Pushing myself from my house in Candaltown's Coleyville, I gazed another quick moment's idle study back toward an old three story structure parts of which were nothing more than tacked together particle board and the occasional scrap of tin, the whole divided into twelve apartments, called flats here in Candaltown, four, including my own, on the first floor. The house resembled most other dwellings in this part of Candaltown, most of them owned by Miss Candal herself. The flat I rented served its purpose. The rent was low, and it kept the rain off my head. A flat in Candaltown on the east coast in the center of mechanized civilization was at least as comfortable as had been Grisson Ranch's bunkhouse.

Shrugging, deciding again that there wasn't a great deal more to life than a roof over my head which didn't leak, I set off to the left along the street bound for the compound of the Candaltown guard and work. Candaltown's State Street is wide, fifty yards or more for most of its mile and a half length, though the half dozen or so trucks and horse carts in immediate sight this early in the morning weaved along narrow paths winding from to side to side along the street in order to avoid the worst of the mud holes. Most of the trucks chug along at a walking pace, a few perhaps a bit faster since there are no guntrucks in sight at the moment. One might on rare occasions see a private motor carriage transporting one of Candaltown's wealthy and elite even here in Coleyville, opulent conveyances of a sort which are beyond the means of most, though they're certainly a far more common sight here in Candaltown than they are in most other towns.

Coleyville, a four block section of Candaltown in which my own house is located, is typical of the residential villages. I suppose it might be called 'a neighborhood' in town and country where old Kilenish is still spoken. Small apartment houses, little different than my own, front both State Street itself as well as narrow lanes and alleys which branch off from the street. A solid wall of buildings on both sides of the street broken only by intersections, it's a fascinating sight to someone such as myself brought up on an outcountry farm. Although a few dozen other people were also up and about at this early hour plodding from the lanes onto the street, yawning, rubbing the sleep from their eyes, Coleyville was still by and large quiet. I never lower my guard entirely, however. This is not Star Lake, nor the small farm on which I was raised. This is Candaltown.

State Street leads south through Riceville for several blocks, Coleyville all over again, three or four story apartment houses, narrow alleys and lanes running from both sides of the street. Eben Street on the northern edge of Riceville and Water on the southern lead toward the town walls and then on to Spaulding Hill just visible off to the left, that the site of one of Candaltown's largest industrial shops, towering smokestacks above a complex of long tin buildings and warehouses where Candaltown's trucks and other types of motor vehicles are manufactured. Most of the components for Candaltown's four type one eleven aircraft are also manufactured in the Spaulding Hill shops. Boss Strem informed me a few weeks ago that Miss Candal has contracted with Spaulding Hill to build a fifth aircraft sometime within the next year or two. If another is built, Miss Candal and boss Strem will have to hire more flyers. I have more than enough hours in my own plane.

Beyond Water Street, I trudged on through Picketville, several blocks on which the street is lined with larger buildings, most four and five stories in height, many of brick and stone construction. Picketville is one of Candaltown's commercial villages, many of the buildings along the street divided into three or four small shops on the first floor, lavish apartments for Candaltown's better off residents on the upper floors, cardboard boxes for the poorest in the alleys between the buildings. Pushing my way along the street through Pickettville, I keep one eye on the alleys between the buildings for any sign of sudden movement in my direction, a hand close to the pistol beneath my jacket. None of the constables employed by the Pickettville Merchant's Association are on duty this early in the morning even though most of Pickettville's taverns remain open twenty four hours a day.

As usual, a single guntruck sat in the sizable park at State and Frank on the southern edge of Pickettville, a small yet ruggedly built utility vehicle with its canvas roof folded down in back, its windshield lowered across the hood in front. The large caliber gun mounted on a metal platform above the rear seats with belts of ammunition hanging from its side is the guntruck's most obvious and most obviously intimidating weapon. Andrew Ribbon and Mareya Lowe, both forty, two years younger than me, sat on the front seats of the guntruck their feet propped across its hood. Ribbon and Lowe watched traffic pass around them with expressions of no great interest or concern. Their qualifications for the task are the same as those I possessed when I had first come to Candaltown, an ability to fire the weapons contained in the guntruck and hit the target at which the weapons are aimed. It's been four years, however, since I've spent any real time pulling guntruck duty.

Guntruck duty isn't, though, all that bad. I settled into an easy humor as Mareya Lowe passed the bottle back to Andrew Ribbon sitting behind the wheel. Ribbon and Lowe certainly get more time off than I do. Only on rare occasions are they unable to return to their own homes after they've handed the guntruck over to the next watch coming on duty back at the compound. I've flown one of Candaltown's four airplanes for the past four years now. I might have to work for days at a time, sleeping in any number of dismal airfield shacks which might lay in strange towns a thousand miles from Candaltown.

"Tom Aulry," Mareya Lowe began, her voice the usual jovial mirth. I broke into an easy smile as I approached the guntruck, will for several moments now be able to lower my guard. No one with ill intend would be foolish enough to approach a fully armed guntruck or three members of the Candaltown guard who know how to use its weapons.

"Grandma," I nodded. I call Mareya grandma because everyone else does. I genuinely like her, however. Again, everyone else does. A few dozen other women work for Miss Candal as members of the Candaltown guard, though most are in their twenties or early thirties, all hoping to marry their way out of the guard before they reach Mareya's age.

"Tom Aulry," Mareya continued in that same voice of jovial ease as she reached for the bottle from Andrew Ribbon and offered it to me. "Marry me and get me out of this guntruck, Tom."

I declined both the bottle and Mareya's proposal with a mirthful nod.

"Can't today, Mareya. Have to work."

"Don't we all," Mareya sighed, and I turned toward the guntruck's driver.

"Aulry," Andrew Ribbon touching a hand to the brim of the "baseball" cap he preferred.

"Ribbon," I answered with an easy nod. I had, first arrived in Candaltown five years ago, worked the occasional duty shift with Ribbon in a guntruck, had accompanied Ribbon and several dozen other members of the guard on the occasional week long patrol into outcountry. Although I don't really know him all that well, Ribbon has always seemed a decent enough sort. Like most other members of the guard, particularly those my own age or older, Ribbon prefers to pass his time with feet propped up in the front of his guntruck watching life pass by around him, hoping that Miss Candal or boss Strem will not call on him to do anything a member of the Candaltown guard is paid to do.

"So," Mareya Lowe continued, "you flying around up there in the sky today, Tom?" Mareya glancing into the air with an expression of wonder for the fact that anyone would voluntarily do anything of the sort.

"Don't know yet. You know the boss, makes up my mind soon as I get to the compound and then tells me about it."

"Yeah," Mareya's laugh gentle, pleasant mirth. I found myself wondering why she had never married. Like most women who for one reason or another have found their way into the Candaltown guard, Mareya is tall, not excessively heavy, though has shown herself capable of the physical demands of her job on any number of occasions. When squads are assembled for overland patrols, Mareya is often chosen to lead them. As often as not, however, Mareya might be found sitting beneath the gun in her truck with a pair of knitting needles in her hands. Mareya is called grandma because of the warmth of her personality, however, not because of her age or appearance. I'd shared the flat in Coleyville with Mareya for a year, she and I on a few occasions glancing that which I suppose had been amused, speculating affection toward each other - perhaps something incomparably more when I on several occasions I had walked through a door at an unexpected moment. Mareya Lowe like most women in the Candaltown guard preferring a form fitting dress its hem falling a few inches above her knees, I'd noticed all along, I suppose, that which anyone might, Mareya pretty, her figure that which couldn't be called a great deal less than voluptuous. And still, Mareya Lowe was a member of the Candaltown guard, was anything from authoritative force to a drinking companion rather than an object of feminine intrigue - until I'd stumbled through a door at an unexpected moment and had yet again stood in dazed, gawking paralysis. Sand blond hair falling in luxurious waves about her shoulders rather in a tight knot at her neck, I'd lowered my eyes another helpless moment and another timeless eternity toward a guard member or a house mate who was suddenly a woman - and Mareya Lowe tall, hourglass beauty and allure to every voluptuously curving extreme, Mareya Lowe as she stood several paces away from me edging eyes awash with nothing more yet nothing less than intrigued mischief toward mine. "Whad'ya think, Tom," the towel in her hand just teasing pretense. "Think I could dance in Twisted Pete's -?" her dancing for me another timeless moment's sultry writhing though Mareya never quite thinking of herself as a great deal more than pretty - until she'd glanced again toward that in my eyes which she genuinely hadn't anticipated, I standing in transfixed oblivion for feminine, hourglass beauty and allure I could only call a voluptuously agonizing ideal.

I stood another moment along Candaltown's State Street in idle conversation with a guntruck's occupants - glanced toward that which was a sultry little change in Mareya Lowe's posture, glanced then toward a half moment's approving delight in her eyes for that in my own which I suspect was the same raw, ravenous abandon. I glanced as quickly toward that which was a glance of unabashed, devouring scrutiny toward me, that a bizare mix of flattering delight and sighing frustration. I could readily admit that I looked thirty rather than forty two. And Mareya Lowe devouring me as she had when it had been she walking through a door at an unexpected moment was choosing words such as cute, beautiful - outright boyish.

I stood at the guntruck's side another moment ripping the clothing from Mareya Lowe's body, she as frantically tearing my own clothing away - she and I with a culminating half moment's glance knowing it was still something in the air between us seeming chemical or magnetic.

I turned a moment later and with passing interest toward the guntruck's two way radio as it crackled to life.

"Michael - Michael Johns," boss Strem's voice the usual insistent demand.

"Yeah, boss," the answer came a quick moment later.

"You got them hooligans rounded up yet, Michael?"

"Almost, boss, almost."

I turned in curious question back to Andrew and Mareya.

"The Howlies again," Andrew Ribbon explained, nodding up the street toward Pickettville. "Couple dozen of 'em roamin' around liquored up last night, beat up on a couple of the merchant's constables before any of us could get there. The merchant's bosses called Miss Candal bitchin' and saying Pickettville wasn't gettin' patrolled enough, and Miss Candal hollered at boss Strem who hollered at Mike and Billy who had north side patrol last night. You're probably better off up there in the sky than in a guntruck."

With a sympathizing nod, I pushed myself back onto the street, walking south once again. State beyond the intersection with Frank enters Candal Center, Candaltown's largest commercial district. Candal Center, a dozen blocks in the center of town, does not appear remarkably different than Picketville save for the fact that most buildings fronting the streets are at least four or five stories in height. Candaltown's largest church, Saint Mary's, lays a short distance from State Street at Candal Circle, its spires visible for some distance in any direction. Candal Center's Merchant's Association is generally supposed to be the most influential of its kind in Candaltown, its president rumored to have a direct telephone line to the residence and Miss Candal's senior clerks. Although most of the larger industrial shops lay at the edge of town along the walls, it is here in Candal Center and particularly in the ornate, well guarded buildings on or near Candal Circle where the powerful elite in the business and industrial establishment do whatever it is they do. Candal Circle, according to Candaltown academia which resides in the University Building just off the Circle, is the town forum, the statement seeming to imply something sinister, though I don't suppose a soldier will ever be privy to the nuanced implications of the thing.

Who knows, I shrugged as I pushed myself along the planks of the boardwalks which ran along the sides of the street though Candal Center. It wasn't quite as necessary to watch the alleys here. Candal Center's Merchant's Association employs a greater number of constables, called marshals here in Candal Center. Two men with star shaped badges on their jackets and pistols openly displayed on their hips sauntered even this early in the morning along the boardwalks glancing now and again toward the doors of those taverns which never closed. Both marshals nodded in recognition as I passed. Unless a marshal has just recently contracted, I'm never stopped in Candal Center any more. I've been questioned several times over the past few years by Candal Center marshals when the wind happening to catch my jacket revealed the pistol beneath. Very few people in Candaltown possess the necessary permit. A weapons permit requires the signature of Miss Candal herself. I can still only grimace in wonder remembering the signs I had seen posted along the highway the first time I had approached Candaltown and the center of mechanized civilization five years ago. "Get caught packing here - get hung here."

Halfway through Candal Center, I turned right onto Janice Lane. Later this morning, waiters from the small cafes will serve drinks to people who have nothing better to do than sit at small canopied tables along the boardwalks. I will sit at one of these from time to time myself, though even a cup of coffee on Janice Lane is rather an extravagance on a guard member's pay. I crossed Saline a quick minute later into Cadeville, another residential district, though a few of the homes here are single family dwellings belonging to the more affluent of Candaltown's citizens, owners of the larger industrial shops and the like. Now close to five and thirty in the morning, many of Cadeville's residents were up and moving, adults toward the mills and the industrial shops most of which lay a short distance beyond the town walls, children and a few teenagers along the street toward Candal Circle and Saint Mary's school.

Pondering the faces of a few of these life long residents of Candaltown in passing, I decided people here didn't actually look all that different than people everywhere else. Children laughed and played as they made their way along the street toward school. Most walked, a few rode bicycles. The expressions on the faces of adults varied. Those dressed in laborer's clothing trudged along without evidence of any great emotion whatsoever. Those in more expensive clothing who probably spent their days sitting behind a desk making decisions wore expressions on their faces ranging from anxious concern to haughty scorn. No one sees the expressions on the faces of the business world's nobility who ride in the backs of large black motor carriages preceded by a dozen men on foot who wave away anyone daring to approach too closely. The scowling men trudging along in front of the carriage are derisively called lictors by some of the teachers at the university, though I and most of the other guard members who take the occasional class at the university can only guess at what lies behind the teacher's smiles of derision. All I know for certain is that Candaltown's Miss Candal has no lictors herself. I suppose you don't need them when you own every guntruck and aircraft in Candaltown, Candaltown's town guard a very potent "praetorian guard."

Walking through Cadeville, I wondered for a quick moment if I was beginning to look like a resident of Candaltown myself, glanced down at the clothing I wore, clothing not quite up to the standards of a mill laborer, yet a touch more respectable than a derelict's who sleeps in an alley between the taverns and sweeps the tavern floors in exchange for drinks. My clothing, indeed my overall appearance, doesn't have to be anything at all, I suppose. Members of the Candaltown guard don't fit into any particular niche in Candaltown society. We're just members of the guard, the ranch mistress' hired help or an empress' personal guard depending on where one looks for historical analogy. If in a particularly irritable mood, boss Strem might on rare occasions insist that guard members assigned to guntruck patrol in town wear the small arm patch which identifies them as guard members, though boss Strem seldom enforces directives of the sort for more than a day or two. Rolling along the streets and lanes of Candaltown in a heavily armed guntruck, the identity of the vehicle's occupants is quite obvious at a glance, though most people notice the guntruck rather than its occupants. Most people along Candaltown's lanes will take pains to avoid being noticed by occupants of guntrucks assumed not quite the same species as themselves.

