shoes tapped down the wooden
hallway. He paused, and then knuckled
the door. The word “Enter” sounded –
feminine, but stern and busy. He opened
it.
The office floor was four steps up
from the hallway. The Airfield Commander
sat at a folding table facing the doorway.
Paperwork occupied her. Her eyes
were down, her hand scrawling. Below the
table were the legs.
The skirt – what there was of it –
bound only the very uppermost of her thighs.
The Commander tipped her knees decorously to the side, precluding a full
view. That skirt couldn’t be regulation,
he thought. It must be a test. The Airfield Commander’s tail, long and
feline, slowly wrapped around her feet.
The motion unlocked the Lieutenant’s gaze. He jerked his eyes upward.
“New pilot reporting to Airfield
Commander,” he said. He threw up a
salute and waited.
She rotated her gaze to him, up from
the paperwork, across the table, slightly downward to
his face. Her eyes were amber. The wide windows faced the field and flooded
the office with glare, reducing her pupils to vertical blades. Her brows, taut at the interruption, relaxed
and she tried to smile. It didn’t
last. Her fingers stroked her hair,
auburn, pulled tightly around her upright ears.
She motioned for him to approach.
“Your paperwork,” she said.
He gave it to her. She brushed the filecase
open and flicked a few pages, a single claw appearing and retracting with each
page turned.
“May I ask who recommended you to
the Academy?”
“An uncle – my father’s younger
brother works for the Administrator of Public Services. I’m sure he has the ear of somebody-or-other
that’s important.”
“Well,” she said, “you not only got in, but
you got out with pretty good marks.” She
closed the filecase and turned to him. “You look pretty good. I’d like to try you out as soon as
possible. I’ll be sending you up
tomorrow morning.”
“Great: What kind of mission?”
“Recon.
With the fuel situation, it’s practically all we do anymore. You’ll be taking up one of the Sprites. Ever flown one before?”
“Haven’t even seen one.”
“Well, no matter: they’re very
similar to the Rogers training model.
Doubtlessly you flew them in the Academy. The Sprites are even more lightweight.”
“Lighter than a Rogers?
On a breezy day they blew about like kites.”
“Yes – well: Sprites have got great
range, and that’s what you’ll need for the recon. We’ll be sending you up north to check out
some factories there. Get the maps from
the Field Navigator before you leave. I
send out a recon flight twice a week.
Dates and destinations are always hush-hush. You will keep the lid on all information so
the folks on the ground don’t get wise.”
The Lieutenant understood. Even full-scale factories could start up if a
reliable surveillance schedule were leaked out. If Tuesday was your flyover day, just shut
down the furnace Monday night. Everybody
could take the day off.
The Commander tucked the
Lieutenant’s file away and thrust his authorization packet at him. “Better get out to the hanger, meet your
mechanic, see your plane. I believe you’ll find the rest of the pilots
in the bunk.”
He grasped the packet, but the
Airfield Commander held tight, gave him a hard stare.
“Don’t let them put you through your
initiation drunk until after tomorrow’s flight – am I clear?”
Her claws retracted and her grip on
the packet was released.
The Lieutenant saluted. “Clear, Ma’am.”
“Be on the airfield at eight.”
He had met the other pilots and his
ground crew. They had laughed together
and he listened to their stories over a dinner of beef and roast
vegetables. He washed it down with a
beer, but threw up a palm when offered a second: “Whoa, guys – tomorrow night,
okay?”
Before bed, he checked out the
Sprite, so it was no surprise in the morning.
The Commander wasn’t kidding when she described them as light. The fuselage was graphite, but the long,
narrow wings were merely frames covered with a sheet of fabric, clear,
artificial, and tough.
The liftoff that morning was slow
but smooth, as he expected. The windsock
had tightened a little since yesterday.
He banked into his northerly route, away from the coasts. As a young cadet, his dream mission would
have in the opposite direction. He would
lead an attack on the south, against the antagonistic Island
Confederation. He would sit in the
fuselage of a fighter, fast, agile, and deadly – everything this craft
wasn't.
He entered the air world and the surface
below transformed into its alter ego.
The ordinary landscape morphed into an unreal topography that never
existed while his feet touched the earth.
It contained no flaws: no muddy barnyards, no ponds covered with scum,
no rutted and potholed roads. From the
heights, the ponds were emerald jewels; the fields, beautiful patchwork; the
forests, rumpled green wool. His plane’s
shadow wrinkled over their textures.
Immediately, he began surveying for industrial activity.
He knew all the signs that people
were threatening the environment or trying to rise above their neighbors – the
Academy had trained him well. He had
already spotted over a hundred simulated surveillance targets set up near the
training field: large sheds with heavy traffic patterns worn into the sod
around them; barns retrofitted with smokestacks for a clandestine blast
furnace; even underground buildings left signs of disturbance that could be
seen from the air. He smelt stale beer.
