Thermals

by Evan Currie

  “You’re kidding me,” Anselm looked over, shocked at the idea.

  Free climbing a relatively smooth tower one kilometer straight up? It was nuts.

  “Fraid not. We had to get in with a helicopter and pull him off the tower at around five hundred feet.” She told him, “The guy was using the construction ridges they put in to allow for flex in order to fire pitons into the wall. After we got him down it took the tower custodians another four months to repair the damage.”

  “Ouch.” Anselm laughed.

  “You have no idea,” she said as she pulled the Eliica over into the lot of the Police Department Head Quarters. “We’re here.”

  “So we are.”

  *****

  “You got your gear all checked out?”

  “Got it!” Ron nodded eagerly, checking his gear a second time.

  Like ninety nine percent of thrill seekers and daredevil times, the ones who lived, Ron was very nearly obsessive-compulsive about the state of the gear he used. It all had to be in perfect working order before he would risk his body on it. Everything he had been loaned and had rented checked out perfectly, so he turned his attention to his local guide, listening carefully to the instructions the expert had to give him.

  “Okay man,” Kamir told him with a friendly smile. “When you get into the updraft you ride it up until you hit fifteen thousand feet. Got that? Make sure you suck on your oxygen or you’ll pass out, right?”

  “Right,” Ron nodded eagerly. “I do para-sailing all the time, I know the drill.”

  “Okay, good. Now just remember, don’t ride it higher…” Kamir shook his head, “That’s really important. Sometimes the Jetstream will curl down a bit, and if you get into that…you’re going for a long ride. And you’re not geared up for it. K?”

  Ron nodded, “Got it.”

  “Alright!” Kamir clapped him on the back, “Have fun, my man!”

  “I will!”

  Ron turned and headed to the plane that Kamir had arranged for him, and the dark faced young man turned to the stuffy looking, dirty blond who walked up behind him. “You get it done?”

  “Oh yeah.” The man smirked, holding up a circuit board. “He’ll be ten klicks up before he even has a clue how screwed he is.”

  Kamir snorted, “I ever tell you how much I hate cops?”

  “Not lately. Buy me a drink at the Blue Yonder and I’ll let you remind me.” The dirty blond grinned.

  Kamir laughed, clapping the other man on the back. “Come on then.”

  Behind them the plane carrying Ron Somer taxied around into position for takeoff, its motor droning loudly in the desert air.

  *****

  “Nothing on our friend Raoul. “Gwen sighed, closing her terminal with a flick of her finger.” You think she lied?"

  “No,” Anselm shook his head, “No, I think she was lied to.”

  Gwen nodded reluctantly. “I’m sorry, I thought I could give you a lead.”

  “You have.”

  “What?”

  “The Thermies.” Anselm said, grimacing. “Much as I don’t want to get involved with those people, it looks like Amir might have something to do with them.”

  “That won’t be easy,” Gwen warned, “The Thermies are a tight knit group, they don’t much like outsiders.”

  “If the job were easy,” Anselm smiled ruefully, “Then anyone could do it.”

  *****

  The drone of the airplane engine created a constant background noise as Ron Somer checked his gear again, and then looked out the side.

  They were climbing hard as they circled around the kilometer high tower, the sight of the immense spire taking Ron’s breath away. He’d para-sailed in the Rockies, and free climbed in the Andes, and done a lot of things that were considered crazy but for all the beautiful sights he’d seen while he was living his life, this was one of the most awesome. He watched the high speed tram as it climbed the outside of the tower, taking tourists to the top of the project tower where they could walk around the relatively narrow boardwalk that hugged the lip of the tower’s huge maw. He’d been there himself a couple days earlier, with his new wife and…

  Oops.

  Ron blinked, he’d forgotten to tell Adrienne what he was doing.

  I’ m a dead man, He groaned, shaking his head as he reached for the portable in his pocket.

