"Nice flying," Lewis said.
Mitch gave him a wry smile. "That's cutting a little closer than I'd like."
"Any landing you walk away from," Lewis said. He looked at his watch. "Damn. It's too late to call Al, not without waking up the exchange."
"She won't be expecting to hear from us till morning," Mitch said. "Come on, let's debrief, and then I hope Colonel Sampson's got a bed for us somewhere."
"Me, too," Lewis said, and clambered out of the plane behind him.
Chapter Seven
December 8, 1932
Colorado Springs
A few stray flurries of snow drifted past the windows, pale against the early morning clouds, and Alma tried to ignore them. There was no point in noticing them at all. She had the books spread out on the desk in the office, determinedly adding columns of figures and ignoring the clock and the weather alike. This was a perfectly good day to do the books. Even if it had started unusually early. And there was no particular reason she was wakeful, none at all.
Unfortunately it was hard to ignore Stasi, who kept getting up and pacing around and opening the door and rattling pencils against the desk and looking out the window. The hundredth time or so Alma looked up, irritated.
"What do you think they're doing?" Stasi asked.
Alma took a deep breath. "I expect they're flying the grid," she said. "They will have put down somewhere overnight, but assuming they had decent weather this morning, they'll be flying the grid. And I expect they will be until they find something or the weather gets too rough." She glanced at the barometer on the wall. "The pressure's dropping. That's the next storm coming in, and the wire from Salt Lake City says it's going to be bigger than what we had last night. But those people are out in it, and they've got to be found before it's too late." Alma bent her head determinedly over the books again. The numbers for November. She would get the books for November closed.
"I don't see how you stand it," Stasi demanded, pacing around the desk to the window again. "How can you stand just sitting here?"
"Because I have to," Alma snapped. "The Army Reserve doesn't take women." All the pent-up frustration bubbled up. "Do you think it doesn't bother me that I have to sit here while Lewis and Mitch fly search and rescue? I'm as good a pilot as most of the men they fly with, and I'm perfectly capable of doing the work, but I can't because I'm a woman. An aviatrix is a nice oddity, a pretty thing to sell newspapers!"
"Lewis and Mitch respect you," Stasi said.
"They do," Alma acknowledged, the anger still welling in her belly. "But they don't make the rules. They don't run the world. If Mitch could have whoever he wanted flying search and rescue of course he'd have me. But he's a major in the Reserves. And he doesn't get to have the beautiful exception."
Stasi had a quizzical look on her face. "Is that what you are? The beautiful exception?"
Alma nodded with what she thought was probably a bitter smile. "Oh yeah. The girl pilot. Look folks! There's a girl who can fly! Not that any woman could fly if she put her mind to it and worked at it. Even when men acknowledge that I can do it they don't generalize. Any woman could do it."
"I don't think women want that either," Stasi said thoughtfully. "If women could do everything men could, then they'd have to, wouldn't they? No more swooning and manipulating, no more being too fragile to do unpleasant things. No more sending men off to work for them. No more sending men off to kill for them. I don't imagine most women actually want to do those things. After all, a lot of women have a good thing going. It's a lot of fun to be hysterical and taken care of. Imagine if men expected you to be responsible and forthright!"
"I wish they did," Alma said.
"That's because you're the beautiful exception." Stasi sat down on the edge of the desk and crossed her legs. "But I don't expect many women wish they were out in a plane in a howling blizzard flying search and rescue for some total strangers! It's a lot of work, darling. Men have duty but women are excused. I expect a lot of men would like to be excused, but other men would call them cowards. But women are natural born cowards, aren't they? There's no reason to ever have to learn to overcome fear and suck it up rather than indulge their feelings."
"A lot of women don't have the choice," Alma said.
Stasi's eyes were very knowing. "You have the choice now."
"And I've made it," Alma said.
Stasi got up again, searching through her handbag for her cigarettes. "I wish no one had to go."
"I wish there were never plane crashes," Alma said. "But this is what we do. This is the brotherhood of the air. When somebody goes down we all look for them, and we know they'd do the same for us. We don't malinger and we don't complain."
"I'm not complaining." Stasi pulled out a cigarette and walked over to the window again, a matchbook in hand. "I'm worrying." She struck the match and lit the cigarette, glancing out the window as though the snowflakes on the wind could tell her something.
A thought struck Alma in an illuminating flash. "You've got it bad for Mitch, don't you?"
"Darling, why would you say that?" Stasi tilted her head back and took a quick draw. "Maybe. Yes."
"That's good," Alma said. "Mitch needs somebody to care about him."
Stasi took another quick draw, swift and impatient, nothing vampish about it. "He says it can't go anywhere."
Alma took a deep breath. "Did he tell you why?"
"I've more or less put it together." She turned around, real, actual concern written on her face. "Lewis said…. Lewis said you were a nurse during the Great War."
And now we get down to it, Alma thought, down to brass tacks, time to speak or forever hold her peace. "I was an ambulance driver," she said. "A medic. I was the first one there when Mitch was wounded."
