by Dean Ing
"You've still got a whole bottle of additive," she reminded him, "and we could siphon gas from cars with your gadget."
"Gotta keep that for later," he replied without elaborating, still studying the map. "We're between Refugio and Woodsboro, and there's an airport a half hour's walk away, right about—there," he finished, pointing midway between the nearby towns.
"No beacon?"
"Some do, some don't," he said, clearly preoccupied now, and grunted as he climbed out of the cockpit taking the fuel bladder with him.
Petra scrambled out onto the metal dome, stretching, learning to walk softly because she did not enjoy the low, ghostly echoes of her footfalls from the tank below her. "God, this feels weird," she said, laughing at her own discomfort.
The curl of a steel ladder stood in the dusk, fifty feet away. They walked to it and grasped its rails, scanning the ground several stories below. The distance to the nearest pump unit was hundreds of yards, she noted. He must have been thinking about those wide-open spaces too. "Long walk, ma'am, but you're not coming anyhow. Does this height make you woozy?"
"Not anymore," she said, laughing, and ran her arms around the barrel of his rib cage before she lost her nerve for it. She felt him start to pull back, hesitate, then clasp her roughly in a hug. He kissed the top of her head. "On the scalp doesn't count," she murmured, looking up at him. "Give me a real smack before you go." I know you wouldn't if I called it a kiss, she thought.
He kissed her with the tender diffidence of a boy but held her as if he meant it, then gave her shoulder a squeeze and turned, tossing the fuel bladder over the side of the tank. "Gotta go fuel up," he muttered, and climbed over the edge.
"I've still got good ole Bobby's money," she said. "And how are you going to get twenty gallons in that plastic thing?"
"One thing I have is money," he said, starting down. "And I'm going to improvise like hell. I'm a crop duster who's out of gas like a damn fool; half of those guys are nuts anyhow. I'll think of something," he added, his voice diminishing in the faint pungent breeze.
She watched him as far as she could see him in the deepening night, reluctant to move, still savoring the kiss they had shared, even if she'd had to demand it and absorb the tingle of whiskers in the process. I've known freshmen who understood more about romance, she told herself, feeling the flush of sunburn on her cheeks as she smiled into the breeze. But I don't love him with that dizzy kind of rapture I felt for the others. In fact, do I love him at all?
She noticed her first star of the evening and, feeling foolish as she did it, whispered an old formula. "...wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight. I wish—that Kyle would get beyond vengeance and find me waiting. Okay, star, that's two wishes; if I get the first, maybe the second will follow. And as for you, Corbett, you old bastard, don't screw up and make me waste the first unselfish wish I've had in years."
It was that unselfishness that pricked her intuition. Oh yes, I'm in love with him, twit that I am, and maybe I should not be dissecting it like a problem in stress analysis. But why not? Maybe because I'll have to admit that it isn't all unselfish. Uncle Dar used to laugh and say that Kyle Corbett led a wild life, and he said it with plain envy, which seemed strange to me at the time because my uncle is the most sober-sided responsible man in the world. But he envied Kyle; maybe enough to kill him? I can't accept that. And the one thing I'll never learn from Brown University is how to live with Corbett's kind of decisive abandon. Could I become a pro in my field and still find his kind of damn-your-eyes freedom? Could anybody?
"You'd tell me no," she said into the night, speaking to the departed Corbett. "But you've done it yourself. Even though you got pushed into some of it. And then you pushed me," she said, laughing at him, and at herself.
An hour later she was sitting at the ladder with one leg through a steel rung, nibbling a Hi Ho and enjoying the breeze, when she saw headlights swing in her direction a mile away. She moved back and hunkered down. A night watchman? Please, God, let him keep going! But the old pickup truck stopped near the ladder. A moment later she heard scrapings and soft echoes in the tank, and realized that someone was climbing the ladder.
Heart beating wildly, she made her decision and swung onto the ladder. "Don't shoot, I'm coming down," she called.
"What the hell for?" he called back. Corbett!
