“Asked out. You mean asked to leave?”
“Just the opposite, really. When you take someone out, you go somewhere together. So you can get to know each other better.” Farley shrugged. “Heck, I’d ask you out even with old Iron Eyes to answer to, if there was any out to go to around here.”
She looked puzzled. “Are you talking about genetic compatibility assay?”
Farley laughed but felt his face get hot. “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. All I meant was that it must be hard for guys to, uh, take an interest, because your father’s kind of a hard—kind of stern,” he amended.
“Stern.” She laughed bitterly. “You could say that. Stern.”
“What kind of heat did you end up drawing for your little unofficial outing?”
“What punishment did I receive for my unauthorized reconnaissance?”
“That’s what I said.”
“I was put in charge of you.”
“No kidding. Of me, personally?” Farley rubbed his palms. “This could be fun.”
“I’m responsible for your crew.”
“Good god. I wouldn’t wish that on a lion tamer.”
She looked at him. “Could two different languages have all the same words in them, really?”
“Search me.”
She laughed. “I’ll have to take that as a yes.”
“Okay, I’ll try to tone it down.”
“Please don’t. I’m enjoying translating it into regular speech.”
Farley laughed. “Look, I’m not asking you to tell tales out of school, but I can’t quite get a reading on your—on the CO.”
“Do you mean you can’t tell what he’s thinking?”
“I mean that exactly.”
“And you think I can.”
“Well, I figure if anyone can get a fix on him, it’s you. We’re in a bit of a jam here, and I’ll take what edge I can get.”
“And here I thought you were interested in me personally.”
“How could I not be? You’re painted on my bomber.”
“I’d be flattered if it weren’t so disturbing.”
“I can’t explain it.”
“Even more disturbing.”
“I’d probably feel the same way in your position.”
“It’s there for luck?” she asked. “A decoration?”
Farley frowned. “Sort of. It gives an aircraft a personality. Not that they don’t already have them.”
She looked alarmed. “The aircraft is an AI?”
“Tell me what that stands for and I’ll tell you if it is.”
“Artificial Intelligence.”
Farley’s brows knitted.
“Inferential heuristics.”
He spread his hands. “Like you said: Same words, different language.”
“Idiosyncratic multipermutational correlatability?”
He cocked his head. “Are you having some kind of fit?”
“Tell me if your aircraft is an AI and I’ll tell you if I’m about to have a fit.”
“Well, aircraft starts with AI. Does that help?”
“It’s a machine with a brain of its own. Like the Typhon.”
“She’s got a personality,” said Farley, “but she doesn’t have a brain.”
“Well, no wonder you painted my picture on it.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You think I don’t have a personality, either?”
“I think anything more complicated than a paper clip has a personality. And you seem more complicated than a paper clip.”
“Talk like that just makes me want to dispense with genetic compatibility testing altogether and get right to it.”
Farley scratched beneath his crush cap. “Look, I’ll level with you, okay?”
“Okay,” she said. “Whatever leveling with me means.”
“It means I’ll be honest.”
“Have you not been?”
“No, I’ve been straight with you.”
“Is that the same as being level?”
“You’re making my head hurt.”
“Well. What do you want to level me with?”
“About the artwork,” he said. “I don’t believe in magic, or elves, or, or—”
“Inter-multiverse gateways?”
“—or whatever it is you just said,” Farley agreed. “But I can’t buy that it’s just a coincidence.”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence either,” she said. “But I’ll bet that both of us are willing to believe more things than we would have a few days ago.”
“I don’t have to believe in them. They’re right in front of me.”
“I believe that it’s foolish to ignore what the universe puts right in front of you.”
“The universe put you right in front of me, so I guess it’d be foolish to ignore you.”
She stopped walking and looked at him. Her smile was pure inscrutability. “And who are you to ignore the universe?” she said.
Farley stared at her. She really was quite tall.
The sun came on again.
“Twelve o’clock,” Wennda said brightly. “We’re late.”
Two hours later Farley walked back alone—amazingly alone—so engrossed in his thoughts that he was barely aware of his surroundings. Commander Vanden had grilled him meticulously about logistics. How would you go about retrieving your warplane with just your crew? What if I gave you weapons? What if I sent a team with you? If the aircraft is operational, how will you return to your own world? If it isn’t operational, or if you can’t recover it, are you willing to destroy it? Have you considered what would happen to you and your crew after that? Even if you make it back to the Dome, to live here you would have to be productive members of our society. You would have to offset your calorie intake. Could you do that? What are your men’s skills?
Farley had also been grilled by a man and a woman who seemed to be some kind of scientists. The commander had said they were going to work on the problem of getting Farley back to his own world. They asked long technical questions he didn’t understand a word of. They wanted to know about the vortex Farley had flown into, what had it looked like, what happened inside it, how fast had he been going, how high had he been, what instruments were and weren’t affected, what other details could he remember? Farley told them everything that had happened, from the radio static hours before they encountered the thing, to the electrical shutdown after they came out the other side. They found all of this fascinating, but had nothing useful to tell him in return.
Now Farley’s head was humming with possibility, with intrigue, with doubt. He wanted the CO’s help very badly, but he just didn’t know how much to trust him. There was no denying the help the Dome dwellers had provided, but there also was no denying it had been in their interest to provide it. Vanden might even want the bomber himself. Use it to blow up the Redoubt, get rid of the Typhon, gain access to the power source in the crater. Invade the castle, kill the dragon, steal the magic jewel from its hoard. He might send a team to help Farley retrieve the bomber, or he might send them to be sure that the bomber was destroyed if they couldn’t, and that Farley’s men would not be captured and interrogated about the bomber or the Dome. Given the narrow margins everybody here had to live within, it was even possible the old man wanted the bomber himself and wanted Farley and his crew out of the picture.
Farley couldn’t really blame him. Strangers in a powerful war machine had crash-landed on one side of a scale that had been precariously balanced for two hundred years. If he were in the old man’s position, he’d cover all his bases, too. But Farley’s chances of getting the Morgana back were a hell of a lot better with more troops and advanced weapons. Even if he couldn’t get a team to go with him, Farley wanted the gear. What would it do for the Allies if he could bring that chameleon armor back?