I ran out of ceiling before I got to the shoulder of Pikes Peak and had to make the decision. Did I go up, into no visibility conditions, and hope, when it was time to descend on the other side of the range, that the visibility was good enough to land at Moses? Or did I head south, paralleling the range, until I got to Royal Gorge and follow the Arkansas River to the west, under the clouds?
We had the fuel to reach Scurry, the next fuel depot after Moses, but only if we took a more or less direct flight.
I headed up, into the clouds. The signal from Moses and Scurry came in loud and clear and Marie was working the vectors on the chart, recalculating our position on a running basis.
“We’re clear of the range,” she said, finally. “Well clear.”
I took the Maule down. I was confident that I had five thousand feet of clear airspace between the aircraft and the rolling plains below. We reached ten thousand feet without breaking through, went off oxygen and continued the descent. Finally, at six thousand feet, only a thousand feet above the high plains, we came out into light rain. The outside air temperature was thirty-four degrees F and if it dropped even a little, ice would start coating the aircraft. I piled on the horses, sacrificing fuel efficiency for speed. The farther south I got, the better—the warmer.
We neared Moses. “Do we push it?” I asked. “If we keep going, we might outrun the front. Even if we don’t, and it catches us, the farther south we get before landing, the more chance we have of not getting snowed in for the winter.”
Marie looked out into the mist. “I say push it.”
Clara and Joey agreed, but it was my responsibility. We were out of the mountains, out of the worst of it. Did I want to push on because it was the right decision, the safe one, or because I was worried about what might be happening back at the base?
For whatever reason, I flew on.
The rain finally stopped fifty miles north of Scurry and the cloud cover broke into scattered cumulus, but the front behind us was visible from the ground, a darkening of the northern horizon. Clara, Joey, and Marie refueled in record time while I checked in with Rick on the shortwave.
“The weather at base is clear, scattered altocumulus about eight thousand, maybe, and the barometer is steady,” he told me.
“We’re coming on in,” I said.
“Of course,” Rick said.
I fought down an impulse to scream into the microphone, There’s no “of course” about it. Winter is breathing down our neck! Instead I signed off.
“How are you holding up?” I asked Marie.
“Fine—now that we’re out of that weather. You don’t look so good though.”
I winced. “Thank-you-so-very-much.” Sleeping badly the night before and the tension of the flight over the mountains had wrung me out like a damp rag. “You want to take it on in with Clara or Joey? I could do it, but it would be stupid.”
She nodded. “Sure. Who wants the right-hand seat?”
Clara said, “Let Joey—he needs the hours.”
When we were airborne, I slumped down in the seat and closed my eyes. Turbulence rocked the plane and I momentarily leaned into Clara. I straightened, but she put her arm around me and pulled me back. My head nestled into the hollow of her neck and shoulder. I breathed in and smelled woodsmoke, soap, and skin. I exhaled and smiled, trying to stay awake, to stay in the moment. She woke me four hours later, on final approach to Wildside Base.
It was raining on the tame side, midafternoon. After we put away the Maule and closed down the wildside, Joey and Marie disappeared into the bathroom. The tub in there was old and very large, plenty big for two, whatever they were doing. For some reason it reminded me of Clara’s bath, our first night at Cripple Creek.
Clara didn’t want to ride her motorcycle back to the apartment in the rain. I offered to take her, but Rick surprised me by saying, “I’ll give her a ride.” Their interactions before the trip had been minimal, strained, and ultrapolite. Rick looked far more relaxed, more comfortable in her presence than he had before the trip.
Clara looked wary, but said, “Okay.”
I made eye contact with her. “It’s no problem, either way, Clara. I have to go talk to Luis, anyway.”
She touched my arm briefly. “You need a bath before you go see anyone. So do I, for that matter.” She dropped her voice. “It’s all right, Charlie.”
They left.
I sat on the porch and waited for the bathroom. The temperature was in the low seventies and the sound of the rain on the roof almost put me to sleep. When Joey and Marie were done with the bathroom, they disappeared into his room and closed the door.
I showered and watched brown water sluice off of me. I thought of Rick then, clean and neat as he looked when they went out the door.
We were back safe. We’d pulled over two million dollars in gold out of the remote reaches of wilderness Colorado. And I was miserable.
In bed, I tossed and turned, my thoughts wandering from the coming financial problems of gold conversion and taxes to the interpersonal dramas of our little group.
Finally, I fell asleep and dreamed of a woman who was sometimes Marie and sometimes Clara, and a man who was sometimes Rick and sometimes Joey. But never me.
I woke, mid-evening, and wandered out into the living room. Marie was watching television, some movie-of-the-week thing based on a “real life story.” She muted it when she saw me.
“Where’s Joey?” I asked.
“He went into town for an AA meeting. Or as he put it—to go dancing.”
“Dancing?”
“The Texas Twelve-Step.”
I looked blank.
She laughed. “It’s an AA joke.”
I jerked my head over at the window, looking for my truck. “Uh, how’d he get there?” Joey’s license was revoked. My truck, though, was there.
