The Starlight Claim

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  “Hey, the green light came on,” says Nate. His neck is craned, watching through his binoculars. Dodge is at the controls. It’s the first time Nate’s seen the thing fly. Dodge smiles, his eyes fixed on the flight of the drone.

  “Contact,” he says. “We’ve got a GPS signal. Now watch this.” And with that he flips a toggle on the right shoulder of the transmitter.

  “What’s RTH?” says Nate.

  “Return to home.”

  And just like that the copter returns, all by itself. Lands on the sand six feet away.

  Nate put the drone back on the chest of drawers. He picked up the transmitter with its twin throttles. He held it in his hands, pulled both the throttles down at the same time to power up, and was shocked — amazed — when the four rotor blades started turning. He let go of the throttles. Caught his breath. Let the silence close in on him again. A silence filled with the skittering of mice and the bad mood of the wind.

  The RTH toggle: you pushed that and the Seeker flew right back to where it started without the pilot doing anything at all. You just stood and watched. It would land as close as could be and then turn off its motor, just like that.

  Return to home. “You hear that, Dodge Hoebeek?” he muttered. But there had never been such a toggle on Dodge.

  Nate wished he had one himself right now.

  He put down the transmitter, looked around, the LED light on his head picking out features of a room he knew every bit as well as his own tiny room over at the Crow camp. The bunk bed was for a visitor — himself more often than not. He’d be over there late, get up to go, and Dodge would say “Stay.” And he’d say “I’m not your dog,” and Dodge would say “Woof” and pant a bit until Nate laughed. Then he’d say “Stay” again, and, of course, he’d stay. And they’d talk until Fern came to the door. “Save it ’til the morning, boys,” she’d whisper. Then when she’d gone back downstairs, they’d talk some more but in whispers until one or the other fell asleep.

  “I don’t like being alone,” Dodge said to him. Only once. Nate remembered thinking how much it would have taken him to say that — to show the slightest sign of vulnerability.

  “I’m here,” he’d said back to the invisible figure in the bunk above. Then he’d waited for Dodge to say something more, but all he heard was the steady breathing of sleep.

  “I’m here,” he whispered again.

  There was nothing much special about the room — no posters, only a handful of paperbacks and a stack of comics. When they were at Ghost Lake, they spent as little time as possible indoors. They were out fishing or jumping off cliff faces or bodysurfing down at Ginger Ale — the name they’d given the rapids over by the dam. They’d make stuff in the workshop over at Nate’s camp or sail or swim. Even when it rained, they were as likely to be outside as in.

  They.

  It was hard to believe there was no more “they.”

  There would never be another “us,” another “we,” as in “We’re going up to the miner’s cabin,” or “We’re going to find our way to Spider; if we’re not back by nightfall, call search and rescue,” or “We were wondering whether we could take the boat down to Sanctuary Cove to do some serious girl watching . . .”

  He remembered flying the Seeker from a canoe on mysterious Spider Lake, the drone hovering between high walls of stone, looking for petroglyphs.

  Nate fought down the raw feeling in his throat. He should never have come up here. Up to this room. Up to Ghost Lake. Not alone anyway.

  He stood, looked at the empty top bunk, patted the mattress. I’m here, he thought, but there was no point to it if Dodge wasn’t. He left the room, closed the door behind him softly. He stood at the top of the stairs and turned off his headlamp. Let the darkness settle, with all its creaks and mouse wanderings and low moans. Then he made his way in the dark down to the first floor, guided only by the small starlight drifting in the one exposed window over the sink. Leaning over the sink, he looked up into the night. Might be northern lights out there when it was this crystal clear. But the two camps were backed up against the hill. The only way you’d see the aurora borealis would be to go out onto the lake. He’d seen them a few times dancing on the ridge of the hills. He wasn’t going to risk it tonight. He was drained. Besides, he couldn’t take the chance of leaving any tracks out there. He felt kind of like a ghost himself.