And for the past four years now I've had even less of a reason to worry about what I look like, nor any reason to conform to societal demands regarding appearance. I'm one of seven people in the Candaltown guard who knows how to fly an airplane. No one, not even boss Strem, cares what I look like two or three miles above the surface of the earth, just as long as I fly that airplane with a reasonable measure of competence. If lucky, I'll just continue to fly light cargo and the occasional passenger to and from other towns up and down the east coast, might have to shoot the tires off a few trucks used by particularly bothersome highwaymen somewhere in outcountry. Always, in the back of my mind, however, is the nagging thought that I'm still a member of the guard. Each of Candaltown's four aircraft is equipped with heavy caliber guns and bomb struts beneath he wings. Although all four of Candaltown's type one eleven aircraft far outclass anything possessed by anyone else in town and country anywhere in the east, life offers no guarantees. I'd contracted for boss Holland and Grisson Ranch a few years ago on the west coast. Grisson's aircraft were also capable machines. That job had ended when Grisson Ranch had become involved in one of the constant range wars which had plagued the area for so long. Grisson Ranch had been burned to the ground, and I'd found myself once again wandering from town to town and country to country looking for someone who was hiring.

As far as I knew at the time, however, Miss Candal and the residence was currently on amicable terms with most of the mayors or presidents or bosses of whatever title in town and country along the east coast. Every several months boss Cramer in Landrin might order one or two of his flyers to harass trucks from Candaltown on the open road. Landrin's flyers are far more sane than Landrin's boss, however, will quickly yield the sky as soon as any of Candaltown's aircraft appear rather than risk engagement.

The sprawling, park like grounds of Candal residence lay on the western edge of Cadeville across Elizabeth Street, named, as far as I know, for a Candal who lived two or three hundred years ago when Candaltown had been a far different place. The residence itself is a long, white building, three stories in height, grandiose pillars about the front steps. The two members of the guard on duty at the door are the only members of the guard required to wear something which looks like a uniform, attire of a sort one might see in a two hundred year old picture book from England or some such place. Miss Candal's residence guards, however, are also the highest paid.

A narrow drive leads from Elizabeth Street across the grounds of the Candal residence, then to the compound of the Candaltown guard which lays another hundred yards to the rear of the residence. The guard compound itself lies along the town wall, although the wall on the western edge of town is in many places nothing more than a rusty chain link fence, the runway laying just beyond it visible for most of its length. The compound itself consists of the "metal building," a long building constructed of corrugated tin, several dozen wooden shed like buildings to the rear. Two of Candaltown's four aircraft were tied down near one of the sheds this morning, my own, and Roler's and Spencer's. I had no idea where Anderson and Waltham or Fine and Killian might be. For all I knew, or cared, they might be patrolling five miles away at fifteen thousand feet or sitting on some rough dirt airstrip a thousand miles away. A half dozen other members of the guard puttered about the compound, though no sense of urgency seemed apparent.

Two mechanics leaned at the open hood of a guntruck next to one of the sheds. Two other guard members were climbing into another guntruck preparing for town patrol.

With a final sigh of brooding resignation, I walked through the front door of the metal building, a few yards along a dark, narrow corridor, and then into the dayroom, large and brightly lit, furnished with several dozen tables and chairs, another half dozen couches next to the walls. The dayroom can easily accommodate forty or fifty members of the guard, though only about a dozen lounged about at the moment, most waiting for boss Strem to come along and tell them to go do something productive. My collapsing onto one of the dayroom couches ensured that boss Strem couldn't dock me a duty shift's pay. I might on occasion pass an entire day doing nothing but sleeping on this same couch, might glance amused relief as boss Strem walks past my couch toward another. The boss yesterday, obviously in a bad mood, had chased everyone out of the dayroom. I'd wandered across the compound yards, checked the fuel and oil levels on my plane, kicked the tires, wandered back toward the dayroom a few minutes later. Boss Strem's mood hadn't improved, however, so I and a dozen other guard members who had no current assignments found places to sleep the rest of the day away in various niches about the sheds.

"Aulry," and I turned to Roler and Spencer sitting at a table a few steps from my couch. "You been shopping at the Church Basement again?" Roler asked with an expression of amused mirth in youthful features.

"Your point, kid?" I mumbled, glancing toward the worn field jacket I wore. I had, in fact, bought it at the church's used clothing store.

"Mareya Lowe's still after you, Aulry," Roler continued in jovial mischief. "I'll lend you something decent to wear and you could have her at the altar in a week."

I nodded annoyed mirth, glanced again toward a young guard member who attired as he was might have appeared more in place in the midst of Candal Circle's crystal opulence rather than in the guard dayroom or behind the controls of an airplane.

"I see you're still hoping for an heiress on the Circle, kid, maybe Miss Candal herself? Maybe marry her and be boss of Candaltown yourself?"

A half dozen other guard members within hearing broke into idle laughter.

"Heh, I figure if I aim high, I gotta at least land somewhere in the middle."

I turned finally toward the other flyer, Spencer closer to my own age, his attire not shabby, though certainly more suited to a guard dayroom than was Roler's lavish ostentation. Spencer, as far as I knew, was another decent man, his only real concern to survive on a guard member's pay plus the small stipend we receive if we fly more than a hundred and eighty hours a month.

"Flyin' today, Tom?" Spencer asked.

"Don't know yet," I shrugged. "You?"

"Yeah," Spencer groaned. "Either me or the kid here. Ain't tossed the coin yet, but it's another Hineton run for Baldwin and Coverly."

"God," I groaned in sympathy. Baldwin and Coverly are two of Miss Candal's senior clerks, ill tempered old men who travel to other towns representing Miss Candal on matters of business and state. Baldwin will spend most of the two hour flight to Hineton throwing up all over the back of the airplane. Coverly will rant and rave, blaming the flyer for every pocket of turbulence which happens to be in the air. When Spencer has listened to enough of his passengers' complaints, he'll finally turn and threaten to toss them out the plane's door unless they "shut the hell up." They usually do so. Miss Candal and boss Strem can find another pair of clerks far more easily than they can find flyers capable of handling Candaltown's high performance one eleven aircraft.

I and the other guard members lounging about the dayroom finally stole quick, anxious glances toward the door as boss Strem walked in. Boss Strem is in his late fifties, tall, in reasonably decent physical condition. Usually dressed no differently than any other guard member, the coat he wore this morning was in slightly better condition than most others he wore. A visit by Miss Candal or someone else from the residence could be expected at the compound sometime over the course of the day. Boss Strem stood at the door for a long minute studying the clipboard he held. Hushed conversations resumed throughout the dayroom. It was obvious by the tentative and undemonstrative nature of the boss' demeanor that he had formulated no grand and coordinated scheme for the day. As usual, he was just making it up as he went.

Boss Strem wandered across the room, wrapping a pencil to the clipboard in distracted thought, glanced a passing half moment from his papers toward me.

"Aulry, you're here. Good," the boss scribbling something on his clipboard.

I sighed, shrugged, supposed the boss' observation didn't really require an answer. It did, however, indicate that I was not going to be spending the day on the couch.

The boss studied the clipboard another moment, glanced again about the dayroom. The assignment would go to whoever happened to catch his eye.

"Jorel, Milden," boss Strem announced, an idle wave of one finger atop the clipboard summoning two guard members from across the room. A thirty year old man and a twenty five year old woman approached.

"We need two patrols on the north side starting today," boss Strem stated. "Find a truck."

"Boss," Jorel complained, "we pulled our twenty this month-"

"Read your contract," boss Strem stated, a dismissing shrug as he turned his back, lowered his eyes to his clipboard once again. Joel and Milden moped from the dayroom.

Although boss Strem tried to limit the number of town patrols guard members were required to pull each month, he was under no contractual obligations to follow this unwritten rule. The three year contracts each guard member signed simply stated that in return for monetary remuneration they would, without question, obey the orders of Miss Patricia Candal, Candaltown's head of state, or her authorized representatives, in this case boss Strem.

"Spencer, Roler," the boss glancing up from his clipboard. "Which one of you are flying Baldwin and Coverly out today?"

"I am," the younger Roler groaned. Roler had lost the coin toss. "If you want, boss, I'll go shoot down all of Landrin's planes for you instead. Shouldn't take more than a day, tell Baldwin and Coverly I'll get back to them tomorrow."

Boss Strem glanced up from his clipboard, stared for a quick moment. I've seen the boss actually laugh on a few occasions, though never in response to one of Roler's attempts at humor. Boss Strem after a quick glance just turned and wandered toward the dayroom's door, glanced back one final time.

"And everyone else - find something useful to do."

I turned again toward the other two flyers.

"What d'ya think he's got for you?" Spencer asked.

I sighed, shrugged.

"Can't be much," I answered, hoping I was right. At least one of Candaltown's aircraft was always kept in the immediate vicinity of Candaltown itself.

"Maybe you get to shoot down Landrin's planes," Roler stated with his usual mischievous smile.

"Who knows," I chuckled, turning back to Spencer. "What's Landrin all about, anyway?" Spencer, born and raised in Candaltown, was most likely to know.

"Goes back fifteen years when I first started flying, my first contract, matter of fact. Old boss Cramer down in Landrin, calls himself president of the council or something like that, used to show up here in Candaltown every

couple months, spent a few minutes buying spare parts for his town's trucks up on Spaulding Hill, then he'd come back down to the residence seeking Miss Candal's hand in marriage. That was back when George Candal was still alive. George finally got tired of Cramer pestering his daughter all the time and canceled all of Landrin's contracts for spare parts. After George died, Cramer asked for Miss Candal's hand again, and she said no. Cramer's been nuts ever since."

"You're kidding," I laughed. "I always thought it was just another trade war, merchants bickering, cutting throats."

"So does everyone else. You hear things, though, when you're the one flying 'em all over the place. Ain't nothing else for 'em to do but talk when they're sitting two or three miles up in the sky. Lot of 'em are scared shitless and start talking to the flyer just to see if he looks like he knows how to fly a plane."

"Yeah," I had to agree. It had been the same in any of the half dozen smaller towns in which I'd worked over the years.

"So you signing again, Tom?" Spencer asked.

"Probably," I sighed. I'd have to decide soon. My second three year contract was nearing its expiration date. "Candaltown pays about as good as anywhere else, and unlike the kid here, I don't see myself marrying into big money any time soon."

"That's cause you give up too easily," Roler stated.

"What happened between you and that Tonlin girl?" I asked. "I thought you had your foot well in the door there, at least."

"Lord," Roler groaned, a sheepish expression settled into his features, and I turned back to Spencer for an explanation.

"We were flying the owner of one the Cadeville mills back up from Connell Lake. The old guy's scared shitless. The kid here's at the controls for final and the old man goes into hysterics when the kid puts on flaps figuring there's something wrong with the plane. The old man crawls up from his seat, looking for reassurance, I guess, and the kids turns around with drool hanging from the side of his mouth and says, 'my good man, not to worry. The furies of the ether hold the wing up.' The old man knows he's gonna die now and crawls back to his seat, probably thinking it's true what everyone says, you gotta be half crazy to fly an airplane to begin with. Anyway, the kid shows up at his girl's house that night with his flowers in his hand and it's the same old man who answers the door, the girl's father."

I broke into a quick moment's laughter, turned back to Roler.

"What did you do?"

"What could I do? I spent two hours with a stupid grin on my face trying every way I knew how to look sane while Tonlin stares at me. I don't think it worked, all the butlers and maids and such saying it was true what everyone says, that flyers eventually start to suffer from oxygen deprivation if they fly too much."

"Anyway," Spencer continued, "boss Strem calls us into his office and asks us what the hell we did to old man Tonlin. Miss Candal and Strem had three more contracts lined up with Tonlin, and Tonlin canceled every one of them sayin' he's gonna stick to overland trucks from now on, slower but safer, then says Miss Candal and the boss oughta be ashamed making healthy young men go up so high in the air where it just ain't natural to be there. Now both Miss Candal and the boss are pretty irritated. I mean, three contracts. That's a hell of a lot of money, and we get the speech how it takes years to build a one eleven and they gotta be paid for."

"Yeah," I sighed. "I know the speech," I winced thinking of the number of hours I had been required to fly already this month.

"Nothing on a partner, yet?" Spencer asked.

"Strem says he's talking to a flyer from Labrenville. Miss Candal's been talking to someone else, someone from Gordon Lake before they burned it down."

"They flew the old Spanrytown L types there."

"Yeah," I agreed. "It'd be like teaching them to fly all over again."

"Better than flying double hours yourself for another year."

"Yeah," I agreed. "All I had was Spanrytown hours before I showed up here, L's and F's. You know, I was perfectly happy in a guntruck till Strem found out I'd flown, then he points me to one of the one elevens and says both its flyers walked and it's mine. He expects me to take it up right then and there."

Spencer allowed himself a quick moment's chuckle.

"Waltham told me about it."

"Yeah, Waltham was there, thank God. Waltham talked the boss into letting me sit beside him for five or ten hours before I went up by myself. Course Strem almost had a heart attack, a perfectly good airplane sitting on the ground while I did nothing but ride along with another flyer. I couldn't believe a town boss didn't know anything about airplanes, especially the boss of Candaltown. Strem only concedes the issue when Waltham points to me and says the only way I'm gonna land a Candaltown one eleven without experience was in about a thousand pieces. Strem understood that."

Spencer chuckled again, glanced toward his watch, then toward Roler.

"Yeah, yeah," Roler groaned, pushed himself to his feet, none too soon as it turned out. Boss Strem chose that moment to wander back into the dayroom.

"Ain't you -"

"On my way, boss," Roler stepping purposefully toward the dayroom's door.

Boss Strem glared another moment's annoyance toward Roler, turned finally toward me.

"Aulry," the boss mumbled, nodding toward the door.

I pushed myself to my feet and followed.

"So, son, you settling in okay?"

"No problems, boss," I answered in easy amusement most of which I suppose I was able to conceal from the boss.

"Good, good," boss Strem answered. "You'll like Candaltown."

I've had this same conversation with the boss for five years now. Perhaps in another five he'll finally realize that I've had more than enough time to "settle in." I followed him a short distance down the narrow corridor, then came to an abrupt halt as he did.

"Oh hell," boss Strem stated, "just a minute, son," the boss stepping into the operations room, walking purposefully toward the radio desk, slapping a hand down on a microphone.

