One Is the Loneliest Number Read online

  “How far along are you?” she said to her double.

  “Not too far,” said Maj Two, and grinned slightly. “I know I like to look over my shoulder. …”

  Maj laughed briefly, wondering if she had perhaps spent more time or care on this part of the simulation than she realized. Perfectionist, she thought, but that was her dad’s side of the family heredity coming out. He had no patience with sloppy work, or work half done … and in this particular case, neither had she.

  Maj sat down in the left-hand seat and glanced across the instrument panel. It was less involved than the new Boeing-MDD 787, but not by much—a daunting array, until you got used to it. In the middle, above the throttles for the six J93 engines, were eighteen dials for air speed, hydraulic pressure, and various other more mundane functions. A set of indicators and dials and toggles above and below handled crew-alert systems, wing-tip-fold and landing-gear status, fire systems, and so forth. This was, of course, well before computers. All such matters were dealt with manually by the flight crew. The thought boggled Maj sometimes, considering that the pilots were also testing this aircraft, and theoretically had a lot of more important things to think about, such as what Mach she was doing, and whether she was staying airborne. Then, on either side, came the instruments for altitude, the Mach repeaters, test-recording equipment, and so on.

  The instruments were all analog—some of them, like the controls for the radio frequency near the left top of the instrument panel, were actually little rotating drums that clicked along, one face at a time, as the numbers they were indicating changed. It all seemed astonishingly primitive. At the same time, this plane had some advantages. Being pretty much pre-transistor, it was nearly invulnerable to problems like the electromagnetic pulse that would accompany an atomic explosion.

  She would have carried nukes eventually, Maj thought, easing herself into the left-hand seat. Just as soon as she went into service .. . That was one of the only things that slightly tarnished the simulation for her. In this incarnation, the plane was merely a testbed for high-Mach technology. But her range and speed had very early suggested to the Air Force bigwigs that she should be delivering nukes. Only the shooting down of Francis Gary Powers’s U-2 in 1961, with its lesson that the surface-to-air missiles were improving a lot faster than planes were, had diverted the Valkyries from that mission. It had caused their program to be canceled too, as well as that of the F-108 Rapier, which would have been the Valkyrie’s fighter escort.

  Maj’s feelings about this twist of fate were profoundly mixed. This beautiful aircraft had produced no Hiroshimas or Nagasakis … and had she been available for use in 1963, when the Cuban missile crisis had heated up to almost boiling over, there was no telling what might have happened, especially with General Curtis LeMay repeatedly urging the President to strike the first blow.

  But at the same time, Maj dearly wished that the Valkyrie could have gone on to be built as she should have been, a peerless bomber, a weapon ready to be used if there had really been need to use her. No one else on Earth would have had anything that could cope with her… though how long the advantage would have lasted, there was no telling. Military superiority was, of all kinds of superiority, the most fleeting, she knew, especially when all sides playing the deadly game were really serious.

  Maj sat back and sighed. She put her feet on the rudder pedals and jiggled them a little. They resisted—the hydraulics were still down, as they would be until well along in the engine-start sequence.

  “You’re really not very far along,” she said to her twin.

  “Neither were they at this point,” said Maj Two. “Come on, let’s do it.”

  “Right.” Maj reached down to the paperwork-clip mounted on the left side of the gray brushed-metal throttle pedestal, and came up with the well-thumbed checklist, tossing its grimy cover back over the ring-binding at the top and starting the first page. “Radio call…”

  “Niner-six point zero zero one,” said her counterpart, leaning over to check it against the list on the copilot’s seat.

  “Crew warning lights …”

  “Encapsulate OK; bailout OK.”

  “EWS/ENS brake?”

  “One, two, three on and OK.”

  “EWS/ADS agent discharge …”

  “Both up.”

  “EWER engine brake …”

  “One, two, three, all off.”

  “Time,” Maj said.

  “Five thirty-three, September twenty-one, nineteen sixty-four.”

