Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 by Melissa Scott Read Free Book Online

stay with them. Easier all around for everybody that way.
    Jerry plopped himself on the side of the bed. “What do you think of Segura?” he asked.
    Mitch opened his eyes. “He’s a good pilot,” he said cautiously.
    “I mean in other senses.”
    Mitch blew out a long breath. So many minefields there. “I don’t really know yet,” he said cautiously. “He’s strong. I couldn’t tell you what kind of mix he has, but he’s got some pretty serious power behind it. He’s air, which is a good thing. I had a look at his discharge papers. May 25th is his birthday.”
    Jerry snorted. “You know the solar position isn’t definitive.”
    “Well, unless you want to ask him what time he was born and where, it’s what we’ve got.” Mitch looked at him seriously. “You know Alma wants him in.”
    “I’m reserving judgment,” Jerry said. He raised a placating hand. “I’m not saying no.”
    “I didn’t say you were,” Mitch said. He hesitated, but it had to be said. “It’s not like replacing Gil.”
    “In any sense?” Jerry’s mouth was tight.
    “That’s Al’s business, not ours.”
    “I’m just saying it will be a problem,” Jerry said. “If it turns out that he’s not good material. Or if he spooks.”
    Mitch nodded. There was nothing he could say that wasn’t too stark, too cruel.
    “Besides,” Jerry said, “It’s not like it was back during the war and right after. We haven’t pushed ourselves in years.”
    Since Gil stopped pushing, Mitch thought. Since Gil was too sick. Maybe he should push, maybe he should try harder to get Jerry and Al going, to work the boundaries again. It had been dispiriting, a cart with three wheels teetering along out of balance, the absence of Gil a continual wrong note. But there had to be structural things that would fix that, even if Jerry insisted it wasn’t proper form. A tripod has three legs and stands.
    “Well,” Mitch said, “Let’s see what Henry’s got for us. And hope it doesn’t bite.”
    “It won’t,” Jerry said grimly. “Not me at any rate.”
     
    L ewis lay in the dark of their seventh-floor room, listening to Alma’s slow breathing beside him, wondering if she was really asleep, or if she just couldn’t bring herself to talk right now. He’d wanted to ask questions, to make love, to celebrate this unexpected holiday, a fancy hotel in Los Angeles and no real obligations. But it had been too awkward, signing the register at the desk downstairs while Alma tried not to look at him. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Segura, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA. While Alma tried not to look like she was afraid someone she knew would suddenly pop out of nowhere in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles and say, “My goodness, Alma! When did you and Lewis get married?”
    “Just now,” she’d have to say, “in Las Vegas.” And then they’d really have to. It was easy to get married in Las Vegas. They didn’t even require a blood test. Just walk in, say who you were, and nobody would even ask for proof of anything, much less the proof of his divorce from Victoria which wouldn’t hold water in half of these United States and put him wrong in the eyes of God forever and ever. It wasn’t like he could really marry Alma anyhow, not in the Church.
    Maybe that didn’t matter to her anyway. He’d asked her once what she was and she’d laughed and said, “Contrarian.” Probably some kind of Protestant, at least on paper. She and Gil had been married by an Army chaplain, a strictly civil service in the army hospital in Venice two days after the Armistice. He’d seen the certificate. Mitch had been one of the witnesses and someone with the unlikely name Iskinder Yonas Negasi had been the other.
    But nobody would ask any questions in Vegas. Not that he and Alma were in a marrying place. It was just that saying they were married was much too close, treading too near the edge.
    It was awkward. Which was probably why as soon as they’d gotten to