Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) (35 page)

‘Not totally heartless,’ thought Neal. He sometimes wondered if that was true. But then he chided himself. Enough. This was Ayala, Barrett’s widow. She was now, and always had been, a true friend. He shook his head again, and again Jennifer looked at him from across the room. He wanted to talk to her about this. He really did. But … but … but the truth was that he didn’t trust that he could speak honestly about this, not anywhere. Even here, even in his personal suite, he could not talk candidly about his concerns about his security chief.

Neal breathed deeply, then stood and went over to Jennifer, who was making a couple of fairly lethal caipirinhas for them both. He had been craving one all day since the problems with the Macapá channel had come to a head. She smiled as he embraced her from behind.

Neal:
‘good, Ayala. that sounds like a good idea, and one i am sure neither quavoce nor banu will have any objection to. listen, ayala, i have to go. jennifer is waiting for me.’

He cringed sharply at the blunder, at the reference to his partner, his confidant, and the inadvertent allusion to Ayala’s loss of hers.

Ayala did not skip a beat though.

Ayala:
‘¿but what about the east asia briefing? i still have two pages worth of intelligence update to go through with you.’

Neal:
‘¿is there anything requiring immediate attention?’

Ayala:
‘no. no, if there was then i would have mentioned that first.’

She paused, then went on.

Ayala:
‘no, there’s nothing here i can’t handle directly.’

He paused as well, and Jennifer felt him go stiff for a moment. But then he breathed again, forcing himself to relax, or at least to detach.

Neal:
‘good. thank you, ayala. as always, i trust you implicitly.’

He meant it. He really had no choice.

Chapter 36: Seeking Doubt

They flew through the darkness. Ahead he sensed a coming dent, a fluctuation in the gravitational plane of his universe. It was an approaching point of glancing. Given its size, he set his wave parameters and then he braced, reaching out quickly to his team to make sure that they knew their respective roles.

WG:
‘[loc.] distortion approaching.’

He received pings from most of his team, but not from Friday. In the final seconds before contact, Wednesday reached out once more.

WG:
‘¿friday god?

Silence. No doubt he was still sulking over Wednesday being appointed squadron leader. Oh well, no time for that now.

0.03, 0.02 …

The glancing came as a blur of focal points, a slowed blink, a single event in which every component was in one place, and then a very different one almost instantaneously. Wednesday, as leader, came in with the first wave, giving him a split second as they flashed past their opponents to analyze their pattern, and their reaction to the attack, and then to send back a response code to the next wave. His best pilots would then act on this.

They saved as many for the second wave as possible, analyzing the scale of the coming force based on the size of the gravitic distortion, and sending only what they had to with the first wave to stop the squadron leader from being summarily wiped out before he could make a code call.

Friday, when the time came, did not let his sulking mood bleed into his fighting. This was too important to him. He lived for this. For the attack. For these few precious moments in which he felt so very alive. And so, when the second wave came through, hot on the heels of the first, he lashed out with true zeal.

The glancing was a single heartbeat of pure adrenalin, a pulse of massive energy. A blink of an eye in which white-hot blades lanced out with all they had, gouging, ripping, tearing at each other, giving everything they had to the ending of the other.

It was all focused on this one moment, the lunge of the fencer, where all the positioning, all the preparation, all the thought and strategy came together to either the moment of connection, the moment of repost, or the hot sting of violation, the sharper end of the blade.

Wednesday had prepared them well, Friday noted. He had sent Friday to one side. A howling wolf to pull the enemies’ attention to him. And in the millisecond of their targeting, the rest of the pack that was the second wave came through in a flanking pattern made perfect by the attempts of their enemies to outwit just such a tactic.

Friday and the rest of the second wave capitalized on Wednesday’s ingenuity and scored a high return. Wednesday had lost himself in the glancing, as had most of the first wave, but the second wave’s better positioning more than evened the field, taking more than half of the enemy squadron. It was a hot kill. An excellent glancing.

Mother:
‘a good pass, squadron. well done. come out and i will show you the tally.’

