A few hours before I flew down to Kindle Farm to pick up queen Aubrey, I stepped from my room in middle-west house and knocked on Julia's door across the hall. Julia is our own queen.

"She's out feeding her goats, Jack," this from seventeen year old Ellie, Julia's granddaughter, wearing a teasing little smile as she stood at the head of the stairs, her stance as teasing a little dance. A very pretty young woman is quite obviously infatuated with me, and I can't deny feeling a very piercing and vain little pleasure for it. It certainly makes my forty two years and the gray streaking my hair a bit easier to bear.

"You better get back downstairs with that," and I nodded toward the glass of apple juice spiked with at least a taste of gin which Ellie was about to spill. "Your grandmother would not be happy."

"Jack," Ellie giggled as she turned and led the way down the stairs. Now I know I'm forty two, I suppose. I have no idea what's behind Ellie's giggled - "Jack." I couldn't, however, as my admirer shot a glance over her shoulder, mistake the mischief I saw in her eyes, her dancing another long moment's enticing blatancy, her dress eminently suited for her dancing. Ellie's dress it that which most other young women on Norecomb Farm prefer, falls half way to her knees, is form fitting and revealing blatancy to every possible extreme.

Ellen, in her early thirties, obviously Ellie's mother, the same coal black hair and the same exceptionally attractive figure, glanced from the stove with a gentle smile as Ellie and I walked into middle-west house's kitchen.

"Have a cup of tea, Jack," Ellen said as she reached for the kettle on the stove. "It's still cold outside this morning."

"Thank you Ellen," I answered as I lowered myself to the table next to grandfather Sole.

"Grandfather Sole," Ellie giggled as she picked crumbs of toast from his long, white beard, "you're making a mess again."

As usual, nothing in either grandfather Sole's eyes nor in the aged lines of his face indicated that he was aware of anything beyond the crust of toast he held to his mouth. When Ellie picked the last of the crumbs from his beard she placed a playful hand to his own, guided the toast to his mouth, broke again into a soft giggle of delight as grandfather Sole nibbled off another bite.

"Mother is out in the west barns feeding her goats," Ellen stated as she carried two cups of tea to the table, placing one in front of me.

"Ellie told me," I answered, watched an enraptured little smile break across a seventeen year old daughter's features, then quiet, mirthful amusement in her mother's as she lowered herself to a chair next to my own. It's been a year now since Ellen's husband and twelve other men here on Norecomb Farm died in the war. Ninety seven other people still live on Norecomb, one of the largest farms in the North and the largest on which I have ever worked. Twelve widows, however, is a rather staggering number even for a farm as large as Norecomb.

"Most of them are very young, Jack," queen Julia had informed me six months ago when I first stepped onto Norecomb Farm. "We need husbands quite as desperately as we need a flyer."

Perhaps, I sighed in middle-west house's kitchen as I finished my tea. I suppose I'm now as content in Rupert Gulf country and on Norecomb Farm as I've ever been anywhere else.

Julia would be a great deal happier, however, were I to turn a bit more of my attention from Norecomb's airplanes to one of Norecomb's widows. Perhaps in another six months, I sighed again as I stole a quick glance toward Ellen sipping her own tea. Neither of Norecomb's airplanes had been damaged during the war. All twelve of Norecomb's widows had, I suspect, emotionally and severely.

"Give everyone another six months, Julia," I'd urged just last night in the hallway outside our bedroom doors as we grasped each other's hands in gentle embrace. Norecomb's widowed queen, as usual, glared annoyance toward me, relented with a gentle, accepting sigh as she squeezed my hand. Julia, ten years older than me, though still exceptionally attractive in appearance, no longer doubts just how attractive, both physically and in every other way, I indeed find her. I can't even begin to hide my feelings for her from my eyes.

"Honestly, Jack," Julia groaned, "twelve very pretty young women here on Norecomb who could give you children -"

I smiled, shrugged, smiled again when Julia leaned forward and rested her lips to my own in the quick moment's gentle touch we've been sharing for several months now.

"Good night, Jack," she then chuckled as she pulled her bedroom door closed behind her, hesitating, I just can't help but notice, for just an instant longer than she had as little as a month ago. Nor will I claim to be anything close to the epitome of propriety and morality. Had it been anyone else but Julia, I'd probably have taken at least another moment's advantage of that moment of hesitation on her part. My feelings for Julia, however, are indeed very genuine emotion, something I've never really felt before in quite the same way, something which I genuinely believe resides in the honest depths of my heart. I suppose I'm asking myself if I've finally, after forty years wandering across the North from country to country and one farm to the next, really fallen passionately in love.

I sat at the kitchen table - and Julia's daughter sitting on the chair next to my own leaning, knowing conspiracy in her eyes.

"Mother is really quite taken with you, Jack," Ellen stated with a soft, perhaps mischievous smile over the top of her tea cup. "Mother would wear a gracious little smile if you married me or Kindy or Alice. I think mother is still hoping that something might work out between you and Ellie, said licentious little dancer certainly amenable."

"Mother -" a protesting sigh from Ellie yet a sultry, less than subtle little glance toward me.

I chanced a half moment's glance over the top of my own tea cup toward Ellie, edged my eyes again toward Ellen, never doubted that Ellen would speak supreme little intimacies.

"But mother would not be smiling inside, Jack. If you asked for mother's hand, Jack, she'd say no, and oh how she'd be begging you to ask again. She'll never say the words, though."

I chuckled, probably red faced, and stared through the kitchen window.

"Looks like snow," I said.

"Perhaps," Ellen laughed as she pushed herself back to the stove when three more of middle-west house's fifteen residents walked into the kitchen.

"Flyin'?" George younger asked as Ellen set his breakfast in front of him. George, twenty five, an excellent horseman, spends his days tending Norecomb's cattle. A lifelong resident, he's still not entirely at ease with me. Perhaps in another six months.

"Maybe down to Kindle, George," I answered. "Queen Aubrey's been talking about visiting Julia."

George nodded, a subtle hint of mirthful humor in his smile as he turned his attention back to his breakfast. George and every other resident on Norecomb Farm hold Julia very dearly in their hearts, and cannot help but notice, I suppose, the glint in my eyes at just the sound of her name.

"Lemme know, Jack, when you get some time," George continued, his voice now idle and complacent. "I been huntin' fifteen head down near Crowber Lake, at least that's where they was supposed to be. Me and Bill Fat rode down yesterday, and nothing. Maybe you can find 'em from up in the air."

"Sure, George," I answered.

"Bill Fat says Pa Kitchen's got 'em."

"Damn it, George," Ellen groaned from the stove, both irritation and remorse evident in her voice. "For God's sake, George, please - don't start another war. Just stay away from Pa Kitchen and Crowber Lake."

"Ellen," George complained, "if Pa's stole our cattle -"

"Let mother handle it," Ellen snapped, pleading vehemence in her features a quick moment later. "George, for God's sake, it's only been a year -" and Ellen turned back to the stove, very real pain not quite hidden from her features.

"Ellen, Ellen, I'm sorry," young George answered. "You're right, Ellen. Julia will handle it," and George gazed across the kitchen with an expression of helpless apology in his features, lowered his eyes again to his breakfast.

Norecomb Farm had actually won the war, decisively, Mileston Farm and half of Mileston country nothing more than ashes when the war had ended, surviving residents sold onto farms across Rupert Gulf country. No one, however, ever really wins a war the scale of which Norecomb against Mileston had been. I finished my tea with a long sigh as bitter memories of wars through which I had lived ran through my mind.

Pushing myself from the table, I grasped a heavy leather jacket from the rack by the door, then stepped into middle-west house's front yard. All six of Norecomb's residences sit next to each other on Rupert Gulf Road, three on one side of the road, three on the other. A dozen barns, the largest of which is a massive tin structure a hundred feet long containing the machine shops, lay just to the east of the residences. Another large cluster of barns lay a few hundred feet further east along a narrow path which leads down to the shores of Rupert Gulf. Julia, according to her daughter and granddaughter, was now feeding Norecomb's goats they penned near another cluster of barns and sheds which lay along a narrow path leading off to the west.

As soon as I had stepped onto the west path, however, Andrew Catt and Will roared to a stop beside me in one of the trucks onto the roll bar of which they had mounted twin sixty caliber belt fed machine guns. Andrew Catt and Will are two of a half dozen exceptionally talented machinists who make Norecomb Farm that which it is. Andrew, who can read, and three of his apprentices who he is teaching to read, have made dozens of expeditions into the South in search of technology, the library now housed in Norecomb's machinist's barn as extensive as any I have ever seen.

"Going up?" Andrew Catt asked as he nodded north along Rupert Gulf Road. Both of Norecomb's aircraft sit beside a packed dirt strip two miles from the residences. I've landed on the loose gravel paths closer to the residence on a few occasions, but it's not my idea of fun doing so.

"Maybe," I answered. "Maybe down to Kindle for Aubrey."

"Good luck," Andrew chuckled.

I nodded, a sour humor in my features. Aubrey, queen of Kindle Farm, is looking for a husband. Andrew chuckles again, relieved, I suppose, that I will be Aubrey's target today.

Andrew, as usual, then jammed the truck's accelerator to the floor. When the cloud of road dust and engine exhaust had dissipated, at least to an extent, I gazed in mirthful amusement for another quick moment toward Andrew and Will now a quarter mile down the road, small herds of dairy cattle loping quickly away from the fence lines.

