over.
The owner was there, looking fresh as a terrier, and greeted me a good morning.
“I don't suppose you had any messages during the night, for me?” I asked her.
But she had not had a message to assure me that Holmes had resolved the issue on his own. Nothing to transform my Valkyrie ride through hell into a placid, unadventurous, puffing, ground-based train-ride back to the warm, dry, August-kissed South Downs. I would even process the honey from the other hives, I pledged, were it to absolve me from climbing back into that aeroplane.
But, no message, telegraphic, telephonic, or even telepathic.
I followed the obscenely cheerful driver out onto the rain-shined street, and he drove me to the hay-field.
Javitz was there before me, his young admirer lingering at a distance. My pilot looked no better than I felt. Still, his hands were steady as he poured me a cup from a thermal flask filled with scalding coffee.
He walked away and finished his check of our various levels by torch-light. I cradled the coffee to its dregs, and dropped the cup back onto the flask. When he came back, I handed it to him, and glanced up at the glass-wrapped passenger chamber with loathing.
Instead of offering me a hand, as he had before, he leant back against the wing and lit a cigarette. “It's ninety miles, more or less, to Thurso,” he began. “That weather report you saw me with, back in London, warned me that the wind was building, and it's out of the north-east. That's why we came across the mountains from Edinburgh instead of following the coast-line.
“But from here on, we don't have a choice. Even if we keep inland, we'll get the wind. The weather's going to be bad,” he said bluntly. “It's expected to blow itself out by tomorrow, but today's going to be rough. And when we leave Thurso, it'll be worse.” He studied me in the half-light. “This could kill us.”
Since I had come to work with Holmes, I had spent rather more time than most women my age in contemplating my imminent death. Gun, knife, bomb-I had faced all those and survived. Death by fire would be terrible, and drowning awful, but relatively quick. Falling from a great height, however, with no control, no hope, no avoiding the knowledge of a terrible meeting with the earth: That would be forever.
I swallowed: It would be easier, if I only knew. If I were certain that we were on the right track, that my presence in Orkney was the only hope for Damian and his Estelle, I would not hesitate to risk my life, or that of this brave man who had blindly done all I asked, and more. If I were sure…
I met his eyes. “I can't lie to you. There is a good chance that we are chasing a wild goose. We may get to Orkney and find our quarry has never been there, never had any intention of going there. And before you ask, yes, I knew it before we left London. My partner and his brother both disagree with me, and are hunting elsewhere.
“Two things I am certain about: One, that I could be right. And two, we only have today. Right or wrong, tomorrow will be too late for two lives, one of those a child. If I could fly this machine myself, I would. If your professional judgment decides that it is insane to go into the air today, I'll see what I can do by train.”
Javitz tossed away his cigarette end and said merely, “Okay. Let's see how things look in Thurso. Lad,” he called. “Help us get the machine turned around.”
When the 'plane was facing the other way, he handed me up, then scrambled past me into his own seat. Our eager helper took up his position at the front, and when Javitz gave him a shout, he yanked the prop with all his young strength and passion. Instantly, the roar of the engine assaulted our ears. The boy whipped away the chocks, and we bumped down the deserted field before the sun cleared the horizon. The head-lamps of an arriving motor- car sought us out, but we were already throwing ourselves at the clouds.
The furs and rugs were cold and damp; they never did actually warm up.
They say that a woman in labour enters a state in which time is suspended and the sensations she is undergoing become dream-like. Men attacked by ferocious beasts claim to enter a similar other-worldly state of grace, when their horror and pain become distant, and oddly unreal. I know, having flown that day from Inverness to Thurso, that a person can only hold so much sheer terror before the mind folds itself away.
We were shaken by giant hands every one of those 150 miles, tossed about and batted up and down. Sometimes we flew above unyielding ground; other times we were suspended above cold, white-licked sea; once we flattened ourselves against a young mountain that loomed abruptly out of the clouds. That time, Javitz emitted a string of distracted curses, and I curled over with my hands wrapped around my head, whimpering and waiting for a ripping impact and nothingness.
The engine roared on.
I retreated into myself and wrapped the world around my head like the travelling rugs. We bounced and rattled and I felt nothing-not until the unending noise suddenly halted and the 'plane ceased its inexorable press against my spine. We both came bolt upright, flooded with panic for three interminable seconds of silence before the engine caught again and the propellers resumed. The shoulders before me were bent over the controls so tightly I thought the stick was in danger of shearing off; my throat felt peculiar, until I found I was keening with the wind.
We followed railroad tracks along the coast, up a river, and through mountains to another river. The ground below settled somewhat, although the wind relented not a whit, and I eyed the green fields and the river with love, knowing that they would be marginally softer than the mountains and warmer than the sea.
Finally, a gap in the clouds permitted us a glimpse of open water with a small town at its edge.
Then the clouds obscured it; at the same moment, the engine spluttered into silence for a terrifying count of four, then caught again.
It did it once more when the town was directly to our right. This time the silence held long enough that the machine grew heavy and tilted, eager to embrace gravity. Javitz cursed; I made a little squeak of a noise; with a sputtering sound, the propeller found purpose again.
If Thurso was too small for an agent of Mycroft Holmes, it was also too small for an air field. However, it did have an apparently smooth and not entirely under-water pasture free of boulders, cattle, and rock walls-Javitz seemed to know it, or else he spotted it and was too desperate to survey the ground for other options. The house beside it had sheets hanging out to dry; as we aimed our descent at the field, I noted numbly that, in the space of a few seconds, the laundry flipped around to cover roughly 200 of a circle's 360 degrees.
We splashed down, skidded and slewed around, and came to rest facing the way we had come. Javitz shut down the motor and we sat, incapable of either speech or movement, until we became aware of shouting. I raised the cover, and a red-faced farmer pulled himself up. “Wha' the bliudy ‘ell're yeh playing at, yeh blooten’ idjit?” the man shouted. “Ye think p'raps we enjoy scrapin' you lot off'n our walls? May waif thought he'd be comin’ threw the sittin’ room winda-c'mere and A'll kick yer- Captain Javitz? Is that you?” His hard Scots suddenly lost a great degree of its regionality.
“Hello there, Magnuson. Sorry to give your wife a fright, it wasn't half what we gave ourselves.”
“Jaysus be damned, Javitz, I'd not have thought it even of you. Oh, miss, pardon me, I didn't see you.”
“Quite all right,” I said. One might have thought I would be growing accustomed to life in a state of fear and trembling, but my voice wasn't altogether steady. Nor were my legs, when I made to stand.
Javitz and I staggered into open air. The rain had stopped, but the sea-scented wind beat at us and made the aeroplane twitch like a fractious horse. The farmer, Magnuson, eyed it as if it were about to take to the air on its own-not, in fact, an impossibility.
“Come inside and we'll see about finding you rooms until this blows over.”
Javitz shook his head. “We'll tie her down and find some petrol. As soon as I've cleared the fuel line, we'll be away.”
“Never!” the other man roared. “My wife would have my guts for garters if I let Cash Javitz take off into this hurricane.”
“No choice, I'm afraid.”
I interrupted. “Mr Magnuson? I'm Mary Russell, pleased to meet you. Pardon me for a moment. Captain Javitz, what the devil made it do that?”
“Probably a scrap of the same rubbish we picked up on that load of fuel in York.”
“But that time the motor just stopped, not stopped and started.”
“This'll just be something that worked itself down to the fuel line.”
“How long will it take you to clear it?”
“An hour at the most. We should pick up petrol, too, while we're here.”
“And you honestly feel we can resume after that?”
“Don't see why not.”