by Graham, Jo
"I mean, how do you keep all those schedules in your head?"
"How do you keep Latin and Greek?"
Jerry shrugged. "Point taken. So what do we do about Lewis and Mitch?"
"If they're on the Commodore there's not a thing we can do about them," Alma said. "Except for us to pack up and fly to New York. It's a long flight for one pilot, but I can do it if I need to." An awfully long flight, she thought to herself. And one not well begun late in the day with no sleep the night before. A night flight by herself…. Alma walked over to the window again. The flag on the pole across the street stood out, flowing beautifully dead east. The clouds were building, the slanting light already gone.
That was the other problem with air travel. The Commodore Vanderbilt would keep going through the night for anything short of massive blizzards. This thunderstorm would close Municipal Airport within the hour. And there was no way she'd take off in the Terrier with a full fuel load right into the teeth of a storm this size even if the airport didn't close. She wouldn't do it in her Jenny at home, much less with a plane she knew less well that frankly handled like a load of bricks when they had the auxiliary tank full.
"I think we're going to have to go tomorrow," Alma said. She held a hand up to forestall Jerry. "Look out the window. There's no way. But if they're on the Commodore with Davenport, you and I can take off in the morning and try to catch up to them."
"We won't get there before the Ile de France sails," Jerry said. "Even I can do that math."
"But Lewis and Mitch will," Alma said. "I'm glad Mitch has plenty of cash with him."
"I am too," Jerry said.
Chapter Fifteen
The rain had slowed by the time they finished eating, but it was still steady enough to soak through the shoulders of Lewis’s jacket and drip disconsolately from the brim of his hat. The vague feeling of content that had come with the hash and fried eggs was long gone. His socks squelched in his shoes, and while he might have been this physically miserable since the War, it hadn’t been more than once. Mitch looked just as damp and maybe even less happy, and the elevator operator gave them a sympathetic glance.
“Still raining? It’s supposed to keep it up all night.”
Mitch looked about ready to explode. Lewis mumbled something polite and placating, and then they’d reached their floor. Mitch knocked, not bothering with the key, and Alma opened the door and fell back as though they’d startled her.
“What are you doing here? I thought you were on the Commodore Vanderbilt.”
“What?” Mitch stared, damp hat in his hands.
Lewis shrugged off his coat, feeling a damp patch still between his shoulder blades. Since the war, he hated having to stay in wet clothes, and wanted nothing more than to get changed. “Why would we do that?”
“You lost him,” Jerry said.
Mitch sailed his hat onto the dresser with unnecessary force. “Yes, we lost him. We chased all over the damn city after an illusion.”
“He’s going to New York,” Alma said. She brandished a sheet of the hotel’s notepaper. “Henry sent a telegram. Davenport’s got tickets on the Ile de France.”
“Why?” Lewis asked. He kicked off his shoes and socks, but the cuffs of his pants were clammy around his ankles.
“I don’t know,” Jerry began, and Alma interrupted.
“It’s more important that we stop him first. What happened?”
“We followed him back to downtown,” Mitch said baldly. “He tried to shake us in traffic, then he took the L. Then he went to the train stations, La Salle Street first, then Union Station. That’s where Lewis realized something wasn’t right. Somehow — and I don’t know when, or how — he managed to send us off after an illusion.”
“Dammit, Mitch, how could you?” Alma exclaimed.
“Because I’m stupid,” Mitch snapped. “How was I to know he was going to New York?”
“It’s my fault,” Lewis said. The wet clothes were sticking to his skin, chill and nasty, and he shivered. “I was leading — he must have fooled me somehow, and if I hadn’t suggested we eat —”
“You what?” Alma glared at him, and Lewis met her eyes squarely.
“We waited at Union Station for the rain to let up, and we had something to eat while we waited. I’m sorry, Al.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Jerry said. “The Commodore Vanderbilt left at three.”
“You should have been on it,” Alma said unreasonably.
“And how the hell were we supposed to know that?” Mitch demanded.