Five minutes later I stepped from the west path into one of the barnyards, then toward Julia, queen of Norecomb, shoveling goat manure from one of the pens. Prior to my arrival on Norecomb six months ago, I had never before seen a woman with a very pretty figure wearing a dress falling halfway to her knees shoveling goat dung, an expression of ease and contentment in her features as she did so. I had certainly never before seen the mistress of a farm Norecomb's size doing so.

"Good morning, Jack," Julia began with a gentle smile as she dropped the next shovel load into the wheel barrow. Perhaps Julia in a light does look a few years older than me. I cannot believe, however, almost ten, and wonder again exactly what it is about her over which I'm so constantly and endlessly intrigued.

"On Trimm Farm," I began, amusement most likely in my expression, "Cora Trimm did not shovel goat droppings into a wheel barrow herself."

"No -?" Julia asked with a soft chuckle.

"No. She found a picture in a book from the South, the queen of 'England's' throne or some such thing, showed it to Bert Trimm, and then stamped her foot on the floor until Bert had built her a throne just like the one in the book. As soon as Bert and a half dozen other men on Trimm Farm carried the throne into Cora's Front Room, she sat down on it and never got off again."

"Is that why so many people walked away from Trimm Farm, Jack?"

"That's part of it. When Cora sold Trimm Farm's airplane for gold and then ordered her husband to make a crown from it, most everyone else walked away, including her husband. Crane Farm, king and queen and couple dozen of their men just walked onto Trimm Farm the next day. Larsen Crane took the gold, Jen Crane Cora's jewels and her clothes, including the ones Cora was wearing at the time. Cora's sister found her wandering along the side of the road a couple days later, half frozen and half starved,

Cora cursing a half dozen cousin kings and queens in Trimm country who'd backed out on pacts."

Julia shook her head in amused wonder, pushed the shovel into the dirt, then stepped from the pen.

"You have a point to make, don't you, Jack?" Julia asked with a gentle smile as she leaned at the pen's rail gazing toward her kid goats.

"I'm not sure," I chuckled, shrugged.

"If you want, Jack," gentle mischief now in her features, "you can sit in the front room when I meet Aubrey."

"Julia -" I began in protest, sighing in an easier humor when she grasped my hand in a quick moment's caressing embrace, amusement now clearly evident in her features.

"Jack, I'll give nothing away to Aubrey or Kindle Farm. I have no wish to be found wandering down the road in embarrassing circumstances and attire. Any pacts I make with Aubrey -"

"Julia, you don't have to explain to me. If I do have a point - all I'm saying is that I would have defended Cora Trimm had she let me. Cora's husband and most of the others would have done so as well. But just before the end, Cora started doing things which didn't make the least sense whatsoever -" and I stood in silence for a long moment, not certain that I was making a great deal of sense myself.

"How many families lived on Trimm Farm, Jack?" Julia asked.

"Twenty one. Seventy eight people. The largest farm in Trimm country."

"Twenty one families without a home, and all because one woman seems to have lost her mind. None of those seventy eight people living on Trimm Farm would have dared question Cora, I suppose, not at least until doing so would have been pointless."

I shrugged, though the answer was obvious. If one finds oneself banished from a farm by that farm's master or mistress, it's as likely as not a forty or fifty mile walk to another farm the king or queen of which hasn't any pact with the farm from which one was banished. It's an ordeal for a man with a family, as likely as not a fatal ordeal if it happens in winter. I've been shown the door myself any number of times over the past twenty years, though I suppose like most other men without families it's far less of an ordeal for me. The fact that I'm a flyer, not the best but reasonably competent, is both the reason why I have been banished so many times as well as the reason why such banishment is no great ordeal for me. I'm not afraid to inform a particularly stupid king or queen what I think about their intelligence. There's always another stupid king or queen somewhere down the road looking for a flyer, the only person who can burn down another stupid king or queen's entire farm in five minutes from the air.

There have been several instances, I suppose, in which the residents of a farm have questioned their master or mistress, several instances right here in Rupert Gulf country in which the king or queen of a particular farm have themselves been sent packing. A farm, however, which has rid itself of its lawful owner rarely survives for any length of time. The deposed king or queen always has a few dozen brothers and sisters and cousins and such ready to avenge them, some of whom will do so honoring pacts, others simply as a demonstration of their feelings toward anyone else contemplating major revisions in the status quo.

"You can't," masters and mistresses proclaim, "question the patriarch's divine, god given rights," not even, proclaim even such as Ma and Pa Kitchen, "if he's a low down, good fer nuthin' skunk."

"Jack, come back to me," Julia chuckled, and I awoke from my reverie when I again felt the gentle warmth of her hand about my own. Julia's soft, brushing touch settled this time very deeply into my heart, and I turned for a long moment toward a woman who must have been exceptionally beautiful in her youth. Indeed, Julia is still a remarkably beautiful woman, though I suppose my perception of her is influenced by the affection I had by this time come to feel for her. Julia, as intelligent and as perceptive as anyone I have ever met, caught it all in my eyes in one quick instant. As usual, however, it's sighing admonishment in her own eyes. Jack, don't be foolish. There are a dozen twenty and thirty year old widows on Norecomb Farm who would make far better wives for a man just turned forty.

I suppose, I sighed, and squeezed Julia's hand in return for a final moment. I'm just not certain, nor do I think Julia is quite so certain any more.

"Well," I began as I gazed toward the kid goats trotting about the pen, "what does Aubrey want this time?"

"You're not - entirely impressed by Aubrey, are you, Jack?" Julia chuckled.

"She reminds me of Cora Trimm. I'm sure Aubrey's looking through picture books picking out a throne for her own front room. She's your - what -?"

"My father tried to explain it to me - fifth cousin, something of the sort through a great aunt. I'm not quite certain myself. What does she want -?" and Julia shrugged, mischief again in her smile when she continued. "You know Aubrey as well as I do now, Jack. You've spent a great deal of time flying her all over Rupert Gulf country. And it is rumored that Aubrey is quite taken with you."

"Ellen calls her Rupert Gulf's busybody, whatever that means. Aubrey would be better off buying her own plane instead of hiring ours all the time."

"I suspect Aubrey wants nothing more than to gossip with me face to face for a few hours. We talked for a few minutes yesterday on the radio."

"Is that what you and Ellen and Ellie were laughing about downstairs in the front room?"

"Yes," Julia chuckled. "The radio is very frustrating for Aubrey. She's dying to tell me which king is - shall we say, seeing too much of some else's wife. She dare not do so over the radio, however. Aubrey spends hours every day searching the frequencies for the least hint of scandal, is certain that other ears are as securely glued to their own radios. And more than a few are."

"When I flew her up to Orlitz Farm last month she spent half the flight discussing a scheme she had to string a telephone line all the way from Kindle to Orlitz. 'There was a time,' Aubrey said, 'when a telephone line between two farms as close as Kindle and Orlitz would have been considered nothing exceptional at all.'"

"But they weren't called 'farms' back then," Julia chuckled. "And your average king or queen or master and mistress of various title had far more than twenty or thirty people to string telephone wire."

"I told Aubrey very much the same. 'It's a cruel world today, isn't it, Jack?'"

"Poor Aubrey," Julia sighed and chuckled. "I think she now regrets having learned to read as a child. She feels herself cruelly misplaced in time. Her dreams lay in the South, and she begins every other sentence with, 'there was a time -'"

"You do not, Julia," I said, probably with an expression of curiosity. "And you know how to read."

Very few kings and queens even in Rupert Gulf country do. Machinists such as Andrew Catt on the larger farms read, as do most physicians and clerics. Some flyers, by necessity amateur machinists, can also read. On smaller farms on which I've worked over the years, farms the aircraft on which were little more than kites with a small engine stuck on somewhere, I've had to perform rebuilds myself, traveling to a larger farm's machinist's shop only for engine parts and electronics.

"I sometimes regret having learned to read myself," Julia sighed. "Both my mother and my father thought it important that I do so. Norecomb Farm, they said, would have a much better chance to survive if I did. Learn, they said, what the word king and queen really means. Do you know what they mean, Jack?"

"The words king and queen don't turn up very often in aircraft maintenance manuals."

"No," Julia chuckled, "I don't suppose they do. It's not what the words mean in the old books which is important, anyway. It's what they mean today."

"Is that good or bad, Julia?"

She shrugged, complacent ease, however, still in her features.

"It could be either, I suppose. Someone, no one seems to know exactly who, walked out of the South, built a farm and read a book, then decided to call him or herself king or queen. The words, and the concepts, have been around ever since, words like pact, banishment, divine right. It's difficult to determine exactly what writers from the South meant by the words. Some called them good, others called them bad."

"I think they can be called good."

"Do you, Jack?"

"The word queen, certainly," and Julia, my queen, again caught the depth of that in my eyes which I suppose I haven't bothered hiding for quite some time now.

"Jack - what a flatterer -" Julia chuckled.

"Maybe," I answered, my mood brooding concern a moment later. "Julia, all jokes aside, I think you are a good queen, the most - noble," I continued, searching for one of the old words I had read somewhere, "the most noble queen on whose farm I have ever worked. I meant it when I said that I would have defended even Cora Trimm had she allowed me to do so. And you are far and away a better queen than Cora was, Julia."

"Jack," Julia began, concern now in her features. "Jack - what are you so worried about -?

"Julia -" I tried, and stood in confused silence, not quite certain how to explain it. Julia, however, broke into a relenting chuckle, again laying a hand to my own in a quick moment's gentle, caressing touch.

