Reaction

by Seth M. Baker

  “Oh, shit, Amadeus.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. Amadeus felt the heat of her hand conducting through his blood. “Amadeus?” Amadeus said nothing. “Amadeus? Look at me.” He turned to face her. The anger hand drained from her face. “I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to be that way. It’s okay. I didn’t think…let’s be a team, okay? As equals? I’ll help you, and that will help me. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Amadeus said.

  “You’re not going to lock me out of your room, are you?” Lilly said.

  “As long as you don’t hit me too hard.”

  “I won’t hit you if you don’t try to make out with me.”

  20

  Five weeks after Amadeus and Grassal had arrived at the Jones compound, wounded and terrified, after Grassal had moved from wheelchair to crutches, after Amadeus learned what his father was really working on, after Amadeus had grown stronger than he had ever been, and after he realized he was falling in love with Lilly, Jones announced over a static-shrouded PA system that the Pachyderm was ready for its first test flight.

  The tall Korean pulled the hangar door open. Another taxied the Pachyderm through the open door and outside with a forklift. Everyone in the hanger followed the Pachyderm, a little parade. Jones spoke with the contractors first in English then in Korean, asking questions about the condition of this or that part, double-checking that they had double-checked everything.

  “Lilly, your dad’s as nervous as Amadeus before a graduation speech,” Grassal said, leaning forward on his aluminum crutches.

  “No,” Amadeus said, “he handles it much better.” Amadeus felt ready, confident. He had logged over a hundred hours on the simulator, hadn't crashed for a week, and, just to see if he could, even managed to land the Pachyderm on the head of the Statue of Liberty. Yes, it was only a simulation, but it was a good simulation. Amadeus called it his crowning achievement. Lilly had smacked his arm for that.

  Su Min said: “Urineun Pachyderm Two hyuenjae imnnida. I present Pachyderm Two!” When she finished speaking, her face was bright red.

  “Um,” Amadeus said, pivoting on his heels to face Jones, “what does she mean, two? You never said there was another Pachyderm. What happened to the last one?” Jones looked at the contractors. They all examined their feet. Finally Lilly broke the silence.

  “It crashed and the pilot died,” Lilly said. “Engine failure.” Jones shot a laser look at his daughter, but she shrugged. “You said not to tell him, but you didn't say what to do if he asked.”

  “Jesus, Lilly,” Amadeus said, putting his hands on his hips.

  “Wow. This is awkward,” Grassal said.

  “There's nothing to worry about. This one has six vertical turbofans and two horizontals. If even if four verticals fail, you'll still be able to land.” Jones said. “And on the first Pachyderm, I’m ashamed to admit, I was too cheap to use the best. I used second-hand turbofans and scrounged helicopter parts. It was only supposed to be a prototype anyway, used in a wind tunnel. The pilot insisted he take it out. This one has all new parts, the best of the best: Lockheed turbofans, Boeing avionics, electrically-charged cloaking paint, top-of-the-line solar-hydro fuel generation, and the body itself, it's entirely my design but it checks one hundred and ten percent.”

  “How do we know your design is sound?” Gravity said. A mischievous grin spread over Jones’ face before he spoke.

  “Because I designed it.” After waiting a beat, Jones continued: “But seriously, I sent schematics, nondisclosure agreements, and bottles of twenty-year-old single malt to some aeronautical engineer friends of mine; these guys are serious rocket scientists. They returned my designs with only slight suggestions for improvement. I followed their recommendations, sent them back, and they gave me the all clear.”

  Amadeus and Gravity looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders, and climbed up into the Pachyderm. Amadeus had sat in the cockpit before but only in the hangar. Out here, on the top of a mountain, with the evergreen land spread out below him, it seemed more real. This was no simulation. More than one or two mistakes, and he would die. But not today, he thought, not today. He wouldn’t make any mistakes. A sudden cheucrash! made Amadeus jump. He looked over. Jones held the neck of a broken champagne bottle.

