The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [111]
“Why did you sell your jet?”
“Why else? I had to. In some other, better world I’m just a dashing tramp flyboy, Van. Maybe I do some milk runs from Bombay to Dubai. I fill this bird up with gold chains and bangles. I settle accounts with some hawala guys and then I can buy another plane. That’s how they finance Bollywood movies . . . but, you know, come on. That’s a mug’s game, it’s the smuggler’s blues, right? That kind of life doesn’t push the high-tech edge.”
Tony leaned forward in his pilot’s seat. “There are only sixty-one of these babies in service in the whole world. And I have the only one that can be flown off a Web page.” Tony held up a clipboard. “Really. I mean, here’s tonight’s little flight plan, okay? Twenty minutes, and it’s almost all automated.”
Van rubbed at his twitching cheek. All automated? No, not exactly. The exact situation involved Michael Hickok standing outside in the gently gathering Virginia darkness with a portable plastic gizmo frankly based on a Nintendo control joystick. Nintendo joysticks worked great, actually. They were extremely dependable interface devices.
The engines began to roar.
“Van, in politics, people need a damn show!” Tony shouted. “And that’s just what we’re gonna deliver. Think of the takeaway sound bite we’re giving these guys! ‘I went to Virginia and Derek Vandeveer grabbed a jet plane right out of the sky!’ ”
Van stared at him.
“You know what I like best about this remote-control rig of yours?” Tony bellowed over the engines. “That it’s all invisible! I mean, if we didn’t know better, we’d think we were haunted by spooks!”
Tony sent the plane into a taxi run. The engines drank fuel and they picked up speed in a hurry.
The jet left the tarmac. They were airborne.
“No freight load,” said Tony as the roar of takeoff faded. “She’s light as a feather with just you and me on board. Stop looking so freaked, Van. I’m telling you, this is totally a picnic. We could go in the back and watch stag films.”
Van found his voice. “I don’t think stag films will go over real well inside India.”
“People are the same all over, Van. I mean, just maybe, you live in a nation of rich maharajas, influence peddlers, crooked elections, and corrupt accountants. With big software industries, and huge gaps between the superrich and the underclass. Where son follows father in political dynasties, hassled by Moslem terrorists. Is that your country? Really, pick any two.”
The jet began to bank. Van sneaked a look out the flat black pane of the window. Maybe he was going to survive this.
“Let me show you something really cool here,” said Tony, scrabbling under his seat. “Look, the pilot’s got his own gun.” He produced a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver. “Boy, a pilot with a gun, that makes you feel a lot safer, right?”
“Put that away, Tony.”
“It’s never loaded,” Tony assured him. “Bullets equal zero.” He tucked the weapon back in its holster. “But they always ask me about that now. They do, I swear. I’ve got, like, fifteen Taiwanese chip executives in here for a dirty weekend in Bangkok, and it’s like: ‘Does our pilot have a pistol in the cockpit?’ Like what, you Chinese businessmen are aching to polish each other off inside the fuselage? The world has gone nuts, Van. It’s like we’re all under a curse.”
The plane bounced twice, violently. The engines whined.
“This must be the good part of tonight’s show,” said Tony. He took his hands from the controls. “We just got fake-hijacked in mid-air, right in front of your adoring crowd.” For the first time, Tony clicked his seat belt.
“So,” said Tony, stretching, “tell me about your next big step, career-wise.”
“I don’t know,” Van told him. “I think I might move out to Colorado with Dottie.”
Tony was astonished. “What? You’re gonna waste time out there with my