Flight (56 page)

The sun is down, but the moon is still
off-stage when Joe carefully stands up just past the rear corner of
the building. He is struck by how much he can see just from
starlight and the faint glow dribbling from the bottom of the three
heavily curtained windows. The boy wishes Bob Tom were alongside so
that he could show off his skill.

No, he corrects himself, not show off. Just
show.

Joe studies the ground to plot out a safe and
silent path. It occurs to him that it has been several minutes
since he has heard any voices. He wonders if the centaurs could
have left the stable while he was working his way around back. A
worse thought comes. What if the centaurs’ silence comes from
listening for him? That thought freezes him. He has no doubt that
the centaurs can be very quiet when they choose. How else could
they get old enough to be bald and gray? Immobilized, with his
captured breath burning his lungs, Joe considers why the men-horses
might become quiet. Awareness of his presence is one. To divert
himself from that thought, Joe considers whether the centaurs might
be sleeping. Don’t horses sleep when the sun goes down? Given how
early in the evening it is and the fact that the stable remains
lighted, the notion escapes his grasp. He wonders if they might be
eating, or…. The boy gives up. He has no idea what a centaur might
be doing just after dusk on a fine spring day.

As he stares at the minefield of leaves and
limbs that the winter winds have pushed against the back of the
building, Joe tells himself and repeats it like a mantra that if
the centaurs discover him, his escape route is to make it back to
the low tunnel from where he emerged. If he can make it to the
tunnel, the space is much too small for a centaur to follow
him…unless they have weapons of some kind. Joe finds it hard to
convince himself that anything human, or half-human, ever would be
without weapons.

The agitated teener forces himself forward. A
half-second later, Joe’s foot snaps a twig and his mouth
involuntarily blurts out a word that Shakespeare liked and
Noramican teenerz have long loved. Joe immediately twists his neck
toward where he made his last blaze. His body says bolt, but his
mind makes it hold its ground. An interminable thirty seconds
finally pass, but nothing happens. Finally, Joe makes himself
approach the first window and the faint glow of light which has
drawn him like a moth.

Through the narrow band of light at the
bottom of the curtain, Joe sees three centaurs standing around a
massive plank table eating what looks to be fried fish and baked
potatoes, lots of baked potatoes. The man-horse who Joe best can
see has four potatoes on a large square wooden plate. In the middle
of the table is a beach ball-sized wooden bowl holding a mound of
small green apples. All three of the centaurs are old. Their cheeks
are mostly covered with gray, scraggly beards, but where the skin
does show, it is red, weathered and wrinkled. After he notices
them, Joe fixates on how huge the centaurs’ hands are. They look
like they have spent years in hard work. Even as Joe watches in awe
at the most domestic of scenes playing out with the least domestic
of actors, he sees just how burdened by age the centaurs are. Their
hands move slowly and in ways that appear to be painful. The
centaur nearest to Joe keeps raising his back left hoof as if to
relieve an ache. When the centaur most nearly opposite to Joe opens
his mouth to load it with potato, Joe can see that his teeth are
mostly just memories. When he sees those empty gums, it hits the
boy how much of a centaur’s day must be spent with finding,
preparing and eating food. With only a human’s mouth and stomach to
feed a horse-sized lower body, Joe guesses the centaurs must have
to eat five or six times a day. Thinking about the centaurs’ mouth
and stomach lead Joe to consider what the centaurs’ whole digestive
system might be like, a thought he chooses not to linger on.

It is not until Joe’s cold nose touches the
even colder window casing that he realizes how dangerously
mesmerized he has been become with the centaurs. He pulls back in
terror. The foreign world he has been engrossed with instantly
loses its power. With his knees quivering and mind struggling to
keep his breath from blurting out of his throat, Joe scuttles
backward until he feels safe enough to move to the next sliver of
pale light.

With cautious step after cautious step, it
takes Joe more five minutes to get close to the second window. He
is crouching down reaching toward the sill when the world explodes
in noise. The rattled adventurer whirls, runs, trips, falls and
surrenders.

As the boy lies on the grass, the thunderous
noise that has startled him, resolves itself into words—words that
Joe first recognizes as English and, then, identifies as almost
assuredly coming from an Adirondack riverman named Bob Tom Damall.
Despite the urge to run to his friend, caution keeps Joe on the
ground. It occurs to him that the yelling he has heard earlier may
have been the centaurs arguing about the riverman.