She'd seen from the edge of the field that it was man and plane both hit, a shaky landing that was nothing like Mitch, the streaks along the lower fuselage from a shell bursting below. She and Gil had run onto the field before the prop stopped turning, her kit banging against her back with every step, for all the good she could do….
Stasi didn't move. "How bad was it?"
"It was an airburst shell," Alma said. "Over Austrian lines. It exploded short, just below the plane. Mitch got sprayed with shrapnel. He still has some fragments in his lower belly and groin. Fortunately, none of them hit an artery or he'd have bled out before he could land."
"And the rest of it?" Her voice was perfectly even.
"Mitch will never father children, if that's what you mean." Stasi didn't say anything, just waited, and so she took a deep breath. "I'm not a doctor and I haven't seen in thirteen years, so I can't say anything with certainty. But some disfigurement and substantial nerve damage as well as the testicular damage. I don't know how much of the nerve damage has resolved." Medicine was firm ground, the solid, professional words that carried no emotions. "Nerve damage may improve in time. There isn't anything that can be done to regenerate nerves, but over the long term they may heal to some extent. We don't really understand how that works or why, but it does happen. Whenever you have nerves cut, you lose skin sensation, whether it's a cut on your arm or whatever. How long it takes that to resolve and how completely it resolves is up in the air."
Stasi nodded slowly. "And without skin sensation or the rest this can't be anything but torment to him."
"I wouldn't say that," Alma said. "Orgasm without ejaculation is entirely possible." Her face felt like it was flaming, but she went on. "And surface sensation is only one way to skin the cat, as it were."
Stasi blinked. "It is?"
"My first husband…." Oh, there was no good way to put this! "Sometimes if you have an engine maintenance problem and can't get in one way, you can use the other hatch."
Now she looked entirely confused. "What other hatch? There's only one hatch."
Alma felt the flush reach her hairline. "Well, yes. One hatch on men. But you can go around from the back, as it were. The nerves on the back of the prostate aren't
affected by damage in front."
Stasi wasn't blushing. But she looked like she'd just swallowed a whole egg.
Forward. There was only forward into the breach, having come this far. "If you put pressure in the right places…well, it's very sensitive. And you don't actually need any…er…fluid. Or the manufacture thereof."
"You've actually done this?" Stasi looked either intrigued or skeptical, depending on how one wanted to read it.
Medical words. Medical words. "Caused a non-ejaculatory orgasm with prostate massage? Yes. Lots of times." The ghost of Gil would be laughing his head off at her. He probably was.
"Huh." Stasi sat down on the edge of the desk and took a draw off her cigarette.
"I don't know that it would work in this situation," Alma said. "I really don't. But it's a possibility. I told you, I haven't seen in years and Mitch and I don't exactly talk about it."
Stasi looked at her keenly. "Why would you tell me this? You're his friend."
"I want him to be happy," Alma said. "And he's like a younger brother, not a friend. I want him to have as much happiness in life as he possibly can. And no, he can't have a family, but maybe he can at least have this much if he had the right woman, someone who was patient and who would never use it to hurt him."
"And you think I'm like that?" She sounded genuinely surprised.
"I've watched you teach Lewis and I've watched you talk to the Dead. I've watched how you handle your vocation. I don't have any idea if you love Mitch or not, or if you'd work together in the long run, but I don't think you'd gratuitously hurt him. I don't think you like hurting people." Alma reached out. "How about giving me one of those cigarettes?"
"I thought you didn't smoke," Stasi said.
"Not much. But this calls for one," Alma said. Stasi flipped the box open and she picked one out with her fingertips.
"You keep trusting me," Stasi said.
"You keep proving me right."
The phone jangled and they both jumped, Stasi grabbing it around the neck and pulling the receiver to her ear. "Gilchrist Aviation." She listened a second and then held it out, relief in every line of her body. "It's Mitch calling for you."
"Good," Alma said, taking the phone. "Mitch? What's going on?"
The line sounded a little spotty. "Hi, Al. We're in Denver. The weather was closing in last night and we needed fuel so since we were up at the north end of the grid we put down in Denver."
"He's in Denver," Alma mouthed to Stasi, who nodded. In Denver, on the ground, fifty miles away.
Behind Mitch there was the whine of engines. "We got some pretty heavy snow overnight, and Salt Lake says there's another storm behind this one. As soon as things clear out enough, we're going to get in the air behind it and hope we can beat the second one."
Alma nodded even though he couldn't see it. "Makes sense."
"That's what we thought," Mitch said. "But we figured you'd want to know we're doing. Hey, Lewis wants to talk to you."
"Ok, put him on," Alma said.
Lewis sounded a little muffled, as though he'd cupped the mouthpiece so no one would hear. "I didn't want you to worry about me," he said.
"I wasn't," Alma said.
"There's something wrong," Lewis said.
"There's been a plane crash," Alma said. If Lewis was getting a bad feeling it was to be expected.
"Yes, but." Lewis sounded worried. "Three plane crashes in three weeks? Isn't that strange, even for the Rockies in winter? Three? All three of them in the same area?"
