by Neil Gaiman
After Leonard’s fateful promotion, Robbie and Emery would sometimes punch out for the day, go upstairs, and stroll to his corner of the library. You could do that then—wander around workrooms and storage areas, the library and archives, without having to check in or get a special pass or security clearance. Robbie just went along for the ride, but Emery was fascinated by the things Leonard found in the Nut Files. Grainy black-and-white photos of purported UFOs; typescripts of encounters with deceased Russian cosmonauts in the Nevada desert; an account of a Raelian wedding ceremony attended by a glowing crimson orb. There was also a large carton donated by the widow of a legendary rocket scientist, which turned out to be filled with 1950s foot-fetish pornography, and sixteen-millimeter film footage of several pioneers of flight doing something unseemly with a spotted pig.
“Whatever happened to that pig movie?” asked Robbie as he admired a biplane with violet-striped ailerons.
“It’s been deaccessioned,” said Leonard.
He cleared the swivel chair and motioned for Emery to sit, then perched on the edge of his desk. Robbie looked in vain for another chair, finally settled on the floor beside a wastebasket filled with empty nail polish bottles.
“So I have a plan,” announced Leonard. He stared fixedly at Emery, as though they were alone in the room. “To help Maggie. Do you remember the Bellerophon?”
Emery frowned. “Vaguely. That old film loop of a plane crash?”
“Presumed crash. They never found any wreckage, everyone just assumes it crashed. But yes, that was the Bellerophon—it was the clip that played in our gallery. Maggie’s gallery.”
“Right—the movie that burned up!” broke in Robbie. “Yeah, I remember, the film got caught in a sprocket or something. Smoke detectors went off and they evacuated the whole museum. They got all on Maggie’s case about it, they thought she’d installed it wrong.”
“She didn’t,” Leonard said angrily. “One of the tech guys screwed up the installation—he told me a few years ago. He didn’t vent it properly, the projector bulb overheated and the film caught on fire. He said he always felt bad she got canned.”
“But they didn’t fire her for that.” Robbie gave Leonard a sideways look. “It was the UFO—”
Emery cut him off. “They were gunning for her,” he said. “C’mon, Rob, everyone knew—all those old military guys running this place, they couldn’t stand a woman getting in their way. Not if she wasn’t air force or some shit. Took ’em a few years, that’s all. Fucking assholes. I even got a letter-writing campaign going on the show. Didn’t help.”
“Nothing would have helped.” Leonard sighed. “She was a visionary. She is a visionary,” he added hastily. “Which is why I want to do this—”
He hopped from the desk, rooted around in a corner, and pulled out a large cardboard box.
“Move,” he ordered.
Robbie scrambled to his feet. Leonard began to remove things from the carton and set them carefully on his desk. Emery got up to make more room, angling himself beside Robbie. They watched as Leonard arranged piles of paper, curling eight by tens, faded blueprints, and an old 35-millimeter film viewer, along with several large manila envelopes closed with red string. Finally he knelt beside the box and very gingerly reached inside.
“I think the Lindbergh baby’s in there,” whispered Emery.
Leonard stood, cradling something in his hands, turned and placed it in the middle of the desk.
“Holy shit.” Emery whistled. “Leonard, you’ve outdone yourself.”
Robbie crouched so he could view it at eye level: a model of some sort of flying machine, though it seemed impossible that anyone, even Leonard or Maggie Blevin, could ever have dreamed it might fly. It had a zeppelin-shaped body, with a sharp nose like that of a Lockheed Starfighter, slightly uptilted. Suspended beneath this was a basket filled with tiny gears and chains, and beneath that was a contraption with three wheels, like a velocipede, only the wheels were fitted with dozens of stiff flaps, each no bigger than a fingernail, and even tinier propellers.
