by Tom Miller
32
We have Communists in New York City, anarchists in Chicago, and rebels in Mexico—and Miss Hardin presumes to lecture me about her rights? She and her mob have no more right to perform sigilry in the street than I do to commit murder. She has no more right to vote in a general election than does a child.
President Herbert Hoover, Speech Regarding Executive Order 5901, May 18, 1932
WITH A LITTLE LESS than two weeks left before the Cup, I settled out at 375 miles per hour, just as Unger had predicted. My flare and settle was sharp, my ground technique strong, my weight at goal.
The University of Detroit decided to end their boycott and participate in the Cup after all. Their protest, it appeared, had been in part a ruse—they’d wanted to delay releasing their list of fliers until they could be sure of having Melissa Pitcairn, the former hover world-record holder, back from France, where she was flying with R&E. So, the Cup would take place with all the usual schools participating. Suddenly, the aerodrome felt friendlier.
I received my Contingency assignment: courier for the Washington branch of Durstman and Associates. Dar was overjoyed.
“You’re as good as living at my apartment some weeks already,” she said to me. “Maybe in a year, if you like it in Washington . . . if you decide to stay . . . we could find a place together. It would be a scandal, but—”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “Not if . . .”
Neither of us needed to say it.
Danielle wrote a well-received article for the Globe on the rescue at the Castle Club. Senator Cadwallader-Fulton called it the finest piece by a philosopher since the war in Cuba. Danielle decided she ought to write a longer one on Gallipoli and so we went to a little shop in Inman Square to buy her a typewriter.
We squeezed down the aisles together, Dar running her fingers over one typing machine after another, delighted by the way the letters were mixed up. Moved by the spirit of extravagance, she chose an Underwood No. 5—to my eye, the largest and heaviest model in the entire shop.
“This has got to weigh thirty-five pounds,” I complained as I hauled it home for her.
“That’s why I’m keeping you!” she said giddily. She grabbed my arm and danced a few steps along the curb, then leaped down to the street and back onto the sidewalk.
We rounded the corner by her apartment.
I smelled the smoke before I saw it. I could barely move. My lips felt stiff as concrete.
“Run,” I managed. “Run!”
In front of Dar’s building, on a flimsy wooden scaffold, a woman-sized effigy had been strung up by a noose and set aflame. A hand-lettered sign reading TRAITOR was propped up against the base.
I tried to pull Dar after me, but she twisted loose.
“No,” she said.
Dar strode toward the rapidly growing crowd of onlookers.
“They could still be here!” I warned.
“Oh, they’ve run away,” Dar said. “Or if they’re here, they only want to watch.”
I wasn’t so sure. I swept my eyes back and forth over the crowd, the rooftops, the doors and windows, searching for suspicious faces, for anyone reaching under a coat. I saw nothing. Or, rather, everyone looked like a potential threat.
In front of us, blue and yellow flames writhed over the manikin. It had been made from straw and rags doused in what smelled like kerosene. Dar surveyed the spectacle for a moment then turned to the crowd.
“You who did this!” she shouted. “You can go to hell!”
Dar kicked at the scaffold’s base. The burning figure swayed. She kicked again with her heavy-soled boot and the whole thing toppled over. One of her neighbors emerged carrying a bucket of water. Dar poured it over the still-burning dummy, which now lay sprawled on the ground. The flames spat and went out.
Dar took a penknife from her workbag and hacked the rope free of the effigy’s neck. She pulled it clear of the scaffolding and crossed its hands over its chest. Then she dragged the wooden beams into a pile, coiled the rope on top, and crowned it with the sign. She sorted through her handbag until she found a vial of mercury fulminate. Aiming at the pile of wood and rope, she popped the cap and drew wildly. It ignited.
Dar stood with hands on hips and reared back. “Do you hear me? Burn in hell!”
Her fists were clenched and her chin was quivering. She coughed and wiped her nose.
“Did anybody see who did this?” I called out.
“Don’t bother,” Dar hissed. “This is Boston. Nobody saw anything, nobody remembers anything. They never do. They hanged witches back in the day. They developed a taste for it.”