One of the pilots he had met last
night had overindulged. She had tried to
cozy up to the new guy and instead slopped beer down the sleeve of his flight
jacket. It was new, a
graduation gift from his uncle in the Administration of Public Services, the
one that had recommended him to Air Corp Academy. If ruined, it would take a month’s salary to
replace. It was more than the
money. It was a symbol of his membership
in the pilot fraternity, of his success, and a sign that he was not some
ordinary slob without achievements or connections. He arrived over his first surveillance
target.
“I’m over the old battery
plant," he said into his radio.
"No sign of industrial activity.”
“There used to be a little bicycle
factory just to the west,” said an unexpected voice. He had anticipated the radio pig; the voice,
however, was feminine, firm and authoritative. “Check that out while you’re there.”
He tilted wings and swooped to the
west side of the complex. The shed was caved in on the far side. Kudzu covered most of the roof. Everything looked very abandoned.
“No – nothing.
All overgrown with vegetation – no paths, no recent
repairs, no spilt coal.”
High at two o'clock he spotted
movement – two planes. Even at this
distance, he could identify the pair as fighters. The Airfield Commander was keeping close
oversight on his first mission. He
quickly recounted his flight so far, trying to tabulate any missteps he may
have taken. He had almost concluded that
his performance was, if not exemplary, at least by the book. The planes began an attack dive.
Alarm spread through him. He realized too late the
model was unfamiliar. The wings
had a certain angle in them, downward sharply from the fuselage, then tips
veering sharply upward.
The lead bird opened fire on him, a
single burst of automatic. His right
wing erupted, the transparent fabric bursting into shreds.
He looked behind him. His rear fuselage and tail were
both ripped through as well. His
engine was untouched, and his fuel tanks intact, but he was unarmed, slow, and
flying beneath his enemy. He began a
sharp descent before they could circle around for a second attack.
His came down in a field of
sunflowers. The lightness of his craft
allowed an easy set down. He popped open
the canopy and looked around. Above him,
he saw no sign of his enemies. He felt
an irrational disappointment. They had
moved on so quickly. It wasn't even
worth their while to destroy his plane on the ground.
He gazed around. The yellow faces of the sunflowers carpeted
silent hectares around him. The only
manmade object in sight was an array of five solar panels in the distance. Once, commanded by a centralized control,
they had tracked the Sun, turned their faces toward it all day long. Now they were broken. No one from Government Central had been that
way in ages to give them their regular
maintenance. The sunflowers, of course,
each turned individually toward the Sun, without any centralized control.
He made a few attempts at radio
communication. This failed, and he
clambered out.
A physical shock raced through the
ground beneath him – a triple explosion from distant hills. He crouched immediately, but then stood and
gazed in the direction of the blasts.
More were coming from farther away – almost certainly the bridges over
the Vessa River.
He realized the fighters that shot him down were only the vanguard of a
larger expedition. For the first time in
over two decades, his nation was at war.
The sound of running brought his
attention up. Many feet were running
through the sunflowers. Men were
coming. He loosened the snap of his
holster.
Ten men burst through the
sunflowers, and a dog barked them encouragement. He faced them, his hand on his pistol, but
not pulling it. No one even looked at
him. They surrounded the plane. The basset hound took control
immediately.
"Four under the engine,"
barked the dog. "Two
under each wing. You two: get the
tail – let's go!"
They hoisted the light craft above
the sunflowers and moved it. In seconds,
it was disappearing to the west.
"Hey!" he cried. "Wait a minute!"
He had no idea whether this was a
rescue and recovery operation, or whether his plane was being
stolen.
The dog returned.
"What's your name?" asked
the dog.
"Lieutenant Forwitz."
"What's your first
name?"
"Drake."
“Follow me.”
They left the field. Ahead of them, the men were strapping his
airplane onto a flatbed wagon behind two horses. The dog leapt aboard. "Let's go!"
Drake clambered on. The driver, a shepherd dog, giddyapped and the wagon moved forward. As it rolled down the country lane, the team
of men broke out tools. The wings were quickly removed from the fuselage and carefully maneuvered
around the wagon, a beetle slowly folding its transparent wings into its
carapace. Then they strapped them
parallel to the plane's body. Within
minutes of finishing, the wagon dipped below a railroad, traveled through a
stone archway far too narrow to have accommodated the Sprite's wingspan.
After a few miles’ ramble through
the countryside, the basset called a halt.
“Why we stoppin’
here?” asked one of the men. “We’re
still four miles from Alessandro!”
“And that’s where she’ll stay for
now. Come by my office first thing in
the morning for your pay.”
