Conquerors of the Sky
Page 79
Dick squeezed his shoulder and turned to the board. “There’s one more thing I want to say. Something that may surprise some of you and even make you reconsider the support most of you have promised me when you vote in a few minutes.
“We’ve done some things wrong in this company. You know what some of them are. I’m not going to list our sins. I could explain why we made some of these mistakes. The explanation would satisfy most of you. But an explanation is not an excuse—or a license to go on making the same mistakes. I want you to know I think they were wrong and we’re not going to do them anymore.”
Dick stepped away from the lectern. “That’s it, gentlemen. Those are my dreams and my principles. If you disagree with them, now is the time to stop me.”
The board endorsed Richard Schiller Stone and his program unanimously, while Frank Buchanan smiled his approval. The directors had already accepted Cliff Morris’s letter of resignation and voted him the generous pension suggested by the new CEO. Dick thanked them and invited everyone outside for Adrian Van Ness’s memorial service.
On the sunny terrace of the headquarters building was an urn containing Adrian’s ashes. The clerical and middle-management employees formed a wide semicircle. Beyond them, several thousand members of the day shift stood in their coveralls. A clergyman recited the Twenty-third Psalm. Dick turned to Frank Buchanan and asked him if he would say a few words. It was a calculated risk. Dick had debated it with Bruce Simons and Kirk Willoughby only a few hours ago. Simons had been jittery about it. Willoughby thought Frank would not say anything too outrageous.
Frank limped to the microphone. “Adrian Van Ness’s contribution to flight was a special awareness that no matter how high we soared or how fast we flew, we were still flying through history. He tried to help us cope with the tangled tormented past that creates so much of the turbulence in our lives. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes he failed. But ultimately there was courage in his struggle—courage we designers and engineers and pilots did not always appreciate. May his courage—and all the other varieties of courage in our sky—help us to continue the struggle to solve flight’s mysteries and endure its failures and heartbreaks in the years to come.”
Overhead, while Frank was speaking, a prop plane began circling. Down, down it spiraled until everyone recognized it as a SkyRanger, Buchanan’s first airliner. From its open door showered a rainbow of rose petals.
Dick watched Frank pick up one of the red petals and press it into Amanda Van Ness’s hand. Earlier in the day, he had witnessed their reunion in his office. Kirk Willoughby had examined Amanda and said she was capable of living happily with Frank. Dan Hanrahan had snorted and said he did not need a doctor to tell him that.
A few feet away, Sarah Morris scooped up a handful of petals and flung them back into the sky. She stood on tiptoes and kissed Cliff Morris on the cheek. Dick picked up a yellow petal and imagined pressing it into Cassie’s hand. Had they crossed another boundary? Were some of them, at least, beyond the rainbow?
Apotheosis, Adrian whispered one last time. You’ll make your compromises like I did. If the Orient Express and the Flying Wing turn out to be paper airplanes you’ll go to work on the next-generation bomber, fighter, helicopter, dirigible if the Air Force wants it. You’ll double the plant capacity and try to do everything simultaneously if you get the orders. You’ll probably kill yourself from overwork in the process.
Maybe, Dick Stone whispered to his American father. Maybe.
BEYOND THE RAINBOW
The icy desert wind hissed out of the night through the open door of Frank Buchanan’s cabin on the slope above Tahquitz Canyon. He sat there, ignoring the cold, pen in hand on the open page of his loose-leaf folder.
A Buchanan helicopter had flown him out to the cabin to clean it out. He was moving to a house in Topanga Canyon with Amanda. On impulse, he had told the pilot he wanted to spend one more night here. The helicopter would return in the morning.
Frank had held Amanda in his arms and the last vestige of his hatred for Adrian Van Ness had been cleansed from his soul. From Amanda had also come a suggestion that had given him new hope for Billy. Previously he had only tried to reach him. Frank had no fears for someone as innocent as Victoria. But Amanda had convinced him that he should try to reach both of them.
“Wherever he is, she’s there too,” she said.
Still only silence, except for the wind. “I’m waiting,” Frank whispered.
From the shelf above his head, a book catapulted across the room and struck the opposite wall. It lay on the floor, its pages fluttering in the wind like the wings of a spent bird.
Frank picked it up and spread it open in the lamplight. His fingers were on the last page of Ezra Pound’s Cantos. His eyes found the final lines.
Immaculata. Introibo
For those who drink of the bitterness.
The Immaculata! The light beyond the rainbow, beyond Eden, beyond the suns and stars. Billy had reached it with Victoria’s help. Soon he and Amanda would be there too, embracing them.
But first there was the Orient Express. One last wing to design. Shakily, Frank’s ancient fingers began sketching the ultimate plane.
By Thomas Fleming from Tom Doherty Associates
Remember the Morning
The Wages of Fame
Hours of Gladness
Dreams of Glory
When This Cruel War Is Over
Conquerors of the Sky
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
CONQUERORS OF THE SKY
Copyright © 2003 by Thomas Fleming
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to New Directions Publishing Corporation for permission to reprint excerpts from “Canto LXXX” and “Notes for CXVII et seq.,” by Ezra Pound, from The Cantos of Ezra Pound, copyright © 1934, 1937, 1940, 1948, 1956, 1959, 1962, 1963, 1966, and 1968 by Ezra Pound.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781466821477
First eBook Edition : May 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fleming, Thomas J.
Conquerors of the sky / Thomas Fleming.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 0-765-30322-1 (alk. paper)
1. Aerospace industries—Fiction. 2. Aircraft industry—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3556.L45 C66 2003
813’.54—dc21
2002032537
First Edition: January 2003