Marie’s smile dropped. “He got his sponsor to give him a ride. They met out at the gate.” She frowned. “He was scared. He was afraid of what they might think since he hasn’t been for a week. I told him to tell the truth.”
“That he’s been in an alternate universe?” My voice rose a bit.
Marie smiled again. “Of course not. Just that he’s been camping and sober.”
I exhaled and headed for the kitchen. “Want anything to eat?”
“Joey’s bringing Pepe’s. He’s getting some for you, too.”
I stopped in my tracks. My stomach rumbled. “Oh. When did he say he’d be back?”
She checked her watch. “The meeting’s only an hour, and he left at six. Anytime now, probably.”
“I guess I can stand that. After a week in the woods, Pepe’s sounds awful good.” I hesitated, then asked, “Any word from Rick or Clara?”
She shook her head and turned the volume back up on the TV. Suddenly I wasn’t hungry anymore.
I went into the kitchen and called Luis at home.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Tired.”
“And was your trip successful?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps we should get together?” Meaning: I’m dying to hear the details, but don’t want to talk on the phone.
I laughed. “Later. Unless you want to come out right now. I’m going to be in bed by ten.”
“Okay. Funny thing today.”
“Oh?”
“Called my friend in Austin.” His lawyer friend, the recipient of the electronic fund transfers.
“Yeah.”
“He’s not in. I keep getting his answering machine.”
I scratched my head. “How long have you been trying?”
“Just since last night.”
I thought for a moment, trying to remember what day of the week it was. “Isn’t this Saturday?”
“I know. He could’ve gone someplace for the weekend. It’s probably nothing.”
“Probably nothing. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Right.” He hung up.
Joey was still gone and Mari
e was zoning in front of the TV. I went outside. The rain had stopped and everything smelled green.
I walked over to the barn and through the tunnel to the wildside. The gold lay on the plywood table at the back of the hangar, all the plastic bags collected in two old army surplus duffels. It weighed a bit over four hundred pounds. Rick, Joey, and I had carried each bag from the plane.
I fetched the wheelbarrow from the barn and dragged one duffel off the table and into it. I trundled the gold through the tunnel, one bag at a time, and hid it under the front porch, behind the steps, then put the wheelbarrow back.
Joey arrived as I was locking up. I met him and together we carried the fast food back to the house. “How was your meeting?”
“Good. I was surprised. What were you doing at the barn?”
“I moved the gold.” I told him where.
He frowned. “I will treat those steps with more respect. Why?”
“We need to convert it to cash—I’m transferring it to Luis tomorrow. We’ve got the education trusts and the legal fund to set up.”
“That’s a lot of money…never mind—we can trust Luis.” Joey shook his head. “Trust is a hard thing to learn.”
I stared at Joey and thought about his alcoholism, Rick’s relationship outside the group, the whole fragile mess. “It sure is, Joey.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll try and learn it together.”
Joey looked at the porch steps. “What about the legal fund? Are we really going to need it?”
I nodded. “Looks like it. We may have to shut down the gate.”
“Who’s going to stay behind and throw the switch?”
“Well,” I said, “hopefully, nobody. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
PART FOUR
COMPLICATIONS
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“GO, GO, GO!”
It was vacation time. It was still August. We had two weeks before school started and we’d worked like dogs all summer long.
The gang deserved a break.
“Then why aren’t you resting?” Clara asked Joey and me.
I bit my lip. I didn’t know where Clara and Rick stood and I was afraid to ask either of them.
Rick hadn’t come home the night before. “Just want to get the safeguards in place. So they’re available.” I wiped sweaty palms on my jeans. “Uh, would you like to go to the auction with me?”
“What auction?”
“The surplus equipment auction at the university. I need some junk for the gate.”
“I’m riding Impossible this afternoon. When is it?”
“Eleven. You should have plenty of time.”
“Okay—I’ll take my bike so I can go straight to the stables after.”
I looked down at my feet. I’d been hoping she’d ride with me, in the truck.
Joey was at the kitchen table working on a solenoid-actuated plunger, wiring it into the control of an electronic timer. “You need anything from town?”
“Uh—get some more D-Cell NiCads. Four.”
“Right. See you.”
Clara and I made our solitary ways over to the University Physical Plant.
A swarm of people were there before us, most of them examining the university vehicles up for auction outside. Clara and I moved into a large warehouse where the rest of the offerings were being displayed. Out-of-date typewriters, word processors, office furniture, lab equipment, tools, and the like were arranged on shelves or tables or floor, tagged with the appropriate lot number.
I signed up for a bidder number and then Clara and I moved down the rows, marveling.
“What on earth is that?”
“Haven’t the faintest idea.”
“And that?”
“It’s a centrifuge.”
“Oh.”
Off to one side I saw something. “I think I’m in love,” I said.
She looked at me oddly, then glanced at the object of my desire. “You’re weird, Charlie. Really weird. I have absolutely no idea what that is.”
“Me neither, but I think I’m going to buy it.”
“It” turned out to be a polarized ion source—a ten-foot-high amalgam of vacuum pumps, high-voltage standoffs, dials, plastic rods, insulators, and magnetic coils topped off with a glass sphere. It looked like something out of Forbidden Planet.
