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Frustrated, Valentine sat back and pushed away the crumbs of the pizza. The man was just as right as he was wrong.
"Anyway", Pyp said. "Pressure's off now. I can arrange your trip north anytime".
"Speaking of valuable skills... I'd like a couple more flying lessons", Valentine said. "Equality gave me an ultralight, I think he called it". Was that just this morning? "I'd like to know more about it".
"So you did listen. Good man. I need to get out of here anyway. Think I'll take you up myself".
Southern Washington, May: Most people thinly of the Pacific Northwest as a cloudy, rainy woodland, fragrant with the moldy, rotting-pine smell of a temperate rainforest. But beyond the rain-catching Cascades, the eastern plains of Washington have more in common with the high plains of the Midwest than the foggy harbors of salmon fleet and crab boat.
Wolves trot through the open country in the summer, pursuing the prolific western antelope, retreating to the river-hugging woods when winter comes.
The former ranching and orchard country of the dry half of Washington is sparsely inhabited but frequently patrolled for reasons unique to this part of the country. A few Kurian outposts, fed by rail lines running up from Utah and Oregon or in from Idaho, circle their lands with towers like teeth, easily visible from the air thanks to the irrigation technology still in use. But these are the terminal ends, for nothing but one Grog-guarded set of rail and highway line runs up the Pacific coast, thanks to the highly effective, organized guerrilla army under their "Mr. Adler".
* * *
The Osprey-style jump jet touched down on an empty stretch of highway, cutting over a high, dry plateau. The Cascades ran in a blue line in the distance, darkening as the sun descended to meet them. Valentine, ears popping in the change of pressure, drank a final pint of milk in memorial to Hornbreed.
It felt like a long flight, and ended with several low passes to find a suitable stretch of road for landing. Valentine had grown used to
short training hops in his time with the autogyro, gliders, and small training craft. The jet, a courier craft for high-level Quislings, was plushly appointed beyond anything Valentine had ever experienced and had ample space in the cargo bay for the autogyro, with its rotators folded away. He rode in the cockpit for an hour or two, listening to Starguide's stories of Utah and Nevada.
"That's right, a big chunk of the Salt Lake City folks just disappeared, almost overnight. Some say they all marched up a mountain and killed themselves. Others say they went to another world. I think it's kinda both - Mormons always were weird", he said as they viewed the Great Salt Lake from fifteen thousand feet.
After a refueling stop at a combination armory and coal-processing plant, featuring the first Grogs Valentine had seen since coming West, they took the rest of the hop up to Washington. The jet had enough in its tanks to make it back to Utah.
"I don't believe it. We're out", Gide said. She'd regained the color she'd lost when they hit turbulence leaving Utah.
Much of the past few weeks had been occupied with Gide's "Exit Authority", a polite term for a sheaf of papers representing a series of undercover transactions that allowed her to leave the Confederation. It wasn't difficult for Valentine to convince Pyp that he'd fallen hard for the girl and wanted her up on the family land in Washington. An allied Kurian enclave in northern Utah agreed to buy her, in exchange for three children - one partially deaf and another in a foot brace - who were to be apprenticed to the New Universal Church in Tempe. The Circus arranged for her Utah paperwork to be "misfiled" using some of Valentine's reward.
She stood well clear of the plane now, lost in a heavy military jacket and knee boots, her dark-and-light-pleated hair bound up atop her head like a swirl ice-cream cone.
His pilot instructor, Starguide, helped Valentine take the ultralight from the cargo hold and give it a final flight check.
"What do your people raise, anyway?" Starguide asked, helping Valentine roll out the autogyro from the cargo bay doors.
"Pigs", Valentine said. "There's a catfish hatchery too. That's where spare feed and pig shit goes".
"You must really love him", Starguide hollered over to Gide.
With that, he closed the cargo hatch with a hydraulic whine. "Well, Argent, I still say you might make a good pilot someday. Come back if you get tired of slopping the hogs".
"I just want to be far away from everything", Valentine said.
"The sky doesn't qualify?"
Valentine shrugged, already composing the part of his report about the Flying Circus. Like the sailors on the Thunderbolt, at least part of the Circus took to the sky to be free of the Kurians, if only temporarily.
He and Gide stood well clear of the jet as it turned around, plugging their ears against the thunder of its exhaust. Starguide used a more fuel-efficient, traditional takeoff. When the Osprey took its running start back into the brassy late-spring sky, they were alone with the wind.
"We're out", Gide repeated. She hugged him. "Fuckin'-A".
"Feels good, doesn't it?" Valentine asked.
"I'll say. Let's take our clothes off. Like little kids in the sun. I'm so in the mood for a frolic 'n' fuck".
"I think we should get going. That jet might have drawn attention".
She broke contact. "You're a torqued kite, Max".