She scrambled back up and did not wait for him to reach the top. "My God, I thought you were a watchman or something," she said, laughing, placing a hand over her hammering heart.
He swung over the top, puffing with exertion. "Then why give yourself away, dummy?"
With some heat she said, "So he wouldn't come up here and see the hellbug, dummy."
Starlight was a poor guide, but he must have seen her fairly well because, after he laughed, he kissed her. It was a frustrating moment for Petra because she had no time to gear herself for a really promising response. "Don't worry," he said with a kind of manic elation, throwing an arm over her shoulder, "I kiss all my copilots. Well, I finally had something go right; a guy was pulling an overhaul at Rooke Field. He offered to loan me his pickup when he heard my sad story. You know, I'm dusting crops and run out of fuel but I land okay, and I'm gonna get fired if I don't get this leased AgriCat back, and I'd rather not have to show my ID to this guy or tell him where I put the duster down if that's okay with him.
"And he's your typical small-town Texan who'll give you the bandanna off his neck if you don't sneer at him, or talk about the size of Alaska." Petra wondered if he had been drinking, because this expansive yarn-spinner was not the Kyle Corbett she knew. He was a Corbett flushed with quick success; and she found that she liked him even better this way as he continued, "Only there's no spare tank around, and it's against the law to put avgas into a car, so the guy keeps filling my plastic tank, helping all he can without actually breaking a law, and I go around the edge of the hangar and pour it into the pickup's tank, which was nearly empty but I promised to bring it back full of unleaded because he wouldn't take the pair of twenties I tried to give him. And here I am," he said.
During this spiel he had led her to the looming bulk of Black Stealth One, and now he crawled in. "C'mon, I'm gonna take it down below and do the siphon routine," he said, patting the copilot's seat.
She started to comply and then stopped. "I'll go down the ladder," she told him.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing; but I've never actually seen this airplane fly when I wasn't in it. It's not something I want to miss."
He flicked switches, and began to spool the big impeller over. "You won't see much tonight either, honey."
Her heart leaped. Honey! But that's just high spirits talking, she thought. "I'll cope. You go on." She gave him plenty of room, squinting as dust teased her eyes, and watched him levitate the craft, seeing him faintly limned by reflection from instruments as he lifted like a creature of fantasy. It's a UFO, she realized with a thrill of gooseflesh, a real one to everybody but us, probably the only one in this corner of our galaxy. How long before I can help build newer ones?
She watched its progress as much by its occlusion of stars as by direct light, and was ravished again by the graceful sweep of its wings. Presently she moved to the ladder, refusing to think about the distance. She counted over eighty rungs before she reached the ground and realized only when she brushed his shoulder with her rump that Corbett was patiently waiting there, perhaps to break her fall if she had slipped.
She found other purchases in the pickup's bed: the plastic bag was full of ordinary gasoline, and the same Exxon station had boasted the kind of cheap tasseled blankets only a tourist, desperate for mementoes, would crave. Wrapped in each of the two thin blankets were cans of Classic Coke. After he backed the pickup into place, they made the fuel transfer directly using the siphon and pressure bulb. He pumped the pickup dry, topped off the tank of Black Stealth One with ordinary fuel, then poured one of the two remaining two gallons of ordinary gasoline into the pickup.
"You're really going to drive the guy's pickup back?" she asked.
"A deal's a deal. Besides, I don't want him calling the cops," Corbett replied. "One thing about a cover story, Petra: you can't just give it, you've got to live it."
He stowed the almost empty plastic bladder into the hellbug and, with Petra beside him, had soon settled the craft in its aerie atop the huge oil tank. "You can make our pallets," he said, heading for the ladder by starlight. "Mosquitoes shouldn't be bad up here."
"I wish I could go with you," she said wistfully as he swung onto the ladder.
"So do I. Don't wait dinner, this'll take a while," he said, and left her. She watched the pickup's lights until they faded from sight.
