Chapter 22

Terri’s turn:

“Centipede,” I said.

“Why?” Cindy asked.

We were all sitting around the table in the conference room. We do that twice a week. It’s a hard spot on the schedule, which means if you’re on the ‘attendee’ list, you’re supposed to be there if humanly possible.

“Because I was thinking about how centipedes move and I wondered if we could do it,” I said. I looked over at my (yes, he’s MY) Jerry. “Motive? We can do it?”

“I’m thinking of how we’ll do it, but yes,” he said. “But why?”

“Because we haven’t done a centipede. We got the hexapod and we went two better and did the octopod...”

“Octo-PUS,” Vicki inserted.

“Okay, octo-PUS, even though he’s on dry land. But a centipede...”

“What do we gain?” Cindy asked.

“Look at a centipede. They’re very low to the ground. Legs tick out from the sides of each segment. Millipedes have legs underneath.”

“Segments,” Rachel jumped in. “How about making one with maybe six or seven segments, with the ability to add additional segments. Each segment has mobility systems plus the room to carry a functional module.”

“Mix and match. Like Legos,” Vicki added.

I looked at Cindy. I know this is what she likes to see. Ideas flow.

“Okay, then,” she said. “Motive power. Functional module. What about power source? Are these things just supposed to add on and draw energy from the battery on the main unit?” she flicked her eyes over in the other direction. “Tommy?”

“Oh, yeah...”

“Tommy, your concentration is flagging,” Cindy chided. “You ‘n’ Mimi...”

“I’m here,” Tommy said. “Just thinking...”

“Uh-huh,” Cindy said doubtfully.

“Small battery in each segment. Self-contained onboard charger. That’s small. And the interface with the other segments includes a power distribution bus, kinda like the cross-feed on your airplanes,” Tommy said.

“Mmm, I’m impressed,” Cindy said. “You WERE paying attention.”

“Size,” I posed. “How big?”

“The body of the segments has got to be at least as big as tennis balls. Smaller and we start getting into some expensive territory on motives,” Jerry said. I smiled at him. Part of it was because of his ideas.

“Okay, let’s start looking at this seriously. Now, about the Army’s mule...”

We’re doing REAL work now.

When the meeting was over, everybody filed out of the conference room. I was putting my iPad away. I noted that Jerry seemed to be taking a bit of time with his laptop. Looked around. Just him and me in the room. I sometimes think that the others do that on purpose. I took the long way around the table, catching up with him.

“Kiss?” I said.

He smiled. “You know I adore you. Sure.”

Little bit longer than a quick peck. “Mmmm. Soon you won’t be kissing a pre-teen,” I said.

He grinned. “Good. I got a thing about older wimmen.”

“Beast!”

“Beauty.” He touched me on the shoulder, letting his hand give it a caress. We’re being brave, for work. Away from work, we don’t get much more adventurous. I do enjoy kissing and hugging and there are other things going on that I recognize. I’ve talked to Tina, naturally, just as natural as I would have talked to Mom. No. Wrong. Mom would have never understood.

Tina told me how nervous she was about me and Jerry.

“It’s Jerry,” I said. “So completely mature and honorable and straightforward, Tina. If Dad stomped real hard, Jerry’d be back in Houston working before the sun set.”

“I know, baby,” she said. “And that’s why YOU have to be careful. You get carried away, well, there’s a certain point where a guy just loses the ability to think clearly about responsibilities and consequences...”

“Girls do that, too, I think,” I admitted.

She tossed her head back. “Yes, we do ... That’s why you NEED a responsible partner.”

“Jerry’s a responsible partner,” I reiterated. “I think that we need to make sure we’re never alone together, not with more than a ... a couple of minutes’ free time, anyway,” I said. This isn’t easy, though. I seriously like getting hugs from Jerry. I’ve been gently warned that I could get carried away and I could put me and Jerry both in a bad situation.

I understand how some girls go ‘bad’. I’m not a bad girl. Dad says I’m a lot of maturity in a very young package, and that with maturity and knowledge come responsibility, and since I’m very smart, I need to be very responsible.

Besides, I’m ALMOST at the age where Cindy met her Dan. Or our Louisiana friend Haley and her Bill. But Cindy got married at fourteen. I think I can hold off for another year or so. Those feelings, though ... Powerful.

Dad and Tina are very understanding. As best I can tell, everybody in our community understands that Jerry’s, in Cindy’s words, ‘not a pedophile. He’s a pTerriphile. We all are. He’s just got a more virulent version.’

Yes, it is a virulent form. I sometimes find myself breaking out in a sweat thinking about it. There are other feelings besides that, too. Sometimes I find it enjoyable to think about how good I can feel from a touch from Jerry. It’s not that I lack physical contact. At home we’re a very huggy family – me, Dad, Tina, and now, Kathy – but there’s something of a promise when Jerry puts his hand on my shoulder or around my waist.