  He stoked the fire and lay his aching body down, pulled the scratchy blankets up around him. The sooner he slept, the sooner morning would come and he could get the hell out of here. He wrestled the headlamp off his head and lay there in the busy darkness. Then there was a metallic scraping sound. He grabbed the headlamp and switched it on. The pop can on the mousetrap was twirling but empty.

  The dream again: Dodge under the ice, writhing in the black void. And then suddenly it morphed into Dodge at the window, scrabbling against the glass, making it chatter in its frame. His eyes full of moonlight, his mouth gaping but no sound coming out.

  Nate sat up, disoriented, his heart pounding, his breath ragged. He focused on the rectangle of lesser darkness beyond the counter, across the room, the only window in this mausoleum. There was no face there. Just a memory. He lay back down again. Beside him the stove ticked. It would need feeding soon. It was voracious. The night was voracious, threatening to eat him up. This place wasn’t really insulated for winter, and he was not insulated against this invasion of memories. He concentrated on getting his breathing back to normal again. He listened. There was something different. The wind. The wind had stopped. Nate’s heart was racing, but the night at least was still.

  And that brought to memory another night, well after midnight. Dodge standing outside Nate’s open window over at the Crow camp, his eyes full of moonlight and mischief.

  “What?”

  “Down to the beach. Now!”

  Nate’s parents’ bedroom is right next door, through walls as thin as paper. But gazing into their room as he tiptoes past, he can see they are sound asleep.

  Dodge is waiting on the sand. He has the quadcopter with him. “Night flight,” he says.

  Oh, the Seeker soars! Up and up and out over the moon-bright lake. Dodge makes it pitch and roll, do a 360, filming the whole time.

  “We have ourselves a satellite,” he says. In the summer darkness, it’s easier to see the light on the drone’s belly turn from red to green. And with GPS in place, Dodge can take his fingers off the controls. They watch the drone hover, staying in one place in the sweet summer air, their own small star. Hovering, waiting for its next command.

  “You’re leaving it here?”

  Dodge is packing up. He turns and looks at Nate, holding the drone. He shrugs. “Back home there are all these regulations. FAA.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Federal Aviation Administration. You can’t go higher than four hundred feet, blah, blah, blah. Here, the sky’s the limit.”

  “Yeah, but —”

  “And,” Dodge interrupts, “Dad says if I want to fly it, I have to join an airplane club.”

  “Oh.”

  “I know. A bunch of drone geeks.”

  “Isn’t that what we are?” Nate asks him.

  “And take classes,” says Dodge, ignoring Nate’s remark. “Can you imagine: drone classes?”

  “That sucks.”

  Dodge pats the drone on its bald white head. “I’ll leave it here until close-up, anyway. Maybe I’ll take it back with me then.”

  Meaning Canadian Thanksgiving in October. “Cool,” says Nate. “We can strap a turkey leg on it and deliver it to the eagles — so they can have a little Thanksgiving celebration up in their nest.”

  Dodge shakes his head, exasperated. “Wrong! Those are American eagles, stupid.”

  “So?”

  “So their Thanksgiving isn’t until November.”

  The memories came to Nate sharp and clear, tumbling one over the other, unsettling him and then suddenly unsettling him even more — unsettling him with an id
ea that made his heart start pounding hard.

  He didn’t stir. He made himself lie there, thinking it through. It was insane. He was insane. But it might work; it could. He could feel the cold gathering force again. He’d have to get up and feed the fire. And if he had to get up anyway . . .

  He fed the fire. And then he made his way upstairs to Dodge’s narrow bedroom and gathered up the drone and the transmitter.

  Could he do this?

  He set the drone on the dining room table. He turned it over and released the GoPro video camera from its bay. He went and found his cell phone by the mattress and compared the weight of it, one in each hand; the cell was heavier than the camera, but not by too much.

  The camera was small, but thicker in profile than his Samsung. The cell phone could slip into the mount okay, but it wouldn’t stay there. But then that’s what rubber bands were for. In the kitchen, he found the right drawer. The Hoebeeks had a collection of rubber bands the size of a hardball. He liberated four sturdy ones and set about seeing if he could make this work. When he was satisfied that it could, he composed the text he would send.

