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Sam didn’t bother to deny it

He pulled her back onto the bed

Chapter Nine

North America

29MAR2285

The emerald towers had carved an uncere into the New Mexico desert The path, now almost two years old, had succumb to the dry, sandy expanse and disappeared

"We’ll keep searching until the caps are at sixty percent," Vanessa said, a hint of defeat in her voice "If we haven’t spotted a place to spool up by then, we’ll have to backtrack"

Tania had all but given up on her tiny porthole It only gave her a partial view of the western horizon, and anyway all she could see when she looked through it was the ghost of an insane hts often drifted back to that moment, which seemed like such an incomprehensible waste to her That man had survived for years, and traveled thousands of kilometers to follow the towers, only to try to force his way into the aircraft and, perhaps, the woman within

Instead she turned to her slate and asked Pablo to slide a video feed to her froreat, but at least it was a straight-down view fro a bit of her old friend Natalie, Tania put together a program to pull frames fro stills onto a es rotated based on the cohtly based on any shifts in altitude Finally she configured a cycling sequence of filters that ran all the iorithms that should, she hoped, accentuate subtle differences in the ground below that ht otherwise be missed That last feature seeh delighted at the result, wondered if she was starting to go stir crazy alone in the cabin She dishts she’d spent on Anchor Station, poring over telescope i for tiny luminosity shifts This was really no different In fact, the nostalgia alone made the effort hile At the very least it took her mind off the tainted air that rushed past just outside

"Vanessa, do me a favor?"

The pilot replied an instant later "Sure"

Tania explained her izag pattern--northwest, tight turn, southwest--with each leg of the pattern one hundred kilo about somewhat randomly "I’d rather do this in a structured way, if you don’t reat idea," Vanessa replied Within seconds the aircraft banked sharply and began the pattern near where the path had disappeared

Two hours later, when Tania had several rows of zigzag-pattern i They’d had two false alar out to be portions of the sah, the width was just right and the depression quite shallow

"Take a look," she said into her headset, feeding the ies back to Pablo in the cockpit She circled the places in question--the line went across two legs of the V flight pattern

"Best one yet," Vanessa replied "We’re near our turn-back point anyway, so we reed," Tania said

The Helios banked hard and Tania felt her weight change as the aircraft started to descend On her screen, the prograes that marked the route of the aircraft perfectly The pictures shrank as the plane lost altitude, so Tania zooative mode, and there, with obvious clarity, was the path

Vanessa’s voice came over the headset before Tania could speak "We see it!"

"Me, too!" Tania said, a wide grin on her face despite the solitude "Are we okay to follow?"

"I wouldn’t advise it Pretty desolate out here, and we burned a lot of energy flying that pattern If we turn back noe can ain to a precious day She switched to her slate’sof the tower path "What about Tucson, in Arizona? It’s only a few hundred klicks and in the right direction"

"It’s a risk," Vanessa replied "This country was in bad shape well before the disease ca to a known functional charging port Trustyou want is to be stranded out here"

"Everything we’re doing out here is a risk," she replied "Skyler told ain forty kilometers outside Tucson, so Vanessaabout the range left in the capacitors, and little about anything else Tania began to wonder if she’done of Skyler’s lines at her to seal the directive

Under the blazing noonday Sun, the fringes of the city shimmered at the horizon Tania craned her neck to look below, but it was a fruitless exercise She saw nothing but an ocean of cloned tract houses, shockingly wide expressways crammed with abandoned vehicles, and bleak patches of sand where the desert had reclaimed some of its former do nothing behind but charred skeletons and blackened ground

Even froh the dry, cooked city on stiff winds Bits of trash and dry weeds drifted through the streets A huge pack of feral dogs rested in the shade of plastic playground equipines stirred theether as the Helios storan to sink at what she saw This was a otten place

She hadn’t studied America much in her youth, other than what her coursework required She knew the nation had once been the world’s doine, only to spiral doard over the course of the twenty-first century, finally settling somewhere in the middle of the pack The city she saw out thecould just as easily be Muh her headset "We’ve spotted so to bank so you can see this for yourself"

The aircraft banked hard, so hard, in fact, she had to grasp the handle by the door She had a view of blue sky at first as Vanessa turned the craft to fly perpendicular to whatever it was they’d spotted Then it leveled off before banking slightly in the opposite direction Tania saw the ground coht in her throat

Aircraft, as far as the eye could see, covered the ground below They were arranged in orderly rows, grouped by size and type infrom ancient jet planes and helicopters to ht capability There were hundreds--no, thousands--of vehicles, all clearly h her at the find This place could provide parts, even entire aircraft, to the colony for decades to come Perhaps even weaponry

Her enthusiasm dwindled as Vanessa took therounds The planes were all in various states of disan to realize this was not a storage facility, but a graveyard