As suddenly as he had begun, Bob Tom stops
his lusty singing of the days and ways of Middle Earth. The
shell-shocked Joe slowly gets to his feet and makes his way back
toward the stable. When Joe looks through the window he sees his
old friend tethered in chains leaning his elbows on the top of a
slatted partition. Joe’s first thought is to alert the riverman to
his presence, but, after he hesitates to consider whether there is
a way to do that safely, that idea gets pushed aside. The teener
has enough experience to know that Bob Tom is not good at curbing
his enthusiasms. Joe goes through his options. He can tap on the
window and hope that Bob Tom hears him and the centaurs don’t. If
the tapping is successful, then what? The old man’s chain doesn’t
look like it’s long enough to let him get close to the window. But,
even if it is, will Bob Tom keep quiet as he pulls back the heavy
curtains and sees Joe? With each consideration, the cautious teener
thinks it’s a bigger mistake to knock on the window. Joe spends a
couple of more minutes thinking of other variations of how he might
alert Bob Tom before it comes to him that having Bob Tom know that
he is there does nothing for the old man’s rescue if he doesn’t
have a way to free him from his chains.

The boy backs away from the window and makes
his way to the third and last narrow bar of light. As he approaches
it, he can’t think of anything but the story of Goldilocks and the
Three Bears. It’s a leap from three beds that are too soft, too
hard and just right to his situation, but there is something about
sneaking peeks into the three rooms that is making a
connection.

Joe feels an ache in his thighs when he
squats down so that he can see under the bottom of the curtain. He
considers how little hockey has prepared him for a quest.

No beds. No bears. Just two pot-bellied
centaurs reading books by the green light of an ancient, battered
phosphor lamp. Joe has only been in place for a minute or two
before one of the centaurs, dressed in a drab green Free Lindsay
Lohan sweatshirt, which bunches on his belly, yawns. Although the
yawn only goes on for two seconds before the centaur raises his
book to his face to cover it, the black magic is done. Joe’s yawn
is so big that his jaw pops. He realizes he’s been clenching his
teeth while he’s been spying. A second yawn splits his face. As
that one finally fades away like a cymbal’s ring, Joe is
overwhelmed with exhaustion. He doesn’t want to rescue Bob Tom or
outsmart a posse of centaurs. He wants to sleep. With a pillow that
smells like his hair when his hair is clean, sheets that smell like
soap, a mattress that doesn’t sag. In a warm room. Maybe not at
Dutton. Maybe not a home. But, somewhere…and before he sleeps he
wants to eat three double bulgur burgers with lots of tahini washed
down with a huge pom-ade.

Ten minutes later, the boy lies on a pile of
leaves feeling extremely drained, somewhat safe, and absolutely
guilty. After twenty minutes of listening hard and hearing nothing
that sounds like humans or horses, Joe crawls back out of the
tunnel, uncovers the bike and raids its panniers for two of his
last three Nougie-nugget bars. As the teener eats, the moon rises
and the chiaroscuro beauty of the forestscape attracts enough of
his attention that some of his fear fades away. He is still hungry
when he finishes his meal, but knows that he has to save the last
of his meager supplies for tomorrow.

Despite his exhaustion, it takes Joe hours to
fall asleep. Some of that insomnia comes from the cold seeping
through the blanket of leaves he has buried himself in. Some comes
from worries that the darkness hides a battalion of ticks coming
his way. The rest comes from shame.

When Joe finally does fall asleep, it is a
deep one because the bear had snuffled him several times and begun
to brush back the blanket of leaves before Joe comes awake. The
boy’s dream-clouded blue eyes open to bright yellow ones, a long
glistening brown snout and a sachem’s hoard of teeth.

Paternal Instincts

It has cost him a lot of money, but Joshua
Fflowers has his freedom. He realizes that to many it might not
look like freedom. After all, the trillionaire is tethered to a
hospital bed with a half-dozen tubes and, seemingly, a one-to-one
ratio of medical personnel to tubes to tend them. Fflowers’ health
is much better than it was a week ago, but it still is the second
worse in his long life. What he has done is risky, but, as he
pondered the decision, he reminded himself that every significant
act of his life has involved risk. Dr. Blaine, and the rest of the
school of doctors sharking about the institute, have insisted that
he must stay. But, the Juvenal Institute is not where the old man
wants to die.

