by Dan Simmons
And Baedecker awakes.
He awakes—as he always does—reaching above him for shroudguides and finding headboard and wall. He awakens—as he always does—silent and sweating and remembering each detail of what he had not been able to remember in the pain-wracked hours of consciousness after the crash or in the pain-measured ten weeks of slow recovery in the hospitals after that . . . or even in the three years following that August day until that first night when he had had the dream for the first time and came awake, just like this, reaching and sweating and remembering perfectly what could not be remembered.
But this time the dream had been different. Baedecker swings his feet to the floor, rests his head in shaky hands, and tries to find the difference.
And does.
The board is red, the stall buzzer is screaming, Baedecker feels the aircraft wallow belly-first toward the trees. There is no reprieve from this heavy pull, the earth is calling him down and under. But Baedecker pulls the stick back into his stomach, hunches and pulls the D-ring, knowing there is not enough time, seeing shattered branches fly up with the lifting canopy, but then—in slow motion—the familiar salvation as the ejection seat rises from the coffin of disintegrating fuselage, rises as slowly as a Victorian elevator in no particular rush to leave, and as his helmeted head passes the line of sight of the deflection mirror set above the cockpit instruments he sees himself for a second there, visor reflecting mirror reflecting visor, and rising farther he sees what he has forgotten, sees what he did not think about in the exigency of the survival instant—which, of course, he had always known, had never really forgotten only abandoned in the reflexive instinct of survival—he sees Scott in the backseat; Scott along for the ride today and still trusting, Scott, about seven years old in crew cut and his Cape Canaveral T-shirt, and his eyes in the mirror, still trusting, waiting for his father to do something but no fear there yet, only trust, and then Baedecker is up and out and safe—but such painful safety!—and screaming Scott's name even as he drifts slowly down to the churning waves of fire.
Baedecker stands and takes two steps to the window. He sets his cheek and forehead against the coolness of the rain-streaked glass and is surprised to feel tears streaking his cheek.
In the deep hours of the morning, Baedecker sets his face against the cold glass and knows exactly now why Dave had died.
Baedecker leaves before dawn so as to be in Tacoma by 7:30 A.M. Some of the members of the Crash Board are not happy to be there but by 8:15 A.M. Baedecker is sitting and listening to the six of them, speaking briefly when they are finished, and by 9:00 A.M. he is on his way south and east, crossing into Oregon above the Dalles. It is a gray, windy day with the smell of snow in the air, and although he scans the northern bluffs for some glimpse of the Stonehenge monument, he sees nothing.
It is a little after 1:00 P.M. when Baedecker looks down at Lonerock from the hilltop to the west of it. There are patches of snow on the steep incline, and he keeps the rented Toyota in second gear. The town seems even emptier than usual as he drives down the short main street. Solly's mobile home is closed up for the winter; Miz Callahan's school has heavy curtains pulled across the windows; and pockets of snow on the side streets have not been disturbed. Baedecker parks in front of the picket fence and lets himself into the house with the keys Di had loaned him two days earlier. The rooms are tidy, still smelling faintly of the ham they had heated up there after the funeral. Baedecker goes into the small writing room at the back of the house, gathers up the stack of manuscript and notes, packs them in a box that had held nine-by-twelve envelopes, and carries it out to the car.
Baedecker walks the hundred yards to the schoolhouse. There is no response either to his knock or to calls into the speaking tube. He backs away to look up at the belfry, but the windows are gray slabs reflecting the low clouds. The garden still holds brittle, broken cornstalks and a decomposing scarecrow dressed in a tuxedo.
He drives the short distance to Kink Weltner's ranch. He has parked the Toyota and is about to go up to the house when he catches sight of the Huey tied down in the field beyond the barn. The presence of the helicopter shakes him in some obscure way; he had forgotten that Dave had flown it there. Baedecker walks to it, runs his hand along the tie-down wires, and peers into the
cockpit. The windshield is frosted, but he can see the Air National Guard helmet propped on the back of the seat.
