by having a working airline before Spain has its first flight.” Herr van Bradt shrugged. “His Majesty is aware of that, of course, but he really wants an air force. And this is the Netherlands. Our navy is merchant ships for the most part. It makes sense that the Netherlands Air Force should be an airline first. He wants to put off the final break with Spain as long as he can. But he is not willing to weaken the Netherlands to do it.”
“You mean we’re not just going to be a Netherlands airline but His Majesty’s air force? These aren’t combat planes. I’d rather do aerobatics in a 747 than in a Jupiter and I’ve never flown a 747 outside one of those computer simulations.” The whole idea of trying to do a loop-the-loop in a Monster gave her the willies.
“The Netherlands aren’t at war, Magdalena. Even if they were, His Majesty knows that the Monster isn’t designed for combat. But neither was the DC3 and it was considered one of the most valuable planes in World War II.”
“You’ve been talking to Georg, haven’t you?” Magdalena sighed. She knew chapter and verse on the magical, mystical DC3. The way Georg talked about it, she sometimes imagined it in a miniskirt and high heels with really big engines falling half out of its blouse. Of course, other times, when she imagined flying it…Well, that was a different story.
“Yes, I have. And confirmed it with Hal Smith. I’d order a dozen of them if I could. The point is: even in war, there are other things a plane can do than bombing or strafing runs on enemy positions. And in peace, which we all hope for, the airline becomes both a money-maker and a status symbol for the Netherlands. That’s what His Majesty wants and he is willing to pay for it.”
Magdalena thought a minute. “Georg isn’t going to like this. Not at all.”
“Fat lot of good it’s going to do him,” Georg Markgraf muttered. “The aircraft are built here.”
“Here is all of three hundred miles from Amsterdam, Georg,” Magdalena said. “Granted, that trip used to take weeks. But you know we can do it in five or six hours.”
“I didn’t want a long-distance marriage.”
Magdalena was stunned. While Georg had been, well, hanging around her a lot, he’d never mentioned marriage. Then she began to be a bit angry. Mostly at his assumption that she would agree to marriage. Which she wasn’t at all sure about. She liked the life of a pilot, being free to go where she willed-or rather, where the schedule allowed.
“Oh?” Magdalena sniffed. “I wasn’t aware that you’d engaged yourself, Georg? Who is it? One of the investors’ daughters?”
“No! I thought you and I…” His voice trailed off.
“Nice of you to mention it to me.” Magdalena threw him a look, then flounced away.
Farrell Smith sighed. “Georg, I’ve never met anybody who had such a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease. Not to mention that was just romantic as all get out…not.”
Mary, his wife, shook her head. “Panic, dear, panic. I’ve got the strangest memory of somebody at this table”-she gave him a significant look-“getting rather tongue-tied, back in the day.”
“Georg would be better off if he did get tongue-tied,” Farrell pointed out. “Instead, he just blurts stuff out, usually stuff that’s going to get him in hot water.”
“I don’t want Magdalena to move back to Amsterdam,” Georg said. “I’ve just been waiting for the right moment to ask her to marry me. This wasn’t the right moment.”
“I’ll say,” Farrell said.
“You’re being awful hard on him, Dad,” Merton said. “Getting a girl is pretty hard when you’re a nerd.” Then he laughed. “Don’t worry about it, Georg. Maggie’s a nerd, too. She’ll come around.”
Farrell held his peace. Barely. He positively hated it when Merton said nerd. Merton had dropped out of high school, not exactly the best endorsement of a teacher. Farrell hadn’t handled it well and Merton had moved out. Then he had that accident after the Ring of Fire and lost both legs above the knee. Merton had always been more of a physical kid than a mental one. The loss of his legs had been especially hard on him, and the Ring of Fire had had made it harder still, because it had turned back the clock in the field of prosthetics. It had never occurred to Farrell before Merton’s accident that the switch from “disabled” to “physically-challenged” had been anything but political correctness. The difference between a peg leg and an up-time prosthetic limb was the difference between a disability and a challenge. At least in Merton’s case. It was, for all practical purposes, impossible to walk on a couple of peg legs that started above the knee. That was not true with up-time prosthetics.
Farrell didn’t peek under the table to see the fiberglass and resin prosthetics that his son now wore. But the knowledge that they were there and Georg had been instrumental in putting them there made it really hard for him to hold his tongue.
Georg snorted at Merton. “What would you recommend, O Great He-man?”
“Flowers, oh Nerdly Genius.” Merton said, “Flowers and chocolates with a note telling her you’re a jerk. The great truth of the universe is all men are jerks. The problem with nerds is they don’t realize it.”
“And the problem with jocks,” his mother told Merton, “is you revel in it.”
“And it’s about time for me to get to my reveling,” Merton agreed, pulling his walker to the kitchen table. He used the walker to lever himself up out of the chair, then reached down and adjusted the tension on the knee springs of his artificial legs, using the walker for balance. They weren’t truly up-time artificial legs, but they were a great deal closer to what they had up-time than Europe had had before the Ring of Fire. With them and the walker, Merton wasn’t limited to a wheelchair.
Wooden legs have the problem that they are heavy. And when you lose most of your legs, you lose that muscle mass as well. Aside from the limited ability to flex at the heel and knee, the fiberglass prosthetics were lighter than wood would have been. Merton still needed buns of steel to make them work, but physical labor had never been his trouble.
“Come on, Maggie. You knew he was going to ask you as soon as he got up the nerve,” Merton said a couple of hours later. Merton was a pilot for TEA-RDA, he guessed it would be soon. It took some extra gear and the truth was that he probably wouldn’t have been allowed to fly professionally up-time. The rudder controls were foot pedals after all. But while not a pilot before the Ring of Fire, Merton did have flight time. He had gone up with friends of his grandfather and even considered it as a career. But he hadn’t liked school.
“I know that. It was his blithe assumption that I’d say yes.”
“From what I’ve seen, you’ve been going out of your way to give him that impression.” Merton gave her a look. “Were you just leading him on?”
“Okay. I would have said yes but…”
“But he failed to suffer enough?”
“No. It’s not that. But, why didn’t he ask me?”
“Dowry.”
“What?” Maggie looked up. “He wasn’t satisfied with my dowry?”
“No. The other one, the one that the guy gives.”
“He owns a big chunk of M and S Aviation!”
“Yep and you own a big chunk of TEA or at least you did. How’s that going to work out, by the way? Is His Nibs buying you out?”
“Not entirely. He wants me to have an interest to make sure I don’t jump ship. Actually, that was one of the things that a lot of the negotiations were about. TEA has two planes and a contract for eight more. But even more than the planes, TEA is the people. By switching off pilots we’ve been able to train more. We have eight pilots and twice that many maintenance people. We’ll have more by the time we have planes for them to fly. All our pilots have experience on four-engine aircraft and most of them are cross-trained as maintenance people.”
Merton nodded. He was one of those pilots; he got maybe three flights a month. And several hours stick time on each flight. And on every flight he was either training someone or being trained. While his legs limited what he could do in the way of aircraft maintenance, he spent time supervising that, too. Like most of the others, he was waiting impatiently for more planes to come off the line at M amp;S Aviation so that he could get more time in the air.
Maggie was still talking. “Herr van Bradt spent a certain amount of time explaining that to His Majesty. If the employees didn’t like the deal, Royal Dutch Airlines would end up owning two cargo planes, two mail planes and