  2 men in the camp. I’m hiding at the Hs. I’ll catch the Budd tomorrow. They don’t know I’m here. They look like criminals.

  The last sentence only came to him as he typed it, and with it came a shock of delayed recognition: two men hanging from a thick, knotted rope — hanging on for dear life — as a helicopter rose above the roofline of the Sudbury Jail.

  “Holy shit!”

  Why had it taken him so long to realize it?

  In the video, they had been dressed in prison uniforms; the footage was grainy and in black-and-white, and most of the time he only saw them from the back, except for occasionally when the rope twisted. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he was sure of it. How else could they have gotten to the camp without coming in on the trail or from the lake? They must have arrived by helicopter.

  Oh.

  . . . a chance to get outa here without the bird.

  Of course. Wasn’t that what Worried Man had said? And wasn’t that another word for a chopper, a whirlybird? It all made some kind of terrible sense. And yet it made no sense at all. A dire kind of coincidence. More like a paranoid’s dream come true. This is what happens when you lie to your parents: the last terrible thing you saw on the news happens to you.

  Why here? And where was the bird — the helicopter?

  It was no use trying to figure it out. He changed what he had typed:

  Escapees from Sudbury Jail have taken the camp! I’m hiding in the Hs. I’ll catch the Budd tomorrow. They don’t know I’m here.

  He pushed send and the message appeared in its bubble. He watched, hoping beyond hope that the word “delivered” would appear under the text, but there was no way, not down here. He knew that. He didn’t even have one bar of service. But maybe he could get some bars without heading up the cliff.

  He just needed elevation.

  He attached the cell phone to the belly of the quadcopter. Shook the drone to see if the phone moved. No, it was nice and snug. Then he checked again to make sure the payload was dead center — balanced. It looked good. Felt secure.

  He’d left his outerwear draped over dining room chairs set all around the fire. It was warm to put on and he was glad of it. He’d do without his mitts, he thought. They would be too unwieldy while operating the controls. Then he imagined his father standing nearby, not saying anything. Just waiting for Nate to figure it out.

  Right.

  At this kind of temperature, exposed skin would be frostbitten in about ten minutes, max. He had brought a pair of gloves as well, in case he had to do anything outside requiring dexterity. They weren’t as warm as his mitts, but they’d do. He didn’t plan on spending any more time out there than he had to. He picked up the transmitter, jiggled the throttles. He could operate it with the gloves. Or maybe he could get everything set up and then quickly take them off if he needed to.

  He got to the door, opened it, and stepped out into a night as still as glass. He would wear his snowshoes. Had to. He needed to get away from the cabin and the trees — down to the beach or maybe even a little way out onto the lake. No, he couldn’t risk that, unless he stuck real close to the underbrush and walked west along the shore a bit. And anyway, even if they did see his tracks, it wouldn’t matter because he wasn’t going to wait until noon to leave. He’d be gone as soon as he could if all went well.

  As he passed under the kitchen window, he saw the black plywood shutter leaning against the house. Perfect! He’d need that. He balanced the quadcopter in one hand, picked up the shutter, and, stowing it under his arm, hefted it to the beach. He found a flat place and laid the shutter down, made it as horizontal as he could on the snow. This would be his launch site. The drone wasn’t that heavy, but it would sink in the snow, which wasn’t going to help with liftoff.

  The stillness was eerie. There was a weather warning. This was the calm before the storm. So be it. Luck was on his side, finally. There’s no way he could have launched the drone into the wind that had assaulted the cabin earlier. The downside was that there was nothing to drown out the sound of the drone taking off. He held the contraption over his head and pushed the cell phone’s home button. It was 11:35. Would the guys next door still be up? He peered toward the Crow camp. He couldn’t see it from here, but he figured he would be able to see something if there were lights on over there. Nothing.