  No, no, better to wait. There was too much noise here to talk anyway, and he’d have plenty of silence in short order. She knew that he was trying to catch a flight before they had to leave anyway, she’d even been cautiously encouraging.

  Ron smiled.

  Cautiously encouraging meant that she hadn’t wanted to somehow aggravate the escaped mental patient she felt her new husband had turned into, but it was still cautiously encouraging. He was going to have to get her to come along on some of his jaunts, Ron knew. Thrills were multiplied when they were shared, like all good things in life.

  “Almost there!”

  The pilot’s yell startled him out of his deep thoughts and refocused his mind on the rush ahead. Ron grinned and raised his fist, “Alright!”

  The plane rose over the lip of the tower, still climbing to get high enough above the stack, then slowly leveled out. The pilot turned around in his seat as he headed the plane away from the tower on an even level.

  “Alright! I’m gonna turn the plane around in a minute and come back, you’ll jump when I tell you, Got it?”

  Ron nodded, flashing a thumbs up. “Got it!”

  “Don’t get fancy, pull your chord as soon as you’re clear!” The pilot yelled, “That’ll give you time to correct any mistakes you make…the air around the tower has some crazy shears, so watch out for them!”

  Ron nodded again, accepting the advice.

  “You sure you want to do this!?” The pilot yelled again, turning in his seat to look back, “It’s a freaky thing for a beginner!”

  “I’m sure!” Ron called back, flashing a thumbs up.

  “Alright!” The pilot turned back around and gripped the controls again, “Get ready!”

  Ron Somer nodded, checking his gear yet again.

  The plane came around in a wide, lazy arc, until it was leading right back into the huge tower as the engine buzzed mindlessly in the background.

  “Thirty seconds!” The call came a moment later. “Open the door!”

  The co-pilot jumped back, then grabbed the door as he roughly pushed past Ron, sliding it open with a jerk. “Get ready!”

  Ron moved to the edge of the plane, grabbing onto the doors at either side. Below him the dust of the desert, the tiny buildings of the city, and shimmering glass of the greenhouse crawled impossibly slowly even as the tower itself seemed to rush in his direction.

  “Jump!”

  Ron threw himself out the door, screaming a joyous war cry as he flipped clear of the plane’s wing, tucked in a graceful half gainer as he spun and turned in the air. He knew that the pilot had said not to get fancy, but Ron loved to flip and roll as he free fell. After a few seconds though he reached up and yanked the chord to his Para-Pack.

  The Para-Pack was something of a cross between a para-sail and a para-chute. The airfoil design of the pack was a little more advanced than the chutes of yesteryear, but it was the materials that really made it something else. Lighter and stronger than designers even dreamed of only two decades earlier, the memory plastics knew what shape they were supposed to be and always struggled to return to it when they were set loose.

  There was no sudden jerk as the pack deployed, the chords he was hanging by were compressed when in the pack and they absorbed his weight as they let themselves extend to their full length until the sudden snap of the foil above unfolding. In a few seconds, Ron Somer was gliding easily and silently through the wild blue as he grasped the control handles and tugged lightly on them to circle around and line up on his destination.

  The Tower.

  *****

  From the top of the Project tower the vie
w was simply astounding, you could literally see as far as the air would let you in all directions. High powered binoculars, available for rent, would let the visitors see the skyline of Sydney on a spectacularly clear day, though usually the city was obscured by heat shimmers on the horizon.

  The Project officials had learned a long time earlier, though, that the view wasn’t the main selling point of the tour.

  People loved watching idiots do stupid things, it seemed, so whenever one of the thermies was in the air, which was most of the time despite early efforts to keep them away, there was always a crowd oohing and ahing at the flying men.

  This time was no exception as the plane came around and everyone saw the man jump out.

  “There he is!”

  Someone shouted, completely unnecessarily, and pointed at the figure as he fell in an aerial ballet. It was short lived though, and the gossamer wings of a Para-pack soon appeared in the distance and they could see the man come around toward them.

  “He’s really going to go for it!”