THIRTY-FOUR
After Corbett returned afoot, complaining of sore feet, they had feasted under starlight, belching Coca Cola fumes tinged with cheese. Now they lay on the pallets she had placed together under a wing of Black Stealth One, feeling residual warmth of the dome on their backs through the thin blankets. "You know," she said dreamily, "even if I told the truth about this experience, my family would absolutely not believe it. My uncle, maybe; probably not even him."
Corbett yawned and put his hands under his head, feeling her arm against his, comfortable with it. "Why not?" You're just putting off what you have to tell her. But you're assuming she wants to keep going and she just might have had an attack of good sense after today...
"They wouldn't be able to reconcile it with what they think I am."
He asked it in all seriousness: "And what are you?"
"Oh—I want it all. Pleasure without consequences, I guess. And don't think you can't, if you're little and cute, and never forget anything or admit anything."
"Sounds like a real sandbagging little shit. I hope I never meet you," he chuckled.
"You already have," she said darkly, "but I'll turn your question back to you. What are you, Kyle? All I know about you are the most important things."
He sighed and shifted position. "I won't give you that crap about there not being much to tell. Let's see: I grew up in Manhattan Beach, California; surfed a lot, got into things that fly because my dad was an engineer with North American—Rockwell, to you. He helped me make boomerangs, kites, gliders, all that stuff. I got through high school without cracking a book but nobody told me how bone lazy I was until I damned near washed out of cadet training."
"Gee, I always enjoyed studying," she said, turning over, her face so near that he could feel the warmth of her breath.
"Yeah, but you're a natural nerd."
"You know what a nerd is," she said, "a nerd is the guy you make fun of all the way through college, and he owns your whole town when he's thirty-five."
"There's something in that," he laughed. "But all I ever wanted to own was the sky. Did a tour of duty in F-104's, took a bunch of engineering courses because I wanted to build better airplanes, married a girl who thought I was going to be a nice, steady, rich airline pilot."
"Lord, I know better than that already. Why would she get that idea?"
"Because I told her so," he shrugged. "But I was wrong. I got a chance at something really wild and woolly to fly so I stayed in, and that's when she started packing. Then in 'sixty-five I climbed into a Blackbird, an SR-71, at Beale Air Force Base." He sighed. "That's where all the engineering paid off; I figured it would. Boy, that thing is—well, the only thing I'd rather have is parked right here. It's a different kind of freedom. Found out, a year later, that I could resign from the service and still fly a Blackbird. Of course, I flew 'em for CIA, but I had some freedom too. Stationed in a place called Tak Le in Thailand, sometimes flying out of Kadena in Okinawa. I met Dar Weston over there; flew recon during the Tet Offensive in 'sixty-eight in another kind of plane, a Lockheed Quietship. The Q-ship could be hairy as a bear. The hellbug is kind of like a Q-ship gone to heaven.
"Eventually I picked up a fungus over there, practically grew moss in my ear. Inner ear infection can put you right out of the flying business. But Dar pulled a string or two for me with another spook agency: NSA. I thought it was just a fill-in job, until I realized I might be building things that fly. With some, uh, occasional test flights, I was pretty happy there until one weekend when I went on a fishing trip with an old buddy. And you know how that turned out. I can't tell you what I've done since then. Mostly soak up desert sun," he said. He had said "Nevada" to her once; twice would be overkill.
For a moment, from her regular breathing, he thought that she had fallen asleep. But, "What was she like?" Petra asked suddenly.
Somehow he knew instantly, as a gazelle knows in open country, that he was being stalked. To his own surprise, he enjoyed it, perhaps because Petra Leigh did a very nice job of stalking. Or maybe just because she was such a spectacular little stalker. "My wife, you mean."
"No, your ear infection; yes, your wife," she said, the tone making her sarcasm unmistakable.
He knew that she would resent him if he laughed. "Blond, tall as I am in heels," he said, "and dynamite in a garter belt."
"Stop it," she said, low in her throat. "Not how she looked; what was she like?"
"That's what she was like," he said, "image was everything for Peggy. What she could see reflected in other people's eyes was all that counted."
