Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (125 page)

"You truly weren't," Jerry said. "Were you?"

Alma blinked, shaking her head and looking out the window at the snow. "No, truly not. Jerry, you know I'm strange to the bone. All these magazine articles -- How To Tell If He's Straying and Twenty Ways To Keep Your Man -- I just don't understand them. Women seem so angry, so hurt and so jealous if their husband as much as looks at another woman, much less actually has a lover! And I truly have never felt that. I just don't have the right feeling, somewhere inside." She paused, looking for the words. Tesla was the nearest person, over by the radiator, and surely he was hard of hearing at his age. No one else could overhear. "When I watched you and Gil together, I thought it was beautiful."

Jerry looked down, a smile crossing his face.

"I did. I thought it was beautiful, you and Gil together. The way you touched each other, the way you kissed. You can never watch someone kiss you, not even with a mirror. It was so beautiful. How could I be angry when Gil was so happy? I didn't feel all these dark, horrible things that other women say are normal. I felt…."

"Aroused?" Jerry said quietly.

"Well, that too." Alma grinned. "That too. But mostly content. I was happy that Gil was happy, the same way I felt when I watched him fly. I liked watching him do things that made him happy, because I loved him. And I realize that I'm supposed to feel all this anger and fury and hurt, but I just don't. I never did. There's something wrong with me that way."

"I'm not sure there's something wrong with you if you don't feel angry and hurt," Jerry said. "I'm not sure it's ideal to feel a killing rage."

"But that's what women do," Alma said. "They feel a killing rage if their husband talks to a pretty woman. They feel miserable and angry if he wants someone else, even if it's with rather than instead. And I just never have. I've never felt the right thing."

"Nor have I," Jerry said. He looked out at the snow-covered runway, the glare glinting off his glasses. "I was never jealous of you, either. But maybe you're just better than most. I told Gil that. I told him you were one of a kind and he'd better not let you get away."

"That was very kind of you," Alma said.

Jerry shook his head, a rueful expression on his face. "I could never give Gil so many of the things he wanted. He wanted to settle down and start a business, to stop moving around from post to post. He wanted a home. And I thought I'd be on digs all over the world. I might be home a few months a year. I couldn't take him with me, and he would be miserable if I did. It seemed like it made sense the way we set it up, with you and Gil making a life together somewhere, and me dropping in when the wind blew that way. It made sense, even if it didn't work out that way."

"But you're working again now," Alma said. "This job at the Met…."

"It's not a field job, but it might lead to one. I've got to get out in the field again, Al."

"You can," she said. "And you will."

"And you have Lewis now." Jerry smiled. "And the baby."

"I hope," she said. "I hope."

"It'll work out," Jerry said. "I think this time it will. And I will always be there when you need me. I promise."

L
ewis landed the Terrier neatly, turning at the far end of the field to taxi toward Gilchrist's hangar.

"That's not good," Mitch said, looking ahead as Lewis turned. Stasi was standing by the hangar door, nearly bouncing up and down on her feet, frowning.

The moment Lewis cut the engines she hurried out, opening the cabin door and climbing in. "I'm glad you're in one piece," she said.

Lewis looked perplexed. "Why wouldn't we be? The weather was fine."

"Albert Kirsch is going after Silver Bullet."

"Who's Albert Kirsch?" Lewis asked.

Stasi stilled her hand on the back of Mitch's seat. "Pelley's man. Pelley's goons are going after Silver Bullet. Oh don't look at me that way, darling! I didn't tell them. But they know about Silver Bullet and they've told people they have a salvage permit and they're going up there first thing in the morning to take it apart because it's late today and Kirsch is waiting on his boys from LA to bring a truck."

"Crap," Mitch said.

"That's not good," Lewis said.

"Of course it's not good!" Stasi said. "Can you imagine the amount of mischief they could make with Silver Bullet?"

"With a machine that downs aircraft?" Mitch said. The possibilities were fairly appalling.

"Yes, with Silver Bullet," Stasi said, looking at him like was being incredibly slow. "That's a bad thing and we have to stop them."

"They can't just walk in there and take it," Lewis said. "Right?"

