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  Rick had to confer with Buzzard by belt phone to find the dust-covered oxygen tank. Then its mask had to be sterilized-purely a matter of routine, Peter assured him, they always sterilized any equipment that might carry strep, flu, or TB. . . . Finally the chrome-yellow tank was strapped neatly behind the pilot's seat, its accordion tube draped over Alex's right shoulder, and the mask's elastic firmly snagged at the nape of his neck.

  Then they rolled him, snugly socketed within his plane, out of the paper hangar. The plane bumped along easily on its little pipe-stçm undercarriage. After rolling the plane eighty meters, the two Troupers faced the ultralight into the west wind.

  Rick turned the helmet on, and Alex was rewarded with a meaningless pull-down menu of virtual instrumentation across the upper rim of his faceplate. Alex dinked around a bit with the rollerball and click button. The system seemed to be functional.

  Five new Troupers now made their appearance, attracted by the fuss. They were three men, a woman, and, to Alex's surprise, a teenage boy. The boy hauled a hundred meters of winch cable out to the ultralight, and the towline was snapped to the aircraft's nose. Two new guys wedged a ten-meter bamboo bipod against the nose of the aircraft.

  Buzzard, lurking distantly at the door of his yurt, drew in the slack on the winches until the launch cable thrummed with tension.

  "Ready, Alex?" Rick shouted at the side of the helmet.

  "Right." Alex nodded. "Let's do it."

  "Just relax, it's gonna be fine! You'll enjoy this!"

  Alex flipped up his faceplate and glared at Rick. "Look, man, stop persuading me. I'm here already, okay? You got me strapped down, I got my oxygen. Launch the son of a bitch."

  Rick's face fell, and he stepped back. He strode out of the way of the wings, then pulled his belt phone and barked into it.

  The cable snapped to, the bipod jammed itself in the limestone earth, and the aircraft was instantly catapulted skyward.

  The drum reeled up with vicious, singing efficiency, and the aircraft climbed as steeply as a roller coaster. The cable detached and fell earthward, and the engine kicked in, and Alex was in free flight.

  The aircraft veered aside to avoid the guy cable on one of the larger towers. It then methodically began vectoring upward, gaining height in a clockwise spiral.

  "How's it going, Alex?" Peter asked over headphones.

  "Okay, I guess," Alex said. He saw the prairie below, sun-blasted straw and patches of poi~onous green, the black strap of highway, a lot of stunted cedars clustered at a nearby draw. In the tug of wind his white paper sleeves flapped like cheap toy flags. The metal stirrups bit at his bare soles.

  Deliberately, Alex swayed back and forth in his seat. The distant ends of the ultralight's wings dipped in response, like the ends of a seesaw, but they soon righted themselves in a chip-aided loop of feedback. And the ground beneath him dwindled steadily.

  He was being gently juggled in midair by the hands of an invisible giant. He was lounging in a folding chair at the parapet of a twelve-story building. If he wanted to, he could pull the harness strap loose, step out on a stirrup, lean out, and drop to earth as sweet and clean as a meteor. Death was near. Death was near. .

  Alex flipped up his faceplate and felt the dry wind strip the sweat from his cheeks. "Go higher, man!"

  "You'll notice that we have six major yurts and four vehicle hangars," Peter told him. "Three of those towers are telecom, and we have four smaller towers for weather instrumentation. The black gridwork over by the latrine tents is a big patch of solar arrays."

  Alex grunted. "Yeah, yeah."

  "We're running on solar now, but the wind generators run around the clock."

  "Huh

  "All those big white rods, staked out in a circle around the camp, are our perimeter posts. They're motion detectors, and they've got some security muscle built in; you're gonna want to be a little careful with those. We have a set of 'em staked out by the highway too. Those big yellow panels are mosquito lures. They smell just like skin does, but any mosquito that lands on those lures gets instantly zapped."

  Alex flipped his faceplate back down. He rollerballed to the menu bar, pulled down a section labeled telecom, and switched to cellular. Peter vanished into telephonic limbo in the midst of his tour-guide spiel.

  A handy phone menu rolled down with fifteen speed dials.

