Conquerors of the Sky (30 page)
Read Conquerors of the Sky Online
Authors: Thomas Fleming
“No, no,” Adrian lied. “You couldn't spoil anything that beautiful.”
“I'm afraid of what Buzz will do to Cliff. He's always hated him.”
“I'll take good care of Cliff. Don't worry.”
That night Adrian lay awake for hours brooding about women, the maddening way in which money, history, politics, entangled and so often strangled their love. Would he ever find one who loved him without a secret agenda in her head? Was part of it his fault? He remembered Amanda in freezing Maine yearning to let go. Was that what they wanted? He had let go tonight and where had it gotten him? Back to his first trauma, mother love.
The next morning a sleepless Adrian felt depressed, distant from a still-amorous
Tama. As they drove back to Santa Monica he turned on the car radio to avoid conversation. A newsman's voice said: “The White House announced that sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. President Harry S. Truman described it as a device that harnessed the power of the sun. The president said the United States had spent two billion dollars to produce it.”
Tama. As they drove back to Santa Monica he turned on the car radio to avoid conversation. A newsman's voice said: “The White House announced that sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. President Harry S. Truman described it as a device that harnessed the power of the sun. The president said the United States had spent two billion dollars to produce it.”
“My God,” Tama said. “Did you know about this, Adrian?”
Adrian's first reaction was outrage. How could he not have known this secret, after spending so many hours in wartime Washington? Why, how, had the generals ordered an extra four hundred Bâ29s when a single plane was about to drop more explosive power than all four hundred combined? He raced to the factory at suicide speed and called General Crockett in Washington. The general ruefully admitted that he had known no more about it than Adrian.
“But it don't really matter whether it was one plane or four hundred,” he said. “We did the job, Adrian.”
Victory through air power, Adrian thought. But there was something wrong with this victory. At lunch in the corporate dining room, Frank Buchanan voiced the thought Adrian had deflected. “It's a disgrace.”
He was drunk again. That should have made him easier to dismiss, but Adrian discovered the contrary. The drunkenness reiterated that Frank was speaking not only for himself but Amanda.
“It's a victory that couldn't have been achieved without an airplane,” Adrian said. “Anyone who criticizes it shouldn't be working in this industry. I find it rather sickening to see a self-appointed moralist ready to lecture the rest of us. May I ask what your qualifications are when it comes to morality, Mr. Buchanan?”
Frank slumped in his chair, reduced to silence. “Adrian's right,” Buzz McCall said. “It's what we've said from the start. We could win the war without the goddamn Army and Navy and we've done it.”
“By incinerating women and children,” Frank said.
“I don't like that part of it any more than you do,” Buzz said. “But what were we supposed to do when the bastards wouldn't surrender?”
“You would have dropped that bomb?”
“If I got an order, yes.”
“That's where you and I part company.”
For a moment Adrian wondered if he could fire McCall and keep Buchanan. At some deep level, did Frank loathe Buzz as much as he did?
Frank lurched to his feet and pointed a trembling finger at Adrian. “I predict we're making a horrendous mistake, getting in bed with the generals. We didn't start out to build planes for them. We built them because we loved flying. Because we wanted to create a better world, not blow it up. People aren't going to forget a plane dropped this bomb. We're going to be haunted by it for the rest of our lives.”
He's right,
whispered the historian in Adrian as Frank reeled out of the dining room. But the words could not be spoken. Adrian Van Ness was the president
of the world's largest aircraft company. He could not let this bizarre eccentric, whom he had reduced to his obedient servant in perpetuity, tell him what to think, much less force him to eat his words in public.
whispered the historian in Adrian as Frank reeled out of the dining room. But the words could not be spoken. Adrian Van Ness was the president
of the world's largest aircraft company. He could not let this bizarre eccentric, whom he had reduced to his obedient servant in perpetuity, tell him what to think, much less force him to eat his words in public.
Adrian's eyes traveled past the faces of the two dozen executives at other tables. Among the designers, all Frank Buchanan disciples, he saw anxiety on almost every face. Around Buzz McCall and his production engineers he saw only contempt. On the other faces the dominant emotion was consternation.
“I don't believe a talent for designing planes includes an ability to predict the future,” Adrian said. He raised his wineglass. “To air power,” he said.
“Second the motion,” Buzz McCall said, hoisting his Scotch.
