But there was Mitch, walking around it in his leather flight jacket doing a visual pre-flight. Two guys were opening the tail gate on the board truck while Stasi stood watching them, her long black wool coat worn over black slacks. Lewis had seen Alma pull in and was walking toward her.
She met him halfway. "What's up?" she asked. "Did we get a cargo run?" She'd been sure there was nothing on the books. And then she saw what the men on the truck were unloading -- two wooden coffins.
Lewis looked somber. "Mitch told the coroner he'd take the mail plane guys back to Cheyenne. He said it wasn't a company expense and you could pull the fuel out of his next check."
"The hell it isn't a company expense," Alma said, falling into step beside him and crossing the field toward the plane. "We're not going to charge anybody for getting those guys back to their families." What's left of them, she thought. The results of that kind of crash couldn't be pretty. She hoped the undertaker in Cheyenne knew that, and knew better than to let family open the coffins.
"Stasi said she'd ride shotgun to keep him company, and I'm going to pull the Frontiersman around as soon as Mitch is done," Lewis said. "I'm running late, but there was a weird short in the ignition system this morning. I couldn't get her to start until I pulled the spark plugs and replaced some wiring. But it's ok now, and it's only three hours down. I don't mind getting back late."
"We'll have the field lit for you," Alma said. At this time of year sunset was at five o'clock. Lewis would be around seven getting in with the late start. "And that's a weird problem to have on a brand new plane."
Lewis shrugged. "Yeah, but I didn't find anything else. Maybe it was just a bad plug. That happens sometimes." Lewis put his arm around her waist for a second, a quick squeeze. He knew she didn't like big demonstrations of affection at work. It made her look like she shouldn't be taken seriously. "I think I've got the easy ride today."
He wasn't talking about the weather, but Alma went there anyway. "How's the report for Amarillo?"
"High of fifty, clear and dry for the morning," Lewis said. "Clouding up late in the day, but no precip. Should be fine. Mitch will have these flurries all the way to Cheyenne. Stasi said she wanted to ride shotgun, which is probably ok since you'll be in the office."
"Yeah," Alma said. Nobody wants to deliver coffins by themselves. "I'll catch up on the paperwork."
Stasi's breath clouded in the frozen air, watching Mitch getting the hatch open for the three men with the coffins, helping them maneuver them in. He must have taken out the cabin furniture for them to fit. In profile her long black coat looked something like a cassock, as though she were the only mourner at the funeral, or the priest.
"Psychopomp," Alma said.
Lewis looked at her sideways. "What?"
"Mitch is a psychopomp," Alma said. "To take home the dead, found and returned, and to guide the living away from the underworld. That's what search and rescue is, isn't it? And he loves that more than anything." Lewis looked a little abashed, and Alma leaned on him. "And you don't. I know that. You miss combat."
Lewis sighed. "I do. I'm not proud of that, Al."
"You are what you are," she said. "Diana's priest. The Hunter. And the end of the hunt is the kill. There's a place for that in the world. You are the thing you're supposed to be." She watched the tension ease from his face. "And Mitch is the thing he's supposed to be. The guide. The one who comes and goes like Death's familiar."
"Death's minion?" Lewis said as Mitch offered an arm to help Stasi up the steps, courtly as she took it straight backed, following the coffins in.
"I'm not sure I'd go all the way to minion," Alma laughed. "But maybe so."
It wasn't a bad day for flying. It could have been worse. The flurries ended around Denver, the usual inaccuracies in the forecast for once working in their favor, high clouds a ceiling five thousand feet above them, straight north along the edge of the Rockies with the mountains off their left wing. Stasi was quiet in the copilot's seat, the coffins behind, and Mitch was glad of the company even if she didn't have much to say. He wondered if she were talking to the dead.
He had to ask. "Do they have anything to say?" he said, jerking his head toward the passenger compartment.
"No." She looked straight ahead out the window at the mountains ahead. "They're not here." Her eyes were fixed on the far horizon, the collar of her coat buttoned up to her neck. "Contrary to popular belief, most dead people don't sit around with their bodies. They prefer to be with their families and friends." The corner of her mouth twitched. "Also they find it creepy."
