David Palmer - Emergence

I don’t know how much of this Adam is aware of. I have not discussed it with him yet. I can’t even think about it without crying.

Besides, this has not been a good time to discuss anything with Adam. Since this morning I have helped where I could and remained quiet and out of the way otherwise. Adam has been an absolute wild man: I have never seen anyone so quietly, intensely, efficiently, and constructively hysterical.

In the space of two furiously busy hours he located a generally undamaged private airfield, found an old Cessna 180 still intact, and, working like a one-armed tornado, with my small assistance, got it running.

During the next hour, operating the control yoke with his good arm and the rudder pedals with his feet, with me serving as his other hand to operate the mixture, throttle, prop-pitch, trim, and flap controls, he taught himself to fly the big old taildragger, accustoming himself to the considerable handling differences between it and the tricycle-geared ultralight. Then we assembled provisions, medical supplies, and survival equipment, including lots of rope, loaded it aboard, topped up the tanks, and took off — all five of us; we couldn’t leave the animals.

We found the location that Candy had triangulated for us. From that point we extended a ten-mile radius, and within that area we began a careful search, flying slowly only a few hundred feet above the treetops.

At the outset I risked suggesting to Adam that he not waste time trying to make out anything on the ground. Chances of spotting her there were minimal to nonexistent. From the air we could see only a fraction of the actual surface; the trees were just too thick. More likely was picking up a flash of color from that brilliantly rainbow-hued wing fabric snagged in a treetop.

Adam nodded absently. He was flying by conditioned reflex, his entire concentration below us, but I think he heard me.

We crisscrossed the area repeatedly, the three of us scanning the terrain until our eyes smarted, endlessly trying to raise her on the radio. After scouring the initial twenty-mile circle without detecting a sign of her, we doubled the radius. Later we tripled it.

I think Adam would have had us out there yet, peering down through the darkness, had we not begun to run low on fuel at about the same time that we ran out of daylight. As it was, even I forgot that it was going to take close to half an hour to get back to the field, and that sunlight lasts longer at altitude than on the ground. It was still possible to make out landmarks below us, but I was glad the old plane’s landing lights worked. We touched down in a gloom hardly distinguishable from dead of night. Utilities are out in this area so the runway lights no longer work, even if someone had been here to turn them on.

While I made dinner, Adam sat and glared unseeing into space. The intensity of his feelings was almost palpable. I have never seen an expression so bleakly, ragingly frustrated. His features contained no remnant of boyishness.

He ate what I put in front of him without, I think, knowing that he did so, and with no change in expression.

After dinner, Tora-chan vaulted into his lap and butted him in the stomach. When that failed to produce the desired chin-scratch, the cat upgraded his effort to a full formal head-dive. Still nothing. Then he sat down in Adam’s lap, gazed up at his face with a puzzled expression, and said, “Mee- ow -oo…!” But the boy never twitched; he remained where he was, immobile, unresponsive to outside stimuli.

I debated jolting him out of it physically, and was on the verge of giving it a try, when suddenly, unexpectedly, he stood and, in a firm, decisive, completely rational tone, said, “Come on, let’s break camp. We can be at park headquarters by midnight, if those roads Candy reported really are passable.”

I was caught completely by surprise. I thought he was in shock withdrawal, but he was thinking, furiously, accurately; evaluating every facet of the situation, together with our options.

Almost incidentally, as we prepared to leave, he brought me up-to-date on his thinking: “Searching by air is a waste of time. It would take a miracle to spot her in those trees. And even if we did, we couldn’t help her from the air, anyway. So we’ll save time by getting there on the ground as quickly as possible. The landmarks she used are unmistakable, and my RDF line hits the intersection of her compass bearings dead center, so we have an accurate fix on where she went down. We’ll get right up there and conduct a ground search.

“We’ll get some bullhorns at a police station — there are bound to be some still operational — and pick up trail bikes from a motorcycle shop. We’ll pull the trailer in as close as we can get it; then push on in the van. If necessary, we switch to the trail bikes. Or we walk -

“ Oh …” Adam broke off, looking concerned in a preoccupied sort of way. Obviously this was the first time all day that my presence had even partly registered, beyond my potential usefulness in prosecuting his search-and-rescue mission. “This is going to be rough. I can’t drag you and Lisa into it. I’ll leave you at the park headquarters in the trailer, and come back for you as soon as I find her.”

He was still only half-aware of whom he was talking to or he never would have suggested anything so stupidly sexist. My reply put a stop to that right then, and got his full attention, as well:

“You and what SWAT team are going to leave us behind…!” I snapped.

Adam’s eyes focused suddenly. He saw me. I heard Lisa giggle behind my back.

“What…? Oh, no-no, I didn’t mean — ”

“I know you ‘didn’t mean,’ ” I replied more gently. “But Candy’s my friend, too. I’m entitled to help.”

“What about Lisa?”

Adam tends to be a little conservative, not to say naïve, when judging the fragility of those whom he considers “children.” Lisa was only slightly less forthright than I was about correcting him. “You’ll never find her without me,” she announced solemnly.

Adam stared. Then he smiled wanly. He interpreted her declaration to mean that he’d better not try to leave us behind, and thought she was trying to cheer him up.

But I know my daughter. That was not bravado or sloppy syntax; Lisa meant it literally. I found myself studying her thoughtfully. She pretended not to notice. She and I will have to talk about this, very soon.

We did arrive at the park headquarters shortly after midnight; Candy’s advice about the roads was accurate.

I ordered Adam to bed as soon as we stopped. He didn’t argue, and he let me put him under, using the trance-induction formula that Candy had implanted. Once the trance had taken hold, I converted it to normal, deep sleep.

I wish someone could do that for me. One reason I’m making this entry is that I can’t sleep. I keep seeing Candy, riding that gossamer-and-toothpicks ultralight down into the sequoias, the airframe breaking up into smaller and smaller pieces as it bounces off those huge upper branches, one after another — finally plummeting unimpeded to the ground.

Another reason is that I write a pretty fair Pitman.

But the main reason I’m doing it is common decency: Adam can hardly be allowed in Candy’s journal while a chance remains that she’s alive. It wouldn’t be fair to let him peek at her intimate reflections, especially her opinions of him, when she may have to face him again. Yes, he would swear never to violate her confidence by looking anywhere but the page on which he’s writing, and he’d mean it and believe it himself as he promised. But I’m curious myself about what she’s written about me, and I’m not In Love with her; though I doubt if I could feel any closer to my own sister, if I had one.