Flight (14 page)

Adaman’s triumph had lost its glow when, on
the following day, he was informed of Joshua Fflowers precipitous
decline. Adaman’s thoughts harkened back to Prince Charles and his
lame fate. If his father was too sick to learn what Joe had done,
or died before he changed the distribution of his wealth and power,
all of Adaman’s efforts would have been for naught.

The unrequited son paced and thought and
paced and thought. After a time he had an idea. He went to the
room’s closet, and searching through his father’s clothes found
what he thought he might find. As long as he had known him, his
father had been a doodler. Whether he was on a fone, conferencing,
thinking, or in a meeting, his hands kept busy. Adaman pulled out a
small wad of cocktail napkins, some from the dedication and some
from the roto flight. He sat cross legged on the bed and spread
them in front of him. Squiggles, arrows, a sketch of his new
building…and Es, lots of Es, and a few fancy Ps. And arrows linking
E’s to P’s. After deciding that Priscilla Langue might be the P,
Adaman’s confusion unraveled. E led to P. E led to Priscilla.
Adaman’s throat made a noise like a clogged drain. He lifted up the
pix of the girl and tried to remember the portrait in the Airie he
had studied a thousand times. That portrait had been done when
Elena Howe was forty, but Adaman could see that the resemblance was
there.

The torrent of words that burst from his
mouth left strings of spittle on Adanan’s chin. In the space of a
day he had gone from checkmating his brother to being in check to
being checkmated. If his father died, the will would remain
unchanged. But, now, if the old man rallied, the will very well
might be changed, but not in the way that Adanan had planned.
Adanan could see how an eleventh hour appearance by someone named
Priscilla Langue could cause him to lose everything he had worked
for so many years. Adaman knew without a doubt that if the old man
had any opportunity to develop a relationship with the simulacrum
of Elena Howe, his own and, most likely, Jack’s future, too, would
be ash. He also was sure that Prince Charles last conscious feeling
had to have been a bitter one. Adaman swore to himself that the
Unbonny Prince’s fate would not be his own.

If his father died, there was nothing he
could do. But…if his father lived, the girl could not.

Adaman Fflowers was mapping out a strategy
with Schecty about how to handle the girl when his brother, Illiya,
accompanied by a single security guardian came in.

“Ah, the prodigal son. I, we, and, of course,
dear he, expected you earlier.”

“Joe’s gone.”

As he quickly gathered the napkins off the
bedspread, Adaman shook his head at the pettiness of his brother’s
concerns.

“Really? How daring. Probably a lark.
Something sophomoric. Spring Break jail break.”

In the raspy voice that he has had since he
was a toddler, when he ate some scouring powder that somehow got
where it wasn’t supposed to be, a tragic accident older brother
Adaman had known absolutely about, Illiya said, “Maybe, but I don’t
think so. I think it’s more. I think he might be grounding. When he
was home over Winter Break, the issue of fledging came to a
head.”

Although he already knew the answer to the
question, the older brother asked, “Why? What’s the problem?”

Illiya’s exasperation seeped through his calm
words like perfume through a jet’s air handler.

“He doesn’t want to fly. He can’t seem to
think of anything beyond playing hockey. His mute was scheduled for
tomorrow. He has been making noises, but we just thought it was
Jongitis. Even the bravest kid can feel some fear of flying.”

“Not my Jack.”

“No, of course, not. Not Jack.”

Illiya walked around the room in
agitation.

“Joe wanted to fly since before he could
walk. For years, he would flop around the room pretending. But,
ever since he got so good at hockey, he’s had a million reasons why
he shouldn’t fly. When he came home for Thanksgiving, he was
adamant. He was going to stay a walker and play hockey. His coach
said this. His coach said that. He’d rather play hockey for ten
years than fly for fifty. We told him he that there was no question
that he was going to fledge. He finally consented, but pleaded to
delay the mute until after hockey season was over.”

Adaman’s speech is clipped as he interrupts
his brother, “And you told him the window for growing the best
wings was small.”

“Of course.”