"Hullo, Dick."
Baedecker turns to see Kink Weltner walking toward him. Despite the cold, Kink is wearing only a dark suit, the left sleeve neatly pinned back.
"Hello, Kink. Where are you headed all dressed up?"
"Headed down to Las Vegas for a few days to get rid of this cabin fever," says Kink. "Fucking weather gets tiresome."
"I'm sorry we didn't get to talk after the funeral," Baedecker says. "I had a few things to ask you."
Kink blows his nose with a red kerchief and slips it back into the breast pocket of his suit. "Yeah, well, I had a lot of chores to finish up. Goddamn, I wish that hadna happened to Dave."
"Me too," says Baedecker. He taps the side of the fuselage. "I'm surprised this is still here."
Kink nods. "Yeah. I've called 'em twice about it. Talked to Chico both times because nobody wants to take responsibility for a machine that's not supposeta exist. They're waiting for a patch of good weather, I guess. I'm not sure if nobody wants to drive this far or if they're afraid to fly it over the mountains. It's all fueled and ready to go when they want it. I'd fly it back myself, but it's sort of hard to handle a Huey with one arm."
"I never mastered it with two arms," says Baedecker. "Kink, you talked to Dave when he got here, didn't you?"
"Just said hello. I was surprised to see him right after Christmas an' all. I knew he and Diane was comin' up sometime after the baby was born, but I didn't expect him before that."
"Did you see him again before he left?"
"Nah, the weather'd already closed in when he landed, an' he said he had the Cherokee stored over to the house. He said he'd be back in a couple of weeks to get the Huey if nobody else picked it up before then."
"Did he say why he'd come out to Lonerock?"
Kink shakes his head and then stops as if he had remembered something. "I did ask him how his Christmas was and he said fine but that he left one of the presents out here. That didn't make a whole lot of sense since they hadn't been out here—far as I know—since you was here with 'em back before Halloween."
"Thanks, Kink," says Baedecker as they walk back toward the house. "Can I use your phone?"
"Sure, just slam the door shut on your way out. Don't bother to lock it," says Kink as he climbs into his pickup. "See ya around, Dick."
"So long, Kink." Baedecker goes into the house and tries calling Diane. There is no answer. The afternoon light makes it seem like late evening, as if there is no energy left in the universe.
Baedecker drives back through Lonerock, passes the closed-up house, and turns right toward the school. He sees the curtains still closed, makes a U-turn in the snow out front, and is heading back toward Main Street when he sees the thin figure with its shock of white hair come around the building from the field behind. He stops and is out of the car jogging uphill toward her, thinking that in her long, dark coat, Miz Callahan resembles the scarecrow in her frozen garden.
"Mister Baedecker," she says and takes his hand in both of hers. "I was just getting my automobile ready for the trip. I have decided to drive to the coast and spend a few weeks with Mr. Callahan's sister's daughter."
"I'm glad I caught you," says Baedecker.
"Isn't it terrible about David?" she says and her hands clench with emotion.
"Yes, it is," says Baedecker and watches the large Labrador—Sable—come bounding around the side of the building.
And then there they are—four of them—barely big enough to walk, and Baedecker is on one knee, petting them, rubbing behind their ears, and he does not even need the old woman's next words to confi
rm what he knows.
"So terribly sad," she says, "and David had come so far to pick out just the right one for his little boy."
Baedecker calls from Condon. Diane answers on the third ring.
"I'm sorry I wasn't there for breakfast this morning," he says. "I decided to go talk to Bill and the rest of them and get a preliminary report."
"Tell me," she says.
Baedecker hesitates a second. "We can talk tonight when there's more time, Di. I hate to go into it all over the phone."
"Please, Richard. I want to know the important parts now." Her voice is gentle but firm.
