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First published in Jubilee by Jack Dann (HarperCollins Australia) and The Magazine of Fantasy and

Science Fiction, June 2001

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Homage to F. Scott—

I'd be flyin’ to find!

My Miss One-of-a-kind!

If I could only get—

If only I could get—

out'a this jail!—

—"Rumplemayer's Basement Blues,” 1921

One

It was like being in a storm, except I heard the thunder first. That was the sound of a dozen anti-aircraft

guns firing at us from the summit of a sheer butte that rose like a monolith above the cruel curls of the

Montana Rockies.

The setting sun was wreathed with gauzy clouds, and it tinted the cliffs and crevasses below as pink as

stained glass flamingos. We were flying a British Moth with a 60-hp de Havilland motor—those Brits

could certainly make an airplane. The Moth was steady as a table and was Joel's and my favorite for

wing walking and stepping off from one plane onto another. I was in the front cockpit this time, just along

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for the ride. It had been Joel's idea to borrow the boss's beaut and skip out after our last performance to

investigate “something goofy” in the mountains near Hades, which was more bare rock than a village set

in the saddle between a mountain that looked like a two-knuckled fist and the mountain that was shooting

bullets at us.

Joel swore and shouted though the communication tube and tried to get us the hell out of there, as bullets

tore into the fuselage. Another burst hit the upper wing just above my head, which was where the fuel

tank was located. My face was spattered with gasoline and I figured then and there that I had just bought

the farm; Joel was shouting through the tube to tell me that everything was okay—when we were hit

again.

I heard a ping as a bullet hit the motor, and an instant later I could barely see through the oily smoke and

fire. I gagged on the burnt exhalations of fuel and oil that smeared over my goggles as the Moth went into

a dive. Reflexively, I took over the controls, which were linked to the front cockpit, God bless Mr.

Geoffrey de Havilland. I shouted back at Joel through the tube and pulled as hard as I could on the stick

while working the rudder and aileron pedals. The compass was going all wacky, as though someone was

playing over it with a magnet, pulling the needle this way and that. Although I couldn't see Joel, I knew

that he had been hit. Another wave of heat swept over me and I figured I'd be lucky to have another few

seconds before the fuel tank blew Joel and me right out of the postcard pink and purple sky.

I'd always wondered what I'd be thinking about in my last moments. I'd wondered about it every time I

climbed into a Spad during Bloody April of 1917; I could fly as well as most anybody, although I was no

Rickenbacker. I had figured I was going to get it in ‘17 or ‘18, but I never even took a bullet, not a

scratch—I had the proverbial angel on my wing—and now here I was, about to get it in 1923, which

was supposed to be the best year of my life. I remembered Dr. Coué's prayer, which everyone was

saying: “Day by day in every way I am getting better and better.”

Better and better.

“Joel,” I shouted through the tube, “you're going to be okay. We're going to be okay.” Day by day in

every fucking way , and I felt that hot, sweaty tightness all over my face like I always do when I'm going

to cry, but I slipped out of that because the old girl was making a whining keening sort of a noise, and

then the motor sputtered and everything became summer afternoon quiet, except for the snapping of the

wing wires—

And I found myself counting, counting slowly and the ground spun through the smoke, and I kept the

nose up as the valley floor rose like an elevator the size of Manhattan, and I wasn't thinking about

anything, not about dying or the tank exploding or the smoke or the smell of the oil—or my Mother, or

Lisa, whom I had only dated twice, but she had gone down on the first date and said she loved me, and

she had so many freckles, and three curly black hairs between her breasts, I remembered those three

black hairs as I counted and by one-hundred-and-forty-seven I expected the giant hand of God to slap

me right into the canyon floor and the fuel tank to explode like the sun and—

* * * *

It was dark when they found me, but the moon was so big and bloated that everything looked like it was

coated with silvery dust, except the shadows, where the moon dust couldn't settle. I don't know whether

they woke me or whether it was the drip from the fuel tank, but once I realized I was alive and that this

was certainly not heaven, I felt most every part of my body begin to ache. I moved my legs to make sure

I still had them, and I tried to swat at the Negroes who were pulling me out of the cockpit. I don't know

what was in my head because they were big men, and I was just swatting away, but they didn't throw me

Page 2

about or mistreat me or ask me any questions; it was as if they were just handling a fragile piece of

merchandise, nothing that was alive, just merchandise. I started coughing as soon as they moved me, and

I craned my neck for one last look at the plane—and at Joel, the poor dumb jake who just had to see if

the stories were true about a grand castle on the mountain. Now Joel was dead, his face shot off, and I

was being carried away by giants who were speaking a dialect like none I'd ever heard; in fact, I couldn't

understand a word, although I couldn't help but think it was some form of Southern English.

