The Philosopher's Flight

by Tom Miller

  My name had followed only Danielle Hardin and Senator Josephine Cadwallader-Fulton. Rarified company.

  “I can’t believe the police are going to allow it to be published,” Ma said.

  “It’s the ramblings of a dying man,” I answered. “He didn’t know what he was saying—half the people on it are already dead. The Trenchers will see it for what it is. They’re not going to dig up Comfort Tyndale just to kill her a second time.”

  But despite my bluster, I knew the Trenchers were salivating over the list. “Holy writ,” the Boston Informer had called it, part of the rumors and innuendo surrounding Gannet’s death. Why, it was common knowledge that a Bible in his pocket had stopped two bullets! Barely had the wind knocked out of him, but the hospital smokecarvers engineered his demise. Only the power of the good Lord kept him alive long enough to record his final prophecy.

  It would make me a marked man. Dar, too. She and her father had holed up in a hotel—even I didn’t know where—with the Corps sending a detail to protect her. We’d exchanged messages, but I hadn’t been allowed to see her.

  According to the Trenchers who’d been captured, they’d been watching Danielle’s apartment and had planned to attack the next morning along with another half-dozen men in hopes of taking her alive. But then I’d visited and the opportunity to eliminate both the Hero of the Hellespont and “the deviant male” who had defiled the blessed Gannet with a sigil had been too good to pass up.

  My favorite of Addams’s men, who’d been guarding the front door, had been shot and killed when the first wave of Trenchers rushed him. Gannet’s acolytes, however, had all survived. The sniper on whom Astrid had dropped the powder bag was paralyzed below the neck; the man Dar had hit had been blinded, both his eyes shredded by the birdshot.

  As I’d had time to reflect, though, my own actions frightened me more than any of the rest. How indifferently, how automatically I’d gunned Gannet down. In all my hours of imagining horrible ends for him, I’d expected to feel celebratory, self-righteous, smug. Instead, I was left with a gnawing ache right in my middle.

  The police had called it the most justifiable case they’d ever seen. But I could have dropped out of the window, even if it meant a broken leg. Gannet would be rotting in jail on three charges of attempted murder, instead of being held up as a martyr.

  “You wouldn’t have wanted him in court,” Mother said. “A chance to rant in front of an audience? It would have done more harm than good.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Might have been safer for me, though.”

  “The Trenchers won’t be able to touch you once you’re with the Corps,” Mother replied. “They’d have the fury of a thousand smokecarvers on them.”

  “The training officer on the message board last night agreed,” I said. “But she thought a change of name might be prudent all the same. I hope you don’t mind.”

  And then I felt very shy.

  “Did you take Beau’s name?” Ma asked.

  I nodded.

  “I went by Mrs. Canderelli for a time. It’s damn hard to spell.”

  Mother sighed and kicked a stone clear of the path.

  “Robert Canderelli was the name on your birth certificate,” she said. “I changed it to Weekes when we moved back to Guille’s Run after the Second Disturbance. It was simpler that way. Too many wanted posters with the name Canderelli.”

  “Was that his real name?” I asked.

  “God, no. His family caused all sorts of trouble—he had a few different names growing up in Santiago. Canderelli is the one he liked best.”

  “So, what does that make me?” I asked. “Half-Chilean?”

  “It makes you his son,” Mother said. “And mine. He would have been proud as hell. I am, too. But I’m terrified of what’s going to happen to you. It’s an evil thing—over there and back here. It works evil on every soul that touches it.”

  “Well, you came through it okay.”

  “I came through it mean. I wasn’t hardly a mother to you.”

  “Ma . . .”

  I put my arm around her shoulders and we stared out at the water together.

  “A man ain’t supposed to say his mother’s his hero,” I managed before my voice cracked. “But I never wanted no hero but you.”

  • • •

  I saw Ma off to the transporter arena that evening and returned to my apartment to find Unger in an agony of indecision, all 159 bow ties spread across his bedroom. He looked me over with distress. “Jake is coming for us in twenty minutes! You can’t possibly mean to go dressed like that.”