The auction catalog informed us it was being sold by the Texas A&M Cyclotron Institute, where it had been used as a particle source for accelerator experiments. But not any more. It had a major crack in its primary vacuum chamber and half the power supplies were shorted.
“It’s perfect,” I said.
“It’s terrible. It’ll fill the tunnel,” Clara said.
“Nah. It’ll come apart. You’ll see. It’ll be great.”
I hurried off to put in my bid. It was a paper auction and you had no idea what other bidders might pay. I asked one of the junk dealers what they thought it would go for as scrap, and tripled that amount.
Then we went outside to wait for noon, when they would tally the bids.
“So,” I said after a spell of uncomfortable silence, “how did things go with Rick?” My throat was dry and I looked away from her when I asked the question.
She kicked at a piece of gravel on the asphalt parking lot. “I don’t know.”
I looked back at her. She had her hands shoved deep into her jeans pockets and was studying the ground. “What does that mean?” I asked. Did he spend last night with you? “Is he still seeing Chris?”
“Yeah. Chris is seeing someone else, too, though. Rick isn’t too happy about it, but they apparently don’t have an exclusive relationship. For a minute, last night, I thought he wanted us back the way we were. But what he really wanted was to talk. He said that’s what he missed about me—someone he could really talk to.” She laughed. “Great sex aside, Christopher apparently isn’t a very good listener.”
“Oh.”
“He still loves me. He just isn’t interested in me.”
I expected to see her cry, then, but her eyes were dry. She looked at her watch and said, “Noon. Let’s go see if you bought Frankenstein’s laboratory.”
She didn’t say anything else, but as we walked across the parking lot, she linked her arm with mine.
It took two trips in my truck to get the components of the polarized ion source out to the ranch.
Between trips I rendezvoused with Luis at the airport and transferred the gold to the backseat floor of his BMW.
“I’ve got an armored car set to carry it to the dealer in Dallas. He’ll send the gem quality nuggets out to some of the professional shows and give us straight bullion prices on the dust.”
We finished shifting the gold and Luis shut the doors.
He was frowning when he turned back to me. “Richard still hasn’t shown up. I reached his paralegal. She doesn’t have any idea where he is. He didn’t mention any trip to her. She’s going to the police.”
“So, this is it?”
“Probably.”
“Is everything done?”
He frowned. “Yeah.” He took a cellular phone from his shirt pocket. “I’m making the calls every hour. They don’t hear from me in the ten-minute grace period and the lawyers in Houston get the call.“
“You don’t have to do this, Luis.”
He shrugged. “We’ll see. I take this client privilege thing pretty seriously. You haven’t done anything illegal—I’m not letting them walk all over me.”
“I’ve called you our wall before. I didn’t realize how right I was. I appreciate what you’re doing.”
He got embarrassed. “Well, you’ve put enough money in my pocket that I can finally afford to get my IFR ticket and maybe buy a plane. I haven’t really had to do much to earn it, yet, but I’ll do my part.”
Back at the ranch, after my second trip, I left Joey to concentrate on the timer and the solenoid while I “dressed” the gate.
I didn’t think I had much time, so I didn’t get fan
cy. I concentrated on the sides of the tunnel, building a parallel stack of power supplies, magnetic coils, and diffusion pumps. When I was done, the tunnel was narrower by a foot and a half and looked like something out of a “Nova” episode. I braced it with angle iron and drilled a hole for the hangar cable yoke in one of the cabinets. The contraption straddled the terminus—the line between the worlds where we’d cut the mower and Joey’s flashlight in half.
Clara came back to the ranch, even though we were officially off duty, and helped me touch it up. “It looks very businesslike from this side,” she said. She walked around to the wildside of the tunnel. “But only until you see the back. All these cables just hang off here. The vacuum tubes don’t connect to anything.”
I bent down and disconnected the hangar cable yoke—power, phone, alarm—and pulled the cable clear of the terminus. The lights on the wild half of the tunnel went out and then, as the generator fired up, flickered back on.
“Why’d you do that?”
I took her arm and led her up the tunnel, on the wildside, away from the terminus and my contraption. “You’ll see.” The switch was still covered with a plywood panel, to keep us from accidentally tripping it. I slid it to the side. “Close your eyes or look away from the gate,” I said.
“You’re going to shut it down?”
“Just for a moment. You want to wait on the other side?”
She looked amused. “No, Charlie.” She crossed her arms and turned away from the gate.
I looked the same direction and threw the switch.
Even with the fluorescent lights on, the flash of light was tremendous, throwing our shadows stark and dark up the tunnel. There was also a sharp burst of white noise and I flinched. I looked back in time to see the back third of my contraption—cables, cabinets, vacuum lines, coils, and coolant lines—fall to the floor of the tunnel with a clatter.
“Hope that didn’t happen on the other side, too,” Clara said.
“Me, too.” I stood and turned my head. “Ow.”
“What is it?”
I touched the skin at the back of my neck. “Sunburn.” I explored further. The back side of the tips of my ears and the side of my right wrist were also pink. “How about you?”