by Eliot Peper
A heavy plopping sound brought her back to earth.
“We’re here.” Nell stretched and then ducked into the cabin. “I just dropped anchor.”
“Here” turned out to be fifteen meters offshore. Instead of a beach or a dock, waves broke against barnacle-encrusted boulders. Peeking over the tops of them was the air traffic control tower of Oakland International Airport.
Nell emerged from the cabin carrying a bright-yellow dry-bag. Then, in one smooth motion, she pulled off her dress.
“Take off your clothes,” she said. “You’re not going to want to be damp for the flight.”
Diana did as she was told, and Nell stuffed the clothes and briefcase into the dry-bag and strapped it shut. They climbed on the gunwale.
“On three,” said Nell. “One, two, three.”
The water was shockingly cold, driving the air from Diana’s lungs. They both came up gasping and laughing at the silliness of it. Needing to bike and sail and swim to the airport because the world had stopped working altogether. It was ridiculous. But it was also real. They reached the rocks in a few strokes and scaled them with extreme care, trying not to cut bare hands or feet on the vicious barnacles. Then they climbed over the fence at the top, and finally they were standing on the grass, runway after runway spread out before them, planes parked in place where the feed had left them.
Nell slung the bag off her shoulder and shook the hair out of her eyes. Her nipples stood erect atop bell-shaped breasts, and sunlight turned the droplets clinging to her trimmed pubic hair into rainbow prisms.
“Damn, girl,” said Diana. “You sexy.”
Nell chuckled. “Right back at you.”
Diana shrugged. “This bod might be tight, but it ain’t hot.”
Nell gave her a look. “That’s only because you’ve spent your life trying not to be noticed.”
Nell tossed her a towel from the dry-bag, and they dressed quickly before jogging off, shoes squeaking on the tarmac. It took them a while to get to their destination. Airports were big when you were a pedestrian. No planes took off or landed. No lights blinked from the towers. There was no real activity at all, though there must have been people holed up in the terminals. Soon they were past the terminals and in an area reserved for private hangars.
Nell pulled up in front of one. Panting, she pulled a physical key from her pocket and approached the human-size door next to the airplane-size hangar doors.
“You use an old-fashioned padlock?” asked Diana.
“Nobody knows how to pick mechanical locks anymore,” said Nell. “It’s better security today than it was when they were in common use.”
Inside it was dark, but the hushed echoes of their footsteps indicated a cavernous interior. Nell unbarred the hangar doors, and they pushed them open, straining against the weight, hinges squealing. Sunlight fell through the gaping opening, illuminating the treasure within.
“Lockheed P-38 Lightning,” said Nell in a reverential tone. Propellers tipped the ends of twin booms. Between them was a central nacelle with a cockpit under a bubble of glass. “It was the primary American long-range fighter during World War II. They used it for bombing, ground attack, and interception across every theater, but primarily in the Pacific. With the drop-tanks, you should have just enough fuel to make it to DC.”
The fighter gleamed in the angled light like a sleeping predator.
“This one was built in Burbank,” said Nell. “It’s a reconnaissance model. No armaments, but a much longer range because there isn’t as much weight. They put cameras on these things, used them to map out enemy movements.” She ran her fingertips along the fuselage, which was painted in what looked like thick black-and-white racing stripes. “These are the invasion stripes they used for the Normandy campaign.” The American World War II insignia was painted on each boom, and near one end of the wing, a white star in a midnight-blue roundel with white bars coming off either side. Belatedly Diana realized it matched the small pin Nell sometimes wore. “The commander of the Eighth Air Force personally piloted one over Normandy so he could watch the offensive. ‘Sweetest-flying plane in the sky,’ he said. He’s right. She’s stable, forgiving, and quiet thanks to those turbo-superchargers. I’ve replaced, repaired, and maintained every flap, bolt, and wire. That’s the only way to know she’ll fly like a dream.”
Nell scrambled up a ladder onto the wing and then gave Diana a hand up.
Diana squatted and placed a hand on one boom, imagining the engine roaring to life, the propeller blurring into motion, this manufactured bird of prey charging hungrily up the runway and into the empty sky it was engineered to dominate.
“Here,” said Nell, leaning into the open cockpit and tossing something to Diana.
Diana caught it. It was a battered leather flight jacket, complete with squadron patches and an elaborate tiger stitched across the back, rampant and glorious. She shrugged it on and looked up at Nell.
“You really think of everything, don’t you?”
Nell squatted in front of her, a delicate frown creasing her forehead. “Lots of people think Analog is nothing but a fetish, a way to put the past on a pedestal. But I wouldn’t be so devoted to something that was just a shrine to anachronism. That’s not what Analog’s about at all. It’s about using technology with intention. It’s about recognizing and respecting the hidden powers of the tools we use and how we choose to use them.” She placed a hand on the boom next to Diana’s as if checking the P-38 for a heartbeat. “How we do things shapes what we do.”
Diana zipped up the jacket. “I’ll take good care of her,” she said. “I promise.”
Nell sighed. “You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t know that already. Now let’s get you airborne, sister.”
