When the hand let go, Wally's leather tool case was flung in his face and the trunk lid slammed down on his head.
He woke up to the sound of traffic and the limo's quietly humming engine. It sounded like a lion purring.
This, thought Wally Boyajian with the wounded pride of a brand-new senior customer engineer, was not the way to treat an IDC employee.
He informed the F and L security men of this unimpeachable fact of business life after the limo coasted to a stop and the trunk lid was raised.
"Look," Wally had said in an agitated voice as he was bodily hauled out of the trunk and stood on his feet, "I happen to be a valued employee with International Data Corporation, and when I inform Mr. Tollini that you-mumph!"
"Have some cranberries," said the chauffeur, jamming a fistful into Wally Boyajian's open, complaining mouth.
Wally bit down. The cranberries were as hard as acorns. His teeth released bitter, acidic juices when they crushed the berries. The taste was not sweet. It was not sweet at all, Wally thought dispiritedly as they walked him, helpless and confused, over to the moon-washed expanse of an actual Massachusetts cranberry bog. It looked like a swamp into which a ton of reddish-brown Trix cereal had been dumped.
None of this, Wally thought, made him think of the holidays at all. In fact, it was inexcusably foreboding.
Crying, he began to spit the foul-tasting cranberries from his mouth.
Wally had almost cleared his mouth of the bitter crushed pulp when they made him kneel at the edge of the bog.
"You were supposed to fix it," a harsh voice said.
" I tried! I really did!" Wally had protested. "You need a media recovery specialist. I'm only a CE."
"You ever hear that saying: the customer is always right?"
"Yes. "
"Then you shoulda fixed the box. No questions asked."
Then they pushed his head into the cool foul water. The hand that had been around his throat did this. Wally knew this because he could feel the same strong thumb and fingers putting merciless pressure on his Adam's apple.
Wally did the natural thing. He held his breath. And while he was holding the precious air in his lungs, the others took hold of his ankles and wrists and slammed him spread-eagled on the edge of the bog, whose cold waters were getting into his nose.
He hoped it was a hazing. He prayed it was a hazing. But it did not feel like a hazing. It felt serious. It felt like he was being drowned for failing to fix a computer.
He held his breath because there was nothing else he could do. His limbs pinioned into helplessness, Wally simply waited for them to release him. He waited for the mean-spirited IDC hazing to be over with.
This did not happen.
By the time Wally Boyajian realized this would never happen, he was tasting the gritty brackish water of the cranberry bog in his gulping mouth. It infiltrated his nose, splashing down his sinuses and into his mouth. Then it was filling his lungs like triple pneumonia. The shock of the cold water made him pass out.
Fear of drowning brought him back around almost at once.
It had been too good to be true, Wally realized, sobbing inwardly. Now it was too unbelievable to comprehend. He was being coldly murdered.
In the last panicky moments of his too-short life, consciousness came and went as he made furious bubbles amid the hard bitter cranberries.
When the last bubble had burst, they consigned Wally Boyajian's limp body to the bog, where his decomposing remains would nourish the ripening cranberries and give flavor to the holidays, which he was destined never to experience again.
Chapter 2
His name was Remo and he was learning to fly.
"Let's see," Remo said, thinking back to what he knew about airplanes, which was precious little. "To make a plane go down, you gotta crack the flaps. No, that's not it. You lift the elevators. Right, the elevators."
Reaching down with a foot, Remo toed the elevators up just a hair.
The aircraft-it was a gull-winged scarlet-and-cream 1930's-era Barnes Stormer-responded instantly by going into a lopsided climb.
"Oops! That's not it," Remo muttered, removing his foot. He noticed that only one elevator actually went down.
The Stormer leveled off quickly as Remo tried to retain his balance against the fierce slipstream. When the plane was again on an even pitch, he tried again. This time he pressed down on both elevators with both heels.
The plane slid into a dive. The elevators fought him. Remo increased the pressure.
Up ahead in the Plexiglas cockpit, the pilot fought the controls. He was losing. He couldn't figure out why. Remo imagined it would come to him eventually.
Looking down, Remo realized he was no longer over the airport. He wanted to be over the airport. If he was going to land this thing over the objections of the pilot, he would need an airport underneath him, not a forest.
This part was easy. The plane was steered by the rudder, just like on a boat. Except that the rudder stuck up in the air and not down into the water. The rudder happened to stick up right in front of him, attached to the tail assembly, to which Remo clung with both hands. His feet were planted on the stabilizer.
He removed one hand from the tail fin and used it to nudge the rudder a hair.
The aircraft responded with a slow, ungainly turn. The distant airport came into view like an oasis of asphalt at the edge of the forest.
"I'm starting to get the hang of this," Remo said, pleased with himself. He would have been more pleased had he been able to catch up with the pilot before takeoff: Remo had missed the man at his house. The maid had cheerfully told Remo that her employer was on his way to do some sport flying. Remo had reached the airport just in time to have the taxiing 1930's-era aircraft pointed out to him.
Remo had sprinted after it without pausing to think his actions through. By the time he had caught up, it was lifting its tail preparatory to leaving the ground.
Impulsively Remo leapt aboard. It was an impulse he had begun to regret at twelve thousand feet.
In the cockpit, the pilot was now fighting the stubborn controls like a man possessed. He had no inkling that his tail empennage had acquired a human barnacle as he was taking off. Probably he would have dismissed the thought out of hand if he had.
The pilot, whose name Remo understood to be Digory Lippincott, had her throttled up to five hundred miles per hour, a speed at which no living thing could retain a precarious perch on the tail.
Yet, a mere nineteen feet behind him, Remo straddled the tail like a man wind-surfing. The right foot resting on the right stablizer and the left on the left. He had been holding on to the upright rudder post like a boy hitching a ride on a dolphin's back.
The slipstream plastered his gray chinos against his lean legs. His black T-shirt chattered like a madly wind-worried sail. His dark hair was combed back by the wind, exposing a forehead on which an upraised but colorless bump showed plainly.
Remo 's dark eyes were pinched to narrow slits against the onrushing wind. Under the high cheekbones that dominated his strong angular face, his cruel mouth was closed.
He was actually enjoying this. The plane was doing whatever he wanted.
"Look, Ma, I'm flying!" he shouted.
His shout carried right through the Plexiglas of the pilot's cockpit. The pilot look around. His mean eyes became saucers.
Remo saluted him with a friendly little wave.
Furiously the pilot flung back the sliding cockpit.
"You crazy guy! What're you doing on my plane!"
"Trying to land it," Remo called back over the rushing air.
"Is this a hijacking?"
"Nah. You're my assignment."
"I'm your what?"
"Assignment. I gotta kill you."
"By crashing us both?" the pilot sputtered.