"I would," Mitch allowed. He didn't really think he'd want to spend much time with what was left of him after he'd augured into a mountainside and burned. He glanced sideways at her again. Asking Stasi a question was a gamble. "Have you always been able to talk to the dead?"
"Always, darling." She stretched out her gloved hands in front of her, stretching without touching any of the instruments. "I was six and a bit when my grandmother died. My parents, all of my relatives, everyone she knew -- they were all sitting -- well, staying with the body for the night, like a wake. Children didn't have to, of course, and I'd gone to bed. But I couldn't figure out why everyone was crying and saying prayers for my grandmother when she was right here." Stasi gave him a little shrug. "She was perfectly fine. I could see her clear as day, and she came in the room and kissed me goodnight and sat on the end of my bed and told me a story. I couldn't imagine why everyone was so sad. She seemed happy and calm and well and she told me that she loved me and that I was her darling girl." Stasi glanced out the window with a little smile. "She said she had to go away for a while, but that she wanted me to know how much joy I had brought her and that she would always love me. So you see I wasn't scared at all. I never was. Why would I be scared of that?"
"You wouldn't be," Mitch said. "It must be kind of nice."
"It would be if all the Dead were nice," Stasi said. "But they're just people. Some of them are nice and some aren't, just like when they're alive. It was no fun during the war."
"I expect not." He could only imagine that. And he didn't particularly want to.
Stasi leaned back in the seat. "Most people think talking with the Dead is hard, darling. But it's not. It's no harder than talking to you. All the mumbo jumbo is just so people will take it seriously. If it seems too easy people think you're faking." She smiled. "The fakes are the ones who need all those things."
"Like Pelley?"
"Pelley doesn't talk to the Dead. That's why he needs to hire a medium." Stasi looked out the window, east toward the snow-covered plains. "I've told you everything I know about his plans, darling."
"He's running this paramilitary organization called the Silver Legion," Mitch said. He nodded toward the folded up paper in the map pocket. "I picked up his newspaper in Salt Lake day before yesterday. Like the Blackshirts in Italy, I guess. He's got a thing about Alexander the Great and he says Nostradamus said that the next big crisis in world affairs is coming in 1939. The guy I got the paper from laughed off all the occult stuff, but there's some stuff in there that's real. You can take Nostradamus that way. It's a legitimate reading."
Stasi looked at him sideways, seeming unsurprised he'd read Nostradamus. "Do you think there is a crisis coming?"
Mitch took a deep breath and let it out, giving himself a moment to put his thoughts into words. "I think so much has changed so fast in the last two decades. I mean, look where we all were in 1912. The ordinary things we take for granted -- movies and cars and planes and telephones in everybody's house -- you couldn't even imagine it when I was a kid. Empires crumbling, monarchies ending, whole ways of life disappearing…. Something's got to give. It's like a huge piece of ice has broken off, and it's got to go somewhere. It's going to roll downhill."
"I don't want to be under the avalanche, darling," Stasi said. Her face was unreadable. "That's my priority."
"Nobody wants to be under the avalanche," Mitch said. "But we can't pretend
there isn't one. That doesn't make it go away."
"So you run," Stasi said.
"Or you try to steer the avalanche."
"No one steers an avalanche, darling."
Mitch shook his head. "Yeah, they do. You can build snow racks or put up nets, plant trees to protect structures. No, you can't make anything perfectly safe, but if you live in terrain like this, you learn how to live with it. There are things you can do to protect places where people live. You don't have to run away or be smothered. You can be a good steward."
Her eyebrows twitched. "And that's what you're doing? You and your Lodge? Trying to be good stewards?"
Mitch nodded. "It's a little section of forest, but it's ours." He risked a sideways glance at her. "You could help. You could do this too. Your job is the Dead, but it's a complimentary line of work."
She was quiet for a long time. "Pelley," she said at last.
He glanced at her again, but her eyes were on the snow-touched peaks below.
