Descending Star

WILY FOX

Aro had a thing for birds.

For as long as he could recall, he had nurtured a deep, abiding admiration and envy for winged creatures great and small. And so, when it had come time to celebrate the new millennium, he had naturally commemorated the milestone by commissioning a flying machine of particular grandeur.

He'd been counting his coppers and compounding interest since before Alexander the Great, so when it came time to purchase his new aeroplane, the prosaic monikers of the hoi polloi, the Cessnas and Beechcrafts, simply wouldn't do. No, he ordered components from hundreds of manufacturers, across the voluminous catalogue of the Military Industrial Complex, myriad obscure suppliers ranged over the entire jolly globe, none of whom had a clear notion of what their products would eventually comprise. The deliveries went to a nondescript and defunct freight warehouse in the middle of nowhere, to be unpacked and assembled by devoted acolytes possessed of an acumen for both heavy machine construction and nanoengineering.

Caius had deplored the project as thinly veneered warmongering.

"Oh, posh," Aro had assured him, "this is not to be a weapon, dear Brother. Oh, no. This is to be my pleasure barge."

Construction, programming and testing occupied the dedication of a crew of three-score for six months and change. The resulting winged beast, a suborbital scramjet powered by direct mass conversion and capable of global circumnavigation, Aro christened the Tufted Quail.

Last night, the Quail had opened in welcome to its guests without being told, because it recognized Aro's friends and associates on sight. It wouldn't take instruction from just anyone, but this particular party had the liberty to send it hither and yon.

The Quail was particularly fond of Jane, because Aro's favorites were its own favorites, as well.

Yes, Jane and Alec had bickered over the pilot and copilot chairs, as expected, but it didn't really matter all that much, who sat where. One did not need to be in the cockpit at all, to give it instruction.

Demetri, on a plush purple sofa in the aft cabin, had lost patience with the reputed pilots and instructed the machine to taxi from where he sat. The Tufted Quail, a faithful servant to Aro and his minions alike, had cheerfully obliged. When Jane and Alec realized that they were rolling, they had endeavored to micromanage the approach to the runway, but the Quail selectively ignored meddling from the gallery and for specific precision maneuvers trusted in its own competency.

"I am to be the captain," Jane had insisted, all in a nit. "That much was plain in Father's tone."

"Enough," Demetri had admonished. "I must file the flight plan, or we could end up in the throat of Mount Vesuvius." The flight plan required a modicum of concentration. as it consisted not only of their departure, but also their arrival at their destination. Once in the air, there would not be sufficient time for the latter. Tucked in the chubby belly of the Quail's fuselage was a truly marvelous propulsion system, which could take them just about anywhere, lickety-split.

The ingenious cybernetic machine in fact had two forms of locomotion. First, the pair of aft turbofan jets handled takeoffs, landings, and approach maneuvers in urban areas. Then there was the nifty little candle tucked below the airframe, which when lit could hurl the Quail three hundred miles up into the ionosphere. The Little Engine that Could had dual exhausts, both rostral and ventral, for deceleration as well as forward motion, or else how would Aro's crazy little bottle rocket ever stop? The upshot: trips in the Tufted Quail, while inarguably thrilling, were invariably brief. Jane and Alec did not have all day to tussle over the best chair.