• • •
Several of Belle Addams’s well-prepared guards trundled us off to the dean’s office while Dar’s retaliatory blaze was still burning.
“This is my fault,” Addams said to Dar. “I’ve gotten too lax about your security. I’ll post someone outside your building for the next few nights, very visibly. When you go to or from the college, you’ll have an escort. On campus, you should go between classes with a group of girls, never alone. If the two of you are planning to go out this weekend, I’ll make arrangements for someone to follow. He’ll be discreet. These are standard, sensible precautions.”
“No, they’re not!” objected Dar. “What would a guard have done this afternoon, search everyone for matches?”
“Miss Hardin, I wish you would take this seriously. We don’t even know who’s behind this—whether the Trenchers are escalating or whether you riled up the Gray Hats with your last article. God knows which would be worse.”
“I am taking this seriously. I don’t care who did it. If I don’t go out in public or if I take a lot of armed men everywhere, then they’ve won. Because I as good as admit that a philosopher who speaks her conscience isn’t safe on the street in broad daylight.”
“If you end up injured, or worse, then they also win,” Addams replied.
• • •
I disassembled my revolver on Dar’s table to clean it. She watched with interest as I ran a wire brush down the barrel and wiped the crane and cylinder. I polished the silver plating and wiped down the pink handle.
“It’s pretty,” she said.
“Yup,” I said. “Ma carries an old Single Action Army—the Peacemaker, they called it. Big cowboy gun. Makes this one look like a child’s toy. If I were choosing . . .”
“Not the shiny little one that fits in your purse?”
“Uh-huh.” I added a couple drops of lubricating oil and reassembled it.
“Robert?” Dar said. “Promise you won’t kill anybody for me.”
33
I’ve served five terms—you know how much I hate asking for help. But when you’re allowed to run and forbidden to vote, that’s just intolerable. They keep telling me to be good, be polite, be a lady. So, pretty please, won’t you turn out on Tuesday to tell Herbert Hoover and friends that they’re gutless little sons of bitches?
Rep. Danielle Noor Hardin, Speech to the Providence Industrial Club, November 2, 1932
ONE WEEK LEFT UNTIL the Cup. I tried to set aside the effigy. Concentrate on flying. On R&E.
Monday morning, I found my makeshift changing room reeking of piss, my harness wet to the touch. I had no doubt who was behind it. Since my breakthrough, Rachael Rodgers had been even more strident in opposing my flying for Radcliffe. Plenty of my classmates still agreed with her.
I put on work gloves and picked up my rigging. To hell with them—I’d practice after I’d cleaned it. But Rachael, flanked by a dozen of her most ardent supporters, blocked the door before I could exit the building.
“What is that appalling smell?” Rachael asked. “Did you wet yourself?”
Several of them snickered.
“It appears someone urinated on my kit,” I said, trying to look perfectly unruffled.
Rachael put on a mock-sympathetic face. “Oh, you poor thing!”
The women stepped aside to let me through.
Once I had my b
ack to them, Rachael called out, “You piss on tradition, then piss on you!”
They each had a cup that they flung in unison. It might have been urine, human or otherwise, or water treated with yellow food coloring, a splash of ammonia, and a drop of methyl mercaptan. But it showered down on me and stank to high hell.
“Oh God, Robert!” Jake said when I found her with the set of booms she and Francine were arranging to practice their slalom flying. “What is that—”
“What’s the best way to get urine out of harness leather?” I asked her.
Jake was kind enough not to ask for more detail. “Mild soap and water.”
I cleaned up my rigging and myself, then went back to the aerodrome. I mopped the floor, washed the sheet that served as my divider, hung up my tack. Just think about doing that twice and see which one of us people call depraved.
The following morning, I found my custom harness cut to pieces. Mother’s old Springfield getup, which I kept as a backup—the one she’d brought back from Cuba—was slashed to ribbons, too. My spiral-cut regulator, smashed.
“Oh, Weekes,” Brock said. She was deadly calm as she sorted through the pile of shredded straps and broken pieces of metal. “You might have told me about yesterday. We ought to have locked up— Oh my.”