“In the morning?
Work done today ought to be paid for today!”
“Yeah!”
“Can’t do it,” said the basset
hound. “If we paid you tonight, you’d be
drinking tonight, and half a dozen agents of the secret police would know our
plane’s moving into town. The money will
be good! You know this business – we have
to keep it tight.”
The men began dropping off the wagon
and walking to town, some of them with back-glancing scowls.
When they were gone, the basset
turned to Drake. “As it is, we’ll have
to move it to a warehouse away from the shop – just until it cools down.”
“I don’t think I caught your name,”
Drake said.
The basset reached out a
thick-fingered hand. “Hammachek,” he
said. “I’m in charge of the crew.”
They shook.
“And who is it you work for?” Drake asked.
The German shepherd driver turned
and gave a little salute.
When the crew had been gone fifteen
minutes, they moved the Sprite down the road a few miles and then up a rustic
lane, into a wood. There they
waited. Hammachek produced a picnic
meal, cheese and hard salami and a long loaf.
There was dark wine, and while all three washed down their meal with it,
Hammachek continued filling his glass long into the evening. Fireflies curled their bright ribbons above
the grass. Finally, the shepherd said,
"Let’s head out."
Within the hour, they had the Sprite
stowed. At the edge of town, Drake
helped them back it into a long sheet-metal shed. He wasn’t sure why. They seemed to be stealing a government
plane, one entrusted to him by his Airfield Commander. However, if that were their plan, why did
they let him tag along and see where they stowed it? They must be bucking for some kind of
reward.
From the plane’s temporary hanger,
they drove to the shepherd’s shop in the canal district. A chain-link fence enclosed the yard. Light spilled out from a crack in the door as
they approached, then the door was thrown wide. A girl ran out, a pure human genetic.
“The secret police were here!” she
called. “They were looking for a pilot –
said he was a traitor.”
Neither Hammachek
nor the boss turned toward Drake, yet Drake felt as if all eyes were on him and
his leather flyer’s jacket.
“Let’s get inside,” said the
shepherd.
They closed the door behind
them. Hammachek and the boss hung their
coats on hooks.
“This is Mattie,” Hammachek said. “She
does the accounting here. We trust her
with everything.”
Drake nodded at the girl. She had to be fourteen at most. Drake noticed she had also fixed dinner. They sat.
"You're in quite fix,"
said the basset. He doled out the
potatoes. "New Government has set
the Secret Police to looking for you.
They're searching for someone to blame, since it sure can't be
them. Your flight was just too
conveniently timed.”
Drake hmmed.
“And it’s quite possible I made some imprudent choices of friends at
Academy,” he said.
“The citizens aren't going to help
you, either. To them you represent
Government Central. You've lived all
your life on their taxes without struggling to survive."
“Not to mention the reward for
turning you in," Mattie added.
Drake snorted. "There's loyalty for you. We Air Corp officers risk our lives...“
The shepherd’s fist came down on the
table. "Government Central's plans
have doled out nothing to the ordinary people but backward misery.”
Everyone was silent for a
moment. The shepherd’s fist remained
immobile on the tabletop. Hammachek
continued eating unabated, his eyes on a magazine in his left hand.
"Well," Drake mused,
"there may be something to that.
Perhaps if their plan hadn't tried to convert the entire nation to
renewable fuels so quickly..."
The shepherd laughed. Drake gave him a questioning look.
"You misunderstand. I don't criticize the government for their
choice of this plan over that plan. I
condemn them for having a plan at all."
Drake was honestly flummoxed.
"You want them to be derelict
of duty?"
“At this shop,” Hammachek
said, “we generally don’t think the government’s responsibilities include
planning our lives.”
Hammachek continued eating as though this
talk were all regular. Mattie returned
to her dinner as well. Drake picked up
his fork.
“If the government is going to
develop a plan,” the shepherd said, “their first errand should be to decide
what to do with the people that don't want to go along. People want to be free; the government wants
them to follow its plan. It’s your job
to make sure they do."
“I just wanted to fly,” Drake
said.
“Yeah – and bomb people’s dreams.”
The shepherd threw his napkin into
his empty plate and stomped out.
Drake narrowed his eyes. "Who does that dog think he is
anyway?"
"His name is Mahlof," said Hammachek.
Drake raised his eyebrows. "Like the ace from the last
war?"
"Not like – is."
Drake fell silent for a moment. "So what's a decorated war hero doing
here in this canal-side workshop?"
"Designing airplanes,” Mattie
said. “He wants to design
airplanes. He wants to build them. Government Central, of course, will have none
of it."
Drake thought about that. He had been thinking about the planes that
had attacked him, about the turn and dive they did. He was sure the Island Confederacy’s planes
were ahead of anything they were flying.
