Bruce Sterling - Crystal Express

Of course Hillis was only one of a mighty host of pioneers. But as the Nobel Prize winner and the author of Structured Intelligent Multiple Processing he has always been a figurehead for the industry. No, more than that; a figurehead for the age itself. There was a time, before he turned his back on the modern world, when people spoke the name Hillis in the same breath with Edison, Watt, and Marconi.

It was not at all a bad film, of its sort. It didn't tell the whole truth, of course; it was conspicuously quiet about Hillis's regrettable involvement in politics during the '40s, the EEC bribery scandal, and that bizarre episode at the Tyuratam Launch Center. But one can read about those things anywhere. Actually, I confess that I felt the loss of those glory days, which we now see, in hindsight, as the last sunset glow of the Western analytic method. Those lost battalions of scientists, technicians, engineers!

Of course, to the modern temperament, this lopsided emphasis on rational thought seems stifling. Admittedly, machine intelligence has its limits; it's not capable of those human bursts of insight that once advanced scientific knowledge by leaps and bounds. The march of science is now the methodical crawling of robots.

But who misses it? We finally have a stable global society that accommodates man's higher feelings. A world of plenty, peace, and leisure, where the beautiful and the sublime reign supreme. If the film caused me a qualm, it was a credit to our modern mastery of propaganda and public relations. Soft intuitive arts, maybe; the dark yin to the bright yang of the scientific method. But powerful arts, and, like it or not, the ones that shape our modern age.

We had advanced from soup to fish when I caught my first glimpse of Darrow. The Dragonfly emerged from the depths of the canyon in a brief frenzied arc, its four wings thrashing in the twilit air. Strangely, my first impression was not of a struggling pilot but of a poisoned bug. The thing vanished almost at once.

I must have turned pale, for I noticed Mari Kuniyoshi watching me strangely. But I held my peace.

Crocodile #2 took the podium. This gentleman was another artifact of the vanished age. He'd been some kind of military bigwig, a "Pentagon chief of staff" I think they called him. Now he was Hillis Industries' "Chief of Security," as if they needed one in this day and age. It was clear that he'd been drinking heavily. He gave a long lachrymose introduction to Hillis, droning on and on about "air force" this and "space launch" that, and Hillis's contribution to the "defense industry." I noticed then that Fred Solokov, resplendent in tie and tails, began to look noticeably offended. And who could blame him?

Hillis at last took the podium, standing erect with the help of a cane. He was applauded loudly; we were overjoyed to see Crocodile #2 go. It isn't often that you see someone with the bad taste to mention atomic weapons in public. As if sensing the scotched nerves of our Soviet friend, Hillis departed from his prepared speech and began rambling about his "latest project."

Imagine, my dear MacLuhan, the exquisite embarrassment of the moment. For as Hillis spoke, his "latest project" appeared on the fringes of camp. Darrow had mastered the machine, caught an up-draft from the depths of the canyon, and was now fluttering slowly around us. Murmurs began spreading among the crowd; people began to point.

Hillis, not a gifted speaker, was painfully slow to catch on. He kept talking about the "heroic pilot" and how his Dragonfly would be airborne "sooner than we knew." The audience thought poor Hillis was making some elaborate joke, and they began laughing. Most people thought it was clever publicity. In the meantime, Darrow swooped nearer. Sensing with a model's intuition that he was the cynosure of all eyes, he began stunting.

Still avoiding the crowd, he threw the aircraft into a hover. The wings hummed audibly, their tips flapping in complex loops and circles. Slowly, he began flying backward, the craft's long tail waggling in barely controlled instability. The crowd was amazed; they cheered aloud. Hillis, frowning, squinted across the table, his drone dying into a mumble. Then he realized the truth and cried out. Crocodile #2 took his arm, and Hillis tottered backward into his nearby chair.

Dr. Somps, his long face livid, scrambled to the podium. He flung out an arm, pointing. "Stop that man!" he screeched. This provoked hysterical laughter, shading close to authentic hysteria when Darrow spun the craft twice tailfirst and caught himself at the last moment, the wings kicking up clouds of dust over the rear of the crowd. Diners, shrieking, leapt from their chairs and fled for cover. Darrow fought for height, throwing full power into the wings and blowing two tables over with a crash and spatter of tureens and cutlery. The Dragonfly shot up like a child's toy rocket.

Darrow regained control almost at once, but it was clear that the sudden lurch upward had strained one of the wings. Three of them beat smoothly at the twilit air, but the fourth, the left rear one, was out of sync. Darrow began to fall, sliding out of the sky, listing backward to his left.

He tried to throw more power into the wings again, but we all heard the painful flopping and rasping as the injured wing refused to function. At the end the craft spun about again a few feet from earth, hit a pine at the edge of our rock garden, and crashed.

That effectively ended the festivities. The crowd was horrified. A number of the more active attendees rushed to the crash site while others babbled in shock. Crocodile #2 took the microphone and began yelling for order, but he was of course ignored. Hillis, his face twisted, was hustled inside in his chair.

Darrow was pale and bloodied, still strapped into the bent ribs of the pilot's cage. He had a few scrapes, and he had managed to break his ankle. We fished him out. The Dragonfly did not look badly damaged. "The wing gave out," Darrow kept muttering stubbornly. "It was equipment failure. I was doing fine!"

Two husky sorts formed an arm-cradle for Darrow and lugged him back to the hogan. Mari Kuniyoshi hurried after him, her face pale, her hands fluttering in shock. She had a dramatic, paralyzed look.

Lights blazed from the hogan, along with the excited babbling of the crowd. The outside floodlights in the rock garden dimmed suddenly. From the clearings around us, corporate helicopters began to lift, whirring almost silently into the fragrant Arizona night.

The crowd dispersed around the damaged craft. Soon I noticed that there were only three of us left; myself, Dr. Somps, and Claire Berger. Claire shook her head. "God, it's so sad," she said.

"I'm sure he'll recover," I said.

"What, that thief?" she said. "I hope not."

"Oh. Right," I said. I examined the Dragonfly critically. "She's just a little bent, that's all. Nothing broken. She only needs a few biffs with a lug-wrench or what-have-you."

Somps glared at me. "Don't you understand? Dr. Hillis has been humiliated. And my work was the cause of it. I'd be ashamed to speak to him now, much less ask for his support."

"You still have his daughter," Claire Berger said bluntly. We both looked at her in surprise. She looked back boldly, her arms stiff at her sides.

"Right," Somps said at last. "I've been neglecting Leona. And she's so devoted to her father... I think I'd better go to her. Talk to her. Do whatever I can to make this up."

"Plenty of time for that later, when things calm down," I said. "You can't just leave the Dragonfly here! The morning dew will soak her. And you don't want gawkers out here tonight -- poking at her, maybe laughing. Tell you what -- I'll help you carry her up to the airfield."

Somps hesitated. It did not take long, for his devotion to his machine burst all bounds. With her long wings hinged back, the Dragonfly was easy to carry. Somps and I hoisted the heavy torso to our shoulders, and Claire Berger took the tail. All the way to the mesa Somps kept up a steady monologue of self-pity and disaster. Claire did her clumsy best to cheer him up, but the man was crushed. Clearly a lifetime of silent spleen had built up, requiring just such a calamity to uncork it. Even though he sensed that I was a rival and meant him ill, he could not entirely choke back his need for sympathy.