Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student (Illusions 2)

He shrugged. I had guessed way high. “You’d have that many if you were in trouble, to keep you from not caring for this life, if you didn’t know there are tests you need to face.”

“Someone in trouble, some kid in jail?”

“Dozens of angels for the kids, just trying to get through, telling them they’re loved, right now.”

“Not me.”

“You understand. Once in a while.”

“They don’t talk to me.”

“They do.”

“Not that I recall.”

He laughed, as though someone he knew was all at once standing behind me. “Don’t turn around.”

I didn’t.

“Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” A soft, gentle voice.

The same voice I heard alone while I walked in the night decades ago, I didn’t know what it meant, then.

“It was you?”

I heard the voice again: “Start your pullout early.”

I closed my eyes and turned behind me, laughing. “You were in my airplane, Ingolstadt, Germany, 1962. No place for you in the aircraft, but your voice behind me. I broke off the pass and barely missed the trees.”

I could tell now. It was a woman’s voice. “Move to the right,” she said.

“Summer, 1968,” I said. “Can I open my eyes?”

“Please don’t.”

“There was another airplane landing toward me. We missed, when I turned.”

“The hand of God.”

“In the desert, 1958. I was going to hit the ground. There was…”

“…an updraft. Lifted your airplane…”

“Lifted? Sheared rivets, nine something G’s, blacked me out till I was in the air, safe again.”

“You heard, when I spoke.”

“I never understood. The desert was cold, early morning, I was going down at 350 knots in a gunnery range, I pulled up way late, knew I was going to hit the ground, and then this blackout, this explosion lifted the F-86 like a toy. I knew it couldn’t be an updraft. Never knew what happened. Never heard anyone explain.”

“I explained.”

“I told you then! Yes, I understand the hand of God! But how did it…”

I could tell she was shaking her head. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

I opened my eyes, saw an image of a lovely mist vaporizing. “When you got in trouble, we gave you a second or two to do something when you could,” she said. “Once, when you couldn’t, we changed space-time. The one time, call it an updraft.”

“But I was thirty degrees descending,” I said to where she had been. “Fifteen thousand pounds coming down at three hundred some knots, there’s no updraft…”