"I enjoy our deep, dark conversations, Jack. I look forward to standing at our doors for fifteen or twenty minutes every night."

"So do I," I answered, perhaps nervous hesitation in my smile, perhaps the same in Julia's. Julia, as usual, recovered first.

"What are you up to today, Jack?" she asked as she again reached for the shovel. I feel a great deal of gentle warmth, however, when she just stands at my side.

"George younger wants me to look for some of his cows down near Crowber Lake. I'll swing down there for a minute, then fetch Aubrey."

"Crowber Lake," Julia sighed. "Pa Kitchen?"

"That's what George and Bill Fat say."

"I'll call Pa when I get a chance. If I bark at him loudly enough, he'll turn the cows loose."

"Ellen more or less ordered George and Bill to stay out of it until you do," and I met Julia's eyes for another long moment in silent concern. "Maybe that's what I'm worried about, Julia. I've lived through three wars and it seems like there's always something else blowing up. Was it any different in all those old books you've read?"

"Not as far as I can tell. Very few generations even in the old South seem to have escaped war altogether."

"I've walked away from piles of ashes a couple times and never thought that much about it. I think this is the first time I've ever really been happy anywhere," and I edged, I suspect, pleading eyes to hers.

"I'm glad, Jack. It's very hard to find a good flyer."

It was, I suppose, as devastating a little pain as any I have ever felt. I have no idea if it was a moment or an hour. I remember it as a struggle just to accept reality as it was, I indeed just a flyer, hired help on Norecomb Farm. I stood beside Norecomb Farm's queen on title, hoped yet that she might feel at least some measure of genuine affection for me. I yet again, however, simply had to accept reality at it was, Julia a queen who will never allow herself to forget that she is Norecomb Farm's queen, its owner and mistress who will brood constantly over the welfare of her dependents, who will agonize over the plight of twelve young widows.

And it was all in another bizarre instant some dizzying little oblivion of confused sensation. I flung my eyes to hers, raised my arms - realized that she had indeed wrenched hers about my waist, frantic pleading in her eyes as she crushed her body onto my own.

"Jack - I'm sorry," she whispered. "That's not what I meant at all - you know it isn't -"

Of course I did. We've stood in the hallway some evenings on middle-west's upper floor saying little more than inane nonsense to each for twenty minutes at a time, she and I holding each other's hands our caresses knowing intimacy. I'd some evenings allowed myself every last intimacy, admitted that I was violently, passionately in love with her. It had some evenings been nothing less than knowing, wicked intimacy between us, Julia yet again intimating that her daughter Ellen was a very attractive woman, some evenings intimating that the years between her granddaughter Ellie and me wouldn't be considered an insurmountable obstacle on most farms across Rupert Gulf country. Standing with Julia in the hallway next to our doors, I'd allowed myself a glance toward two young women who anyone would see as exceptionally beautiful - and had turned my eyes back toward the woman with whom I stood. I see that which anyone might, Julia still an exceptionally attractive woman, her figure eminently so, and she seeing all of the rest in my eyes, knowing that I'm gazing toward the most beautiful and alluring woman who has ever lived. It had some evenings been little less than licentious abandon between us, Julia's stance a half moment's teasing little dance, something which I could only believe was vain delight in her eyes for that which she saw in my own - she at least for moments forgetting entirely that I was supposed eventually to become interested in one of Norecomb Farm's younger widows.

And it had some evenings been that between us which I can only call culminating, knowing intimacy, a final crush of our hands to each other's, for the past several months now a touch of our lips to each other's - and the thing for a moment and a timeless little eternity obvious to every possible extreme, she and I standing that final moment pretense abandoned, one or the other of us needing but whisper a single pleading word.

And I stood with Julia beside a pen in the west barns the thing dizzying, reeling oblivion. I stood holding her in my arms, the crush of her arms about my waist finished, frantic intimacy.

"Jack -" she whispered again, "you know I didn't mean -"

"I know -"

"Jack -" and it's finally a moment's settling ease in her eyes, perhaps even amusement, something of the sighing ambivalence it's been so often over the past several months Julia knowing that I just can't fall in love with any of Norecomb Farm's young widows - Julia knowing that I've fallen violently, passionately in love with her.

"Julia -" I finally tried, and I watched that same annoyance flash across her face for one quick moment. And it was as quickly gentle ease in her eyes, eyes buried to my own in finished, searching intimacy.

"I know, Jack," Julia whispered, pretense between us yet again abandoned. It's even then a moment's bizarre amusement, the same sighing ambivalence - and Julia burying her eyes to mine hiding absolutely nothing. She's as passionately, violently in love with me as I am with her.

And with that, I suppose we both finally allowed ourselves a moment's awakening pause.

"I have more work to do, Jack," she chuckled, a glance toward her goats.

"All right," I chuckled as well - and she and I leaning together. We've kissed dozens of times over the past several months, though we've never given ourselves up to more than a quick instant's knowing passion in the touch of our lips to each other's. I'll never quite know why I chanced a half moment's very genuine passion this morning, touching my lips to Julia's for just a moment longer than I had ever before dared, and realizing a quick moment later that I had no idea what to expect. It seemed the same giddy little dream for Julia's arms crushed about my waist with finished strength, the touch of her lips to mine not a gentle, fleeting moment but a timeless eternity's intimate, passionate caress.

A long minute later, how long I'll never know, we again met each other's eyes. It seemed again a dream to me, was every doubt and pretense gone. I held her in my arms a final moment - and it's not quite like anything I've ever before known. I can't for an instant deny that it's matter of physical consequence. I simply see her as beauty and allure which leaves me immersed in a raw, falling want as dizzying as any I have ever known. As well, however, I just don't have any doubts that my love for her is something a world more than that which I've known in the past. I just don't have any doubts that I've finally fallen genuinely, passionately, honestly in love with someone.

And in another instant it's yet again blinding, dizzying oblivion I had never before known in quite the same way, the woman with whom I was so frantically in love seeing it all in my eyes - and her answer simply that which it is to me, her answer to me pleading, frantic assent. It's finally that endless fall from a cliff, she and I crushing violent arms about each other, our breath gasping fury knowing our want the same.

And with that, it was yet again awakening lucidity in her eyes.

"Oh Lord, Jack," Julia groaned as she stepped from my arms, reached for her shovel, "I'm fifty years old."

"I'm forty two," I protested. "Seven years difference -"

"Eight," Julia snapped, anger affected in her voice, reluctant amusement in her eyes when she again realized that it had been quite some time now since she'd been able to hide a great deal of anything from me. Julia stood with shovel in hand at the goat pen's rails another long moment, a mix of hesitation and resignation in her features when she raised her eyes again to mine.

"Jack - why on earth with twelve young women on Norecomb -" but she just broke into a long moment's pondering sigh, meeting my eyes again in intimacy a quick moment later. "Jack, I suppose I really did mean it when I said you're welcome to sit in the front room with me. And when you and I talk at night in front of our doors -"

Both Julia and I stood in awkward silence for another timeless moment. Julia's unspoken thought is obvious, intimacy as complete and finished as we have ever shared with each other. Why haven't you followed me into my bedroom, Jack?

I can't tell myself that it is because we are not married. Most people must travel twenty or thirty miles to the nearest cleric. Julia and I would have to walk a dozen steps down the hallway in middle-west house in order to knock on pastor Joel's door.

Julia finally broke into a smile of easy humor as she lifted the shovel and stepped back into the goat pen.

"Go on, Jack. Get Aubrey or whatever you have to do. We'll talk again tonight."

In a settling mood myself as I turned for the west path leading back toward the residences, I glanced over my shoulder toward Julia she once more at work in the goat pen. Julia has three dresses, two of which resemble those worn by older women both on Norecomb Farm and other farms across Rupert Gulf country, and the dress she was wearing this morning the one which reveals a figure no different than her daughter Ellen's, not appreciably different, for that matter, than her granddaughter Ellie's, though Julia's figure without a doubt a woman's rather than a girl's.

"Mother," Ellen has been chuckling at the breakfast table for several months now, "you haven't worn that dress since I made it for you twenty years ago. You called it scandalous," and with a mischievous smile, Ellen glances back and forth from Julia to me. "Jack, don't you think mother looks absolutely stunning wearing a dress I made for her twenty years ago when she wasn't quite thirty yet, a dress which would be ruined if altered -"

"Oh Ellen, honestly," Julia snaps, that same expression of annoyance in her features.

When I had first walked onto Norecomb Farm six months ago, Julia and I spent several afternoons in middle-west house's front room in negotiation, Julia explaining that both of Norecomb's flyers had deserted her just prior to the war, Julia going so far as to offer me a place on the farm's document of title if I would agree to a place on Norecomb.

Several afternoons later, I sat again in middle-west house's front room waiting for Julia, then turned toward the door as Ellen walked in carrying a cup of tea.

"Mother has asked me to keep you company," a very pretty young widow with her mother's long, coal black hair said as she sat on the other side of the couch from me. Those were Julia's explicitly stated orders, though it quickly became obvious that Julia had something else on her mind, would have been quite pleased had it been Ellen and I who eventually knocked on pastor Joel's door. Ellen is indeed a remarkably beautiful young woman, every bit as brilliant as Julia herself. I looked closer that afternoon six months ago, however, and it wasn't difficult to see the sharp and piercing grief a young woman just six months a widow was concealing beneath her genial smile.

