Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(103)
On the ground, the plane was maybe four feet tall, and from Peter’s standing position it appeared as a single shimmering gold wing with a long tapering sparrow’s tail. Its stretched skin was printed with delicate circuitry. The body hung below, a streamlined pod like a welder’s acetylene tank with an asymmetrical instrument package at the nose and a giant propeller now motionless at the rear.
Peter had seen military drones up close several times. This little plane had as much resemblance to a Predator or Reaper as a Model T had to some sleek, gull-winged concept car still being dreamed up by an engineer on Ecstasy.
It looked like some version of the future.
When the propeller stopped, the Yeti walked around his creation. “It’s doing a self-diagnostic,” he said as he bent to sight along the wing, crouching on the concrete to inspect the instrument pod. He looked comfortable with the drone, very much in his element. More comfortable than he probably was with people, thought Peter. Or even the reality of the present.
Like Peter’s grandfather with his boat motors.
As the Yeti worked his way around the machine, he kept talking. “The Predator drone burns jet fuel in what’s basically a souped-up lawn mower engine. Powered flight, but limited time, one to two days. I was trying to build a plane that could power itself, that could travel long distances or stay on station, observing, for weeks or months at a time. See those solar panels? They’re printed on the skin, and they’re superefficient. The wings are different, too. This bird is essentially a glider with an electric motor. Most of the time it just rides the wind, charging its batteries. Only the dense parts show up on radar. It looks more like a couple of geese flying in formation.”
“You work for the government?” asked June.
Always the investigative reporter, thought Peter. Trying to find out about her own past.
“We were supposed to be a research group,” said her father. “Like a think tank. Independent. I needed to do something with the last of the money I made in software. I gave out grants, brought smart people together, or that was the idea. To work on the difficult problems. For the public good.”
“But something happened,” said June.
“Yes,” said the Yeti. “Something happened. A small government agency offered us funding, and we took it. They saw that I was solving a difficult problem. Then they saw that I was having trouble with my memory, and other things. So they stepped in.”
“Your memory troubles,” said June. “Can you tell me about them?”
“They come and go,” her father said, frowning. “I leave myself notes, they help me remember.” His face lit up. “Wait,” he said, and pulled the notebook out of his sagging jacket pocket. Some pages were marked with colored tags. Peter saw big block lettering on the bookmarks, with labels reading “EVERY DAY” and “THINGS THAT HELP.” The Yeti opened his notebook to a page near the front, marked “WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?”
He read from the paper. “I had some problems with the blood vessels in my brain,” he said. “I forget things. Sometimes I get stuck in the past. Sometimes I imagine things that aren’t true. It was my own fault. I was very stressed at work. I took medication that I should not have taken, for a long period of time. I damaged my brain. But there are things that help. If I do those things, I can manage my life. I can still do creative work.”
“When did it start?” June’s voice was soft. “How long ago?”
He lifted his eyes from the page to look directly into his daughter’s face. “Before I left the software business,” he said. “You were about five. I had those microseizures and lost my pilot’s license. It got worse over time. I took a lot of stuff to try to, you know, to medicate myself. I didn’t really understand what was going on until after you left to find your mother.”
June’s childhood was ruled by a man who didn’t know his own brain was damaged. Peter watched June assimilate this new knowledge. It was like watching the forms for a house foundation bulge slightly as they filled with wet concrete. Containing all that liquid weight.
God, she was tough.
She was even tough enough to ask the next question.
“Do you remember that Mom died last week?”
Peter was glad she brought it up, because he sure didn’t want to. But somebody had to while the Yeti was still more or less in the present.
He covered his eyes with his big hand, long white hair cascading down.
“I forget,” he said. “First I forget that she left. If I manage to remember that she left, I’ve forgotten that she died.”
And every time he remembered, thought Peter, would be like learning it for the first time.
How would that be, discovering that your wife was dead, over and over?
“I’m sorry,” said June. “You still loved her.” It wasn’t a question.
“I did,” he said. “I always loved her. It wasn’t her fault she left. It was mine.”
“Do you know who killed her? And why she died?”
“I . . .” The Yeti looked at his notebook, at the page markers labeled in his neat engineer’s handwriting, but didn’t appear to find anything to help him there. “No. I don’t.”
Peter heard a soft rattle and turned. Behind him at the black stone barns, both wide roll-up doors rose on their tracks. The golden drone’s propeller came on again and pushed it forward to some predetermined point, where it turned and rolled into one barn. From the other barn, another drone emerged, the slight sound of its propeller hidden by the sinuous clatter of the roll-up doors closing again.