And everywhere, there were wings, sprouting from every inch of the craft’s body in an explosion of canvas and balsa and paper and gauze. Bird-shaped wings, bat-shaped wings; square wings like those of a box kite, elevators and hollow cones of wire; long tubes that, when Robbie peered inside them, were filled with baffles and flaps. Ailerons and struts ran between them to form a dizzying grid, held together with fine gold thread and mono—lament and what looked like human hair. Every bit of it was painted in brilliant shades of violet and emerald, scarlet and fuchsia and gold, and here and there shining objects were set into the glossy surface: minute shards of mirror or colored glass; a beetle carapace; flecks of mica.
Above it all, springing from the fuselage like the cap of an immense toadstool, was a feathery parasol made of curved bamboo and multicolored silk.
It was like gazing at the Wright Flyer through a kaleidoscope.
“That’s incredible!” Robbie exclaimed. “How’d you do that?”
“Now we just have to see if it flies,” said Leonard.
Robbie straightened. “How the hell can that thing fly?”
“The original flew.” Leonard leaned against the wall. “My theory is, if we can replicate the same conditions—the exact same conditions—it will work.”
“But.” Robbie glanced at Emery. “The original didn’t fly. It crashed. I mean, presumably.”
Emery nodded. “Plus there was a guy in it. McCartney—”
“McCauley,” said Leonard.
“Right, McCauley. And you know, Leonard, no one’s gonna fit in that, right?” Emery shot him an alarmed look. “You’re not thinking of making a full-scale model, are you? Because that would be completely insane.”
“No.” Leonard fingered the skull plug in his earlobe. “I’m going to make another film—I’m going to replicate the original, and I’m going to do it so perfectly that Maggie won’t even realize it’s not the original. I’ve got it all worked out.” He looked at Emery. “I can shoot it on digital, if you’ll lend me a camera. That way I can edit it on my laptop. And then I’m going to bring it down to Fayetteville so she can see it.”
Robbie and Emery glanced at each other.
“Well, it’s not completely insane,” said Robbie.
“But Maggie knows the original was destroyed,” said Emery. “I mean, I was there, I remember—she saw it. We all saw it. She has cancer, right? Not Alzheimer’s or dementia or, I dunno, amnesia.”
“Why don’t you just Photoshop something?” asked Robbie. “You could tell her it was an homage. That way—”
Leonard’s glare grew icy. “It is not an homage. I am going to Cowana Island, just like McCauley did, and I am going to re-create the maiden flight of the Bellerophon. I am going to film it, I am going to edit it. And when it’s completed, I’m going to tell Maggie that I found a dupe in the archives. Her heart broke when that footage burned up. I’m going to give it back to her.”
Robbie stared at his shoe so Leonard wouldn’t see his expression. After a moment he said, “When Anna was sick, I wanted to do that. Go back to this place by Mount Washington where we stayed before Zach was born. We had all these great photos of us canoeing there, it was so beautiful. But it was winter, and I said we should wait and go in the summer.”
“I’m not waiting.” Leonard sifted through the papers on his desk. “I have these—”
He opened a manila envelope and withdrew several glassine sleeves. He examined one, then handed it to Emery.
“This is what survived of the original footage, which in fact was not the original footage—the original was shot in 1901, on cellulose nitrate film. That’s what Maggie and I found when we first started going through the Nut Files. Only of course nitrate stock is like a ticking time bomb. So the Photo Lab duped it onto safety film, which is what you’re looking at.”
Emery held the film to the light. Robbie stood beside him, squinting. Five frames, in shades of amber an
d tortoiseshell, with blurred images that might have been bushes or clouds or smoke damage, for all Robbie could see.
Emery asked, “How many frames do you have?”
“Total? Seventy-two.”
Emery shook his head. “Not much, is it? What was it, fifteen seconds?”
“Seventeen seconds.”
“Times twenty-four frames per second—so, out of about four hundred frames, that’s all that’s left.”
“No. There was actually less than that, because it was silent film, which runs at more like eighteen frames per second, and they corrected the speed. So, about three hundred frames, which means we have about a quarter of the original stock.” Leonard hesitated. He glanced up. “Lock that door, would you, Robbie?”
Robbie did, looked back to see Leonard crouched in the corner, moving aside his coat to reveal a metal strongbox. He prised the lid from the top.