  They were thoughtfully accompanied by

  1 Jerry Mulcahey.

  2 Greg Foulks.

  3 Joe Brasseur.

  4 Carol Cooper.

  5 Ed Dunnebecke.

  6 Mickey Kiehl.

  7 Rudy Martinez.

  8 Sam Moncrieff.

  9 Martha Madronich.

  10 Peter Vierling.

  11 Rick Sedletter.

  12 Ellen Mae Lankton.

  13 Boswell Harvey.

  14 Joanne Lessard.

  15 Jane Unger.

  This looked very much like the Storm Troupe's idea of a digital pecking order. Alex was amazed to see that Juanita had somehow meekly settled for being number fifteen.

  He clicked fifteen and got Juanita's voice mail, an I'm not-in-right-now spiel. He hung up and clicked four.

  "Carol here."

  "It's me again. I'm now flying over your camp."

  Carol laughed into his helmeted ears. "I know, man, word gets around."

  "Carol, am I correct in assuming that this is some kind of hick hazing ritual? And pretty soon they're gonna tell me there's some kind of terrible software malf in this aircraft? And I'm gonna go through a whole bunch of, like, crazy barrel rolls and Immelmanns and such?"

  Carol was silent for a moment. "YoU don't miss much, for a guy your age."

  "What do you think I should do? Should I act really macho about it? Or should I scream my head off over the radio channel and act completely panicked?"

  "Well, personally, I screamed bloody murder and threw up inside the helmet."

  "Macho it is, then. Thanks for the advice. Bye."

  "Alex, don't hang up!"

  "Yeah?"

  "I think I'd better tell you this. . . . If you don't scream, and scream a whole lot, then they might just push the envelope on that little bird until its wings tear off."

  "You sure have some interesting friends," Alex said. He hung up and switched back to radio channel.

  "...support the generators. And it's useful for keeping track of goats," Peter was droning.

  "That's really remarkable," Alex assured him. He switched the catch on the oxygen mask and pressed the mask firmly over his mouth and nose. For a moment he thought he'd been gypped, that he'd get nothing for his effort but the dry stink of plastic hose, but then the oxygen hit him. It spiked deep into his lungs and blossomed there, like a sweet dense mat of cool blue fur.

  The paper walls of the camp dwindled beneath him as the aircraft continued its climb, spiraling up with the mathematical precision of a bedspring. As pure oxygen flushed through him to the sharp red marrow of his bones, Alex realized suddenly that he had found the ideal method to experience the Texas High Plains. The horizon had expanded to fantastic, planetary, soul-stretching dimensions. Nothing could touch him.

  At this height, the air at ground level showed its true character. Alex could witness the organic filth in the low-lying atmosphere, banding the horizon all around him. It was a sepia-tinted permanent stain, a natural smog of dirts and grits and pollens, of molds and stinks and throat-clogging organic spew. . . . By contrast, the high sweet air around him now, cool and thin and irresistible, was a bone-washing galactic ether. He felt as if it were blowing straight through his flesh.

  In the distance, half a dozen buzzards corkscrewed down a thermal in pursuit of earthly carrion.

  dial numbers. names.

  Peter's voice buzzed in his ears.

  Alex tugged the mask from his face. "What?"

  "You okay, man? You're not answering."

  "No. I mean, yeah! No problem. It's beautiful up here! Go higher!"

  "We
seem to be having a little software trouble down here at base, Alex."

  "Really?" Alex said in delight. "Hold on a sec.

  He pressed the mask to his face, huffed hard at it three times. From some lurking tarry mess deep within his tuberdes, blue goo suddenly fizzed like a rack of sparklers. "Go!" he screamed.

  "Hit it, man, push the envelope!"

  Peter fell silent.

  The wings wobbled, building up to a convulsion. Suddenly the craft pitched over nose-first and headed straight toward the earth. The descent lasted five heart-stopping, gut-gripping seconds. Blood left his heart, sweat jetted instantly from every pore in his body, and he felt a lethal chill grip his arms and legs.

  Then the machine caught itself with a vicious huff of fabric and swooped through the pit of a parabola. Alex's head snapped back against the seat hard enough to see stars, and he felt his hands and feet fill with blood from g-forces. Great gummy bubbles rose in his chest.

  The plane soared trembling toward the zenith.

  Alex jammed his trembling blood-sausage fingers against the mask and gulped down fresh oxygen.

