Tales of Riverworld

by Philip José Farmer

  Oh, oh! Here came The White Ghost. Around the corner far down the hall, a woman in a wheelchair had appeared. She was up early, looking for a victim. If she kept on her heading, she'd run into the Von Richthofen of the nursing home. Stoss would rave at her like a sergeant reaming out a dumb recruit.

  He returned to his hangar to allow The White Ghost to roll on by him. She was ninety-six, but her fuel line wasn't clogged. A real ace, a sky shark, deadly. If she wasn't so damn ugly, he would have challenged her long ago.

  Silently, she wheeled on by. She never talked, just cruised day and night, hoping to catch somebody by surprise. As soon as she passed, he banked left and flew down the hall. Though the pace made his undercarriage hurt, and the Hispano-Suiza in his chest thumped, he got to his objective on schedule.

  This hangar held only two, Harz and Whittaker. Harz was a snoring lump, big as a Zeppelin Staaken bomber. He could take her any time, but it was the sleek tough fighters he was after. Like Whittaker. A widow – weren't they all? – of unadmitted age but to his keen falcon eye about seventy-four. Except for some of the young nurses, the handsomest craft in the place.

  Her framework was splendid, though covered by wrinkled fabric. Her motor cowlings were still shapely, considering the date on which the factory had shipped her out. He classified her as a Fokker D-VIIF, the best.

  She'd been sociable enough – until the day he'd zoomed by and dropped a note challenging her. From then on, she was as cool and aloof as the Kaiser invited to dinner by a pig farmer. But she had class. She'd not run squealing to The Baroness.

  His motor having quit racing, he glided toward her, then stopped. What the hell! Something was crawling under the sheet over her. A giant cockroach? A water bug? No} it was her hand moving over her cockpit. The sheet was fluttering like fabric ripping from the wing of a Nieuport in a too-long, too-hard dive.

  Grinning, he climbed over the bar at the foot of the bed and raised the sheet.

  •••

  Whittaker moaned, her 185-horsepower, six-cylinder, in-line, water-cooled BMW IIIa purring. Her fingers were playing with her cockpit instrumentation. Sacré merde! The hoity-toity Fokker wouldn't answer his challenge, but she wasn't above a jack-off dogfight, a furtive combat with herself.

  Under the sheet, in a darkness like the inside of a night cloud, The Lone Eagle glided. Her widespread legs guided him like landing-strip lights. He was ready for sudden action, an air-raid-siren scream, her fists beating at his head like shrapnel from Archie.

  He pushed her hand away, felt no start, heard no protest. He nose-dived, the wind screaming through the wind wires and struts, his motor roaring. Then he was zeroed in, firing quick short bursts, what the hell, his tongue was a Vickers machine gun, too.

  Now, all caution abandoned, he poured a long, slow stream of fire into her cockpit. The Fokker shuddered and moaned under his blasting. Thank God she wasn't like so many of the Columbia Huns. They weren't too clean; they smelled like the early World War One rotary-engine planes. Castor oil was used then for lubrication, and the poor bastards that breathed it got diarrhoea.

  Her exhaust pipe was clean and her cockpit was sprayed with some Frenchy-smelling perfume. Tasted like bootleg alky. No time for nostalgia now, though.

  Whittaker knew he was present, but she wasn't saying a word to him. Still waters run deep; aces fly high. She'd incorporated him into her fantasy; to her, he wasn't real flesh; he was part of her dreamworld. So what? His Vickers was ready. First, though, a few manoeuvres. He crawled on up, grabbed her big round cowlings, chewed on the propeller hubs, then eased the gun into the cockpit. She uttered, softly, lovingly, obscenities and profanities she'd probably not heard until she came to the nursing home.

  Now she was tossing him up and down as if he were flying through one air pocket after another, hitting updrafts after each one. Now his Vickers was chattering, eating up the cartridges in the belt, the phosphorus-burning bullets tracing ecstasy across the night sky.

  It was too much for the D-VIIF. She gave a loud cry, and her fuel tank ruptured. Shit squirted out over his Vickers and his undercarriage.

  Cursing, he zoomed out of the cloud cover, sideslipped from the bed and raced toward the doorway. The Staaken was up now, yelling but not knowing what was going on. Without her glasses, she was as blind as a doughboy in a smoke screen.

