Earth and Air

by Janet Edwards

  I ached to tell him about all the precious things my history club had discovered on New York Fringe and in other ruined cities over the years. Items that had survived by pure chance, as well as those that had been deliberately preserved in stasis boxes. Every one of them a potential clue to the history, science, and other knowledge lost during humanity’s great exodus from Earth.

  I forced myself to keep quiet. Other people would have argued this point with Gradin hundreds of times already. They’d obviously totally failed to change his attitude, and he was bound to react badly if I repeated things he’d heard a dozen times before. I’d done some flying with Gradin years ago, and a lot more very recently in Athens. By now I’d spent enough time in an aircraft with him to know that the man had three main moods. Resigned grumpiness, irritated grumpiness, and aggressive grumpiness.

  Back in the twentieth century, there was a period when different parts of humanity were on the verge of launching masses of nuclear weapons at each other. An unbelievably stupid idea, because that was before the invention of interstellar portals. With the whole of humanity living on Earth, those people wouldn’t just have killed their enemies, but brought poisoned rains and wind down on themselves too.

  In those days, part of Earth America had a system for describing how close they were to launching their missiles. DEFCON 5 was as close as they got to peace. DEFCON 1 meant the human race was minutes from annihilating itself. I used the same system as mental shorthand for Gradin’s moods. He was currently at DEFCON 4, the resigned grumpiness. If I made any history related comments, he’d move to DEFCON 3, the irritated grumpiness, or even DEFCON 2, the aggressive grumpiness.

  What really worried me was the constant threat of Gradin going to DEFCON 1 and quitting his job. He was planning to retire from being a Dig Site Federation pilot at the end of the year to start a much easier job as a portal delivery pilot. It wouldn’t take much to make him decide to leave early, and that would kill my chances of getting my pilot’s licence this summer.

  It would take months, perhaps even years, before New York Dig Site found a replacement for Gradin, because qualified pilots were in desperately short supply. That was probably the only reason the Dig Site Federation had employed a bad-tempered, unpredictable, disruptive rebel like Gradin for decades. Well, that and the fact the man was a brilliant pilot.

  Gradin banked the plane and started flying across the dig site to today’s survey starting point. I frowned as I saw a sprawling flooded area ahead of us, with the occasional tall building sticking up from the murky water. I compared it to the survey area shown on the main display of our aircraft control panel, and wrinkled my nose.

  “Why does our survey area include part of a flood zone? Only research teams are allowed to work in flooded areas, and they won’t bother excavating buildings on New York Fringe when they’ve got far more important work to do on New York Main.”

  “I have to fly a full survey of New York Fringe this summer, including all the flood zones,” said Gradin. “There’s some work going on to reduce the flooding issues on New York Main by removing debris from one of the rivers. That’s expected to help drain the flooded areas here as well. Those areas have never been surveyed before, so Fringe Dig Site Command wants an idea of what may surface when the water levels change, especially any potential problems with hazardous waste.”

  I nodded. People did some chaos stupid things with hazardous waste in the days of pre-history. They buried radioactive materials and lethal chemicals, or sealed them in stasis boxes and containment fields, and then casually forgot where they were in the confusion of Exodus century. That’s not a problem for the norms. They can choose to live on any one of hundreds of fresh, unpolluted colony worlds, but the Handicapped have no option but to live on Earth.

  We’ve inherited all the past glories of the human race, and the legacies of its most colossal mistakes as well. Even after centuries of working to clean up the ancient poisons, there are still incidents every year where a sudden leakage of hazardous waste means settlements have to be urgently evacuated.

  Gradin sighed. “We need our survey to show as much detail as possible about what’s underwater, so we’ll have to fly at an uncomfortably low altitude. Flying low over ruins is dangerous enough, but flooded ruins are even worse. If you crash on land, then your impact suit can save your life. If you crash on water, your impact suit can kill you.”

  “I know,” I said grimly. The six main hazards on a dig site were fire, electrical, chemical, water, radiation, and magnetic. Water was on the list because if you fell into any area of deep water while wearing an impact suit, its weight would drag you down to the bottom. If you tried taking off the clinging suit, then you risked drowning before you could free yourself, so the standard advice was to wait and hope that rescuers reached you before the recycled suit air grew so poisonous that it killed you.

  “Whenever you’re in control of the plane,” said Gradin, “you must be constantly aware of your closest potential landing areas.”

  “That’s like the dig site safety rule about knowing the position of your closest emergency evac portal.”

  “I suppose so,” said Gradin grudgingly. “In both cases, you’re making sure you know your escape route in case anything unexpected happens. I’ve had to make several emergency landings over the years due to things like engine failure, severe weather conditions, and even colliding with a bird. If you can reach a feasible landing area, a controlled landing is almost always safer for you than blowing the cockpit cover and jumping.”

  He paused for a moment. “If you’re over water, then a pancake landing should give you time to inflate the onboard emergency dinghy, while jumping with just your suit means you’re going straight down to the bottom. If you’re over land, then jumping is slightly less dangerous, because in theory your hover tunic should slow you down enough that your impact suit prevents you getting injured when you hit the ground. In reality though, you could still get badly hurt if you landed on something nasty, and New York is full of nasty things.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t need convincing that it was better to land a plane than jump out of it.