They left, departing the blackness to return to a more natural wing. With a rush they now flew once more as a part of the greater flock, a gathering of friends, each benefiting from the aggregated current of air they were pulling with them. Wednesday and Friday flew back to their appointed spots, their usual places in the flock’s great, collective wing.

Friday did not look at Wednesday as they felt the familiar, comforting pull of the air on their wings.

“You did well, Friday,” said Wednesday, in as conciliatory a tone as he could muster. He was sad his friend had not been made squadron leader, but also a little angry. Angry at having his own achievement marred by his friend’s sullen mood.

It was an even day, so the water was below them. On odd days the sea passed by above. On some days there was no sea, only pockets of water gathered into huge, oddly shaped globules passing by below and on either side of them. Some days these shapes had meaning, humor even. Holidays were especially fun. Holidays were defined by the group. Days set to remember specific achievements by one or all of the pilots. The holidays came each month, and they were always accompanied by lots and lots of fabulous food.

Mother came to them now, beating up and out of the head of the flock and soaring over it, her great wings beating only slightly now as she feathered the air, feeling it and using it. She flew with a grace only the best could match.

Even fewer could truly outmaneuver her. But Friday was definitely one such ace, and this was the focus of his frustration. But as she came over to fly over them she was all smiles, and it momentarily softened even his resolve.

Wednesday saw the hint of a smile on Friday’s face before he returned to staring sullenly ahead. So did Mother, apparently, and she winked lightly at Wednesday as she came up to them and the rest of their squadron.

“Well done, Wednesday. An excellent tactical analysis,” she said, and Wednesday beamed.

“As for the second wave’s execution of your orders …” she paused, and Wednesday saw that Friday was listening in the ever-so-slight faltering in his tail feathers, a twitch that betrayed his true focus.

“… a masterful piece of flying.” she said magnanimously, rolling gracefully once for emphasis. The squadron took the chance to mimic her, ducking and rolling in a couple of quick turns that sent the surrounding banks of the flock reeling, and had the squadron members beating hard to reclaim their places in the huge body of birds a moment later.

But they were laughing as they did so, all but one, still sulking. As they beat back up into place, Mother swooped in closer, and a whisper found Friday’s ear amid the whistling wind on his face, “Especially you, Friday. As always, you were magnificent.”

He did not join the others in their whooping and hollering, but he could not keep the smile from breaking out across his feathery face.

“As for this rolling and swerving, this breaking of the flock’s flow …” she then said suddenly, with the full bellow of her baritone voice, “well, Wednesday Squadron can
stay
out of this place in the flock.”

They all balked. Had they really angered her so by breaking formation? Breaking line was not that unusual, especially when a battle had gone particularly well. Could she really be so angry as to dock them their hard won position in the flock’s wing?

“With this victory you have moved up a place on the roster!” she then shouted, and after a moment’s disbelief they were breaking away again, this time without exception. Promotion meant first place again. They had worked hard to reclaim their lead. Every few weeks the game changed slightly. New rules were added, older rules became obsolete. A series of poor glancings after the last change had cost them precious spots against the other top teams.

Wednesday God’s promotion to the top spot had seen a change in direction. He was good at this, great in fact, and his teammates brushed his belly and back with the tips of their wings, the beats of their wings drawing him up, raising him on their gifted lift as they called out his name.

Friday was not beyond redemption. He could not fight such happiness. Nor resist the call to be a part of such a celebration. Promotion meant respect for them all. And it also meant diving time, beneath the shimmering surface passing by below them.

“You will return to the flock next cycle,” said Mother, already starting to move back to the head of the great army of pilot trainees. “Your new place will be assigned then. Now go!”

At this, they dove as one, racing each other downward with abandon as the wind whipped around their faces. Their wings were only rudders now, guiding their meteoric fall as they plummeted toward the water below. As always, some used them more liberally than others, costing themselves precious momentum. But not Friday. He pulled himself close to his chest, drawing inward with all his might to keep his profile as small and slippery as possible.

Always the fastest, always the best. But never the leader, he thought.

The others naturally veered away from him. He was too aggressive, too competitive, even in the world of flight school. They knew Wednesday would follow his friend. He was nothing if not loyal. They liked that about him, even if they didn’t see why he was so close with Friday. A few of the others shouted last calls of congratulations as the water came rushing up to meet them, and then they were gone.

