Emerson shook his head. He knew, of course, how this story was going to turn out. He’d examined Curringer’s statue and read the inscription on the base too many times to forget. But it was the first time he’d heard it from someone who’d been there.
“You know what a World War I biplane looked like?” Drake-Tealy asked him. “Well, these were rather like that, our little aeroplanes, only smaller, with transparent wings, and a deal more fragile. Bill snapped a wingspar, the gods alone know how, and plummeted like any bird with a broken wing. Most likely he’d have survived a fall, given what we’ve got for gravity hereabouts, but by the time he hit the ground, headed in under full power, he was doing almost two hundred miles an hour.”
Drake-Tealy stopped again, just within sight of the cabin.
“Miri came to believe afterward that it couldn’t have been an accident. I’ve never been convinced one way or the other, altogether. It is a difficult mishap to explain, but I find it endlessly more difficult to believe that Bill committed suicide.”
“Could it have been murder?” Emerson asked.
“I’ve given it some thought. Wild Bill was by no means the most popular fellow in the solar system. One fact is incontrovertible: it was a bitterly unhappy man at the controls that day, and we were the ones who’d made him that way. At the time, Miri followed him down, desperately trying to catch him up and get his nose up or nudge him into the lake. Instead, they packed it in together as I circled, watching helplessly. Truth to tell, old chap, neither of us has ever learned how to live with the guilt we still feel every day over what happened.”
“So instead,” Emerson suggested, glad to get the words out, “you’ve spent the past several decades together, hating yourselves and making each other miserable.”
“You’re very wise for one so young, my boy,” Drake-Tealy replied. “I may let you live, anyway.”
They found the wrench Emerson needed in the toolshed, actually more of an outdoor closet, that comprised one end of the greenhouse. Digger, complying with Emerson’s earlier request, ducked inside the house briefly for his rifle and immediately hurried off on an errand of his own. He didn’t intend doing anything about the African leopard, he explained, but he wanted very much to see it.
“What’s life,” he grinned as he turned to march back into the forest, “without a little danger?”
“A whole lot easier on the cardiovascular system,” his young friend replied automatically, but he didn’t really mean it, and the old man didn’t hear him, anyway.
Emerson sighed and went to the front porch, where he sat cross-legged for over an hour, carefully dismantling his flying yoke and reassembling it just as carefully as a pair of the independent machines he’d first invented. Each half of the device would now suffer from the same range, speed, and altitude limitations which had frustrated him during the process of development, but that was irrelevant at the moment.
It wasn’t a set of wings he was building, but a set of legs.
Then came the really hard part.
Taking one of the machines with him, he went through the front door and into the living room, where Stein was sitting with a book processor in her lap, reading. Unaware that it was rude, he looked over her shoulder and saw that she was leafing through the Unfinished Memoirs of William Wilde Curringer, the only thing the man had ever written, published shortly after his untimely death.
Emerson had read it, too, but from paper pages, bound between plastic covers.
Why do I suspect that if all the money spent on ramps, bus elevators, and the like in an attempt to make the world “wheelchair accessible” had been dedicated to neurological research, no one would need ramps and elevators? Why do I suspect that, if it had, the lawyers would have stopped it on behalf of clients who prefer being crippled and helpless to losing their government benefits?
As his shadow fell across her shoulders, Stein cleared the screen, folded the laptop, and set it aside.
She looked up at him. “It is an amusing paragraph, is it not, prophetic and pathetic at the same time?”
How was he supposed to answer that?
“Poor William never guessed that these words would ever be published. He was so misunderstood—willfully so by politicians and the media—that it was something Raymond and I thought must be done for him after he passed away. Raymond calls it history’s longest epitaph. Writing casually, for his own benefit, William conducted no research and did not know that such a lawsuit had been filed already back in the nineties, for precisely the depraved and disgusting reason he specified. Nor did he realize that what he wrote would ever apply to anyone he knew personally. He was an engineer. He simply hated the waste.”
Emerson nodded, still not knowing what to say. This was too much like an extension of the conversation he’d just had with Drake-Tealy. These two old people might not be happy together, but they were very much alike, and he was aware that there can sometimes be too much mutual understanding. He was reminded of something he’d read in one of Horatio Singh’s books—was it Shaw or Churchill?—about the British and Americans being two peoples separated by a common language.
Her eyes suddenly brightened and he could see a trace of what once must have been great beauty. “What have you been working on out there all morning, young man? Is that it, there in your hand? Is it what I think it is? If it is, I believe I shall surprise you. I know that I can be rather forbidding at times, but you need not dread the necessity of arguing me, of all people, into something new.”
Emerson felt a wave of excitement. “Then you’ll—”
“I would very much like to try your invention, if I may. I have wanted to since you first arrived. These wheels—” she slapped a palm down on the armrest of her chair “—were not made for the wilderness, nor the wilderness for them.”
Emerson nodded again. One of the things he’d feared most during his recovery was that he might end up in a chair just like hers on an undeveloped frontier world.
“And now,” asked the foremost ethical philosopher in the solar system, throwing her lap blanket aside and grinning up at him like a child, “what do I have to do?”