"Tell me more about you mother, Ellen," I asked in order to change the subject, and I'll never forget the expression in Ellen's features, appreciation, apology, remorse, just about everything I could imagine. In another time and place - perhaps. Ellen and I have found a gentle, sincere affection for each other over the past six months. Even a year, however, is far too soon for more, especially for a widow in her early thirties.

Little more than a month later, Ellen and I again found ourselves sitting in quiet conversation in middle-west house's front room.

"Tell me more about your mother, Ellen," I asked again. I suppose when I asked the question I wasn't really aware of how deeply in love with Julia I already was. Ellen, as I say, every bit as brilliant and perceptive as Julia, searched my eyes for one quick moment, and then broke into an intrigued smile. Ellen was quite aware of that which I was not.

"You and mother are almost the same age, Jack," Ellen answered in easy humor. I suppose I sat with blank, uncomprehending stupidity in my features. I had thought that Julia was about ten years older than me, Ellen about ten years younger. Ellen, it seems, had added it all up far differently.

The next morning a daughter with implicit orders from her mother to interest Norecomb's new flyer in herself set about doing the exact opposite.

"Ellen," Julia complained as she walked into the kitchen, "where are my other dresses."

I and several other male residents turned toward Norecomb's very attractive queen wearing a dress we'd never before seen her in. I and several other male residents of Norecomb had a great deal of difficulty swallowing for the next five minutes. Julia is indeed just that beautiful.

"I'm making alterations to your other dresses, mother," Ellen chuckled as she carried Julia's tea from the stove to the table and placed it in front of a chair next to my own. "Besides, I worked so hard when I was a girl making that dress for you and you never wear it. It's time you did. Jack, doesn't mother look beautiful wearing a dress which I made for her when she was thirty?"

"Oh Ellen," the first time Julia had snapped her "oh Ellen." Julia happened to glance over toward me, however, never suspecting at the time, I suppose, that the man who was going to marry her daughter or one of the younger widows had other ideas. My ideas as Julia glanced toward me must have been blatantly plastered all over my face as I desperately tried to swallow a piece of toast caught in my throat. Something like confused wonder flashed into Julia's eyes, perhaps even embarrassment a quick moment later.

Julia kept wearing her daughter's scandalous dress, however, searched my eyes many times over the next few months, and sighed in annoyance, some of it affectation, when she realized the gawking stupidity in my own eyes whenever I looked at her wasn't affectation in the least.

Julia's sighs are now generally sighs of amusement. We've stood in middle-house's second floor hallway in ever more intimate conversation for the past several months now, and we've found the depth of genuine emotion in our love for each other, that love expressed finally this morning in a kiss far more passionate than any we had yet shared. Physical attraction, however, is simply a part of it all, a fact of life, I suppose. I walked from the goat pens this morning, glanced a moment over my shoulder toward a woman who I simply see as beauty and allure to every possible extreme. I'm not really certain how blatant or obvious that final glance was. I met Julia's eyes a final moment - her smile, I finally realized, mischievous accusation for that which she hadn't, of course, missed in my eyes. And her stance, I realized, was for another moment and another timeless little eternity as exotic and blatant a little dance as any I have ever seen.

"Jack -" Norecomb's queen had just several evenings before protested, she and I in teasing, mischievous moods as we stood in the hallway, "I do believe, as we climbed the stairs, you were gawking at my ass -"

2 ------

As soon as I stepped from the west path back onto Rupert Gulf Road, Andrew Catt and Will again roared to a stop beside me, dust and smoke billowing in every direction.

"Runs like a clock," Andrew shouted above the rumbling engine as he slapped a hand against the truck's door. Norecomb's chief machinist considers repairs he has made to a particular piece of equipment adequate if that equipment is still functioning after ten or fifteen minutes grueling torture he himself has inflicted on it.

"Give me a ride up to the planes, Andrew?" I asked, wondering if I was going to regret doing so.

"Not a problem," Andrew shouted, and I grasped the truck's roll bar, hauled myself onto the rear seat, then clamped down on whatever I could find. As usual, Andrew slapped the gas to the floor and held it there until the tach needle was as far above the safety line as he could coax it. Shifting into a higher gear, Andrew began the whole process again. I twisted my gaze toward the edge of the road for a quick, cautious moment, dairy cattle on both sides loping purposefully away from the fence lines. I'm certain I detect annoyance on more than a few of the cow's faces. A moment later I turned ahead once again, Andrew now shouting at the top of his lungs and his voice still barely audible above the scream of the engine.

"George younger and Bill Fat," Andrew shouted, pointing toward two horsemen a quarter mile off to our left. "Looks like they're heading up the North Coast Road."

"Best they do," I shouted back. "Ellen told them to stay away from Crowber Lake and the Kitchens."

"Good girl," Andrew Catt agreed, again at the top of his lungs. "Ellen's gonna make us a fine queen when it's her turn. Bill Fat gets us into another war every time he opens his mouth. You goin' down to Crowber, Jack?"

"Maybe. If I survive long enough to get to the planes."

"Never lost anyone yet," Andrew roared almost as loudly as the truck's engine. "Besides, sixty can't be nothing to you."

"Sixty's a whole lot when you got fence posts six inches from your ears, Andrew."

Andrew broke into jovial laughter as he again turned his attention to the tach needle, a thousand RPM above the red line now. I glanced for another quick moment off to side. Ellen, her daughter Ellie, and a half dozen children from middle-west house proceeded in another truck along one of the farm paths at a far more sedate pace, probably to harvest the rest of the potatoes in the north fields.

"Might even be as good a queen as Julia," Andrew again shouted, glancing over his shoulder toward me with a broad, expectant smile in order to watch the glint in my eyes at the sound of Julia's name.

"Maybe," I just shouted back, returning Andrew's smile.

A quick moment later, Andrew finally slammed the brakes and the truck slid in another cloud of dust to a stop next to the shed in which both of Norecomb's airplanes are hangered.

"Two minutes flat," Andrew laughed as he glanced at his watch. It's exactly two miles from the residences to the airfield. Andrew had averaged sixty miles to the hour over loose dirt and gravel roads I'll usually drive at ten or fifteen miles to the hour if I'm in a particularly reckless mood.

"Thanks, Andrew, I think," and I grasped the roll bar again, pulling myself to solid ground and safety.

"Not a problem," Andrew again chuckled as he nodded toward the shed. "You taking number one up?"

"Yeah. Soon as I get time, I gotta pull two's carb off and have you look at it."

"James Petan and some of his boys just got back from an expedition. Went all the way down to the tree line. Said they found two good Piper carbs. All they need is gaskets, maybe a little machinin'. Petan'll give 'em to us for gas or silver. Julia's talkin' to 'em now and she's gonna let me know. Nothin' on another flyer?"

"Not that I've heard, Andrew. You're not thinking of - another experiment -?"

"You kidding? I learned my lesson."

Norecomb Farm used to have three airplanes. When both of its flyers had deserted a year ago just prior to the war, Andrew and several of Norecomb's men panicked, rolled one of the planes to the end of the runway, then drew lots to decide which one of them was going to learn to fly it. The unfortunate winner, they tell me, actually got the plane several hundred feet into the air.

"Just like drivin' a truck, fer as I can see," the amateur flyer had radioed down. He then, I suspect, tried to turn the plane the way one might a truck, a yank of the stick one way or the other. Andrew tells me that the amateur flyer survived. The plane and several trees into which he flew it did not.

"How bout you, Will," and I turned toward the younger man on the truck's passenger seat. "You wanna give it another go? You didn't do that badly last time we went up?"

Terror, very little else, flashed into young Will's eyes, terror quite similar to that which he had shown every time I had released the plane's controls into his hands attempting to teach him how to fly it. Will had actually performed several thirty degree banks without a great deal of difficulty, his recoveries back onto level flight no worse than my own had been twenty years ago when I had learned to fly with old Pa Steuver shouting into my ear for every mistake. The terror in Will's eyes genuine, however, I had given up. Flying an airplane is very different from driving a truck. In order to fly, it's necessary to think, something very difficult to do when you're terrified (though it will never fail to amaze me that old Pa Steuver never seemed to have a great deal of difficulty even after his fourth or fifth cup of gin).

When Andrew and Will again tore off down the road, I walked to the front of the shed, pulled the wide swinging door open. Norecomb's aircraft, I suppose, might well seem terrifying. Aircraft on other farms on which I've worked have been little more than a few pounds of canvas stretched over a wooden frame with a ten or so horse engine stuck on, flying kites capably of little more than thirty or so miles to the hour requiring a few feet of runway. Both of the aircraft in front of which I now stood are twin seat, a hundred a fifty horse planes capable of well over a hundred miles to the hour. When fully armed, the thousand yard hard packed strip in front of the shed is none too long.

As usual, I checked the ammunition belts on both wing guns. As far as I know, no one on farms within three hundred miles has been slinging anything more deadly than insults toward their neighbors for the past several months. It's all two easy, however, for something to blow up over night. Charles Killeasy, king of a large farm a hundred and fifty miles to the south and the closest farm owning aircraft comparable to our own, has half a dozen time over the past twenty years settled disputes with smaller farms neighboring his own by dumping several hundred pounds of napalm on them. That's more than enough to burn a farm even as large as Norecomb to the ground. And the last I'd heard, both Chester Grease and Bill Kiddle have been flying for Charles Killeasy (Kilisi is his real name) for the past year now. Both Grease and Kiddle are excellent flyers, and neither possess a shred of common, moral decency.

