“She expects! Why doesn’t she trot her … self over there and give him the message. You call her back and tell her to step on it. She can speak to him as soon as he finishes the lecture. These women are too lazy to get off their chairs and stop powdering their noses. You tell her to hand‑deliver that message to Argent.”

Nurse Roditis cleared her throat. “Doctor, should I do something about an operating room downtown?”

“That has to be Redding’s decision … . Where is he? I bet he stopped with one of those university types for coffee. He drinks coffee all day long, it’s a medical miracle he has kidneys left. I drink it by the gallon when I’m around him. If I keep it up, I’ll end up with ulcers like his. Where the bleeding hell is he?”

“If you do want to operate, she had breakfast this morning, but she hasn’t taken anything since.” Nurse Roditis popped a thermometer under Connie’s tongue. “Now don’t bite down, that’s a good girl.”

Hawk gripped the controls of the floater. Luciente hunched poised at the forward weapon and Connie was in the backseat with another weapon, mounted so that it could swivel through one hundred eighty degrees in any plane.

Hawk was making the floater climb abruptly. They were over the sea, gray waves far below like scales of an enormous fish. The sky was overcast; the puffy bellies of clouds hung over them. They skimmed along just beneath, dodging through fog banks. The floater bobbed corklike in the tides of the air, and she felt a little ill. Hawk looked happy at the controls, singing something Connie remembered hearing before, yes, the night of the feast. She had been walking with Bee, his arm around her. Abruptly her flesh recalled his big warm hand, the thumb gently brushing her breast naked under the flimsy. “How can anybody sing about fighting on such a night?” He had answered her that on such a night people died fighting, as on any other.

“How good to fight beside you

friend of our long table,

mother of my child.”

Hawk warbled in her high thin voice and the floater banked, dipped, leaped while Connie’s stomach quavered and fell. Sea gulls crossed under them. Fog closed in the horizon. Nothing could be seen but clouds and once in a while another floater bobbing in and out of clouds, as if on an upside‑down sea of thick gray air.

“An army of lovers cannot lose,

an army of lovers cannot lose!”

Hawk warbled in her squeaky soprano, cheerful in the closed cabin, and banked the floater right into a cloud that melted around them, shutting off the world till everything was gray cotton fluff and she could not tell up from down. Connie felt dizzy and gripped hard the levers that controlled her sleek weapon.

Luciente grinned over her shoulder. “Don’t start shooting clouds, sweetness! Relax. Just enjoy the ride! Whee!”

“Enjoy? My stomach sticks in my teeth! Do we have to scoot along upside down?”

“We’re like the sea gulls, winging along,” Hawk cried. “How can you not like to fly?”

“You moved this week, Hawk?” Luciente interrupted tactfully.

“I turned over my old place to Poppy. It’s kid‑sized, the bed and chairs are little. Poppy’s been waiting for space for twomonth. Was planning to go to council for building supplies if something didn’t break soon. But I’m taking Jackrabbit’s old space, and Poppy can take mine.” She swung the floater at a ninety‑degree turn and scudded across clear space–a ravine dropping to the sea–into another mass of soft nothing. “My old space is great for a kid. Poppy’s ten. Near enough to the children’s house so you can run over when you want, if you don’t like spending the night alone sometimes. But the floater pad’s handier to where I’m moving. I love the sound of the waters–I’m sorry! You know what it’s like. I’m so sorry,” she sputtered to Luciente.

“Today we carry on Jackrabbit’s fight.” Luciente made herself busy with her weapon. Luciente was operating the jizer and Connie, in the tail, the scanner.

“If we survive,” Luciente said conversationally five minutes later, “have you redded what you’ll do now you’re adult? Bee said you’re dreaming on traveling. Will you apprentice yourself?”

“I’d rather work with floaters than anything. But I want to travel awhile. Never hopped farther than the top of the bay. Thunderbolt and I’ve chewed on taking off for some wandering–after the current phase of the war is over, of course.”

“How do you know it’ll be over?” Connie asked. “Do you expect to win soon?”

“Win? It comes in spurts.” Luciente made a face over her shoulder. “Like sun spots.”

“We thought we’d go south. We figure we have a few useful skills to trade and we can always stiff it on any passing work. Bolt is a skilled pollinator. I’m a good beginning mechanic. I don’t mean to wander forever, like those puffs. No family, no base. I’d never get to fly. But I want to look around first.”

“Forty degrees north of east,” Luciente’s voice whipped out. “Two hundred feet lower than present elevation. Dogfight. I count eight objects.”

Hawk canted about, then lurched off through the gray flab in a direction Connie trusted was north of east Their speed increased till she felt dizzy and scared once again. During the talking she had forgotten to be anxious. None of them spoke now. Hawk was maneuvering sharply. Luciente was checking her own weapon. Then she unbuckled herself, reached over the seat to make a couple of adjustments on the scammer. Then she buckled in again and quickly read their position on the instruments.

“Almost on them,” she said softly, although of course no one outside could hear them through the cabin walls. “Safeties off. Let’s get them!”

Their floater lurched free of the clouds and straight into the melee. Four of the floaters were decorated like all the machinery at Mattapoisett The other five (nine, not eight, she counted) were khaki‑colored and leaner in construction. Their motors were loud and they left a trail of dark exhaust whenever they climbed.

Hawk carried them right into the midst of the fracas. The noise deafened her, clutching the scammer. When she saw one of the khaki floaters making at them, she shot the weapon and hoped for the best A bolt of light ribboned out. Hawk kept them twisting, climbing, dipping, she turned upside down and flipped over and came about again till Connie had no idea what was up and what was down. A floater fell in flames into the sea, but she could not tell whose it was. They were fast, supremely maneuverable. It felt like a contest of hummingbirds. It felt like a scrap of dragonflies glinting and humming, turning over and round with their terrible teeth and claws. The floaters were beautiful even in mortal combat. The soft furry bellies of the clouds hung into the fight The cold gray scales of the flank of the sea tipped and angled. Sometimes Hawk brought them so low that Connie could see the foam on the crests of the waves, see the spreading stain where the floater had gone down.

Piloted into death by a twelve‑year‑old, she thought. Between the clouds and the vast sea sweeping off into a fog bank, she felt tiny. They were shrunken to the size of insects, of midges and gnats turning in the air. Then she stared at Luciente and her sense of size and proportion returned.

With a red scarf tied around her head to keep her unruly hair from her eyes, Luciente was calm, cheerful at the jizer. She rode out the twists and turns, the plummetings and the shuddering escalations of the floater with apparent pleaure, as if she were riding a spirited horse. Her body moved easily, not freezing in panic as Connie’s did in a futile effort to maintain some reference point of up and down. Luciente swayed and rolled, constantly adjusting her aim.

Hawk carried them down through the center of the fight again. Another floater fell past, broken, burning. This time she could see it was a khaki machine. She tried to count the floaters as they bore in. Perhaps there was one less of each.