There were no objections to the toast. Everyone drank to air power. “Incidentally,” Buzz said. “I've been on the phone to the Pentagon. They're can-celin' everything on the books but fifty BâTwentyânines. Unless someone starts another war real quick we're gonna have to fire fifty thousand people next week.”
Ruined
clanged in Adrian's soul. “Peace, it's wonderful,” he said.
clanged in Adrian's soul. “Peace, it's wonderful,” he said.
An immense moon dangled above Los Angeles, bathing the city and the beaches and the boulevards in its pale yellow light. Amanda Van Ness paced the rooms of her empty house. For three months the world had been at peace. She was sure Adrian spent his nights in Tama's arms, although he claimed to be grappling with the horrendous problems of converting Buchanan Aircraft to a builder of commercial planes. Victoria was always out with her fellow teenagers. Amanda was alone most of the time.
Alone but not lonely because in the darkest corner of her soul, Califia lay in an ivory casket, her golden sword in her pale hands. Amanda vowed she would not utter the fateful word that would awaken her. Memory would warm her heart. Those years in Eden would be her refuge.
For centuries, the moon had summoned lovers to rendezvous. Amanda thought of it gleaming on the forest of grimy oil derricks that Cadwallader Groves had become. She thought of it shining through the sycamores in Topanga Canyon. When Frank was away during the war, she often drove there and sat on the porch, bathing in the glow, relishing the silent affirmation of Eden.
Why not go again? Why not touch the memory? It would help keep Califia in the tomb. Adrian had told her Frank had sold the house and moved to another canyon. If someone else was living there, she would explain that she had spent four happy years in the house and was simply returning for a look at it. She would be content to sit in her car for a few minutes in the moonlight.
The most nervous householder could hardly object to a fortyâfiveâyearâold housewife sitting in his driveway for five minutes.
The most nervous householder could hardly object to a fortyâfiveâyearâold housewife sitting in his driveway for five minutes.
Amanda drove out Santa Monica Boulevard to the coast highway and swung north beside the ocean. Santa Monica was full of young people with ebullient eyes, laughing mouths. They were Americans, winners of the greatest war in history. The future belonged to them. She wondered if among them there were a few like her, for whom the victory was a wound.
Oh, Father, with your dream of a world reborn as Eden. Maybe to wish for too much happiness was the worst sin. Perhaps your daughter has learned the lesson of survival. Happiness preserved in the memory, like the beautiful butterflies you used to catch and mount in glass cases on Casa Felicidad's walls.
On the coast road the moonlight was incredibly bright. People were driving without headlights. The ocean undulated like an immense shimmering carpet. The narrow entrance to Topanga appeared on the right. In five minutes she was approaching the road to Frank's house. She shifted into second gear for the steep climb.
Up the slope labored her 1940 Ford to burst into a clearing twice the size of the one Amanda had known. Half of it was a parking lot filled with at least two dozen cars. Frank's house was gone. It had been replaced by a hangar-shaped building, the front painted gold and illuminated by concealed searchlights. There were a half-dozen oval windows cut in the side walls. Amanda walked to one of them and looked inside.
A beautiful dark-haired woman was bending low, serving food to a bald, grinning fat man. The woman was naked. Amanda recognized the man. It was Moon Davis, Buchanan's chief test pilot. Next to him, an equally obscene grin on his face, was Buzz McCall, Buchanan's production chief. Beside him, leering drunkenly, sat Frank Buchanan. In the distance were a half-dozen other beautiful naked women serving food to other members of the Buchanan hierarchy.
Amanda did not know how long she stood there in the moonlight watching them swill their liquor and chomp on their steaks and ogle the naked women. She looked for Adrian but could not find him. That was hardly a consolation. He was unquestionably a steady customer. But Frank! His presence meant he not only approved, he had collaborated in this desecration of Eden.
Amanda drove home through the moonlight, blinded by tears. It was a miracle that she reached her Hancock Park driveway alive. In the house, the moonlight continued to flood her mind. Everything in her life was revealed with scarifying clarity. All the truths she had suspected and tried to banish, the truths that she had hoped love would keep at bay.
Women were men's victims from the dawn of time. From the days when they oiled their bodies with frankincense and myrrh to please a pharaoh to the gift of their fidelity to lying medieval troubadours to their public prostitution in the celluloid world of Hollywood, they were always victims, exploited, used, abused. Only once, in a dim past before male historians began to write their lies, was there a country where women reigned.