  The Baroness' voice rose from somewhere around the corner of the hall. Trapped! No, not The Lone Eagle! He plunged into a hangar tenanted by four pilots long past flight duty. Oh, oh! A visitor! That crazy crone Simmons, the eighty-year-old with eczema, was in bed with poor old Osborn. She was on all fours between his skinny legs. She didn't mind that his feet had been cut off in an accident years ago. All she was interested in was his joy stick. She'd taken out her false teeth and put them on the bed behind her.

  The other old vets were snoring away. Simmons raised her face, which looked iike a dried-up used rubber, and she snarled gummily at him. Osborn was on his back, desperately trying to gain altitude, but he couldn't get off the runway. A real kiwi. Henry slid under the bed. If The Baroness came in here, she might be so mad at the two above him she'd forget to check his hangar. If Simmons kept her trap shut...

  Simmons yelled. 'You footless old bastard! My Gawd, I'm sick and tired of sucking limp dicks!'

  Henry was so startled he raised his head and banged it against the springs. 'Oh, shit!'

  A long silent minute passed. Then the springs began going up and down. Artillery barrage. So Simmons had managed somehow to unjam the old fart's gun. The Lone Eagle should make a run for it. The Baroness would soon be in Whittaker's hangar. He crawled out and stood up. The three oldsters were still sleeping, toothless jaws gaping like baby birds begging for worms. Worms were all they'd get.

  Osborn was still on his back. Simmons was standing up, clutching his left thigh with both hands. Sacrebleu! His leg was jammed up to the calf up her cockpit. She was bouncing up and down on it like a toy monkey on a stick, a Sopwith Camel caught in an Archie trap. Osborn was being dragged toward the foot of the bed as each bound carried her backward.

  She tried to turn as he circled her widely, but her machine movement plunged the stump into her.

  He started to take off for Allied territory, then stopped as Simmons screamed. One of her plunges had brought her toes between the false teeth, and they'd closed like a wolf trap. As she fell over the end of the bed, he zoomed out laughing. What next?

  •••

  The only one in the hall was The White Ghost. Here she came, full throttle, grinning like the skull insignia on the great Nungesser's Nieuport. She'd wait until he began to pass her, then... wham!

  She tried to turn as he circled her widely, but her machine didn't have the terrific right torque of a Camel. He got behind her, pushed as fast as his damaged undercarriage allowed, and then let loose. Around the corner, Stoss bellowed like the motors of a Gotha bomber.

  Just as he reached the other corner, he heard a scream followed by a crash. He couldn't resist peeking around the corner. The Baroness was on her back. The machine was lying on its side, its pilot sprawled by it. The Black Eagle was laughing too hard to help either of them.

  Henry took off for home base, put his flyinggear into the dresser drawer, and crawled into bed. The Fokker's shit was all over his fuselage, but he'd just have to endure it until things settled down. Anyway, the shit didn't smell as bad as Stoss' breath.

  The old Hispano was thumping as if it had sand in its bearings. He couldn't take too many sorties like this one much longer. One of these days, the motor'd give out and he'd go into the final dive. So what? Was there a better way to die? He wasn't like the other old pilots, too tired, sick, or senile to care about anything. He was going to stay in the combat zone until The Biggest Ace downed him.

  Not, however, before he knocked The Bloody Baroness flaming out of the skies. He hated her as much as she loathed him... to hell with her. He slid back to September 1918. The Big Push. That month, he'd shot down fo
ur planes and had busted two Drache observation balloons.

  But October first, as he was firing at a Pfalz D-12, that Kraut fighter had come from nowhere behind him. The Bitter Pill was in rags, its fabric was burning, his knee was shattered, and boiling radiator water was scalding his legs. He couldn't take to the silk because that asshole, A.E.F. Commander 'Black Jack Pershing, had forbidden American fliers to carry parachutes.

  He'd had to ride the out-of-control ship to the ground while he hoped the fuel tank wouldn't explode. Somehow, he'd managed to sideslip it, putting the fire out, and then he'd levelled out just before he crashed into a small river. The Kraut soldiers who dragged him out thought he was dead. No wonder. His left eye and most of his teeth had been knocked out and he was covered with blood.