  “Not that time, you spud. Time outside.”

  “Twenty zero three, October twenty, twenty twenty-five.”

  “Thank you. Shock pos—”

  “Bypass area one go, two go.”

  “Meatball—”

  Abruptly her father’s face appeared in the space where the cockpit’s front canopy would have been if it were down, and Maj started at the sight of him. She had installed a link to “outside” audio and video as a heads-up display, but right now there was nothing but her dad’s head, apparently hanging in midair, and the effect was peculiar, especially where the “matte” effect caused by the computer’s processing of the image sparkled a little in the places where his hair was starting to go missing.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said. “Blinding …”

  “What is?”

  “Your head—you’re standing right under that lamp again. Can you move a little to one side?”

  He did, making an amused face, and the lighting on his head changed somewhat, though his face remained centered. “I just wanted to make sure you’d finished your homework.”

  She snorted. “Oh, please!”

  “And what about you?” her dad said to the counterpart.

  “She did it,” said Maj’s “twin.” “It’s in the computer if you want to look at it.”

  “Oh, please,” her dad said, more than effectively mimicking her. “I believe in calculus, but I don’t need to go look at it… not that much anyway. Maj, Mom asked if when you’re done, you would take a moment to look around in her workspace and find her that recipe for the marzipan lebkuchen again. She’s elbow-deep in Nana Do’s fruitcake recipe at the moment, and she doesn’t want to go on-line.”

  Maj shook her head and smiled. This was certainly a safer place to be, at the moment, than the kitchen was. “I will. You going out now?”

  “In a little while. Have fun, honey.”

  “Will do, Daddy.”

  Her father’s head vanished, making Maj grin harder for a moment as she thought thoughts of the Great and Powerful Oz, whom her dad was beginning to resemble as his hairline continued to recede.

  Her mother, who sometimes more closely resembled the absent-minded professor than her father did, was another story entirely. When she was not designing and setting up computer systems for people, and making what Maj suspected was a fair amount of money at it, she was also one of those people who cook for pleasure, and who do bizarre and amazing things that no one else in their right mind would do.

  In her mother’s case, as the holiday season started its slow approach, this meant making tons of fruitcake to give as gifts, and building gingerbread “houses”—though perhaps “houses” was the wrong word. She had replicated buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright’s in gingerbread, including the famous “Glass House,” which featured sugar-glass windows that she cast herself because “no one else gets them flat enough.”

  It was from her mom that Maj had first caught the simming bug … though her mom’s sims ranged so widely through so many media that Maj sometimes came away from them shaking her head.

  She shook her head now. ”Remind me to pick up that structural gingerbread recipe later,” she said. “Now where was I?”

  “The meatball,” said Maj’s doppelganger.

  Maj looked over at the artificial “horizon” indicator, a sphere set in a surrounding sphere of clear liquid, and pressed the “home” button. It homed and settled itself into the lines that indicated that the aircraft was presentl
y sitting flat and level. She glanced over to see her counterpart doing the same thing with the duplicate meatball on the copilot’s side.

  “On,” Maj’s duplicate said. “ADS engine operations—”

  “Amplitude gauges OK.”

  “Fuel tank pressurization sequence—”

  “One through eight OK.”

  “We’ve got people out on the tarmac,” Maj’s duplicate suddenly said.

  “Huh?” Maj was surprised at that. She had programmed her playroom to let her know with an audible chime when someone entered. She hitched herself up a little and peered over the edge of the cockpit. Roddy L’Officier was wandering around out there, hugging himself and generally making “brr” gestures.

  “You’re early,” she shouted at him. “Go away and come back in fifteen minutes.”

  “It’s OK,” Roddy said. “I’ll just wander around.”

  “Fine,” Maj said, and added under her breath as she sat back down again, “Go ahead, freeze your butt off, I don’t care.”