“Yup,” I said.
It was like looking at a dismembered friend. My face went hot.
Not in front of Brock, I told myself, not again.
“Use one of the McCoule rigs with a chest expander?” I suggested. My voice cracked only a little.
“Oh, hell no!”
• • •
I broke down in Dar’s arms. Stupid, humiliating sobs. She held me until the spell had passed.
“We could go away for the weekend,” Dar suggested. “You tell me where. The mountains. New York City—we could see your sister. Go away and not hear a single word about the Cup.”
“You never hid,” I said.
Dar ran her fingers through my hair. “I wouldn’t think less of you, Robert.”
“Yeah, you would.”
Dar looked sad and exhausted. “Then do it. And I’ll sit in the front row.”
• • •
Jake messaged every Harnemon’s depot she could think of. By seven that evening, the outlet in Santa Fe had found a DCI extended-body, spiral-cut reg in their warehouse, still in its original box. They sent it express transporter line.
“Hand delivery tomorrow morning,” promised Jake. “Don’t let it out of your sight.”
Which just left the problem of a harness. Professor Brock made special arrangements. At nine thirty that night she messaged me: My office. Now.
She had a short, bald man of about fifty years sitting beside her, engrossed in Unger’s pages of equations for converting push energy to hovering quanta. The family resemblance was obvious.
“Your brother?” I asked.
“Steven is the lead flight dynamics engineer at Northwest Aero,” Professor Brock explained.
Steven climbed to his feet and shook my hand. “The famous Mr. Weekes! We were all terribly sorry to hear about this morning. So many hours went into building that harness.”
“It was beautiful,” I said. “It was perfect.”
“Funny you should say that, because none of us around the office in Detroit thought so,” he said. “You were such an interesting problem. We kept coming back to what changes we’d make given a second opportunity, how we’d do it if price were no object. When we got Janet’s message, our ad man said we ought to consider it an opportunity. Outfitting what will be the two most recognizable faces in the Cup. We sketched an idea or two—”
He riffled through his briefcase, bringing out a reduplicated drawing: A man in a skysuit stood with his hands on his hips, four sandbags strapped across his chest. In front of him a small, thin woman was in the midst of a one-step, arm-up launch. Both wore full-body, form-fitting skysuits of a type I’d never seen before—the straps seemed to weave between layers of fabric.
The text ran: Meet Mr. Robert Weekes of Radcliffe College. He carried 180 pounds flush using our integrated cargo strap system during the 1918 General’s Cup. Flared and settled every landing. And who could mistake Miss Aileen Macadoo, world-record hoverer at 518 miles per hour? Northwest Aero’s low-drag construction helped her win a fourth gold medal—in the long course, no less!
In block letters at the bottom: NORTHWEST AERO: STRONG ENOUGH FOR A MAN. FAST ENOUGH FOR A LADY.
“That’s supposed to be me?” I asked, laughing. I looked like a giant carved from granite.
“We’ll take a few photographs, make it truer to life.”
I studied the text again. “Does that mean Macadoo’s flying the long course instead of the short?”
“That’s right,” Brock said. “Sacramento took a wee bit of umbrage at Detroit bringing home Melissa Pitcairn to compete. They one-upped them by switching Macadoo to the long course. I can only imagine how Detroit reacted.”
“Oh, we were already out for blood and that was the final insult!” Steven said. “Sacramento making a play to steal the gold from Missy the Missile, war hero and all.”
He took a set of calipers and began measuring my arms at two-inch intervals. “No allergies to spiders, I hope?” he asked. “Nickel? Latex rubber? And no objections to flying without boots?”
“None,” I said, still staring at the picture. “What’s it made of?”
“Cloth woven with the latest vapor deposition techniques. Smokecarved. All the best qualities of silk and steel. A hundred dollars a yard, but the publicity alone will be worth ten times that. We’ll reinforce the knees and ankles with piezo-kinetic threads that go stiff when you strike—you’ll be able to punch your landings and it’ll absorb the shock. We offered the design to Macadoo, but she wanted a shark-scale coating instead to improve laminar airflow. Makes her a touch faster.”
