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"Not me," I said. "Memory like a steel claw."
"Old friend," he said quietly. "I know you so well. Don't you ever get tired of being contrary?" . "Deathly tired. But if that's what it takes to live my life the way I want to live it, contrary shall I be."
He laughed, and let our flying machine slide off the
thermal-top. We coasted slowly cross-country, more balloon than aircraft. I didn't care for his answers, they threatened and frightened and angered me. But the details of the ultralight, the aluminum tube and fittings, the reflex curve of the wing, the attachment of stainless-steel cables, even the curious pterodactyl insignia painted on the canard I printed in memory, to build from nothing if I had to.
He found some sinking air and rode it down in circles as we had ridden the rising air upward. The meeting was not going to last much longer.
"OK," I said. "Hit me with some more answers."
"I don't think so," he said. "I wanted to warn you, but now I don't think so."
"Please. I'm sorry I was contrary. Remember who I am."
He waited a long moment, decided at last to talk.
"With Leslie, you'll be happier than you've ever been," he said. "Which is fortunate, Richard, because everything else is going straight to hell Together, the two of you will be hounded by the government for money your managers have lost. You will not be able to write, lest the Internal Revenue Service seize the very words you put on paper. You will be wiped out, bankrupt. You will lose your airplanes, every one; your house, your money, everything. You'll be stuck on the ground year after year. Best thing that ever happened to you. That will ever happen to you."
My mouth went dry, listening. "That's an answer?"
"No. Out of that will come an answer."
He broke off over a meadow on the crest of a hill,
looked down. Waiting at the edge of the grass was a woman. Watching us, waving at the sight of the airplane.
"Want to land it?" he said, offering the controls to me.
"Field's a little small for a first-time landing. You do it."
He stopped the engine dead, turned in a wide circle, gliding. As we crossed the last trees before the meadow, he plunged the nose down, dived to the grasstops, smoothly tilted the nose up again. Instead of climbing, the ultralight floated for a second, touched its wheels and rolled to a stop by a Leslie even more breathtaking than the one I had left in California.
"Hello, you two," she said. "I thought I'd find you here, with your airplane." She leaned to kiss the other Richard, ruffle his hair. "Are you telling him his fortune?"
"His loss of one, his gain of another," he said. "So lovely, sweet! He'll think you're a dream!"
Her hair was longer than I knew it, her face gentler. She was dressed in lemon-gossamer silk, a high-neck flowing blouse that would have been prim had the silk not been so sheer. A wide sunlight sash for a belt at her waist. Slacks of white sailcloth, seamless to the grass, covering all but the toes of her sandals. My heart nearly stopped, my walls nearly shattered right there. If I'm to spend my years on earth with one woman, I thought, let this be the one.
"Thank you," she said. "Got dressed for the occasion. Not often we get to meet our ancestors . . . not often in the middle of a lifetime." She put her arm around him as he stepped from the airplane, then turned to me and smiled. "How are you, Richard?"
"Deeply envious," I said.
"Envy not," she said. "The airplane will be yours."
"I don't envy your husband his airplane," I said. "I envy him his wife."
She blushed "You're the one who hates marriage, aren't you? Marriage is 'boredom, stagnation, inevitable loss of respect'!"
"Maybe not inevitable."
"That's encouraging," she said. "Think you'll change your mind about marriage, someday?"
"If I'm to believe your husband, I will. I don't see how, except when I look at you."
"No fair looking, after today," said the future Richard. "You'll forget this meeting, too. You've got to learn your own way, for better or for worse."
She looked up at him. "For richer or for poorer."
