Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille

by James Van Pelt

  The security guard directed him toward the door. Waldemar swirled to Creighton for support.

  “He would have left with the others,” whispered Creighton, more to himself, more it seemed in hope than anything.

  Waldemar tried to dodge around the guard, but the man caught him by the waist and held him back.

  “I can’t, sir,” he said. “I can’t let you go out there.”

  Waldemar strained again against the man’s grip, then gave up. He looked at the vid desperately. “You don’t understand,” he said. “Euthlos is in the egg. He won’t be able to unstrap himself.”

  Creighton said, his voice as hollow as a tomb, “I’m sure you’re mistaken. He’ll get away. He must.”

  “He’s in the egg. Look where the fire is.” Waldemar pointed to the vid. “Look at where the explosion must have been. He’s right there!”

  Then the vid screen winked out, and the lights in the room flickered.

  The next hours passed like a nightmare. The tight passageway led them down to a bunker under Genotech. Other executives joined them in the spacious but windowless lounge, all of them edgy, upset and snapping at each other. Creighton manned a communications station and grilled the security forces for news, and gradually a head count came in. Eventually, all the athletes and trainers were accounted for except Euthlos and Dr. Pops.

  “The bomb,” said the head of security, “was in the Race Simulation facility. It’s too hot to get close. We won’t find enough to scrape up in there to fill an envelope.”

  Waldemar, sitting in the chair next to Creighton, hung his head and stared at his hands. He thought, I should have told them about the girl in the woods. And the more he considered it, the worse he felt until he could feel nothing at all. The news passed around him and above him, but it didn’t touch him. He barely heard Creighton cursing for interior vid imagery. “Why are we cut off this way?” he yelled. “The explosion was in the Training Center!” Everything in the world narrowed to what he could see of his own hands clasped in front of him, the tops of his shoes, and the image of Euthlos’ face as he listened to the story of Waldemar’s last bandit run.

  Information came that Humans First claimed responsibility for the bombing. A news vid showed a masked figure reading part of a manifesto decrying the use of “godless, gene technology.” Then the news anchor said, “Although damage was extensive, loss of life could have been much larger. Genotech has announced that in the spirit of the Olympics, and because of their refusal to give into terrorism, they will still send their team to the Games. Tragically, Euthlos 4, the much rumored and highly anticipated Genotech marathoner, is feared to have perished in the explosion.” Then the screen showed the last ten seconds of Euthlos 3’s victory from the previous Olympics.

  Five hours after the explosion, Security announced that it was safe to go “topside,” and Waldemar followed Creighton to his office. The Training Center was barricaded off, while Genotech security and the police combed the building for clues, but the vids had switched themselves back on, and Waldemar watched dully as a hand held unit showed them the interior of the building. The head of security had been right; the Race Imaging Egg room was as if it had been erased. Nothing remained.

  Creighton flicked the image to the records from before the explosion. He ran it back far enough to watch Waldemar wave, and Euthlos enter the Training Center. He slowed the images of people fleeing after the explosion, magnifying faces. Finally, after five or six repetitions of vid from the beginning of the disaster to when the vids kicked off, Creighton said, “He never exited.”

  Looking at the screen, but washed out and exhausted, Waldemar said, “He was in the egg.”

  “Those Humans First bastards must have chickened out, or maybe it was premature. I’ll bet when the investigation is done, we’ll find out that Dr. Pops had something to do with it. I’ll bet he planted the bomb, and it went early, taking him with it. I never liked him,” said Creighton. “They must have had something else planned too, otherwise I don’t understand the knocking out of our vid capability. And why for that length of time? Three-and-a-half hours? That was a separate action. We’re lucky that we’d taken security precautions.”

  “Euthlos died.”

  “He was insured. There’s always product loss,” said Creighton, absently clicking his pen in thought. He wrote something on a pad on his desk. “We might even be able to turn this to our advantage.” He scribbled furiously for a second. “There may be a sympathy angle here if we spin our press releases right.”

  Without saying anything, Waldemar left the room. As far as he could tell, Creighton didn’t see him leave.

