Five new Troupers now made their appearance, attracted by the fuss. They were three men, a woman, and, to Alex's surprise, a teenage boy. The boy hauled a hundred meters of winch cable out to the ultralight, and the towline was snapped to the aircraft's nose. Two new guys wedged a ten-meter bamboo bipod against the nose of the aircraft.
Buzzard, lurking distantly at the door of his yurt, drew in the slack on the winches until the launch cable thrummed with tension.
"Ready, Alex?" Rick shouted at the side of the helmet.
"Right." Alex nodded. "Let's do it."
"Just relax, it's gonna be fine! You'll enjoy this!"
Alex flipped up his faceplate and glared at Rick. "Look, man, stop persuading me. I'm here already, okay? You got me strapped down, I got my oxygen. Launch the son of a bitch."
Rick's face fell, and he stepped back. He strode out of the way of the wings, then pulled his belt phone and barked into it.
The cable snapped to, the bipod jammed itself in the limestone earth, and the aircraft was instantly catapulted skyward.
The drum reeled up with vicious, singing efficiency, and the aircraft climbed as steeply as a roller coaster. The cable detached and fell earthward, and the engine kicked in, and Alex was in free flight.
The aircraft veered aside to avoid the guy cable on one of the larger towers. It then methodically began vectoring upward, gaining height in a clockwise spiral.
"How's it going, Alex?" Peter asked over headphones.
"Okay, I guess," Alex said. He saw the prairie below, sun-blasted straw and patches of poi~onous green, the black strap of highway, a lot of stunted cedars clustered at a nearby draw. In the tug of wind his white paper sleeves flapped like cheap toy flags. The metal stirrups bit at his bare soles.
Deliberately, Alex swayed back and forth in his seat. The distant ends of the ultralight's wings dipped in response, like the ends of a seesaw, but they soon righted themselves in a chip-aided loop of feedback. And the ground beneath him dwindled steadily.
He was being gently juggled in midair by the hands of an invisible giant. He was lounging in a folding chair at the parapet of a twelve-story building. If he wanted to, he could pull the harness strap loose, step out on a stirrup, lean out, and drop to earth as sweet and clean as a meteor. Death was near. Death was near. .
Alex flipped up his faceplate and felt the dry wind strip the sweat from his cheeks. "Go higher, man!"
"You'll notice that we have six major yurts and four vehicle hangars," Peter told him. "Three of those towers are telecom, and we have four smaller towers for weather instrumentation. The black gridwork over by the latrine tents is a big patch of solar arrays."
Alex grunted. "Yeah, yeah."
"We're running on solar now, but the wind generators run around the clock."
"Huh
"All those big white rods, staked out in a circle around the camp, are our perimeter posts. They're motion detectors, and they've got some security muscle built in; you're gonna want to be a little careful with those. We have a set of 'em staked out by the highway too. Those big yellow panels are mosquito lures. They smell just like skin does, but any mosquito that lands on those lures gets instantly zapped."
Alex flipped his faceplate back down. He rollerballed to the menu bar, pulled down a section labeled telecom, and switched to cellular. Peter vanished into telephonic limbo in the midst of his tour-guide spiel.
A handy phone menu rolled down with fifteen speed dials.
They were thoughtfully accompanied by
1 Jerry Mulcahey.
2 Greg Foulks.
3 Joe Brasseur.
4 Carol Cooper.
5 Ed Dunnebecke.
6 Mickey Kiehl.
7 Rudy Martinez.
8 Sam Moncrieff.
9 Martha Madronich.
10 Peter Vierling.
11 Rick Sedletter.
12 Ellen Mae Lankton.
13 Boswell Harvey.
14 Joanne Lessard.
15 Jane Unger.
This looked very much like the Storm Troupe's idea of a digital pecking order. Alex was amazed to see that Juanita had somehow meekly settled for being number fifteen.
He clicked fifteen and got Juanita's voice mail, an I'm not-in-right-now spiel. He hung up and clicked four.
"Carol here."
"It's me again. I'm now flying over your camp."
Carol laughed into his helmeted ears. "I know, man, word gets around."
"Carol, am I correct in assuming that this is some kind of hick hazing ritual? And pretty soon they're gonna tell me there's some kind of terrible software malf in this aircraft? And I'm gonna go through a whole bunch of, like, crazy barrel rolls and Immelmanns and such?"
Carol was silent for a moment. "YoU don't miss much, for a guy your age."
"What do you think I should do? Should I act really macho about it? Or should I scream my head off over the radio channel and act completely panicked?"
"Well, personally, I screamed bloody murder and threw up inside the helmet."
"Macho it is, then. Thanks for the advice. Bye."
"Alex, don't hang up!"
"Yeah?"
"I think I'd better tell you this... . If you don't scream, and scream a whole lot, then they might just push the envelope on that little bird until its wings tear off."
"You sure have some interesting friends," Alex said. He hung up and switched back to radio channel.
"...support the generators. And it's useful for keeping track of goats," Peter was droning.
"That's really remarkable," Alex assured him. He switched the catch on the oxygen mask and pressed the mask firmly over his mouth and nose. For a moment he thought he'd been gypped, that he'd get nothing for his effort but the dry stink of plastic hose, but then the oxygen hit him. It spiked deep into his lungs and blossomed there, like a sweet dense mat of cool blue fur.
The paper walls of the camp dwindled beneath him as the aircraft continued its climb, spiraling up with the mathematical precision of a bedspring. As pure oxygen flushed through him to the sharp red marrow of his bones, Alex realized suddenly that he had found the ideal method to experience the Texas High Plains. The horizon had expanded to fantastic, planetary, soul-stretching dimensions. Nothing could touch him.
At this height, the air at ground level showed its true character. Alex could witness the organic filth in the low-lying atmosphere, banding the horizon all around him. It was a sepia-tinted permanent stain, a natural smog of dirts and grits and pollens, of molds and stinks and throat-clogging organic spew... . By contrast, the high sweet air around him now, cool and thin and irresistible, was a bone-washing galactic ether. He felt as if it were blowing straight through his flesh.
In the distance, half a dozen buzzards corkscrewed down a thermal in pursuit of earthly carrion.
dial numbers. names.
Peter's voice buzzed in his ears.
Alex tugged the mask from his face. "What?"
"You okay, man? You're not answering."
"No. I mean, yeah! No problem. It's beautiful up here! Go higher!"
"We seem to be having a little software trouble down here at base, Alex."
"Really?" Alex said in delight. "Hold on a sec.
He pressed the mask to his face, huffed hard at it three times. From some lurking tarry mess deep within his tuberdes, blue goo suddenly fizzed like a rack of sparklers. "Go!" he screamed.
"Hit it, man, push the envelope!"
Peter fell silent.
The wings wobbled, building up to a convulsion. Suddenly the craft pitched over nose-first and headed straight toward the earth. The descent lasted five heart-stopping, gut-gripping seconds. Blood left his heart, sweat jetted instantly from every pore in his body, and he felt a lethal chill grip his arms and legs.