"You don't know where the third one is," Alma said sharply.
"I don't know on paper," Lewis said. There was a tone in his voice she recognized. "But I know. And that's the thing. We need to get down there, but it's not on our part of the grid. Mitch says he's willing to go down there and say we got lost or something so I wanted to let you know what we're doing. We're going to overfly the Silver Bullet mine as soon as the weather lets up."
"Ok," Alma said. "That sounds like a good idea."
"I love you."
"I love you too," Alma said, ducking her head. He would do it, and it was right and necessary, and she would give anything to be there this moment, standing around a hangar in Denver, waiting to fly into the storm.
There were half a dozen other search planes grounded at Denver, and more at the smaller fields along the flight path. In Denver, Sampson had rounded up breakfast and was already briefing a pair of cousins from north of the city on the weather. He nodded to Mitch as they approached but didn't break off the stream of orders.
"— then head back along the ridge line to your point of origin."
"Ok," the older cousin said, but he didn't look happy, and the younger one cleared his throat.
"Sir, if the weather's going to close in again — we've got stock to take care of back home. Any chance we could take a northerly part of the grid?"
Sampson looked as though he was going to refuse on general principles, but Mitch felt something tingle at the base of his neck. "Where were you fellows supposed to be?" he asked. "I wouldn't mind switching for something south of where we were. I know that area better to start with."
"Here," the older cousin said, and held out a map. Mitch took it, trying to keep his movements casual. Yes, the Silver Bullet mine was within reach of their part of the grid — a lot easier to explain getting only that much lost, rather than the seventy miles he would have had to justify.
"I'll trade," he said, and gave Sampson a rueful smile. "I'd rather get stuck closer to home myself if the weather closes in again."
"Which it will," Sampson said. "Salt Lake says we've got about nine hours before the second storm, but conditions are going to start going downhill by midafternoon. All right, you guys switch. Grab something to eat and we'll try to get you in the air by ten-thirty."
Sampson was better than his word. The boys from up north lifted off at quarter of ten, their rattletrap Simpson clawing for air, and Mitch followed them at five past, steering the Terrier in a long lazy curve toward the southwest. The wind was still strong from the west, but steady, and the ceiling was high enough to give them a decent view of the ground.
"I think we should head straight for the mine," Lewis said.
"I was planning on it," Mitch answered. The numbers were already dancing in his head. Forty minutes to the start of their grid, another forty minutes, maybe an hour to the mine if they went the most direct route — and that was the best choice. If Lewis was right, passengers and crew had been down overnight in a snowstorm; the sooner they got there, the better. "What about the emergency kits? You got them ready to drop?"
"Just about," Lewis answered, and clambered out of his seat.
"Be sure you hook in before you open the door," Mitch called, and Lewis grinned.
"No fear of that."
Mitch grinned himself. No one really liked standing in a plane with the door open and nothing between them and a thousand foot drop — well, maybe some of the crazier flyboys, the ones who liked parachuting, but not anybody normal.
He checked his heading, adjust his course a few degrees more westerly. Off the port wing, the clouds hung low in the east as well, promising snow on the plains. The sky to the west was paler, but he thought he saw the first shadow of the second storm edging up behind the most distant peaks.
There was the highway, and, further west and south, the break that was the nameless creek everyone used as a pointer to the mine roads above it. It would be frozen now, but the gap in the trees was still there. Mitch banked the Terrier again, climbing as they came up into the mountains.
There was the first of the mine roads, just a river of snow between trees, and then the open area before the old minehead, timbers sticking up like fingers out of the snow that covered the collapsed outbuildings. Alma would know which one it was, but Mitch couldn't remember, if he'd ever known.
The Silver Bullet was higher still, further in, the original owners trading ease of access for a chance at the better seams of ore that wer
e supposed to be in the higher slopes. Mitch checked his instruments again, heading good, altitude steady, and craned his head to see out the windows. No breaks in the canopy below, no signs of a crash on the rocks and snow above the tree line.
And there was the minehead in the distance, weathered gray against a purplish slope too steep to hold the snow. "We're coming up on the mine," he shouted, and glanced over his shoulder through the open cockpit door to see Lewis scrambling forward.
"Everything's ready to drop if we see them," he said, frowning. "I think — they came over the mine, and then due east —"
Mitch nodded. There was a valley below the minehead; he thought Alma had said once there had been plans to run a rail spur up here, but the ore had run out before the owners could finish the job. He could pick out the outbuildings now, mostly intact, tin roofs piled with snow. The windows in the main building were mostly boarded over, but it looked as though something was moving behind them, at the edges of the frames, weird shimmering non-shapes like crawling color —
A crack of thunder split the sky, and the instruments went out, the controls suddenly lifeless in his hand. He held everything steady, assessing — there was room enough for now, the engines were all still running, though every single instrument was dead. Lewis came scrambling forward, face white, shoved himself into the co-pilot's chair. He grabbed for the radio, and dropped the microphone as a spark nipped his fingers.
Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 Page 86