“Because you’ve brains, no matter how hard you try to hide it, and talent to spare.” Alma ran her hands through her hair. “Both of you. Damn it, he’s sailing tomorrow.”
“All right.” Mitch glared at her. “We’ll fly out —”
He was interrupted by another crash of thunder, and Alma shook her head. “Not tonight, we won’t. Not in this weather.”
Mitch went to the window. “It’ll clear. We’ll be fine.”
“No, it won’t,” Alma said. “That’s the storm front that’s been behind us since California —”
“I can handle it,” Mitch said.
Lewis looked from him to Alma’s furious face. “Well, I can’t. Not with the supplemental tank full, and maybe not even with it empty. They’re going to close the airport anyway.”
Jerry gave him a look that was almost grateful. “Lewis is right,” he said. “We won’t get out tonight.”
“Then what the hell —” Alma bit off the rest of what she’d been going to say, shook her head hard. “We can’t afford to lose him. Not with what it can do.”
“He has to stay Davenport a while longer,” Jerry said. “If he wants to sail on the Ile de France, he has to stay Davenport.”
“That’s true,” Mitch said.
“If we take off first thing tomorrow, with a full fuel load,” Lewis began, and Alma nodded.
“Ok, it’s eight hundred miles, give or take, to New York.”
Mitch reached for a scrap of paper, found a pencil and scribbled for a few minutes. “We can’t do it in one hop. We’ll have to stop to refuel.”
“Are you sure?” Alma came to look over his shoulder.
“I’m sure,” Mitch said.
“But —”
“We’d be landing on fumes,” Mitch said. “Trust me on this one, Al.”
She nodded reluctantly. “So if we leave first thing — we might be able to go at first light, if we use Henry’s name, and plan to leave before any of the commercial flights want to go. If we could leave by five, we could make it by one. We might just be in time to make the sailing.”
“Or to stop him from sailing,” Jerry said. “One or the other.”
“We might make it by then,” Mitch said, but he sounded doubtful.
“Assume the worst,” Jerry said. “We miss the Ile de France. What are our options?”
“Catch another boat?” Lewis said, when no one else spoke.
“We’ll be behind him all the way,” Alma said, “and we’ll have to dowse for him when we get there. But, yes. That’s a possibility.”
“Make sure he really did take the Ile de France,” Mitch said, with a wincing smile.
“Point,” Jerry said.
“We wire Henry,” Alma said. “We tell him that Davenport gave us the slip and to look out for him. If he can do anything — well, I doubt he can, but on the off chance, at least he’ll know.”
“Henry’s in New York?” Mitch asked.
“For the airship launch,” Jerry said.
“Oh, right.” Mitch touched the back of his head again.
“Maybe he can come up with an excuse to stop him,” Lewis began, then shook his head. “No, sorry, that would only make it — jump — again.”
Alma nodded. “And that’s the one thing we really don’t want. Let it think it’s shaken us, and we’ll catch up with it in France.”
Lewis looked from one to the other. Mitch’s temper had cooled
, and there was a new ease, a comfort, between Alma and Jerry, as though they’d come to some understanding. “But what does it want?” he asked, and there was a little silence.
“I don’t really know,” Jerry said, after a moment. “I do know that, almost by definition, it can’t be good.”
“But —” Lewis paused. “Ok, I know this sounds bad, but hear me out. How bad can it be? This is one guy, an archeologist — a college professor. What can he do? You’re talking about sailing to France and letting everything back home go hang so that we can chase him. Isn’t there — I don’t know, some other group who could take over, or something? Like Henry’s lodge, or that Bullfinch guy you called in California?”
“I don’t know anybody else,” Alma said. “Not any more. It all fell apart after the War, Lewis, we just — there didn’t seem to be much point, after everything we’d been through. Saving the world — most people didn’t think it was possible. Gil was one of the few who thought we could keep trying.”
