The War in the Waste

by Felicity Savage

  Crispin looked inside the hangar. Then at Vichuisse. Then back at the two airplanes that hulked inside. One was the ancient, broken-down Blacheim bomber which the squadron had had for donkey’s years, it was said, since before they were phased out of bombing and became a purely defensive outfit. The other was a Gorgonette which had been shot to pieces shortly before Crispin joined the day shift. Its pilot had been dead five minutes after landing. The Gorgonette had still had its daemon, but its wings and fuselage were in tatters. Lieutenant Holmes had given it up as a bad job; Crispin thought differently. Working on his own time, using unwanted scrap lumber, he had repaired the sorry wreck. Did Vichuisse know about that? Was he being punished? The daemon was utterly ungrateful, of course—didn’t know him from the Queen—and if it did, it hated him for putting its prison in working order again. He could feel it glowering at him from inside its cell, inside the bulky machine, in the shadows. “Which one, sir?” he asked Vichuisse with a dry mouth.

  The captain’s laugh showed that he was not amused. “The Gorgonette, of course. Did you think I would send you up in the Blacheim? I’m not completely ignorant of the intricacies of the transformation engine—I am aware that without a daemon there’s nothing doing. And the daemon of that heap of junk must have got thin enough five years ago to slip out the exhaust pipe. No, I should like you to test-fly the Gorgonette. I am aware that you have been working on it. If it fails you, it is no one’s fault—and no one’s loss—but your own.”

  Crispin started into the hangar. He stopped and looked at Vichuisse. “I never did anything to you, sir,” he pleaded one last time.

  “Never did anything,” Vichuisse echoed. Then he turned on Crispin a smile so warm and radiant it made him take a step back. “I believe you’re looking a gift horse in the mouth, Kateralbin! I thought you were brighter than that! No?” His tone made it obvious that for Crispin to contradict him would be inadvisable, if not fatal.

  Crispin went to the Gorgonette and automatically began to check it over.

  “None of that.” Vichuisse’s voice cut through his blue funk. “I haven’t got all day.”

  “But we always check the kites before takeoffs,” Crispin protested.

  “Get a move on!” Vichuisse was still giving orders.

  Scarcely aware of what he was doing, Crispin boosted himself up into the cockpit and strapped himself in. He had no helmet, or even goggles, no parachute; his rigger’s overall was completely inappropriate, and his toolbelt got in the way. He unfastened it and dropped it over the side of the cockpit. It was difficult to swing the cockpit shell closed on his own. Suddenly it crashed down, nearly braining him, and through the glass he saw Vichuisse resting a long pole against the wall. The captain gestured impatiently.

  Crispin sent a quick prayer to the Queen if she was listening, wrapped the whipcord around his fist, and jerked. The big daemon growled disconsolately as it stirred from sleep. In a remarkably short time it was purring and straining at the cord. It was powerful, hungry, and tired of inactivity. Its name was Toeleris. How did he know that?

  Don’t think about it. He maneuvered the Gorgonette out of the hangar. On the muddy downslope to the runway, it nearly ran away with him. That forced him to get the hang of the controls in a hurry. It was not that different from driving a truck—the Gorgonette felt about the same weight as a Dunlap ten-wheeler—although of course everything would change once he got up in the air. If he ever did get up in the air. The cockpit was a cell of unbearable noise. The self-starting props were whirring around at top speed. He was dimly aware of Vichuisse watching from outside the hangar as he turned the Gorgonette and geared the daemon for takeoff, doing everything by instinct, copycatting what he had seen the pilots do—he had no idea what half the dials were for, only the stick, landing gear, and whipcord. Thank the Queen it was a time of day when no one much was about—the afternoon patrol would not be returning for an hour or so. If anyone was watching, they must think him crazy. He thought himself crazy. The Gorgonette was a junk heap. His heart was beating so hard he was afraid he would pass out. Dizziness made his vision go jerky as the daemon, knowing its job better than he did, put on speed, and the Gorgonette’s wheels tore up the ground and the pines loomed larger and larger, darker and darker.

  And there was that horrible moment when he was convinced he was not going to make it—

  And then the magical bounce that took him into the air, the engine coughing and the wind screaming around the cockpit, leaving his stomach and his worries and Vichuisse all on the ground.