Settling myself into number one, I started the engine, then glanced across toward number two for another quick moment. Perhaps I'd tear its carb off when I got back. With Chester Grease and Bill Kiddle just two hours flying time to the south, I'd be far more comfortable with both planes in working order. Jill on Tabry Farm, two hundred miles west along the North Coast, manages to get herself thrown out of Tabry country with amazing regularity. Gossiping on frequencies Jill and I used when we both worked at Show Lake, frequencies seldom used here in Rupert Gulf country, Jill is constantly asking me what it's like working for Julia Norecomb. I sincerely hope that Jill will indeed defect from Tabry to Norecomb. Jill, even though in her early sixties, is not a flyer I'd care to meet in the air on less than friendly terms. Even Grease and Kiddle on Killeasy Farm have a very healthy respect for Jill.

Sighing, both with frustration and anxiety, I throttled the plane from the shed, glanced one final time toward the wind flag, then guided the plane toward the southern end of Norecomb's north-south runway.

"Shop -" I called over the radio, glancing idly toward the tree line a hundred yards from the northern edge of the strip as I waited for someone in the machinist's shop to walk over to the radio bench.

"Yeah, Jack," Junie, Julia's younger sister, about my own age, answered a long minute later.

"I'm off," and I waited for Junie's latest.

"One more month, Jack," Junie's voice crackled low and sultry over the radio. "I told Julia last night that she's got one more month, then you're fair game for me, sweetie."

Chuckling, I replaced the microphone, my mood considerably improved, and for another long moment gazed about the wood surrounding the airfield on three sides. I suppose it's an exercise in futility calling my departure into the machinist's shop. Rupert Gulf country is as heavily populated as anywhere else in the North. Large farms with ten or fifteen families lay every twenty or thirty miles, smaller farms with four or five families every ten or fifteen. If a flyer goes down, he or she can only hope that it's close to one of the farms, or failing that, close to one of the roads cut through Rupert Gulf's dense forests leading from one farm to another. As often as not, however, a flyer who does not return a few hours after launching has found his final resting place beneath the canopy of the forest or at the bottom of a lake somewhere. Flyers from other farms will search for a downed flyer for a week or two. Jill from Tabry would probably search a month for me. Even Grease and Kiddle, most likely defying Charles Killeasy's orders in order to do so, will search for a downed flyer, even one they will enjoy shooting down sometime in the future. Both Grease and Kiddle know the absolute, other worldly isolation which envelopes you as soon as the wheels leave the ground. As soon as they do so, however, by and large you're on your own. You either come back or you don't.

Realizing that I was sending myself again into a mood of dismal, sour brooding, I glanced a final moment toward the temperature gauge, then reached for the throttle. Pushing it to the stop, the plane accelerates well, rotates at sixty knots with little more than a feathering touch to the stick. Just seconds later I've gained several hundred feet of altitude, the blue expanse of Rupert Gulf spreading into the distance off to my right, the north coast directly below me a quick minute later.

George younger's lost cows first, I decided, banked left, recovered with Crowber Lake now visible through the windscreen, and then spent a long moment wishing Pa Steuver was still alive.

"Damn it, kid, relax," Pa would bellow six inches from my ear as I nudged the airplane into a thirty degree bank, my knuckles white as I waited for the stall horn to sound. Relaxing, I would then pull the plane level once again, rolling ten degrees one way, ten the other, my heading twenty or thirty degrees off when I'd finally managed to level the plane. "Damn it, kid," Pa Steuver bellowed, "you sleepin'? I said one eighty. You ain't payin' attention, kid? You's too damn relaxed."

Less than a year after I'd first stepped into a plane with Pa Steuver, however, I found myself performing eighty degree banks, Pa's voice loud and frantic over the radio as he called his own position as well as the position of the attacking planes trying to slam bullets into our bodies. I was haunted for a year after that war by the image of two attacking aircraft suddenly falling into the front of my gun sights, flames enveloping them a quick instant after I'd pressed the trigger. The most disturbing part of it all was for the fact that I couldn't remember what I had done to get those two planes in front of my gun sights. Nor could Pa tell me. Pa Steuver, with thirty five years flying experience and generally acknowledged to have been one of the best there ever was, spun down in flames only a half minute after the engagement had begun.

Five years later, then about five after that, I finally discovered the answer. Luck. In both of those wars I'd known beforehand that I was going up to meet flyers who had out maneuvered me every single time in the past when we'd harassed each other in mock battles. When the real thing came, my maneuvers were nothing more than guesses. I'd roll the plane, hope that I'd chosen correctly, and then I'd press the trigger when the other plane fell into my sights, astonishment most likely in my expression that it had.

Perhaps, I sighed as I glanced down on Norecomb now sprawling a thousand feet below my left window, that last war in which I'd fought would be last war in which I would ever fight. Julia and most of the other residents of Norecomb would certainly share my hope.

Six months ago when she and I had first met, Julia had gazed toward me the way anyone might toward a wandering gunman, an obvious edge of distaste in her features as she gazed toward the only man still alive who has slaughtered four other men in the air.

"I will do anything to avoid another war," Julia informed me. "To do so, I will even hire you."

Julia, that first afternoon, had gazed toward me the same way the last three kings and queens for whom I'd worked did.

"Keep away from the children," Bernice had commanded four years ago when I first met her. Bernice, I suppose, suspected that I would eat them.

"Can't wait to kill again, can you, son?" old king Willie Crank had asked when he'd hired me, Willie studying my eyes for another long moment. "Yeah," Willie scowled, "born killer. See it in the eyes every time."

Two years ago I'd stepped onto Whitefish Farm. As usual, I did so with my hand on my pistol, waiting for the farm's young gun to step forward. A disturbing number of the larger farms on which I've worked have one, always anxious to test himself against a man whose killed four other men. I suppose it's ironic that a man with, at best, mediocre flying skills, has gained his reputation pressing an aircraft's gun trigger. Young gunfighters step forward certain that they are facing a skilled flyer without prowess with a pistol. Actually, it's quite the other way around. I'm usually holding my pistol to the other man's chest before he's even pulled his own from his holster, will then disarm a seventeen or eighteen year old boy and lead him by the ear to his master or mistress.

On Whitefish Farm, however, I hadn't been able to do so, the first time in my life I was not able to do so. The young man who pulled his pistol on me was very fast. I had wondered for years if I could ever pull the trigger on the ground if it became necessary to do so. When that young man on Whitefish Farm fell, I no longer had to wonder. Nor did anyone else, I suppose. It's been a merciful two years now since anyone else has challenged me, on the ground or in the air.

Again I glanced over my shoulder toward Norecomb now several miles behind.

"You're a very lonely man, aren't you?" Julia had asked that first afternoon six months ago. "I suppose anyone who has killed fourteen other men would be."

Julia's numbers, like most other people's, were fanciful exaggeration. Her assessment of my emotional state that day I had first stepped onto Norecomb most certainly was not.

"Does it matter to you how I feel, queen?" I asked. I suppose I hadn't really cared in the least at the time if it mattered or not, no more than I had on the last three farms on which I had worked.

"No, it does not," Julia had answered, distaste still clearly evident in her features as she fixed me with steady, unwavering eyes. "My only concern is that Norecomb be spared any more suffering."

It rather startled me when only days later Julia had already revised her opinion regarding certain aspects of my character.

"You're not really a killer, are you, Jack?"

"We'd better keep that a secret between ourselves," I answered. "At least for now."

Several miles further south, I happened to glance toward the ground once again. George younger and Bill Fat had ridden west from Norecomb. Instead of turning north for the coast, however, they had turned south along a horse and cattle track which led toward Crowber Lake.

"George," I sighed across the radio, intentional annoyance in the tone of my voice, and again glanced toward the horsemen as one pulled a small, portable radio from his pack.

"Just huntin' cows, boss," George answered as he peered toward the sky. "We ain't goin' nowhere near Crowber."

"All right, George," I sighed again as I replaced the microphone. Crowber Lake, fourteen miles to the southwest, is a hard morning's ride for George and Bill, would be two hours or more across narrow dirt and gravel tracks even in one of Andrew Catt's sturdy guntrucks. It's a little over six minutes in the air, less if I run the plane at full throttle.

A few miles from the lake, I eased the plane into a shallow descent, let down to several hundred feet, then glanced toward several more small clearings for any sign of movement. A moose, a small pack of wolves, but no cows. A quick minute later I crossed the northern shore of Crowber Lake, the southern shore seconds later, then Crowber Farm itself, a single residence with three small barns at its rear. Two women, one possibly Ma Kitchen herself, appeared to be leading a cow into one of the barns.

With another long sigh of annoyance, I throttled the plane a few hundred feet further into the air. A half mile south of the farm I banked into a hundred and eighty degree turn. A fairly wide tractor path which leads directly up to the residence is not particularly difficult to land on, even in an aircraft in which sixty knots is slow enough for a landing approach. As I flared a few feet above the tractor path and then settled easily onto the ground, I again spend a moment wishing that Pa Steuver was still alive to see the ease with which I was now able to perform at least the basic maneuvers. Twenty years ago, with Pa Steuver screaming into my ear, a hay field a half mile long and a hundred yards wide was a challenge for me in a plane which stalled at thirty five knots.

Rolling to a stop fifty yards from the residence, I shut the engine down, glanced toward a half dozen children playing in the front yard. Four families, perhaps a dozen and a half people, live on Crowber Farm, Ma and Pa Kitchen its king and queen, though unlike Julia, the Kitchens probably understand the terms only as they are used today.