  Lopes 7, an enhanced Olympian entry from Indonesia-Pac Industries, won the 2096 marathon with a time of one hour, forty-seven minutes and twelve seconds. Much of the speculation centered on the potential time of Genotech’s entry who was destroyed in a terrorist attack six weeks before the game. Dedicated fans mourned the opportunity to see a repeat of the stirring, come from behind victory his predecessor, Euthlos 3, had staged in the previous Olympics. Lopes 7 averaged four minutes and five seconds per mile.

  Waldemar didn’t watch the Olympics. Instead, he continued training for the St. George marathon in October. On the long runs, he found himself thinking about his weeks at Genotech, and gradually the mourning leaked away, a little bit on each mile, a little bit, workout by workout. But the more Waldemar trained, the worse he felt. Euthlos would run full speed, he had said, when he had a reason to run. The vids turned off for three-and-a-half hours after the explosion. If Euthlos had lived, it would have been time to run the fifty miles off the Genotech property.

  Long runs give time to think. Beneath him, his body whirred away, eating up the distance, striving to reach the pace, but he was always thinking about the things Euthlos had said to him, his boyish enthusiasms about the “outside” world, and his hobbies. So the closer the race in St. George came, the emptier Waldemar became. In the last few days, he felt as light as a wisp, hollow, a running device.

  The first twenty-five miles of the marathon unwound as if the race hadn’t been the goal ever, as if it were a step toward something else. He’d long ago left the pack behind and ran by himself, without even the sound of others’ footsteps to remind him he was in a competition. The Utah desert scrolled inexorably past, but he paid no attention; his inner eye focused in, feeling the pace, feeling the building rhythm of his feet on the road. He ran in a zone, the effort somehow removed from him and remote, and he thought about Pheidippides rolling down the dusty trail toward Athens, a message of victory in his heart, the love of his city spurring his feet on. Waldemar thought about Euthlos too. “Give me a reason to run all out,” he had said, “and I’ll show you running.”

  Waldemar entered the finishing straightaway. At the end of the street, a half mile farther, a finish line banner hung above the pavement. A small crowd waited, mostly family members and runners’ friends, and they cheered Waldemar’s approach.

  Time is distance, thought Waldemar. A fantastic runner, given the motivation, a runner capable of holding a four minute per mile pace, could cover fifty miles in less than three-and-a-half hours. The distance from Genotech to the end of the vid surveillance was almost exactly fifty miles. The idea boggled the mind. It was preposterous. No one would believe such a thing was possible. If Euthlos had lived, if he had started running when the vids went out, it could have been the greatest foot race of all time, unwitnessed and unrecorded. Waldemar pictured a lone runner fleeing a burning building, knowing no one would see him go, stretching himself farther and farther. If he made it, freedom. He would have to make it. What else was there? In some races, losing is not a choice. Pheidippides would be proud.

  Waldemar crossed the finish line and the people cheered him, both the enhanced and unenhanced. He didn’t ask for his finishing time; it didn’t matter. He bent at the waist, bracing himself with his hands on his thighs. People slapped him on the back; faces congratulated him. Most he knew. Friends. Oth
er runners. Then, he saw a girl in camouflage pants, golden blonde hair, short cropped. It was Euthlos’ Humans First girl friend. What was she doing here? And who was that standing behind her? Was it Dr. Pops? But he died in the explosion!

  A familiar voice said, “You broke two hours. You did it.”

  Waldemar began laughing. Euthlos wrapped a blanket around him. The long-legged runner wore a tan jacket, like the girl, and his boyish smile was broad.

  Weakness struck Waldemar’s legs. He had to sit. Someone pushed a water bottle into his hands, and he rolled its coolness against his forehead before taking a drink. He’d broken two hours; he’d run into the unknown territory, and nothing was different. Still, it was very, very good. He shivered.

  Euthlos crouched down, draped a second blanket around Waldemar’s shoulders and whispered in his ear, “No one could run the way you did today. You’re a legend.”