And we hadn't even seen a castle.

Damn you, Joel.

I blacked out, and woke up as I was being thrown this way and that in the seat of some kind of

souped-up, armored suburban; but this beast hadn't rolled off any of Henry Ford's production lines. It

was a chimerical combination of tank and automobile. Instead of windows, the passenger cab had thick

glass portholes, and Lewis machine guns were mounted on the hood and trunk. I could hardly hear the

motor as we sped and jostled into the long purple shadows of the mountains above, and my captors

were as quiet as the mountains.

When I woke again, after dreaming that Joel was fine and we were back in the Moth gliding silently

through the night over castles and fairy lights, I found myself in the air indeed. The suburban was being

hoisted up the sheer face of a cliff, rising into the milky moonlight; and, startled, I bolted forward. The

two black giants beside me pulled me back into the cushioned softness of the seat and held me there. I

tried to talk to them, to ask them what was going on, but they just shook their heads as though they

couldn't understand me.

Then with a bounce the suburban was lowered onto solid ground. Two men and a boy were waiting

beside a crane used on aircraft carriers to hoist boats and planes; and as they removed the cables that

had been attached to the hub-guards of the huge truck-tyred wheels, they spoke to each other in that

peculiar dialect that was both familiar—and unfamiliar.

Once again we drove, only now we were that much closer to the sky. As I looked out through the

porthole on my right, the moon looked green, radiating its wan, sickly light through filigrees of cloud; and

the road made of tapestry brick was as straight and neat and ghostly as the fog and mist that clung to it.

We passed a lake that could have been a dark mirror misted with breath and reflecting the stars and

bloated moon. I caught a sudden scent of pine, and then I saw it, a cháteau—no, rather a moon-painted

castle—with opalescent terraces, walkways, mosque-like towers, and outbuildings rising from broad,

tree-lined lawns.

But my destination, alas, would be otherwise.

Two

“ Hell's bells, it's almost noon. ”

“ Clarence, how would you know whether it was noon or what? Your wristwatch has stopped so

many times, it could be midnight. ”

“ Don't call me Clarence or I'll break your legs. ”

Page 3

“ You an’ whose army ?”

I snapped awake and looked around the room, which resolved around me. Walls, floor, ceiling seemed

to be made of a piece, a smooth, translucent layer of opal, which glowed with light; but I could not

discern the source of the suffusing light, nor could I see the inset marks of tile, only high, straight,

iridescent planes that reached to a ceiling of the same substance. I was lying in a comfortable feather bed

with a jewel-inlaid footboard; the bed and an ebony table and elbow chair were the only pieces of

furniture in this smooth, glittering travesty of a monk's cell.

“Well, sleeping beauty has awoke,” said Clarence. He had a pale, freckled complexion, red hair that

was graying, and a pop-eyed look, no doubt because his eyebrows were so white that they seemed to

disappear. “You're probably still feelin’ dopey,” he said to me. “The slaves drugged you so Old Jefferson

could do his interrogation. Takes a while for it to wear off.”

“Well, they didn't drug me ,” said the man who had been goading Clarence about his name. He was

bald, tall, and aggressive; and he had a ruddy complexion like Clarence—it was as if both men were of

the same Irish and Dutch ancestry. Both wore pants and shirts that looked like pajamas, except Clarence

wore an aviator's jacket and the bald man wore a cap.

Eleven other men were standing in the room behind them, and a short wiry aviator—I was sure right then

and there that they were all aviators—said, “Old man Jefferson drugged everybody . Even you, Monty.

You just don't remember none of it, while we do.”

“But none of us remembers much,” said Clarence, who introduced himself as Skip, and then introduced

me to Monty Kleeck and Farley James and Rick Moss and Carl Crocker and Eddie Barthelmet, Harry

Talmadge, Keith Boardman, Gregory “Cissy” Schneck, “Snap” Samuel Geraldson, and Stephen

Freeburg, who “was the only Jew in this mess of Protestants.”