A quick moment later, Ma Kitchen walked from the residence toward my plane. Ma, though sixty, prefers dresses younger woman in Rupert Gulf country wear, the hemline falling just to her knees. Unlike most other women, however, Ma wears her pistol strapped openly to her side, in Ma's case some sort of canon with a barrel about a mile long.

"Jack Earp," Ma began with a crooked grin as I stepped from the plane onto the ground. To my annoyance, that name has been following me for the past two years, is starting to catch on now on Crowber and a few other farms across Rupert Gulf country.

"Ma," I answered, settling into tentative ease as I gazed toward the grin. "You're not gonna shoot me, are you, Ma?"

"Ain't made up my mind yet," Ma answered with her rasping cackle as she spat on the ground.

"George younger and Bill Fat," I began, "are riding down this way, Ma, looking for fourteen head."

"That so? Julia's got over two hundred head now, ain't she?"

"Something like that, Ma."

"Well, George younger and Bill fat ain't gonna find no fourteen head a cattle here. We ain't got but twelve full growd hogs left, and we gotta give three a them up to the Carin's 'cordin' to the peace pact."

Nodding, I glanced for a quick moment toward two small children now clinging to Ma's side. Dressed in worn, ragged denim and wearing shoes little more than bundled strips of rawhide, it was the children, as usual, who suffered most from the fact that Ma and Pa Kitchen had sided with Mileston Farm during the war. The treaty pact Julia had signed with the Kitchens required nothing more than the destruction of several automatic rifles here on Crowber. Several other farms on the winning side, however, had imposed far harsher terms on Crowber. One had demanded all seventeen head of cattle Crowber had owned before the war. Another demanded six full grown hogs a year for the next twenty years or their value in silver. Twelve and fourteen year old girls had gone to old lechers on several other large farms.

"Ma," I continued, glancing toward the barn into which I'd seen her leading the cow even if I didn't feel a great deal of personal concern over one lousy cow, "I don't think you have fourteen head here either. But you know George younger and Bill Fat. Bill Fat especially. Even if you just have one cow here, it'd be best if they didn't see it. George and Bill ain't bad people, but they're not immune to the occasional piece of stupid, even over one stupid cow," and I glanced toward Ma's pistol for another quick moment. "I don't wanna see anyone get hurt, Ma, over one lousy cow. Julia doesn't either, Ma."

Ma Kitchen nodded, appreciation, I suspect, in her eyes as she grasped the children to her side.

"Where's Pa and the others, Ma?" The last I knew, there were five adult males on Crowber Farm.

"Huntin' moose. I told 'em not to come back till they get one. Children gotta eat."

"That they do, Ma," I answered as I pulled the plane's door open. "If you do see anything of George and Bill, Ma, keep your barn doors closed and just let 'em ride on through. They ain't stupid enough to tangle with you over something they can't even see."

"They say you's a no good killer," Ma continued as I settled myself onto the plane's seat. "They say, Jack Earp, that you'd gun a man down quick as the man what you's named after."

"That's what they say, Ma," I sighed, then watched the same crooked grin break into Ma's features as I pulled the plane's door closed.

3 ------ Throttling the plane back into the air, I passed another five minutes over Crowber Lake, another moose, perhaps the same one I'd seen earlier, but still no fourteen head of cattle anywhere in sight. With a little luck, George younger and Bill Fat wouldn't cross paths with Pa Kitchen, Pa reputed to be almost as quick on the trigger as Ma. Banking finally onto a southwesterly heading toward queen Aubrey's Kindle, I glanced one last time down on Crowber Lake and its children without decent shoes this close to winter.

"The treaty pacts Carin and Redwood and the others imposed on Crowber Lake are entirely immoral," Julia had stated several evenings ago. "People just won't forget, though. The war is going to be very fresh in everyone's mind for at least a generation, and very few farms are going to give Crowber better terms while it is. I just can't convince enough of the others that the pacts are immoral."

"Maybe I should fly over a few of their farms at a dozen or so feet, Julia. A Norecomb airplane can be a very convincing, perhaps even - persuasive sight."

"You're not really a born killer, Jack. Remember?" Julia asked with a gentle smile as she grasped my hand.

"But that's still our little secret, isn't it? And even if I'm not a killer, both of the airplanes are."

Julia nodded in grim amusement. The planes are indeed on rare occasions use to search for lost cattle and the like. But tasks such as this don't require aircraft which will lift several hundred pounds of ordinance, aircraft capable of flying from Norecomb to Killeasy Farm in forty five minutes. The only reason a farm flies airplanes which burn a gallon of astronomically expensive fuel every ten minutes is to make a very convincing point to others, the reason Norecomb's queen hired me in the first place.

Leveling the plane a half mile above the ground, I glanced over my left shoulder toward Rupert Gulf, then toward the North Coast over my right shoulder. Turning forward once again, I settled into my alien, secluded world a half mile in the air. The sight of the occasional cattle pasture and small agricultural field cut from the forest every ten or fifteen miles is all that provides a small measure of relief from a pervasive and overwhelming sense of isolation. Ponds and small lakes outnumber and outsize any sign of man's activity this high in the air. Lake Spury, six miles from edge to edge, dominates the view for another twenty minutes. Beyond Spury it was more of the same, the world spreading large and untamed far below, nothing more than an occasional glimpse of anything human. As usual, I found myself peering toward the western horizon for any sign of Jill, then toward the southern for Chester Grease or Bill Kiddle. All three will make the occasional foray into Rupert Gulf county. On a clear day another aircraft might be visible for ten or fifteen miles, further if you happen to be looking in the right direction at just the right moment. As likely as not, however, Jill is over Tabry several hundred miles to the west if she's in the air at all. Grease and Kiddle are pestering one of Charles Killeasy's neighbors a hundred and fifty miles to the south. I know of perhaps a dozen and a half other farms further to the east which fly airplanes. Only rarely, however, perhaps once or twice a year, will kings and queens of these distant farms send their aircraft into Rupert Gulf country. Nor are the flyers particularly anxious to make the flight, particularly those for whom Rupert Gulf is close to the point of no return on their fuel gauges.

Julina Turo, for whom I worked ten years ago, seemed to have had a pathological need to know exactly what lay three hundred miles on every side of Turo Farm.

"The airplane," I tried to explain to queen Julina, "will only fly four hundred miles with a full load of fuel, two hundred out, two hundred back."

"There's another seat in it, isn't there?" Julina asked. "Fill that with gas. I want to know how many residences Julia has now on Norecomb."

And so, despite my better judgment, I found myself over Norecomb three hundred miles and three hours from that which at the time had been my home, a camera in my hand, gallon cans of gasoline stuffed into every available niche around me with jerry rigged fuel lines leading to the engine compartment. Snapping pictures of Norecomb for a pathological queen, I did so flying as cautiously as I could. Three hundred miles might be three hours flying. It's four or five days in the back of an overland freight, and that only if you're lucky enough to find one going your way and have enough silver in your pocket to pay for the ride. As often as not, three hundred miles is two or three weeks on the back of one hay cart after another.

A quick minute later I glanced toward the instrument panel and the direction finder, though I'm now some distance beyond the range of Norecomb radio. Again that strange sense of seclusion from the rest of humanity settles about me. Visual navigation in this area is not difficult, however. It's a clear day, and there are plenty of small yet distinctively shaped lakes charted with a reasonable measure of accuracy, some by myself, some by my predecessors at Norecomb. Over Trility, I banked left a few degrees, pulled power back, and then settled into a shallow descent, Kindle Farm now only ten miles ahead, the largest of its fields and pastures clearly visible a quick minute later.

"Anyone on Kindle," I called over the radio on Kindle's frequency, as usual without success. Aubrey is probably sitting beside her radio hunting other farm's frequencies for the latest gossip. Other kings and queens who have something to say to Aubrey usually wait until she turns up on their frequency rather than attempt to call her on her own. Andrew Catt and several of his machinists on Norecomb build and maintain most of the radios now operating in Rupert Gulf country. Pacts signed by most kings and queens allow Andrew to assign base frequencies for these radios. Assigning Kindle Farm and Aubrey a base frequency, Andrew complains, is an exercise in futility. Someone sitting on a tractor a mile from Aubrey's residence will usually call farms fifteen or twenty miles away hunting for her, will leave messages in case she happens to show up on their frequency.

It's not vitally important that I talk to anyone on the ground at Kindle anyway. Five minutes after I replaced the microphone, I pulled the power back another hundred RPM, glided the final few miles toward Kindle, then glanced down on a farm about half the size of Norecomb, still one of the largest in Rupert Gulf country, however, four sizable residences, several dozen barns and sheds, three large herds of dairy and beef cattle in the surrounding pastures.

Supposing the winds still northerly, no one after all from Kindle seeming overly anxious to answer the radio and tell me otherwise, I banked the aircraft onto a southerly heading over the farm, then pondered the half dozen oil wells several miles to the south, the source of the greater part of Aubrey's and Kindle Farm's considerable wealth. The oil, refined in several large sheds a short distance from the wells, is then trucked to farms across Rupert Gulf country, some of it to farms even further away.