  Waldemar leaned into him. Suddenly, none of his muscles seemed to have any strength. Everything he had had gone into the race.

  “You could,” Waldemar said. “You would have killed me.” He pulled the blankets closer.

  “Who, me?” said Euthlos. “I’m no runner. I’m nobody. Just a fan. Just a regular guy.” He grinned.

  Waldemar saw it all. Dr. Pops must have helped, and Euthlos jimmied the vids. He only needed three-and-a-half hours to make a mythical run.

  “Come on,” said Euthlos. “I’ll buy you a beer.”

  FLOATERS

  No matter where Rye stood, the end of the world always looked the same. First, a disturbance on the horizon. If there were clouds, they boiled upward and thinned. If there were none, the air itself shimmered as it gave way to the forces rushing around the curve of the Earth. Then, on the edge of sight, a glow climbed higher and brighter, like a sunrise where the sun was a wall instead of a ball, intolerably bright, stretching to invisibility in both directions.

  Land rippled before the pressure wave, rushing toward him, rolling under trees and hills and buildings. Before he could even flinch, it was on him, and the world went acetylene white.

  After that, dust and lightning and smoke tornado storms. If he went far enough ahead, he passed over the blackened ground, finding no remnants of anything human, just miles and miles of empty, airless, lifeless vistas. Everything burned away, even the atmosphere.

  In the virtually rendered world of the future, however, even on the burnt surface of a dead planet, Rye felt happy. No swollen glands. No weakness. His avatar stood fully fleshed and clean. No purplish welts of Kaposi’s sarcoma. Not pale. No shakes. No floaters.

  It was part of Dr. Martin’s regimen. Once a week Rye and Gretta had to see the end of the world to emphasize the importance of their mission. When Rye took his headset off, he would look up to the hand lettered sign above the metal door, WE CAN CHANGE THE FUTURE, and know for himself that it was untrue.

  It didn’t help that the note penned under the sign, in Gretta’s hand, said, NOT THAT ALL OF US WILL BE AROUND FOR IT.

  After his last visit to the conflagration of the world, Rye had said, “Let me go back home for my end. I can’t help you anymore down here.”

  Dr. Martin nodded sympathetically but said, “No. As long as the loop is closed, we have to keep it that way.”

  Gretta stared at him through the conversation in the unnerving way of hers, but she didn’t add a word.

  Rye worked his way through the security screens methodically. He tapped one access code after another into the programs, passing each level of clearance, getting closer each time to an outside line. The notebook with security procedures lay open on the table beside the terminal. Dr. Martin’s head wasn’t geared to secrecy. He didn’t lock the book up. He hadn’t kept private what was in it. But until now, Rye had never thought he would need it. Everyone on the outside believed him to be dead. For all practical purposes, to them, he was.

  Still, the chance for discovery was high. Rye listened to the hiss of air coming through the vent. The keys pattered softly. He’d have almost no time to clear the screen if either Gretta or Martin woke up. Their rooms were only a few steps away down the hall, and in the converted missile silo, they’d long since lost sense of day and night. They slept in two and three hour snatches whenever they needed.

  So he kept his head cocked to one side, waiting for sounds. Gretta was with Martin again in one of the three sleeping cubicles at one end of the short hallway that constituted the length of their living space. Across the hall, computer equipment and two small desks filled another room. At the other end of the hall stood the blast door with its steering-wheel handle. No missile in the silo, of course. It had long ago been removed.

  Today, even his skin hurt. The gentle tap of the keys burned against his fingers, and his wrists ached.

  The metal floors, walls and ceiling amplified every sound. Clicking keys pounded like hammers on stone. They’d know he was up. They’d know he was in the communications room, a place he had no need to be. They’d discover and stop him.

  But if he could e-mail his sister, Annie, he could save her, and he’d live with the repercussions.

  A black spot drifted across his vision in his left eye. He blinked hard. Sometimes that helped. Flicking his focus from left to right helped sometimes too, but this spot seemed unaffected and drifted inexorably upwards, never quite out of sight, always at the top of his vision. His M.D. called them floaters, one of the symptoms of CMV retinitis, a herpes infection of the eyes.

