My Favorites

by Ben Bova

  Christ, one lurch of this crate and he’ll go ass over teakettle out the door!

  Zavgorodny stood beside the other Russian with one hand firmly gripping a slim metal rod that ran the length of the cabin’s ceiling. They seemed to be chatting, heads close together, nodding as if they were at their favorite bar holding a casual conversation. With ten thousand feet of empty air just one step away.

  Zagorodny beckoned to Jamie with his free hand, gesturing him to come up and join them. Jamie felt a cold knot in his stomach. I don’t want to go over there. I don’t want to.

  But he found himself unbuckling the seat harness and walking unsteadily toward the two men near the open hatch. The plane bucked slightly, and Jamie grabbed that overhead rod with both fists.

  “Parachute range.” Zavgorodny pointed out the hatch. “We make practice jumps here.”

  “Today? Now?”

  “Yes.”

  The other cosmonaut pulled a plastic helmet onto his head. He slid the tinted visor down over his eyes, yelled something in Russian, and jumped out of the plane.

  Jamie gripped the overhead rod even tighter.

  “Look!” Zavgorodny yelled at him, pointing. “Watch!”

  Cautiously, Jamie peered through the gaping hatch. The cosmonaut was falling like a stone, arms and legs outstretched, dwindling into a tiny tan dot against the deeper brown of the land so far below.

  “Is much fun,” Zavgorodny hollered into Jamie’s ear.

  Jamie shivered, not merely from the icy wind slicing through his lightweight shirt.

  Zavgorodny pushed a helmet into his hands. Jamie stared at it. The plastic was scratched and pitted, its red and white colors almost completely worn off.

  “I’ve never jumped,” he said.

  “We know.”

  “But I . . .” He wanted to say that he had just had the stitches removed from his side, that he knew you could break both your legs parachute jumping, that there was absolutely no way they were going to get him to step out of this airplane.

  Yet he put the helmet on and strapped it tight under his chin.

  “Is easy,” Zavgorodny said. “You have done gymnastics. It is on your file. Just land with knees bent and roll over. Easy.”

  Jamie was shaking. The helmet felt as if weighed three hundred pounds. His left hand was wrapped around that overhead rod in a death grip. His right was fumbling along the parachute harness straps, searching blindly for the D-ring that would release the chute.

  Zavgorodny looked quite serious now. The plane was banking slightly, tilting them toward the open, yawning hole in the plane’s side. Jamie planted his feet as solidly as he could, glad that he had worn a sturdy pair of boots.

  The Russian took Jamie’s searching right hand and placed it on the D-ring. The metal felt cold as death.

  “Not to worry,” Zavgorodny shouted, his voice muffled by Jamie’s helmet. “I attach static line to overhead. It opens chute automatically. No problem.”

  “Yeah.” Jamie’s voice was shaky. His insides were boiling. He could feel sweat trickling down his ribs even though he felt shivering cold.

  “You step out. You count to twenty. Understand? If chute has not opened by then you pull ring. Understand?”

  Jamie nodded.

  “I will follow behind you. If you die, I will bury you.” His grin returned. Jamie felt like puking.

  Zavgorodny gave him a probing look. “You want to go back and sit down?”

  Every atom in Jamie’s being wanted to answer a fervent, “Hell yes!” But he shook his head and took a hesitant, frightened step toward the open hatch.

  The Russian reached up and slid the visor over Jamie’s eyes. “Count to twenty slowly. I will see you on ground in two minutes. Maybe three.”

  Jamie swallowed hard and let Zavgorodny position him squarely at the lip of the hatch. The ground looked iron-hard and very, very far below. They were in shadow, the overhead wing was shading them, the propeller too far forward to be any danger. Jamie took that all in with a single wild glance.

  A tap on his shoulder. Jamie hesitated a heartbeat, then pushed off with both feet.