CHAPTER 39
The yoke thrummed under Diana’s hands as the P-38 clawed into the sky. Her eyes danced across pressure gauges and dashboard indicators, tiny diagnostic windows into the workings of this antique marvel. She mentally cycled through every button, lever, dial, and switch, silently repeating Nell’s instructions, thinking through scenarios where she might need them, branding everything into memory.
Diana had proved herself a decent pilot during training. Even though nearly all aircraft were feed driven, Langley wanted its field officers equipped to handle as many situations as they possibly could. That included manual flight training for a wide variety of models. But that had been years ago, and she’d never flown anything remotely close to this venerable specimen. They hadn’t anticipated the possibility of escape from an aviation museum. Shame on them.
Takeoff had been hairy. After finding a stretch of empty runway, people pouring out of the terminals to gawk at the strange spectacle and Nell giving her two thumbs-up, the twin engines had howled like banshees as Diana opened up the throttle. She had got off the ground just in time to make it over the tail of a passenger jet sitting frozen on the tarmac farther down the runway.
Now she was airborne, curving around in a long arc over the bay to soar east over Oakland. The city shrank beneath her, and cumulus clouds towered above, their bulbous protuberances shaded in hot pink and saffron by the sun setting behind the Golden Gate Bridge.
Everything went white as she entered the belly of a cloud. The feedless P-38 became a microcosm of the feedless world, blinded by the hand of a fearful goddess. The cramped cockpit turned suddenly claustrophobic, the domed glass shrinking to entomb her in this aerial coffin that she should never have acceded to climb into. Having so far survived this day’s many dangers, it was suicidal to have boarded this death trap. Was she really after a solution? Or was she seeking annihilation instead of redemption?
But then the propellers shredded through the far side of the cloud, and the world opened up around her again, spires and arches and cliffs of colored fluff forming a vast celestial palace beyond even the intricate fantasias detailed in Dag’s notebooks. Even this world devoid of justice was occasionally blessed by beauty. Diana drank in the view, dousing the flames of a
nxiety with wonder.
This was the peregrine’s vantage she had envied. It was a relief to leave Dag, Nell, Rachel, Javier, Hsu, and the rest behind to debate their options and make their plans. She had convened them, offered them a new path forward, and now she had a mission.
Missions had always been handed down to her. That they came from above lent them an authority that confirmed Diana’s confidence. The job must be important because it came from Helen. The job came from Helen because it must be important. Whatever the specs, whatever it demanded of Diana, it was necessary and therefore undeniable. That was what chain of command meant, and chain of command was sacred. There was no need, no opportunity, to question. Diana could perform the most vicious acts safe in the knowledge that her conscience could remain clear. She had outsourced her moral compass to a higher power, Helen. Even as a freelancer, moguls and robber barons had set Diana’s agenda, dubbing her a pawn in their convoluted intrigues.
The second Diana had rescued Dag, that house of cards came tumbling down. This new mission bore no seal of approval but Diana’s own, and the prospect was scary and intoxicating. This was her life, and she would choose how to spend it, come what may.
The P-38 reached cruising altitude, and Diana double-checked the heading, matching it against the charts she and Nell had pored over in the safety of the hangar, mapping out her route to the nation’s capital.
Glimpses of farmland were visible through gaps in the clouds below. California’s Central Valley provided fresh produce to much of the country, massive industrial farms in a battle of attrition with drought, pests, and climate change where the prize was keeping millions of pantries full. Despite their apparent verdancy, Diana hated these vast tracts of monoculture. They were precisely the opposite of what she had tried to achieve in her greenhouse. They were a green desert, a poor, brittle ecosystem whose lack of biodiversity increased short-term yield at the expense of everything else.
Over the last few centuries, the world had become a monoculture of polities, every scrap of land divided by borders into countries where the nation state ruled. But the feed had no borders, and its digital fascia might support novel social institutions. Tomorrow’s announcement would inject new dynamism into the system, rebalancing incentives, freeing things up so that maybe, if they were very lucky, one day the world’s political ecosystem might resemble the wild perennial grasses she and Sofia had admired on the slopes of Mount Tam, diverse, messy, and resilient.
The Sierra Nevada mountain range emerged from the clouds ahead, the last rays of sunlight igniting the peaks like a menorah. Each candle snuffed out as the sun dropped below the horizon behind her.
How we do things shapes what we do. Diana remembered the enforced calm with which Rachel had taken the day’s devastating news. The old woman was an enigma that Diana was only starting to crack. The intensity with which she listened. The facility with which she let others lay out the arguments that were doubtless raging in her head. The conviction with which she confronted impossible decisions.
Commonwealth was everything to Rachel, and yet she had killed the feed in an instant once she realized it was necessary. Hours later she was risking everything, everything, yet again to sidestep Helen’s coup and challenge the entire geopolitical status quo on first principles. Do it. Diana had never expected her to say yes. It was a last-ditch effort, a sliver of hope in a bleak situation. It was too much to ask, too much to even internalize. And yet it was happening. All because Rachel was so ruthless in pruning her assumptions that she faced every obstacle as if it were unique. Despite her age, she didn’t live in the past, hobbled by the constraints of experience even as she harvested its benefits. It was awe inspiring.