He looked her over. She was wearing trousers on her withered legs. Her arms, as he’d observed long before this, were surprisingly muscular. Emerson had arranged the nylon support straps so that they could be unfastened easily from the rim of the flying yoke. Under the kindly gravity of Pallas, it was relatively easy, even as awkward as he felt doing it, to move her from the chair to the floor, slide those straps beneath her, and refasten them where they belonged.
She now sat, as he had on the porch, with her legs crossed, the flying yoke around her waist. He showed her the controls and cautioned her to keep the motors running slowly.
Then he stepped out of the way.
Motors thrumming, the yoke lifted itself, hesitated, then lifted Stein until her lifeless toes just touched the handwoven rug underfoot. Her face was frozen in a valiant attempt not to betray too much emotion, but an amused and powerful intelligence still twinkled behind her eyes as she advanced the lever which took her, very slowly at first, then more rapidly, across the living room.
She stood, and that was almost the right word for it, looking down at the kitchen counter. When she turned back, there was a smile on her face and tears coursing down her cheeks at the realization that with his flying yoke she might regain some portion of her mobility—and perhaps even mastery over her own life. Emerson knew all the signs.
“Can we try it outside?”
He opened the screen and stood aside. “Careful on the steps.”
A Message from Vesta
All arguments in favor of coercive government invariably reduce to an assertion that people are irresponsible children who need to be watched and taken care of. There is probably substance in this claim. Keep anyone in the nursery long enough, say until he’s sixty-five, and his behavior will be, at the least, somewhat erratic.
—Mirelle Stein, The Productive Class
Dear Emerson,
Bet you’re surprised to hear from me! Nails is a better typist, but when your order came, via the South Pole of all places, he said it should have the woman’s touch. Not a woman’s touch, he told me to emphasize. He was trying to be nice. Aloysius and Henrietta will see if they want to add anything, so it won’t be very personal. I’ll run spelling and grammar when I’m done so you won’t be ashamed of me.
Everything at the plant is running fine and we’re making piles of money. We all miss you very much—add an extra “very” for me, although the style program hates it. The experimental barrels you ordered from Czechoslovakia before you left finally came and they work just like you said they would, 15% higher velocity with peak pressure actually lower than a conventional barrel. I understand how progressive twist, graduated groove diameter, and polygonal rifling work together to achieve the effect, but how do you think of these things in the first place? Nails said we’ll have to make them ourselves, as supply and quality are unreliable and the freight is too high. He says to tell you he’s working on it.
Now for the part I’ve been avoiding until now. They’ve just had word in Curringer of Gibson Altman, Junior, from, of all places (another tussle with the stupid style program, insisting I shouldn’t say that twice, but why not?), Vesta. Aloysius (who’s right here peeking over my shoulder and making me generate typos you’ll never see) says it looks like Junior lit out for Berkeley when he left here.
Anyway, on account of recent economic and political events back on Earth, where our Pallatian-style Hyperdemocracy is threatening to catch on, 50 or 60 young “socialist reactionaries” (Aloysius wanted to be sure I used this term, which seems to amuse him no end for some reason) have “seized” what Aloysius calls the bleakest and least-likely-to-ever-be-inhabited of the asteroids, for all that it’s the third largest, and are “holding” it. From what or whom I’ve no idea, since nobody has ever claimed that rock or ever wanted to as far as I know before this.
We found out about this because the TV at the Nimrod, which sometimes gets broadcasts from Earth, picked up a press conference relayed from Vesta where Junior and his Berkeley friends announced they’re establishing a “People’s Economic Democracy.” Mrs. Singh said it looked like they were mostly liberal arts professors and their more gullible students, innocent, she said of any technical or survival skills. Even I could see, once Aloysius pointed it out, that all they had was flimsy recreational gear, camping stuff, and tourist-grade spacesuits.
Unlike Pallas (Mrs. Singh is dictating this), a water-rich carbonaceous chondrite containing all of the essential elements and compounds necessary to existence, Vesta is barren granitic rock, incapable of sustaining human life even given current technology. When their air and other supplies run out, this ill-conceived and badly equipped expedition is going to run into exactly the kind of trouble anyone besides a bunch of academics could have predicted before it left Earth.
I guess that means (me again) that you don’t have to worry about looking for Junior any more.
Enclosed please find (which is a stupid expression, considering) the two complete flying yoke units you ordered, plus a supply of spare parts. I hope they’re okay when they get to you. They have a long way to travel by not very reliable means.
We all hope you’re well and happy and staying warm and getting enough to eat, and that we can see you soon. I hope you’re getting well inside and out and that you find what you’re looking for. Nails is here with the crate now—he says you’re going to be surprised because these are the new, improved model with better batteries and more efficient motors—so I guess I’d better close this.
All my love,
Cherry
Hands shaking with rage, Emerson threw the letter to the floor—then carefully picked it up again, folded it, and tucked it away in an inside jacket pocket. It had been neatly laser-printed on gold-embossed stationery from Galena’s, subtly perfumed and well intended. The fact was, he hadn’t been surprised to get it.