"All right," says Baedecker. "First, the starboard engine had shut down completely just like they thought, but they're pretty sure now that Dave got it restarted just a few seconds before the crash. The hydraulics problem was a result of a stress, structural failure . . . no one could have caught it . . . but even that seems to have stabilized at about thirty-five percent assist. I don't know if the gear would've gone down, but Dave was planning to deal with that when the time came.
"Second, he couldn't see a damn thing, Di. He said on the tape that he could see lights when he came out of the clouds at sixty-two hundred, but that was for about two seconds. The mountain ridge he hit was in the center of a squall, heavy rain and zero visibility down to the deck for at least eight miles to the north.
"Third—and this is the important part, Di—the Portland Center controller handling the emergency told Dave that there were ridges up to five thousand feet there. The ridge he hit was at fifty-six hundred; it ran all the way east to Mt. St. Helens. I'd bet anything that Dave had fifty-five hundred as his punch-out altitude. Maybe higher, but the thing is, he'd just got the beast back in the corral—he was on top of the hydraulics problem, he was out of the ice, he'd just got the engine relit, and he was less than four minutes out from Portland. He was doing the best he could, Di, and he would've had it if it hadn't been for that ridge."
Baedecker pauses, seeing . . . no, feeling those last few seconds. Fighting a stick gone as heavy as a crowbar in a box of rocks, pedals trying to kick his knees back into his belly, no time to look out the rain-streaked canopy, watching the tumbling ball, checking the airspeed indicator and altimeter while handling the throttle and waiting for just the right second to try again on the engine restart. And all the time, above the grind and storm, aware of the small noises from the backseat.
Baedecker, knowing in his gut and soul that Dave was no fool, could see him being the first to snort derision at the sentimental suggestion of a pilot spending two seconds too long in a dying airplane because of a dog, but Baedecker could remember the tone of Dave's voice three months earlier, saying, "I can't remember ever being any happier," and in that tone he hears the possibility of a pause of one second or two where no pause is permissible, sees that final straw added to the already significant weight of a test-pilot's determination to save a salvageable aircraft.
". . . appreciate your doing it and telling me; Richard," Diane is saying. "I never doubted, really. There were just so many little questions I couldn't answer."
"Di," says Baedecker, "I know why Dave came out to Lonerock. He had a special present he wanted to give you and the baby." Baedecker pauses. "It wasn't . . . ah . . . wasn't ready when he was here," he lies. "But I'm going to bring it in tonight if that's all right." Baedecker glances at the Toyota where the puppy is making scrabbling sounds in the box in the backseat next to the box holding Dave's manuscript.
"Yes," says Diane and takes a breath. "Richard, you know the sonogram said we're going to have a boy."
"Dave told me," says Baedecker.
"Did he tell you the names we've been considering?" she asks.
"No," says Baedecker. "I don't think so."
"We both agreed that Richard is nice," Diane says. "Especially if you think so too."
"Yes," says Baedecker. "I think so too."
Baedecker drives south on County Road 218, past Mayville and Fossil, crossing the John Day River just past Clarno. The road to the ashram-ranch is wide and graveled, running north from the paved county road. Baedecker drives three miles along it, thinking about Scott. He remembers the drive back to Houston that Watergate summer so long ago, Baedecker wanting to talk more to his son, unable to, feeling—in spite of everything—that Scott also wanted to talk, to change things.
There is a roadblock where the road narrows between two ditches several feet deep. A blue, airport-type limousine is parked diagonally, blocking the road. To the left is a small building with a sloping roof, brown sides, and a single window. It is meant to be a guardhouse, but it makes Baedecker think of the covered school-bus stops that sit by the side of the road in Oregon. He stops and gets out of the Toyota. The puppy is sleeping in the backseat.
"Yessir, may we help you?" says one of the three men who emerge from the shack.
"I'd like to get by," says Baedecker.
"Sorry, sir, no one beyond this point," says the man. Two of the three are large and bearded, but the speaker is the larger of the two, at least six-two. He is in his early thirties, and wears a red shirt under his goosedown vest. There is a medallion on the outside of the vest, and Baedecker can see a photograph of the guru there.