  The sky received the Gorgonette like a mother receiving a prodigal child.

  Crispin never forgot that first flight, short and unadventurous though it was. The twilit sky grew huge around him and the land shrank and shrank until he saw how insignificant Pilkinson’s Air Base II really was, just a clutch of shacks in a copse on the roiling desolation of the Raw; and there was the meandering gray line of the road to Shadowtown, and far off to the west, the antlike activity of the front. And away and above to the south, a formation of kites, Kirekunis from the look of them, flying serenely home.

  Bank. Circle. Mustn’t get too high!

  A small figure on the runway beneath was jumping and waving its arms for him to come down.

  Landing was far harder than taking off. He lost his nerve and circled twice more before he actually came in to the runway. By the time he taxied to a halt, he had realized there was a lot still wrong with the Gorgonette. The daemon might be willing, but something clanked ominously in the transformation engine, and one of the props was wobbling as it spun. He hadn’t rebuilt the wings properly, either. The starboard ailerons were not working, so that it had been impossible for him to bank right when he was in the air. He came to a halt at the beginning of the runway, shut down the engine, and unwrapped the whipcord from his right hand, wincing.

  Vichuisse was standing by the slowing port propeller. He helped Crispin to the ground.

  In the air Crispin had been perfectly calm, but now he was shaking all over and wet with sweat. His fingers would not work when he tried to buckle the toolbelt Vichuisse handed him back on. Hopelessly, he let it fall to the ground and raised his gaze to meet the captain’s.

  Vichuisse smiled.

  Crispin blinked.

  The smile grew broader. Teeth showed. “Congratulations, Kateralbin.” Vichuisse stepped forward and held put his hand.

  Crispin shook it. It felt like the end of the world. There was no hint of displeasure in the blue eyes. For the first time that Crispin could remember, they looked kind. As Vichuisse gestured for him to kneel, he realized that this was the first time he had ever seen Vichuisse display the calm, oh-so-officerly poise he admired so much in the lieutenants, the demigods of the squadron. As a rule, Vichuisse was a sizzling, spitting enigma. A man to be feared. Not respected.

  Crispin knelt in the mud, trying hard not to drop to his hands and knees. His thighs trembled.

  Vichuisse tapped him gently on both shoulders with his boot knife. “By the power invested in me by our glorious Lithrea the Second, Queen Regnant, I authorize you to perform all the duties of a pilot of this squadron, the eightieth of the Lovoshire Parallel. I hereby relieve you of your duties as rigger-handler—though I by no means prohibit you from continuing to make your valuable expertise available to your erstwhile colleagues. Rise.”

  Crispin rose, stumbling. Vichuisse steadied him. A small wind had started to blow, bringing a scent of cooking from the mess hall. It had been beautiful weather for flying, but if the wind got any stronger, the afternoon patrol would have a hard time getting onto the ground. Crispin scrutinized Vichuisse for signs of his usual sneering cruelty. Could this all be an elaborate joke, a phase of what Crispin had believed, even before Vichuisse ordered him to test-fly the Gorgonette, to be the captain’s vendetta against him? But Vichuisse had dubbed him pilot! Of course, no one had seen, no one could confirm the appointment—

  “Pilot Kateralbin.” The captain jerked his head to
ward the base. “If I were you, I’d put up your machine before those fellows get the whole squadron out of bed to watch.”

  Crispin turned and saw three riggers standing outside Hangar One. They were smoking and evidently regarding the scene with astonishment.

  Crispin turned back toward the Gorgonette. He’d be lucky if he could get it into the hangar without it falling apart under him. Without his falling apart.

  “Not Hangar Four,” Vichuisse called as Crispin swung clumsily up into the cockpit. “Hangar Two. Park it with Lieutenant Fischer’s other five. That way the riggers will know to give it a complete overhaul tomorrow—they’ll do a much better job working in concert than you were able to in your spare time.” The familiar, cruel note of laughter came into Vichuisse’s voice. “And in the morning, I’ll give you some personal landing lessons.”

  0kandar 1893—Fessiery 1894 A.D.

  The Raw: Pilkinson’s Air Base II

  Pilot Kateralbin.

  It was what he had hoped for. It was far more than he had dared to hope for.

