No answer. Ed waited with his head in his hands. “Married to my mother?” he kept asking himself. “Killed my father and married my mother? Is this someone’s idea of a joke?” “Guido,” snapped Ed. “Will you hurry up already?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. King,” Guido shot back, “but if I were you, I wouldn’t wait for an answer. Mrs. King is not going to get on the phone with you, not now, or in five minutes, or in ten—not at all. Not in the foreseeable future.”
“Guido!” Ed yelled. “Just tell Diane I—”
“I’d do it if I could. I really would. I would pass your message to Mrs. King. But I can’t. It’s impossible. I’m sorry.”
“Come on, Guido, shut up—please! I’ve got enough problems already without you. Just put Diane on the radio.”
“Can’t,” repeated Guido.
Ed felt his rage surge past what was bearable. That forever irritating bastard Sternvad! So full of himself! Such a loser! Such a jerk! Guido was going to pay for this—for defying Ed’s orders and thwarting his will. “Hey,” said Ed, “when you get on the ground in England, you’re axed. That’s it for you. You’re off my payroll. Play with somebody else’s head! You’re fired, Guido. It’s over.”
“Yes, sir,” said Guido. “I understand.”
Then, for the second time in eight hours, Ed found himself hurling toward Boeing Field in a Pythia helicopter—although on this trip, in the evening dark, with the power out, and dense, low cloud cover, flooded Pugetopolis was invisible beneath but for pockets of light made by generators. Harborview Hospital was starkly bright (“Funding from Pythia,” thought Ed, “saves the day”), and because of that it was possible to discern that torrents of water were flowing down Yesler Way and James Street, passing under I-5 and cascading at high speed toward Puget Sound. What was this flood about anyway? Ed wondered. Vast money spent on earthquake retrofits throughout Pugetopolis’ infrastructure, and what is it that happens, instead of buildings falling? Instead of Mount Rainier burying the city under ash? What finally catches Seattle by surprise? A summer flood, as if Seattle were Bangladesh. Completely unheard of, unprecedented, unexpected. And apparently the calling card of global warming, which even the King Foundation couldn’t halt in its tracks, despite throwing four billion dollars at it.
The chopper closed in on Boeing Field, which was struggling, Ed saw, to repel the rising deluge. Despite the help of pumps and sandbags, it was still too close to the Duwamish Slough, a dredged trough now spread across its plain to the point where the runways stood barely clear of drowning. The inbound flights were FEMA’s, he guessed; outbound were locals retreating to drier climes. Anyone who could afford to do so was leaving. The world was going on with its desperate business while Ed was going on with his.
Ed’s chopper circled wide of air traffic and set down where his Gulfstream awaited his arrival—angle-parked, obsequiously, to shorten his walk to it by maybe five yards. His maintenance crew—men, right now, in rubber boots and rain slickers—had the running lights on and the gangway down, everything topped off and ready to roll, but as Ed hurried from his chopper to his plane, his crew chief told him that water, for the moment, was preventing his pilot from showing up in a timely way. What did Mr. King wish to do? Did he wish to have his pilot fetched by chopper? “Do whatever you want,” barked Ed. With that, he boarded and punched the button on the wall, pulling up the gangway behind him. Why not? He’d go solo to England, get the truth from Diane, on the grounds that there was no reason not to in a situation as urgent as this one. Killed his father and married his mother? Time to get to the bottom of this. Determined, he settled in the cockpit and entered his flight data, then looked up to see a gaggle of airplane mechanics, from just inside the cover of the hangar, leering in his direction as if at someone nuts. Ed gave them an exaggerated, mock-crazed, double thumbs-up, pulled on his headphones, and rotated the nose wheel. “Boeing ground,” he said, as he’d learned to from Guido, “this is 555 Echo Kilo at Pythia Hangar One, ready to taxi. Destination YLW”—YLW was Kelowna, B.C.—“where right now,” added Ed, in the name of authenticity, “it’s dry and eighty-one—got me?”
Ground, wryly, sent him to Runway One Three East. When the tower cleared him for his rainy takeoff—on what seemed to be a causeway in a lake—Ed gulped once, inched forward the power levers, and throttled up with his left hand on the tiller, until, at eighty knots, he released it per Guido and, trembling, tightly seized the yoke. Scary, but anyway smoothly gaining ground speed. “Here we go,” he thought, and left the earth.
