Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air (27 page)

“Science…” Pelley’s voice was low but deep, compelling. “Do you truly think that science as it now stands knows everything there is in the world? Two hundred years ago, no one expected to be able to move goods cross-country in less than months, and today a train crosses the United States in three days. Fifty years ago, flight was for birds, kites and balloons. Today man has crossed the Atlantic by airplane, and who knows where he will fly tomorrow? Records, impossibilities, they all fall by the wayside. Could you not concede that there might be other powers, currently only poorly and partially understood, that once mastered, may usher in a new scientific spirituality?”

Willi swallowed bile. He’d heard that argument before, or something very like it, sitting around the fires in Lop Nur, and he’d seen where that led. For a moment he could smell wood smoke, see the cave dark on the hill above the camp — He shoved the memory down, back where it belonged, and took a breath, fighting for the right words, but nothing came. Across the street, the sidewalk was crowded, sailors in uniform and young men in civilian clothes mingling amiably enough, but here there was no one, no excuse or escape. And then he saw them, two young men in impeccably pressed midshipmen’s uniforms, stark white against the night. The nearer one looked familiar, like a student he’d taught in the bad years before he’d won a place in Berlin, when he was still teaching history at a mediocre secondary school and trying to keep food on the table.

“Excuse me, Mr. Pelley, I see — Lorenz!” He plunged into the mercifully slow-moving traffic, fetched up on the opposite side of the street. “Lorenz, is that you?”

The taller midshipman turned, his face lightening. “Professor Radke! What in the world are you doing in Hawaii?”

“I am working on an archeological dig,” Willi answered. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Pelley hesitating, trying to decide if he would follow. “And you — but I don’t need to ask. I saw the
Emden
arriving today.”

Lorenz grinned. “Yes, indeed,
Herr
Professor. Our first leave in a tropical port!” He stopped. “I’m sorry, where are my manners?
Herr
Professor, this is my classmate and very good friend Max Sommer. Max, this is
Herr
Professor Radke, the one from school that I told you about.”

“Very pleased to meet you, sir,” Sommer said politely. He was dark and skinny, with the look of someone still growing into his adult body.

“And you, Midshipman Sommer.” Pelley had given it up as a bad bet, was no longer anywhere in sight, and Willi allowed himself a sigh of relief. “I won’t keep you from your well-deserved tropical leave, but if you are looking for sights — come and see our dig. It’s only a Hawaiian village, but there are interesting features.”

Sommer looked momentarily skeptical, though he was too polite to say anything. Lorenz smiled. “I’d love to see it,
Herr
Professor. Where can I find you?”

“Ask at the Bishop Museum,” Willi answered. “Which I also highly recommend.”

“I will — and thank you,
Herr
Professor,” Lorenz said.

“I’ll look forward to it,” Willi said, not believing him — what sailor would spend a day in the highlands when he could be on the beach looking at pretty girls — but happy to let them both pretend. “Good night, gentlemen.”

“Good night,
Herr
Professor,” they chorused, and Willi turned away, looking for a cab.

Chapter Twelve

M
itch looked out the front window of the Catalina, then glanced back at the compass. They were on course, and in about fifteen minutes should see Molokai ahead. The seas were calm, the sky cloudless — a perfect day for a test flight. Alma had her head buried in the map, no doubt committing to memory every shoal and current anywhere near the Hawaiian Islands, just for her future reference. That was Al for you. He knew better than to interrupt.

Stasi was with the kids, though Jimmy seemed less than enthusiastic about spending the day with Miss Lee, Douglas and the little girls. Mitch shook his head. They'd have to be careful about what Jimmy saw. He was too old not to realize how weird some of it was. Well, Douglas was too, but Douglas would probably think everything was neat rather than scary or wrong. Douglas would just want to try it himself, and Mitch figured he wouldn't be put off easily. Of all the kids, Douglas was the one most like him, strange as that might seem at first. Douglas wanted it to be real. The minute he saw something Mitch couldn't rationally explain, he'd be all over it like white on rice. He sure had been.