  And he was grateful, of course. He was grateful every minute of every day, as he apprehended the complexities of flying solo and in formation with Lieutenant Fischer’s crew. Yet he had to coach himself strictly in order to keep expressing that gratitude to Vichuisse. An unsilenceable voice inside him told him to steer clear of the captain, and when they did meet, to speak in the most formal terms—to widen the distance between them as much as possible. He didn’t really do you a favor, the voice said. Fischer’s crew was short a man anyway. You didn’t know that. Vichuisse simply chose the means of replacing that pilot which would be most amusing to himself; and cause everyone else the most bewilderment.

  But Crispin’s sensible half kept him kowtowing to Vichuisse. And talking with him, when it could not be avoided, on a note of false conviviality. The captain seemed to think they were friends now. Sense told Crispin that this ought to be true. But he could not make himself like or trust the captain. Couldn’t Vichuisse detect how despicably false his manner was?

  Apparently not.

  But they didn’t encounter each other that much more frequently than before. And now Crispin had other things to think about. From the beginning, he was terrified that the other pilots in his crew looked down on him. Ground crew and pilots lived in two different worlds; he had not anticipated the difficulties of transferring from one to the other. His new world was smaller and narrower than any he had known before, though vast in terms of physical scope. Takeoff; flight; ENEMY; landing; food; sleep; and always, unceasingly, the kill tally sweepstakes, a game embittered by the competition between crews. Then there was the forced comradeship with one’s own crew—a scant five other men. The tension stemming from who was “friends” with whom seemed at first to be overpowering. But after the first few weeks, Crispin realized the pilots’ dependence on each other was largely emotional. In a defensive unit like 80 Squadron, the death toll wasn’t as high as it was in the outfits assigned to cover the front lines, and so the mix of personalities, remaining more or less constant over periods of months, became inextricably blended—like different colors of paint mixing to make a single shade of brown.

  Crispin’s personal insecurity had made him standoffish and suspicious; but when he finally relaxed his guard, his crewmates accepted him without fanfare. It shocked him that they were willing to treat him no differently than they treated each other. They had not been shunning him; they had no time to spare for such pettiness. Crispin’s flying improved markedly, and he let out his breath in relief. He had found his groove again. He coaxed his crewmate Martinson, who was good at painting, to do a buxom black woman on his kite, and although it looked nothing like his mother, he christened the Gorgonette Princess Anuei. He affected a slight Kingsburg drawl. He walked with a slouch to disguise the natural lightness of step which came from his Lamaroon resistance to gravity. To his astonishment, he found himself becoming popular.

  The crews of 80 Squadron were identical organisms. This was the secret of their teamwork in the air. And yet the squadron was far from a harmonious unit. Eighty Squadron had a reputation for being something of a grab bag of pilots: a ragtag assemblage of human odds and ends. More, perhaps, than in other units, each of its men was an individual.

  And each man wanted individual glory.

  The kill.

  It was on everyone’s minds all the time.

  The competition for glory.

  And farther off, though not so far that they dared not think about it, the pension, the honorable (and lucrative) discharge. As old Biggins had said once, provoking derisive laughter among the riggers, none of whom would have dreamed of risking their lives in the air, no matter what the payoff: “They makes the kills, the Queen gets the bills . “

  But it was, of course, far more likely that the pilots would be killed first. It was almost impossible to survive a Kirekuni fire-tracer hit, much less an “own goal” of Ferupian screamers. In the short term they had only one dream: the kill. Perhaps because of his compulsion to prove himself, Crispin came to be more obsessed by it than any of the others. His crewmates teased him about it. There was an edge of bitterness in their voices. But on New Year’s Eve, when the Queen’s Greeting was read aloud and the tallies announced in the mess, Lieutenant Fischer commended Crispin. In two and a half months on the crew, he had shot down twenty-nine Kirekunis.

  Crispin was ridiculously flattered. The truth was that the snob in him was utterly in awe of Fischer. Their lieutenant was a quiet, commanding man of thirty from the eastern domain of Ishane. He had the dark hair and fair skin of the heartlands. His ancestors, he told his crew, had in fact come from the heartlands, though for generations they had been squires to platinum-headed easterners. Fischer had a grain-trade fortune and a wife awaiting his discharge; he would not even need a pension. He had joined the QAF for the love of adventure.