Adaman crossed the room, picked up an
envelope, the one with a Bissell logo, folded it and stuffed it in
a pants’ pocket before he said, “And Joey started talking about PAM
techniques. Break-throughs. Second chances. Am I correct?”

There is silence as Illiya absorbed the anger
he felt at Adaman calling his son, Joey. Finally, he asks, “Did he
get that from you?”

“I believe we traded a couple of EMs. He
wanted to know when—youth’s hope— or if—his mistrust of Cygnetics
science—it would happen. Since I handle the science side and you
handle the money, he thought I would know more about those kinds of
things than you. What could I say? I told him it was something the
company has been working on almost from the beginning. You can
change jobs, or faiths, a dozen times, change spouses, give birth
anytime from ten to seventy. So, why should you have to make the
most momentous decision of your life within a short period of your
adolescence? If we could perfect Post-Adolescent Mutation, a person
could run, swim, play baseball, climb mountains, sail, be a plumber
or scuba diver, or any of the things a winger can’t do, or do well,
for ten, twenty, thirty years and then begin to fly.

“Flying has always been the pre-eminent
symbol of freedom—and a big part of freedom is the ability to
change, to make choices—but our technical constraints take away so
much choice. We are free when we fly. We are free to fly. But, we
are not free to decide when we fly.”

Unable to suppress his anger any longer,
Illiya’s voice rose, “Did you encourage him to stay a walker
because he just might be able to mute his wings later on?”

Adaman threw up his hands at the absurdity of
what his brother has said.

“No, Illiya. I told him the truth. That
science swings from the unthinkable to the incremental and back
again. Until our illustrious father, dare we call him dad, and our
intended mother worked out the G-splices and mutancy maps for the
first implant, self-flight was unthinkable. Wings on humans. Not
wings on things attached to humans. Unthinkable. Until Brianna Brim
landed at mid-field at Super Bowl LI. That moment fundamentally
changed the world—like the invention of language, love, god, the
A-bomb.

“But, then…our oh so busy near mom and
dad…bat wings to bird wings…incremental. And all of the things
since—colors, shapes for speed or distance, lowering the failures
with anti-rejection drugs, projecting body mass to wing size, all
of those things are just accommodations to the initial lightning
bolt. And, as those things were solved, the scientists always
thought that PAM would be just another incremental improvement. Not
just a tweak—I don’t think anybody was that arrogant. Not something
you can see ahead and just need to pack some water before you get
on the path. But something that, at least, gives a glimmer over the
horizon. But, so far, even after sixty years on the path, there’s
been no glimmer. As you know, despite our efforts, our very
expensive efforts, PAM has proved intractable—like squamous-celled
cancers. As a result, if we’re being honest…as brothers should…but
please don’t tell the stockholders …we’ve taken away as much
freedom as we’ve given.”

Illiya’s voice, an octave higher and beyond
incrementally louder, blurted, “You told him that? Flying
diminishes freedom?”

“I’m sure I listened more than I talked,
brother . Of course, there was probably a little of the fond
uncle’s wisdom. But, I did tell him that PAM did not seem to be
around the corner, and, that like anything else, flying could add
or subtract from one’s life.”

Illiya threw his hands up in disgust.

“Well, after all of the balanced parsing,
Adaman, after all the philosophizing, what remains is that Joe is
gone. The son of the Co-president of Cygnetics Corporation is
hiding so that he won’t have to fly. If this gets known, and if the
Gen4 data starts to leak out now that dad’s not there to stop it,
this news could drop fast to the bottom line.”

“Dramatic, but I think implausible. We’ve
kept that data off the screen for months. I’d give Joey a day or
two before setting off alarms. You have unleashed our own dogs, I
presume?’

“I had a team of six guardians begin a search
as soon as the school called me.”

Adaman held his chin in imitation of a wise
man thinking.

“Hmmm, I think if it were my son, which, of
course, I am so jealous that it is not, I would call the school and
tell them that Joey has shown up at home none the worse for
wear.”

“And, if he doesn’t show up?”

“Our guardians are very, very good. I can’t
see that happening.”