"This is the road to the ashram, isn't it?" asks Baedecker.
"Yeah, but it's closed," says the second man. He wears a dark plaid shirt and Baedecker notices a cheap security-service badge pinned to it.
"The ashram's closed?"
"The road's closed," says the big man, and Baedecker hears the change in his tone. There will be no more "sirs." "Now turn your vehicle around," he says.
"I'm here to see my son," says Baedecker. "I talked to him yesterday on the phone. He's been sick, and I want to see him and talk awhile. I'll leave my car here if you want to drive me in."
The big man shakes his head and takes three steps forward and in that brief motion comprised of swagger and expectation, Baedecker knows that he will not be allowed to pass. He has never met the man, but he knows him well; he has seen his type in bars from San Diego to Djakarta. He has known several like him—far too many—in the Marines. For a while, as a young man, Baedecker had considered becoming him.
Baedecker glances at the third man—little more than a boy really—thin and pockmarked. He is wearing only a red cotton shirt and is shivering in the cold breeze coming out of the north.
"Nope," says the big man and comes closer, too close for psychological comfort and knowing it. "Turn it around, Pop."
"I'd like to see my son," says Baedecker. "If you have a phone in there, let's call someone."
Baedecker makes a move to step around him, but the big man stops him with a thrust of three fingers, hard, in Baedecker's chest. "I said turn it around," he says. "Back it up to that wide spot down there, and turn it around."
Baedecker feels something sharp and cold and familiar well up inside of him, but he stops and backs up two steps. The big man is all shoulders, chest, and arms, broad neck under a wild beard, but his belly is big and soft even under the vest. Baedecker glances down at his own stomach and shakes his head. "Let's try it again," Baedecker says. "This road is still a county road, I asked in Condon. Now if you have a phone or radio, let's talk to somebody who can think and make grown-up decisions. If not, drive me into the ashram and we'll find someone."
"Uh-uh," says the big man and shows his teeth. The other one with a beard takes a step closer to his friend while the youngest one moves back into the doorway of the guardhouse. "Move now, Pops," says the big man. The same three fingers hit Baedecker's chest again. Baedecker takes another step back.
The man shows more teeth, pleased by Baedecker's retreat, steps forward again, and brings his whole palm forward in what will be a straight-armed shove. Baedecker goes with it, takes the offered arm, brings it around and back and up, not quite hard enough to break bone but quickly enough to let softer things rip inside. The big man yells and pulls, Baedecker steps with it, watching the second man, and lifts
higher, only his right hand busy now, leaning on the big man a bit as the other goes cheek down onto the hood of the Toyota.
The man with the badge yells something as he moves in, both arms held out wide like a wrestler beginning a match. Baedecker hits him three times with his left hand, the first two blows fast and useless with no extension and little weight behind them, the third solid and satisfying, landing deep in the other's throat. The man backs away with both hands up to his neck, catches the heels of his cowboy boots in the gravel at the edge of the road, and sits down heavily in the deep ditch.
The big man is still puffing and sliding along the hood, kicking now and trying to get his arm back. Baedecker is sliding with him, ready to get both hands into play, when he sees the youngest man come out of the shack with a twelve-gauge pump shotgun.
Ten feet separate Baedecker and the boy. The kid is holding the weapon somewhere between port arms and the way Scott used to hold a tennis racket when he was little before Baedecker taught him better. Baedecker did not see the boy pump the first shell into the chamber, and he feels strongly that it was not done before the boy emerged from the shack. Baedecker hesitates a second, but already the cold, sharp-edged anger he had felt a second earlier is fading to be replaced by the hot flush of anger at himself. He spins the big man around and propels him back toward the boy hard enough that the man stumbles forward, forgets that his right arm will no longer work to break his fall, and goes face first into the gravel and mud at the feet of the boy with the gun.