  “There’s also the point that abandoning your plane in midair means there’s a risk of it killing someone on the ground,” continued Gradin. “If you’ve no choice but to jump, then you must make sure your plane will crash somewhere clear of any people. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life knowing you’re only alive because one, two, or a score of other people are dead. I’ve seen what that does to a pilot, and it isn’t pretty.”

  I’d had no choice in who taught me to fly this summer. My only possible instructor was the New York Dig Site professional pilot, so I’d have had to accept whoever that turned out to be. This was one of the moments when I felt glad that instructor was Gradin.

  I’d met some pilots who’d gloss over unpleasant truths, leaving me ignorant of something crucial out of misguided kindness. Gradin wasn’t like that. If there was something I really needed to know, something like this, I could count on him to tell me it bluntly.

  We flew on in silence until we reached our survey start point. Gradin spoke to Fringe Dig Site Command on the broadcast channel that could be heard by everyone working on the dig site, and started flying the first leg of the survey. Once he’d checked the survey plane sensors were transmitting their data properly, he spoke on broadcast channel again.

  “This is New York survey plane. Pilot handing control to co-pilot.”

  I leaned forward in my seat and activated my co-pilot controls. I tried to keep the self-conscious note out of my voice as I set my suit comms to broadcast channel and completed the required report of a change of pilot.

  “This is New York survey plane co-pilot, Jarra Reeath. I have control.”

  For the rest of that survey leg, I let myself glory in the pure joy of flying a plane and the feeling that I owned the skies. I came back to reality for a moment to check my instruments and turn to fly the second leg.r />
  “Where is your closest potential landing area?” asked Gradin.

  “It’s behind us now,” I said. “There’s the usual pairing of an accommodation dome and a sled storage dome, with enough flat space around them for an aircraft to land.”

  “Dig site accommodation domes are deliberately set up to have a flat area next to them that’s big enough for an aircraft to land,” said Gradin. “These domes are scattered across hazard zones, and could be cut off by either a portal failure or a portal outage due to a solar storm, so it’s vital that they can be reached in an emergency by air.”

  He paused. “There’s a much closer potential landing area than the one you’ve mentioned though. A landing area that also has the big advantage of being straight ahead of us. Remember that with some types of engine trouble, an attempt to bank or turn the plane could be disastrous.”

  There was a landing area ahead? I stared at the ground in bewilderment. Gradin had described the ruins of New York as a mess, and I felt the area ahead of us was especially messy.

  “I can see some tracks running through the ruins,” I said, “but they’re only just wide enough for hover sleds. Aircraft wings need much more space.”

  “It’s true that the tracks aren’t usually wide enough for an aircraft to land,” said Gradin. “Even coming down as close to vertical as possible, there’d be a big risk of stripping one or both wings on some rubble, and sending the plane rolling in a nasty crash. However, there’s sometimes a wide area where two tracks meet.”

  I could see the spot Gradin was talking about now. It had to be the spot he meant, because it was the biggest flat area I could see, but it still seemed ridiculously small. “The crossroads just before the start of the floodwater? Between that skeletal spire and the round building?”

  “That’s right,” said Gradin.

  “Is that really big enough for a safe landing?” I asked.

  “It’s not big enough for a safe landing,” said Gradin, “but it’s big enough for a safe crash. By a safe crash, I mean one that you’ll be able to walk away from even if the aircraft never flies again. The Dig Site Federation always complains bitterly when you wreck one of their aircraft, but there’s a lot of consolation in the fact you’re alive to hear the complaints. I’ve totally destroyed ten aircraft over the years, so I’ve reached the point where the whining doesn’t bother me.”

  I blinked. “Ten aircraft!”

  “And I’ve seriously damaged plenty of others,” said Gradin proudly. “That isn’t a bad record when you consider that I’ve been a Dig Site Federation pilot for four decades. Stop and think about that, Jarra. Four decades of flying over some of the worst terrain on this planet. Four decades of doing rescue work on my base dig site. Four decades of volunteering to help when there’s a crisis elsewhere. I could have easily destroyed twenty or thirty planes by now instead of just ten.”

  I realized he was right. Gradin did far more than fly surveys of dig sites. I’d only seen a glimpse of his more dangerous work, but that had been enough to demonstrate how easily a pilot could lose an aircraft or even their life.

  Gradin abruptly changed the subject. “You’ve already logged a good number of the mandatory flying hours needed to get your pilot’s licence, Jarra, and you can get the rest of them flying survey legs like this, but we need to cover several extra things as well. I’m fairly satisfied with your take-offs, though you’ve still got a bad tendency to hammer the thrusters, but your landings are a real problem area.”

  He shrugged. “You love launching a plane, you’re ecstatic flying it in the air, but you’re a nervous wreck when it comes to putting it down on the ground again. It’s no wonder you’re doubtful about the idea of landing at that crossroads. You’re scared of putting a plane down on the huge landing area at New York Fringe Command Centre. You’d probably still be nervous if you had a landing area the size of Earth America.”