“They are so good that they have found
nothing in forty-eight hours.”

Adaman shrugged in theatrical defeat.

“Then, perhaps, my proposed course is the
wrong one. It is your son and you must decide. I must concern
myself with our poor father.” Adaman touched a fingertip to his
cheekbone. “And another small matter.”

After Illiya left, Adaman finished his
conversation with Schecty. No consternated Unbonny Prince Charles
biting on a knuckle. The girl must go.

“Please, Schecty, when you get in touch with
me, please refer to our new situation as ‘another small matter.’
That I think will keep my spirits up as I grieve what is, or isn’t,
happening to papa.”

Head over Heels

Prissi had two surprises when she arrived
home for Spring Break.

The first surprise was discovering two
immense shipping crates sequestered behind their cyclone fenced
storage area in the basement of the Gramercy Arms. Her father
obviously had let go of his notion about leaving their African past
behind.

When Nora Langue had died, Beryl Langue’s
immediate response had been to cut and run. He locked up his lab,
asked friends to pack up their furnishings and, within a day of
Nora Langue’s ashes being scattered onto Lake Tanganyika, he and
Prissi were crossing that same lake in the first leg of their
sojourn. A week later, they entered Costa Rica through a back door
encumbered with a total of three suitcases and two paks.

Now, almost three years after her mother’s
death, Prissi had the opportunity to be re-connected with her past
through the collection of boxes spread across the storage area
floor. Prissi couldn’t wait to see what might have been saved of
their lives in Burundi, but she realized that her second surprise
might cut into her time to explore the first.

Dr. Smarkzy had sent her the contact numbers
for his friend, Pequod Jones, at the New York Public Datarium. He
EMed that if Prissi wanted to travel down The Lost Path, she could
have no better cicerone than the curmudgeonly Pequod Jones. In
addition, Smarkzy himself was going to take advantage of his break,
to which he could attest faculty anticipated more than students, to
see if he could find some things from the GOD that could help the
cause. Prissi assumed that the good old days referred to Smarkzy’s
time at Cold Spring Harbor.

Despite the romantic allure of The Lost Path,
Prissi probably would have spent much more time in her apartment
building’s basement going through her past rather than at the NYPD
if it had not been for a piece of very bad luck.

In homage to her favorite teacher, Prissi
flew up Fifth Avenue late in the afternoon of her first day home.
She met Pequod Jones, who proved to be anything but a curmudgeon.
Jones, a ruddy-faced old man with a beach ball belly and flailing
arms, let her know that he was breaking the rules by allowing her
to look through the Fflowers collection…and that he was taking
great pleasure in doing so. He told her that he was compelled to
break the rules because he was a scientist first and a datarian
second.

Prissi spent two hours going through a
miniscule portion of the archives Joshua Fflowers had donated to
posterity. She skipped through paper, disk, stick, bubble and
liquid memory of Fflowers early years as a scientist, entrepreneur,
executive, and philanthropist looking for material relevant to
delayed fledging. She found little enough of that; however she did
discover that the company that Smarkzy recalled his friend working
for was named Centsurety. Of the small amount of material that did
seem relevant, almost all of it was either so stupefyingly dull or
so obtuse that Prissi’s lids drooped within seconds of beginning
her work.

When Jones bounced by to ask Prissi about her
progress, Prissi, being a Dutton student, was compelled to tell him
the truth. It was drudgery. Eyes bright and head bobbling, the
datarian smiled as he said, “Science, small s is,” and walked
away.

Prissi, who had worked long enough not to
feel guilty but had found so little to pique her interest that she
couldn’t convince herself to stay another minute, was paking up
when her bad luck arrived in the guise of an old pix presented to
her by Pequod Jones.

“Maybe it will make it more interesting if
you can see with whom you are dealing.”

The large pix Jones held out to the teener
was a group-shot of a dozen, mostly young, men and women loosely
clustered around a couple of picnic tables.

Dr. Jones pointed out Joshua Fflowers and
then named three other people he knew. He ended with a pudgy finger
touching a widely smiling dashing young man raising a bottle in
toast to the unseen photographer.