Julia tells me that she buys about half of Norecomb's fuel from Aubrey, would prefer the figure to be less, though she dare not at the moment retire either of Norecomb's planes, no matter how expensive their fuel requirements are. The war which a year ago had cost Norecomb Farm twelve of its young men, had cost other farms allied to Norecomb many more, had begun when Norecomb's flyers had deserted. No one, it seems, has ever found out what particular inducement Mileston Farm offered them to do so. As soon as they did, however, Mileston Farm and its allies, none of which owned aircraft of their own, could contemplate a war with Norecomb and envision a reasonable chance of success. Mileston's first target, however, had not been Norecomb, but Kindle and its oil wells. Twenty five of the thirty five adult men who at the time had lived on Norecomb had driven down to Kindle in order to answer Aubrey's screamed pleas for help across the radio. Only thirteen of those men came back.

"It all started because those two flyers were cowards," Julia informed me that first afternoon six months ago, "loathsome, craven cowards -" Julia, trembling in anger, had growled, searching my eyes as she did so. Julia, like the three previous kings and queens for whom I'd worked had already decided that her new flyer was a despicable killer. "But you're not a coward, are you? You're not the type who will walk away when we need you?"

"No, I'm not," I answered. I don't really know why I'm not. I suppose I've proved it to myself, however. Both of those last two flyers who died in front of my wing guns should have killed me. I was quite aware that they were capable of doing so as I went up to meet them. I went up anyway, fatalistic, I suppose, and happened to have luck on my side.

Glancing toward the oil wells for which so many men both on Norecomb and on a hundred other farms across Rupert Gulf country had died, I then banked the plane back toward Kindle Farm and a tractor path not a great deal different from the one on which I'd landed at Crowber. It's possible, I suppose, to approach the path at fifty, even forty five knots. Jill Tabry, when I worked with her at Snow Lake, preferred to pound down onto the ground as slowly as possible. At sixty knots, however, the airspeed I prefer if the strip happens to be long enough, you have a few more seconds to nudge the plane left or right if you flare on either side of the path. It's been quite some time since I've missed an approach, however, and again I broke into a soft smile of contented satisfaction as I floated directly over the path a few more seconds, perhaps a few seconds longer than necessary, but this particular strip is plenty long enough to do so.

Settling easily and finally onto the ground, I rolled out toward a small shed a short distance from Kindle's residence houses, pondering a dozen men and women busy with various manner of tasks in several of the yards as I shut the engine down. A few people glanced toward the plane with expressions of idle curiosity, none, however, with the concern I'd seen on the faces of Ma Kitchen and her grandchildren. I've landed at Kindle several dozen times over the past six months. I suppose its resident populace is used to the sight.

Jake Triddle and Danny hairless - the latter named appropriately -wandered toward the aircraft as I stepped to the ground. Neither Jake nor Danny are lifelong residents of Kindle. Neither, as far as I know, have family connections here. Both, like myself, have spent their lives wandering from country to country, farm to farm, pistols openly displayed on their sides announcing their primary area of expertise to the farm's master or mistress. Jake and Danny, however, both close to my own age, have always impressed me as decent enough sorts, would most certainly use their pistols to defend Kindle Farm were it necessary to do so, but have outgrown juvenile notions that doing so is anything more than a job to be avoided whenever possible.

"Jake, Danny," I nodded as they approached.

"Her high and mightiness," Jake began as he nodded toward the largest of Kindle's residences, nothing unusually belligerent in his features, "says she'll receive you upstairs."

"Great," I sighed, and watched subtle expressions of amusement break into Jake and Danny's features for the expression of foreboding in my own.

"She's still looking for a husband?" I asked as we walked across the barn and shed yards toward the residence.

"Been lookin' for two years now," Jake continued, "ever since I rode in here. She's - interviewed at least twenty perspective candidates for the job," and there's leering amusement in both Jake and Danny's features.

Jake and Danny abandoned me at the steps of Aubrey's residence. Aurelia, one of a dozen of Aubrey's incredibly beautiful nieces on Kindle Farm, met me at the door, something like amusement and mischief in her features as she escorted me up the winding staircase toward Aubrey's apartments on the upper floor.

"Couldn't I just wait for her in the plane, Aurelia?" I sighed.

"Aunt Aubrey simply wouldn't hear of it," Aurelia answered, sultry mischief again in her stunning southern features a quick moment later. "So, Jack, you're about thirty now, aren't you? Certainly closer to my own age than decrepit old aunt Aubrey's?"

Aurelia is quite aware that both Aubrey and I were born within a week of each other forty two years ago. I can't, I suppose, help but feel a very long moment's vain little pleasure for that in Aurelia's eyes which isn't affectation in the least. A tall, blond, hourglass beauty is attired as all of the Kindle nieces are, a dress which isn't a great deal more than clinging pretense covering nothing more than it absolutely has to. Taking my arm into her own as we climbed the stairs, the dance she performs is writhing, caressing intimacy to every maddening extreme. Climbing finally onto the landing at the top of the stairs, it's culminating eroticism I'm yet again not in the least certain I can resist.

"Jack - a quick drink -" Aurelia nodding toward the door to her room, her dance an embrace of writhing, caressing suggestion to every blatant extreme.

"Aurelia -" I sighed as I raised protesting hands to capturing arms finally drawn about my waist in urging embrace - and wild, giddy delight in her eyes for that which I suspect was raw, resigned abandon in my own. "Aurelia -" I protested again, and stood another dazed moment deciding that I must slam her body into my arms, crush my hands onto curves mine to devour in wild, frenzied love making.

"Jack - yes," an explosive gasp wrenched from her throat.

I'll never quite know why that was awakening, a young beauty of uncanny perceptive acuity pouting defeat as I extracted myself from her arms as gently as I could.

She finally gave up, a relenting smile as she led me the final distance to Aubrey's door, pushed it open.

"Jack -?" Aurelia now chuckling in mirthful amusement as I stood in front of the door in trembling hesitation, a door behind which sat a queen Aubrey who in her own amorous pursuits was given to far less restraint than any of her nieces.

Sighing steadying resignation, I pushed myself through the door and into the presence of "decrepit old aunt Aubrey." I'll never, I suppose, be able to find words adequate enough to describe her, can only image some Greek goddess from the furthest reaches of antiquity. Seated on that which most people call a throne and attended by two more nieces, it seems indeed something metaphysical, Kindle's queen tall, hourglass beauty and allure to every impossibly blinding extreme, long brilliantly blonde hair falling over her shoulders in luxurious waves, her features soft, delicate beauty which give no hint of the clockwork mind hidden beneath.

"Jack -" Aubrey, dressed in next to nothing crooned as she pulled another piece of nothing over herself, the feigned expression of modesty in her features calculated to focus my attention on the very obvious fact that I have yet again "stumbled" onto her she wearing next to nothing. And my attention is focused indeed, despite any reservations I might have. Aubrey is just that beautiful. Eighteen year old nieces who on any other farm would be considered incomparable feminine beauty and allure gaze toward Aubrey with pouting envy in their features.

"Aubrey, you're - looking well," I stammered as I lowered myself onto one of three large couches in a lavishly decorated sitting room. I've given up hoping that Aubrey will ever feel inclined to meet me beside the plane - and can't deny yet again feeling another long moment's vain, flattering pleasure.

"Girls," Aubrey stated, her smile sweet and radiant charm as she ordered them from the room.

"Julia," I begun, I the fly gazing toward the spider, "is anxious to see you again, Aubrey," and I stole another quick glance toward a door which I was fairly certain could be locked from the outside.

"It's very good of you to drive your airplane all the way down to Kindle for me, Jack. It's such an exhausting drive all the way to Norecomb in a truck. An hour or two of sheer terror with you way up in the sky is certainly preferable."

"It's not that bad, is it, Aubrey?" I asked with a soft chuckle. Other than Will on Norecomb, Aubrey is the only other person in Rupert Gulf country who has ever climbed into in airplane with me.

"I suppose it's not that bad," Aubrey chuckled as well, something a bit more, however, settling into her features. "As long as you're the one driving the airplane, Jack."

"Thank you, Aubrey," and I searched with at least a measure of frantic vehemence for a change of subject. "Julia is - anxious to see you," I stated - and sat feeling incredibly dim and stupid.

"I'm anxious to see my cousin Julia as well. You and she are quite taken with each other, aren't you, Jack?" perhaps an edge of knowing mischief in Aubrey's eyes.

"I - admire Julia -"

"She, over the past few months, can finish very few sentences when talking about you, Jack. And my cousin is certainly one of the most attractive queens in Rupert Gulf," Aubrey quite aware that I'm gazing as usual in spell bound entrancement toward beauty and allure which I yet again can only call blinding.

"Yes -" I answered, nothing a great deal more profound coming to mind, and I yet again watched easy amusement settle into Aubrey's features, just the edge of quiet resignation a quick moment later. I'm not really certain if I should feel sorry for Aubrey. I'm not really certain how I should feel about her. Aubrey is searching so desperately for love. I suppose it's rather sad that someone as impossibly beautiful as she is and the queen of a farm second only to Norecomb in wealth and influence doesn't really know what love is. Several dozen men, they tell me, a few of them kings and heirs of large, successful farms, have courted Aubrey over the years. All of her suitors, they also tell me, have run like hell back to their own farms as soon as they really got to know her.

"Well, Jack," Aubrey began as she pushed herself from her chair, "I suppose I should get ready for my hour of sheer terror in the sky," and Aubrey stood a short distance from one of the windows making no attempt to do so. The nightgown Aubrey is wearing conceals very little of anything - and Aubrey standing another very long minute in front of the window just to be certain that absolutely nothing was concealed from me. It was yet again that which it always is, a half instant's struggle on my part until I just gave up, a glance of blatant, devouring scrutiny. The word incomparable just doesn't suffice.