“You a Jew too?” asked the skinny, nervous upchuck who was called Cissy. There was a meanness in

his voice, but he wasn't big enough to back it up, and I knew he was more dangerous than the

three-hundred-pound hulk they called Snap.

I thought about saying yes, but I figured I might be here a while—maybe for life, from the look of

them—and so I said, “No, I'm Catholic. You have a problem with that?”

“No, no,” said Cissy, backing off. “I got no problem with Christians.” Then in an undertone he said,

“Long as they're Christians—”

“Where the hell am I?” I asked, some of the muzziness from the drugs finally clearing—if, indeed, I'd

been drugged. I directed myself to Stephen Freeburg, who had the same kind of dark, sharp features as

Rudolph Valentino, who last I heard had gone to prison for bigamy.

“You're in the Randolph Estes Jefferson Hotel,” Freeburg said, smiling. “It's probably the fanciest, most

comfortable jail in the world. And unless you can think of something we haven't, you're here for life.”

“No, we'll get out,” said Carl Crocker, a short, overweight, squarish chap with bristly brown hair—they

must feed these guys pretty well, I thought; but everything was just words and thoughts wriggling like

worms in sand. Nothing seemed real. My mouth felt like it was stuffed with wire. My eyes were burning.

My head was pounding. Wake up, I told myself. Wake the hell up.

“Yeah, your tunnel,” Freeburg said sarcastically. “Next, you and Snap will be drilling straight down.”

Page 4

Everyone laughed at that.

I guess I looked bemused because Eddie Barthelmet, a reedy yet muscular man with thinning black hair,

whom I figured immediately as the sort who kept his own counsel, said, “It's solid diamond underneath

us. Hardest substance in the world.”

I shook my head and grinned. I could take being the butt of the joke.

“I'm not joshing you. The whole goddamn mountain is diamond, except for the rock and stone above.

And it's all owned by the Old Man, who isn't too willing to share, which is why we're down here, and

he's up there.” Everyone laughed at that, and Eddie just nodded toward the ceiling, as if some omniscient

being were standing right above us. Then after a pause, he asked, “Did you happen to notice if your

compass seemed to go wild when you approached the mountain?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I figured it had been knocked out of whack.”

“No, the same thing happened to me. None of the others remember anything being wrong with their

compasses, so I figure that the Old Man concocted something new. An artificial magnetic field, or

something like that.”

“Well, if he could change the official maps of the United States, he could screw up our compasses, I

suppose,” Clarence said. I didn't figure him to be the brightest of the bunch, but I couldn't help but like

him. He seemed genuinely concerned, and maybe it was the way he slouched or patted the chair, I don't

know, but for some reason I had the feeling that he was really at home here. He turned to me and said,

“Don't worry, you'll be meeting the Old Man soon enough. And when you're ready, I'll give you the tour

of the place and help you get set up. Now you think you're ready to tell us your name and how you came

to be flyin’ out here? You were flyin'?—”

I nodded and told them my name—Paul Orsatti—and I told them that I was a mail pilot, which I'd been

for a while, until I got myself fired from New York Chicago Air Transport for being self-righteous; and I

wasn't going to tell them that I'd been kicking around for the past year as a roustabout stunt flier, working

for crummy outfits like Pitkin's Circle-Q Flying Circus. Or that I'd been playing piano in cheapjack

speakeasies for nothing more than drinks and whatever change the Doras and ossified lounge lizards

could spare. I didn't tell them about Joel, and how he'd heard rumors about there being something

strange in the mountain near Hades. I only told them I'd gotten a bit off-course—next thing I knew I was

being shot at.

And as if I'd been caught telling a lie by the Lord God Almighty Himself, I heard a voice calling everyone

to attention.

A broadcast from above.

* * * *

“Well, boys,” said God. “Don't you want to have a chat? My daughter's accompanying me, so y'all better

be on your best behavior, gentlemen. None of your usual filthy street patois. Now shake a leg!”

Everyone started swearing and complaining, but they obediently moved out of my room toward where

the voice was probably coming from, and Skip pulled me along, telling me that I might as well know my

keeper and get it in my head that I'm here and that's that and how it's not so bad, in fact, probably better

than we'd ever have it back home in the real world.

Page 5

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