Mitch thought about it. "I don't know who would notice or care. It's state land and it's the middle of the winter. Nobody goes up there except maybe hunters or sport fishermen, but they're not going in the middle of winter." A thought struck him. "Maybe it was Pelley's men who turned it on in the first place. Maybe they were messing around up there and turned it on and that's why the crashes have happened."

"Or maybe Rayburn tripped it with his radio test," Lewis said. "But it doesn't matter which it was. Stasi's right. We have to stop them." He looked at Mitch. "We could go to the sheriff and tell him that these guys from LA plan to rob the Silver Bullet Mine."

"Two problems with that," Mitch said. "First, it's not our mine. It belongs to the state, and everybody knows there's nothing worth anything up there. The sheriff isn't going to send a bunch of guys up to guard an abandoned mine because we say that somebody plans to steal something. And getting into a Death Ray story with the sheriff isn't going to fly, I can tell you that. Second, if he did believe us, he'd wait until business hours tomorrow and call the Colorado Department of Mines to see if they've got a salvage permit. If they jumped right on it, which they won't, they'd hunt around for a few hours trying to find a permit and probably get back to the sheriff on the next business day or two and tell him there's no permit."

"And by then it's gone," Stasi said, her hands on her hips. "Once Kirsch gets it taken apart and put on that truck, we'll never find it."

"We have to stop them," Lewis said. He twisted around in his seat. "It's up to us."

Mitch frowned, his hands still moving over the Terrier's instruments in the post-flight. "I could call Colonel Sampson," he said. "He believed me when I said there's a navigation hazard. I could try telling him the whole story. Or at least the part where somebody wants to steal Dr. Tesla's machine." That part was plausible at least. Tesla was well enough known that you could buy that somebody wanted to steal a Tesla invention. Mitch took a deep breath. "I could ask Colonel Sampson to send a Guard unit up. Those guys who were there for the last crash -- they'd believe there's something peculiar going on."

Lewis nodded slowly. "That makes sense. He trusts you."

"Does he?" Mitch glanced sideways at Lewis.

He shrugged. "Pretty much. He doesn't ride herd on you. But even if he does get a Guard unit sent up, they're not going to get there right away. He's got to go through the chain of command. And that's going to be tomorrow or the next day." He looked up, his eyes keen. "So we're going to have to guard it ourselves until they get there."

Stasi's eyebrows rose. "You do know that Kirsch's boys are good for a fight."

"So am I," said Lewis.

"Sampson first," Mitch said. "And then we'll get together some stuff and go up there tonight. They may back off if somebody is already there." He looked up at Stasi. "You stay here and see if you can reach Alma and tell her what's up."

Her voice was flat. "You are insane if you think I'm staying here while you and Lewis go up there to deal with Pelley's boys."

"It might be dangerous," Lewis said.

"Of course it will be dangerous!" Stasi said. "Why do you think I'm going? If it was just that you and Mitch were going to spend an uncomfortable evening camping in the snow, I'd happily stay home and take a hot bath, darling! But if you're planning on getting into it with Albert Kirsch, I'm coming. Remember, I'm the one who knows him."

"She's right about that," Mitch said. "She may be able to talk him around." He couldn't help tweaking Stasi just a little. "Or talk him to death."

"I'll do my best to bore him silly," Stasi said. "Or at least stall."

T
he narrow room was cold, wind whistling through the gaps in the window frame, rattling the glass. The heavy curtains lifted and fell in spite of the towel that the hotel's manager had wedged against the sill. He'd provided a stack of extra blankets, including what looked like a handmade quilt, and an apology. These were the last three rooms available, what with the weather, and somebody would have to take the one on the corner. Better him than either Alma or Tesla, Jerry thought, and turned his back to the draft to light a cigarette. Not that he'd dare say that to Alma — not that it was possible to think of her as delicate after the job she'd done getting them this far. But Tesla was well over seventy, and Al was pregnant, and that meant he should be the one to take the drafty room. Besides, as he'd pointed out when Alma would have protested, it was closest to the bathroom.