"Michael - Michael Johns? You there?"

A young clerk seated at the desk raised her eyes toward the boss.

"They went off duty an hour ago," Julia Claredon stated.

"Off duty?" the boss questioned. "All right, dear, you keep looking for them hooligans, hear? They gotta be rounded up before tonight or Miss Candal's gonna be jumping all over me," the boss nodding Julia back to the microphone, she making a pretense until the boss' back was turned.

"Hooligans," the boss complained as he strode back toward the door. "Every night, hooligans," and I followed the boss down the corridor and through the doors of the metal building quite aware that I would find our where we were going when we got there.

Boss Strem stood motionless another long moment studying the activity across the grounds of the compound. Several dozen guard members were now engaged in various manner of task. Roler sat in the cockpit of his plane preparing for the flight to Hineton while a young female guard member helped the elderly Baldwin and Coverly into the back of the plane. Boss Strem glanced toward a dozen guntrucks parked next to one of the weapons sheds.

"Two more town patrols," he mumbled. "Five more overland a month. That's seven -" the boss pronounced with a glance toward me.

"Yeah - seven -" though I'll never be certain if the boss ever saw me in anything other than a distracted corner of his mind.

"Well, son, we might as well get this over with."

"Yeah, boss," I answered, whatever the hell it was.

"Right," boss Strem striding across the grounds of the compound toward the Candal residence. As usual, the boss walked a straight line across the lawns rather than follow the curving stone path, boss Strem one of the few in Candaltown who could do so without fearing all manner of verbal retribution from the residence gardeners.

I pondered the large white building for another long moment as we approached. It had been two years now since I had last walked up the rear steps of the residence, then into a small office in order to sign another three year contract. Every one of the several hundred guard members employed by Candaltown signed in this same office, though Miss Candal herself might be present only if it was a guard member's first contract.

I felt no inordinate concern, however, that it was not time for me to renew as we walked past the single guard on duty at the residence's rear entrance and then up the steps. More than likely Miss Candal, who knew even less about airplanes than boss Strem, had contracted flights to some new destination and wanted a flyer to tell her if it was possible to fly an airplane north as well as south or some such thing.

I followed boss Strem through the residence's rear entrance, then along a hallway past a half dozen small offices in which Miss Candal's secretaries and clerks of various order and capacity worked. The boss didn't turn into the small office where guard matters were usually handled, however, but walked another ten yards along the hallway to the point where it intersected with the wider marble corridor running the length of the north-south axis of the residence. Glass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, the corridor provides access to the residence's ballrooms and the like. Boss Strem again came to an abrupt halt.

"Well, Aulry, I'll leave you to it, then."

With a distracted nod, the boss quite as I might have anticipated just turned a strode back down the corridor in the direction in which we had come. I watched him do so with the usual measure of amused amaze, with far less than I had the first time this had happened.

Glancing up and down the length of the marble corridor, then toward the office doors along the hallway, I wondered if I should have asked boss Strem what the hell I was doing here.

"Oh, I didn't tell you?" the boss had apologized last time, had complained another long minute that the demands of his job were catching up to him, had then turned without explanation toward the door leaving me wondering why I had bothered in the first place.

I fingered the small patch in my jacket pocket just to make sure it was there. Most of Miss Candal's clerks who worked in the residence would recognize me on sight. Still, this was the residence, and at the moment I could provide no reasonable explanation for my loitering here.

I settled myself onto a chair next to the marble walls of the corridor, not as comfortable as the couch in the dayroom, but it would do. I did nothing for another long while but listen to telephones ring in the offices down the hallway, watched someone walk from here to there every few minutes and wondered if it would be appropriate for me to fall asleep. I was, after all, doing nothing different here than I had been doing in the dayroom, sitting around looking at my watch, wishing it was four in the afternoon rather than seven in the morning.

Candaltown, I sighed in musing amusement, pondering memories of other towns to which I had wandered over the years. I had in Nazareth on the Ohio met one of the girls I had been certain would be the one true love of my life. It had lasted about three months, about as long as anything has ever lasted for me. Nazareth had resembled Candaltown in appearance, a bit smaller, perhaps. Everything, after all, is smaller than Candaltown. Nazareth had been a far different place to work, however. The boss of Nazareth never had to tell anyone to find something to do, had planned everyone's day minute by minute down to the smallest detail.

Grisson Ranch, on the west coast, had been even smaller than Nazareth, though I'd genuinely enjoyed the two years I had spent there flying old, single seat Camels in search of the boss' lost cattle. Boss Holland, called foreman by west coast natives, had resembled boss Strem in temperament, storming into the bunk house every morning and chasing everyone out, then leaving it to the individual to find something productive to do. Boss Holland had interfered only when the work someone happened to be doing wasn't productive enough. Grisson Ranch had been impossibly beautiful Meskill girls wandering from the deserts into mechanized civilization, wandering into the bunkhouse and pushing a bit of light, flimsy cloth from their bodies, crawling beneath the sheets.

I might have remained in the west and on Grisson Ranch for the rest of my life save for the fact that Grisson just didn't exist any more. Boss Holland had sided with the Plantil River Association in the range war against the North Grange Association. Boss Holland had chosen wrong. I had dropped four or five small bombs on North Grange forge and machine shops, had then flown back to Grisson Ranch just in time to watch it burn to the ground.

A large price then on my head because I had been on the loosing side, I had wandered back into the east over the next six months with two Meskill girls in train not quite certain what I was going to do with them. I'd wandered across the Ohio and back into mechanized civilization, had sighed a moment's annoyance awakening one morning in a seedy tavern room to find a hundred weight silver, and the girls, gone. I'd then wandered toward the coast, had visited a brother and sister at Star Lake for a few days, had asked if they knew who was hiring. Candaltown, my brother answered, was always hiring.

I'd wandered through another half dozen smaller towns and farms up and down the east coast hoping to find something quiet and out of the way. Candaltown, I had assumed, would because of its size and industrial character resemble Nazareth where one reported to work every morning standing at attention while the boss strutted up and down the ranks barking out orders. The boss of Nazareth, I'm quite certain, is Hitler reincarnate. No one else was hiring, however, so I had fished out my last ten weight silver piece and bought passage to Candaltown on the back of an overland freight loaded with cabbage.

It wasn't really all that bad here, though, I decided with an easy smile as I watched a young clerk walk down the corridor with a stack of papers in her hands, then climb the curving staircase which led to the upper floors of the residence. Working in Candaltown resembled Grisson Ranch more than anything else. You made certain boss Strem knew you were in the dayroom in the morning, then did what needed to be done, or did nothing when nothing needed to be done. As often as not, boss Strem would mumble "have a good flight" as he rushed by, and I would walk into the operations room to see if anyone knew where the hell I was supposed to fly to and why. Someone usually did. If not, I would search through a couple baskets of the boss' memoranda and make an educated guess. So far, it has always been the right one.

Boss Strem had on several occasions walked into the dayroom and asked why I wasn't already in my plane. Miss Candal was ready to go. Snatching up charts to just about anywhere from the operations room, I'd then walked up to Miss Candal waiting by my plane and apologized for being late.

Miss Candal, tall, forty though still the age's dazzling and impossibly beautiful "princess," is generally in a pleasant mood as I tell her it will only take a quick moment to plot a course to - ah? Miss Candal will then provide me with the destination, might with amused mirth in her features suggest that it would be a good idea to write the destination down the next time. She had, after all, asked boss Strem to arrange for the flight two or three days ago.

Leaning further into my chair, another clerk and a woman I didn't recognize walked down the staircase and then along the corridor toward the hallway. The clerk was just about to round the corner when she recognized me sitting next to the wall.

"Mr. Aulry, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes," I answered, pushing myself to my feet.

"This is Mrs. Corey," and I turned toward the other woman with an easy smile, offered my hand.

"Hello," I stated.

"Hello," Mrs. Corey answered with a gentle though reserved, perhaps even bashful smile. She grasped my hand in a quick moment's tentative touch, turned a questioning expression back to the clerk - hadn't, I suspected, any greater idea than I had as to why we'd been introduced.

"Well dear," the clerk concluded, turning back to Mrs. Corey, "just a few more papers to sign," a nod toward one of the offices down the hallway. Mrs. Corey and I exchanged a final smile. I glanced another moment's curiosity as she was led down the hallway, Mrs. Corey perhaps forty, pretty, a very pretty figure.

I lowered myself again onto my chair wondering if it would be a minute or an hour before I found out why I was sitting in the residence and why I had been introduced to one Mrs. Corey. Candaltown, I sighed in musing amusement. It seemed, I supposed, to work, despite the people who ran it.

I spent another moment wondering if I should just wander back over to the dayroom, stretched my feet, decided it didn't make any difference where I dozed at the moment. Rubbing a nagging ache from my shoulders, I passed another moment pondering my lot in Candaltown. I was forty two, certainly felt forty two at the moment, could think of no pressing need to move on again. Wander lust, I decided, was a younger man's vice. Hell, I even had a little flat here in Candaltown, nothing grand or luxurious, but on a par with most others. It was certainly more comfortable than had been the old bunkhouse at Grisson. Candaltown's streets were sometimes an annoyance after dark, particularly in the commercial villages. They were survivable, however, if one used a little common sense, kept one's eyes open near taverns such as The Hanging Dog and Twisted Pete's, taverns frequented by hard core drug addicts and the like. I spent most of my evenings at home anyway. Like most other residents of Candaltown, I could afford the monthly payments on a radio, an unheard of luxury in most other towns save for the wealthiest citizens or the more profitable taverns. I suppose I've given up on marriage, though I still enjoyed the occasional evening with Mareya Lowe or several other women my own age doing nothing more exciting, however, than listening to the radio or eating a meal together - Mareya Lowe and I still on occasion finding ourselves stealing musing glances toward each other. I suppose I can sigh in accepting resignation for the fact that I'll never see forty again, can sigh in musing amusement realizing that a woman like Mrs. Corey to whom I had just been introduced appears very attractive to me. I'd gazed as she walked on down the hallway perhaps toward a store clerk who wouldn't have attracted any undue attention along the lanes of town. Her dress indeed clerical and form fitting rather than lavish, ostentatious eloquence, I had indeed noticed a figure which could be called pretty - had at least for a timeless moment or two decided that Mrs. Corey walking on down the hallway was entirely naked as she did so.

I lounged on my chair another few moments, my very pretty store clerk gasping and trembling in ecstasy for my hands flung up and down her body in searching, devouring caress, she and I seeing raw, frenzied want in each other's eyes as we ripped the clothing from each other's bodies, she and I knowing it something chemical or magnetic which we just couldn't resist any longer. It was she and I entwined in abandoned lovemaking become all of the agonizing bliss we'd known with that first glance toward each other that it had to be. It had happened in a precipitous moment, Mrs. Corey and I knowing and admitting that there had been others in the past, and yet she and I finally entwined in passionate intimacy, she and I knowing we had finally found that other for which we had searched all our lives. It was indeed a moment's genuine emotional intimacy between us, she and I listening to the pounding of each other's hearts, she and I knowing we would never hurt each other, had finally found love without all manner tumultuous complication - and my very pretty store clerk gasping and writhing in shuddering violence for my frantic, devouring kisses and caresses, she and I finally gasping together in sweet, consumating ecstasy.

Passing another several minutes lost in all manner of pleasant imagining, I finally pushed myself again to my feet when Miss Candal walked down the staircase. I still had no idea, however, if it was her I was supposed to see.

"Oh - Mr. Aulry -"

"Yes - Miss Candal," I replied as she approached. As usual, I wondered for a quick moment why she had never married. She might be Miss Candal and - what was it, Head of State or something of the sort, but she was still an exceptionally beautiful woman.

"Mr. Aulry," she continued with a gentle smile as she offered her hand. "I'm so happy I ran into you. You really are an excellent airplane driver. You all call yourselves -"

"Flyers, Miss Candal -"

"Yes, indeed - I can never remember."

"They use the word pilot in some other towns, a very old word. It means - ah - airplane driver I guess -" and I suppose my smile now appeared something close to stupid.

"Yes, indeed," Miss Candal continued with a gentle laugh. As usual, I found myself far more at ease with her than I might have supposed possible. "It's very difficult to find people to drive my airplanes for me. For some reason I have a great deal more difficulty finding people to drive my airplanes than other towns do. I wonder why that is, Mr. Aulry."

"Well, Miss Candal, most other towns still fly old Camels and Spanrytowns. They're high wing aircraft which stall at fifty or sixty knots. The one eleven stalls at ninety -" Miss Candal of course having no idea what I was talking about.

"Yes, of course," she just answered with a soft smile. "That must be it. Well, Mr. Aulry, I do hope you and Mrs. Corey will like each other," and Miss Candal offered her hand once again.

I grasped her hand for a quick instant. Me and Mrs. Corey like each other? Miss Candal either didn't notice the expression of perplexity on my face or just assumed it another symptom of oxygen depravation popularly assumed to be common among flyers, Miss Candal offering a final civil smile - she and I perhaps meeting each other's eyes another timeless moment even as we stood in the staid and eminently inhibiting corridors of Candaltown's residence. It might even in the residence's corridor's have been a fleeting half instant's glance of helpless, frenzied abandon on my part, a form fitting dress ripped away, Patricia Candal the impossible feminine ideal, voluptuous hourglass beauty and allure to extremes I could only call agonizing - I daring only in vague corners of my mind suspect that it might have been a sultry little change in her posture as she offered me her hand, Patricia Candal finally turning, walking away - that which almost seemed another half moment's change in her posture and an agonizing eternity's maddening, writhing dance, Patricia Candal still entirely naked and knowing I stood in something I could only call a finished, reeling agony. It's a half moment's struggle for reasoning lucidity and restraint - and yet another devouring glance toward writhing curves which are broad and round to every maddening, agonizing extreme. It's Patricia Candal finally slammed into my arms, curves which are the impossible, voluptuous ideal finally mine to search and explore with my hands, to devour in frenzied, wanting abandon, Patricia Candal writhing in my arms in trembling, gasping fury, she and I at last flinging burning eyes toward each other's knowing it the ultimate, agonizing want for each other.