  Nothing. No motion. No sound except the thrum of wind rushing past. Jamie suddenly felt that he was in a dream, just hanging in emptiness, floating, waiting to wake up safe and somehow disappointed in bed. The plane had disappeared somewhere behind and above him. The ground was miles below, revolving slowly, not getting noticeably closer.

  He was spinning, turning lazily as he floated in midair. It was almost pleasant. Fun, nearly. Just hanging in nothingness, separated from the entire world, alone, totally alone and free.

  It was as if he had no body, no physical existence at all. Nothing but pure spirit, clean and light as the air itself. He remembered the old legends his grandfather had told him about Navajo heroes who had traveled across the bridge of the rainbow. Must be like this, he thought, high above the world, floating, floating. Like Coyote when he hitched a ride on a comet.

  He realized with a heart-stopping lurch that he had forgotten to count. And his hand had come off the D-ring. He fumbled awkwardly, seeing now that the hard-baked ground was rushing up to smash him, pulverize him, kill him dead, dead, dead.

  A gigantic hand grabbed him and nearly snapped his head off. He twisted in midair as new sounds erupted all around him. Like the snapping of a sail, the parachute unfolded and spread above him, leaving Jamie hanging in the straps floating gently down toward the barren ground.

  His heart was hammering in his ears, yet he felt disappointed. Like a kid who had gone through the terrors of his first roller coaster ride and now was sad that it had ended. Far down below he could see the tiny figure of a man gathering up a dirty-white parachute.

  I did it! Jamie thought. I made the jump. He wanted to give out a real Indian victory whoop.

  But the sober side of his mind warned, you’ve still got to land without breaking your ankles. Or popping that damned incision.

  The ground was really rushing up now. Relax. Bend your knees. Let your legs absorb the shock.

  He hit hard, rolled over twice, and then felt the hot wind tugging at his billowing chute. Suddenly Zavgorodny was at his side pulling on the cords, and the other cosmonaut was wrapping his arms around the chute itself like a man trying to stuff a ton of wrapping paper back inside a gift box.

  Jamie got to his feet shakily. They helped him wriggle out of the chute harness. The plane circled lazily overhead.

  “You did hokay,” Zavgorodny said, smiling broadly now.

  “How’d you get down so fast?” Jamie asked.

  “I did free-fall, went past you. You didn’t see me? I was like a rocket!”

  “Yuri is free-fall champion,” said the other cosmonaut, his arms filled with Jamie’s parachute.

  The plane was coming in to land, flaps down, engines coughing. Its wheels hit the ground and kicked up enormous plumes of dust.

  “So now we go to Muzhestvo?” Jamie asked Zavgorodny.

  The Russian shook his head. “We have found it already. Muzhestvo means in English language courage. You have courage, James Waterman. I am glad.”

  Jamie took a deep breath. “Me too.”

  “We four,” Zavgorodny said, “we will not go to Mars. But some of our friends will. We will not allow anyone who does not show courage to go to Mars.”

  “How can you . . . ?”

  “Others test you for knowledge, for health, for working with necessary equipment. We test for courage. No one without courage goes to Mars. It would make a danger for our fellow cosmonauts.”

  “Muzhestvo,” Jamie said.

  Zavgorodny laughed and slapped him on the back and they started walking across the bare, dusty ground toward the waiting plane.

  Muzhestvo, Jamie repeated to himself. Their version of a sacred ritual. Like a Navajo purifying rite.
I’m one of them now. I’ve proved it to them. I’ve proved it to myself.

  Introduction to

  “We’ll Always

  Have Paris”

  If all works of fiction can be categorized as a simple conflict of motivation, such as “love vs. duty” or “responsibility vs. freedom,” how would you summarize the classic film Casablanca?

  To me, the underlying power of that film is the conflict in the soul of Richard Blaine, the American owner of Rick’s Café Americain, in Casablanca in 1941. Rick is deeply in love with Ilsa, a beautiful Swedish refugee from the Nazis who have conquered Europe from Poland to the English Channel.

