Chapter 9

The AutoNav had no problems getting me to Rawhide that Saturday morning. Jack's Diner looked exactly like you'd imagine a diner in a one stoplight town like Rawhide would, except this was two of them laid together in an 'L' shape. Pope's Flight, and that was what everyone called it by the way, held court at a huge table that took up the entire top of the 'L'. Breakfast itself was a huge pile of pancakes, hash browns and sausages which everyone fished off the platters in the middle of the table with casual and frequent stabs of their forks. There was a large coffee pot nearby that saw heavy use as well. Two of them actually, and nobody was drinking decaf, it appeared.

Most of the morning talk around the table was about the weather, and here I was able to hold my own already. One thing I knew, having been flying on several different worlds, was that people who were going to put themselves in the air needed to know what the air around them had planned for them. That meant weather, in the general sense, and the weather in a more specific sense, wind speed, direction, visibility, cloud ceilings and 'conditions', such as storms in the area, air temperatures, you name it. Anything that could be known in advance was considered valuable.

I had spent a little time in the intervening week learning the ins and outs of reading weather charts and interpreting weather broadcasts. I got these skills from the minds of several willing and Awakened McKesson pilots. If I'd wanted to get flight certified the old fashioned way, they'd have made me do a lot of learning the old fashioned way too, but this bit of it I could have without it. I'd already had a more general interest in the weather anyway. Nobody likes to be halfway up a cliff face on a free climb when the clouds roll in and began pumping out rain.

On top of what the pilots taught me, and what I picked up through my own interests, I had a certain sensitivity to what happened in the skies around me anyway. You aren't born the granddaughter of The Wind of Arbor without some things just rubbing off, I guess. I could have had a comfortable life on Arbor as a weather witch, if I wanted to, but no thanks!

I had learned a little about Pope as well, and about the rest of his flight, to a lesser degree. I may have been pretending to be living a mostly normal life in Angels Camp, but McKesson Security was never too far away, even as behind-the-scenes as they managed to be. I got a clearance on Pope and his group, and got it almost instantly. Pope it seemed, was retired McKesson security himself, and that meant he was Awakened. There had been something about him, I'd felt. This explained it.

I could see in his eyes, when I first got to the diner, that he knew that I'd gotten the security report. I nodded over the crowd at him as Betsy guided me to the coffee pots and a seat at the table beside her.

"Everyone, please give a big hello to Skye, she's new," Pope called out loudly to the rest of the table. I got a lot of hollered greetings, and I blushed and gave everyone an embarrassed wave. All part of the school girl act.

<Thanks.> I sent to Pope.

<You're welcome, and thanks back.>

<?> I wondered what he had to thank me for.

<For not digging it out yourself. For letting McKesson security have to ask.>

<That's not my style.>

"What's your style then?" He asked out loud later, when we were both at the coffee pot at the same time.

"Not sure yet," I answered honestly. "I'm still working on it."

Pope was the only one in the flight who was Awakened, but several of the others worked for one or another of the McKesson companies. Kendra, the one with the thing for Pope, actually worked for Proto-Tech, the company my Great, great, great granddad Gerald McKesson had bought out and then brought into the McKesson fold. I actually owned ten percent of the stock in Proto-Tech, a birthday gift from my 3-greats Grandpa. It was one of the few direct connections I had to any of the McKesson companies.

I talked for a little bit over breakfast with her about PT as she called it. They had been a high tech electronics manufacturer back in the day when Gerald McKesson bought it, but these days they mostly made components and sub-assemblies for Obsidian Aerospace and Guardian Gravitics. They still did what Kendra called 'speculative electronics work' under the banner of their Proto Star subsidiary. It was mostly contract work, including prototyping for other companies and for some of the McKesson companies that wanted something tried out without waiting for it to be scheduled into one of the main company production facilities.

Breakfast adjourned and a caravan formed to wind its way down Shell Road, headed to the forest service fire road that lead up to the top of Peoria. There were fourteen of us all together, and half the people left their cars parked at the diner in Rawhide and doubled up in the remaining cars. I had my Icon, with its large cargo area and room for four, so along with Betsy, I had three other passengers.

I spent my first Saturday learning how to assemble the triangular hang glider frames that the group used, how to check the wing fabric and harnesses for wear and tear; what everyone called 'preflight'. Towards the end of the afternoon, I got to go up for my first time, riding a tandem rig with Pope. The most noticeable thing, once we were aloft was the quiet. Other than the creaking of the harness and the struts and the occasional pop of the stretched fabric wing adjusting itself, it was incredibly quiet. I could hear Pope's breathing clear as a bell. After letting me soak in the quiet of it for a while, he began to give me a running commentary on what he was doing and thinking. About constantly keeping an eye on the altimeter and the horizon; about getting a feel for where the rising thermals were; about using his weight to maneuver the glider where he wanted it to go, and the dangers of 'big' motions.