  It was all downglide from then on. The rest of his life – a crippled carpenter with an ailing wife and four kids. Still, the old joy stick, the trusty Vickers, had functioned splendidly. Though he didn't have as many cartridges in his belts as when he'd flown in the Big One, he had more than some young punks he knew.

  His daughter said, 'But, Dad! You're getting worse! The day nurse told me you're losing control of your bowels!'

  'Horsepoppy! One of my roommates crapped on the floor – must have thought he was home – and I slipped on it. I didn't take a shower right away, because the night nurse gets uptight if she finds me out of bed after taps.'

  She bit her lip, then said, 'Mrs Stoss says you sneak around at night and... uh... bother the old ladies.'

  'Any of them complaining?'

  'No. But she says most of them are too senile to resist. They don't know what's going on, and those who do are just as bad...'

  He chuckled. 'Say it. Just as bad as me.'

  The other patients being visited – patients, hell; geriatric prisoners of war – sat on sofas or wheelchairs in the big lounge. They were chattering away like a bunch of French whores or sitting dull-eyed, slack-jawed, drooling, while their relatives tried to get a rise out of them.

  By God, a rise could be gotten out of him. Wouldn't they be surprised if they knew just what kind and how many?

  'I wish I had let you go to the vets' hospital. There aren't any old women there you could take advantage of

  'You're the one wanted me to come here to Busiris so I wouldn't be so far away from you. So I see you once a month – if I'm lucky.

  'And don't give me that crap about sixty miles is a long way to drive. No, I made the right decision, after all, even if it was mainly for your convenience. The vets' hospital is out. If I have to choose between elephants' graveyards...'

  'Nurse Stoss says she may have to put you in a room by yourself. Or... uh... restrain you.'

  'You mean, strap me down in bed? Or stick me in a straitjacket? Bullshit! You forget I broke out of the toughest prison camp the fucking Krauts had, and I was almost a basket case.'

  'Please, Dad, not so loud! And don't use those filthy words! Listen. It won't be easy, but we can work it out if you'll be nice. You could come home...'

  'Are you nuts? Your husband hates me! I'd have to sleep on the living-room sofa! That yapping dog drives me crazy!'

  'Shh! You're embarrassing me. Mrs Stoss says you're out of control. She thinks–'

  'She thinks! But she's never seen me doing anything! She's crazier than you think I am.'

  He waved at The Black Eagle, who was wheeling Mr Zhinsky out of the lounge. The Black Eagle grinned. He knew who'd caused the uproar that morning.

  'Who's that coloured man?'

  'The spade of the Spads. He flew double patrol last night because one of those drunken Zeps they call attendants couldn't make it. He often works double shifts to support his family and put two kids through college. He's one of those lazy niggers your redneck husband's always talking about. He's my buddy, flies wing for me.'

  'What're you talking about?'

  'Just my senile ramblings.'

  She stood up, sniffing, and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. 'If only you could be like the others.'

  'You mean, sit around with my mouth open catching flies and let someone wipe my ass for me? Or sing nonsense songs all day and all night until I've driven those who weren't crazy when they came in out of their minds?

  'Not me! I'm not giving up! The fucking Kaiser is going to rue the day Wild Hank enlisted. I'm going to keep on racking up my kills.'

  'Kills?'

  'Just a manner of speaking.'

  'Listen, Dad. That nurse says she's treated you with all the compassion and care in the world, and–'

  'Compassion? Care? That steely-eyed Hun? The scourge of the skies?'

  'Don't talk so crazy! I can't stand it!'

  'Maybe we just ought to write to each other. That way, you won't have to listen to your husband bitching about the cost of the gas you use getting here.'

  He rose and limped away, not looking at her but saying loudly, 'Next time you come, bring some whiskey! And leave the bullshit at home!'

  He passed Mrs Whittaker, who was talking to a visitor. He winked. She turned as red as Von Richtofen's triplane.

  Blushing!

  So he hadn't been completely a figure in her dreamworld. She had known that he was real flesh. Also, she hadn't told Stoss the truth about the commotion that morning. The code of the skies was unbroken. Chivalry wasn't dead.

  Maybe she was too embarrassed to admit to anyone, even herself, what had happened. Or maybe she thought every woman crapped when she had an orgasm. Maybe her husband had been a kinky shit-eater and she'd believed him when he told her that's how everybody did it. But could anyone be that rotten?