I stood in the corridors of Candaltown's residence - and finally decided it time for a moment's very genuine pause. I might just as well have been standing in the corridors of some ancient "palace" in Rome or the Americas gazing raw, wanton lust toward a civilization's empress or "first lady." Dignitaries from town and country across the east attired in expensive, ostentatious magnificence are bowing to the floor presenting themselves to the age's current empress. Residence handmaids are curtsying with awed reverence in their eyes. I was an airplane driver who certainly appeared such, a common soldier in an empress' or a first lady's "praetorian" guard - and I stood yet another reeling moment in the corridors of Candaltown's residence, an empress glancing a timeless moment over her shoulder, that which I still couldn't dare believe was a sultry little change in Patricia Candal's stance even in the corridors of her "palace" - and Patricia Candal and I stepping from the plane onto some airfield a thousand miles from home. Candaltown's queen and the east's empress slid her arm through my own quite as she had any number of times over the past few years as I escorted from the airfield toward town - and she and I this time flinging frenzied eyes perhaps toward a nearby shed right on the airfield, she and I finally flinging every last pretense aside as we fell through the shed's door, our lovemaking all of frenzied, ravenous abandon we'd both for so long known it had to be.

I stood in the corridors of Candaltown's residence, stood finally in settling, quiet thought another quick moment. Who was Mrs. Corey? I had been introduced to her, and now I was supposed to like her? Boss Strem obviously and as usual had neglected to tell me something.

I decided I'd had enough of the residence and turned for the hallway. I'd search papers in the baskets in the operations room. Maybe I was supposed to fly Mrs. Corey somewhere, though I still had no idea why it was necessary to like her in order to do so.

Walking back down the hallway toward the residence's rear entrance, Mrs. Corey emerged from the office now carrying a suitcase in her hand. Approaching, I glanced again with a measure of wondering curiosity. Mrs. Corey just didn't look like most of the people who contracted a flight with Miss Candal. Most of the passengers I flew were elegantly attired bankers or owners of the larger industrial shops who could afford what to me would have been a year's salary for a single flight. Mrs. Corey seemed quite unremarkable in appearance, her dress that which might have been worn by a clerk in a store in one of the commercial villages. It was pretty, form fitting rather than flowing, ostentatious eloquence, certainly revealed a very pretty figure. Mrs. Corey's face was all wrong too. The haughty, almost arrogant self assurance was missing. Mrs. Corey was, I decided again, just pretty, forty I yet again guessed, a touch of gray in otherwise dark, coal black hair which she wore in a short knot at her neck rather than in some fashionable arrangement preferred by most of Candaltown's social elite.

"Hello again," I began as I approached.

"Hello again," Mrs. Corey answered, attempting a gentle laugh. I couldn't help but notice the hint of nervous anxiety now in her features.

"Uh - Mrs. Corey," I began, "are you flying today?"

"Oh no," she answered, "not in Candaltown. I flew Spanrytowns with my husband in Gordon Lake, but a one eleven would be far too much for me."

And I realized in an instant who Mrs. Corey was, and why she wasn't the epitome of elegance and wealth. She was the flyer with whom boss Strem had said Miss Candal was talking.

I stared another moment, finally realized that I was doing so.

"I'm sorry," I stammered, forced a rational expression of gentle civility into my features. "Um, you've just contracted -"

"Yes," Mrs. Corey answered when I hesitated. "They haven't told me what I'll be doing yet. I would assume some sort of clerical work, perhaps flight dispatching. I told boss Strem and Miss Candal that I've flown for twenty years now, and know most of the routes -"

I realized again that I was staring when Mrs. Corey hesitated. I recovered a moment later, even felt a quick moment's amused mirth when I considered my own circumstances the first time I had contracted with Candaltown. I could well appreciate what this quiet, soft spoken woman must be feeling.

"I'm sorry again," I tried, now with a genuine smile. "I'm one of the one eleven flyers, Mrs. Corey. It's just now dawning on me why we were introduced."

"Yes, I see," Mrs. Corey answered, perhaps an edge of relief in her features.

"They did the same thing with me when I first came here five years ago, asked me questions, shoved a contract in front of me, then pointed me toward the compound."

"Well, I'm afraid they haven't even shown me the way to the compound yet."

"No," I chuckled, again with an easy smile. "Let me help you," and I reached for the suitcase.

"Thank you -"

"Tom."

"Thank you, Tom. I'm Carolyn."

I held the door for her, then nodded toward the winding stone path which led toward the compound. I stole another glance as we walked down the rear steps of the residence, pondered again the expression on her face. It wasn't one of obvious pain and despair, though I suspected she must be concealing very strong emotions. Not many people had escaped from Gordon Lake. Although I couldn't be certain, Carolyn Corey was most likely a widow.

"Have you found a place in Candaltown yet, Carolyn?" I asked as we walked toward the compound.

"No. I just arrived an hour ago. I've been staying in Collinsville for the past two years, since -"

"Yes," I answered, gently. "It must have been very difficult after Gordon Lake." I didn't want to press her at the moment, however. After all, I had survived Grisson Ranch myself. I knew what it felt like to have one's entire life burned down around you. Had Mrs. Corey raised children at Gordon Lake as well?

"It was very difficult, Tom," Carolyn answered with a soft, appreciative smile. "I lost my husband and my son. Both were flyers."

I winced.

"I'm very sorry," I answered.

"A great aunt in Collinsville took me on. She was very kind, but she's not well off. I flew one of Collinsville's Spanrytowns for a year and a half, mostly mail and dispatch routes, until Collinsville sold the routes. Then I heard Miss Candal was hiring. I'll be just as happy to work on the ground. Flying every day was getting to be a bit much for me."

As we approached the front door of the metal building, I was wondering how I was going to tell Carolyn Corey that her own expectations were not those of boss Strem or Miss Candal. Perhaps I would just put it off until she had had a chance to catch her breath. Boss Strem, who chose that moment to emerge from the front door of the metal building, had other ideas.

"Oh, Aulry, good. And Miss -"

"Corey, boss," Carolyn answered.

"Yes, Miss Corey, all settled in?"

"Well, I've just -"

"Good, good," boss Strem turning back to me. "Aulry, Landrin's pestering our trucks down on the Little Elm Highway again. Fly down and chase 'em off, will you, son? Be a good chance for you to show Miss Corey how to fly your airplane. That's a good lad," and boss Strem was gone.

I felt a quick moment's relief. The assignment wasn't a difficult one, a forty minute flight south to Landrin country. If I couldn't find any of Landrin's planes harassing overland freights on the Little Elm Highway, I'd buzz Landrin Town and boss Cramer's residence two or three times just to let him know that boss Strem was thinking about him, would then wander back up to Candaltown wasting as much time as I could along the way. With a little luck, boss Strem would have forgotten about me by the time I landed. I would spend the rest of the day doing nothing, would pass the evening in a flat in Coleyville listening to the radio and deciding surviving another day was an accomplishment.

And with that I glanced again toward my other immediate concern. She would, I supposed, have to decide for herself. I could sympathize with Carolyn Corey. When it came down to it, however, there wasn't a great deal else I could do for her.

"They expect you to fly," I just stated.

"Obviously," she answered, an expression of brooding annoyance in her features. "I told them I've never flown anything like a one eleven. My impression that they weren't really listening was obviously correct."

"You could try to get out of your contract."

It's genuine concern in her features, perhaps even a moment's panic. I could again well appreciate her feelings. If she and Candaltown disputed the terms of her contract, it wouldn't be Candaltown which suffered. Many of the occupants of the cardboard boxes in the commercial village's alleys had come to grief over contractual difficulties of one sort or another with Candaltown.

"All I had," I shrugged, "was Spanrytown and Camel hours before I came here. It can be done."

"You don't mind?"

"Doesn't make any difference to me. The planes belong to Candaltown. They're good planes. They're - one elevens. But none of us have any great personal affection for them, certainly no financial stake or interest in them. All we do is collect our pay on Friday. And I've been flying mine without a partner now for six months. Got twice as many hours as I need. Any affection I might have felt for the plane is wearing pretty thin at the moment. All I gotta do right now is fly down to Landrin. Couple of boss Cramer's Spanrytowns have been pestering our trucks for the past couple months. I usually just holler at them over the radio once or twice, maybe fire off a half dozen rounds in front of their noses and that does it. If you want, just come along for the ride. And it is a one eleven -" another glance, a moment's obvious edge of intrigue in her features. There are only four one elevens in existence.

"All right," Carolyn finally answered, her voice sighing resignation.

What is it they say, I asked myself as we walked into the operations room - life's a bitch. I've heard this phrase from one side of the continent to the other, though I've heard it as often in Candaltown as anywhere. I suppose that's because Candaltown is where you end up when you've gone through everything else. Placing Carolyn's suitcase on the chart shelf, I reached for several local charts, then turned toward the young clerk at the radio desk.

"Going up?" Julia Claredon asked, her feet propped across the desk.

"Yeah," I answered, glancing amused mirth toward a young guard clerk glancing searching curiosity toward Carolyn, searching, I supposed, for signs of insanity in Carolyn Corey's features. After all, a flyer with touches of gray in her hair has certainly spent a great deal of time in the airless reaches of outer space. A few people have begun to search me for any such signs, though I suppose my appearance spares me as intense a scrutiny. I look thirty rather than forty two. I'll probably be "son" to boss Strem for another ten years. I suppose most people think I'm too young to suffer the most dire effects of the mysterious flyer's disease.

Carolyn and I stood a few minutes later next to the one eleven. I kicked one of the tires, stood in silent inspection another moment. Candaltown's mechanics exceptionally competent, I hadn't any great concerns regarding the plane's mechanical condition. Engineers from Spaulding Hill performed frequent and detailed maintenance on all four of Candaltown's one elevens, all in all a far cry from Grisson and several other towns where I'd had to perform engine overhauls myself. It's another moment's obvious concern in Carolyn's features, perhaps that same edge of wondering awe, that which I had felt myself the first time I had stood next to this plane having just been informed that I was expected to fly it. The four bladed prop catches a flyer's attention immediately. As far as I know, Candaltown's one elevens are the only planes in the air with an engine powerful enough for such a prop. The plane's cabin usually configured for light cargo, seats for six passengers can be bolted down in ten minutes, though during the evacuation of Edgartown three years ago, I'd lifted off from a three thousand foot strip without a great deal of difficulty with eleven people stuffed into the back of the cabin.

"It's not as hard as it looks," I began, turning back to Carolyn. "I think you'll enjoy it. And it is a one eleven -" one of four aircraft against which opposition in the air just doesn't exist.

She and I settling ourselves onto the front seats, Carolyn passed another minute studying the instruments and the controls. Other than pistol grips at the flyer's right hands and throttles at their left, the controls aren't remarkably different than those found in the most recently built Spanrytowns. I glanced another moment, I suppose, toward a store clerk sitting in the right seat of this plane. And still, it was that same edge of knowing, wondering intrigue in a flyer's features. It would be pleasant to sit on the ground at least occasionally and watch this damn airplane roll down the runway with someone other than myself at the controls. I could indeed, I decided again, see a flyer's fascinated intrigue in the features of a store clerk sitting at my side in this plane.

"The stick takes a little getting used to," I stated, forcing an easy humor into my voice, feeling a twinge of guilt for doing so. If this plane really was beyond her, however, I'd never let her take it up by herself. Until then, I was trying to make it easy for her, not really the safest thing to do. I was just tired of flying this damn airplane by myself.

I finally started the engine. The one eleven's instruments might have resembled those of a Spanrytown. The rumbling, throaty sound of its engine did not.

"It's quite a thrill the first time you take it up," I continued, hoping to distract Carolyn from her concerns. "You'll like it. Climbs out at a hundred sixty knots and two thousand feet a minute."

I glanced again toward my store clerk though I felt encouraged when the numbers, twice those one might encounter in a Spanrytown, didn't seem overly frightening to her. I decided to try more. After all, she was a flyer. There must be a part of her which longed to try those numbers out.

"It'll top out at three hundred knots, cruise at two forty though I've held it at full power a couple times when boss Strem wanted me somewhere quick. Had it up above thirty thousand once or twice too," a nod toward the oxygen masks beside the seat. "We usually fly passengers at ten or eleven thousand, though every once and awhile boss Strem wants photos of something, and doesn't want anyone to know we're taking them."'

Carolyn nodded, attentive enthusiasm, I decided, in her features as I reached for the microphone.

"Julia -?" I called.

"Yeah," the answered crackled over the speaker a quick moment later, "see ya, Tom."

"See ya," I chuckled, replaced the microphone onto its cradle, turned again to Carolyn. "That's Candaltown flight clearance."

"Not remarkably different than anywhere else," Carolyn chuckled.

"Yeah," I answered, nodding toward the hundred yard grass taxiway which led through the chain link fence toward the runway. "Go ahead and take it out." Carolyn glanced a moment's concern. "Drives just like a Spanrytown. You'll like it."

She nodded, determination now in her features as she reached for the throttle.

"Bout twenty five'll get it rolling," I stated, assumed a posture of complacent ease as I pulled a chart onto my lap on which the course to Landrin was already plotted. I could always grab the controls if I had to.

Carolyn throttled the plane forward and then onto the runway without difficulty, however, more slowly than I might have taxied it myself, though I found myself enjoying the sensation of the plane in motion with someone else at the controls. It was finally, I suppose, a great many doubts gone. Taxing an airplane along the ground can be every bit as difficult as flying it. My store clerk had very obviously spent a great many hours behind an airplane's controls.

"Wind's about three forty," I continued, pointing to the flag a short distance to our left. "Runway is three six at this end, so just let her go. You wanna rotate at ninety -" another hopeful glance.

"You want me to -"

"Go ahead. You'll enjoy it."

It's yet again determination in her features, that same edge of wondering intrigue. I stole another glance as she guided the plane onto the runway. Carolyn doesn't really look like Alice Anderson who flies with Waltham. Alice is twenty, wears clothing boss Strem bemoans as scandalous, shouts her opinion from one side of the dayroom to the other. Carolyn Corey, I decided again, looked like a store clerk in Riceville or Candal Center, the ordinary skirt she wore falling just above her knees. She'd spoken in a quiet, reserved voice ever since I had met her back at the residence, though I supposed anyone who had lived through Gordon Lake might be prone to anything but boisterous enthusiasm. You don't have to be Alice Anderson or "the kid," I guess, to fly an airplane. I can spend entire days myself in brooding quiet. And the last thing I wanted anyway was a partner who spent long, tedious flights talking about nothing.

As often as not, I will just thrust the throttle forward as soon as I complete the turn onto the runway. Carolyn, however, brought the plane to a stop, turned again toward me, hoping at least in a corner of her mind, I suppose, that I would reach for the controls. I could yet again easily understand her hesitation, she just arrived in Candaltown and finding herself in another bizare moment at the controls of a machine toward which she might just an hour ago have gazed the shuddering fright anyone might. About to say "you'll like it" again, I decided that was wearing a bit thin. Perhaps just honesty this time.

