“All designed and made here in the Commonwealth,” Adrienne confirmed pridefully. “Except for some engine parts and the cockpit electronics. We could make the engine parts and do without the digital stuff, at need, even if we’re not up to making a C-130 or Black Hawk from scratch.”
Tom looked back at the Hummer parked beside the reception block while Adrienne went through her preflight check. Tom had taken the sensitive and heavy parts of their baggage himself, on the take-no-chances principle, since he was something of a demolitions expert and Roy wasn’t. Tully and Sandy were supposed to be bringing along the rest of the bags. Instead they were horsing around, something that suddenly developed into serious lip-locking. He sighed; on the one hand, he’d seen it developing over the past weeks, and he certainly didn’t begrudge his friend finding someone. On the other hand, when Roy fell he tended to fall hard.
Adrienne looked up from checking the engines. “Glad of that,” she said quietly. “Sandy deserves some happiness, particularly with someone who doesn’t care who her maternal grandmother was.” A slight snort. “We Rolfes had something similar in our early history, certainly!”
“Ah…” Tom hesitated. “Tully’s a great guy, you betcha, but he’s had… problems that way. Two divorces.”
“Third time lucky, maybe,” Adrienne said. “And it’s easier to stay married here. Fewer distractions; people stay put more.”
She gave a piercing whistle and the two broke apart; Sandra looked embarrassed and Tully didn’t, but then… I could count the number of times I’ve seen Roy embarrassed without taking off my socks, Tom thought. I mean, look at that Hawaiian shirt he’s wearing!
They loaded the luggage into a cargo compartment, through gull-wing doors that opened just behind the six-seat passenger cabin. Tom took particular care with several small brass-bound leather trunks. There was no problem with carrying weapons openly here in the Commonwealth; outside the towns and the more settled farming zones everyone went ironed, and even inside them it didn’t raise much of an eyebrow. The explosives and night-sight gear in those, though…
The rest of the gear was exactly what they would have packed for the holiday she’d described to Charlie Carson—the best way to look like you were doing something was to actually do it. Then he opened the door at the rear of the passenger compartment—it swung upward too—and handed everyone up. There was a wheeled stairway around somewhere, but boosting people gave him an excuse to grab Adrienne below the hips and lift her effortlessly high over his head.
“Show-off,” she said, grinning down at him.
“But you like what I show off,” he pointed out.
“Point taken.”
“Show-off,” Tully said as he settled into the seat behind the copilot’s, and Tom edged past him.
“You’re just jealous,” Tom replied. “But I forgive you. It can’t be easy being the world’s only hobbit….”
“I’m not jealous,” Sandra said, and winked. “I’m too fond of breathing un-squashed.”
“Not a problem,” Adrienne said, “when dealing with a gentleman.”
The four of them laughed easily.
Tom stopped after a second, thinking, Forgiveness is an odd thing, as he settled into the copilot’s seat and adjusted it—which required putting it nearly back to Tully’s knees. Leather sighed under him; the aircraft had an unfamiliar smell, less ozone and synthetics than he was used to, more wood and oil and metal. His mind went on working as he watched Adrienne lean out the window to check the control surfaces, her feet moving on the pedals and yoke. The way her neck curved, and the little wisps that escaped the braid she’d made of her bronze-bright hair…
Back right after we got shanghaied through the Gate, I could’ve sworn I’d hate her guts forever. Either I’m a very weak person, or love conquers all, or maybe it was just a snit. Or maybe I’m starting to like this place a lot and resent being brought here a lot less. I don’t like all the methods, but the results certainly aren’t bad. I like the way you don’t have to wade through layers of bureaucrats to get something done, for example. But is that because of the way John Rolfe built this place, or just the scale? With the population of one medium-small city, could you have as much paperwork?
The checklist went quickly. They put on their headsets; she handed ear protectors, the kind you wore on a firing range, to Tully and Sandra before she flipped the ignition switches. It had been a while since he’d flown in anything this small, and he’d forgotten how loud piston engines were, radials particularly, and particularly with the side windows open. The port engine lit with a bang and a burst of black smoke from the exhausts and then settled down into a steady rumm-rumm-rumm as the twin-bladed prop spun into a silver disk; then the starboard followed suit. The buzzing roar made speaking futile, although the muffling earphones helped; Adrienne’s finger pointed out the essential gauges—oil, manifold pressure, temperature, RPM.
“Ready for takeoff, tower,” she said.
“Cleared, No Biscuit,” a man’s voice returned casually. “San Diego’s expecting you sometime late tomorrow. Check in a couple of times, would you?”
“Roger, wilco,” she said. “Over and out, Napa control.”
Well, there’s another pleasant lack of formality.
Adrienne worked the throttles and turned the No Biscuit into the wind from the south. Tom felt a small flutter of excitement as the nose came up and the wheels came off the concrete; he always did at the beginning of a trip. With it was a bit of the acid apprehension he’d felt getting into transport planes, with a hostile reception waiting at the other end. It wasn’t as bad; they weren’t going to be seeing any action soon, but it was there. This wasn’t a vacation, after alclass="underline" It was an op, even if the strangest one in his life.
“Do the landing gear, would you?” Adrienne shouted in his ear. At his questioning look, she pointed to a lever between the seats.
“Well, we are back to basics,” he muttered unheard, gripped it, flipped off the restraining strap, and began pumping it up and down. The two wheels under the wings and the nosewheel in front of them came up with a rattle and clank of gears, closing with a sigh of rubber gaskets.
They climbed steadily to five thousand feet; it got chilly enough that he zipped up his jacket. There were patches of fog over the bay, and a dense bank of it veiling the site of San Francisco… or New Brooklyn, he thought. Most of the rest of the Bay Area was clear; he could see Mount Diablo to their left, and Mount Tamalpais over to the right in Marin, rising out of fog like a peak in a dream, densely green with virgin woodland almost to the peak. He grunted a little then, as if hit in the belly.
At his companion’s inquiring look, he shouted: “It keeps hitting me—what isn’t there.”
She nodded. “Same thing in reverse! Only it’s worse, FirstSide. Like seeing someone you love horribly disfigured.”
The plane kept out over the water, a thick fringe of marsh and tide flat ringing the larger bay, a deep indigo blue broken here and there by the whitecaps or the larger V of a ship’s wake. Once they lurched aside to dodge a flock of birds rising from the edges of the bay; dark shapes hurtled past, but nothing crashed into their wings or the props.