  I’m hiding in the Hs.

  That was the message. Not “we’re hiding.” It didn’t matter. No need for lying anymore. He called up the text and pressed send again.

  Then he placed the drone on the landing pad, took off his gloves, and shoved them in his parka pockets. He powered up. The four propellers started whirring. Now lift. There was a hesitation, but then — sure enough — slow but steady, the craft took off from the plywood launchpad and began to climb into the dark sky. The red lights were blinking, but he hadn’t expected anything less. The thing was to get it high enough. Come to think of it, he had no idea whether finding the satellite that allowed for GPS control would mean he could send the text message, but it was worth a try. Worth freezing for a few minutes.

  The rise was slow, the noise irritating but not too loud. Just in case, he throttled the chopper out toward the lake and westward, the farther from the Crow camp, the better. Up, up it went, higher into the night, wobbling a bit as it found a stray breeze up there, something trickling in over the northern hills, he guessed, because the drone seemed to want to head south down the lake.

  “Steady on,” he heard Dodge’s voice in his head. “Easy, Nate. God, she’s beautiful!”

  And then he saw what he’d been hoping for: the lights turned green.

  “Houston, we have contact!” It was Dodge’s voice in his head.

  He operated the left throttle to make the Seeker do a slow 360. He hadn’t the foggiest idea how cellular technology worked, but he was going to give this thing every fricking chance he could. Higher it rose, and higher. Then he pulled both of his thumbs from the spring-action throttles to let the drone just hover. Maybe his mother would still be up, would receive the text right now and answer him. His hands were already tingling — hot, with the cold. He couldn’t exactly imagine standing out here long enough to send her another text, but it would be amazing — so incredibly comforting — to know he’d gotten through.

  The Seeker hovered, just as it was supposed to do, but only for a moment, and then it started to keel toward the south, pushed by some unseen force. There was some kind of turbulence up there — something Nate couldn’t feel down here. The front moving in from the north, he guessed, rising up over the hill and swooping down into the basin of the lake while he stood in its lee. He tried to regain manual control but the copter was fighting him. Desperate now, he turned to the RTH toggle on the right shoulder of the transmitter.

  “Turn back,” he whispered to the drone. “Return to home.”

  It was supposed to do
this all by itself, but he could see the green light had turned red again. He had lost his GPS lock. Which meant manual operation was all he had, except he was shaking now and the machine didn’t seem to want to do his bidding anyway.

  Dodge was the master of this craft; where was he when you fricking needed him?

  Nate groaned. He had lost all feeling in his hands; he was shaking every bit as much as the copter, but now was no time to put on his gloves. Desperately he played the throttles, but the drone was out of his control, spinning, pitching, and rolling — sashaying about like it didn’t know whether it was coming or going. And then suddenly, for no reason he could grasp, the Seeker plummeted, like a duck hit by a shotgun blast.

  It was all over in a matter of seconds. The drone hit the lake and burrowed into the snow. For an instant, he could see a blurry red light from under the surface, and then it went out.

  Shivering, Nate dropped the transmitter on the plywood launchpad and grabbed his gloves. He pulled them on and then his mitts over them and then shoved his hands into his armpits, staring out at the lake where the crash had taken place. It was over toward the enemy camp, maybe twenty yards out from the water hole, as far as he could guess, for there was nothing but starlight to go by now. And there was no way he could go over there to retrieve it. They’d see his tracks right off, the minute they looked out the sunporch window, which was the first thing anybody ever did at camp when they got up.

  “Looking to see the lake’s still there,” Astrid liked to say.

  Well, it was there, all right, even if it was buried under snow and ice so thick you could drive a truck across it.

  Return to home.

  Go. Back. Inside.

  There was nothing else he could do. He had either sent out an SOS or not. But it was no use calling for help if you ended up freezing to death doing it. He grabbed the transmitter and shoved it in his jacket pocket. He picked up the plywood panel, no longer anything so special as a launchpad. He trudged back toward the H-camp.