"Might as well, Carolyn. Like I say, rotate at ninety. All you need is light pressure on the stick. Soon as you've got a hundred and forty knots turn left to two one zero. Just like you did it in a Spanrytown, except everything happens about twice as fast. It's gonna seem like you're driving a tiger for a minute, but you'll pick it up quick. I'll take it back if you get anywhere close to a stall. And - you gotta admit, it is a one eleven. You must have wondered at least once or twice what it would be like -"

"I suppose I did," Carolyn answered with a quiet though encouraging chuckle, a final sigh at she turned back to the controls.

She edged the throttle a short distance ahead, lined with the runway, finally pushed the throttle to the stop. As usual, it's something almost otherworldly, feels quite as though the four bladed prop is grabbing barrels of air as it propels us forward. It's raw, audacious power of a sort which can't be experienced in any other machine. We're passing through sixty knots short seconds later, rotation speed for a Spanrytown.

"Doing fine," I called across the seat in an easy tone. Carolyn appearing calm and confident, I fixed an eye on the airspeed gauge. "Seventy - eighty - ninety -"

As I had myself the first few times I'd flown this plane, Carolyn applied a bit too much back pressure against the stick. We were flying empty, however, save for five hundred rounds of ammunition in the wing guns, the plane just slicing from the ground into the air with that same bizare audacity. Carolyn settled into an easy climb a quick moment later, and I reached for the gear handle.

"Doesn't take long to get used to it," I stated, glancing toward the altimeter and airspeed. "Okay, left to two one zero."

Again I stole a quick glance as she entered a cautious thirty degree bank. I was searching for any sign that my store clerk felt the thrill anyone who had flown in the past must feel at the controls of a one eleven. And it was there indeed, that same edge of wondering fascination about the edges of her eyes.

"Takes forever getting around at standard rates in this thing. Go ahead, lean it over, have a little fun. Take it to sixty," I urged.

"Sixty -?" she asked.

"Go ahead. I've had it all the way to ninety at this speed. You'll like it," I said with a gentle laugh.

Carolyn edged than plane over another fifteen or twenty degrees, intensity now in her features. She's certain, I suppose, that the stall warning horn must blare at any moment. When it did not, however, she banked another few degrees, overly cautious now, allowing the nose to drop.

"It'll take it. You're nowhere near the limit. Go ahead - pull -" a flash of her eyes toward mine, the thing as she pulled the plane's nose up yet again a raw, forceful power which is unique. It's our weight crushed onto the plane's seats with a force seeming bizare and impossible - Carolyn a flyer who knows that it isn't.

"Spaulding Hill and the engineers say it'll take six or seven weight," I continued as she wrenched the plane about, finally recovered onto a southerly heading.

"Oh God," she moaned when she rolled a bit too far, not panic, just irritation.

"Stick takes a little getting used to, hydraulics and all. You're doing fine. Might as well take it up to ten thousand for now," that to a Spanrytown flyer sounding something like outer space.

Carolyn nodded, settled the plane into a steady climb. Again studying the chart for a quick moment, I set the directional radio to Landrin. It was anyone's guess, however, as to whether Landrin radio would be on the air. It usually depended on what sort of mood boss Cramer was in.

We'd passed through five thousand feet in another several minutes, were climbing at fifteen hundred feet a minute forty knots faster than a Spanrytown's top speed. Even after four years the numbers still fascinate me, and I glanced again toward that subtle hint of wonder in Carolyn's features, pleased that it was there.

"Incredible, ain't it," I stated.

Carolyn turned with an easy smile.

"Like driving a tiger," she laughed.

"Yeah."

"How long have you been flying, Tom?"

"Twenty years, on and off. Started when I was twenty two."

"Oh -?" Carolyn glancing the skepticism most people did when I revealed my age. "You can't be that -"

"Yeah, I am, with all the aches and pains to prove it."

"Yes," Carolyn laughed. "I know what you mean. I'm forty two as well."

We exchanged quick smiles, though I don't suppose there was a great deal of anything beneath those smiles. Young Roler is quite right. It's been some time now since I've taken any great pains over my appearance. The old field jacket I wear is warm, comfortable, nothing more. And Carolyn Corey is now quite aware that a position in the Candaltown guard is not a particularly lucrative or attracting position, most guard members who choose to remain such reconciling themselves to inevitable fate. I felt, I suppose, an idle curiosity for Carolyn's gentle smile - glanced again, I suppose, toward my exceptionally pretty store clerk with in exceptionally pretty figure. And still, I couldn't imagine that she was yet fully recovered from Gordon Lake, suspected that she felt anything but ease at the moment just arrived in Candaltown with nothing more than a suitcase to call her own. Such was life for more than a few members of the Candaltown guard, that perhaps one of the reasons why very few of us were married.

Carolyn guided the plane through ninety five hundred feet, began leveling for ten thousand, contented ease in her features as she manipulated stick and throttle. It's perhaps a moment's amused mirth for me knowing that her adjustments aren't going to be enough.

"God," she again groaned in professional irritation when the aircraft shot a few hundred feet above ten thousand. A heavy Candaltown one eleven, twice the empty weight of a Spanrytown, tends to keep going the way it's currently going unless a very deliberate effort is made in advance to deter it from doing so.

"Not bad at all," I offered. "There's nothing else to bump into up here anyway. Landry's Spanrytowns come up to seven or eight thousand every so often. Most everyone else stays at five or below. You'll get used to it."

"Maybe I'll even enjoy it?" her voice gentle amusement.

"Sure you will," I answered. She's quick, I decided. Maybe a good partner indeed.

I pondered the terrain beneath our windows for another idle moment, still felt the same fascination for a perception of movement even at ten thousand feet. It's yet again something otherworldly, she and I now existing alone in some alien state unapproachable by the rest of humanity, the machine under her control one of only four capable of invading a world so far removed from that from which we have come. It's a sense of alien isolation which can only be felt in a Candaltown one eleven. And it's yet again the wondering fascination in her features which I'd hoped to see, my store clerk gazing knowing awe toward the instruments as well as toward the earth so far below our otherworldly windows.

I glanced a few minutes later toward the directional gauge and the needle swinging forward.

"Boss Cramer's on the air," I noted, a nod toward the plane's instrument panel. "I'll listen in every once and awhile whenever I'm down this way. Sometimes it's the boss himself between songs, says things like only road kill and such end in Candaltown, reason why it's so big, attracts flies from everywhere."

"I've listened to him in passing a few times myself," Carolyn answered.

"Yeah. I guess that's one of the few advantages of Candaltown. It's always gonna be there. I got burned out myself, outa Grisson Ranch out west, but I don't suppose anyone's ever gonna burn Candaltown down."

"Where are you from, Tom?"

"Star Lake, originally, North River country," Carolyn returning an easy smile. Star Lake is not far from Gordon Lake.

"I've been there. It's a pretty little town."

"Yeah. Sometimes I think I should have stayed. I still have a brother and a sister there, but they're just making a go of it on their farm, not much left when they get their families fed. Candaltown's probably it for me."

"What's Candaltown like?" Carolyn asked, an obvious edge of anxious concern in her eyes.

"It's - everything you've heard about it, I guess. It's not really that bad a place to work, especially in the guard. Partners watch out for each other -" perhaps another glance which was something other than dutiful scrutiny.

Carolyn nodded, perhaps a moment's amusement in her eyes as she turned her attention back toward the plane's instruments. I found myself hoping again that she would indeed be able to master the one eleven. Both of the plane's flyers were usually dispatched for flights of long duration, and there was nothing more irritating than listening to the kid or Mareya Anderson drone on and on about absolutely nothing for fifteen hundred miles. Carolyn Corey seemed perfectly content to pass long minutes in brooding quiet. I couldn't be certain at the moment what she was really like. She probably at the moment felt very much alone. Still, she was handling the plane as well as might be expected of someone with nothing more than Spanrytown experience, that my only real and immediate concern.

We navigated for another few minutes from the Candaltown directional, the only reliable radio this far north along the east coast. Radios in Calanery and Washington Factory and several other of the larger towns around Chesapeake Bay operate twenty four hours from time to time, though it's not a good idea to place any real reliance on them.

"Lets go down to three thousand," I began. "We can follow Landrin for now. We'll be over the Little Elm Highway in twenty minutes."

Carolyn nodded, an expression of determination in her features as she reached for the controls.

"Try it with the stick," I suggested, glancing from a corner of my eye, concealing the mischief I felt. She nodded again, a hint of anxious concern in her features as she edged the plane's nose beneath the horizon. I watched in gentle amusement as she reduced power, glanced with alarm toward the airspeed indicator, then reduced power again. It's an obvious edge of anxious concern in her features, though no sign of panic whatsoever. Had she pulled power this far back in a Spanrytown, the plane would slow down, even in a descent. A one eleven does not, particularly with its nose this far below the horizon. Carolyn was about the reach for the throttle again when I broke into a soft smile.

"Let her go for a minute," I suggested.

"You sure," she asked, an expression of wonder in her features as she glanced again toward the instruments. We were descending two thousand feet at minute approaching three hundred knots.

"We're nowhere near the limit," I answered. "Boss Strem's not happy unless I've buzzed boss Cramer's residence in Landrin at three hundred and fifty knots. Strem's jubilant if he gets an angry phone call from Cramer saying we shattered half the windows in the residence. If we haven't, Strem'll likely as not have us fly back down to Landrin all over again."

"I see," Carolyn chuckled in mirthful amusement, perhaps an edge of wondering skepticism in her voice. As far as I know, three hundred and fifty knots is the highest figure anyone can quote for a machine built by men, at least today.

"I'll take it for awhile anyway. We're close to the Little Elm now," Carolyn nodding, releasing the controls into my hands. "I'm gonna push this thing for a few minutes now," I continued, complacency, I hoped, in the tone of my voice. My words were more than sufficient. "Landrin's planes don't make a great deal of fuss when we show up, but I'm a hell of a lot more comfortable coming down on them fast rather than slow. Ready for it?"

"I'm all right," Carolyn answered, determined confidence in her features. It pleased me, and I reached for the throttle again, pushing it forward.

Short stretches of the Little Elm Highway came into view a quick minute later, though forest concealed the narrow dirt road for considerable distances. None of Landrin's aircraft appeared to be in the area.

Approaching the east west highway from the north, I sent the plane into a moderate dive, allowed airspeed to climb, then leveled at five hundred feet. I had considered performing the next maneuver without warning Carolyn, but decided against doing so. Waltham had given me no warning whatsoever the first time he had done this to me, but I just couldn't see myself doing the same thing to someone else, particularly, I supposed, not to Carolyn.

"I'm gonna pull a tight two seventy to the left over the road," I began. "It's intense, five or six weight, but it'll give you an idea of what this thing's capable of at speed. It also scares the hell out of any bad guys who happen to be watching, and gives me a chance to shake the cobwebs out myself."

"All right," Carolyn answered, tense, though understandably so. After all, she probably knew what a tight turn in a Spanrytown at a hundred and fifty knots felt like. We were now approached the road at three hundred.

Directly over the road, I rolled left all the way to ninety degrees, then pulled close to the limits. It's a crushing, teeth gritting maneuver. It feels quite as though a fist is slamming you down onto the seat. You do it, I suppose, because you enjoy it, even at my age. I glanced again, this time with genuinely professional scrutiny - and her eyes awash with all of the wild exhilaration I'd hoped to see.

When the plane had dropped another several hundred feet I rolled back enough to raise the nose, for once just enough, not too much, not to little. I glanced again toward the ground, toward the compass, finally slammed the stick right and forward, my recovery one of the best I'd performed in quite some time. I'd recovered more than a few times in the past from this wrenching a turn with the aircraft's nose thirty or forty degrees above the horizon. This morning, however, we were flying straight and level five hundred feet above the highway in a westerly direction.

Glancing again toward Carolyn, I felt another moment's genuine satisfaction for that which I saw in her features.

"It is - intense," she stated with a gentle laugh.

"Yeah," I answered. "When we get done down here, we'll go back up and you can try a few on the way back home. You'll be doing them every day in no time at all."

"Perhaps, though I doubt like that, Tom."

"Oh, I won't lie, that one just fell into place. I'm - eminently average. More often than not I'll recover in some very embarrassing climbs. Waltham's best at this sort of thing. He'll do three sixties at a hundred feet, and ninety degree banks with passengers in the back until the boss starts screaming at him cause people are canceling contracts."

Again Carolyn returned a gentle, quiet smile.

I gazed another minute toward the Little Elm Highway, toward the occasional ten wheeled truck crawling along at ten or fifteen miles an hour. Any faster and a driver risks all manner of damage to his vehicle. Five years ago I had pulled several guard patrols along the Little Elm, though even in one of Candaltown's sturdy guntrucks twenty miles in one hour is a jolting, bone rattling ordeal.

Switching on another radio, I adjusted the frequency to that most commonly used by cross country truck drivers, listened to several minutes of idle conversation. One driver complained of the number of hours his boss required him to work. Someone else was threatening to pound another driver's face in unless he "got the hell out of the way." More than a few voices, some, though not all feminine, offered all manner of propositions to drivers in low, sultry, and obvious tones.

Reaching for the microphone, I depressed the key without bothering to wait for silence, a rare event on this frequency.

"Anyone seen an airplane around here?" I asked.

"Who the hell wants to know," the radio crackled.

"Me," I answered, shaking my head. This was always the way it went.

"Who the hell's me, tough guy," a different voice asked.

"The guy who's gonna pound your face in if you don't answer my question."

"Oh," laughter finally sounding across the radio. "Try down by Crowe River. Someone said they saw an airplane down there. What the hell you want with an airplane anyway, bub?"

Shaking my in amused mirth, I replaced the microphone, then banked the aircraft toward Landrin once again. Crowe River, a small roadside truck station lay twenty miles north of Landrin. All I need do was fly the needle another ten minutes until the Crowe River itself came into view.

Carolyn sat in silence, gazing toward the forested terrain. It is indeed a fascinating sight watching almost five miles of gently rolling hills slip beneath us every minute. I felt no great concern flying a one eleven five hundred feet above the treetops, however. A Spanrytown diving on us at full power would still be a hundred knots slower than our present speed unless that flyer was completely suicidal. Even if he was, I could climb several thousand feet in seconds with little more than gentle back pressure against the stick.

"There," Carolyn suddenly stated, pointing ahead.

"Yeah," I answered when I saw the dot perhaps a thousand feet above the horizon ahead. "Good eyes, Carolyn," I smiled, then yanked the one eleven another five hundred feet into the air. It took all of ten seconds and very little loss of airspeed to do so.