  His throat throbbed. The glands in his neck were swollen again, and so were the ones in his groin. He shifted uncomfortably in the office chair, trying to relieve the pressure.

  If he could see Annie again, explain why he’d left, he could tolerate the discomfort. He thought, I made a bad decision, coming here.

  Rye hadn’t really believed that a secret, government project existed that needed his expertise in virtual reality, until at the end of the long plane trip and even longer car ride the soldier in the prefab opened the elevator door without comment. Sunburn marked his cheeks, and after a while Rye wondered if it hurt him to speak. The soldier hadn’t said a word since Rye and the unnamed NSA agent had entered. Silently, he checked their I.D.’s, then handed Rye a clipboard with a clearance form already filled out. Rye signed it.

  “Do you bring a lot of people out here?” Rye asked.

  “That’s on a needs to know basis,” said the agent.

  “Oh.”

  The agent said, “God-awful hot. You’d think they’d pop for some air conditioning.” He loosened his tie. Sweat darkened his collar. “Lucky dog, it’s cooler down there I’ll bet.”

  The soldier took the clipboard and gave it to the agent to sign.

  “Did they get all my bags?” asked Rye. “There are a couple of blue cases for my medications.”

  The agent shrugged. He was younger than the one who’d accompanied him on the plane and more bored. “Everything’s there that went in the car.”

  “I really need those cases.”

  Handing the clipboard back to the soldier, the agent said, “I’m sure they’re around. If not, we’ll find them and send them to you right away.”

  “I won’t be coming back up, you know,” said Rye. He remembered the briefing at the hospital. They’d found him just as he was checking out, and he was so tired and discouraged that a job offer from the National Security Agency that involved, among other things, a guarantee for paid medical treatments, sounded too good to believe. The catch was, they said, that he’d have to disappear, at least for a while. He’d get more explanations later, but once he took the job, he would vanish. His family would be told that he’d died.

  Rye wondered if NSA hung out at hospitals recruiting people with death sentences, or if it were just a lucky coincidence for them.

  “No one comes up,” said the agent. He smiled, not unkindly. “I hear it’s pretty cushy down there.”

  “I’ll need my medicine.” A black spot drifted across the room, across the agent’s face, di
stracting Rye. He worried that he looked twitchy, always trying to see things no one else noticed.

  “Let’s get you in the elevator,” the agent said, picking up two duffel bags.

  Rye bent to pick up another, but suddenly grew dizzy, and he stood until the room quit spinning. He rubbed the spot on his chest where the catheter had been for ten days in the hospital. They’d infused him with medication to combat the CMV, but now he felt weaker than ever.

  “You’re not well?” said the agent, grabbing another bag. The blue medical cases were behind it.

  “They didn’t tell you?” said Rye. He felt steady enough now, but the black spot seemed to have paused in the upper right corner of his vision, and he couldn’t ignore it.

  “Sorry to hear it. But it is cooler in the silo. What are you doing down there? Special hospital?”

  Rye crouched carefully and picked up the blue cases. “That’s on a needs to know basis.”

  “The rules. First,” said Dr. Martin, “we must remain in a closed loop. It’s the butterfly effect: You know, how the flap of a butterfly wing in China might result in a hurricane in Florida. Our smallest information leak could change everything.”

  “Okay,” said Rye. His stomach hurt. Fourteen pills each morning. Different meds through the day. Random specks drifting through his vision. Between disease and side effects from the medicine, it was all he could do to keep from grimacing. He concentrated on ignoring his symptoms.

  “Second, no fraternizing with each other.”

  “I’m not gay,” said Rye.

  “Neither am I,” replied Dr. Martin without blinking. “I meant Gretta.”

  “Gretta?”

  “She’s the other member of our team. Top-notch programmer. A graduate student from a class I taught last year. By the way, she might be a bit hostile. She’s not convinced a man whose computer background is all in 3D gaming is the right person for the job.”