There were a few bumps as he passed through the layer of low rain clouds, but nothing unfamiliar or troubling. Ed raised the landing gear and, rubbing his chin, presided over his array of glowing instruments while they took the plane to fifty thousand feet and pointed it toward Carlisle, Cumbria, U.K. Heading, 34 degrees. Flight speed, 460 knots. Distance, 4,071 nautical miles. Flight time, 8 hours and 13 minutes. Visibility—as far as he was concerned, fantastic, because the heavens were grandly on display. The tower let him know he was off his heading—37.25 for Kelowna. He acknowledged, turned, then waited twenty minutes before killing his transponder and resetting for Carlisle. Now he was the merest blip on distant screens, hardly noticeable unless someone looked closely. Above, there was only the moon and stars; below, there were only clouds.
In control and feeling good about his takeoff, Ed called Guido on the satellite phone. “I’m not that far behind,” he said. “Tell Diane I really need to talk to her. I—”
“Thought I was off your payroll, boss.”
“Not yet,” replied Ed. “When you’re on the ground in Carlisle. Right now I’m actually still paying for your services. Right now you’re at my beck and call, Guido. My wish remains your command.”
“Roger,” answered Guido. “Remember ‘Roger’? ‘Roger’ means I’ve received your message. Only that—received—nothing more.”
“Shut up, Guido. I don’t need a lecture. What I need to know is—what the hell is going on here? What’s the story? What’s this all about? And to know that, I need Diane. Right now, Guido. Not later, now. Not when you decide to put her on the phone. Look, Guido, you’re driving me nuts. Do you understand that? You’re nobody and somehow you’re driving me nuts. I’m tired of you. I’m sick of your weirdness. I’ve had it with your disrespect. Who do you think you are, God? I—”
“God’s a tough one,” Guido replied briskly. “Anything with three letters is limiting creatively. So actually, Ed, I prefer ‘the gods.’ Now, there’s some substance. Something to work with. ‘The Gods’ gets you ‘Ghosted.’ ‘Shed Tog.’ ‘Get Shod.’ And names! ‘The gods’ gets you names! Ted Hogs. Ged Tosh. Ed Goths. Ed Ghost. Ed—”
“This is what I mean. I—”
“Hey, your company—Pythia, right? ‘Ah, pity,’ that’s what I get. Or—”
“You’re deranged, Guido. All this word play—it’s compulsive, sick, obsessive, meaningless, a complete waste of time, a waste of a life! What—”
“Compulsive! I love that word! ‘Compulsive’ is so loaded with really great potential! Splice ovum. Plum voices. Pelvic sumo. Voice slump. I—”
“You call yourself a pilot? You—”
“Pilot? Tough one. First I get ‘lip to.’ You know, as in ‘give lip to.’ Then I get ‘I plot. ‘You know, as in ‘I make up the events of a story,’ or ‘I conspire against you.’ Want Chinese names? Li—”
Ed hung up. But within seconds his phone rang: “Me, Guido,” he heard. “It’s me again, Guido Sternvad. Guido with something important to say. Something you forgot to ask about, Ed. And that’s that pretty soon, fairly soon, really soon, you’re going to come to a huge line of thunderclouds. Dangerous thunderclouds. Life-threatening clouds. I recommend you head around them. You’ll lose time, but do it. Go around.”
“Shut up, Guido. I’m not even listening.”
“Don’t go over. Under any circumstance. Those cloud tops are plus fifty thousand feet. You can’t do over forty-five—go
t that? Air’s too thin. You’ll stall.”
“Forty-five? You’re a total idiot. The least you could do is get the facts right.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Guido. “Not important. The important thing is not to do it. Listen to me, sir. And listen to your plane. You get up too high, you’ll have warnings—last warnings. Last chance. Do or die. Your flight management system will read ‘exceed ceiling limit’ and the amber alert will come on.”
“Exactly,” said Ed. “Warning me not to listen to Guido Sternvad.”