  But on a stormy morning in Fessiery of the new year, Fischer was smeared like marmalade across a hill in the Raw, shot down along with another man of their crew, two men of Keinze’s, and four KE-111s. The wreckage was spectacularly complete. There was no piece of an aircraft larger than a man’s hand: all eight were reduced to the same silvery jam. High above, fleeing for home, Crispin could hardly see for tears. All that anchored his concentration was the knowledge that it wouldn’t do Fischer any good for Crispin to follow him down. When he climbed out of his Gorgonette back at Pilkinson’s II, he saw that his three surviving crewmates, Potter, Harrowman, and Dupont, were crying, too, which only made it worse. The pines moaned in the wind. Ankle-deep mud lapped around the barracks. They tracked it across the floor when they went inside.

  Later in the day they collected themselves for the eulogy, composed long before Fischer’s death by Lieutenants Keinze and Festhre and read with a conspicuous lack of emotion by Vichuisse. Afterward they stood in the rain, sharing their outrage. Vichuisse had deadpanned the thing—made a joke of it! How dare he? Fischer had not been an easy man to know—but he had been their lieutenant! He had been Fischer! How dare Vichuisse?

  And that night Crispin was wakened from a pitch-black, dreamless sleep by a night-shift groundsman bringing a summons from the captain himself. “Better not take too long about it either, Pilot,” the boy said, dripping, watching Crispin struggle with his boots. “He’s in a mighty mood. Cackling like a bloody jackdaw.”

  Crispin wondered vaguely how the boy dared speak to him like that. Then he remembered he had known him a lifetime ago when he worked the night shift. The weasel’s name was Simmons, Smithson, Shitson... something like that. “Get lost, Shit... Simmons,” he said. “Captain Vee’s a skunk who should have been a policeman, not a pilot. You know it, I know it. Is there anything else? No. Get rid, then.”

  Gasping with delight, Simmons scuttled out. Crispin sat for a minute, his head in his hands. Then he slogged through the mud to the door at the far end of the mess hall. He knocked. If any response came, he could not hear it; the night was loud and wet. He
went into the little entryway and removed his coat and boots. Another mackintosh was hanging beside Vichuisse’s. Crispin’s heart rose slightly.

  But when he went in, he saw no sign of anyone else. Vichuisse sat in his big leather chair with his toes on the grate of a blazing fire. As Simmons had said, he was cackling. He stopped when he heard Crispin come into the office, and looked around the wing of his chair. “Ah! Kateralbin... Close the door, there’s a good fellow, its difficult enough as it is to keep the place warm. Sit down.”

  Another chair, less sumptuous, had been drawn up to the fire. Crispin eyed the bottle of brandy on the side table with longing, but when Vichuisse offered it to him, he shook his head.

  “Cocoa then?... No? I suppose you’re wondering why I got you out of your bunk.” Vichuisse laughed. Crispin could not see the joke. The captain poured himself another tumblerful of brandy and took a long swig.

  There were paintings on the walls and the paper-heaped desk was equipped with blotter, inkwell, and granite pen holder. A tiny stained-glass head of the Queen hung in front of the blackout shutter; it would catch the sun in the mornings. Probably the only metal in the room was the nib of the fountain pen. Vichuisse’s illusion of luxury was just that. All the furnishings were tattered or repaired. Through the door on the other side of the room, Crispin could see the scarred bureau and the narrow bed. Someone’s green pullover lay on the pillow. Was Vichuisse’s guest concealed in there? Crispin could hear no sound. On the foot of the bed was a coverlet which looked as though it had been lovingly embroidered over a period of years. By whom? Vichuisse’s mother? Did Vichuisse have a mother? Crispin had never heard of his having a wife. The motley decor gave off an indefinable impression of sadness. Crispin had heard that ever since he was appointed, the captain had carted every single bit of furniture in these two rooms around to every base where 80 Squadron was posted.

  Vichuisse tapped Crispin on the knee. “Staring around! It’s not as if you’ve never been here before! Eh? And it’s only by your own choice that you’re not less of a stranger to these humble quarters.” By the time Crispin figured out the convoluted syntax of that remark, Vichuisse was leaning forward, his eyes gleaming brilliantly. “But I didn’t get you here to make passes.”