  I cringed. This was one of the moments when I was anything but glad that Gradin was my instructor. We both knew I was nervous about landing an aircraft. We both knew the reason for that. I didn’t need Gradin to rub my nose in the problem.

  I comforted myself with the thought that we were wearing impact suits and had our hoods up and sealed. The special fabric covering my face allowed me to see out, but Gradin would only be able to see a vague, featureless blur. Any embarrassingly distressed expressions were safely hidden from sight, so I just needed to keep my voice under control.

  “Yes.” Rather than wait for Gradin to make some cuttingly painful remark, I said it myself. “I’m nervous because I keep remembering messing up that landing a few weeks ago.”

  As I said the words, I was hit by the memory of a sickening crunching sound. My hands shook, the aircraft wavered off course, and I had to correct my flight path.

  “Yes, you messed up a perfectly simple landing that a child in a Nursery unit could have managed while eating ice cream,” said Gradin. “I admit I’m partly to blame. If I’d been paying proper attention during that landing, I could have used my pilot controls to override yours. I wasn’t, so I didn’t. In fact, I made the situation even worse by getting a bit irritated.”

  I frowned at my control panel. Gradin had been more than a bit irritated after that crash. He’d screamed insults at me. If he didn’t shut up about this soon, I’d start screaming some of those insults back at him.

  “When it’s a choice between a human life and an aircraft,” said Gradin, “you can destroy an aircraft and be proud of yourself. Damaging an aircraft through sheer carelessness is a very different matter. You should feel bad about it afterwards, but you have to pull yourself out of that, learn what you can from your mistake, and put the whole thing behind you.”

  “I have put it behind me,” I said. “You made me do two landings the very next day, and I did a couple more when we were in Athens.”

  “It’s true that you’ve landed a plane several times since the crash,” said Gradin, “but every time you’ve been hideously tense when you started your landing approach. I could hear the way you held your breath at the crucial moment, and then suddenly gasped for air once we were safely on the ground. I kept thinking you’d overdo holding your breath and pass out from lack of oxygen.”

  The way he said the last bit sounded as if he thought he was making a hilarious joke and expected me to laugh, but I didn’t find it funny.

  “We need to keep working on your landings to get you past that problem,” said Gradin. “There are also a few official requirements you need to cover, and some unofficial extras of my own.”

  “What sort of unofficial extras?” I asked suspiciously.

  “You’ve seen me fold an aircraft’s wings to get it through a portal. There are a few other technical things, and some non-standard flying techniques. We’ll fit oxygen booster cells to our impact suits one day, and spend a few hours doing high altitude flying.”

  I grinned. High altitude flying sounded fun.

  “You may never need to do any of these things,” said Gradin, “but they can sometimes save a life. I had a case like that only last month. The research dig teams keep messing about on the remains of the old skyscrapers on New York Main, risking their necks to retrieve some object they consider vitally important. Two people were doing that when the last remaining staircase collapsed behind them. That was the point when they discovered the rope they had with them, which they’d thought was long enough to reach the ground, was only about half the length they needed.”

  Gradin laughed. “They couldn’t depend on their impact suits to protect them if they jumped from that height, so I had to fly over there in my small freight plane, and lower a carrying net on a rope to rescue them. It’s not easy combining thrusters and hovers to hold position over one of those ruined towers. It’s not easy dropping a carrying net down to the right one of several thousand windows either, especially when the fools you’re rescuing tell you they’re on the fortieth floor when they’re actually a floor lower down. They were lucky t
hat I’m such a brilliant pilot.”

  Gradin paused, waiting for me to speak. I knew what he wanted me to say. Gradin loved boasting of his exploits, and expected me to act as his adoring audience, making suitably flattering comments about his skill and heroism. I was relieved to get away from the painful subject of crashing aircraft, so I was prepared to indulge his ego a little.

  “You’re a great pilot.”

  “I am,” he said happily.

  “Probably the best pilot the Dig Site Federation has.”

  “Definitely the best.”

  I sighed. “A bit of modesty would be nice though.”

  “I don’t believe in false modesty,” said Gradin. “I’m a superb pilot and I take risks to save lives. I’m entitled to suitable recognition, praise, and thanks in return.”

  I frowned down at the ruins below, noting a flat expanse between two buildings that would be a reasonably safe place to land. “I suppose you made those poor people you saved from the skyscraper thank you for rescuing them.”

  “I didn’t make them thank me,” said Gradin. “They wanted to thank me. At least, they wanted to thank me the first few times. After two hours, I admit they seemed to be finding it a strain, but the experience was good for them.”

  “I can see that making them be grovellingly grateful for hours was a good experience for you, but I don’t see why it was good for them.”

  “It was good for them because it means they’ll be far more careful on dig sites in future. They won’t want to risk being rescued by me and having to be grateful again.” He laughed. “Being rescued by me is a fate worse than death, Jarra.”

  His comment was funny enough to make me giggle, but it confused me. Could it be true? Did Gradin deliberately make people suffer so they’d be more careful in future? He often said things like this, where I wasn’t sure if he was teasing me or was deadly serious. I sometimes got the impression he wasn’t sure about it himself.