  Radcliffe’s end of the year party was being held at the Smoke and Mirror, the most chic venue in town. It served as a wild celebration of the end of classes, a “bon voyage” for the Contingencies heading to their jobs, and a more sober farewell to the outgoing corpswomen.

  I hadn’t, until a few hours earlier, planned to go. I had no desire to face my classmates. The attack had violently upset Radcliffe’s student body; the volunteer campus patrols and nightly reports of suspicious men had only just begun to die down. Everywhere I went, they pressed me for details. Was it true I’d murdered a man in cold blood? Had Dar mistaken me for one of them or did I think she’d shot me on purpose? Had I seen Gannet in his death throes, all bloody and gasping and crazed?

  Then in our last exchange of messages, Danielle had declared she would attend. A few pictures of me, alive and healthy, for the Globe, she’d explained. Put a little spirit in my fellow Cliffes. Talk to you for a minute, face-to-face, if you’ll let me.

  The thought of her made me queasy. I hadn’t seen Danielle since Tillie had flown her out the window—Addams had kept us in different buildings to ensure that a single Trencher attack couldn’t kill us both. Our conversations by message had been terse. We’d avoided talking about Gannet. Or the Corps. I was frightened of what Danielle might say to me but I couldn’t bear not to see her.

  I did my best to tamp down my feelings. I straightened my shoulders and put on my gray suit and a red cravat in lieu of a bow tie—not that anyone was at risk of confusing Unger and me.

  We heard the growl of an engine followed by honking: Jake, feverish with delight, piloting Radcliffe’s custom Packard automobile, Addams sitting stiffly beside her. They’d been doing lessons, ostensibly in recognition of Jake’s valorous action during Gannet’s attack, but also, one suspected, because Addams wanted to bask in a little secondhand joy.

  Mayweather was in the backseat smoking a cigarillo. Unger and I piled in with him. Jake pulled away from the curb and floored the accelerator, grinding the gears.

  “Easy!” Addams barked. “Let the clutch out. No!”

  “She never handles quite the way you think she will the first time,” Mayweather jibed.

  “And the last time if you’re not more careful than that,” Addams said. “Turn it, no, toward—toward—”

  She lunged for the steering wheel.

  “We’re worried these are going to replace hovering?” I wondered aloud, my knuckles white with holding on to the seat.

  Jake drove us, without actual damage to the car or our persons, to an anonymous building in the North End. There was no sign to denote the place, only a glass door and two large windows blacked out with crepe paper.

  Addams positively refused to allow Jake to park. Mayweather offered Jake his arm and the two of them entered the building.

  “I’ll be arranging your ride home, Sigilwoman Wee—er, Canderelli,” Addams said to me. “Check in before you leave. Miss Hardin will be along in a few minutes. She’s finishing up photos for the newspapers.”

  Freddy and I went inside.

  My first impression of the interior was of overwhelming darkness. The walls, the floor, the tables and chairs, the bar—all of it was painted a black of such richness and totality that light simply died when it struck. Only the barest hints of edges. Yet I could see Unger clearly and the liquor bottles sitting on their nearly invisible shelves.

  The ceiling p
rovided the illumination. It was a vast, glowing, philosophically built mirror that stretched the length of the dining room. But the closer I looked, the less sense it made: I couldn’t see my own reflection in its surface. Unger and the hostess weren’t in it, either. Faint lines of color rippled across the image—a tapestry woven of light-emitting smoke, perhaps? The difficulty of synthesizing threads in a thousand different colors, much less annealing them, would be extraordinary.

  Unger coughed. The hostess was holding his coat and hat. I handed over mine as well. “The ceiling,” I said. “Is it a fluorescent particulate thread in a Robechon matrix?”

  “Goodness, no,” the hostess said, looking pleased with the question. “Though that’s not the worst guess I ever heard. Come back in fifty-nine minutes and then you’ll see. If you look quickly—” She pointed.

