“Major, you are to wait in line,” Dog told him.
“Egghead told me to go first. Nice guy. So how are we doing, Colonel? Did you find something?”
“I offered you a job here.”
“No offense, Dog, but you and I both know that’s going nowhere. Unassigned test pilot — that’s a man without a country.”
“I meant the Megafortress project.”
“Ah, I’m a jock. I’m not flying cows. Shit, Colonel, the EB-52 is a girl’s plane, you know what I mean?”
“No, Major, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Hey, it’s great for Cheshire and Rap, probably as much as they can handle. But guys like us — we’re jocks, right? We belong in the best.”
“You know, Mack, I’ve had a ball-buster of a day. In spite of that, and maybe in spite of my best judgment, I have actually made some inquiries on your behalf. But you know what? I have a tremendous headache. And when I get a headache, I sometimes forget to follow up on things. I don’t answer important phone calls. Paperwork tends to get lost.”
“Gotcha, Colonel.” Mack jumped to his feet. “F-22 is going to need a commander, I hear.”
Dog said nothing.
“How about a gig in Europe? Naples?”
“Good night, Major.”
Mack took a few quick steps toward the door. “Hey, go easy on Ichison,” he said, spinning around. “Not wrapped too tight. I told him there’d be plenty of people looking for an engineer with experience like him and he just about started crying.”
“Thanks.”
“Just doing my bit.”
Chapter 26
Breanna took her beer inside into the living room, curling up on the couch next to Jeff in his wheelchair. He had a folder with reports open on his lap, and seemed only vaguely interested in the basketball game on the TV; she reached for the TV controller.
“Don’t change the station,” he growled.
“Oh, come on, Jeff. You’re not watching it.”
“Yes, I am.”
“What’s the score?”
“Denver 45, Seattle 23.”
“Blowout.”
“Don’t change the station.”
“What a grouch,” she said. She drew a curve on Jeff’s skull behind his ear, sliding her finger down and back along his neck. “Come on. You don’t want to watch TV. Let’s watch a dirty movie.”
“Friends is not a dirty movie. And that’s what you’re aiming at.”
“After Friends.”
Her hand shot toward the controller, but he was too fast, snatching it away.
But then, as she knew he would, he clicked it to her program.
“Whatcha doing anyway?” she asked him as the opening credits rolled.
“Classified.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s just bullshit for Washington,” said Jeff finally, closing the folder. “Flighthawks and ANTARES. Need-to-know bullshit.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” said Breanna. “What are you getting me for Valentine’s Day?”
“A six-pack of Anchor Steam.”
“Very romantic.”
Jeff tucked the folder away in his briefcase, locked it, then wheeled himself into the kitchen. By the time he returned with a beer, the program had started. As it happened, it was one of the two Breanna had already managed to see.
“Want to play Scrabble?” she asked.
Jeff agreed as long as she’d put the basketball game back on. Twenty minutes later, she was ahead by more than a hundred points.
“What’s bothering you?” she asked her husband. “You didn’t all of a sudden start rooting for the Sonics, did you?” He shrugged.
Breanna put her fingers at the base of his neck, kneading gently. Finally he began to speak.
“I saw Kevin today. I think ANTARES is blowing his head to pieces.”
“They only just started.”
“He got into Theta-alpha already. I talked to Geraldo before I came home. She’s excited as hell and pushed up the simulator tests. He’ll be at Stage Five in a few days. Hell, maybe tomorrow.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Flying on the sim.”
“Really?”
Jeff nodded his head but didn’t say anything. ANTARES was one of the few things they didn’t talk about before his accident, and not just because the program was highly classified. Something about the interface and the associated protocols, Breanna gathered, deeply bothered Zen. But when her husband didn’t want to talk about something, he didn’t; there was no sense pushing him.
Besides, there were better ways to spend the night. Breanna slid her fingers under his shirt. “Loser has to draw the bath,” she told him. “And gets the bottom.”
“Bree—”
She leaned forward and kissed his temple, then rolled her tongue gently around his ear. “All right, you get the bottom whatever the score.”
IV
BRAINSTORM
Chapter 27
The rain started with a few scattered drops, hitting against the high leaves. Time extended; the sprinkle grew quicker, then slowed again, drops sliding and popping through a filter of gently spinning leaves. The wind began to pick up. A bird with long massive wings fluttered overhead as a snake unwound in the distance.
The dark night surrounding him grew even blacker. The rain fell more strongly, began to pound. A low peal of thunder heralded an intense outburst; more thunder, more, and then a fierce flash of lightning.
Kevin Madrone felt his brain fold open and his body catch fire; he exploded into the forest and the storm, becoming the rain, becoming the thunder, becoming the flame that flashed at the center of the universe.
I’m in.
Most of the other successful subjects described reaching Theta as something like a rusty nail slicing through their skull, followed by the rush of a roller coaster heading downhill. The sensation of pain had been a constant for all the subjects, nearly all of whom said it progressed incredibly as they moved beyond the Stage Two experiments, which involved simple manipulation of a sequence of lights. Stage Three involved manipulating a series of switches; Stage Four called for interpreting data from the interface unit. Most of the test subjects who managed to reach Theta washed out in those stages, never reaching Five, which called for controlling an aircraft simulator, much less Stage Six, which was actual flight.
But Madrone felt no pain on reaching Theta; it was all rush. He went from the Stage One tests to Stage Three on his second day. He was ready for the primitive simulator sequences the next afternoon; that afternoon, he told Geraldo he wanted to work with C3, the Flighthawk controller. When she told him the programming updates needed for the gateway link between ANTARES and C3 hadn’t been completed, Madrone suggested he could help by working with the gear.
Overjoyed at their unprecedented progress, Geraldo called in the scientist working on the gateway software — Jennifer Gleason. The beautiful, ravishing Jennifer Gleason, who with his help completed it in two sessions.
Three days later, he was ready to fly for real. They moved to the Flighthawk command bunker, where with Zen as a backup, he got ready for a ground takeoff.
The plane nearly broke him in half.
He’d spent the night before chanting the procedure for takeoff and the flight plan, committing it all to memory — military thrust, brakes off, roll, speed to 130 indicated, back on the stick, maintain power, climb, clear gear, alpha to eight, 250 knots, indicator check, level flight at bearing 136, orbit twice. Walking into Bunker B that morning, he felt confident, as sure of himself as he had ever been. Someone asked him if he wanted a cigarette and he laughed. Someone else — Zen — remarked that he’d gained weight. Kevin nodded confidently, ready to nail this sucker down.