"Just one of them," I said, meeting Carolyn's anxious eyes. "This should be nothing." I still unlocked the guns, however, just in case.

Even though the Spanrytown was also flying south toward Landrin, it took us less than five minutes to close the ten mile distance. Pulling power back several miles behind the other plane, we glided the final distance in another quick minute. Now only a few hundred yards behind the Spanrytown, I lowered the flaps ten degrees, added power, studied the aircraft another long moment. A large red "2" painted on the tail indicated that it belonged to "Pete" or "Crank," though we have no idea what their real names are.

"I think it's Pete," I stated, glancing toward Carolyn, then toward the Spanrytown.

"How can you tell?"

I nodded again toward the other plane, badly out of trim, one wing occasionally dipping toward the surface even though there was no turbulence in the air whatsoever. Actually, Pete is an excellent flyer, one of Landrin's best. He has a few bad habits, however.

"Pete imbibes a bit," I stated with a mirthful smile. "He pays attention to what he's doing when he has to, doesn't always bother the rest of the time."

I reached for the radio, switched to Landrin's frequency, then reached for the microphone, certain that the other flyer had not yet noticed our arrival.

"Pete," I shouted into the microphone. "What the hell you doing with that bottle?"

The Spanrytown's left wing dipped at an alarming angle for another quick moment, Pete with cigar in mouth and bottle in hand reaching for his microphone.

"Who's this? And w'dya want?" the radio crackled. It was indeed Pete's voice, the usual edge gruff laxity in it.

"Look over your right shoulder, Pete," I answered. Again the Spanrytown's wing dipped as Pete's aged face, unshaven, long white hair hanging at its side, appeared at the Spanrytown's window for a quick moment.

"Alternate," the radio crackled, and I reached down to switch frequencies. "Pete," I explained for Carolyn, "has something to say that he doesn't want boss Cramer to hear. Alternate this month is one twenty one point eight. We change it every couple months, hold cardboard signs to the windows with the frequency written on them."

"Hey, boss," Pete's voice again sounded across the radio. "I'm settin' down at Crowe. Follow me in and I'll buy you a quick one."

Smiling, I reached for the microphone.

"Maybe next time, Pete. Listen, Pete, boss Strem says I gotta shoot you down. Says you been pesterin' our trucks up on the Little Elm."

"It weren't nothin' but a big mistake, boss. I was reachin' for my - coffee cup and this infernal machine just got away from me. Next thing I know I got wall to wall truck comin' up to smack me in the face. Bein' the peaceable good natured sort I am, I flew over to wave at him, let him know there weren't no hard feelings. He musta mistook my intentions, emptied a pistol at me so I gotta put a round or two into his radiator but weren't no big deal."

I settled into a quick moment's laughter. This was as good as any Pete came up with.

"Besides," Pete called a moment later, "you guys all know I got my eyes on Miss Candal. Now there's a looker. She don't know it yet, but I'm gonna make here my sweet lovin' baby one of these days, and you heard it here first."

I chuckled again as I raised the flaps, pushed the throttles forward, then banked right until we were beyond the range of Pete's guns.

"All right, Pete," I called one final time. "You let boss Cramer know we're thinking about him. Talk some sense into him. I'd miss our pleasant little conversations with you guys if we had to burn Landrin down and you'd be out of a job, Pete."

"You got it, boss," Pete answered.

A quick minute later, I centered on Landrin's radio once again, glanced toward the Spanrytown now falling rapidly behind, then turned toward Carolyn.

"Might as well fly over town once or twice, take a quick look at things before heading back."

"All right," an edge of quiet concern in Carolyn's voice. "Is it serious between Landrin and Candaltown, Tom?"

I glanced gentle commiseration. I hated war myself. Carolyn Corey, a survivor of Gordon Lake, must certainly have felt the same.

"Not - not really serious," I answered. "Cramer himself's the only real problem. Jackie Sperin and Carl Olery - they're our spies - spend a lot of time in Landrin. Cramer's always spouting off about something or other, but you get downtown on the street and no one gives a damn about it all. Lot of people right in Landrin think boss Cramer's a little touched in the head. I've no doubt old Pete's been buzzing trucks on the Little Elm, but probably not because of boss Cramer's say so. Pete just gets a little too much of a snootful and decides he's gonna have a little fun. I've caught him a couple times, and my God, no matter how happy he gets, he flies that old Spanrytown like it's built on him when he's paying attention to what he's doing. He's been flying for about a hundred years now. But like I say, Carolyn, I don't think there's gonna be a war, not unless boss Cramer really goes nuts. And he'd have to be nuts taking on Candaltown. We got a couple hundred people regular in the guard now, and boss Strem calls all the temporaries in every summer for a couple of weeks or so. There's two thousand of them in decent shape, another couple thousand who know which end of the rifle the bullet comes out. If it was really serious, they'd have bosses cross country getting people on the farms organized too."

Carolyn nodded, and I decided to try more.

"Like I say, I was at Grisson Ranch when it was burned down. The absolute last thing I want is anything like that again."

"Yes," Carolyn agreed. "It's all senseless," another long moment's studying glance toward me. I was certain she wanted to say more.

"How - how are you doing yourself, Carolyn?"

"It's been hard - at times," she began, meeting my eyes, perhaps an edge of very real pleading in hers. "I kept busy for a long time. That helped. There's - there's not much else to say, I guess. I get up, do whatever I have to do, and that's it."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"I didn't really belong in Collinsville, though, didn't really know anyone there. It's very small, and you fee like an outsider. I suppose that's why I finally decided on Candaltown - just to loose myself there."

"Yeah," I again agreed. "That's Candaltown. It's not really that bad, though, especially if you can find a place in one of the residence villages. I'll show you around when we get back if you want."

"Thank you, Tom," Carolyn's smile gentle warmth "You must know the place fairly well by now."

"Yeah. I spent my first year on guntruck patrols. It's something like a marshal's or a sheriff's job in other towns. I still pull it every couple weeks or so, maybe a shift or two when boss Strem doesn't have any flights contracted anywhere. You spend eight or nine hours chasing drunks off the street, though what you're really doing is driving around letting everyone know Miss Candal and the residence runs Candaltown. The commercial villages all have their own law, constables or marshals, and they take care of most civil matters. Mostly we're just patrolling the streets, sometimes some of Miss Candal's farms outcountry. Every once and awhile they send a couple guntrucks all the way down here. You run up and down the Little Elm for a week or two, drink beer, then wander back north to Candaltown and tell boss Strem what you saw."

"You sound like you enjoyed that."

"I did - until boss Strem found out I'd flown Camels and Spanrytowns and stuck me in this thing. I mean - I like flying, but I was ready to give it up after Grisson Ranch. And I'd sure as hell never thought about flying a one eleven. But I guess you know how that story goes now."

"I guess I do," Carolyn chuckled, her features calm and complacent mirth. I suppose she's debating whether or not to challenge the terms of her contract. I found myself genuinely hoping that she would not - and realized a quick moment later as I stole another glance that I'd stolen quite a number of them already. It might have been a moment's notice about the edges of Carolyn's eyes - might even have been a sultry little change in her posture for a glance on my part which I finally suspected had been a timeless little moment's devouring notice. Finally turning my attention back to the airplane's instruments, I settled into a resigned humor supposing it all an unavoidable little fact of life. I had when presented to my exceptionally pretty store clerk in the corridors of the residence deported myself with gentle civility, had perhaps for a fleeting moment or two noticed a form which was pretty, perhaps even girlish - had for a few timeless moments ripped every last shred of clothing from her body. Carolyn Corey offering me her hand in the corridors of the Candal residence had smiled gentle, quiet warmth doing so. And still, I had indeed, I yet again realized, seen at least a fleeting moment's amusement in her eyes even when she'd turned and walked on down the corridor, that a culminating opportunity to rip every last shred of her clothing away and she eminently aware that I was doing so.

"I guess I do - know how the story goes," Carolyn repeated with a brooding sigh. "I probably won't contest the terms of my contract, however. I'm not really in a position to do so - everything I have to my name in that suitcase -"

It seemed as timeless a moment as any I had ever known. I chanced a glance, saw the same gentle amusement in her eyes. And it was she and I sitting together in a Candaltown one eleven the front of which was every bit as confining as a Spanrytown - the hem of her dress falling half way to her knees as we sat just inches a apart and a change of her posture seeming that which I could only call consumating.

I urged myself, necessarily so in the circumstances, toward a settling calm, maneuvered the plane several minutes later into a moderate rate of climb, leveled at four thousand feet. Landrin, slightly smaller than Candaltown though still a mile from edge to edge, was now less than ten miles away. The steel fabrication plant on the western edge of town is the first structure which can be identified as we approach. A quick half minute later the power generation station closer to the center of town came into view. I pointed both structures out to Carolyn, explained that both were on the top of the list according to boss Strem's latest war plan. I felt comfortable enough with Carolyn by this time, however, to intimate the grave concerns I had regarding my own involvement in such activities, though I felt no real concern doing so. I said nothing to Carolyn I might not have said to boss Strem himself. All he could do was fire me and I'd have to find a job somewhere else. Who knows, maybe even in Landrin. It's common enough for individuals who work in various town guards and militias and the like to drift from place to place more than a few times over the course of their lives. Ideologies and such in today's world are the concern of those who order the fighting, very rarely the concern of those who actually have to do it.

Two miles from Landrin now, and I nosed the aircraft into a moderate dive, lining directly onto Landrin's main street. As usual, I felt a pang of conscience doing this to so many thousands of people below, though I supposed I'd feel a whole lot worse if I were doing it with bombs attached to the wing struts. Less than a minute later I eased the stick back, perhaps a bit too soon, but a whole lot better too soon than too late. I'm not quite as good at this as Waltham who can raise a cloud of dust flying along Landrin's main street. Not bad, though, I decided with a soft, perhaps mischievous smile of contentment as we entered Landrin a hundred feet above the street. Four or five seconds later we were downtown, clearing the five story Merchant's Exchange Building by fifty feet. Another five seconds later and we departed Landrin before any of the truck drivers now scrambling from the street really had a chance to dive into the cover of alleys between the buildings.

South of Landrin I entered a moderate, climbing turn. I wanted Landrin at least two miles to port by the time I completed the turn toward the north. Every great once and awhile a few red tracer rounds will fly into the sky from Landrin Barracks if a plane makes a second pass. I had no intention of doing so today, however. The first pass had made the point quite adequately.

Leveling onto a northerly heading, I then felt Carolyn's gaze and turned, perhaps with a sheepish expression.

"You enjoyed that," Carolyn stated, amused accusation in her features.

"Maybe a little. I'm hoping that if I do it without bombs, I'll never have to do it with them. Waltham puts on a hell of a better show than I do."

"Is that why everyone was running from the street."

"Yeah. Waltham's come down here a couple of times and done touch and goes right in the middle of Main Street."

Carolyn broke into another moment's laughter. I was beginning to suspect that she had recovered from Gordon Lake a bit more than I might at first have supposed.

"It won't make much of a point with boss Cramer," I sighed, "but if our little shows make it harder for Cramer to pull men off the streets and put guns into their hands, I'll be happy. Seeing a one eleven pointed directly at you is one hell of a terrifying sight. I don't have any great stake in Candaltown myself, just a little flat I rent on the north side, but I'd rather sit in that flat in the evening and listen to the radio than have to sit on a hill somewhere watching for some army or something from Landrin. If that army knows what's waiting for them, maybe they won't come."

Carolyn nodded in quiet understanding. Sparing with her words, quiet when she did speak, her smile was open and genuine, without affectation as far as I could tell. The prospect of long duration flights with her didn't seem at all unpleasant.

"Go ahead and take it back for awhile," and I released the controls into her hands. "Just fly north, thirty degrees or so. Try a few turns if you want. We'll pick up Candaltown radio in twenty minutes or so. Matter of fact, might as well just wander around for awhile anyway. If we get back too soon, boss Strem'll just find something else for us to do, maybe some real work this time."

I sat for another long while in contented silence, pondered the terrain below with my head on arm. Most of the farms in this part of the country are small, single family operations, ten or fifteen acres cut from the surrounding wood. Every twenty or thirty miles a small village, perhaps a dozen houses, a steepled church, passes beneath our windows. Carolyn banking into a moderate left turn, I gazed idle wonder toward one of the old towns for a long moment. A half dozen large trucks sat near the center of the ruins. Though we couldn't be certain at this altitude, I suspected the trucks belonged to the Landrin Steel Fabrication Company. As far as I knew, boss Cramer and Landrin owned salvage rights in this part of the country, though the process by which such rights are negotiated between towns is no great interest of mine. I supposed the high altitude photographs I and other Candaltown flyers were frequently assigned to take had something to do with it all, though only Miss Candal, boss Strem, and a few of the senior clerks who worked in the residence would know for certain.

The farms closer to Candaltown were a bit larger, particularly those owned by Miss Candal herself. Five years ago, I'd spent more than a few weeks wandering along narrow dusty roads from farm to farm in outcountry, as often as not pulling the guntruck to a stop in front of small roadside taverns, spending an idle hour or two listening to the locals express their opinions about Miss Candal. By and large such opinions were favorable, in many cases enthusiastically so, certainly more so than they had been when bosses in most other towns in which I had worked had been critiqued by town and country's residents.

"As far as queens go," many local farmers will say, "our Patricia is as good as any." Many of the tavern keepers in the small villages surrounding Candaltown would place free beers in front of us. "Nothing too good for the queen's knights," they will say.

Smiling softly as I gazed down on another small cluster of buildings rising beside a road intersection, I decided the tavern keepers' analogy was as good as any. I will sometimes pass an idle hour or two in the library on Candal Circle and leaf through two hundred year old books, wondering what life must have really been like when the world was a far different place, when people lived for seventy or eighty years instead of fifty.

The books say that monarchies were more prevalent in Europe than here in North America, though I suppose if you stretch the point to its limit, Miss Candal could be considered a queen. It's her portrait stamped on all Candaltown gold and silver pieces. Still, pageantry seems to be a thing of the past, at least the elaborate pageantry described in the books. When a Candaltown guard member signs his or her first contract, Miss Candal does nothing more than grasp your hand for a quick moment, smile, and express her hope that the terms of the contract are acceptable. You've decided that long before you ever signed the contract, however. The terms are very simple. Miss Candal says do something, and you do it. I suppose her question is nothing more than Candaltown's single small concession to pageantry.

I'd lost myself entirely, I realized a few moments later, in silent, pondering reverie for quite some time, turned toward quiet amusement in Carolyn's voice.