  Gravity sat in the copilot’s chair with his hands folded in his lap as Amadeus did his preflight checks. Battery level full. Wind speed low. The control panel was flat black with silver switches, one switch for each of the horizontal and vertical engines, a level for thrust control, a yoke, and, Jones' idea of a joke, a pair of fuzzy dice hanging down from the ceiling. On a sturdy stand, a large tablet computer functioned as the interface for the communications and navigation system. The interior of the Pachyderm was about the same size as a minivan. Besides the fuzzy dice, the interior was unadorned, nanosteel walls and frame covered with spray-on sound dampening. The floor under them was grated, all the wires and interfaces for the avionics exposed. The door sealed out the outside air, allowing cabin pressurization. The features were intentionally limited; according to Jones, every extra gadget and feature was a potential point of failure.

  On the computer, Amadeus opened the navigation system and entered a short course around the ridge, a round trip of two hundred kilometers, all manual navigation, no autopilot. He would stay low, just in case. No matter what Jones said, he wouldn't trust this machine until he had some actual time learning to fly it, not just punch directions into the navigation system.

  A low vibration filled the cockpit. “Sound okay? Can you hear me?” Amadeus said into his headset. Gravity nodded, tested his, and came through loud and clear. Through the window, Amadeus could see everyone backing away from the Pachyderm. No one seemed to trust the engineering. Well, Amadeus decided, I’ll trust it. I have to.

  Before he started, he remembered the first time he rode a motorcycle. It was a small bike, a 50cc Honda. He and his parents had gone to a resort in Maine. Near the resort, a dirt bike track offered rentals. After making a flurry of soon-forgotten promises, he persuaded his mother to rent the bike for him. At first he was unsteady, keeping his feet down, driving slow. Within fifteen minutes, he crashed. The proprietor of the rental shop came over and helped him up. Amadeus was twelve at the time, the proprietor in his twenties. Amadeus did everything he could to be strong and hold back his tears. The proprietor told him riding a bike was like riding an orca: if it smelled fear, if you weren't confident, it would throw you into the water and eat you up. If you show it who’s boss, though, you'll totally own it. Amadeus didn’t think to ask how many orcas the proprietor had ridden.

  He increased speed of the verticals and the Pachyderm lifted from the ground. Confident, like an orca rider, Amadeus made the plane rise higher and higher, the altimeter creeping steadily upward. Below, his friends grew smaller and smaller. At 3,300 meters, Amadeus powered up the horizontal fans. The Pachyderm leaned forward, the horizontal fans rotated at an angle, and their dentist chairs automatically tilted forward; the three-part tilt Jones was so proud of. Everything was working fine. Amadeus flipped the switch to run a current through the cloaking paint. Looking through the window, the engines faded away, replaced by a slightly blurred view of the ground below. If anyone was looking up, they wouldn’t see anything more than a breeze.

  They flew north, dry mountains passing underneath them. As Amadeus flew, he thought of Lilly. He was angry she hadn’t told him about the dead pilot, but he still wished she could join him; he’d rather have her with him than Gravity. Though, he supposed that if things went bad, this strange war dog might be a good man to have by his side. Would things get bad? Could they get much worse?

  Beneath them, farmland, its irrigation circles in the middle like chips on a bingo card, gave way to suburban houses, once-grand five bedroom homes that had been converted into four-family apartments, each development serviced by solar buses and light rail bound for to Denver. According to his map, Denver lay over a hundred kilometers to the west.

  “Want t
o see Denver?” Gravity asked him. Amadeus thought about it for a moment, wondered how many laws he would be breaking by flying over a major city, and decided not to.

  “That can’t be legal.”

  “You're still worried about the law?”

  “A little.Maybe.”

  “Maybe you ought to get over that. Think of it this way, the law is like inertia. It works for you until it starts working against you. Right now, it's definitely working against you, and if you want to get it working for you again, you're going to have to get comfortable in grey areas.” As he spoke, Gravity gazed out the window. His brow seemed to have some extra wrinkles in it.

  “I don’t understand,” Amadeus said, achingly baffled.

  “All I'm saying is don’t worry until you’re actually in trouble.”

  “That doesn't mean I should go around and flagrantly smash every law like a drunken monkey,” Amadeus said. “And I’m kind of already in trouble.”

  “Hmm. You’ve got a point. If you hadn't guessed, I'm more a direct-approach kind of guy.”

