“Two hundred?” said an incredulous voice. “Against seven? That’s suicide.”
Tom looked toward the voice. “The hang-gliding team, I should say, isn’t intended as an effective attack force. I guess it would be more accurate to call it a hit squad. Our primary goal is the necromancer.”
The babble in the auditorium sounded as if an astounding fact had just stunned a courtroom. “Our chances aren’t good,” continued Tom, raising his voice, “and we don’t know nearly as much as we should. But it’s the best chance we’re likely to have. He has powers—” The talking had died and the last three words were spoken too loudly. “He has powers,” Tom repeated in a lower voice, “and at the very least we can serve as a distraction while the rest of you fight your way up. If we can keep him busy enough, he might not get a chance to try to stop you.” He stopped to let that sink in.
He had neglected to mention something we had discussed earlier: the fighting on the lower levels would also serve as a distraction in the hang-gliding team’s favor—the battle might cause reinforcements to be sent down from the upper floors, decreasing the chance of our being spotted as we came in, and increasing our chance of being able to fight our way through.
“But,” he went on, “we also might not make it. There’s a good possibility we’ll be picked off before we even reach the Empire State Building. In which case it’s up to you, and you’ll have to fight it all the way up.”
“That’s a hundred stories!” somebody protested.
“Eighty-six, in the main building,” Tom responded levelly. “And, as far as we know, the enemy are only located on the bottom three or four and top two or three floors. The middle ground should be the easiest part. Once you get past the bottom four floors, you ought to be home free.”
I noticed he said “once” instead of “if.”
The next thing I knew the assembly was breaking up amid loud arguments, speculation, expressed fears, and optimism, and Tom was asking that members of the hang-gliding team and the two leaders of the ground forces—how quickly we form our military jargon, I thought—stay behind to go over the whole thing again. Everyone cleared out but the nine of us. I stared at the map of New York as Tom gave instructions on the ground attack to Avery Stondheim and Roger Dawson.
You’re it now, you bastard, I thought, looking at the grid of streets. You’re all there is.
“As for us,” Tom was saying, “we have to go light. No armor, no shields. No heavy weapons. Carry a bow and arrow if you’re any good with one; we’ll find a way to strap them down so we can get them off quickly but won’t fall off before that. Take your sword, of course—I think you can wear it without having to tie it to the glider.”
“Tape it to the trapeze bar with duct tape,” said Malachi, “and turn an end up so you can pull it away quickly when you need your sword.”
Tom nodded. “Hank, you’re our archery expert—could you fire a bow while flying one of those things?”
“I don’t think so. The kites respond pretty quickly, and if you let go I doubt you’ll stay in neutral position. One good gust of wind and you’re gone. You could probably recover, sure, but I don’t think you’d be able to do that and land on the eighty-sixth floor. Maybe you could do it if you had the bow out and already fitted, but I wouldn’t want to try to do that and fly the glider at the same time.”
I stared through the far wall. Tom stepped into my field of vision, lifted the map of New York, and set it behind another drawing. “This is a rough map of the eighty-sixth floor, based on a drawing Pete did for us. We’re going to have to—Pete, where are you going?”
I looked back at him, only half aware I’d started for the door. “Huh? Oh, I’ve got to … . My blowgun. Shaughnessy has my blowgun.” I turned and left. My feet pounded numbly down the hallway, echoing in the huge empty spaces, and I was only dimly aware of reaching my room and sitting down on the edge of the bed.
I sat there for an hour, hands clenched, with the worse case of the shakes I’ve ever had.
*
I knocked on the door.
“Who—oh, hello, Pete.”
“Hi, McGee. I came … .”
She opened the door to let me in and closed it behind me.
“I’m not sure why I came,” I finished lamely.
She studied me.
“I, uh, read your note. I guess that’s why I’m here. I mean, what I want to say is, well—thank you. Thank you very much.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Pete.” Her voice was soft.
“I know, but I want to. I—shit, I don’t know. McGee, I’m confused.”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” she said gently. “I understand.”
My jaw worked. “Well I’m glad you do. Maybe you can explain it to me.”
She looked at me for a long time. “I don’t think I’d want to be in your shoes for anything,” she finally said.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because I know what I want. My choices are usually pretty clear; I rarely have any major conflicts.” She went to the door and opened it. “And I’m sorry, but I think you’d better leave.”
But I stepped toward her.
“No, Pete. I wouldn’t do that to you, and I wouldn’t let you do it to yourself.” And she held the door open for me.
I stood on the other side of it for a few minutes after it closed, still confused.
*
Archives Section:
“Uh—” I didn’t know her name. “Do you know where I could find Shaughnessy? I’ve got to get my blowgun from her.”
She looked dubious but told me. “She’s been rooming with me,” she added. I wondered why she did.
The “room” turned out to be a sectioned-off space, a hastily made cubicle of sheets, wood partitions, and curtains, arranged to provide some semblance of privacy. How do you knock on a sheet? I cleared my throat. “Um, anybody home?”
Shaughnessy pulled a sheet aside. “Pete.” The distance still seemed to be there. “Hold on a minute. I’m not dressed.” She closed the sheet before I could respond. A minute later she emerged, wearing shorts and a blue T-shirt.