It was full dark now. Peering down through the cabin window of a normal flight, Diana was used to seeing webs of lights spread out below. Sprinkled thinly across rural stretches, they amassed into sparkling terrestrial nebulae around urban centers. Not tonight. There was nothing but darkness below as stars began to wink to life overhead.
While there was still so much to do, she didn’t have time to dwell on the events of the day. Reflection would come later. For now, she had to prepare to meet the president of the United States. Diana marshaled her thoughts, calling to mind every detail she could remember about Lopez. There was the public stuff of course. When you ran for office, your PR people tried to buff up your reputation just as the opposition smeared it. One way or another, your life was on public display. But Diana knew more than what a civilian could find on the feed. She’d heard chatter about Lopez from staffers in Beltway bars, reviewed his government file when he’d become vice president, and kept her ear to the ground for rumors from her agent network.
Hours passed, and the stars wheeled above her.
The important thing wasn’t winning a trivia contest about Lopez’s background. It was figuring out what made him tick and how he made decisions. She compiled a mental model of his personality, dropped him into imaginary scenarios, and played out how he would respond, always ready to defend his theoretical actions with anecdotes from his past. Logic was important, but people put rationality on a pedestal. You didn’t change someone’s mind with a frontal assault, lobbing facts at them with an intellectual trebuchet. That was how you started a fight at a family Thanksgiving dinner. If you truly wanted to sway someone, you had to understand them first, figure out how they felt and why they felt it. Then you worked your way up from emotions and values to beliefs and points of view. The long route to decision-making was the only accurate one.
Diana yawned and took her body’s hint, popped the stimulants Nell had supplied, and washed them down with a swig from the water bottle at her side. This was a long flight, pushing the very limits of what the P-38 could handle. Exhaustion could kill.
She focused on the rumble of the engines, feeling the vibrations travel up and down her spine and numb her hands on the yoke. This was a beautiful machine, an angel of death built by the leading aerospace experts of its time to rain destruction from the skies. That Nell had offered her such a treasure was an extraordinary act of trust. That Nell had inferred Diana’s profession was an indication that her own security protocols needed to be improved and that Nell was even more dangerous and useful than Diana had come to assume over the years. Then again, the very fact that Nell knew more than she ought to was in many ways the truest reason why she’d offered to help. She knew Diana as few others did, even though her evidence was slim. The only place where Nell’s intuition had gone awry was in dubbing Diana a good person. Nell’s incomplete estimation won Diana a pass she didn’t deserve. She had done horrible things to good people all in the name of patriotism. When you owned your own decisions, you owned your own sins.
The moon rose above the horizon, yellow and fat, throwing its buttery light over the miles of country spinning past below. Diana checked her course. She was on track. Hour after hour after hour. The engines purred. The fuel gauge edged toward empty. The moon arced across the sky, painting the ragged clouds chrome, obscuring the stars with its brightness.
And then the radio squeaked and Diana nearly had a heart attack.
“This is Captain Lisa Woodward of the United States Air Force.” A burst of static. “Identify yourself and divert course to these coordinates.” A string of numbers. “I repeat, this is Captain Lisa . . .”
Diana craned her neck around to peer through the glass bubble of the cockpit. There, up and off her tail, were two sets of running lights. Shocked, she instinctively tried to summon the feed, but nothing came. Squinting back at them, she could make out their wedged shapes. Antique F-16s. Late-twentieth-century fighter jets. The military must have started to scramble whatever prefeed equipment they could find. They both rocked their wings and flashed their running lights. She looked down. That must be Cherrydale. She was so, so close.
For a mad moment, she imagined peeling off into a spin and trying to ditch her tail before coming into the city under the radar. But she was in a P-38, and they were in F-16s. Th
ey were air force jocks, and she was someone who had once gone through flight training years ago.
“. . . yourself and divert—”
Diana rocked her wings in response and clicked through. “Hi, Lisa, this is Special Agent Valerie Daniels from the San Francisco bureau of the FBI. I am on an emergency mission with critical intel about the feed disruption to deliver to POTUS. Thank you for your escort. Never thought I’d fly a relic.”
“Please divert course, and we will bring you down at Reagan.”
“Roger that.”
They must have cleared the runways. Reagan wasn’t far from the White House. It would do just fine.
The left engine coughed, and Diana’s eyes flew to the fuel gauge. Empty. The engine sputtered, quit, came back to life for a moment, sputtered, and died. The left propeller began to slow, the individual blades becoming visible as if emerging from a heavy mist.
“So, Lisa, this is a little awkward, but my left engine just died, and I don’t know if I have the juice to make it to Reagan.”
The Potomac appeared ahead, an inky serpent slithering through the capital.
“If you cannot make it to Reagan, eject and ditch the plane in the river. We’ll have someone come pick you up.”
The right engine coughed.
“I really, really can’t do that,” said Diana, thinking of the gentle way Nell had run her fingers along the underside of the wing. “I’m going to bring her down on the Mall.”