  A little tone dinged in his headphones. They had reached one of the way points he had programmed onto the map. Amadeus turned the craft west, making a forty degree banking turn away from the suburbs and towards the Pacific Ocean. Waves of the Pacific crashed far away, but Amadeus would forever associate west with the Pacific, east with Atlantic. Canada was north, Mexico south. His perspective on geography was decidedly American.

  “Let's take this thing up and see what it can do,” Amadeus said. Gravity mumbled something into the headset. When Amadeus asked him to repeat it, he wouldn't. In fact, Amadeus noticed Gravity was gripping the armrests of his chair as if he might fall out should he let go. “Are you okay?” Amadeus asked him.

  The clouds were lower this direction, puffy and bubbly like clusters of white grapes. At first, they flew just beneath them, then Amadeus began to vary their altitude, flying into then out of the clouds. The altimeter read 4,300 meters. Snow covered the mountain peaks below.

  “No, I’m fine, just fine.”

  Amadeus looked closer at him. His face was pale. “If you're fine than you won't mind when I do this,” Amadeus said, pushing the yoke forward. The Pachyderm dropped. Amadeus felt his stomach lift, just like on a rollercoaster. The cell phone Jones had given Amadeus rose from the console. For just a moment, they were floating. Amadeus leveled things out and came to a floating stop.

  “Oh God, please, don't do that again.” Gravity reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a plastic bag, and vomited into it.

  “Airsick some?” Amadeus asked. “Sorry about that. I had no idea.” The smell of sick filled the cabin. Amadeus pulled his shirt up over his nose. Gravity was muttering to himself. “You look worse than you did before.”

  “Take me back. I can’t do this,” Gravity said. If Amadeus hadn’t just seen Gravity vomit, he would’ve thought Gravity was joking.

  “Okay.”

  For the last leg of the trip, Amadeus kept things steady and level. They followed a river for awhile, and passed over a couple of abandoned strip mines. The areas left behind looked like an artist's imagining of earth after a nuclear holocaust. The slopes were gone, the rich wrinkles of the earth's crust replaced by blasted, stripped, flattened, bulldozed, and grated fields. By the time they reached the third waypoint of their loop, Gravity was pale, silent, and still visibly nervous. Amadeus wondered how anyone could find flying so disagreeable; he felt focused, exhilarated, and sharp as a needle. Such freedom; he could go anywhere in the world. Sure, the Pachyderm wasn't as fast as a jet, but he didn't have to deal with other passengers or go through airport security. The best part, he was in control of his craft and his trip and his life, not in the hands of some nameless, faceless pilot. For the first time since before his graduation, he felt his sense of independence returning.

  With ease, he brought the Pachyderm around for the last leg of the test flight and landed without any trouble, dust spinning and swirling around the craft. Jones and the contractors had monitored the entire flight on handheld computers. Amadeus hopped out, energized by and satisfied with the flight. Gravity, however, staggered out, looking like he had had too much to drink, and vomited again. The contractors cheered them, pointing and laughing at Gravity as he leaned against the Pachyderm. With the cloaking still on, he looked like a man leaning at an impossible angle.

  “No problems?” Jones asked. Since they had left, he had donned an old leather pilot's cap, making Amadeus think of children who, in the early days of television, would dress up in costumes to watch their favorite show. But Jones wasn't that old.

  “I was about to ask you the same question,” Amadeus said. “We were going to fly over Denver, but I was worried about showing up on radar.”

  “Nanosteel is not only light, but it’s radar absorbent. Combine that with the cloaking paint, and the Pachyderm is damn near invisible.”

  “Gravity and the Pachyderm don’t seem to play well together,” Amadeus said.

  “I’m sure he has his reasons. This is an experimental craft we’re talking about, not exactly like hopping on a seven sixty seven, now is it?” Amadeus shrugged. Jones yelled something to the contractors in Korean. Su Min gave him thumbs up. “The first flight of the Pachyderm Two is a success. Bonuses for everyone!”