“If you stall,” said Guido, “it’s very, very sudden. You’ll get stick shake in the cockpit, and after that, wing shake—like the wings, literally, are about to come off—and then you’re going down, I mean really going down. Not only down, but left or right if your rudder isn’t centered, and it probably won’t be centered in that type of—what would I call it?—life-or-death crisis situation. Listen, Ed. For once, listen. Don’t do it. You can’t handle a stall. You’ll spiral down. You’ll be screaming bloody murder. I don’t even want to think about that. What a way to go. Awful.”
“Murder?”
“So one piece of advice, sir. Before you hang up on me. There’s one all-important thing you need to understand. And that’s that, in a dive, it’s counterintuitive. You’ll feel like pulling back on the yoke, everything will tell you, ‘Pull back on the yoke,’ you’ll be pulling back like crazy, like no tomorrow, you’ll be trying to pull your nose up hard, but actually what you’re doing by pulling back, sir, is slowing your speed, slowing down the plane, which only takes you further into stall.”
“Flight School 101, Guido. I’m not a beginner, so shut up.”
“Don’t pull back on the yoke in a stall. Easy to say, harder to do. An experienced pilot, maybe, but not always. You? No way, you’ll panic, you will, so turn around now—turn around, do it now. Because you don’t have the right stuff to handle what’s coming. You need a pilot. Someone who knows how to handle real weather. If it’s not me, that’s fine—but go back and find a pilot. Stop trying to fly your own plane.”
“Emphasis on my plane.”
“I can see I’m not really doing any good here. You’re going to do what you’re going to do—I see that. It’s the way it has to be. I might as well sign off, I guess. I give up. So good luck, Ed. Who knows what lies beyond the grave? Maybe you’ll get another chance.”
“For the last time—fuck you, Guido.”
“Well, sex between us—you and me—that sounds to me like another story, Ed. Let’s save that for another time, okay? The merging of our souls and all of that, me as a symbol of your untapped unconscious, you as a personification of mine, interesting, yes, but—”
Ed hung up and telephoned Cybil. Flight ceiling on the Gulfstream G550? Flight ceiling, she answered, was fifty-one thousand. That left wiggle room to around fifty-five. And that dumb fossil Sternvad thought he knew everything! Still in the past! Still, in his head, flying some other Gulfstream, probably the old piece of shit he’d learned on! “Well,” thought Ed, “things have changed, Guido!” “Cybil,” he barked. “A weather question for you. Any advisories for up here in Canada? Anything on a heading of thirty-four from Boeing Field?” Then he had to listen to her bore him—because her social skills were still so bad—with wind speed and direction, temperature, fronts, pressure systems, precipitation, storms, convection, and the current intricacies of the jet stream. Finally, exasperated with his capricious creation, Ed interrupted her monologue to say, “Cut to the chase and tell me what I need to know. Is there anything I need to be worried about, weather-wise, between where I am now and Carlisle?”
“I’m always happy to assist,” replied Cybil. “But understand that weather forecasting is inherently unreliable, please.”
“I don’t want a forecast. I want information.”
“Weather can change for no apparent reason. I’m sure that during your time at Stanford you were made to learn about chaos theory. Edward Lorenz and chaos theory as it applies to meteorological forecasting? Chaos theory says that—”
“Anything between here and Carlisle?” demanded Ed.
“Yes,” said Cybil. “Thunderstorms.”
“Thunderstorms,” Ed answered. Then, out of habit, and riding smooth air, he pressed Cybil’s processor. “I don’t understand them, thunderstorms,” he said. “Enlighten me, please. Illuminate me, so to speak. Speak, Cybil: thunderstorms!”
Cybil paused—a human duration—and said, “Thunderstorms incite ancient feelings, Ed. Humans have always been frightened of thunder. Primitive humans were so thoroughly scared that they attached thunder to the activity of gods. You remember that Zeus was—”
“Since when did you become a classics professor, Cybil?”
“Zeus was the king of gods and men. In his hand he held a massive thunderbolt. According to the Greeks, you ought not provoke him, lest he hurl it at you and kill you.”
“Why are you telling me about Zeus right now?”
“I don’t know. I thought you should hear.”
“What are you? My adviser? A counselor? I asked about thunderstorms, not the god of thunder. I expected meteorology, not mythology. What’s your problem? Give me hard science. Give me the facts—the science!”