Alma pregnant. It was obvious once she'd said it, a dozen odd little changes suddenly making a coherent whole. He sat down on the edge of the bed, the only furniture in the room besides the dresser and the bedside lamp, and after a moment swung his legs up and pulled the nearest blanket over them. That was better, and he reached for the flask he'd set beside the ashtray. The bourbon he'd bought in New York was smooth, the real McCoy, and he savored its sweet heat. Alma hadn't been showing the first time, and surely — surely that meant the danger was past? Surely that meant she would carry this one to term? And how far along was she? Further than before, so at least a couple of months, which meant… he counted on his fingers. A June baby, possibly, late spring, early summer, Taurus or Gemini or Cancer, earth or air or water. Al's and Lewis's child.

Lewis was going to be delighted. He was the sort of man who was meant to be a father, who'd dote on the baby. Gil would have teased to hide his devotion; Lewis wore his heart on his sleeve. Tears prickled in the corners of his eyes, and Jerry thumbed them impatiently away. Calm and kind and loving — you truly couldn't ask for better. Though the life of Diana's priest was not his own — Jerry shoved that thought aside. He wouldn't borrow trouble, not yet. That would come when it came, no need to rush to meet it.

He took another long drag on his cigarette. The first baby would have been nine by now. He hadn't thought about that in ages, one loss swallowed by another, but the numbers were instantly to hand, as though some part of him had still been counting. Gil's child, except not. His own child.

And maybe that was the problem, why it hadn't taken. Queers didn't father healthy children, even if he had managed to rise to the occasion. And who wouldn't rise for Al? He grinned in spite of himself, unable to regret a single episode, a single instant they'd been together. He'd loved Gil deeply and passionately, and he'd come to love Al the same way, to appreciate the curves and hollows of her body, to delight in the silk and satin revealed when they peeled back the layers of even her most ordinary working clothes. There might never be another woman for him — probably wouldn't be, he knew his own tastes too well to believe otherwise — but he was lucky to have had this, to have had her as well as Gil. And if it had been his fault, his failure, Al would never say so.

Al wouldn't believe it. The thought came to him like benediction, a truth inarguable. He could almost hear the indignant catch of breath, the lifted eyebrows she'd somehow caught from Gil, and then hear her in full cry. You might as well say it was my fault, for having both of you, or Gil's, and you wouldn't blame either one of us. Don't you dare say that. And then, a softer voice, Gil's voice: Sometimes there are no answers. At least not good ones.

He rested his head against the wall above the headboard, the cigarette almost burnt out between his fingers. He stubbed it impatiently in the ashtray, and fixed his eyes on the back of the door where his bathrobe hung ready. We'll father no children, Merrill had said, and Jerry knew what he'd meant. No children, no family, free from all conventional bonds, and thus able to make dispassionate choices, to stare into the sun without going blind. But it wasn't true, and had never been. They were close as family, him and Gil and Alma and Mitch — they were family, complicated and untidy as it was. If he had never known Al, if it had only been him and Gil, they would have been family still.

And they were family now. Al and Mitch and Lewis would be there for him, as he would be for them, no matter where the work took him. He'd need to be back in New York in the spring, but that shouldn't be a problem. He closed his eyes, the draft chill against his hands.
Diana, she's with child to Your priest, watch over her. Bona Dea, Hera, Isis Mother of the World, Lady Bastet, Holy Mother Mary and sweet Saint Anne, protect her and the child.

Chapter Thirteen

Colorado Springs,

December 20, 1932

I
t seemed to Stasi that she'd just barely gone to sleep in the little bedroom upstairs next to the bath when she was awakened by a knock at the door. "Stasi?" It was Mitch's voice. "It's time to get up if you're coming. Lewis is making breakfast."

Stasi swore, rolling over in the single bed so that she could see the clock. 3:45 am.

"Stasi?"

"Coming," she said.

Her warmest clothes weren't up to snuff, but there wasn't much to do about that -- wool slacks and two sweaters to go under her long wool coat, a pair of Alma's silk long underwear under the slacks. Not really up to hiking around the mountains in the snow, but hopefully it wouldn't be horribly cold. She bundled her coat over her arm, checked her hair in the mirror, and went downstairs.