“It’s all right. Now to the off-license. I’ve got a guest coming on Tuesday evening for a drink. The only booze we’ve got is dire leftovers from my party.”

“Don’t I know it . . . What kind of guest?”

“A friend. Someone I hope will become a friend.”

Tom gives me a sidelong glance. Says nothing.

That night I roll at twelve thousand feet, light and agile. I have no weapons on my wings. My armorer took my cannons away before I left. “It’s your last day,” he said. “So you won’t need them.”

So I turn over and over, the still point, the axis of the gimbal. The blue dome of sky and white dome of desert slip round and round me. The midday sun sets and rises, sets and rises.

The 109s have no difficulty in finding me. Eight, nine, ten of them, they come out of the sun like bees from a hive.

They hit me again and again. The flames are so transparent in the brilliant sunshine that I’m not even sure they’re real. I feel for the lever that releases the emergency exit panel. But my hand can’t find it. When I turn my head to look, there’s no lever. With a yell of rage I punch a hole in the side of the cockpit and crawl out.

It’s a hard landing on desert stones, but I still don’t wake. The white parachute canopy envelops me, binding itself against my face. The harder I struggle, the tighter it winds around me. I can’t seem to—

—

“Get free,” I say aloud, thrashing my way out of the bedsheet.

“Dad?” Tom’s in the doorway.

“What?”

“You were shouting.”

“What’s the time?”

“Quarter to five.”

“Sorry, Tom. Just a dream.”

He lingers for a moment, a tall shadow, and then goes back to bed.

FOURTEEN

Yvette

5 June 1964

La Géographie is full up, so here I am, starting today on the back pages of La Biologie. I’ve just been admiring my truly staggering diagram of the human circulatory system. Gazing with envy on those bright cushions of red blood cells—labeled, with curving arrows, les érythrocytes—bouncing along a cross section of the artery that loops and twists—wheee!—from lung to heart to aorta. I bought a special ink to color those erythrocytes, a Sennelier carmine, and over twenty years later the result is still spectacular . . .