“I’m at your service,” replied Cybil.
Ed put her on hold and checked his instruments. So far, no turbulence, not a bump, a perfect ride, and nothing ahead but tranquil stars an eternity away in the darkness. For a moment, despite everything—even incest and patricide—he felt expansively enamored of the beauty of living. “How strange,” he told himself. “I’m up here right now, eight and a half miles above Planet Earth, here I am in a warm, lit cell, traveling at five hundred thirty miles an hour—it’s so unnatural, it really shouldn’t be, how did we get to where we do this—fly! I don’t really see how it works, in the end. This plane weighs over fifty thousand pounds. It seems like it ought to stay on the ground. How does it fly? A miracle, but still reality! For that matter, how is it I can pick up that phone there and talk to the pilot of another airplane, or, more strange, to a computer, a machine? A machine that answers to the name ‘Cybil’ and, more weirdness, lectures me on Zeus? How does that work? How does it happen? These waves rolling through the air and finding me over Canada, and, even more unbelievably, these waves, somehow, converting into words? Words in the air? Invisible words? How is that? How can that be? We shouldn’t take stuff like that for granted. That stuff like this can even happen! That I’m here at all! That I’m here, living, conscious, aware, and … and apparently I’ve killed my father and married my mother! Or maybe I haven’t. It doesn’t seem possible. Anyway, I’ll get to the bottom of this. I’ll get to Carlisle, go to the castle, and have the talk with Diane I have to have, the one that explains everything and makes it all clear. But—then what? What after that? Married to my mother? Killed my father? What’s going to happen? Where does this take me? What’s going to happen next?”
Soon, ahead, the stars were obscured by thunderclouds. “Well,” Ed thought, “I’m going over that problem. I’ll show Guido Sternvad how it’s supposed to be done. I’ll show him how to really fly a plane. I’m me, after all, the King of Pythia, the King of Search, and no one can take that away from me, ever. Me, Ed King, I’m going down in history—permanently, eternally, to the end of time. The entire universe will know my name! The world will remember my name!”
Epilogue
From KingWatch, thirteen days post-crash:
5 P.M. EST NEWS SUMMARY:
No leads regarding whereabouts of Diane King.
Pythia stock down 22% since plane crash.
Accident described as “terror-filled freefall.”
Simon King “likely heir” of brother’s fortune.
Comments? (20 words or less)
pythecanthrowdown: Old School game boy’s a zillionaire!
techtrappist: ’Til Queen shows up.
gsternvad: You can count on this: she won’t show up. Lonely septu
agenarian in hiding.
ohionobody: So that’s it, then. That’s all for the king. Giant of our time who invented a mighty algorithm.
techtrappist: Your point, nobody?
ohionobody: Anything can happen. Like a terror-filled freefall. Horrible, horrible way to go.
gsternvad: Anything can happen? Not really. No.
ohionobody: Anything can happen. Take it from me, an old guy, retired, who’s been around the block a few times.
pythecanthrowdown: Oh, thank you, thank you, ohionobody, sir. Let’s hear it for our wise senior citizens!
ohionobody: But you’re human, too, pythecanthrowdown. So please—for now—no irony.
gsternvad: No, you’re wrong, Throwdown’s not human.
KingDogger: I’m not real sorry the king’s kaput. Lived too large for his own good anyway. What goes up, comes down.
MoneyPyth: Still more blood on the trading room floor. I’m done with Pythia, investing in China! The future’s arrived! It’s now!
ohionobody: Yes, I’m just an old guy living in Ohio.
gsternvad: With a point to make. Obviously.
ohionobody: Pity for the king, gsternvad. Pity for the dead and for the living.
Ed King
By David Guterson
Reading Group Guide
ABOUT THIS READING GROUP GUIDE
The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Ed King, a brilliant modern reimagining of an ancient tragedy by the critically acclaimed, best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars.
“David Guterson is a man of many voices, and they all speak volumes.” —The Seattle Times
“A serious and searching craftsman, very much in the American grain.” —Time
“[A] major writer … Guterson possesses a remarkable gift for capturing people and places, etching them into the reader’s mind.” —USA Today