Oil and grease, high-octane fuel. And a metal smell hard to explain. Aluminum, iron, blood.
He opened his eyes and looked down at the letter in his hand. Below the printed time and date were two handwritten words painstakingly formed in shaky block letters. Two last words from Lieutenant Gerald Broben, hellraiser, wiseass, zillionaire, philosopher on wheels, and the best copilot this or any other world would ever see.
Farley smiled at that final message even as it blurred before him.
TAXI MISTER?
*
She was skylighted against gray overcast, profile framed in the hangar entrance, angled upward as if eager to regain the sky. Pale light glimmered the contours of her graceful and aggressive frame, gleamed her cowlings and chrome and cockpit glass, glared the vivid painting on her nose. Undiminished by the decades, beautiful and sharp as she had ever been. A window looking out on 1943 in some other world than this.
“Hey beautiful,” the old man whispered to his bomber.
The restoration was perfect. She was the Fata Morgana he remembered, nothing more and nothing less. He had no doubt that Jerry’s drive and affection had made that happen, but Wen’s hand showed in every bolt and rivet.
Farley was out of the chair before the girl could help him up. He only had eyes for the bomber as he leaned on his cane and walked closer and looked up in wonder at the painting on her nose. Shorty’s artwork was even better than he remembered. The depth and subtle shading, the sharp clean lettering, the trompe l’œil floating rocks that might also have been flying fortresses. Above the artwork were sixteen stenciled bombs and six swastikas and one odd figure that looked something like a Thunderbird.
And Wennda. The figure’s glamour just as he remembered. The pose regal but sexy, features faintly stern. But this was no longer a painting that eerily resembled the woman he’d loved all his long life. This was a portrait of her. The likeness so perfect that it broke his heart.
Wennda. Her fretful expression concentrating on some problem. Her sudden and disarming smile when she solved it. The rich deep color of her eyes, glimpsed sometimes in a thin band on the horizon certain rare clear days at thirty-five thousand feet when the sun had dropped below the curve of the earth. The way she’d called him Farley until he’d said to call him Joe. The iron in her tone when she pressed home a point. The scent of her hair. The strength that had chosen duty to her people over feeling for him. The suspended moment in a hellbent chaos that permitted one brief kiss.
Farley had tried to tell himself that seven decades’ time had burnished one week’s memory of her like some bronze shield carried by a mythic hero. But he didn’t believe that for a minute. What he yearned for with a marrow-deep longing that had shaped the life he’d led beyond their parting was nothing more and nothing less than Wennda. You don’t misremember that.
Farley held his gnarled hand high to touch the underside of the bomber’s fuselage like some weary penitent arriving at a shrine. His fingers slid beneath the painted signature.
Shorty Dubuque
August 1999
The hand stopped. The old man stood open-mouthed. Then he smiled. “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” he said.
“Sir?”
Farley turned at the voice behind him. He had completely forgotten about the girl. He looked around to see the crowd gone, the gates closed, the bunting being taken down. A crew was setting up to roll the Mustang back into the hangar.
“Would you like to go back to your hotel, Mr. Farley?” the young woman said. “It’s been quite a day; you must be very tired.”
“The day’s got nothing to do with it,” said Farley.
“I’ll have them bring your car.” She started away, but the old man grabbed her arm. The strength of his grip surprising.
“I want to take one more look,” said Farley. He nodded at the bomber. “No crowds, no tours, no questions. Just me.”
The girl looked doubtful, then suddenly smiled. “Of course,” she said. “We’re not on a schedule.”
“That’s the spirit,” Farley said.
He let himself be helped as he went slowly up the portable steps below the waist door. In the hatchway he stopped and let his hand linger on the hull’s thin metal skin. Hello? Hello.
He looked back at the girl. “Do you think we could be alone for a few minutes?” he said.
“We are alone, sir. Take all the time you need.”
Farley gave a private smile. “I didn’t mean me and you,” he said.
*
The restoration work was utterly invisible. She was, simply, the bomber he had flown out of Thurgood in the last years of the war. The familiar mix of smells as much a part of her as the close-set aluminum ribs and rivets.
He glanced at Everett and Garrett’s gun stations on either side of the waist. Two big men had stood here close as subway commuters and fired back in calm desperation at murderous fighter planes.
He made his careful way around Martin’s ball turret bulging from the floor below. Someone had left a Coke can on the hydraulic rig where once a spider drone had torn apart a much-augmented human being. Farley pitched it out the left-side window and kept moving forward. He smiled at the hand-lettered sign on the door to Shorty’s radio room. Goodnight, Mr. Benny.