  The tour guide tried not to roll her eyes, she’d been on this shift for too long to be impressed by the machismo of the Thermies anymore. They were crazy, sure, but it was commonplace to her. In fact, this one was pretty simple actually, with none of the flare most of the show-offs showed.

  To the gawkers, though, it was all new and all awesome.

  *****

  Ron laughed, throwing his head back wildly as he fought a sudden wind shear that tried to shove him off course. It was like the tower had its own defender, determined to only let in those worthy to ride the immense thermals to the sky.

  Ron knew wind shear, though, and could compensate as long as they didn’t get much worse.

  Ahead of him he could make out people in the observation deck of the tower now, and he imaged he could see them waving and pointing at him. It was too far for that, but he was pretty sure that they would be.

  He and Adrienne had been.

  Then he was through the shear, swooping over the heads of the onlookers as he crossed the lip of the huge tower and looked down into the maw for the first time.

  It was lit inside, and that surprised him for a moment. He’d expected an oppressively dark maw, like a chimney or smokestack, spewing out its heat in anonymity. Not this almost…cheerful blinking of lights as the blades of the turbines endlessly spun within the one hundred meter wide wind tunnel.

  Then he suddenly felt jerked in his harness, the Para pack yanking him upwards like a rocket as a flush of warmth suffused him and suddenly, for all the rush and adrenaline he felt this strange sensation of peace and safety.

  Do I smell strawberries? Ron blinked the thought away, laughing madly at the strange thought as the warm air rushing upwards caught him and spun him, twirled him, cradled him as he shot upwards in its embrace.

  Now I’ll call her, Ron chuckled, letting the thermal take him as he let one hand go of the controls and pulled out his portable.

  A simple flip let the folded material of the screen snap into position, and he had his wife’s account on his buddy list so the call when through instantly.

  “Ron?” Her voice was uncertain as she looked out of the screen at him. “Is that you?”

  “Guess where I am right now!” He yelled, though he probably didn’t have to.

  Something about all that extra space seemed to demand that something fill it, even the obnoxious yelling of an adrenaline filled madman.

  “How should I…RON!!!”

  He laughed as her scream coincided with his flipping the portable upside down and giving her a view of the ground, greenhouse, and tower that was well below him now. He felt like an astronaut on lift off, the world rushing away from him as he climbed for the stars.

  “Ron Somer you crazy lunatic!”

  Ron was still laughing as he flipped the portable back, “Relax, Adrienne…It’s great! You’ve got to try this!”

  “How high up are you!?”

  He glanced at his altitude gage and shrugged, “Only a couple kilometers.”

  Funny. It felt like he’d been climbing faster than that.

  “Are you carrying oxygen!?”

  “Of course!” Ron made a show of taking a breath from his mask. “In fact I’ll have to put it on full time in a moment.”

  “You put it on now!”

  “But then I couldn’t talk to you, Adrienne my love!” He grinned wildly.

  “Ronald Somer you put that mask on now or I will be waiting for you when you get down, and need I remind you that I’m licensed to carry a firearm!?”

  Ron laughed, but acquiesced and put his mask on. For a few breaths anyway, then he took it off again.

  “Ron!”

  “Relax, Hon! The tower produces nice warm and oxygen rich air, remember?” He chuckled at the outraged look on her face. “I’m fine.”

  Adrienne was visibly calming down now, thankfully. While he found her shock amusing for a short while he didn’t want her worried every time he went skydiving or parasailing, it would make for a very rough marriage.

  “How high are you now?”

  Ron frowned, but glanced down just the same.

  “Twenty five hundred meters.” He told her a moment later.

  Then he frowned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Ron shook his head, “It’s nothing, Hon…It’s just odd.”

  “What’s odd?”

  “I could have sworn I was higher than tha…”

  The sudden shock of his para-pack foil jerking horizontally cut Ron Somer off, and yanked the portable from his hand as a blast of icy cold ripped through the warm comfort he’d enjoyed till then, and suddenly Ron Somer was like a bubble being tossed through a hurricane and air seemed very difficult to find for his lungs.