The land of Califia. California before time began.
In the theater of her mind, this land would be reborn. Slowly, solemnly, Amanda descended to the ivory casket and spoke the word.
Awake,
she whispered.
Awake, my queen.
Awake,
she whispered.
Awake, my queen.
The casket opened. There lay Califia in her silver robes, clutching her golden sword. Her dark-blue eyelids fluttered. The wide sensual mouth trembled. She opened her eyes and spoke.
Did someone call my name?
Did someone call my name?
Almost blinded by the moonlight streaming from Califia's eyes, Amanda fell to her knees.
Your servant, summoning you to restore the reign of women, my queen.
Your servant, summoning you to restore the reign of women, my queen.
Will you obey my commands?
Yes! Yes!
The ecstasy of surrender flooded Amanda's soul with the radiance of a thousand moons.
Then I will arise and ride the winds of night with you. All our deeds will be done in darkness. In the dawn you will resume your disguise of the faithful wife and I will retire to my tomb.
Yes! Yes!
With a smile, Califia stepped from the casket and held out her hand to the kneeling Amanda.
Arise. Let us seek out the worst of the oppressors and design fitting punishments for them.
Dazedly, Amanda imitated Califia and stripped naked. Together they walked through the silent house to the lawn, where a gleaming silver plane awaited them in the moonlight. At the controls, also naked, was Tama! She too was a servant of Califia! She too had the knowledge of oppression that opened the secret door in the female soul. She smiled a welcome to Amanda and they soared into the moonlit sky.
Amanda chose their first target, the club on Topanga's ridge where women were groveling naked before the conquerors of the sky. Down, down they swooped to let Califia and Tama see the obscenity with their own eyes. The rage it ignited there! It was a flame in Amanda's heart.
What will their punishment be, my Queen?
Amanda asked as they circled above the building.
What will their punishment be, my Queen?
Amanda asked as they circled above the building.
I will lay my most terrible curse on them,
Califia said in a voice that had the thunder of surf in Pacific caves.
They will labor and labor but they will never profit, they will never know happiness with a woman again. They will emanate a stench that drives women mad, a foulness that inspires revenge and retaliation in sunlight and moonlight.
Califia said in a voice that had the thunder of surf in Pacific caves.
They will labor and labor but they will never profit, they will never know happiness with a woman again. They will emanate a stench that drives women mad, a foulness that inspires revenge and retaliation in sunlight and moonlight.
They swooped down again and Califia aimed her golden sword at the building. A terrifying yellow flame leaped from the tip and surged in the window, enveloping everyone in the room. Amanda could see the skulls and the bones beneath the revelers' flesh. The yellow flame sank into all of them, a divine electrocution that left them looking like putrefying corpses.
Amanda rejoiced until her eyes found Frank Buchanan. Frank! The five letters that had once encompassed a world. That too was being destroyed by Califia's vengeance. For a moment grief tore at Amanda's heart. Was Frank truly among the guilty? Was he too a victim of Buzz McCall, Adrian? It was too late
to ask Califia for mercy. She could only weep as he too joined the ranks of the living dead.
to ask Califia for mercy. She could only weep as he too joined the ranks of the living dead.
Amanda awoke with sunlight streaming in the window. It was almost noon. Adrian was in the doorway frowning at her. “I'm going to work, even though it's Saturday,” he said. “Since when have you taken to sleeping in the raw?”
She said nothing. She was terrified that she might betray Califia.
“You can sleep any way you pleaseâbut you ought to get under the coversâor shut the door. It's not a habit I want Victoria to acquire.”
She knew what he was thinking. That was the way she had slept with Frank. He was right, of course. Just in time she remembered her promise to be a dutiful wife by daylight. “I won't do it again,” she said.
Adrian walked over to the bed and kissed her. With a terrific effort she managed to accept the touch of his loathsome lips. “You could also get pneumonia. It got quite chilly last night.”
“Thank you for taking such good care of me.”
From the darkness Califia whispered:
Well done, my good and faithful servant
.
Well done, my good and faithful servant
.
For a moment Amanda wondered if this was freedom or a new more terrible bondage.
It was too late to do anything but obey.
Thank you, my queen
.
Thank you, my queen
.
As Adrian regarded her with his usual condescension, Amanda slowly regained her joy. All the atomic bombs and flying superfortresses in the world would not protect this man from Califia's vengeance.
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