Heavy Weather

Buzzard jumped in the back of the truck and hit keys on the kite's laptop. The kite went dead again.

"Smart cloth," Martha explained, shaking the kite with a mix of fondness and a

"She's a good machine," Buzzard hedged, rebooting the kite and patiently watching the start-u p progressing on the screen. "On a good day, you can float her off the thermal from a camp stove."

The kite came to life again suddenly, thrumming like a drumhead. "That's more like it," Martha said. She carried the kite into the light prevailing breeze.

Buzzard clamped the kite's spool to the rear bumper of the truck and watched as Martha drew line out a dozen meters. "Go!" he yelled, and Martha threw the big kite with an overhand heave, and it leaped silently into the sky.

The kite paid out line on its spool, with deft little self-calculated reelings and unreelings, until it caught a faster wind. It took on height quickly then, with deliberate speed, arcing and rearcing upward, in a neat set of airborne half parabolas.

"Smart cloth," Alex said, impressed despite himself. "That is very sweet... how many megs does she carry?"

"Oh, just a couple hundred," Buzzard said modestly. "It doesn't take much to fly a kite."

Martha then took it upon herself to hack the ceramic blockhouse of the tower. The tower's stolid, windowless blockhouse looked practically indestructible, an operational necessity in an area practically abandoned. Alex had not seen any wasteland structure vandals yet: word was that the major gangs had been ruthlessly tracked and exterminated by hard-riding posses of Texas Rangers. He'd been assured, though, that there were still a few structure vandals around: looters, scavengers, burglars, hobbyist lunatics from out of the cities. They tended to travel in packs.

Martha established that the relay tower belonged to a bank: it was an electronic-funds-transfer cell. The fact that the cell was out in the middle of nowhere suggested that the funds under transference were not entirely of a state-sanctioned variety. She then began the tedious but largely automated process of figuring out how to use it for free. Almost all networks had some diplomatic recognition of other networks, especially the public-service kinds. If you brought up the proper sequence of requests, in the proper shelter of network identity, you could win a smaller or greater degree of free access.

In the meantime, Buzzard took out his ornithopters. These were hollow-boned winged flying drones with clever foamed-metal joints and a hide of individual black plastic "feathers." The three omithopters could easily pass for actual buzzards at a distance. Provided, that is, that one failed to notice their thin extrudable ante

It took a lot of computational power to manage the act of winged flight. Like most buzzards, the omithopters spent much of their time passively soaring, wings spread to glide, the algorithmic chips in their wired bellies half shut down and merely sipping power. Only when they hit real turbulence would the 'thopters begin to outfly actual birds by an order of magnitude. The machines looked frail and dainty, but they were hatchlings of a military technology.

With the ease of long habit, Buzzard hooked the first ornithopter's breastbone to the notched end of a long throwing stick. He preened the machine's feathered wings back, then ran forward across the hilltop with the long hopping steps of a javelineer and flung the machine skyward with a two-handed over-the-shoulder whip of his arms.

The ornithopter caught itself in midair with a distantly audible whuff of its wings, wheeled aside with dainty computational precision, and began to climb.

Buzzard swaggered back to the rear of the truck, his throwing stick balanced over his shoulders and his long floppy hands draped over it. "Fetch me out another birdie," he told Alex.

Alex rose from his seat on the bumper and dimbed into the truck. He detached the second ornithopter from its plastic wall clips and carried it out.

"What's that really big bundle next to the wheel well?" Alex said.

"That's the paraglider," Buzzard said. "We won't be using it today, but we like to carry it. In case we want to, you know, fly up there in actuality."

"It's a ma

"Yeah."

"Well, I want to fly it."

Buzzard tucked the bundled ornithopter in the crook of his arm and pulled off his sunglasses. "Look, kid. You got to know something about flying before you can ride one of those. That thing doesn't even have a motor. It's an actual glider, and we have to tow it off the back of the truck."

"Well, I'm game. Let's go."

"That's cute," Buzzard said, gri

Alex considered this. "I want you to teach me, then, Boswell."

Buzzard shrugged. "That's a big weight for me to pull, Medicine Boy. What's in it for me?"

Alex frowned. "Well, what the hell do you want? I've got money."

"Shit," Buzzard said, glancing uphill at Martha, still hard at work accessing the tower. "Don't let Martha hear you say that. She hates it when people try to pull money stuff inside the Troupe. Nobody ever offers us money who's not a geek wa

Alex waited for him to return and handed him the third flier from the truck. "Why does Martha have to know?" he persisted. "Can't we work this out between us? I want to fly."

"'Cause she'd find out, man," Buzzard said, a

Alex's eyes widened. "What?"

"It was a brawl, man! They went at it tooth and nail. Screamin', punchin', knocking each other in the dirt-2- man, it was beautiful!" Buzzard gri

"Holy cow," Alex said slowly. He metabolized the information. "Who won?"

"Call it a draw," Buzzard judged. "If Martha had two real feet, she'd have kicked Janey's ass fer sure. .

Martha's ski

"Jerry let them fight like that?" Alex said.

"Jerry was out-of-camp at the time. Besides, he wasn't actually fucking Janey back then; she was just hanging around the Troupe, trying to buy popularity. She was being a pain in the ass. Kind of like you're being right now."

"I noticed Jerry took Jane a lot more seriously after that fight, though," Buzzard mused. "Got her started on the weight training and stuff... Kinda shaped Janey up, I guess. She acts better now. I don't think Martha would want to tangle with her nowadays. But Martha's sure not one of Janey's big fans."

Alex grunted.

Buzzard pointed into the back of the truck. "See those deck chairs? Set 'em up under the sunshade."

Alex dragged the two collapsible deck chairs out of the truck. After prolonged study of their slack fabric supports and swinging wooden hinges, he managed to assemble them properly.

Buzzard launched his third ornithopter, then retreated into the cab of the truck. He emerged with a tangle of goggles, headphones, his laptop, and a pair of ribbed data gloves.

Buzzard then collapsed into his reclining chair, slipped on the gloves, the goggles, and the phones. He propped his elbows on the edge of the chair, extended his gloved fingers, wiggled the ends of them, and vanished from human ken into hidden mysteries of aerial telepresence.