Much of the past few weeks had been occupied with Gide's "Exit Authority", a polite term for a sheaf of papers representing a series of undercover transactions that allowed her to leave the Confederation. It wasn't difficult for Valentine to convince Pyp that he'd fallen hard for the girl and wanted her up on the family land in Washington. An allied Kurian enclave in northern Utah agreed to buy her, in exchange for three children - one partially deaf and another in a foot brace - who were to be apprenticed to the New Universal Church in Tempe. The Circus arranged for her Utah paperwork to be "misfiled" using some of Valentine's reward.
She stood well clear of the plane now, lost in a heavy military jacket and knee boots, her dark-and-light-pleated hair bound up atop her head like a swirl ice-cream cone.
His pilot instructor, Starguide, helped Valentine take the ultralight from the cargo hold and give it a final flight check.
"What do your people raise, anyway?" Starguide asked, helping Valentine roll out the autogyro from the cargo bay doors.
"Pigs", Valentine said. "There's a catfish hatchery too. That's where spare feed and pig shit goes".
"You must really love him", Starguide hollered over to Gide.
With that, he closed the cargo hatch with a hydraulic whine. "Well, Argent, I still say you might make a good pilot someday. Come back if you get tired of slopping the hogs".
"I just want to be far away from everything", Valentine said.
"The sky doesn't qualify?"
Valentine shrugged, already composing the part of his report about the Flying Circus. Like the sailors on the Thunderbolt, at least part of the Circus took to the sky to be free of the Kurians, if only temporarily.
He and Gide stood well clear of the jet as it turned around, plugging their ears against the thunder of its exhaust. Starguide used a more fuel-efficient, traditional takeoff. When the Osprey took its running start back into the brassy late-spring sky, they were alone with the wind.
"We're out", Gide repeated. She hugged him. "Fuckin'-A".
"Feels good, doesn't it?" Valentine asked.
"I'll say. Let's take our clothes off. Like little kids in the sun. I'm so in the mood for a frolic 'n' fuck".
"I think we should get going. That jet might have drawn attention".
She broke contact. "You're a torqued kite, Max".
Valentine considered telling her his real name now, and his destination - though not his purpose. Travel was a lot safer with a companion in case of illness or injury, he rationalized. "How's that?" he asked instead.
"Never taking a run at me. Queer?"
"No".
"Balls blown off?"
"No".
"What, then?"
"Don't have much luck with women", he finally said.
"Just sex, you know. It's healthy. Might get that stick out of your ass.
Valentine opened the autogyro's canopy, revealing the twin seats, the passenger above and behind the pilot. He grabbed the steering-wheel-style stick and turned it so the little ship was pointed down the road, and opened the tool pouch. His nose detected something rotten in the right cargo compartment. Sure enough, Jimmy had left him a dead rat as a going-away present. Valentine extracted it and flung it into the dry, weed-pocked soil beside the road. "Wouldn't work that way with you", Valentine said.
"How's that?"
"I like you".
She stared at him for a moment, her upper lip working back and forth, then tousled his hair. "I know you do. Otherwise you wouldn't have gotten me out".
"I'd like to think I'd still have tried even if I didn't".
"You hide behind a lot of ifs, Max. I know you're a pretty good card player. That's about it".