Okay. Enough of the yucky ‘love’ stuff. Time to think about what a centipede can do that our other platforms can’t do as well or better.

Cindy’s turn:

Spoilt. I’m ruint, to, as Mizz Lee says, ‘lapse into the vernacular’. Nikki and I just got back from a three-day conference in Los Alamos a couple of weeks ago, then I did a round trip with Mizz Aneeta to South Louisiana. In both cases we beat the heck out of drive time, to be sure, and even on the trip to Los Alamos we made the trip in almost the same time as it would have taken for a commercial flight. Yes, we took Nikki’s Mooney. It’s faster and more economical, cruising at a hundred and seventy knots – a hundred ninety miles an hour.

I chafe. Got an itch. As the cheesy line goes, I feel the need for speed. Yes, the 402 is faster, but five times the cost to fly and we get a whole ten miles an hour speed premium.

I’ve made my feelings known.

Alan smiles like he’s talking to a little kid asking for an extra dessert. He does that on purpose. And he says, “Build us a business case.”

Apparently reducing travel time to New Mexico is not case enough.

So I do the next thing on the list. I visit my adopted grandmother one day. Actually, we visit the restaurant often, it being a frequent lunch and dinner destination. On special occasions I’ve been known to wear my sari and the bindi that Grandma Desai gave me when she adopted me.

“Grandmother,” I ask formally, “I have a request.”

“Anything for my successful grand-daughter,” she smiles. I’m not her only successful grand-child.

“I would ask you to ask Shiva for a new airplane.”

“Come, child,” she says. “Let us go...”

Her little Shiva altar is in a corner of the restaurant. There is incense. There are fresh flowers. And now there are colorful and aromatic spices. I note that the lingam glistens with fresh cream. I know Nikki’s pregnant. Mom’s about to deliver any day. Kara’s pregnant. I wonder who’s next.

Two weeks pass. Life is still good. We have a couple of crews in Tennessee. The new branch office has technicians in the field, we’re in western Georgia and South and North Carolina and my step-dad’s running the roads when he’s not on the phone coordinating multiple projects.

Me and Nikki have BOTH taken the twin out with crews and equipment.

I should know better than to shove Grandma Desai at Shiva. Or maybe it was my Sunday prayers at the Baptist church.

We went on vacation. There’s an ulterior motive. Johanna’s folks want them to visit their mountain home in Montana. There’s a guest cabin, and the ulterior motive is that we take Stoney and Johanna and little Stoney with us which means that the Cessna 402 is going to Montana and Cindy is the pilot in command.

Since a basic fact is that Anders Solheim sold us the plane for a dollar, we immediately agreed to the vacation deal. Eighteen hundred miles. That’s going to mean two fuel stops. Make it an overnight, at least going. We’re leaving Stoney and Jo and the baby with the grandparents.

That flight introduced a squiggle into our stable system of transport.

Second thing. Let Alan tell it.

Alan’s turn:

Does it ever stop? At least, does it ever slow down? Evidently not, I guess. So this evening we were at dinner at the Pavilion, as usual. That’s not always where the trouble starts, but it’s often enough.

This evening I was sitting at a table with the two Dans, and Cindy and Nikki were over at a white board, arguing with the Munchkins about something involving some furious calculus, when Wally wandered over with a fresh cup of coffee.

“Gents, I’ve got an opportunity for you, if you want it,” he said. “I really don’t think you’d be interested, but I sorta have to run it by you anyway.”

“Uh, Wally, I’m starting to get a little worried. What are you talking about?” I asked. Last time Wally blindsided me, it was because a cylinder on my plane needed work.

He said, “I’ve been taking my annual A&P refresher course over at Auburn Regional. It involves turbine engines, mostly jet engines, and us mechanics talk to each other -- you probably know how that works, right?”

He continued “Anyway, one of the guys was talking to me about one of their clients. The company at issue is a jet-charter business, and they’re having trouble meeting payments on one of their birds. Actually, it’s Geno’s old company.”

Dan 1.0 said, “Wally, what kind of bird?” He took a disturbed look. I’d be disturbed, too, if I was married to Cindy of the Skies. “What are you driving at?”

Wally said, “It’s a Citation II, and I think it’s valued at about $1.3 million or so. They’re keeping it busy, but I think they’re going to have to let it go back to the bank. My buddy said they only owe about $500K on it, since it’s an older bird.”

Dan 2.0 said, “OK, but how does that involve us? We’re not in that business, and we really don’t know much about it.”

Wally said, “Well, you know about the important part, which is the money. The jet-charter biz makes a lot of revenues, but most of us know that the bank is the one who keeps most of the money. The other issue is that the current owner has developed a gambling problem. Other than that, the only other problem is that they’re having a little trouble finding pilots, sometimes.”