"Tom," she stated, nodding ahead. We were only ten miles from Candaltown.

"Go ahead and land," I said with a mischievous smile.

"Tom," Carolyn groaned, and I pushed myself straight in the seat, reaching for the controls.

"I haven't slept so peacefully in a long time," I chuckled. I had indeed enjoyed sitting back in this airplane and doing nothing.

I finally reached for the microphone.

"Julia - Aulry here," I called.

"Yeah," the answer sounded. Julia Claredon is another who wastes very few words.

"Winds, hunn?" I asked.

"Three forty at five."

"Anyone around?"

"Nothing scheduled till two, a Spanrytown from Crocher."

"Okay, Julia. I'm gonna do a couple touch and goes."

"Knock yourself out."

Replacing the microphone, I turned toward Carolyn another quick moment.

"We'll try one straight in, then do a couple patterns. Won't take you long to pick it up."

Flaps and gear now down, we approached Candaltown at a hundred and twenty knots, cruising speed for a Spanrytown. I suppose I'm about as comfortable landing a one eleven as I'm ever going to be. An occasional passenger will watch me as I guide the plane toward the runway and then, when we're on the ground say, "nothing to it, heh?" or something to the effect. Carolyn, however knows better. I suppose she must notice the intensity in my expression as we bank another few degrees to the left onto our final approach. Even when I reduce back another ten knots, the plane is still approaching the narrow dirt strip as fast as most other planes will fly at full throttle. It takes only ten seconds to pass over the southern half of Candaltown, a solid jumble of brick, steel and wood off to our right. Manipulating the stick and throttle in careful, easy movement, we finally reached the end of the runway. Flaring perhaps a bit too late, I pounded hard onto the runway, then thrust the throttle forward as the plane bounced back into the air. It was not one of my better performances, certainly not the proverbial "greaser" in which the plane settles easily and lightly onto the runway, though it wasn't, I'd have to say, "that bad." Guiding the plane back into a climbing left turn, I glanced across toward Carolyn as soon as I dared.

"Doesn't look too hard, eh?"

"It doesn't look hard, no."

"Come on - you'll enjoy it," I chuckled. "Now that you can fly it, I know you wanna land it."

We performed low approaches for a few more minutes, Carolyn at the controls several times, then a few more touch and goes. Carolyn aborted her first attempt when she judged her altitude and airspeed wrong. They were, but she realized it in plenty of time. Her next several attempts were better, and I felt no need whatsoever to reach for my own controls. Indeed, I was yet again pleasantly impressed with her ability. My quiet and unassuming store clerk seemed to sense exactly what the heavy one eleven needed, and reacted accordingly. To put it simply and succinctly, she is a better natural flyer than I am, and with experience, will eventually handle this aircraft better than I am able. I found myself wondering if professional envy might even be a problem sometime in the future.

Again Carolyn guided the aircraft into a left turn, then lined with the runway for final. I was feeling satisfaction now, I suppose. Her turns were clean and precise, little or no over control. There wasn't any reason she couldn't fly by herself.

"Try a full stop," I stated in an easy voice when Carolyn recovered onto final.

Carolyn shot a quick glance of apprehensive concern toward me.

"Won't be any problem for you, Carolyn," I continued. "You got five thousand feet in front of you on the ground. You can stop this thing in fifteen hundred if you have to, but take a couple three thousand if you want. Just settle her down, let her roll, and then start on the brakes. Takes quite a bit longer than a Spanrytown, but you'll have no problem at all."

Carolyn nodded, guided the aircraft toward the end of the runway. I suppose I know what she's feeling, remembering my first experience with this aircraft. It feels very different approaching the strip at a hundred knots rather than the sixty of a Spanrytown. You touch the controls, however, and you feel the extra speed necessary. Even at a hundred knots a one eleven feels heavy. At the end of the runway you know, you feel that you need power as well as rotation or the flare is not going to be enough.

And Carolyn, as I now might have anticipated, settled the plane smoothly onto the ground, that same contented satisfaction in her features as she pulled power off.

"Plenty of room," I stated, and she began applying pressure on the brakes. Again, you can't help but notice the difference between this plane and others. Spanrytowns touching down are rolling little faster than a guntruck's top speed. You just hit the brakes and you stop. The one eleven is whipping down the runway at breakneck speed. You're not thinking stop, but slow down. Carolyn braked easily at first, then with confidence, bringing the plane to crawl with a large stretch of the strip still ahead.

I suppose I was smiling without the least affectation, Carolyn's expression contented ease. It had been a good landing and she knew it. I was pleased that she did.

"Just do a one eighty back to the shed," I stated. "You won't have any problems getting used to this plane, Carolyn. You've got a good feel for it already. I'll go up a couple more times with you, but you can take it on your own after that. It's not too bad when there's two people assigned to a plane. You get more time off."

Again Carolyn just nodded as she swung the plane about, then back along the runway toward the guard compound. There are no parallel taxiways at Candaltown. The runway itself just lies in an open field a short distance beyond the town wall. As often as not a few dozen children will peer through the fence whenever Candaltown aircraft or aircraft from other towns are landing and taking off. A one eleven is a particularly fascinating show. The shriek of its four bladed prop run at full power can be heard half way across town.

"Sometimes in the morning before school," I continued as we approached the compound, "you'll turn onto the runway and there's kids all over it. Just call Julia or whoever's in the operations room. She has whatever guntruck's closest run up and down the runway a couple times and chase them back over the fence."

"All right," Carolyn answered, then turned with question, perhaps even concern in her features. "What happens now, Tom?"

Glancing again toward Carolyn for a quick moment, I realized this must indeed be her primary concern. Had it been a man or a younger woman beside me, I might have said something like, "you're on your own, now." For reasons I had as yet no time to ponder, I couldn't see myself saying this to Carolyn quite so bluntly. Still, it was about all I really could say.

"I don't really know myself," I shrugged. "I usually just park the plane. Calwicky or Crane'll come along sooner or later and fuel it. Then we just poke about the ops room or the dayroom, see if Stem's looking for us. If not, all you do is hide out for the rest of the day. Our report time for this plane's been seven in the morning for the last couple of months now, so you have to hang around the compound at least till three in the afternoon. After that you make sure boss Strem's not looking at you or hope he doesn't have anything else for you to do, then you make a dash for the street."

"All right," Carolyn chuckled, perhaps another moment's searching anxiety in her voice. "You said you'd show me around, Tom -?"

"Yes - certainly," I answered - a flash of my eyes, every last shred of clothing torn from her body, perhaps a knowing, answering flash of her eyes toward mine. And still, I felt comfortable with Carolyn Corey. At least I saw no reason not to feel comfortable with her, and felt relief for this. I would be spending a great deal of time with her for the foreseeable future. Even guard members who are married generally spend as much time with their partners during working hours as they do with their spouses during off duty hours - and my guard partner as she maneuvered the plane toward the maintenance sheds deciding another change of posture necessary and that seeming as agonizing a little dance of sultry writhing as any I had ever seen. It was yet another flash of her eyes toward mine - and the thing almost seeming that which it had been any number of times in the past when it had been Alice Anderson sitting in the plane's right seat her leg lain to my own in blatant teasing caress, Alice not given to a great deal of subtly as she glanced toward one of the maintenance sheds. "Sex, Tom -?" a twenty year old Alice whose dress covered very little of anything inquired. It was now my forty year old store clerk sitting beside me in this plane, a subtle little dance, a half moment's flash of her eyes. It was all just a fact of life, I decided again - Carolyn Corey with gentle mirth in her eyes eminently aware that her new guard partner must rip the clothing from her body every few minutes.

A quick minute later we had parked near the maintenance sheds. As Carolyn shut the aircraft down, I glanced, as usual, about the grounds of the compound. No one appeared to be in any particular hurry, nor, more importantly, was boss Strem standing at the parking apron waiting to shout, "where the hell you been?" as soon as I stepped onto the ground.

Climbing from the aircraft a minute later, we walked toward the metal building, approaching the door just as Larry Atwel emerged.

"Ain't safe," Atwel began.

"The boss?" I groaned.

"Ranting and raving," Atwel answered.

I groaned again. If Larry Atwel was fleeing boss Strem, the boss must indeed be in an irritable mood. Larry Atwel is about my own age, though there the resemblance ends. Atwel is heavily built, with muscles looking something like flowing stone. Atwel is leader of the guard's shock squad, twelve individuals who resemble Larry in temperament and appearance and respond to emergency situations both in Candaltown itself and well as across country. The shock squad by itself can usually accomplish what would otherwise take fifty other guard regulars or two hundred temporaries. Every several weeks I or another of the flyers will fly the squad to a practice range a few miles north of town where they will parachute from the aircraft at two or three thousand feet.

"Heard Strem mention your name a couple times, Tom," Atwel continued.

"Yeah -?" I asked in trepidation.

"Don't worry. Apparently you done good. Strem got a call from Cramer in Landrin. Cramer's hoppin' mad. Only time I saw Strem smile all morning."

"Thank God," I sighed.

"So," Atwel continued as he turned toward Carolyn and offered his hand. "This is your new partner, heh? I'm Larry Atwel, Candaltown's chief kicker of bad guy's butts. I'm the one they send when no one else wants to do it."

"Hello, Larry," Carolyn answered with that same quiet smile. I suppose I'm struggling with my own now - am finally glancing without a great deal of pretense toward a very pretty woman with a very pretty figure. I hadn't really, I decided, considered the possibility of anything more than a working relationship between myself and Carolyn. I might look thirty rather than forty two, but the size of my build has as much to do with the fact as my facial features. I am certainly no competition for Larry Atwel. To play with historical analogy a bit more, I suppose one might call Larry Atwel Miss Candal's chief knight.

I felt easy resignation, I decided, to the obvious as Atwel and Carolyn grasped each other's hands for a quick moment, though I suppose I did ponder Carolyn with something seeming a finished, accepting abandon. She really is very attractive, of medium height. She looks forty, though her features are soft, delicate, almost a match for Miss Candal's. Carolyn moves with a certain easy poise, perhaps one might call it graceful, the perception accentuated by the dress she wears. I suppose I do feel a measure of concern for her as we stand beside the metal building this morning. I hope no one hurts her. She's very vulnerable at the moment, just arrived in Candaltown. I still hear that edge of quiet pleading in her voice as she asks me if I will show her around Candaltown.

"Well," Atwel continued, releasing Carolyn's hand and glancing back toward me. "How's she drive that sky buggy of yours, Tom? Are me and my babies gonna feel safe in it?"

"She drives it better than me, Larry. You'll want to ride back with her instead of jumping."

"True partners," Atwel laughed - and Larry Atwel of course holding nothing in reserve, another glance toward Carolyn, a mirthful nod toward me. "He's nuts about you, you know, mad in love with you, bout ready to light into me with all guns blazing -"

Sighing, chuckling in resigned mirth as Atwel walked away, I turned toward the same quiet amusement in Carolyn's features. I hadn't, I supposed, hidden much of anything from her to begin with, had glanced intrigued fascination toward my new partner the entire morning - might at least for a fleeting moment have debated pounding Larry Atwel into the ground if he didn't get his hands off her.

"How is partnership defined here in Candaltown, Tom?" Carolyn Corey asked, perhaps just the edge of knowing amusement in her eyes.

"Actually, it isn't, no more than it is anywhere else, I suppose. At least there are no written directives. Boss Strem says something like, 'you two work together,' then leaves it to the partners. You can change partners any time you want. A lot of people do. When you're in the guard, it's better to work with someone you trust and get along with, even for flyers, because we still pull a few guntruck patrols. Our choices for partners are limited because there's usually only a handful or two of flyers here at any time, but you can still switch partners if you want," perhaps an edge of desparate, frantic pleading in my eyes.

"Oh?" Carolyn answered with a gentle shrug. "I enjoyed working with you this morning, Tom. Maybe more than I should have. After all, you were going out of your way to make me feel comfortable, and that's not really considered the best way to teach someone to fly."

I acknowledged the truth of it with a soft chuckle, edged my eyes to that which I couldn't again doubt was quick, perceptive brilliance in hers.

"Well, I'm being honest when I say you'll have no problem with the plane, Carolyn. If you didn't know how to fly it, believe me, I'd say something pretty damn fast then."

Carolyn chuckled in easy mirth.

"My husband was the same when he taught me to fly the Spanrytown. Very kind and tolerant, but he'd put his foot down when I wanted to try maneuvers he didn't think I was ready for."

"Oh -?" I asked, intrigued. Carolyn had flown very conservatively this morning. It was difficult to imagine this quiet, almost demure woman who looked so much like a store clerk performing maneuvers not actually required to get an airplane from one place to another. As I had suspected earlier, however, there must indeed be a part of her wont to push the aircraft a bit closer to its limit.

"Perhaps," Carolyn continued, "you'll be shouting at me the next few times we go up."

"Perhaps," I laughed, as we walked across the yards behind the metal building, strolling without haste in the general direction of the maintenance sheds. A few dozen other guard members, most regulars, a few temporaries performing the sixteen hours of duty required of them every month, wandered about in various manner of tasks. Wasting time seemed to be the most prevalent task.

"Where are we going, Tom?" Carolyn asked several moments later, a measure of anxiety returned to her features. I had indeed said nothing by way of explanation, had just started walking - might for fleeting moments have admitted my current guard partner's company markedly different than anything I'd known in the past.

"Nowhere, really," I shrugged. "We don't have any standing assignment at the moment, so until someone says different, we just hide somewhere on the compound. You can do whatever you want, Carolyn, just as long as we stay within shouting distance of the compound. Just poke around if you want, look the place over."

I nodded toward one of the clerks who worked in the operations room, the clerk now walking hurriedly across the grounds of the compound shouting "Calwicky" over and over again.

"That's how you know when boss Strem's looking for you," I explained.

Carolyn nodded, and I turned to ponder the interior of one of the sheds. Larry Atwel and a half dozen members of his shock squad were sprawled across the floor beneath stacked crates of ammunition. Strolling a short distance further down the line of sheds I peered through another door. This shed unoccupied, I pushed myself through the door and found a small niche among piled sacks of grain.

"As good a place as any to hide," I sighed as Carolyn, who had just followed me through the door, found a similar niche several steps away.

I glanced as she did so, I suspect, another moment's stolen scrutiny, glanced toward a woman who I decided certainly didn't resemble the social elite of Candaltown, at least not in the manner of her movement and expression. She lowered herself to a makeshift bed amid the grain sacks as though it were perfectly natural to do so.

"I'm fine, Tom," she chuckled.