T
hey'd been at Aviano eleven days, eleven days at a forward airstrip, four patrols and one dogfight. His second contact with the enemy was nearly his last, and he never even got in his plane.

Spotters had sounded the alarm: Austrian planes coming in, a flight coming in high and fast, above the range of the artillery pieces. They didn't drop until they were over the field, spiraling down in long dives, machine guns blazing, tracer bullets burning bright. At the first alarm Mitch had run for his plane, Lt. Colonel Gilchrist right behind him. They were out in the open, still twenty yards from the flight line, when the first of the attackers dove.

Mitch threw himself flat on the ground, covering his head with his hands as though that would help. The sound of bullets smacking into the ground around him sounded like hail, like a heavy rain back home, not like something that would kill him. And then it swept past. Its engine was loud over him, the gun firing, and he lifted his head to see Gilchrist's plane riddled with shot where it sat on the flight line, bullets punching through the thin skin of the wings, perforating it in a way that should surely bleed even though he knew it was cloth and wood. A line snapped, whipping up and then down.

Mitch started to get to his feet. His plane was just beyond. If he could get to it, get into the air face to face with these sons of bitches….

"Get down!" Gilchrist yelled, knocking him down again as a second plane began its run. "Roll!"

Mitch did as he was told, rolling hard to the left. It was curiously unreal, watching the dirt kick where he had lain.

The runway had been flattened out with heavy equipment, but at the edge there was a ditch a couple of feet deep, just a leftover from the construction process. They rolled into it together, dirt in his eyes, dirt in his mouth.

The third Austrian dived from the other side of the field, sweeping toward them across the flight line. Sparks, fire…. Another plane exploded in flames, the bullet hitting the gas tank. Nobody'd made it to the flight line, so at least nobody was trying to taxi it, Mitch thought. He put his head down and stayed down in the ditch as the plane's machine gun wove its pattern of destruction, and then the bullets were past.

Mitch started to say something, or maybe Gilchrist did, just as the plane swept over. Something fell with a hollow, bouncing sound.

A grenade.

It landed just between them in the ditch, four feet from each, bounced twice and came to rest.

Time elongated. There were two seconds left, maybe three. Five or six beats of his heart, and then his life was over. There was no way he could reach it in time. There was no way Gilchrist could. It was going to explode right between them, and there was no cover, no time to run, no time to do anything other than scream. He looked at Gilchrist, and it seemed every movement took forever, slow as moving under water.

Gilchrist's hand rose, palm out, as though he could shove the grenade away though it was further than he could possibly reach, some nonsense word shouted at the top of his voice.

The grenade bounced. It turned, bounced once more, over the lip of the ditch onto the dirt above. Mitch turned his head down just as it exploded, dirt showering down over them both in a brown rain.

Time ran normally again. The plane continued on, pulling up as it passed over the buildings at the end of the field, a bright dot in the air, yellow with a knight's helmet painted on the tail.

"You ok?" Gilchrist yelled. At least Mitch thought he was yelling. His ears were still ringing.

"Yeah."

And there was the heavy
boom, boom
of the artillery, the rattle of machine gun fire. They were getting some ground cover at last. The yellow biplane lifted into the blue sky, rising out of reach of the guns.

Gilchrist was already scrambling to his feet, running out onto the flight line to see the damage. Mitch stilled his hands and took a deep breath. Over. It was over, and he was fine. Somehow.

He should have let it drop. But replaying the moment over and over all afternoon, Mitch couldn't see how it happened. The grenade fell into the ditch between them. It bounced twice. It came to rest. And then it moved again, bounced straight up, turned in the air, and bounced out of the ditch. That was flat out impossible. There was no way in the world the grenade could have moved like that. But if it hadn't, he'd be dead. Gilchrist had done something. The colonel had done something that saved his life.

Mitch waited until after dinner, until the lights of fat oil lamps shone out through the full dark, lighting canvas tents like lanterns incongruously arranged for some kind of party along the edges of the field. Gilchrist's was on the end. Someday they'd have better quarters, hopefully before winter came, but for now it was tents. Mitch called out from outside as was proper. "Colonel Gilchrist? May I have a word with you, sir?"

