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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Fly By Night Fate

  Standing out on Oakstaff Street, Prissi decided that she should be cautious and fly the northern route home. But before she had flown a dozen kliks, her shoulder was hurting so badly that she knew she couldn’t make it straight home. After circling twice, she landed on the ubiquitous green roof of a Vegantopia. Dozens of seggies were parked by the front door. After getting her bearings and a PS report, which came up bland, Prissi flared her wings and dropped to the ground.

  Inside, the winger found the usual lay-out. A long row of herbaria and aquaria separated the counter from the dining room. The counter had chairs near the door and perches at the far end. Most of the counter seats were occupied by bored-looking pre-fleds sucking down banana soys and sporking up glute-not desserts. As she walked past them, Prissi gave those staring at her the “you’re invisible” look she usually reserved for Waterville townies.

  A red-haired walker, whose eyes were considerably smaller than several of the excrescences galaxied across his forehead, listed the day’s soups in a low drone that reminded Prissi more of a horsefly caught between window pane and screen than human speech. Prissi guessed at a couple of syllables and ordered a pomelo and squash potage with a hi-fi muffin and a quadralatte. Prissi rubbed the outline of the crystal around her neck and pondered what had happened at Burgey’s house. It was obvious that the crystals were more than just pieces of jewelry. But what could they be? While she waited for her food, Prissi put both pieces on the counter and studied them. They seemed to be no more than spiraled pieces of fractured glass. They reminded Prissi of the crazed glaze of some raku pottery. Were the crystals, despite their large size, some how precious? Diamonds? Africa still was the home of diamonds. Had her mother found something like the Hope Diamond? Prissi snorted. Was she holding some kind of new world altering material?

  Hearing a clink, Prissi looked down the counter. Before the boy got within three meters of her, Prissi knew that he was going to slop soup onto the counter. Dropping both crystals in her kanga, she leaned back on her perch in anticipation, then, smiled smugly when a chunk of squash and some viscous orange fluid made its escape.

  The boy muttered something and Prissi guessed, “That’s okay,” was an appropriate response. The soup was decent, but the muffin was so thick and dry with spelt and bits of healthy chaff, and so oddly tasting from the extra baking soda needed to lift it enough to call it a muffin, that it took Prissi some real work and a lot of latte to get it down her throat.

  By the time she was half-way through her litert of coffee, Prissi knew that she could fly to Montana on one wing. Riding her feeling of invincibility, she pulled her special pen from her kanga, grabbed a clean lapkin and wrote, “Bigger tip: Wash your face with Zit-o-zilch and E-NUN-CI-ATE.” She weighted the message down with a twenty eurollar coin left from her change, flared her wings for the pre-fleds and sashayed toward the door.

  Back in the air, the rejuvenated teener felt so much better, she considered flying directly home. But, a smarter part of her knew that her bravura was more caffeine than strength and that to be safe, she needed to take the long way home. She started north toward the GW Bridge, but soon could feel herself getting so hypo-glyked from all the caffeine running through her that, after a couple of kliks, she landed on the roof of a school and called Nasty Nancy.

  ”Hi, it’s me.”

  “Sounds just like you.”

  “I’m in NJ totally discharged. Any chance I could flop and flap with you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you need to ask your folks?’

  “You forget I am an only child.”

  “Just for a couple of hours.”

  Nancy Sloan’s parents lived in a ten-room penthouse apartment on the western edge of Fort Lee. The glass-walled cavernous living room ran the width of north side of the building. At the east end of the room, one could see the GW Bridge dimly glowing in the waning daylight. To the north the writhing brown snake of the Hudson chewed away at its banks while far to the west the double urban auras of Newton and Screwton pulsed.

  Prissi looked out at the nearly empty skies and remembered a previous visit to the Sloans when she had watched flock after flock of wingers sweeping past to their homes in the outer suburbs. As she took in the view, Iaocomo and Emerald Sloan, who owned a generic pharmaceutical company that specialized in STD remedies for Fourth and Fifth World countries, came out to say hello, then went back to their office, which Prissi remembered as being almost big as her father’s apartment.

  After the adults left, Prissi started to tell her Nancy where she had been and what she had learned since leaving home that morning, but Nancy said that she really wasn’t that interested. Deciphering what had happened to a little company a half-century before wasn’t what she wanted to do right then. Instead, she suggested that she teach Prissi how to crochet. Prissi, who wasn’t sure what crocheting was but was very sure that it wasn’t pronounced the way Nancy was saying it, figured that she owed her roomie enough for her NYPD help that she shouldn’t argue.

  A frustrated Prissi stayed for almost three hours sitting in the Sloan’s immense media room on a high armless couch that allowed her to drop her wings behind its back. After they ate slivers of pepperoni peetsa, Nancy showed Prissi how to twist and turn the yarn so that a piece of string became a piece of cloth. Despite her initial dismissive attitude, Prissi found herself more interested in the yarn being knotted than the yarn being spun in an old 3-D vid starring Shiloh Voight playing in the background.

  It was almost ten before Prissi got up to leave. Outside on the launch pad, the sky was so clear that she could see a billion stars. Once she was in the air, with lights both above and below her, she felt like she was flying inside a magic tunnel. As she approached the GW, she dropped low until she was flying just above the aquaphosphor lights of the ancient bridge. Being drawn to the lights’ beauty made Prissi think of the ancient Greek sailors drawn dangerously close by the singing of the Sirens. Prissi’s snort carried for blocks. Not this one. Admittedly, she was part bird and part woman, but her singing would have sent any sailors tacking off in the opposite direction. As fast as they could haul sail.

  Prissi swept off the bridge and turned south. The air above the West Side levee was much darker than over the GW. She slowed her pace to give her eyes time to adjust. Looking ahead Prissi saw that the air was almost completely empty of wingers. The buildings hugging the levee began to seem ominous. The further south she went, the emptier the city seemed. She sensed things at the edge of her peripheral vision, but when she snapped her head around, nothing was there. To feel safer, Prissi climbed a couple of dozen meters higher, but despite the additional height, her nerves stayed jittery. A klik later she dropped down until she was flying at less than ten meters feet off the ground. Again, she felt like something was shadowing her. She twisted her head around again, saw nothing, turned back and screamed when she saw how close she was to a blank brick wall that hovered alongside the levee.

  “Josie Geezsaphat. Just fly.”

  Prissi looked far down the levee and saw two flight lights coming her way. Seeing those beams reassured her that she wasn’t the only person flying over Manhattan that night. The lights drew closer and, being northbound, began to climb to give Prissi room to safely pass beneath. As the two passed overhead, Prissi saw a flash of orange. She yelled, “High,” and the others yelled back, “Sky.”

  Prissi was still smiling at that brief contact when a darkness grabbed her from above and drove her down toward the levee. She managed to get her feet under her just as she hit. She stumbled forward, had her balance for a second, was hit a second time, and felt the levee’s concrete surface tear at the skin on the heels of her hands as she skidded forward. When she was knocked down a third time, her head smashed into the unforgiving surface. Her body ground to a stop…except for her consciousness, which flew away.

  Two shadowy forms, like giant birds of prey, dragged her deep into the shadows at the levee�
��s edge, then flapped their orange wings in fierce excitement at they picked and tore at her.