  She spent a moment trying to rerail her derailed train of thought. It took a moment. Of all the members of the simming group she worked with, she was least fond of Roddy. He was one of those people who seemed to consider it their place in life to be a seemingly never-ending trial to those around them. He was nothing special to look at: dark-haired, a little short, a little pudgy with the kind of “baby fat” that some people were late growing out of, especially if they liked junk food a lot. But Roddy was a boaster, a real in-your-face type, brilliant and never shy about reminding you of the fact, always acting like he was in control, or secretly knowledgeable about everything that was going on around him, always shoving himself and his advice into your business, whether they were wanted or not.

  Maj generally did her best to ignore him. She didn’t exchange friendly virt-mails with him, as she did with most of the rest of the group. He sent enough of them to her, though, sitting back in an unusually fancy implant-support chair and passing judgment on her sims in his whiny, superior voice, even several months after a given run-through, and generally telling her what he thought she should do to make them “acceptable.” To him maybe, Maj thought. Picky little creep. He’s plainly mistaken me for someone who gives a flying fart about what he thinks.

  Then she took a deep breath. Maj had a temper, and sometimes it got the better of her… which embarrassed her. Doubtless Roddy had good reasons for being the way he was. For one thing, he would never discuss his family. Maj suspected there was difficulty of some kind at home. Not my business, she thought as she continued to work her way down the lengthy checklist, though she had to wonder about someone who had such expensive clothes on all the time, the newest Barrington slicks and HueElls, while at the same time never seemed to have enough money for the occasional group outings for a pizza. Odd, but.. . who knows what’s going on with him.

  And it had to be said that though his manner was routinely a pain, he did occasionally— more than occasionally, Maj thought, forcing herself to be honest—come up with useful suggestions regarding sims. He really was very good at them. If only he could make the suggestions without making it sound like he was some saintly charitable genius type with a mission to the brain-dead, Maj thought.

  “More visitors,” said her counterpart.

  “Oh, frack, I don’t believe this,” Maj muttered, and sat up again. There were three more people down there, easily. What’s the matter with that chime? I’ve got to check the code, something’s gone south… . “Can’t any of you tell time?” she shouted down at the newcomers. “I’m still doing my preflight checks! Come back a little later!”

  “Don’t mind us, we’ll just walk around,” said Bob’s cheerful voice from somewhere directly underneath Maj. “Hey, wow, look at this. …”

  She had to smile at that, just slightly. Bob was not normally effusive in his praise, and seemed to be trying to hold a poker face in place all the time … but Maj suspected that was because he was permanently excited about most things, and for some while now had been cultivating the ability to hide the fact.

  “Madeline, can’t you turn the temperature up out here a little?” came another shout from below. That was Mairead, comfort-loving and intolerant of conditions as always. Maj remembered with amusement how bitterly she had complained to Bob about the “air pollution” from the cannons at Gettysburg.

  “Sorry, Mair,” Maj yelled back, “it’s the high desert at the end of September. What do you expect, the beach?”

  “But deserts are hot!”

  “Not at night,” someone else remarked from further back under the plane: Shih Chin’s voice. “Make yourself a jacket and keep quiet. I’m pacing.”

  Maj smiled. Chin was the kind of person who had to know exactly how big something was. If she was pacing the long way down the Valkyrie, that would keep her busy for a few minutes. “Crap,” Maj said to her counterpart. “I forgot where we were.”

  “TACAN.”

  “On,” Maj said, frowning. There was only one TACAN system in the plane, which was a serious pain in the butt as far as Maj was concerned. In those early days before global positioning satellites, being able to figure out where you were was vital, and TACAN helped you do that… but for those purposes, two systems, or three, were better than one. Apparently the Air Force upper-ups had felt that their XB-70 pilots were incapable of getting lost, or if they did, that they could darn well pull out a map and read it.

  Or stop at a gas station and ask for directions, Maj thought. Idiots. But everybody had been trying to save money. What should have been a whole program’s worth of aircraft was now going to be just three, and NASA and the Air Force were determined to wring every last penny’s worth of high-Mach research out of them. An extra TACAN system, at that point, probably looked like a needless extravagance….

