Piranha

How did he manage to get on with so many people after polio took his legs? Wasn’t he bitter? Why didn’t bitterness come out in his relationships, which seemed to show no trace of anger or frustration? Zen didn’t fool himself that his own relationships were on nearly so lofty a plain; at least privately, he railed about his condition every day.

“Ready for lunch?” Bree asked.

“Starving.”

“Red Room?”

“Nah, Admiral Allen’s there, and Ax says stay away.”

“Allen? Is that who landed on my runway?”

Zen gave her the gossip he’d heard from Chief Gibbs: Apparently the admiral was on a tear because his people had gotten their fa

It wasn’t until they were at their table with full trays of food that Zen realized Bree was distracted. He made a joke about her choice—salad with a side of yogurt—then one about his—a double helping of homemade meat loaf, with extra gravy. She hardly snickered.

“Bad flight?” he asked.

She shrugged.

“Something up?”

“I fly every day,” he said.

“You know what I mean. Flying a robot. It’s not the same thing.”

“Yeah,” he said. He missed a lot more than flying.

“I don’t know if I can do it, Jeff,” she said.

“You don’t have to,” he told her.

“It’s a promotion. It’s important.”

Zen slid back a little in his seat, looking at her face. Brea

“Hey.” He paused, not really sure what to say. After an awkward silence, he stumbled on. “There’re plenty of different projects out there. You don’t have to take something you don’t want. But if you do take it, I know you can do it,” he added quickly. Her lips had pursed—a bad sign. “I mean you’re beyond capable of it. I mean, that’s why you got it.”

“The Megafortresses.”

A sore subject, he knew, since she had hoped to inherit Major Nancy Cheshire’s place when she left. But Merce Alou, who outranked her, had been tagged.

“To be honest with you, Bree, the EB-52, not that it’s a dead end or anything, but it’s now, uh, mature.” Zen hated using the bureaucratese, but it did essentially describe the program. The EB-52 was now a production aircraft; the advances were sure to be incremental. “The UMB. Hell, that’s the future. Or something that comes out of it. Ask anybody. But if it’s not what you want to do, don’t worry about it.”

“It’s a big adjustment, that’s all,” she said, poking her salad. She frowned, but this time at him. “You’re not going to eat all of that, are you? It’s pure fat.”

He laughed and reached for his soda—then yawped with pain.

“Problem?” she asked.

“Tooth. Geez.”

“Are you going to get it fixed or what?”

“This afternoon.” The cold soda had shot through the nerve into every cell in his skull, and his head reverberated with pain. He put down the glass and rubbed the back of his jaw on both sides hoping to ease it somehow.

“Not going to cancel this time?”

“I didn’t cancel on purpose,” he mumbled.

Bree’s ma

“I’m glad my misery is entertaining,” he told her.

“Don’t be a sissy.”

“You filled it with extra ice,” he said. “You knew I had the appointment.”

“Just a coincidence,” said his wife.

Freed from his onerous escort duty, Da

Not that he’d taken any time off to mend. You had to break something for that. Like your neck.

Da

He turned off the perimeter road, driving up a short hill toward a bunker halfway between the underground hangars and the main gate. A brown slant of cement marked the entrance to the hardened security monitoring station. Lieutenant William McNally and two airmen were inside, reviewing the security feeds and drinking coffee, not necessarily in that order.