"Pelley believes that souls are bound forever by their past oaths. I can't say whether that's true or not. I don't know how it works. But there's a reason that marriages are 'til death do us part. You're not supposed to be bound after death, held to fidelity in lives to come when you may never even meet this person again. But Pelley believes that there are some oaths that endure death, whether through the person's choice or not. He thinks that you could summon people by those oaths."
"To do what?"
"I don't know," Stasi said. "And I don't know if it's even true. I thought it was just one of those things people go off on. I didn't think he'd actually do it."
"I'm more concerned about this Silver Legion of his," Mitch said. "And yeah, he's got some good ideas like medical care for vets, but…." It was hard to even get his head around it, hard to even get close. "I don't want to live in Pelley's world where everybody hates each other and every group is out for themselves."
"Darling, you don't always get to choose," Stasi said. "Having the liberty to choose is an enormous privilege."
"I know," Mitch said. "Believe me, I know I'm lucky." And he could choose whether or not to take Henry's job offer. It was a lot of money and potentially a lot of power to do good. But how much time would he actually spend in the air? And how much of that would be real flying, cross-country in all weathers? How much time would he spend supervising and writing reports instead of working on the plane himself? How much of it would he love? But the money was enough he could take care of someone beautifully, if there were someone to take care of, who'd never want for anything again.
"What was the story?" Mitch asked. "The story your grandmother told you."
Her face lit, and for a moment he could see the mischievous girl she must have been. "Queen Esther," she said. "It was my favorite."
"The bridge between worlds," Mitch said. "Who made enemies into friends with her love."
"Don't forget her terrible revenge, a massacre in reverse. Kill all your enemies' children lest they kill yours. That's how it works, darling. Even God says so," Stasi said. "And don't discount what it cost her, a lifetime in the king's bed."
"Do you think she hated the Persian emperor so much then?" Mitch asked. "The Bible doesn't say."
Stasi shook her head. "I think she loved him. And used him too."
"Maybe he didn't mind being used."
"Maybe not, darling," she said. "Some don't."
Iskinder had always thought that one of the great advantages of the Astoria was that its outrageous rates included a good deal of discretion. If a guest wanted to light candles and burn incense in his room it was his own business. If, of course, he had actually had any incense. Iskinder nodded for the waiter to remove the table with the remains of their dinner, and once he had gone, locked the suite door behind him.
Jerry looked up from his place on the sofa, and took a last drag on his cigarette.
"It's time, I suppose."
Iskinder looked at him. "If you're having second thoughts —"
"No, not at all." Jerry still looked unhappy as he ground out his cigarette in the crystal ashtray. "I just wish I understood what was going on."
"So do I," Iskinder said. "But what I do — I can't say I like it."
As he had hoped, Jerry smiled at that. "This Pelley. Apparently I haven't been paying enough attention."
Iskinder felt his own smile fade. Pelley was a symptom, he thought, the most extreme version of something that had gone terribly wrong with the world. His own country was facing an increasing threat from Italy, despite the League of Nations, despite all the treaties proclaiming a twenty-year friendship and the renunciation of war, and his careful overtures to American leaders — men he'd been to school with, men who in many cases he'd counted friends — had gone precisely nowhere. No one wanted to see another world war; the average man was too worried about keeping his job, or finding one, to have much sympathy left for a bunch of Africans. Especially when Mussolini cloaked his own imperial ambitions in concern for a peasantry enslaved and oppressed by a feudal nobility. The most progressive Americans could hardly be expected to support a regime of slaveholders….
But that was his business, not Jerry's, and Jerry had been nothing but supportive throughout the visit. Now it was his turn to give. "Nor I," he said. "But surely it will pass. Shall we begin?"
It didn't take long to shift the furniture enough to clear space for the circle and to lay out the ritual tools, candles at the cardinal points and in the center, and a crystal wineglass filled with water set beside a single cigarette. Not the standard equipment, and neither one of them had proper robes, except of course for Iskinder's most formal traditional garments, and he wasn't surprised when Jerry sighed.
"Just once I'd like to do things properly."