The box was filled with water—Robbie hoped it was water. “Is that an aquarium?”
Leonard ignored him, tugged up his sleeves, then dipped both hands below the surface. Very, very carefully he removed another metal box. He set it on the floor, grabbed his coat, and meticulously dried the lid, then turned to Robbie.
“You know, maybe you should unlock the door. In case we need to get out fast.”
“Jesus Christ, Leonard, what is it?” exclaimed Emery. “Snakes?”
“Nope.” Leonard plucked something from the box, and Emery flinched as a serpentine ribbon unfurled in the air. “It’s what’s left of the original footage—the 1901 film.”
“That’s nitrate?” Emery stared at him, incredulous. “You are insane! How the hell’d you get it?”
“I clipped it before they destroyed the stock. I think it’s okay—I take it out every day, so the gases don’t build up. And it doesn’t seem to interact with the nail polish fumes. It’s the part where you can actually see McCauley, where you get the best view of the plane. See?”
He dangled it in front of Emery, who backed toward the door. “Put it away, put it away!”
“Can I see?” asked Robbie.
Leonard gave him a measuring look, then nodded. “Hold it by this edge—”
It took a few seconds for Robbie’s eyes to focus properly. “You’re right,” he said. “You can see him—you can see someone, anyway. And you can definitely tell it’s an airplane.”
He handed it back to Leonard, who fastidiously replaced it, first in its canister and then the water-filled safe.
“They could really pop you for that.” Emery whistled in disbelief. “If that stuff blew? This whole place could go up in flames.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Leonard draped his coat over the strongbox, then started to laugh. “Anyway, I’m done with it. I went into the photo lab one night and duped it myself. So I’ve got that copy at home. And this one—”
He inclined his head at the corner. “I’m going to take the nitrate home and give it a Viking funeral in the backyard. You can come if you want.”
“Tonight?” asked Robbie.
“No. I’ve got to work late tonight, catch up on some stuff before I leave town.”
Emery leaned against the door. “Where you going?”
“South Carolina. I told you. I’m going to Cowana Island, and…” Robbie caught a whiff of acetone as Leonard picked up the Bellerophon. “I am going to make this thing fly.”
“HE REALLY IS NUTS. I mean, when was the last time he even saw Maggie?” Robbie asked as Emery drove him back to the Mall. “I still don’t know what really happened, except for the UFO stuff.”
“She found out he was screwing around with someone else. It was a bad scene. She tried to get him fired; he went to Boynton and told him Maggie was diverting all this time and money to studying UFOs. Which unfortunately was true. They did an audit, she had some kind of nervous breakdown even before they could fire her.”
“What a prick.”
Emery sighed. “It was horrible. Leonard doesn’t talk about it. I don’t think he ever got over it. Over her.”
“Yeah, but…” Robbie shook his head. “She must be, what, twenty years older than us? They never would have stayed together. If he feels so bad, he should just go see her. This other stuff is insane.”
“I think maybe those fumes did something to him. Nitrocellulose, it’s in nail polish, too. It might have done something to his brain.”
“Is that possible?”
“It’s a theory,” said Emery broodingly.
Robbie’s house was in a scruffy subdivision on the outskirts of Rockville. The place was small, a bungalow with masonite siding, a cracked cinder-block foundation, and the remains of a garden that Anna had planted. A green GMC pickup with an expired registration was parked in the drive. Robbie peered into the cab. It was filled with empty Bud Light bottles.
Inside, Zach was hunched at a desk beside his friend Tyler, owner of the pickup. The two of them stared intently at a computer screen.
“What’s up?” said Zach without looking away.
“Not much,” said Robbie. “Eye contact.”
Zach glanced up. He was slight, with Anna’s thick blond curls reduced to a buzz cut that Robbie hated. Tyler was tall and gangly, with long black hair and wire-rimmed sunglasses. Both favored tie-dyed T-shirts and madras shorts that made them look as though they were perpetually on vacation.
Robbie went into the kitchen and got a beer. “You guys eat?”
“We got something on the way home.”
