A live Trosza. But if Voitar could die of seasickness, might they also die of airsickness?
He could make out the plane in the deep shadow of lakeside forest, and lay the unconscious Trosza on the shore nearby. From the Voitu’s aura, it was clear now that he had serious internal damage. Silently, Macurdy cursed the force of his kick. After getting the raft and inflating it, he loaded his captive, then paddled the dozen or so yards to the plane, where a curious MacNab helped him fold the Voitu inside. The pilot had worn his kilt this time.
“Long skinny son of a bitch,” he commented. “Got a flashlight?”
“Sure.” MacNab took one from a compartment and turned it on the Voitu’s face. “Jesus Christ! Look at those goddamn ears! They all look like that?”
“Yep. Really tall, really slim, red-headed, and ears like a goat.”
“How’d you get him?”
“Trickery and a close-combat move.”
“Huh! Did he carry a gun?”
“A spear and a sword. I left them there.”
MacNab put the flashlight away, shaking his head. Macurdy’s replies had posed more questions than they’d answered. “We’ve got a complication,” he said, as if in passing.
“What’s that?”
“Fuel. Some flak batteries fired at me when I crossed the coast near Venice. Took a hole in one of the wing tanks. Lost the gas it still had in it, and it won’t hold any now. And the other one won’t hold enough to get us to Naples.”
Hell, Macurdy thought, I didn’t need that. “How is this crate for crash landing on dry ground?”
“Good, if we could stay in the air long enough to reach allied territory. But I can guarantee we won’t.”
“Can’t we land on the water when we run low, and refuel the other tank with what’s left in the cans?”
“Maybe; I’ve got my fingers crossed. But it’s windy down there, and the forecast’s for more of it. The chop will make it tricky at best.”
MacNab climbed atop the wing, Macurdy handing the cans up to him, and refilled the other tank, then taxied to midlake and took off. Well, Macurdy thought, at least I’ve got a pilot who knows how to navigate. Meanwhile he hoped earnestly that the weather down south would ease off.
After take-off, Macurdy spent about half an hour working on the energy threads in Trosza’s aura. They responded, but the results held only briefly. Within seconds they “unraveled,” so to speak, la sing into chaos. He hoed that bit by bit he’d get them to hold–that gradually the e ects of even such brief normalization would bring improvement. But after 30 minutes they seemed more chaotic than when he’d started, and reluctantly he gave up. It was, he told himself, up to God now, and he wasn’t at all sure that God intervened in things like this, especially to lighten the killer’s conscience.
Crossing the coast brought no flak this time. “How’s the wind?” Macurdy asked.
“Worse. You might as well put on a life jacket. Get me one too.”
Macurdy followed his advice. Trosza’s aura told him his captive’s grip on life was tenuous, and he decided not to struggle him into a life jacket unless it became necessary. Instead he worked again on the chaotic energy threads in the vicinity of the damage. The disorganization was more severe and widespread than before, and the threads, when he adjusted them, didn’t remain adjusted even for a moment.
Glumly he quit, thinking that at least the Voitu wasn’t airsick, and sat down beside MacNab again. He remembered something Arbel had told him: A body can be too damaged to save, a shaman had to be prepared for that.
Closing his eyes, Macurdy dozed, to dream about the fuel gauge.
After an uncertain time, he awoke to dawnlight, gray and grim, and with an odd sense of detachment watched the slatecolored Adriatic for several minutes. The fuel gauge needle was very near the peg.
“How are we doing?” he asked.
“Better than I’d expected. We’re almost far enough south to angle toward the coast. Better put a life jacket on your passenger though.”
Macurdy got in back with Trosza. What Arbel had termed “the spirit aura” was gone, and properly speaking the body aura too. All that was left was residue: the energy of tissues that survived, temporarily, the death of the integrated organism.