Jerry touched her shoulder, a casual, intimate gesture that made Lewis blink. “What it wants,” he said. “If I’m right, what it wants is what Caligula had, absolute power over an empire that exists to serve and sate it alone. No, it can’t get that from Davenport, though it can, if it tries, feed its bloodlust. Think about Jack the Ripper. This thing could use one body to kill, and then move on, and the truly responsible creature would never be caught. It would probably enjoy making someone like Davenport do that, too — there’s extra pleasure to be gained from forcing an unwilling host to commit atrocities, and Bill, whatever I may think of his scholarship, he’s not that kind of man.
“And that’s the least it can do. It’s new to this world, it hasn’t found its feet yet, but it’s already deduced there’s not much for it here. Who could it possess in America that would give it the kind of power Caligula had? The President? Not really. He doesn’t have enough money, and there are too many checks on his power. A millionaire, a Morgan or a Vanderbilt — Henry, even — they have the money, the social standing, but not the political clout. But in Europe, or in a colony….” Jerry shook his head. “There are people who have that kind of power right now, and this creature will figure out how to reach them. We can’t let that happen.”
Lewis nodded slowly. He could see the pictures Jerry conjured up, and knew there were places where that kind of power still existed. It didn’t matter that they’d won the War, some things never changed. People never changed.
“It’s what we do,” Alma said. “It’s what I do. I made a promise.”
“To Gil?” Lewis asked.
Alma nodded. “To Gil, and to God, and to the lodge, to the Builders of the Temple. But to myself most of all.”
They took a taxi to Municipal Field in the thinning light, the sun not yet up, but the eastern sky glowing behind the last of the previous day’s clouds. It had taken four telephone calls and a good deal of pleading, but Henry’s manager had gone to bat for them, and the controller had grudgingly agreed to let them take off before sunrise, provided they didn’t require field lights, and would pay the overtime for the fuel boy. Alma had winced and agreed, and the manager — currying favor with Henry, Mitch guessed — offered to supervise getting the plane gassed and ready. They pulled up at the hanger, and the manager sent a mechanic to help load the baggage, while Mitch made his walk-around and Alma collected the latest weather reports. She came back shrugging, handed him the sheaf of flimsies, and Lewis came to look over his shoulder.
“Not bad,” he said, and Mitch shrugged.
“Could be worse.” They were both whistling in the dark, and knew it: the storms that had gone through Chicago the night before were still ahead of them, not building, but not diminishing any, either. It would be a rough ride all the way, even if they didn’t overtake the front. At least they’d gotten what passed for a decent night’s sleep on this trip. Mitch stretched a final time, and touched the sore place on the back of his head. It was a lot better this morning, and only hurt when he actually pressed on it, but he’d seen stars when he’d hit the wall, all right. He’d been a little worried there for a moment.
Alma and the manager were talking about something — probably the flight plan, Mitch thought, but before he could join them, Alma had turned back toward the plane.
“We’re fueled up and they’re ready,” she said. “And I think the controller wants us out of here as soon as possible.”
Mitch nodded. “We’re just — there he is.”
Jerry was limping toward them, a paper bag in his hand. “Breakfast,” he said, and hauled himself into the cabin.
“Thanks,” Mitch said, and followed him aboard. He settled himself in the cockpit, and looked up in mild surprise as Lewis took the co-pilot’s seat.
“Alma and Jerry are talking about what to do once we catch the thing,” Lewis said, and Mitch nodded.
They ran through the last checklist, flipped the ignition and adjusted the choke until the big radials were humming nicely. The flagman was waiting for them, waved them onto the field ahead of a big Ford with Powers Air Transport stenciled on its tail. Lewis grinned.
“Nice to have pull.”
“Henry’s name counts for something,” Mitch said.
The Terrier was sluggish with the supplemental tank, and took most of the length of the field before it rose reluctantly into the air. Mitch kept the throttles open for a long while, letting the power build, and finally leveled out just above the patchy cloud cover. He could see a heavier wall of clouds ahead, and hoped the winds would keep pushing it ahead of them. They’d be cutting it close, impossibly close, but if everything went right, they might just be able to catch the liner. He ran the numbers again in his head, calculating. Maybe, maybe if he pushed it, if everything went just right, they could make it without stopping…. If they could take the shortest route, if they decided not to worry where they crossed the Alleghenies, didn’t bother staying in range of emergency fields, if they didn’t hit headwinds: it was so close, just on the edge of impossible. He glanced out the window, seeing Lake Michigan beneath the wing, blue flashing in and out of the spotty clouds. He didn’t have to commit to anything until they were over Ohio, and that was a couple hours’ flying. He’d see how it went, and decide then.