  “Next!” Maj’s counterpart said. “Come on, get your brains in order. Your nerves are showing.”

  “Never,” said Maj … but she smiled a one-sided smile as she went back to the preflights. “Test recording …”

  “Digital on. Analog on.”

  “Air-induction-control system.” It was one of the most crucial parts of the aircraft, the ramps inside the air intakes that would expand and contract to manipulate the airflow to the engines.

  “All ramps answering.”

  4 ‘Lateral bobweight.”

  “Normal.”

  “Flight display.”

  “To pilot…”

  “Command control.”

  “To pilot.”

  Maj watched her copilot throw the last toggle. “That it?”

  “That’s everything but the shouting.”

  “Great.”

  She stood up, stretched a little, shivered in the cold, then carefully started going down the ladder again. The sky, which had been flushing through ever more outrageous shades of peach and rose, now suddenly paled in the space of a breath or two to a thin, faint, clear gold as the first limb of the sun came molten and blazing over the low jagged mountains at the edge of the world.

  As she got to the bottom and jumped down, the others’ virtual presences gathered around her. Bob, looking skeptical as usual; Mairead, shaking her blazing red curls in bemusement at the big wing she looked up at; and all the others, walking back to her from down the length of the plane, touching the parts of it that they were tall enough to reach … which in this case was only the landing gear, big enough to dwarf everyone in the group.

  Mere size, of course, was not going to be enough to impress this bunch. Maj remembered the scorn that had been rained on Chin’s simulation of the heavy-lifter Arcturus … though it had deserved it, since its wheels had fallen off halfway through the simulation. A bumping noise got her attention, and Maj turned and saw Roddy actually kicking the Valk’s tires. “Hey—!” she said, and then stopped. Why be petty about it? The chocks were held in place by the simulation, and it wasn’t as if he could do anything to the tires anyway. They were built to handle landings of a half-
million-pound plane at a 150 miles an hour.

  Not that they always did, her uneasy memory said, but that wasn’t her problem right this second. The group gathered around her, and Maj gestured upward and said, ‘The XB-70 Valkyrie.”

  Kelly pointed up toward the left side of the hull just under the cockpit, where elegantly scrolled letters said Rosweisse. “What’s that?”

  “Her name,” Maj said, and was unable to keep herself from flushing a little with embarrassment.

  “‘White Rose’?” There was laughter. “What kind of name is that for a Valkyrie?”

  “One of the first ones,” Maj said. “Go check the Elder Edda. Wagner used the name … but only because the Norse used it first. They didn’t see why you couldn’t have a delicate little pretty-flower name and still be perfectly able to kill things.” She gave Kelly a slightly more challenging look than usual. “Anyway, it beats calling a submarine Indomitable when all it does is blow itself up.”

  Kelly suddenly looked rather more interested in the landing gear than he had been, and Maj immediately felt guilty for making fun of him. “Well,” said Chin in her even-handed sort of way, “performance is something we haven’t evaluated yet. Let’s look her over.”

  The group set out on their own walk-round, and Maj went around with them, trying to look at Rosweisse as if she had never seen the plane before. The wheels, she thought as they went past the landing gear, that blown tire … and then she forcibly put the worry aside for the moment. There was nothing she could do about the tires just now, though they would be enough of a challenge shortly. Maj had dedicated herself to building the plane exactly as its designers had, with all their bugs in place . .. and working to find out what could have been done to make it function anyway, something that the vacillating government of that time had not been willing to do. It was a private pet peeve, and if Maj could make it work, it would be a tiny I-told-you-so to the world in general and the bureaucrats in particular. Eventually, when she had wrung every last bit of performance out of the simulator, Maj was determined to send it to the brains at NASA/Dryden, that now included the facility that had once been Muroc/Edwards AFB, and let them see what they could make of her data.