“I came for my blowgun,” I said without preamble.
“Oh.” She looked as if I’d just punched her in the stomach. “I’ll … get it.” She disappeared behind the sheet again and was back in fifteen seconds with the Aero-mag. I looked it over, squinting down the tube to see if anything had got lodged inside, and to make sure it was still straight. It was in fine shape. A little scratched up, maybe, but we’d been through a lot together. I had made darts from piano wire I’d found on the scavenger hunt with Mac, and I pulled one from my back pocket, fitted it, and looked around for something to shoot at. An antique headboard and bedframe leaned against a wall. The mattress had probably been procured by someone with the room for it. I raised the Aero-mag to my lips and puffed as if sounding a low note on a tuba. Thock! It reverberated through the Archives Section. Ignoring Shaughnessy, I walked to the headboard, grabbed the end of the dart, braced one foot against the wood, and pulled, twisting. The bead came loose and I fell onto my back.
I got up quickly, dusting myself off. Shaughnessy looked as though she were trying hard not to laugh. Her face was red.
“What’s so damned funny?” I demanded, feeling cloddish.
“You take yourself so seriously,” she said when she caught her breath.
“I’m doing serious things, Shaughnessy.”
“Oh, Pete.” She looked exasperated and changed the subject. “That’s really something, being able to hang glide. Maybe you’ll be able to get to Ariel.” She watched me carefully, gauging my reaction.
“That’s why I’m going,” I said evenly.
“Is there another glider?”
She looked insulted when I laughed. “No, there isn’t. At least, we didn’t find another one. Besides, you could get killed.”
“For your information, Mister Garey, I am marching with the rest of this a
rmy tomorrow.”
“You can’t.”
“I can and I will. And who the hell are you to tell me otherwise?”
“Shaughnessy, look—you don’t have to do this for me. This is my fight.”
“Your fight! Your fight! You arrogant son of a bitch, what makes you think I’m fighting for you and Ariel in the first place?”
“But I thought—”
“‘But’ nothing. Do you think all three hundred of these people are fighting to get Ariel back for you? They’d be fighting if you’d never existed, and I happen to believe in what they’re fighting for. But I suppose you haven’t stopped to consider their reasons for any of this.” She snorted. “You don’t even care about Ariel—you’re trying to save your own feelings, your own selfish interests.”
“That’s not—”
She wouldn’t let me get a word in. “You don’t care about her, you don’t care about these people and their cause; you don’t even care about me, and I’ve tried everything I can to—” She stopped, eyes widening. “Oh … shit!” She disappeared a final time behind her sheet.
For the second time in fifteen minutes I stood behind a closed entranceway, feeling stupid and confused.
*
I tried to use the chamber pot in my room and couldn’t relax enough. I tried to sleep. I couldn’t relax enough, but I had to go to the bathroom. I lay awake and stared up at the blackness, thinking how nice everything would be if only I could use the fucking bathroom.
I was scared. I was surprised at how hard it was to admit that to myself.
I got up and dressed.
*
“Shaughnessy?” I whispered beside the silent sheet. “Shaughnessy?”
“Who is it?”
“It’s me. Pete.”
Another voice, sleepy. “Wha? Time to go already?”
“Shh. No, Deb. Go back to sleep.”
She appeared quietly, drawing the sheet aside and stepping into the huge room. She wore the T-shirt and white shorts she’d had on before. “What do you want, Pete?”
A single Japanese lantern burned behind me, casting my shadow upon the sheet, upon half her face. I moved a little to see her more clearly. She looked as if she had been crying.
“Shaughnessy, I—I want to apologize. For the other night, when you came into my room and I yelled at you. I was upset. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. You didn’t deserve that.”
“It’s okay, Pete. I understand.”
“No, it’s not okay,” I said, echoing the words I’d used to begin shouting at her that night. “I need you to understand. I haven’t been thinking straight.” I tapped my temple with a forefinger. “I feel like I can’t see things as they are.”
“You need Ariel back,” she said simply.
I nodded in the darkness and she shut her eyes. “I understand, Pete. Yes, I do.” And without saying any more she turned back inside her little cubicle. I heard her beginning to cry.
I stood there a long time, listening. When it stopped I realized there was a wet streak under each of my own eyes. I wiped them away with my sleeve. And then I left.
*
We sat on the front steps and watched them go, Mac, Walt, Rank, Drew, Tom, Malachi, and myself. Occasionally someone would look back and we gave them a heartfelt thumbs-up.
“Well,” said Tom after the last of them had turned out of sight, “what are we waiting for? We’ve got a building to jump off of.”
Twenty-Two
I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills When all at once I saw a crowd … .
—William Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
Ice water chilledmy lungs as I drew a shuddering breath and jumped off the top of the World Trade Center.
The building dropped below me. The street was a five-second, screaming fall away. The skyscrapers pointed away from me, their angle of tilt increasing with their distance, as though I looked at the city through a fish-eye lens.