  21

  After a celebratory cookout, catered by the Koreans, Amadeus was re–reading some of his father’s journals when Jones rolled into the room. “I've contacted Esther for you. She’ll be expecting you. But she’s a very busy girl and doesn’t have much time to spare. Here are the coordinates, address, and phone number.” He handed Amadeus a scrap of paper with neat, handwritten numbers “Esther lives in Midtown. Happily, her building happens to have a helicopter pad. Once you get into the city, you'll need a disguise. Just in case anyone might recognize you.” He pulled out a little brown satchel. “Esther said she's seen your picture in the paper, but I explained things to her and she's, um, sympathetic to your situation. She's a friend; she'll help us. As for the other partners, she might be able to help you find at least one, maybe even two of them. If we could crack this ridiculous security that your father used, then maybe you wouldn't have to run all over the world, but right now… you've got to run all over the world.”

  “I don't mind,” Amadeus said. “I kind of like flying, and it feels better than sitting around.”

  Amadeus spent the remainder of the evening studying an aeronautical chart of North America with a ruler, pencil, and notebook, manually plotting out his flight to New York. The computer navigation system would work fine, but having a backup never hurt. Besides that, maps, with their implicit promise of adventure, excited him and gave him something to do while the contractors made final tweaks to the Pachyderm.

  Later, in the evening, after Gravity and Jones had gone to bed, Amadeus, Lilly and Grassal were in the data center together, but instead of working on the files, they played rummy, enjoying each other’s company and some well-earned downtime. They were playing to one thousand points. So far, Lilly was two hundred points ahead of either of them. Grassal laid down four aces, leaving Amadeus with a handful of unplayed royals.

  “Why?” Amadeus said, smacking the table. “I thought we had a truce.”

  “All's fair in love and torture,” Grassal said.

  “Which one is this?” Lilly asked.

  Lilly ended up winning the match, with Grassal in second. Amadeus couldn't regain his momentum after the betrayal. Grassal said something about basking sweet defeat then crutched off to bed.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the other pilot?” Amadeus said. “And don’t say I didn’t ask. How was I supposed to know?”

  “You weren’t supposed to know,” Lilly said. “I’m sorry, maybe I should have told you. But my father needed a test pilot. I thought it would complicate things. It’s not a big deal. This design is much better.”

  “That is a big deal. How am I supposed to trust you?” Amadeus said.

&nbs
p; “Maybe you’re not,” Lilly said. She spread the cards across the table in a practiced flourish then scooped them up. With her thumb, she flicked the top card from the deck into Amadeus’ lap. “Good night,” she said. Amadeus watched her stride off, out the door and into the hallway. He picked the card up from his lap. The king of hearts. The suicide king.

  22

  Morning came. Everyone at the Jones compound rose early, early. Outside, quarrelsome streaks of saffron filled the sky, but satellite images of the continent showed nothing but clear skies. Amadeus loaded his limited supplies into the Pachyderm.

  “I'm trusting you to take good care of this craft,” Jones said. “We've put years of work into it. Flying it, I know, is not without risk, and you've shown yourself to be a capable pilot. Keep it safe.”

  “I will. And, thanks, Jones, for everything.” Amadeus bent down and gave Jones a hug, as much as he could. “I wish I could take you for a ride in the Pachyderm.”

  “I wish it, too, my boy,” Jones said, “but nature hasn't been kind to my body. Lilly always said what I lack in the body I make up for in the brain. Isn't that right, honey?”

  “That’s right, Daddy,” Lilly said. “Amadeus, do be careful…out there.” Amadeus noticed she said this the same way her father did, giving “out there” the same tone someone would use to describe a lecherous waiter.

  “I know you'll have Gravity with you, but still.” She gave him a chaste hug. Amadeus felt his face redden. Neither had mentioned what had passed between them last night.

  Grassal came up and leaned on his crutches. “My man, you fly safe. I know you, you will. Here’s the phone, finished right on time, just like we talked about.” Grassal handed him a black phone a little larger than a business card with a small white attachment. “It’s got all the data from the statue, a thumb scanner built in to the touch screen and a glucometer, like the kind diabetics use, on its side, for the blood samples. It was a super-simple mod. The phone is pretty old, Jones gave it to me, but it’ll work. It has GPS and all that, but you shouldn’t need it. Ten years ago it would’ve been a super computer, but you know how it goes, Moore’s Law and all that. But for what you need, it’s first-class.” Grassal had a faraway look in his eyes, still on a prodigious amount of pain pills. Amadeus wanted to say something to him, but decided this too would work itself out. His friend was no fool. Amadeus thanked him for modding the phone.