Their nation, on the other hand, was struggling to produce even
fuel.
The shepherd stood looking up into
the stars, smoking a cigarette. The
water on the canal flowed darkly by. The
stars were sharp. Drake stepped down to
the water's edge.
“Sorry I got so emotional on you,”
Mahlof said. “I suppose you were raised
on the “threat to equality” line and all that.”
“Sure.”
“Well, so what if we don’t end up
all equal? Some people would rather take
the kids fishing on Saturday. Some want
to work and make some extra cash. Let
them. Who’s to say who is right?”
They watched the sky in silence
again.
“Sky’s full of planes again. Like when I was a kid. What do you s’pose
they want?” Drake asked.
“Who?”
“The Island Confederacy.”
“They want to force open our
ports. They didn’t shut down their
markets just `cause we did. They became
more powerful as we fell back into agrarian ways.”
They both watched the stars, looking
for dark patches eclipsing them, unlit airplanes traversing their skies.
“I think I ought to go back,” Drake
said.
“Turn yourself in?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s your choice.”
Drake eyed him sideways. This was where it cut: “If I could talk to my
airfield commander... If I could turn my
plane in...”
He waited for this to sink in.
Mahlof flicked at his cigarette’s
end. “Well, I guess we’d only be out the
men’s pay and our time.”
“You can have my jacket. It’s worth a month’s pay.”
Mahlof eyed it. “It’ll just about cover the patch job.”
The Lieutenant returned to the
airfield the following afternoon. He
lined up his Sprite on the airstrip below and slowed. As the grit in the tarmac came into focus,
the Airfield Commander burst out of the main control building. Drake could see her long, feline tail
whipping behind her. His wheels hit the
tarmac. The Airfield Commander was too
close to the strip. She should have been
standing further away. Something was
wrong. She pulled out a pistol, large
caliber. She cracked one in his
direction and followed up methodically, firing in a controlled manner until the
mag dropped out. He instinctively
veered; his left wingtip bounced on the sod.
The right plunged back down. The
plane veered sharply to the right. The
wing struck the Commander. She flew
backward, landing inert on the turf.
He threw open the canopy. The pistol lay on the grass, out of her
reach. He ran toward her, stopped,
returned for the first aid kit, and then ran to her again. He leaned close, over her face. She was alive and conscious.
She fluctuated between staring
intensely at him and wincing.
“You stopped? Why did you stop?”
“You’re my commander. Of course I stopped. Why were you shooting?”
“I was so angry,” she said. She paused, pulling her lips tightly
together. They looked dry. “I was told you had betrayed us.”
“I was shot down.” He pointed.
“See the patches?”
She looked the plane over while he
continued to fumble through the first aid box.
“I’ve got to get to a hospital,” she
said. “What sort of fuel do you
have?”
“Twenty liters.”
“We’re not going to make it to
Alessandro. It’ll have to be the Island
Confederacy.”
“Do you think that wise?”
“I think I’m bleeding inside. I may not make it further. You have a radio. Beg them.”
“I’m giving you something for the
pain.”
He injected her, then
paused for a moment to watch its effect.
She visibly relaxed.
He opened the cargo hatch. A narrow compartment ran through the fuselage
behind the pilot’s seat. She would have
to fit. He returned to her. Her amber eyes were glazed,
unblinking.
His thoughts raced. I didn’t just lose her, did I?
“Hey you,” he said aloud.
She blinked.
“I’m not ready to die yet,” she said
slowly. “I haven’t found my pilot.”
“Ma’am, the painkiller’s confusing
you. I’m your pilot.”
She turned toward him. Her eyes weren’t exactly
focused. “I thought you might
be. You were different.” She touched his face. “You didn’t look at my legs.”
“I’m going to move you now,” he
said. “It’s probably going to
hurt.”
He folded her arms in front of her,
and then slid his left hand under her shoulders, and the right under her hips. He slowly lifted, and then tiptoed toward the
plane.
“You!” she said gently.
“What?”
“You’ve got your hand on my
ass.”
He blushed. “Not a bad place for it.”
“But not exactly regulation,
is it?”
“No,” he said, “but neither is your
skirt.”
He slid her into the narrow
compartment. The long, raised lid made
it look uncomfortably like a coffin. She
looked out at him dreamily.
“You’re going to kiss me, aren’t
you?”
“Maybe later.”
“I could be dead when you open this
door again.”
He briefly considered whether she
would remember later and whether that might be a good thing. He kissed her. He found he liked it more than he
expected.
He shut the hatch and clasped
it. He couldn’t start the engine quickly
enough. The plane rose slowly, and he
headed toward the Island Confederation as in his dream, but not on a mission of
attack, but one of mercy.