“Dad?” said June. “We need to know what’s going on.”
The Yeti let go of Peter and turned to his daughter, his face infinitely gentle. “Honey,” he said. “You really don’t have the clearance. You don’t want the clearance. These are not good people. In fact, you should go.” He looked at Peter. “Can you get her out of here? I’m not in charge here. I can’t protect her anymore.”
“Goddamn it, Dad.” June stamped her foot, hands on her hips, eyes blazing. “They killed Mom. They tried to kill me. Leo, the guy you hired to be my landlord, helped them track me through my phone and laptop. They burned down my apartment, behind the house you bought in Seattle. So I have the fucking clearance, okay? I need to know what’s going on.”
He looked at her.
“What?” she said.
“I just want to remember this,” he said. “I want to remember your face. My daughter all grown up.”
She flew at him and buried her face in his chest and held on tight. He wrapped his enormous arms around her and closed his eyes. Father and daughter. They stayed like that for a long moment.
Peter watched the trees, leaves moving in the breeze.
Then the Yeti opened his eyes and cocked his head, listening to something Peter couldn’t hear. “Why don’t you get your truck off the road,” he told Peter, and pointed his chin at a patch of dirt corrugated with tire tracks. “Now would be good.”
49
Peter hustled to move his pickup and limped back to the wide cement apron in time to see a shadow flash up the road toward them.
Chasing the shadow twenty feet above the pavement came something like a giant bird, blue-gray on its underside, completely silent and very fast. Its wingspan was considerably wider than the road.
“Holy shit,” said June.
It pulled up at the last moment to rise again in a steep, elegant ellipse, shedding velocity on the turn, wingtops parallel to the high granite scarps and gleaming gold in the morning sun. It circled back over the orchard, lined itself up with the road, then dropped down and down to finally merge with its shadow on a skeletal tripod of wheels.
Peter and June just stood and stared as it rolled up the road.
As it lost momentum, Peter heard the soft sound of a window fan on a summer day. Bending down, he could see the blurred propeller pushing it the last few yards to the concrete apron between the barns. Peter walked over, wanting to get a closer look as it passed, the medical boot an unwelcome weight on his foot.
On the ground, the plane was maybe four feet tall, and from Peter’s standing position it appeared as a single shimmering gold wing with a long tapering sparrow’s tail. Its stretched skin was printed with delicate circuitry. The body hung below, a streamlined pod like a welder’s acetylene tank with an asymmetrical instrument package at the nose and a giant propeller now motionless at the rear.
Peter had seen military drones up close several times. This little plane had as much resemblance to a Predator or Reaper as a Model T had to some sleek, gull-winged concept car still being dreamed up by an engineer on Ecstasy.
It looked like some version of the future.
When the propeller stopped, the Yeti walked around his creation. “It’s doing a self-diagnostic,” he said as he bent to sight along the wing, crouching on the concrete to inspect the instrument pod. He looked comfortable with the drone, very much in his element. More comfortable than he probably was with people, thought Peter. Or even the reality of the present.
Like Peter’s grandfather with his boat motors.
As the Yeti worked his way around the machine, he kept talking. “The Predator drone burns jet fuel in what’s basically a souped-up lawn mower engine. Powered flight, but limited time, one to two days. I was trying to build a plane that could power itself, that could travel long distances or stay on station, observing, for weeks or months at a time. See those solar panels? They’re printed on the skin, and they’re superefficient. The wings are different, too. This bird is essentially a glider with an electric motor. Most of the time it just rides the wind, charging its batteries. Only the dense parts show up on radar. It looks more like a couple of geese flying in formation.”
“You work for the government?” asked June.
Always the investigative reporter, thought Peter. Trying to find out about her own past.
“We were supposed to be a research group,” said her father. “Like a think tank. Independent. I needed to do something with the last of the money I made in software. I gave out grants, brought smart people together, or that was the idea. To work on the difficult problems. For the public good.”
“But something happened,” said June.
“Yes,” said the Yeti. “Something happened. A small government agency offered us funding, and we took it. They saw that I was solving a difficult problem. Then they saw that I was having trouble with my memory, and other things. So they stepped in.”