By the end of the Twentieth cent, only a few enthusiasts built these gossamer brutes; but those few tended to be stress analysts, architects, aerodynamicists. Wakefield techniques tended to interest those who could combine the mind of a theorist and the hands of a watchmaker. Stan Thompson qualified on both counts.
Sandy Grange watched Thompson uncrate the ultralight craft with dwindling disbelief and growing appreciation as he spoke. "What Boucher proved was that you could build an aircraft that would fly for years," Thompson said, pausing to cluck over a cracked spar. "Once you get the little bugger up above the weather, fifteen klicks or so, there's not much to impede sunlight."
"Except nightfall," Sandy murmured.
"That's where Boucher's vision came in. He designed 'em to climb so high that, by nightfall, they're over thirty klicks high. They go like hell in that thin air but so what? They're radio-controlled and they keep circling — more or less geostationary over some chosen spot.
"With such ridiculous wing-loading, the sink-rate is lower than a lizard's navel, and the aircraft carries storage cells to keep the propeller going at night. By dawn, it's still fifteen klicks up and sunlight recharges the accumulators — which are over there in the fuselage," he said, nodding to the package Lufo was unwrapping. "So up it goes again until nightfall."
"I don't see any propeller in front," she said.
"It's a pusher. The first Boucher relays were conventional, but this rig is a 'Daytripper'—designed around the rectenna for a holo system. The fuselage must be almost a meter wide to hold that gear, so somebody thought of making a lifting-body fuselage. Actually it's a triple-delta shape with air-control vanes to keep airflow where you need it for maximum lift. The Day tripper has a nine-meter span, with a butterfly tail up front for still more lift, and wings at the rear. The technical term is 'canard'," he finishd.
Pregnant silence from Sandy before, "That means 'hoax' in French, doesn't it?"
He blinked. "Does it?"
Her gaze was a challenge. "Are you pulling my leg, Mr. Thompson? Look at it from my view: I'm being offered four hundred pesos so you can use my soddy to repair an airplane that flies forever.
But you brought it here on pack-horses! And if that doesn't stick in my craw, you ask me to swallow the idea that it beams forbidden media into Wild Country."
Stan Thompson pulled out ancient bifocals, chortling as he adjusted them. "Actually, they're scheduled to come down in Mexico once a year for maintenance — but yes, that's about it. We knew this one had gone off-course and landed in this area, and for our purposes, for a low profile, a horse is still the best way to travel. I figured I could trouble-shoot the Daytripper and get it launched again, but I found it had been damaged too much. First by a beam of some sort that melted part of the film, and then in landing. Took us days to find it.
"I decided it'd be easier to dismantle it and take it back to Mexico for repairs, but I was wrong; it won't take rough handling.
"Now I either repair it and launch it from here — primitive as our accommodations are for it — or we destroy a hundred thousand pesos' worth of Boucher relay and go back empty-handed."
"Well, I'll believe it when I see it," Sandy replied.
Lufo had been listening. Now he pointed to Sandy's old holovision set. "Does your holo work?"
"Usually. For the past week I haven't been able to get XEPN, the Piedras Negras chan—." She turned back, mouth open slightly, to gaze at the disassembled craft. "Well I be damn," she whispered.
"Nine days, to be exact," Thompson muttered. "By the time I get it back on station, a lot of nice folks in Wild Country will have been without Indy media for two weeks."
"I thought you were working for the Mexicans."
"I am — because Governor Street asked me to.
How else can he get media coverage into Streamlined America?"
Sandy mulled that over for long minutes. The credentials of James Street were well-known: Major General, USA, (ret.); Governor of Texas; Undersecretary of State; then unsuccessful candidate for the Presidency on the Independent ticket. In Texas he was still ‘the governor', a man who could sit a horse or kiss a baby with the best of them. But Street's anti-Federalist rhetoric had hardened after the war; Blanton Young labeled his trenchant truths as sedition, and saw that the label became official. Old Jim Street found himself branded a rebel fugitive from justice, and knew what brand of justice he could expect. Thus the official label became the fact: James Street was the guidonbearer for rebel forces in Wild Country.
"Most of the news on the governor confuses me," Sandy said finally. "I heard on FBN that he's a dying man."
"Sure you did. He isn't," Lufo assured her. "Who d'you think plans strategy for the unions?"
"I hadn't thought about it. But I should think the governor's too old to be sneaking around the country like that."
"Mostly they come to him. And that's about all I want to say about it," Lufo ended gruffly.
Stan Thompson moved sadly between the separated pieces of the Boucher relay, sighing as though the device were an injured child. "It'll be a miracle if this ol' Daytripper makes another trip. Lufo, will you get my repair kit? May as well start now."
But Espinel had anticipated him, carrying the kit over his shoulder as he entered the soddy. Thompson took it with a nod, then turned back to stare at the latino. "Trouble?" Lufo had seen the look too; stepped to the doorway, his sidearm ready.
"I don' know," Espinel replied. "But I took a ride aroun' the perimeter. Miz Sandy, you got any pigs here?"
She swallowed hard, then spread her hands. "Where would I keep them?"
"I guess you wouldn'. But I see the biggest hog tracks I ever see in my life out there," Espinel said. "Un monstruo, prints big as my hand."
Lufo crossed himself. "I thought that damn' thing was just a Wild Country legend. No wonder the ponies were spooked!"
Thompson fitted a scalpel-like blade into a handle; began to slice film from a shattered wing spar. "What the devil are you talking about, Lufo?"
"The devil is right. Used to be a story about a Russian boar that escaped from a Texas Aggie research station near Sonora, North of here. Big as a pony, mean as a grizzly; sooner eat a man than look at him and has bowie knife tusks to do it with. Sandy Grange, where the hell are you going?"
She paused at the door to reply: "I, uh, have to find Childe. No, you stay there. I'll be all right."
"If you say so," Lufo said, doubting it, replacing the pistol with reluctance. He turned back to Espinel.
"She's survived this long with that monster out there in the brush. Espinel, you sure about these tracks?"
Espinel essayed a wan smile, put his thumbs and middle fingers together to form an oval the size of a human hand.
"Mierda! So Ba'al is loose out here after all," said Lufo.
Thompson: "Who?"
"That's what they named him after he took a lot of slugs and killed some people. The false god; the devil; Ba'al. I hope that cute little rubia knows what she's doing out there. And we better mount a sentry at night; he might have a taste for horseflesh."
CHAPTER 17
Sandy's journal, 3 Jun'
The soddy is small for a rebel boarding house, but the pay— if I can believe them! — will be good.
No fear I'll ever forget this day. Stan Thompson: healer's hands, monomaniacal in his work, preoccupied. I might be any age or gender for all he cares. Espineclass="underline" wiry, shy & deferential, not your average Mex bandit! It hurt him to shoot that pony. & Lufo Albeniz? A prototype, healthy laughing macho animal, moves like a big snake but crushes you with those dark mestizo eyes.