In Boney’s bomb bay Farley held his cane horizontal and made his way along the grab lines where those boys from long ago had done their desperate duty like construction workers treading I-beams five miles above the ground. In the pit he stepped around the top turret stand and looked up at the cockpit. His seat on the left, Jerry’s on the right. The round footwells in the bulkhead in between where Wen had stood monitoring the instruments like an overseeing lioness.
Farley set his cane above the footwells and hoisted himself up. He had a bad moment where he didn’t think he’d make it, but he told his body the hell with that. He picked up his cane and put both hands on the double handle and lowered himself into the pilot seat. The seat cushions stiff against his back and legs. It felt like being reunited with a missing limb.
Both throttles were in place now. Either Jerry had been bullshitting him about the cane, or Wen had replaced the one he’d supposedly used for the handle.
Farley looked at the empty copilot seat. The world was a better place with you in it, Jerry. Which means the world is worse without you. I know I sure am.
He leaned the cane against the bulkhead. Feet on the rudder pedals. Hands on the control wheel. Like putting on an old shoe. It felt like years since he had sat here. It felt like hours.
He closed his eyes and breathed the bomber in.
*
He dangled his feet over the edge and looked out across the vast blank white. She leaned against him and he put his arm across her shoulders. The warm press of her. Perfume of her hair.
She brought his hand forward to clasp in both of hers. The three hands old and spotted. He didn’t need to look at her to know that she was undiminished by the decades, beautiful and sharp as she had ever been.
“Was I really there?” he asked. “Were you?”
“You were always going to be there,” she said. “You remembered me before we ever met. An echo across time.”
He shook his head. “There isn’t any more time,” he said. “Not in this world.”
“Oh, Joe.” She squeezed his hand. “There’s nothing but time.” She leaned toward him and the sky paled white.
*
Hands still on the wheel. Heart a cauldron alloyed with grief and fear and hope. The fierce unlikely wonder of every hot and bloody beat.
There’s nothing but time.
Wennda you are not a forlorn hope. You aren’t a desperate wish I’m making. You’re as real as I am. Your face is painted on the ship that brought me to you. An echo across time. That future’s still out there somewhere. Because time’s not an arrow. It’s a shock wave. It spreads out in all directions at once. From every possible past to every possible future. Someone I’ve loved all my life told me as much. Will live to s
ay as much. Because she’s waiting out there, somewhere. Somewhen. There is out there a hub around which all times turn.
His grip on the wheel. A shape he still felt in his dreams. Hull and engine and flap and line. The emblem of his yearning heart tattooed upon her metal skin. His last friend from the world before. Joe Farley twenty-two years old and brave and afraid and immortal and frail and very far from home.
Beyond the windshield the overcast was finally burning off and what remained of day was clearing. In some other future up ahead a bright soul’s beacon shone. It would be beautiful at sixteen thousand feet.
He could hear the voices in his headset now. Boney and Plavitz and Shorty and Wen, Everett and Garrett and Martin and Francis. Everybody check in.
Gyros—uncaged.
Fuel shutoff switches—open.
Gear switch—neutral.
“Wheels up,” the old man whispered.
He felt the cockpit tremble as the Fata Morgana began to pick up speed. Slowly at first, then in a rush. The daylight brightening to a blinding white as the world he knew all dropped away.
acknowledgements
The experience, shared resources, and painstaking research of a huge number of historians, archivists, hobbyists, Youtubers, and forum members was invaluable during the writing of Fata Morgana. Listing all of them would amount to a lengthy bibliography; we can only offer our deep gratitude and appreciation for their work and their generosity in sharing it.
We’d also like to thank the following people and organizations:
The Collings Foundation (collingsfoundation.org), who maintain and operate the B-17G Flying Fortress Nine-O-Nine;
The creators of the website at vintagetin.net/B-17Nine-O-Nine/G/, for its amazing and invaluable panoramics of every location on the Nine-O-Nine;
The Experimental Aircraft Association (eaa.org), and the crew and volunteers of the B-17G Aluminum Overcast, for their hands-on approach and invaluable information;
Greg Kuster, Paul Hammond, and the March Field Air Museum (www.marchfield.org) for the generous loan of their beautiful B-17G Flying Fortress Starduster for our author photo;
Craig Good and Sean Bautista, for technical information related to piloting and large aircraft, and for catching manuscript errors large and small;
Jurgen Gross, Dave Williams, and David J. Schow, for answering questions as well as providing valuable input and unstinting support;
Adrian Smith and Lynn Bey, for their comments on an early draft.
If there is any level of detail and authority in this book, it’s because of the people and organizations listed above. Anything we got wrong is most definitely our fault and not theirs.
Special thanks go to:
Richard Curtis, our agent, for his instincts, enthusiasm, and tough love;
Michael Carr, editor extraordinaire, for his diplomacy, acumen, and attention to detail;
Gigi Grace and Beth Weilenman Mitchroney, for unwavering support, patience, and faith.
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