"This is the guard, I suppose," I chuckled as well. "You might work every day for a month, then do nothing but sleep for a couple more weeks. Not much of a life, but as good as some, I guess."

"About what I did in Collinsville for two years. All I had there to sleep in was a fuel shed."

"As often as not the fuel shed's all that's left here."

"And sacks of grain can seem a luxury. I spent last night in a truck loaded with crates of chickens. It's not easy to sleep with four dozen chickens staring at you. I intend to enjoy my grain sacks."

I nodded, noticed indeed the fatigue now in her features - and couldn't again help but notice a great deal more as she curled herself into a little niche in a corner of the grain shed. It's yet again, I suppose, a bizare and fleeting moment's wild, abandoned imagining, a struggle for a reasoning, settling calm.

"You're not married, Tom?" she asked a quick moment later.

Larry Atwel, I decided, had intimated clearly enough that I wasn't.

"No," I chuckled. "Almost, a couple of times. Never quite, though. I spend the odd evening out with Julia Claredon or Mareya Lowe - Mareya's guard regular too, guntruck patrol, all that. I'm more than happy most evenings just sitting at home listening to the radio or reading the newspaper. If you want, Carolyn," I continued, perhaps allowing myself yet another half moment's abandoned imagining, "you can come over and spend the night. It's nothing unusual for guard members to share a place for awhile if one of them's just contracted. It takes awhile to find a decent place, and the tavern rooms here are anything but," my proposition just the consequence of practical necessity, perhaps one more fleeting moment's almost helpless imagining, a glance toward a very pretty woman with a very pretty figure - I wondering perhaps for another bizare and timeless moment if I could even wait until tonight, wondered if Carolyn Corey knew that it was she and I entwined in frantic, abandoned lovemaking. It might indeed have been another half moment's amused mirth in her eyes - perhaps even a subtle little change of her posture as she lay curled in a nest of grain sacks a few paces from my own.

My proposition, I decided as quickly and again, had been devoid of ulterior motive, perhaps just a lingering edge of amusement in her voice as she answered it - perhaps even another subtle little change of her posture she knowing that I was, as she answered, frantically tearing every last shred of clothing from her body.

"I was hoping you'd take me in for the night, Tom."

"Oh -?" perhaps a wondering chuckle.

"One of the clerks in the residence suggested as well that the tavern rooms were drunks and cockroaches, then suggested that you were of a sort who wouldn't allow me to spend the night in a tavern room -" perhaps yet another moment's edge of mirthful amusement in her eyes. A residence clerk, as likely as not, had suggested that it would be preferable to fight off an overactive partner's advances than suffer drunks and cockroaches in a tavern room.

"All right," I chuckled. "It's not a big place, nothing like you'd see up north, just a front room and a back room in a flat. You can have either -" though I supposed my struggle for a reasoning calm become increasingly futile.

"Thank you, Tom," a touch of her hand to my arm, I perhaps allowing myself another fleeting moment - a glance toward a quiet soft spoken woman with an exceptionally pretty figure - a glance toward a woman with whom I was violently, passionately, painfully in love.

Settling finally into something at least close to awakening reason and musing quiet, I did, I suppose, steal yet another glance as she closed her eyes, curled herself into a makeshift bed in our grain shed. It might indeed, I decided in gentle amusement, have been a moment's sultry little change of her posture for me. And still, it had probably been nothing more than a half moment's intriguing mischief on her part. She knows I'm her own age, but I just don't look it. I felt as nagging a little concern that she might never think me wont to find myself genuinely attracted to her, might suppose that only a twenty five year old woman would appeal to me, a woman who looks closer to my own age even if they were not - and I in our little grain shed finally allowing myself another glance toward the woman with whom I was madly, passionately in love, the woman who I had invited to spend the night with me she and I to pass the night in frantic, abandoned lovemaking.

It's yet again a moment's search for lucid, settling calm. Carolyn's innocent little gesture of affection toward me, I decided, had settled it all for the moment anyway. A touch of her hand to my arm had saved both of us all manner of stammering, pointless explanation which neither she nor I were up to at the moment. Let it be for now, she'd said - perhaps one fleeting half instant's mischief in her eyes, she and I to decide this evening rather than at the moment whether or not we were going to ravish each other - the touch of her hand to my arm perhaps a fleeting moment's teasing caress.

I settled into my own niche atop sacks of grain in our little shed - the little shed in which I usually reposed by myself. I could at the least, I supposed, admit that I had been pleased when a partner had just followed me into that shed, could admit that I enjoyed her company - yet another glance and perhaps another moment's abandoned imagining toward my store clerk attired as any such in the east might be, Carolyn's dress as form fitting and revealing as any - her figure something a world more than just pretty as she lay curled atop sacks of grain in our little shed. She wasn't a Mareya Lowe or a Miss Candal, tall hourglass beauty to every voluptuously alluring extreme, and yet my Carolyn curled atop sacks of grain in our little shed suddenly as maddening and alluring a woman as any whose ever lived.

Enough, I sighed, settled finally and again into a resigned humor - wondered perhaps for a few more moments if Carolyn Corey's nature had always been that which it had seemed this morning, quiet, unassuming reserve. I'd always supposed my own nature the same, that perhaps the reason for that which I decided again might indeed have been a very genuine affection between us only hours after we had met each other. It's yet again, however, a struggling search for a lucid, reasoning calm, a glance toward a woman just contracted into the Candaltown guard - a glance, therefore, toward a woman who laying curled atop a nest of grain sacks a few paces from mine has ended alone in the world owning little more than the clothing in which she was attired.

She was, I finally decided, my partner and therefore mine to guard and protect, that for the moment enough. I found myself in another several minutes drifting toward that which had at the time been the one undeniable passion of my life - sleep. On any number of occasions over the past five years in Candaltown, the demands of guard duty and a passion for sleep had come into conflict, often for days at a time. No one in the Candaltown guard begrudges another the occasional morning or afternoon recouping sleep which has been sacrificed to the demands of duty often enough in the past.

Nor, at the moment, did I have any other overriding passions in my life. Flying could still be enjoyable at times, could as often, however, seem grueling work rather than a passion. I was just as happy sitting at home pondering a thirty foot square patch of green behind the house, sitting for an hour or two with a small notebook in hand writing down whatever odd thought came to mind. I sometimes passed a few idle hours in the library in Candal Center, the largest, as far as I know, on the east coast. Candaltown University, a building almost as large as St. Mareya's Church on the circle, is also one of the largest such institutions which exists today, though again, I suppose it couldn't compare to such institutions which existed in the past, some of which, according to extant literature, were housed on campuses as large as Candaltown is today in its entirety. I've taken the odd class myself at the university over the past five years, mostly literature and philosophy, though the tuition is very expensive. Most of the university's regular students are the sons, and in a few instances, the daughters of the financial and industrial elite. A few of the students are from other towns scattered across the east, their tuition paid by the towns themselves in anticipation that the students will return as doctors and teachers.

I've often wondered why a far greater number of these "foreign" students are women, particularly given the hazards of outcountry travel. The roads even in Candal country in spring can be little more than a quagmire of mud, can at any time of the year be infested with sizable and well organized bands of thieves and highwaymen. Candaltown guard patrols make occasional forays several hundred miles into outcountry when particularly brazen bands of highwaymen are making a nuisance of themselves. I've flown Larry Atwel and his shock squad even further in search of highway gangs come into possession all manner of exotic, heavy caliber weaponry. And still, I've known students at the university who have traveled all the way from the Chicago towns, a six hundred mile journey which can involve a week's dangerous travel and cost a hundred weight silver, and a great number of them women.

I glanced again toward Carolyn, sleeping an hour now, felt a moment's irritation that I couldn't fall into sleep myself. I gazed, I suppose, the same intrigued fascination wondering what her life prior to the moment had been. She was obviously intelligent, perceptive, well educated. She spoke classical English, impeccably, rather than one of the local northern dialects which can be all but unintelligible to a resident of Candaltown. In a way, I suppose we're both fortunate to have been raised near Candaltown since it seems this is where we're to end. The vulgar English spoken on the streets here in Candaltown isn't markedly different than that which is spoken in Star Lake country or was spoken in Gordon Lake before its destruction. When, almost ten years ago now, I had first wandered into the west and onto Grisson Ranch, it had seemed almost every other word was unfamiliar to me. Many local dialects in the west in grammar and syntax are beginning to show an Asian influence. In other places, particularly in isolated country in the Rockies, it can be argued that local speech it no longer simply a dialect of English at all, is rather an entirely new language derived from English and Spanish and various other influence over the past several hundred years.

I settled myself again into my little niche in the grain shed, might in the midst of my rambling thought even have fallen at least close to sleep when another of the operations room clerks wandered across the compound yards this time shouting my own name.

"What -?" I groaned in annoyance for a face finally poked through the grain shed's door.

"Boss says get a truck - northside."

"Great -" I sighed in annoyed resignation, turned then toward question in Carolyn's eyes. "Town patrol - what I was telling you about on the plane. Apparently Miss Candal or the boss wants the flag shown about on the streets."

Carolyn nodded, rubbed sleep from her eyes. Walking from the grain toward another shed near which a line of guntrucks sat, I collected a gun and several boxes of belt ammunition from the weapons cage, finally mounted the gun onto one of the truck's platforms. We drove up to the metal building several minutes later from which I retrieved a radio and Carolyn's suitcase.

"My house is on the northside anyway," I commented as I once more settled behind the guntruck's wheel. "We can stop by, drop your things off, then with a little luck find some place to hide the rest of the afternoon."

"That sounds pleasant enough," Carolyn chuckled as she reached for the pistol she'd been given in the weapons cage, pulled the slide back in inspection, then thrust the clip into the handle. It might for a half moment have been Mareya Lowe sitting at my side in the truck, pistol in one hand, knitting needles in the other. It would always, I supposed in idle amusement, be my demure and unassuming store clerk clearing one of Candaltown's semiautomatic pistols.

"An uncle taught me," Carolyn chuckled for my studying attention, "a civil deputy who let me ride with him cross country, back taxes, chicken thieves, that sort of thing," perhaps an edge of anxious concern in her features as she glanced toward Candaltown's streets and alleys in which several bodies with bullet of knife wounds might be found before nightfall.

"It's not that bad," I began, "generally no big problems, at least not here in town. There's usually five or six other trucks out on the streets somewhere at any given time. It only takes a couple minutes to get from one side of town to the other and most of the time it's just show to begin with, bluff and bluster. We roll up on village law having problems, sometimes stand at the gun and look mean, but no one's ever opened up in town, at least not in the five years I've been here. I don't think anyone on any side's so insane at to want that right in the middle of town," a shuddering nod toward a heavy caliber, belt fed machine gun just the presence of which will leave a rioting tavern mob in quaking silence.

I guided the truck at a walking pace through Candal Center a short while later, the streets now a flurry of motion in every direction. The day was warm and pleasant, though last week's spring rains had left the street clogged with a countless number of mudholes. Trucks of various sort weaving about these hazards did so at the same walking pace, however, particularly when our guntruck came into view. Most guard members on town patrol will leave ordinance enforcement to the village constabularies, though boss Strem will occasionally demand direct involvement on the part of the guard.

"You'll catch him peeking around a corner from time to time," I informed Carolyn, "trying to see if you're doing something useful or productive. The villages and Candaltown split the take on traffic summonses. Writing them is considered productive."

A large crowd of people now wandered from shop to shop along Candal Center's boardwalks, woman in casual dress, wives and mothers, others wearing dresses similar to Carolyn's, secretaries and clerks on their lunch breaks. The large, open air market to our right in which vendors sell vegetables and on occasion fruit from covered stalls is another center of flurried activity. Save perhaps for the size of the crowds, the scene is not entirely different from that which one might encounter in any other large town. Mothers with young children at their sides were the most common shoppers in the market square. I stole another studying glance toward Carolyn, supposed the scene must be painful for her. She caught my glance this time, returned a gentle smile.

"I'm all right, Tom," she stated.

I nodded, hoped it was gentle ease in my own features. I couldn't again help but realize how perceptive she was, felt pleased for it. It's far easier and as often as not safer if one's guard partner is indeed intelligent and perceptive, a glance enough. I further realized that she was indeed becoming Carolyn to me, felt the same satisfaction for the fact. Nothing was worse than working with a partner who was entirely unpredictable in hazardous situation.

"Maybe partnership isn't defined here in Candaltown," Carolyn continued, "but you take it seriously, don't you, Tom?"

"I think you have to, at least to an extent. Especially in the guard."

"But you don't, Tom," perhaps an edge of gentle amusement in her voice, "have to keep being as kind to me as you've been all morning. I'm pretty much what you see now, not much else more or less. Gordon Lake still hurts, but it has been two years now. Maybe I'll recover a bit more, but probably not much more. But I'm not going to break down and collapse at any moment. Maybe I'll never be the type for the shock squad, but I'll do the best I can."

"You'll do fine, Carolyn."

"You're being kind to me again," she chuckled.

"Maybe," I agreed. "I suppose I like working with a partner who's also a friend."

"So do I, Tom. I also like working with someone who thinks I might be worth worrying about," Carolyn turning toward me with a gentle, questioning smile.

I nodded - and that of course another fleeting moment's helpless, almost requisite imagining. Candaltown and boss Strem, I suppose I informed Caroline, would shrug all the indifference a boss Holland on Grisson Ranch might have shrugged when they found out that we were living with each other - and Carolyn leaning across the truck's seat, touching her lips to my cheek for a moment and a timeless little eternity.

"I suppose -" she continued in easy amusement, "I suppose at one time that might have been considered a courts martial offense."

"At one time," I chuckled, "perhaps a couple hundred years ago. I thought you might be very well read, Carolyn."

"It's a passion. I taught at Gordon Lake when I was young. I dreamed of coming to the university here in Candaltown, but Gordon Lake was far too small to afford the tuition."

I nodded toward Candal Circle and the university building a short distance ahead.

"I spend quite a bit of time reading myself. I have a couple dozen hours at the university. It's not easy on guard pay, but it's not impossible. I'll show you the library when we get some time off."

"I'd like that, Tom - very much," a touch of her hand to mine, her hand wrapped to mine another moment and another timeless eternity in unfeigned, assenting caress.

It was, I suppose, pretense between us finally dismissed. It happens as often as not just that quickly in Candaltown as it does anywhere. It might almost have been another half moment's bizare shrugging amusement between us. It's yet again brilliantly perceptive eyes edged toward mine - and baring unforeseen obstacles which very seldom exist in such as the Candaltown guard, she's mine if I want her - mine forever.