Petra surprised him again with her giggle. "I thought she'd be smart, but I'm losing interest already."
"She was valedictorian at Torrance," he objected.
"Sure, if that was all that counted for her at the time. At Brown we call it 'barfback'; she can feed back what she's been given. Trained memory but retarded at the analytical level. I'll bet you a really good kiss I can tell you something about her that you haven't mentioned."
"You're on," he said without thinking.
"She never, ever once did anything inventive or original," she said. "And she probably never will."
He fell silent a moment, then began to laugh. "That's right."
"Well, didn't that bother you?"
Her tone became more urgent, almost pleading. "Didn't you ever wish she'd come up with something new, something uncanny and maybe useful?"
"I may have," he said. Yes. Sure, a hundred times, but then she wouldn't have been Peggy. "It was a long time ago, Petra. She could be a gray-haired old woman by now."
"Barfbacks are born old," she said.
Rolling onto his side toward her, his head propped on one hand, he said, "Sounds like you've given it a lot of thought."
"You bet I have. And it may be too soon to tell, but I'm developing some very definite ideas about you."
He reached a hand out, felt the softness of her hair, caressed it down to her chin and left it there. "I know that, Petra; I'm not a completely insensitive clod. But you're probably wrong about me, and there's something I must..."
"Why don't you just shut up and kiss me as if you meant it, and let me decide whether I'm right or wrong," she urged, turning toward him.
He found her mouth with his own, gently, and tasted Classic Coke and felt the firm softness of her lips, parted in acceptance and, gradually, with increasing desire. Then her hand was in his hair in a gentle caress, more sensual than insistent, and now he tasted only her femaleness, and they moved together until she was lying supine, her breasts swelling wonderfully beneath his arm, his tongue evidently with a mind of its own, she accepting that too and responding in kind, and her breath filled his lungs, an almost-forgotten sense of sharing for him. He lifted his head then, knowing she must feel his erection growing against her hip, and rolled away with a manful attempt to quell his impulses.
She moved again to face him and uttered a sigh that was almost a moan. "Marvelous," she whispered, her fingers blindly tracing down his arm. "For such a muscular devil you can be awfully tender, Kyle."
He had his breathing under control, enough to say, "To think I've been calling you 'kid.'"
A giggle. "We're even, then; I started out thinking of you as a hardened old bastard." She eased an arm around
his chest and placed her face in the hollow of his throat and then murmured, "Well, listen, old bastard, we were both wrong."
He put a hand up to her hair, stroking lightly, turning to kiss her forehead, and then she lifted her face and initiated a kiss that began in tenderness but soon became a long, lingering wonderment for him as he flung his caution aside, his tongue tracing her lips, kissing her throat as she held his head cradled in her arms.
And when he lifted his head again, she was unbuttoning her blouse for him, and for herself. "Must I tell you 'yes,' Kyle? This is why yesses were invented."
"No," he said, suddenly, almost truculently, sitting up, leaning forearms on knees, staring into the starlit sky. "This is fucking crazy," he muttered.
"Sounds good to me," she teased, sitting up too, her chin on her knees.
"Stop it," he growled, and faced her. "Listen, you: I didn't think a woman could bother me, let alone get me questioning my own motives, anymore. I like you, Petra, a hell of a lot, but—"
"I could get to be almost lovable," she murmured.
He laughed helplessly, and snapped his fingers. "Like that," he agreed. "That's why I won't make love to you for the wrong reason. You said vengeance was my worst quality, and you were right."
"Ah," she said, and fell silent. After a long pause she said, "And you've only been making me fall in love with you for revenge. On my uncle," she accused.
He raised his hands and shook them. "Don't— make it sound like I've done it on purpose. But revenge is the last passion remaining to old men, and it has crossed my mind that nothing could possibly even my score with that uncle of yours more than for him to know I raped you before I let you go."
"I can think of something worse," she said. "If I told him I raped you! Wouldn't be far off the mark, either."
He began to chuckle, his shoulders shaking with it. Then, "God, it's ingenious. You'd do that?"