"Oh - it looks like it's going to be a beautiful day, doesn't it, Jack," Aubrey glancing through the window, commenting another half minute on the weather - the dance she performed for me leaving me choking for breath. I wasted now, I suppose, nothing more than a half moment in pointless struggle, might have sat an hour in contented delight devouring the most voluptuously beautiful woman who has ever existed. I allowed myself in the end no pretense whatsoever. In some ways, Julia is and always will be for me the most beautiful woman who has ever lived. Julia even under a dispassionate eye is indeed a very attractive woman, her features retaining a very genuine beauty, her figure feminine beauty and allure toward which young men half her age will often steal very blatant glances.

And still, I sat again in transfixed oblivion, Aubrey leaning at the window, dancing in culminating abandon, darting a glance over her shoulder just to be certain that I was taking advantage of the unrestricted license she had granted me - unfeigned delight in her eyes as she commented on the weather.

"Well Jack, which dress should I wear?" Aubrey asked as she nodded toward four draped over another of the couches. "I want to look nice when I meet cousin Julia, and I'm certain your taste is far more refined than anyone else's."

"You look nice in the red dress, Aubrey," I tried. All four are the essence of revealing blatancy.

"Do you really think so, Jack?" Aubrey crooned, taking the dress into her hands. "Do you really think I look nice wearing this dress?" Aubrey writhing toward the couch on which I sat.

"Yes - yes, Aubrey," I answered, chanced a glance - and sat for another timeless eternity she and I finally locked into an unfeigned embrace of each other's eyes She's pleading now without the least pretense, I perhaps pleading as well, pleading for a moment's pause. Julia's belief that I "am not impressed" by Aubrey isn't quite correct either. I suppose I feel gentle amusement in Aubrey's company, and could very easily, I realized as I fell another timeless eternity into searching, pleading eyes, feel something a great deal more for her. And it's yet again something I can only call raw and primal to every finished extreme. Were Aubrey to lean with obvious, passionate intent at the moment, I'm not in the least certain I could resist, would probably do a whole lot more than not resist.

Aubrey did lean forward, a hand atop my own in gentle embrace for a very long moment. Aubrey's smile is complacent warmth, however, as she meets my lips with her own in a quick instant's affectionate touch.

"Jack -" her voice mirthful, resigned amusement, "when are you going to fling me onto one of these couches, ravish me to your heart's content?"

"Aubrey, if - if things were just a - little different -" I tried, searching for anything. She stood her hand crushed onto my own in emotional warmth another moment, sighed - and as I'd already anticipated, stepped no further than the back of my couch in order to dress.

"I'll desist for the moment," she chuckled as she lay her nightgown on the back of the couch, complacent ease in her voice as she continued. "Emmon Pears drove Julia's airplanes before you, Jack."

"Yeah," I answered, at least a measure of rational calm returning to my voice as I made certain that the tree on the other side of the window didn't go anywhere. "Pears and Dillwiddy. No one knows what's become of either of them, do they, Aubrey? Just walked away from the war?"

"Yes," Aubrey sighed. "Julia wants me to forget about Pears and Dillwiddy, but I will never do so. You know Julia as well as anyone now, Jack. You know what it's like living on Norecomb. If there's a saint alive today, it's Julia. I won't allow Pears and Dillwiddy to just walk away."

"What is it now, Aubrey, five hundred weight silver or a hundred gallons of gas on their heads?"

"Yes, and I've made it quite clear that only their heads need be delivered to me."

"So I've heard," I shuddered.

Aubrey finally stepped around the couch - and it's yet again something not quite explicable. Her dress as impossible as it seems is something more, and certainly something less, than are dresses worn by any of the nieces. And Aubrey, of course, abandoned herself without the least hesitation to a dance of writhing abandon in order to model a dress in which she just appears all the more exquisitely, impossibly beauty.

"Aubrey, it looks - very nice -"

I'll never really know why I bother with the pretense. It's giddy delight in her eyes as she leans again, the touch of her lips to mine this time a long moment's passionate caress, another timeless little glance as she waits for me to slam her into my arms, rip the dress away, devour her in wild, frantic lovemaking.

It's yet again a moment and a bizarre, timeless little eternity. She sees it all in my eyes, knows that if she leans again I'll fling myself frantically over the edge. And with that, it's the same perceptive, dazzling brilliance in Aubrey's eyes, yet again just that edge of resigned mirth in her features. She lowered herself onto the couch beside me, will never give up entirely. She sees the ambivalence in my eyes, however, will allow me retreat if I plead for it - and it's just another moment's dizzying little abandon between us. I simply have to admit that I do not dislike Aubrey, am genuinely fond of her in an amusing sort of way - and will lunge if the caressing brushes of her knees to my own are anything more than the teasing intimacy they always are.

"Anyway," she finally continued in gentle amusement, a possessing hand to my arm, a touch of her knee to mine, "Emmon Pears used to drive me in Julia's airplane to see her. As soon as old, nasty Emmon opened the plane's door for me, I'd have to hunt around Norecomb for an hour to find Julia, out in the west barns with her goats, down on the beach. Since you've been coming to get me, Jack," the same gentle mischief in her smile, "I've noticed that Julia is waiting for me right beside that - thing -"

"The runway," I chuckled.

"Yes. And Julia's smile is so sweet and gracious as you help me from the airplane. Did you ever notice her eyes, though, those tiny little darts she's shooting at me. 'Get your damn hands off him, Aubrey.' One of these days, my dear saintly cousin is going to forget herself and say it aloud."

With a soft chuckle I met Aubrey's eyes with appreciation in my own.

"When are you going to marry my lovesick cousin, Jack?"

"Well - ah -"

I don't think I've ever finished an entire sentence in Aubrey's company.

"She's crazy about you, Jack. As I say, you know her as well as anyone, and you know she's a saint, not the type who will ever be sensible and just come right out and say how she feels. But I know my cousin too, Jack, and it's been twenty years now since I've seen her eyes quite as fogged over as they have been for the past six months now."

"Maybe - maybe in a few more months, Aubrey - maybe we'll - decide something -"

"Well," Aubrey sighed, "I'll give her another month or two. It is, I suppose, only fair. But just a month or two, and then I'm going to abandon civility and propriety entirely -" Aubrey's lips by then an inch or two from my own, her hands clawing ferocity to my arms, caresses of her knees to my own something I can only call maddening.

In the end it's that same precarious stance at the edge of a cliff, an immersion in raw, dizzying abandon knowing she'll cry out in assenting ecstasy as soon as I crush her onto the couch - quite as I just can't deny I had little more than a month ago. I'll never be quite certain why the memories shot a frantic path through my mind, Aubrey just a month ago shuddering and writhing in frenzied violence for my kisses and caresses, gasping in abandoned delight knowing I was gazing in dazed oblivion toward feminine beauty and allure I saw as some inexplicable, impossible ideal. I hadn't, however, denied a thing that culminating day a month ago, rested timeless moments in remorseful pause admitting the ultimate, admitting that it was all wrong. And still, I hadn't in some ways had the least doubt, would marry her afterwards, might even fall in love with her.

I'll never know why I had hesitated one final moment that day a month ago, flung my eyes to hers - a licentious, promiscuous Aubrey indeed trembling in very real fright.

"Aubrey -" I'd whispered, trembling now in fright myself.

"Jack - yes -" she'd whispered, had then, however, explained her fright. "It's - it's just that - I've never done it before, Jack - "

I'll always wonder if it had been stunned disbelief in my features. It was, as I might have expected, that same mix of sighing resignation and amusement in Aubrey's as we pushed ourselves from the couch.

"Yes, you're right, Jack. We are being a bit - precipitate. Perhaps we should wait - at least awhile -"

And so I yet again found in myself a very genuine affection for Aubrey, had sometimes chuckled in mirthful amusement wondering why she doesn't bother challenging or denying all manner of innuendo and rumor.

And I sat again with Aubrey knowing that another half instant would be enough. It's yet again that which it had been a month ago, a seemingly helpless fall from a cliff as I decided in a bizarre, blinding instant that I must slam her into my arms, ravish her with my love. I flung eyes probably awash with a wild frenzy to hers, saw it all this time, she yet again trembling in fright - as she crushed her knees onto my own, her hands clawed onto my arms, Aubrey frightened and yet her eyes wide and ablaze with assenting ecstasy. I sat feeling the same very genuine affection for Aubrey, felt the same vain little pleasure knowing that her feelings for me were every bit as genuine. And I sat yet again in reeling oblivion for an Aubrey who dancing next to a window had been quite aware that she was doing so hiding absolute nothing from me, giddy delight in her eyes with every glance over her shoulder. I sat immersed finally in some raw, liquid warmth - and sat with her flinging myself yet again frantically and finally over the edge, thrust my hands to her waist, slammed her body to my own.

"Aubrey -" I gasped.

"Yes -?" her breath exploding fury.

"Aubrey -" my own voice an explosive gasp - until I decided to allow myself a half moment's awakening lucidity, will never know why. "Aubrey - we should be going - shouldn't we -" and I rested another timeless and ludicrous moment realizing that I had slammed her body onto my lap, my hands clawed frantically about her waist.

It's the same resigned amusement in her eyes, perhaps an edge of lingering, entranced delight.

"Yes, Jack. I suppose we should be going."