Friday, ahead as he was, hit first. Wednesday never did like this part. But the bit that came next was more than worth it. He focused on where Friday had impacted the water, the white font of his passing swelling upward and outward now in concentric circles of foam and spray. Wednesday aimed for it like a target, bracing for impact as it came roaring up at him.

The transition was not unlike being hit in the face with a bucket of ice-cold water and Wednesday could not understand why the others found it so fun. But this water was different. This water washed their very forms away, changing them, brushing their wings away to be replaced by arms once more.

As the water washed over them, their legs and talons became the ordinary, fleshy legs and feet of boys once more. Mother said this was them leaving the magic place, the underside of the world, to return to the reality they had been confined to for the first part of their ever-improving lives.

Somehow the normal world still felt welcoming, though, as Wednesday smashed through the water, and out the other side, his form morphing back to normal, his boyish body now leaping, not down through water, but up from land, land he had just passed through, his momentum now losing itself as he reoriented to his heavy form in the normal world.

He landed next to his friend, who was grinning. They were on green grass. It was lush and soft. It smelled alive. Here their rivalry was forgotten. It was not really a rivalry anyway. Friday wished for nothing but the best for his friend. Truly, he hoped that Wednesday could be every bit the pilot Friday was. But he wasn’t. That was what confused Friday. And yet his friend had been chosen over him, to lead the squadron, to lead Friday.

But, that was neither here nor there. They had won, that was all that mattered now. And they had won by enough of a margin of attrition that they had moved up a whole rank. It was too good a feeling to waste on jealousy, or questioning the whys and hows of it all.

This was
their
time. Wednesday and Friday: the Gods of this world and the next.

He smiled in his special way, a smile that seemed not only to fill his face, but to light up the space around him with his exuberant joy. Wednesday was so happy to see that smile. It was a single piece of truth in an ever more exciting, but also confusing, world. It had once been his only solace in a cold and unforgiving life, now it was the one good thing he had carried over from that grey time.

As they stood, Friday spinning suddenly and running off to the house, to Home, Wednesday was filled with a familiar sense of belonging, a sense almost strong enough to overcome the little voice in him that said something was wrong. That this, patently, was all very wrong.

They were not Gods, despite their honorifics, and yet somehow both his friends and he, and a host of others, had ended up in this place. A place Mother said everyone went to. A place that Mother said was where they had been destined for all along. They had just been left behind, left in one grey, hopeless world when they should have been moving between these two wonderfully colorful ones.

But that was passed now, she told them all every night. That was passed. They were with Mother now, and they were going to have everything they ever dreamed of.

And it
was
the stuff of dreams, thought Wednesday, as he chased after his friend up to the house, crashing through the never-locked door into the living room. It was strange to see it now, the place that had been their everything for those first few months. Now just a place to visit, a weekend getaway.

A weekend getaway, yes! That was how he had seen it described. A weekend getaway. An island, Jeju, that was what it had been called. It was so vague now, so distant, but the memory came back to him now. The memory of an article and a picture. They had been in a magazine which Friday had stolen from one of the orphanage’s warden’s rooms. A magazine Friday had not even been able to read. An illegal magazine from the south. It had come to fill Wednesday’s dreamscape, even as it had become frayed and tattered from countless rereadings.

At the time, back then, the magazine had sat outside everything Wednesday understood. It had undermined everything that he and his fellow orphans had been told about the world, and about their God, their Glorious Leader.

At first, Wednesday had assumed he had been taken to Jeju Island when he had come here. But no. This … this place … this is not Jeju, he thought. Even Jeju, with the stories of swimming and diving and hiking, even that seemingly magical place paled in comparison to
this
.

So as Friday ran out of the kitchen, already carrying an armful of fruit and breads, crumbs spilling from a quickly stuffed mouth, and vaulted up the stairs to get his toys out, Wednesday felt something under the happiness, something unsettling. A question.

He did not go and get food, though he did feel hungry when he looked at it. Instead he followed his friend upstairs. As Friday began arranging his toys on the floor, mumbling something about the battle of the birdmen, Wednesday just watched him.