Miles, Mystery & Mayhem - Lois McMaster Bujold [132]
His lightflyer. Parked in the top of a 25-meter-tall oak tree.
No—crashed in the top of the 25-meter oak tree. Vanes bent all to hell and gone, half-retracted wings crumpled, doors sprung open, gaping to the ground; his heart nearly failed him at the sight of the dangling empty pilot restraint harness hanging out. The wind sighed, the branches creaked ominously, and the crowd did a hasty prudent backstep. Ethan surged through them. No blood on the pavement . . .
"Hey, mister, you better not stand under there."
"That's my flyer," Ethan said. "It's in a damned tree . . ." He cleared his throat to bring his voice back down an octave to its normal range. There was a certain hypnotizing fascination to it. He tore himself away, whirled to grab the garageman by his jacket.
"The guy who was flying that—where . . . ?"
"Oh, they took him off hours ago."
"General Hospital?"
"Hell no. He was feeling no pain at all. His friend got a cut on the head, but I think they just sent him home in the ambulance. City police station, I imagine, for the driver. He was singing."
"Aw, sh—"
"You say you own this vehicle?" a man in a city parks department uniform accosted Ethan.
"I'm Dr. Ethan Urquhart, yes?"
The parks man pulled out a comm panel and punched up a half-completed form. "Do you realize that tree is nearly 200 years old? Planted by the Founders themselves—irreplaceable historic value. And it's split halfway down—"
"Got it, Fred," came a shout from on high.
"Lower away!"
"—responsibility for damages—"
A creak of strained wood, a rustle from above, an "Ah," from the crowd—a high-pitched rising whine as an antigrav unit suddenly failed to phase properly.
"Oh, shit!" came a yowl from the treetops. The crowd scattered with cries of warning.
Five meters per second, thought Ethan with hysterical irrelevancy. Times 25 meters times how many kilograms?
The nose-down impact on the granite cobblestones starred the gleaming red outer shell of the flyer with fracture lines from front to rear. In the sudden silence after the great crunch Ethan could quite clearly hear an elfin tinkle of expensive electronic instrumentation within, coming to rest a little out of phase with the main mass.
* * *
Janos's blond head turned, startled, at Ethan's tread upon the tiles of the Sevarin City Police Station.
"Oh, Ethan," he said plaintively. "I've had a hell of a day." He paused. "Uh—did you find your flyer?"
"Yeah."
"It'll be all right, just leave it to me. I called the garage."
The bearded police sergeant with whom Janos was dealing across the counter snickered audibly. "Maybe it'll hatch out some tricycles up there."
"It's down," said Ethan shortly. "And I've paid the bill for the tree."
"The tree?"
"Damages thereto."
"Oh."
"How?" asked Ethan. "The tree, I mean."
"It was the birds, Ethan," Janos explained.
"The birds. Force you down, did they?"
Janos laughed uneasily. Sevarin's avian population, all descendants of mutated chickens escaped from the early settlers and gone feral, were a diverse lean lot already hinting at speciation, but still not exactly great flyers. They were considered something of a municipal nuisance; Ethan glanced covertly at the police sergeant's face, and was relieved by a marked lack of concern at the birds' fate. He didn't think he could face a bill for chickens.
"Yeah, uh," said Janos, "you see, we found out we could tumble 'em—make a close pass, they'd go whipping around like a whirligig. Just like flying a fighter, and dive-bombing the enemy . . ." Janos's hands began to make evocative passes through the air, heroic starfighters.
Athos had had no military enemies in 200 years. Ethan gritted his teeth, maintained reason. "And ended up dive-bombing the tree in the dark instead. I suppose I can see how that could happen."
"Oh, it was before dark."
Ethan made a quick calculation. "Why weren't you at