  In the artificial image I saw the barmaid enter through the back hallway with a rag and wipe down a section of the bar where the black was a little lighter. Then she exited. But when I looked back at the real bar, the barmaid was standing right there, mixing a drink.

  “So not a tableau,” I murmured. A recorded image? I hadn’t known such a thing was possible.

  Unger and I walked down a hallway lit only by thin, luminescent strips of wainscoting. The corridor ended in a V. To the left, glowing cursive letters in red spelled out HELL; glowing blue ones on the right read HEAVEN.

  “Shall we start at the bottom and work our way up?” suggested Unger.

  Hell had been cleared for dancing. A piano player banged out a spirited tune and everyone was doing a fast, high-stepping waltz I’d never seen before. The room’s only obstruction was a huge crystal punch bowl mounted atop a pedestal. It contained a liquid that changed colors right on down the rainbow, from red to ultraviolet and back again. Intrigued, I ladled out a glassful and sipped at it. When it was red, it tasted of tropical fruit and grain alcohol. When it was orange . . . exactly the same. I’d been hoping for a full complement of flavors to accompany the colors, but it seemed there were limitations to what even smokecarvers could do with mixed drinks.

  I put the glass to my lips again and found it empty.

  “Son of a gun!” I muttered.

  “You’ll want to drink it quickly!” called Krillgoe Hosawither, who cut quite a figure in a Navy dress uniform rather than his absurd Cocks regalia. He and his dance partner spun toward me. “Once it hits your glass, it evaporates at the end of the cycle.”

  Anyone who wasn’t dancing was looking at the ceiling, waving and gesturing or acting out elaborate pantomimes. Rather than our own reflections, the ceiling displayed an entirely different group of people who waved back from a brightly lit white room decorated with puffy clouds.

  Simultaneous two-way visual transmission, Unger explained. A network of smoke fibers absorbed the light on one side, shuttled it over to the other, and re-emitted it.

  I picked out Jake in the reflection. She motioned to come over.

  I exited Hell, turned the corner, and entered Heaven, where a string quartet played a musty old piece. There were tables set with lace doilies and flutes of champagne in neat rows. Jake sat slouched in a chair, her feet up on the table, smoking one of Mayweather’s cigarillos. She reached into his breast pocket and proffered one to me. I held it, unlit, between my teeth.

  “You’re shipping out tomorrow?” she asked.

  “First thing,” I replied. “Essie and I will take the same transport down.”

  “You’ll need this, then,” Jake said. “From me and the Threes. Come safe home.”

  Jake handed me an old bronze coin the size of a nickel that had been mounted so it could be worn on a necklace. It showed the profile of a handsome young man with curly hair who wore a bowl-shaped helmet with wings—the god Hermes, the original flier. I strung it beside the vial of silver chloride on my chain and tucked it beneath my shirt. One couldn’t possibly have too many good luck charms.

  “Most of the sigilwomen carry one of Athena—I already gave Essie hers—but that didn’t seem right for you,” Jake said.

  In the ceiling we spotted Essie back in Hell, dancing closely with Krillgoe, who’d changed partners. Any girl’s dream, but who could have imagined Essie being audacious enough to ask him a month ago? Or even one minute ago?

  “Though one suspects Ensign Hosawither is only Sigilwoman Stewart’s second choice for a dance partner,” Mayweather whispered.

  “Brian!” Jake said.

  Mayweather stubbed out the end of his cigar. “They had a fling, you know, in the old books. Clever Hermes and solid, sensible Athena, shield and spear and all.”

  “Athena was a maiden, unless I misremember,” I said.

  “I’ve heard that one before,” chuckled Mayweather.

  “No,” Jake said. “Your job is to be her big brother. You bring her back alive. I can’t go through all that again, especially not for Essie. Or for you.”

  Mayweather squeezed her shoulder.

  We watched in the ceiling as the song ended and Krillgoe gave Essie a peck on the cheek. They separated and young Miss Stewart retreated to a corner of the room to whisper with several other girls. Standing nearby was Danielle.

  The Hero of the Hellespont stood rigidly, arms crossed, scanning the dance floor. As if she could sense my presence, Dar glanced up at the ceiling and caught me watching her. I looked away.