“Is all that— I mean there’s a rule against accepting money or gifts, right?” I asked.
Steven winked. “If you return the suit afterward, all you’ve done is provide a valuable service to the advancement of American sigilry by testing an experimental harness. Now, perhaps, in a couple months you’ll decide you’d like to make a little money by offering your likeness to our advertising campaign . . .”
• • •
Mayweather intercepted me the moment I emerged from Brock’s office.
“Could you draw a picture of it?” he pleaded. “Describe it to me at least?”
“Brian, how can you possibly know—”
“It’s a custom job by Northwest Aero, so it must be Steven Brock. It’s all over the betting sheets. Don’t tell me you haven’t looked at them.”
I hadn’t, though you could hardly go two minutes without hearing whispers about the odds on one flier or another—even Radcliffe’s most law-abiding young ladies liked to wager a few dollars on the Cup.
“It’s unethical for me to see it,” I said.
“Only if you bet against yourself,” Mayweather assured me.
He pressed a tip sheet into my hands. Four names caught my interest:
Macadoo, Aileen Marie. Sacramento. EVEN MONEY to win; 1 to 2 to medal. Fine racing form at 60 inches, 93 pounds . . . rumored to have broken her own record of 518 mph . . . plan for 3 hot landings . . . custom racing harness by Northwest Aero . . . three-time short-course gold medalist should win going away.
Pitcairn, Melissa Anne. Detroit. 3 to 1 to win; EVEN MONEY to medal. Not in peak racing condition after a year in France . . . 70 inches, 168 pounds . . . former record holder at 511 mph . . . plan for 6 hot landings . . . custom harness by Patterson & Lee . . . likely winner if ill fortune befalls Macadoo.
Stewart, Sarah Elizabeth. Radcliffe. 25 to 1 to win; 4 to 1 to medal. Well-balanced at 65 inches, 120 pounds . . . scouted at above 410 mph . . . plan for 10 hot landings . . . Menten-McClintock Type IX harness . . . unpredictable flier with only 2 years’ experience.
Weekes, Robert Arthur. Radcliffe. 100 to 1
to win; 10 to 1 to medal. Power flier at 721/2 inches, 189 pounds . . . verified at above 374 mph . . . plan for 10 hot landings . . . custom lifting harness by Northwest Aero . . . better bet if high wind or rough weather.
“Ten to one to medal?” I said. That was better odds than I would have given myself.
“You’ll beat both of Trestor’s fliers on speed alone, so everyone is saying sixth place for you. They’re wrong. I have a hundred dollars on you to finish third.”
“Brian!” I said. “I don’t need to know that. And that’s throwing away your money.”
“No, it’s basic psychology: Detroit’s number two knocks out Macadoo, and Sacramento’s number two retaliates—that’s all three of them injured or disqualified. Pitcairn squeaks through unscathed and Miss Stewart, provided she doesn’t stop to pray over the dead, takes second. You finish third.”
“That’s a very dramatic idea.”
“Unger agrees. ‘Most probable outcome.’ He’s got a hundred on you, too. We’re going to put someone at each of the checkpoints to tell you where things stand.”
“That’s absolutely forbidden.”
“No, coaching during the event is illegal. We won’t have Brock or your old lady shouting strategy, just a few like-minded young men to tell you how many seconds the next flier is ahead or behind. The crowd always yells that sort of thing, anyway. We’ll do it for Essie, too. Detroit and Sacramento will be doing the same for theirs. Really, I’m doing the Cup a favor: it would be unfair for Radcliffe to be the only school not doing it.”
“Yes, terrible that we cheat so poorly.”
• • •
During the days leading up to the competition, spectators from California and Michigan poured into the city. While Boston considered the Cup an annoyance to be dealt with once every four years, the more philosophical parts of the country looked forward to it—Detroit all but shut down during the event.
Some of the philosophical tourists went looking for trouble in the Trencher enclave in downtown Boston. In the clash that followed, the Trenchers stabbed three Detroiters. The next night two Trenchers ended up bonekilled.