  *****

  Anselm Gunnar was looking over the complaint reports and files of the more colorful of the ‘Thermies’ and was surprised at how much like a movie script some of it read like. “I find it hard to believe that the Tower Project puts up with them.”

  “The first Thermies were Project personnel,” Gwen grinned, shrugging. “Later on, there were a couple half-hearted attempts to put a stop to it, but eventually they just gave up. The thermies kind of give the place some character.”

  “A lunatic asylum has plenty of character as well. I don’t see the attraction,” Anselm replied wryly.

  She laughed, “the tourists love it, love it enough that they get bussed and trucked out here all the time to ride up the tower and watch the thermies ride the plume.”

  “More money that way?”

  Gwen nodded, “Yeah. The Shanty people don’t hold much love for the tourists, but the Tower seems bent on bringing them in. It’s usually some tower peon that keeps suggesting a larger airfield, something to bring them in by the planeload.”

  “I’m surprised it hasn’t happened.”

  “Major airlines don’t like to fly near the tower.” Gwen explained, “They even routed a couple flights around us because the heat the tower puts up into the sky messes with the Jetstream a bit. Makes things unpredictable for flyers, so we mostly only get the Bush pilots.”

  Anselm grunted.

  Like the lunatic fool he’d flown in with.

  “Most cargo moves around Australia on the road trains anyway,” She shrugged. “I mean, when you take three or four semi-trailers and link them together under a powerful truck, you can haul a lot of stuff.”

  “I’ll bet.” Anselm smiled, about to say something else when a buzzer sounded. “What’s that?”

  “Emergency call. Nine-One-One.” She said, frowning as she turned in her seat and tapped a command into her terminal.

  A moment later a stricken-looking blonde was yelling out of it, startling them both.

  “Please calm down,” Gwen said softly, but firmly. “What is the nature of the emergency?”

  “Adrienne!?” Anselm snapped, leaning over the desk. “What happened?”

  “Agent Gunnar! Thank God.” I
nspector Adrienne Somer said, calming down. “It’s my husband. He went up in the thermals…I think he had an accident.”

  Inspector Dougal immediately began making calls through other lines, getting rescue agencies on the alert, but Anselm felt his face go hard as he started to wonder.

  Coincidence?

  Anselm Gunnar didn’t believe in the beast.

  *****

  Winds ripped past him at high speeds, slicing through his clothes and into his skin as Ron Somer forced his hand to steady itself long enough to clamp his oxygen mask into place. He was out from over the tower now, the sudden winds had pushed him to the east at high speed as they sliced through him like knives.

  He could feel the bite of cold already numbing his limbs as he danced madly under the tough para-pack foil above him.

  He thought he was still accelerating, but it was hard to tell. The ground moved so slow under him, deceptively inching along at a turtles pace even though his terrified mind knew that it was much faster.

  He had to be in the Jetstream.

  It was the only answer, but it didn’t make any sense.

  The Jetstream was ten kilometers up, he had only been around three!

  Belatedly he looked down at his altimeter, staring at the readout.

  Four thousand meters.

  His hand gripped around the plastic of the electronic device, gripping it tightly enough that splinters of pain ran up his fingers as they protested the cold and pressure. The plastic cracked.

  There was no way that reading was right.

  Once you got more than a few hundred feet above the ground it was nearly impossible to tell how high you were by eye, the distance just completely skewed the mind’s perspective so that a para-sailor simply had to rely on his instruments. If they were badly calibrated, he was in serious trouble, but Ron had checked the calibrations himself before he left. It didn’t make any sense!

  Ron let go of the offending device and began to struggle with the controls of his para-foil, wrestling to get it to let some of the air go by. To slow himself, and drop free of the stream of biting cold air he was caught in. If he rose any higher…

  Ron Somer shuddered, either from that thought or from the cold. He didn’t know which, and didn’t really think that it mattered either.