"Come in."

Gilchrist was sitting at his folding table, papers and maps spread out, the lamp making a halo of light around his prematurely gray hair, his young, unlined face. He didn't look up. "Sorley."

"How did you do that, sir?"

"Do what?" Gilchrist still didn't look up, but Mitch saw him hesitate.

"With the grenade," Mitch said.

"I didn't do anything. It bounced." Still didn't look up.

Mitch straightened his back. "With all due respect, sir. That's not what happened."

Now Gilchrist did look up, meeting his eyes squarely. "Sorley, in combat the eyes can play tricks on you. Sometimes you think you see something and you don't, just because it's a high-pressure situation. The grenade bounced. Lucky for us."

And that was where he should have left it. He should have said, "Thank you, sir," and gone out. But that wasn't what happened, and he knew it. Something wonderful had happened. Something amazing. And he was going to know what it was.

"That word you said," Mitch said. "That's what caused it." He swallowed. "You saved my life, colonel. Thank you." Gilchrist didn't say anything, just sat there with a curious expression on his face, and so Mitch plunged on. "I know you did something. I don't know what. But if you hadn't I wouldn't be here now. I want to know how you did that."

"Do you?" Gilchrist asked. His voice was low and conversational, but a shiver ran down Mitch's spine. "Do you really?"

"I want to know," Mitch said.

"To know what?"

"Everything." There were so many things he wanted, so many corners of the world unexplored, so many amazing things, horrible and good at once that ninety years wouldn't be enough to grab them all, and he'd nearly run out of time here, today, twenty-five years old. "How did you do that? What was the word you said? Can you teach me to do that?"

"The word has nothing to do with it," Gilchrist said. "It's just a tool, a focus for natural ability. And no, I can't teach you. Not that. Not unless you're already inclined that way."

"What is it?"

"It's called telekinesis," Gilchrist said. "Moving things with your mind. And I didn't know it would work, not for sure." He grinned, suddenly looking young despite being an old man of thirty-three. "But mortal fear is a powerful incentive!"

"You didn't know it would work?"

Gilchrist shook his head. "It was pure reflex. A Hail Mary pass. That was the only way to reach it in time." He shrugged. "Good thing it did, for you and me both."

"And this is…" Mitch searched for the words, pulled out of myths and family stories both. "This is like the Second Sight or something. A thing that you have to have naturally."

"And what do you know about the Sight?" Gilchrist asked.

"It runs in families. Women mostly. My grandmother…" Mitch stopped, aware he was about to sound crazy. "My grandmother could tell the future. She was a Scot. She said it came down her line from a farmer's daughter accused of being a witch who hied off to the colonies one step ahead of the law." Gilchrist was just watching him. He sounded like an idiot. "I haven't got it or anything," Mitch said quickly. "It's just a myth."

"All the myths are true."

Gilchrist's voice was perfectly even, a statement as bald as if he'd said the weather would be clear tomorrow. All the myths are true. A hundred thoughts ran through Mitch's mind in that moment, gods and sea monsters and witches calling down fire, vampires and nightmares and portentous dreams of strange countries under blazing dawns, legends and histories and stories half remembered, the dreams that you spin as a child half asleep when knights on white horses appear out of the fog.

"All of them?" Mitch said.

Gilchrist grinned. "Almost all of them. The world is an amazing place for those with eyes to see."

"You saved my life with telekinesis."

"And my own," Gilchrist said. "Lucky thing, huh?"

"Tell me what it's like."

Gilchrist blinked. "What?"

"What it's like. What it feels like to do that. I want to understand." Mitch felt like he was flailing, looking for the words, the magic words that would unlock everything. "I want to know."

"It feels good," Gilchrist said. "Right. Big." He paused, as though he were looking for the words himself, like he'd never answered this question before. "Like being more yourself than you've ever been before."

Mitch nodded slowly. "I want that," he said.

Gilchrist leaned back on his camp stool, crossing his arms across his chest. "And what would you do with it if you had it, Sorley?"