  The plane was now flying upside down, piercing some timeless peak of weightless nothingness. Alex, his head swimming within his helmet, examined the enormous platonic sprawl of blue beneath his naked feet, through eyes that were two watery congested slits. Pulling loose and flinging himself into that limitless wonder would be worth not one, but a dozen lives.

  JANE opened the door flap of the command yurt. Inside the big tent, pacing the carpet at the end of his thick fiber-optic leash, was Jerry Mulcahey. Jerry's head was encased in the Troupe's top-of-the-line virching helmet, and both his hands were in stripe-knuckled data gloves. Jerry was wearing paper, a refugee suit that had seen some road wear. His right paper sleeve, and both his paper legs, were covered in his pencil-scrawled mathematical notation.

  As Jerry turned and paced back toward her, Jane glimpsed his bearded face through the helmet's dark display plate, his abstracted eyes stenciled with gently writhing white contour lines.

  Jerry had ten-kilogram training weights strapped to each ankle, which gave him a leaden, swinging tread. Jane had often seen him pace with those weights, in marathon virching sessions, for hours on end. Every other hour or so, Jerry Would suddenly stop, deliberately pull the weights from his ankles, and then strap them onto both his hairy wrists.

  Jane Velcroed~the yurt's doorway shut behind her, against the rising gusts of dusty west wind. Then she waited, her arms folded, for her presence to register on him, and for Jerry to surface from whatever strange sea of cyberspace had tangled his attention.

  At length Jerry's pacing slowed, and the karate chops and Balinese hand gestures with the data gloves became a bit more perfunctory, and finally he glided to a stop in front of her. He pulled the blank-screened helmet off and set it on his hip and offered her a big bearded smile.

  "We need to talk," Jane said.

  Jerry nodded once, paused, then raised his shaggy blond brows in inquiry.

  Jane turned her head toward one of the two attached subyurts. "Are Sam or Mickey in right now?"

  "No. You can talk, Jane."

  "Well, I went down to Mexico and I got Alex. He's here right now."

  "That was quick," Jerry said. He seemed pleasantly surprised.

  "Quick and dirty," Jane told him.

  Jerry set his tethered helmet down on the carpet, crouched, and sat heavily beside it. "Okay then, tell me. How dirty was it?"

  Jane sat down beside him and lowered her voice. "Well, I structure-hit the power to the clinic, then I broke into the place when it was blacked out, and I found him with a flashlight, and I carried him out on my back."

  Jerry whistled. "Damn! You did all that? We've created a monster!"

  "I know that was a really stupid thing to do, but at least it was over in a hurry, and I didn't get caught, Jerry. I didn't get caught, I got him Out, and I aced it!" She shivered, then looked into his eyes. "Are you proud of me?"

  "I guess," Jerry said. "Sure I am. I can't help it. Were there witnesses?"

  "No. Nobody knows, besides you and me. And Carol and Greg, they know, but they'll never tell. And Leo, of course."

  Jerry frowned. "You didn't tell Leo about this little escapade, did you?"

  "No, no," Jane assured him. "I haven't been in contact with Leo since he found Alex for me." She paused, watching his face carefully. "But Leo's smart. I know Leo must have figured out what I was up to. I could tell that much, just from the E-mail he wrote me."

  "Well, don't figure out Leo anymore," Jerry said. "You don't know Leo. And I don't want you to know Leo. And if you ever do get to know Leo, you'll be very sorry that you did."

  She knew it would annoy Jerry if she pushed, but she had to push anyway. "I know you don't trust Leo, and neither do I. But you know, he's been very helpful to us. It can't have been easy to track Alex. Leo didn't have to do that for me, just because he's your brother. But he did it anyway, and he never asked you or me for anything in return."

  "My brother is a spook, and spooks are professionally affable," Jerry said. "You've got what you needed now. Let Leo alone from now on. Your brother's one thing, but my brother's another. It's bad enough that your no-good brother's shown up in camp, but if my brother ever arrives here, then all hell will break loose."

  Jane smiled. "Y'know, Jerry, it does me a lot of good to hear you say that. In a very sick, paradoxical way, of course."