He was sitting on a rustic plank-and-pole bench on the front porch of the Drake-Tealy cabin. The heavily built plastic crate Cherry had mentioned lay directly under his gaze, the top pried up and plastic bubble-wrap draped over its edges. After the story Digger had told him, he was glad he hadn’t had to fly it here, slung beneath an ultralight aircraft. The flying yokes it had contained were gone. Digger and his wife were already up in a meadow above the house, giving them a try.
Now, he told himself, it was really time to go.
Somehow, another six weeks had mysteriously slipped by. Granted, they’d been a great deal more pleasant than the first six he’d spent here, since he’d gotten to know his hostess better and she’d spent every spare minute she had practicing with his modified flying yoke. The monthly ultralight could pick up mail as well as deliver it, thanks to a hook it carried and an arrangement near the cabin like a clothesline strung on a pair of fifty-foot poles. He’d meant the new machines he’d ordered as a sort of bread-and-butter present, anyway.
In addition to the letter from Cherry, he’d even received a present of sorts himself. Nails had very thoughtfully included a full complement of batteries of the new type, significantly lighter in weight and much longer lasting, and a pair of improved motors for retrofitting to his old flying yoke. It appeared to Emerson that they might take half a day to install, calibrate, and test.
And then he must be gone.
He was determined not to be cheated again by Junior’s lack of character. First it had been his adversary’s cowardice, now it was incredible stupidity. A comparatively easy death by starvation, freezing, asphyxiation, or even explosive decompression would never do. Junior had to know who was killing him and why.
He was not going to get away this time.
The complicated double thrumming noise of two pairs of counter-rotating impellers came to Emerson at about the same time he looked up from his tightly clenched fists and watched Drake-Tealy and his wife drift like autumn leaves around the corner of the cabin in their new flying yokes, their faces flushed with excitement.
“Tallyho!” hollered the anthropologist.
“I actually chased a deer!” Stein exclaimed, almost looking like a girl again. “I lost him in the trees, but for almost a kilometer, I stayed right on his tail. I could not have done that before! Emerson, what you have accomplished is amazing!”
With an expression communicating that he agreed, although in a different context, Digger let his motors die on the pathway to the porch, settled to his feet, and eyed Emerson closely. “Here, now, my fine young miracle worker, was there bad news in that letter? You look as though your best friend had just died.” There was concern in Stein’s eyes, as well. Perhaps he was a miracle worker.
“My worst enemy.” Emerson shook his head, as if to clear his mind of an unthinkable idea. “Digger, tell me something. Doesn’t that receiver of yours transmit, as well?” Despite his early experiences, he knew nothing about radio.
“I’d have thought you’d noticed that already.” The old man stepped out of his flying yoke and folded it. Stein remained suspended in hers, her motor speed reduced, and appeared almost to be standing beside him. He draped an arm over her shoulder. “As long as someone at the other end is listening. There’s a regular schedule for that at the South Pole—a contract dispatch office where we pay them to look after all of us Outbackers at least once a week—and an emergency frequency, besides. I established the system myself, many years ago.”
“Good.” Emerson stood, resettled his gunbelt about his waist, extracted a cigar, and lit it. “Is there any way they can relay a message to somebody in Curringer?”
Drake-Tealy shrugged. “None that I know of specifically, but I’m sure it can be arranged, one way or another. What’s this all about, Emerson, if you don’t mind my asking? Your worst enemy—that’d be the former Senator Altman, wouldn’t it?”
“His son, who seems to have turned up again. And that’s all I want to say about it now, Digger
. You and...Miri have been kind to me. I don’t want to have to argue with you about what I’m planning to do. I need to try sending that message to Curringer, and then I have to go. I have to go, in any event.”
“As you will, then.” Drake-Tealy nodded, striding up the now-needless ramp and onto the porch, where he left his flying yoke leaning against a wall. “By all means, let’s see what can be done. I’m a bit curious myself. I’ll crank up the wireless.”
“And I’ll make us a nice cup of tea,” declared Miri.
Both males stared after her as she wafted through the screen door and into the kitchen.
“This is Jean-Luc Picard, calling Starfleet Command. Picard to Starfleet Command. How do you read me? Over.”
It was only the work of a few minutes, seated before Digger’s big, black, complicated-looking radio—United Cantons of South Africa Defense Forces surplus, he informed Emerson—to establish contact with the dispatcher on duty at the South Pole, who was employed by a company similar in purpose and structure to the several which maintained the atmospheric envelope around the asteroid.
“Doctor Drake-Tealy—Digger—this is South Polar Central Dispatch. Janet speaking. What can we do for you? You’re not scheduled for regular contact until next Tuesday. And could you please be persuaded to use proper radio procedure? Over.”
Drake-Tealy had explained that while there were probably more convenient communications systems in use—computer-enhanced cellular telephones like those employed in Curringer, for example—none was simpler or less failure-prone than the old-fashioned shortwave he’d first seen in everyday use in Australia.
He grinned at his unseen listener who had likely identified him by his voiceprint. “Probably not, my dear. You’re new, aren’t you? Ask the others. But before you do that, we’ve a favor to ask of you, if we may. Over.”