Iskinder paused, setting the last candle in place, momentarily overcome by memory. Jerry had been made journeyman during the war, one of the few times the Lodge had managed a formal gathering. Count Udolpho swore that the so-called music room had been designed as a meeting place for an earlier lodge, and certainly there seemed to be niches for candles at each of the cardinal points. The heavy velvet drapes closed out light and sound, sealing them into sacred space. They had all been properly robed, each according to grade and patron; the air had smelled of beeswax and frankincense, heady as church, and the circle had leaped into existence almost as they called it. He could still see them there, Alma with her fair hair loose on her shoulders — she and the Countess had been the only two women in the Lodge then — Mitch at her side, both robed in apprentice's white as Iskinder was himself. The ritual had been long and intricate, and Gil had presided over it with unusual solemnity. Only at the end, when Jerry emerged acknowledged, had Gil allowed himself to smile, and the air between them had very nearly crackled with the heat of their connection. It had not occurred to Iskinder until later to consider how carefully Gil had worked, how complicated it must have been, to create the formal elegance that was Jerry's nature.
"The Astoria isn't fancy enough for you?" he asked, and Jerry grinned.
"You have to admit it's not their usual style."
"Nonsense. If I'd asked the concierge to provide me with the necessities for a Hermetic ritual, I'm sure he could have managed."
Jerry blinked. "Now I almost wish you'd tried." He pulled the medallion from his pocket. "Are we ready?"
Iskinder nodded, and took a deep breath to center himself. It was his task to support the ritual, to cast the circle and then lend energy, and he was glad to do it. He had brought his ritual dagger with him — one could be excused much when one was a barbarous African — and he drew it gently, the ancient iron blade dull in the electric lights. He turned to the east, hand lifted in salute, then drew the familiar cross. "Ateh malkuth ve-gevurah ve-gedulah le-olaham, amen."
He bent to light the eastern candle, then traced a pentagram in the air above it. The faintest breath of wind caressed his face, and he traced the circle to the south, crossing behind Jerry to light the seco
nd candle. The flame leaped in answer to his call, a spark in his soul, and he moved on to the west and to the north, returning at last to the east to close the circle.
"Before me, Raphael, behind me Gabriel. On my right hand Michael and on my left Uriel. About me shines the pentagram, and within me the six-rayed star."
He closed his eyes for a moment, seeing the archangels robed in white and scarlet like icons in the church, stern beautiful faces beneath spreading golden halos, wings outstretched to shape the circle, familiar comfort. At the circle's center, Jerry lit another candle, then unwrapped the medallion. He held it above the flame and then the water, purifying it for the ritual, then passed the cigarette over the water and lit it from the candle's flame.
"In the name of the Lord of the Universe," he began, "and of He Who is on the Mountain, the Lord of Bows, Anubis, and of Raphael who protects the Tree of Life from those unworthy, I conjure thee, O Shroud of Darkness and of Mystery, that thou encirclest this creature of earth so that it may become invisible, so that seeing it, men see it not, neither understand, but that they may see the thing that they see not, and comprehend not the thing that they behold. So may it be."
He drew in a lungful of smoke, then exhaled it over the medallion. For a moment, it seemed to Iskinder that the smoke lingered, wrapping around the worn metal, blurring it further.
"Shroud of Concealment, long hast thou dwelt concealed," Jerry said. "Quit the Light, that thou mayest conceal this creature of earth before men. Let it receive thee as a covering and a guard, according to my will, in the name of Jehovah Elohim."
Iskinder saw him take a breath, marshaling will and focus.
"This medallion shall remain safe within the keeping of the Metropolitan Museum until I come for it," Jerry said. "The image on its reverse shall remain unnoticed and unremarked, its puzzle shall be unsolved, until I return to solve it. The Emperor's last resting place shall remain concealed until it may safely be uncovered. So may it be."
Iskinder looked up sharply. Those were not the words that Jerry had originally written, and for an instant he thought he saw Jerry standing elsewhere, torchlit, the air filled with dust like floating gold. The shape of rams' horns seemed to frame his long face. And then the vision was gone, contextless and unhelpful, and Jerry had finished the last invocation, setting the medallion carefully aside. Iskinder bowed, and they stood for a moment in silence before Iskinder moved to open the circle.
Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 Page 82