  Jerry grimaced and ran his hand over his sandy hair. He was losing some of it in front, and the virching helmet had mashed the sides down over his ears, like a little boy's hair. ''Family is a nightmare.~~

  "I'm with you," Jane said. She felt very close to him suddenly. Family troubles were one of their great commonalities. It had been good of him to agree to let her brother into the Troupe, when she'd been so frank about Alex's shortcomings. She was sure that Jerry would never have done such a thing for anyone else. She was being stupid and reckless and troublesome, and Jerry was letting her do it, as a kind of gift. Because he loved her.

  "We gotta think this through, some," she told him. "The Troupe's not gonna like this much. Alex is no star recruit, that's for sure. He has no skills. And not much education. And he's an invalid."

  "How sick is he? Is he badly off?"

  "Well, I've always thought Alex was nine tenths malingerer, at heart. Dad's dropped thousands on him, but never pinned down what's wrong with him. But I can guarantee he's not contagious."

  "That's something, at least."

  "But he does get bored, and touchy, and then he gets these spells. They're pretty bad, sometimes. But he's always been like that."

  "No one stays with the Troupe who can't pull weight," Jerry said.

  "I know that, but I don't think he'll stay for long. If he doesn't run off by himself, then the Troupe'll throw him out after a while. They're not patient people. And if there's a way to make trouble here, Alex will probably find it." Jane paused. "He's not stupid."

  Jerry silently drummed his fingers on his papered knee.

  "I had to do this, because he's my little brother, and he was in really bad trouble, and I felt sure he was going to die." Jane was surprised at how much it hurt her to say that, at how much real pain and sense of failure she felt at the thought of Alex dead. She'd resented Alex for as long as she could remember, and in rescuing him, she'd thought she was doing something tiresome and familial and obligatory. But at the thought of Alex dead, she felt a slow burn of deep unsuspected emotion, a tidal surge of murky grief and panic. She wasn't being entirely frank with Jerry. Well, it wasn't exactly the first time.

  She took a breath and composed herself. "I've just dragged Alex out of the mess he was in, but I wish I could be responsible for him. But I can't. I believe in the work here. You know I believe in the work, and I do what I can to help. But now I've done something that really doesn't help the Troupe. I just brought you a big load of trouble. I'm sorry, sweetheart."

  Jerry was sile
nt.

  "You're not angry with me, Jerry?"

  "No, I'm not angry. It is a complication, and it's not helpful. But it's simple, if you can let it be simple. As far as I'm concerned, your brother is just like any other wannabe. He pulls his weight here, or out he goes."

  She said nothing.

  "We throw people out of the Troupe every season. It's ugly, but it happens. If it happens to your brother, you'll just have to accept that. Can you do that for me?"

  She nodded slowly. "I think so. .

  That earned her one of Jerry's looks. "You'd better tell me that you can do that, Jane. If you can't, then we'd all be better off if I threw him out right now."

  "All right," she said quickly. "I can do that, Jerry."

  "Maybe Alex can measure up. We'll give Alex his chance." Jerry stood and fetched up his helmet lefthanded, dangling it by one strap.

  Jane stood too. "I'm not real hopeful, but maybe he can do it, Jerry. If you'll back him a little."

  Jerry nodded. He swung up his helmet at the end of its strap and caught it in his other hand. "I'm glad you're back. You picked a good time for it. We've got a show for your little brother. Tomorrow it's gonna break loose along the dryline from here to Anadarko."

  "Wonderful! At last!" Jane jumped to her feet. "Is it mega-heavy?"

  "It's not the F-6, but the midlevel stream has serious potential. We're gonna chase spikes."

  "Oh that's great!" She laughed aloud.

  A shadow appeared at the door of the yurt. It was Rudy Martinez, from the garage. Rudy stood flatfooted, visibly sorry to interrupt. Jane aimed her brightest smile at him, wanting him to know that life would go on, the Troupe was moving, she'd aced another one.

  Jerry nodded. "What's up, Rudy?"

  Rudy cleared his throat. "Just tuning up for the chase . . . What's with the malf in Charlie's right front hub?"

  "Oh hell," Jane said. "Hell hell hell . . . Take me there, Rudy, we can fix that, let's go see."

  ALEX WAS SITTING in a flaccid plastic bath with a trickling sponge on his head. He was in the back of the hangar yurt, where Peter and Rick had dragged him, after pulling him, unconscious, from the seat of the ultralight.