He knew they had to face into the fall. He knew they had only seconds. Now it was his turn to help her, and he grabbed at her, missing because she was going feet first and thus with less wind resistance. Using his abdominal muscles, he forced his legs out behind him. Then he stretched his arms, making himself into an arrow pointing downward, and slid toward her, gaining distance slowly as, below her, the ground spun, a green haze.

He reached her, felt her warm skin, drew her to him, grabbing a shoulder, an arm, turning her, then laying an arm around her shoulder so that they fell together.

She understood the machine—the drone—but he understood the sky and he worked his will on it, and the rushing air ceased to rush, and they were dropping toward a bright cloud, and he could smell the exhaust of one of the helicopters as they sank into the gray, swirling silence.

By the time they emerged, he had controlled their fall. How, he was not quite sure, but it felt right, that was all. It was a sense of harmony with earth and air, something he had been well aware of before, but never felt with this clarity and certainty.

The wind declined as they dropped, and her eyes, which had been red with terror, now began to clear and sparkle, and he saw something like wonder come into them.

“Are we flying?” Her voice was snapped away by the wind.

“We’re falling very, very well.”

Then he knew, if he turned himself, he could do something—and he did it, he faced directly toward the ground and began to speed, her shouts of alarm tearing away behind him. Closer he went, closer yet, until he could see treetops and then a splash of gray roofs, then he spread his arms and threw his head back, and a great, howling whoosh took him upward again. Faster and faster yet he rose, until the fleck of a cloud above him became an enormous mass, and he flew through it in an instant and was still rising.

The vastness of the Pacific lay before him, stretching to the blue edge of the sky. On it, he could see a container ship followed by its white wake, steaming toward San Francisco, still oblivious to the trouble there.

Treetops flashed past below them, and a flash of green, then they were crashing down through the boughs into a forest glade.

He hit so hard that his teeth snapped and his legs stung from the impact. He rolled away as much of the energy of the fall as he could, then came to his feet in tall, yellow grass. A moment later, he saw her as she, also, rose up.

She looked down at herself, then up at him. They came together, embracing, and he was glad because he thought that she had made a choice, and it was him.