Despite the many years of living, the many
years of ill-health, the horrible boredom of the self-absorption
that ill-health brings, Joshua Fflowers still, mostly, wants to
keep living. But. But. But, if he is going to die, then, he doesn’t
want it to be in any place other than the Airie. His home provides
both a haven and a special opportunity for his death.

Risk? At his age? He’ll gladly take the
risk.

After signing two sets of papers—one which
funded a major program in mind biology resets with a Juvenal
Institute staff member as the primary researcher and the other
which relieved the Institute and its staff of any and all liability
for the problems which have occurred with the rich man’s
rejuvenation—Fflowers prognosis becomes so rosy that the Institute
can, in good faith and conscience, release him.

Fflowers makes his goodbyes, which are
somewhat unnecessary since a significant contingent of the
Institute’s regen and rejuve staff is coming with him to the
Airie.

Fflowers is absolutely forbidden to have
visitors; however, within hours after arriving at the Airie,
Fflowers summons Vartan Smarkzy. The old schoolmates spend two
hours together.

Smarkzy appears to be forthcoming. He has
known Prissi Langue for less than two years. After the fact, yes,
he can suppose that a part, a small part, of his interest in her
was that there was a resemblance to Elena Fflowers. However, since
he had not known Elena at fifteen and his vision is far from what
it once was, he wasn’t, nor could he be expected to be, struck by
the resemblance, like Fflowers himself has been. When Smarkzy asks
Fflowers what he thinks is going on, the trillionaire says that he
is persuaded that Prissi is a clone of Elena. When the Dutton
teacher wonders how that is possible, Fflowers said because Elena
is still alive. When Smarkzy asks how he knows that to be true,
Fflowers answers, “Because I’m old, rich and patient. Enough time
and money applied to any problem will usually bring an answer.”

“How long have you known?”

“Much too long.”

“Where is she?”

“Where she wants to be…away from me.”

“Africa? Prissi says that she grew up in
Africa.”

“Not Africa. She didn’t grow up with Elena.
If she had, I would know. In fact, I doubt that Elena even knows
that she exists.”

“So how could she be cloned? Who else would
have Elena’s eggs?”

When Fflowers smiles, it makes him look like
he is in excruciating pain, “You probably were interested in
Priscilla not because her looks reminded you of Elena, but because
her behavior reminded you of someone else.”

“Who?”

“Laureby’s old girl friend.”

“Roan? Roan’s been dead since the
explosion.”

Fflowers’ bitter laugh quickly turns into a
wracking cough.

“Vart, who was the smartest person we ever
knew?

Smart is all ways. School smart. Science
smart. Street smart.”

“Roan Winslow.”

“Gone without a trace. Burned to ashes except
for a small fragment of bone and two teeth.

“Priscilla’s mother was named Nora, an
anagram of Roan. Elieson. Elide. To pass over or ignore. Nora
Elieson emerged from the dust and shadow of Africa about
thirty-five years ago. I’ve asked some very good…historians…and
they tell me that Nora Elieson has no history. She was a good wife,
a good mother and she died in an accident three years ago.”

Smarkzy rebuts, “An unexpectedly dull third,
fourth and fifth act for the smartest person we ever knew.”

Joshua Fflowers shrugs his shoulders and
twirks his lips down in answer.

“It could be that people change. For example,
Beryl Langue, a mediocre scientist for decades with the GN, marries
Nora Elieson, and, a decade later has figured out how to grow
regenerative wings on guinea hens.”

Now, it is Smarkzy’s turn to laugh and his
laugh, too, degenerates into a cough. When the old man gets himself
under control, he says, “Some people change.”

Fflowers leans his head back into his pillows
and speaks slowly to the VA to adjust the hospital bed. He
seemingly doesn’t do a good job with his instructions to the voice
activator because the bed fails miserably to execute his commands.
Fflowers begins swearing in exasperation. Finally, his hands pat
the bed covers until he finds a remote. Still swearing, he pounds
on the remote. Like a badly trained dog, the bed refuses to do any
of its tricks. It is not until Smarkzy takes the remote, and
punches a short sequence of buttons that the bed obeys and Fflowers
reclines.