  But there are other things happening in Europe, a war and human conflicts that dwarf the love of an individual man for a wonderful woman.

  Well, you undoubtedly know the movie. It’s at the top of every list of Hollywood classics. And you know the heart-wrenching final scene at the airport, where Rick sends Ilsa away, to return to her husband while he—and Capt. Reynaud—head for the war. Love vs. duty, portrayed as dramatically as you’ll ever see it.

  But what happened to Rick and Ilsa and Reynaud after the war? Did they ever meet again? Did love triumph after all?

  Read on.

  We’ll Always

  Have Paris

  He had changed from the old days, but of course, going through the war had changed us all.

  We French had just liberated Paris from the Nazis, with a bit of help (I must admit) from General Patton’s troops. The tumultuous outpouring of relief and gratitude that night was the wildest celebration any of us had ever witnessed.

  I hadn’t seen Rick during that frantically joyful night, but I knew exactly where to find him. La Belle Aurore had hardly changed. I recognized it from his vivid, pained description: the low ceiling, the checkered tablecloths—frayed now after four years of German occupation. The model of the Eiffel Tower on the bar had been taken away, but the spinet piano still stood in the middle of the floor.

  And there he was, sitting on the cushioned bench by the window, drinking champagne again. Somewhere he had found a blue pinstripe double-breasted suit. He looked good in it; trim and debonair. I was still in uniform and felt distinctly shabby.

  In the old days, Rick had always seemed older, more knowing than he really was. Now the years of war had made an honest face for him: world-weary, totally aware of human folly, wise with the experience that comes from sorrow.

  “Well, well,” he said, grinning at me. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

  “I knew I’d find you here,” I said as I strode across the bare wooden floor toward him. Limped, actually; I still had a bit of shrapnel in my left leg.

  As I pulled up a chair and sat in it, Rick called to the proprietor, behind the bar, for another bottle.

  “You look like hell,” he said.

  “It was an eventful night. Liberation. Grateful Parisians. Adoring women.”

  With a nod, Rick muttered, “Any guy in uniform who didn’t get laid last night must be a real loser.”

  I laughed, but then pointed out, “You’re not in uniform.”

  “Very perceptive.”

  “It’s my old police training.”

  “I’m expecting someone,” he said.

  “A lady?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You can’t imagine that she’ll be here to—”

  “She’ll be here,” Rick snapped.

  Henri put another bottle of champagne on the table, and a fresh glass for me. Rick opened it with a loud pop of the cork and poured for us both.

  “I would have thought the Germans had looted all the good wine,” I said between sips.

  “They left in a hurry,” Rick said, without taking his eyes from the doorway.

  He is expecting a ghost, I thought. She’d been haunting him all these years, and now he expected her to come through that doorway and smile at him and take up life with him just where they’d left it the day the Germans marched into Paris.

  Four years. We had both intended to join De Gaulle’s forces when we’d left Casablanca, but once the Americans got into the war, Rick disappeared like a puff of smoke. I ran into him again by sheer chance in London, shortly before D-Day. He was in the uniform of the US Army, a major in their intelligence service, no less.

  “I’ll buy you a drink in La Belle Aurore,” he told me when we’d parted, after a long night of brandy and reminiscences at the Savoy bar. Two weeks later I was back on the soil of France at last, with the Free French army. Now, in August, we were both in Paris once again.

  Through the open windows behind him, I could hear music from the street; not martial brass bands, but the whining, wheezing melodies of a concertina. Paris was becoming Paris again.

  Abruptly, Rick got to his feet, an expression on his face that I’d never seen before. He looked . . . surprised, almost.

  I turned in my chair and swiftly rose to greet her as she walked slowly toward us, smiling warmly, wearing the same blue dress that Rick had described to me so often.

  “You’re here,” she said, looking past me, her smile, her eyes, only for him.

  He shrugged almost like a Frenchman. “Where else would I be?”