The wind caught the kite above my head as I stepped off into the dizzying height. It threatened to lift the sail’s nose, to carry me backward over the roof where the vortex winds whirled unseen, which would slam me back onto my starting point. I pulled the bar, moving my body forward six inches and picking up speed by increasing the angle of attack.
*
The journey to New York had been uneventful, made mostly in silence, only the uneven drumbeat of the horses’ hooves pounding in time to the steady clinking of our swords in their slings. When we passed those who had left on foot before us they cheered, and for those few minutes I felt good.
We reached Manhattan before nightfall the next day, abandoning the horses at the Holland Tunnel. After freeing them, we walked the rest of the way to the World Trade Center. The front doors were open. We walked into the huge, blue-toned main floor and began climbing.
*
I went straight toward the Empire State Building for twenty seconds, then began a gentle turn to the right. If I turned more than about thirty degrees I would be losing more height than I’d be able to make up. I made sure it was more gradual than that, inching to the right side of the kite. After a second it responded: the right wing spar dipped slightly, and there was the city, spread out in high relief, wheeling ever so slowly almost two thousand feet below. Ice cubes formed in my stomach as I looked down at it. I tried to relax in my prone position, resisting the irrational impulse to kick my feet as though swimming. The wind blew into my face. I felt as if my shoes were going to fall of.
Stall speed increases on a turn—that is, it’s easier for the kite to lose lift while banking. I compensated by pulling forward on the trapeze bar to gain speed. The kite lost altitude, but I’d gain that back when I passed over the western edge of the tower I’d jumped from; the air rushing up the sides would provide lift. If I did it right, I’d gain more than I had lost. I continued the gentle curve until I saw the rear of a yellow kite with a red V in the center. A G.I. Joe figure in a warm-up suit dangled beneath: Malachi Lee. He was climbing at a good angle as he passed over the World Trade Center, playing it smart by keeping the nose up slightly and letting the wind do the work. Far ahead of him, just beginning his second right-hand curve toward the eastern side of the opposite tower, was an even smaller figure beneath a white paper airplane with a diagonal blue slash: Tom Pert.
The top of the building was now above me by a few stories; I’d lost the height in the turn. Each of us was launching as the one before him began his first half-turn of the circle, and as I steadily approached the building another delta shape glided from the edge. A rainbow-arced kite with a ball of gold at one end of the colorful crescent: Mac.
*
We’d managed to climb up the first forty-four flights before Tom decided it was too dark to go on and we set up “camp.” Exhausted, we set our long, thin burdens on the floor and slept in a hallway. We hadn’t seen another human being since passing the ground forces the day before.
*
An upsurge of wind lifted the sail. I raised the nose just a tad, climbing. In only a few seconds I was back at rooftop level, fifteen hundred feet from the street. Another of the kites swooped, bat-like, from the top. Red, green, and blue stripes: Hank. Behind me, Mac should be midway through his first turn. I was too busy to watch; the air gusted unpredictably and the glider required my constant control. I couldn’t afford to let my grip relax on the control bar.
I climbed until I was about two hundred feet over the top of the tower before the upsurge died down. Malachi and Tom had been right: the updrafts more than compensated for the altitude we lost during turns. By the time we came over the eastern edge of the other tower, straightened out, and caught the convection current from that side, we should have gained at least three or four hundred feet from rooftop level. Possibly more, if we could keep our turns gentle.
My speed had put me a little ahead of the game. Tom was just reaching the opposite edge of our lift-off tower’s twin. He should have been j
ust leaving the influence of the updraft, but the difference shouldn’t prove crucial, as long as I didn’t overtake him. Or run into him.
I leveled off and flew straight. Ahead of me Malachi Lee completed his second one-hundred-eighty-degree turn and straightened.
*
I’d got up early next morning, having slept little, and what sleep I’d had was troubled. Everyone else seemed edgy also. Except for Malachi Lee, who looked like a relaxed cat. Drew seemed the most nervous. He was defensive and easily agitated. We left him alone.
We picked up our zippered nylon bags and took the stairwell again. The climbing was dreary and mindless, which was bad—not because of the drudgery but because it left your mind free to roam. Fear played volleyball in my imagination. Ironically, I was relieved when we finally reached the top.
The final door was locked. We took it off its hinges. It opened onto a small area that, as with the Empire State Building, had been a concession counter selling souvenirs. We walked on through double glass doors and blinked in the sunlight glaring from the roof. We set the kites side by side. Each of us walked to the edge and looked down silently, alone with his thoughts.
On a clear day, you can see … .
The Empire State Building. No more pollution to mar the scenery; the Change had provided a grand view. Funny—it seemed even smaller from here, though it dwarfed the buildings around it.
We still had five hours to go before we jumped. Rather than sit around and become even more jittery—Drew had developed a pronounced twitch in his right eye—we unzipped the long bags and began assembling the rigs.
*
I banked into the second turn. Drew ought to be launching about now. I risked a glance toward the farther of the twin towers. His kite—green on the wingtips and along the keel—rested on the roof beside Walt’s, nose-down, two Technicolor moths.
Goddammit—he’s chickened out.
I shouldn’t have been so disdainful, but I was. I could understand the reluctance to take that first and irretrievably committed step, but not the lack of fortitude in being unable to overcome it.
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