  What evil lurked in the hearts of men?

  Only God and The Shadow knew.

  •••

  All quiet on the Western Front. No impending Armistice, though. The Baroness had changed her schedule and now went up on patrol every half-hour. The Black Eagle had warned that she had the red ass for him, was loaded for bear, and was as mad as a wildcat with a tied-off dong in mating season.

  'The next time she hears a ruckus, she's heading right for your room. If you're not in it, she's got you. That means a lot of extra legwork for her, and that fat-ass don't like that no way. She hates your guts 'cause you won't lie down and die while you're still living. She isn't getting any ass, but she don't want you to, either. A real bitch in the manger.'

  Henry stayed in bed, except for piss call, for five nights. The sixth, Stoss went back to her regular schedule. Henry grinned. The Lone Eagle had outwaited The Bloody Baroness.

  The seventh day, he had to get into action. He'd been on furlough too long. His control stick was out of control. His Vickers was throbbing with the pressure of the ammo belts. At 0510, sure that The Baroness was at her HQ, he put on his helmet and goggles.

  'Contact!'

  'Contact!'

  Out of the hangar, down the runway, then soaring into the wild blue yonder, heavy with the fumes of senior-citizen shit.

  Target: Mrs Hannover. With that name, she had to be a CL IIIa, the beautiful escort fighter that looked like a one-seater from a distance. But when an Allied pilot got on its tail, he found himself staring into the red eye of the observer's Parabellum machine gun.

  He'd talked to the kid – she was only sixty-five – and he'd found her charming. She did have one functional defect, though. She'd sometimes get a faraway look, as if she were listening to a radio receiver in her head. She quit talking; she didn't even notice when you left.

  That was why her children had put her in the nursing home. She was an embarrassment, not to mention that she was rich and they were trying to get her declared incompetent.

  At 0513, he came in on a glide path, surveyed the area, found her partner sleeping, and landed in her bed. He was ready to take off, full throttle, if she screamed. Instead, she sighed as if she'd known he was coming, and the dogfight was on.

  Not much of a combat though. CL IIIa's did fool you.

  The only thing that bothered him for a while, aside
from the lack of aggressiveness, was that she kept crying out, though softly, 'Jim! Oh, Jim! My God, Jim!' but if she thought he was some other ace, what the hell? You didn't have to be properly identified by the enemy before you downed her.

  His long leave had fired him up so that he decided to stay for another tangle. It took only fifteen minutes to reload his Vickers with the Hannover's help, though she still thought he was that jerk, Jim. But just as he was about to shoot again, he felt a stabbing pain in his exhaust pipe. His scream of anguish mingled with her climactic cry, and he barrel-rolled away and out of the bed. It was a crash landing, but he wasn't structurally damaged. The only repairs he needed were to the fabric on his tail and the mid-parts of his wings. They were scraped raw, but he was flight-ready.

  The White Ghost was in her machine at the foot of the bed and cackling like The Shadow (a famous World War One ace before he took up crime fighting). The cane she carried concealed under the blanket over her legs, a Hotchkiss cannon if ever he saw one, was thrusting at the Hannover. The White Ghost was trying to goose her, too.

  He swore. He'd forgotten the first rule of aerial combat. Always make sure the Boche isn't sneaking up on your tail.

  As he rose, he groaned. He was damaged worse than he'd thought. He felt as if a Le Prieur rocket had been shoved up him. Damn The White Ghost!

  Schweinhund! I'll rendezvous with you some other time!'

  He sped from the hangar as fast as a seventy-nine-year-old Spad could go. Though he needed a breather, he had no time for it. Get back to base before The Baroness intercepted him. The worst of it was that his Vickers hadn't used the second load. It was sticking out from his pyjamas like a 7.7mm Lewis in the nose of a Handley Page 0/400 bomber. He was proud that it had an independent life. But he wished at that moment that he could control it.

  Puffing, he banked left and shot down the runway and into his hangar. He just had time to take the scene in before his wheels slid out from under him and he ground-looped. A roommate, Tyson, was standing there, his stick hanging out, a puddle of piss on the floor before him. And there was The Bloody Baroness, cursing and on her hands and knees. She must have run in to check on him and slipped on the mess.