  He came around the table, past me. She kissed him swiftly, lightly on the lips. It was affectionate, but not passionate.

  Rick helped her slip onto the bench behind the table and then slid in beside her. I would have expected him to smile at her, but his expression was utterly serious. She said hello to me at last, as Henri brought another glass to the table.

  “Well,” I said as I sat down, “this is like old times, eh?”

  Rick nodded. Ilsa murmured, “Old times.”

  I saw that there was a plain gold band on her finger. I was certain that Rick noticed it too.

  “Perhaps I should be on my way,” I said. “You two must have a lot to talk about.”

  “Oh, no, don’t leave,” she said, actually reaching across the table toward me. “I . . .” She glanced at Rick. “I can’t stay very long, myself.”

  I looked at Rick.

  “It’s all right, Louie,” he said.

  He filled her glass, and we all raised them and clinked. “Here’s . . . to Paris,” Rick toasted.

  “To Paris,” Ilsa repeated. I mumbled it too.

  Now that I had the chance to study her face, I saw that the war years had changed her, as well. She was still beautiful, with the kind of natural loveliness that other women would kill to possess. Yet where she had been fresh and innocent in the old days, now she looked wearier, warier, more determined.

  “I saw Sam last year,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “In New York. He was playing in a nightclub.”

  Rick nodded. “Good for Sam. He got home.”

  Then silence stretched between them until it became embarrassing. These two had so much to say to each other, yet neither of them was speaking. I knew I should go, but they both seemed to want me to remain.

  Unable to think of anything else to say, I asked, “How on earth did you ever get into Paris?”

  Ilsa smiled a little. “I’ve been working with the International Red Cross . . . in London.”

  “And Victor?” Rick asked. There. It was out in the open now.

  “He’s been in Paris for the past month.”

  “Still working with the Resistance.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes.” She took another sip of champagne, then said, “We have a child, you know.”

  Rick’s face twitched into an expression halfway between a smile and a grimace.

  “She’ll be three in December.”

  “A Christmas baby,” Rick said. “Lucky kid.”

  Ilsa picked up her glass but put it down again without drinking from it. “Victor and I . . . we thought, well, after the war is over, we
’d go back to Prague.”

  “Sure,” said Rick.

  “There’ll be so much to do,” Ilsa went on, almost whispering, almost pleading. “His work won’t be finished when the war ends. In a way, it will just be beginning.”

  “Yes,” I said, “that’s understandable.”

  Rick stared into his glass and said nothing.

  “What will you do when the war’s over?” she asked him.

  Rick looked up at her. “I never make plans that far ahead.”

  Ilsa nodded. “Oh, yes. I see.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m thinking about going into politics, myself.”

  With a wry grin, Rick said, “You’d be good at it, Louie. Perfect.”

  Ilsa took another brief sip of champagne, then said, “I’ll have to go now.”

  He answered, “Yeah, I figured.”

  “He’s my husband, Rick.”

  “Right. And a great man. We all know that.”

  Ilsa closed her eyes for a moment. “I wanted to see you, Richard,” she said, her tone suddenly different, urgent, the words coming out all in a rush. “I wanted to see that you were all right. That you’d made it through the war all right.”

  “I’m fine,” he said, his voice flat and cold and final. He got up from the bench and helped her come out from behind the table.

  She hesitated just a fraction of a second, clinging to his arm for a heartbeat. Then she said, “Goodbye, Rick.”

  “Goodbye, Ilsa.”

  I thought there would be tears in her eyes, but they were dry and unwavering. “I’ll never see you again, will I?”

  “It doesn’t look that way.”

  “It’s . . . sad.”

  He shook his head. “We’ll always have Paris. Most poor chumps don’t even get that much.”

  She barely nodded at me, then walked swiftly to the door and was gone.

  Rick blew out a gust of air and sat down again.

  “Well, that’s over.” He drained his glass and filled it again.

  I’m not a sentimentalist, but my heart went out to him. There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do.