  “A goddamned tragedy,” Mayweather lamented. “His stock is never going to be higher and instead of playing the field, here he sits, pining for—”

  “You should ask her to dance,” Jake said.

  Dar looked healthy and well rested. She was dressed luxuriantly in a yellow silk dress and white gloves, hair done up, rouge on her cheeks. She wore an almost maternal expression of concern—these were her girls, her charges to protect, even if they didn’t know it. Whoever was protecting her, I couldn’t spot.

  “Ask her to dance,” agreed Mayweather.

  So I did. Dar saw me reenter Hell with more than enough time to turn and run or transport herself home. But she held her ground.

  “Would you like to dance?” I asked grimly.

  She opened her mouth then shut it again with a look of incredulity not so very far removed from a smile. “You want to dance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know how?”

  I looked around at the couples holding each other close, rocking and turning to a slow, warm song. “I can manage.”

  I took her familiar hand in mine and put an arm about her waist. Her hair brushed against my cheek and caught on the bandage.

  “God, I’m sorry about your face,” she said.

  “My fault,” I said. “I should have ducked better.”

  “I just can’t believe it. You or me or any of it. Robert, when they came through the door . . .”

  “I know,” I said.

  We turned a couple of circles together. “Are you doing okay?” I asked.

  “I’m better than I was. My dad’s been an absolute rock. He says he doesn’t know if everything happens for a reason, but that he wouldn’t have us change a single thing we did.”

  I nodded. “How’s Mrs. Hardin taking it?”

  “Badly. It’s the sort of thing Mom always said would happen. When I left home, she was worried sick about Boston and then petrified about Gallipoli. She’s sure Washington will be even worse, a den of iniquity and peril. When I told her we weren’t together anymore, it was the maddest I’ve ever seen her—she wanted to meet you.”

  “Probably safer for me that I didn’t.”

  “Yes! Nobody’s ever been good enough for her little girl. Then when I’m not with someone, she worries philosophy has turned me on to women.”

  Dar shifted her hand to a more secure grip on my shoulder. “So,” she said. She had a nervous little smile. “I’ve decided that for a liar and a coward, you’re awfully brave. Even with the bandage, you’re middling handsome. So, I’m going to reserve the right to visit you.”

  That was so
unexpected as to be incomprehensible.

  “Where?” I asked. “In France?”

  “Of course in France! I can hop the transatlantic chain to Le Havre. From there, a good transporter can always find a way into your tent in the middle of the night. Your wingmates wouldn’t even know.”

  I grinned at the thought. “That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

  “It’s a terrible idea. You’re also not going to say no after you’ve been over a few weeks.”

  “Paris?” I countered. “I’ll get a couple days of leave every three months.”

  “Name the date.”

  The weight of what Dar was saying came roaring over me. The smell of her jasmine perfume filled my nostrils and the semi-vaporized smokecarver alcohol burned through my veins. I gave a guttural yowl, caught her under the arms, and spun her round and round. We were both laughing like maniacs and fighting back tears.

  “I’ll write you every day,” I said.

  “No, you won’t. But frequently? Please?”

  I stepped on someone’s foot and nearly dropped Dar. People were staring. I didn’t care. I set her down and kissed her until I had to come up for air.

  “When I get back—” I said.

  “Don’t,” she said. “We’ll talk about it when you get back.”

  “But what does that make us?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t have a word for it. I mean, if you meet a pretty little Sigilwoman First Class over there, I expect an invitation to the wedding. But if you don’t—”

  I leaned back in and kissed her again.

  In the months that followed, when the thunder of distant artillery kept me up at night, when I sat in the mess tent scrubbing bloodstains out of my backup skysuit, when I went into no-man’s-land to retrieve my lieutenant’s body on a day my division suffered a third of our number killed or wounded—always, that was the kiss I remembered.

  Then Unger was pulling at my elbow, worked into a lather about something, something I absolutely had to see.

  “Good-bye, Robert,” said Dar. “Come safe home.”