An hour and a half in the air, and he was pretty sure they weren’t going to make it without a stop. And if they stopped, they weren’t going to make the liner. The clouds had closed in, and he’d dropped down to 3000 feet to get under them, the Terrier bouncing and leaping in the unsteady air. He was pretty sure they were burning fuel faster than he’d planned, but they were running on the supplemental tank, and there was no gauge to check. He looked out the window again, looking for the grain silos outside of Fostoria. In the right-hand seat, Lewis looked up from the clipboard.
“What about Canton? I’ve got a listing for McKinley Field.”
Mitch considered. Land at Canton, top up the wing tanks without filling the supplement tank, that would save time — no, if they were going to do that, better to press on further, burn a bit more fuel. “What’s beyond that? Is there something at Altoona? Allentown?”
Lewis reached for the Rand-McNally with its listings of roads and airfields. The Terrier rocked again, and Mitch tightened his grip on the controls. The weather was getting worse as they closed on the front, the clouds dropping lower ahead of them, heavy with rain.
“Towanda Legion Airport,” Lewis announced, and grabbed for the clipboard as the Terrier dropped. “Full fuel service, grass field. North and west of Scranton.”
“Ok,” Mitch said, and adjusted his grip on the controls.
Half an hour more, and the rain began. Mitch lifted the Terrier, looking for clear air above the clouds, but they gained a thousand feet, and they were still in broken cloud, thunderheads towering to the east. Mitch swore under his breath, then louder as he fought the controls. There was a series of thumps from the cabin, one of Jerry’s books gotten loose, and a moment later Alma fought her way to
the cockpit door.
“How’s it looking?”
“See for yourself,” Mitch answered.
“Damn it to hell.” She clung to the doorframe as the Terrier lurched and fell off to the left. “It’s no good, is it?”
“Cleveland,” Mitch said, grimly. “I’m putting us down at Cleveland.” He couldn’t risk taking his eyes off the controls, but he knew she heard the regret in his voice. “I’m sorry, Al.”
The air was a little easier to the north, but it took most of his strength to muscle the Terrier down onto the grass. It was raining hard still as he taxied onto the verge, and he sat for a moment in silence after he’d shut down the engines. Lewis scrambled out of the other seat, back into the cabin to let down the steps, and a moment later Mitch saw him and Alma running across the grass toward the administration building, Lewis’s jacket held over their heads in lieu of an umbrella. It didn’t make any difference, Mitch thought. They weren’t going to make it in time — they’d have to catch another ship, figure out some other way to get to Paris, and then start the whole lousy process all over again. And in the meantime, Davenport, or the thing that rode him, it would have all the time in the world to do whatever it pleased. Jerry had talked about Jack the Ripper, the dry pedantic voice not quite able to quell the horror. Mitch had seen something like it once, behind the lines, a girl — not a nice girl, maybe, sharp and demanding, and expensive, too, but she hadn’t deserved to die like that, gutted like a fish in her little second-floor apartment, the sheets and mattress so soaked in blood that they’d thought for a moment they were red satin. And the girl, so carved up he hadn’t registered her as human at first, and then had thought it had been a bomb, artillery, even though it couldn’t have been, the rest of the room untouched, except for the blood. They’d caught the guy — he’d been eager to confess, to explain why he had to do it — and they’d tried and hanged him, but it wasn’t something Mitch could ever get out of his mind.
If he hadn’t lost Davenport in Chicago — if he’d had the sense to think that it would use its powers, would try to distract them, they wouldn’t be in this mess. They could be on the train, almost to New York already, with plenty of time to get tickets and get on board without him seeing them. But, no, he’d fucked it up again, and people were going to pay for it. Just like they always did.