Robbie drank his beer and watched them. The house had a smell that Emery once described as Failed Bachelor. Unwashed clothes, spilled beer, marijuana smoke. Robbie hadn’t smoked in years, but Zach and Tyler had taken up the slack. Robbie used to yell at them but eventually gave up. If his own depressing example wasn’t enough to straighten them out, what was?
After a minute, Zach looked up again. “Nice shirt, Dad.”
“Thanks, son.” Robbie sank into a beanbag chair. “Me and Emery dropped by the museum and saw Leonard.”
“Leonard!” Tyler burst out laughing. “Leonard is so fucking sweet! He’s, like, the craziest guy ever.”
“All Dad’s friends are crazy,” said Zach.
“Yeah, but Emery, he’s cool. Whereas that guy Leonard is just wack.”
Robbie nodded somberly and finished his beer. “Leonard is indeed wack. He’s making a movie.”
“A real movie?” asked Zach.
“More like a home movie. Or, I dunno—he wants to reproduce another movie, one that was already made, do it all the same again. Shot by shot.”
Tyler nodded. “Like The Ring and Ringu. What’s the movie?”
“Seventeen seconds of a 1901 plane crash. The original footage was destroyed, so he’s going to restage the whole thing.”
“A plane crash?” Zach glanced at Tyler. “Can we watch?”
“Not a real crash—he’s doing it with a model. I mean, I think he is.”
“Did they even have planes then?” said Tyler.
“He should put it on YouTube,” said Zach, and turned back to the computer.
“Okay, get out of there.” Robbie rubbed his head wearily. “I need to go online.”
The boys argued but gave up quickly. Tyler left. Zach grabbed his cell phone and slouched upstairs to his room. Robbie got another beer, sat at the computer, and logged out of whatever they’d been playing, then typed in MCCAULEY BELLEROPHON.
Only a dozen results popped up. He scanned them, then clicked the Wikipedia entry for Ernesto McCauley.
McCauley, Ernesto (18??–1901) American inventor whose eccentric aircraft, the Bellerophon, allegedly flew for seventeen seconds before it crashed during a 1901 test flight on Cowana Island, South Carolina, killing McCauley. In the 1980s, claims that this flight was successful and predated that of the Wright brothers by two years were made by a Smithsonian expert, based upon archival lm footage. The claims have since been disproved and the lm record unfortunately lost in a fire. Curiously, no
other record of either McCauley or his aircraft has ever been found.
Robbie took a long pull at his beer, then typed in MARGARET BLEVIN.
Blevin, Margaret (1938–) Influential cultural historian whose groundbreaking work on early flight earned her the nickname “the Magnificent Blevin.” During her tenure at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American Aeronautics and Aerospace, Blevin redesigned the General Aviation Gallery to feature lesser-known pioneers of flight, including Charles Dellschau and Ernesto McCauley, as well as…
“‘The Magnificent Blevin’?” Robbie snorted. He grabbed another beer and continued reading.
But Blevin’s most lasting impact upon the history of aviation was her 1986 best-seller Wings for Humanity!, in which she presents a dramatic and visionary account of the mystical aspects of flight, from Icarus to the Wright brothers and beyond. Its central premise is that millennia ago a benevolent race seeded the earth, leaving isolated locations with the ability to engender human-powered flight. “We dream of flight because flight is our birthright,” wrote Blevin, and since its publication Wings for Humanity! has never gone out of print.
“Leonard wrote this frigging thing!”
“What?” Zach came downstairs, yawning.
“This Wikipedia entry!” Robbie jabbed at the screen. “That book was never a best-seller—she sneaked it into the museum gift shop and no one bought it. The only reason it’s still in print is that she published it herself.”
Zach read the entry over his father’s shoulder. “It sounds cool.”
Robbie shook his head adamantly. “She was completely nuts. Obsessed with all this New Age crap, aliens and crop circles. She thought that planes could only fly from certain places, and that’s why all the early flights crashed. Not because there was something wrong with the aircraft design, but because they were taking off from the wrong spot.”