The Weapon - Exodus - part 11
By Diana the Valkyrie
Wendy visits the US Air Force


I woke up next morning, up in a tree. I mean, I looked down, and there was
foliage, I looked up and there was foliage, I rolled over and if Wendy hadn't
held on to me, I'd have been a crumpled heap on the ground. So much for monkey
instincts. "Wendy, why a tree?" "It's safer than on the ground, and I thought
you might like to wake up in a leafy suburb." "So how did it go last night?"
"As you'd expect," she replied, "they talked it backwards and forwards but
they have the choice that is no choice." "Hobson's" I said, "what's for
breakfast?" "Hobson's choice, rice or rice," she replied. "Ugh. Cold rice.
Yuck." "Yes, or you can have hot rice." "Hot." She held out her hand, full of
steaming rice. "That's got to sting," I said. "No, why should it? The point of
pain is to alert you to the fact that you're suffering damage. This isn't
damaging me, so there's no pain." "Huh. Got a spoon?"

After I'd eaten, we flew back to the village. I sat and talked some more with
Lan Ho, and I told my flying bulldozer to start levelling and tamping down
hard, a large area to use as the primary evacuation airfield. While she did
that, I broke some more bad news to Lan Ho. "We're going to have to do a hot
evacuation. When the 'emergency government' hears we're leaving, they're going
to get very mad, because they see the main source of their income flying off.
So they'll be down here sharpish, and we have to get ready to mount a defence.
"Couldn't we pre-empt an attack like we did before?" asked Lan Ho. "I don't
think so. Last time they were all bunched up in one building. That's not the
case here, they're all over the place, and they'll converge on here." "How can
we hold off an army while we're boarding airplanes?" he asked, "it's
hopeless." "Nothing's hopeless," I replied, "I have a plan. Contact all the
opium processors, the people who do the chemical process of converting it to
heroin. Tell them to bring their boilers and stills, and also as much of the
drug as they can. And the other thing I want you to do, is get the carpenters
making kites. Big kites. Kites big enough to carry a man."

When Wendy came back from stamping flat a large chunk of the landscape, I told
her it was time to crank up the liason with the USAAF, so we took the
sub-orbital shortcut, and we were in California by evening, where I took the
opportunity to have a nice hot dinner, a nice hot bath, and a very nice very
hot Wendy. And in the morning, we paid a visit to General Marston at Edwards
AFB, a place I've always wanted to visit, on account of the Shuttle, but
without any security clearance, you don't really get to see the good stuff.

She could have flown straight in and landed on one of their airstrips. But I
decided that would just freak them out, these Californians are so straight,
anything unusual sends them pear-shaped. So we walked up to the main gate, and
Wendy did her "You know who I am?" bit, and the guard at the gate, who
obviously had all the initiative trained out of him, said "No, who are you?"
"I'm Batman," she replied, and he started writing that down. "Uh, wait a
minute ... " I said. I got that disentangled, and then we ran head on into the
rule that said all weapons have to be checked in at the gate. So I looked at
Wendy, and Wendy looked at me, and I said "Don't say it." And she didn't,
otherwise there would have been no way to disentangle that one.

They decided that we were both aliens, me because I'm British, and her because
she was, well, they weren't sure, but she sure wasn't from Kansas. I kept
mentioning General Marston until eventually one of them had the bright idea of
contacting the general. "Uh, sir, there's these two aliens at the gate," he
said. "Uh, yessir, the female is, uh, is, uh, her feet aren't, uh. Uh.
Yessir."

So we were taken to see the general. He was an important man, a busy man and a
man that clearly had no time for us. But we did seem to have the ear of the
Potus, so he managed to find us a few minutes in his busy schedule. "It's all
under control," he said. "Uh, what airfield will you be using," I asked. "The
first wave will be a team of Cee-Bees, airdropped to construct an airfield."
"And how long will that take?" "We should have it operational within a month,"
he replied. Wendy and I exchanged glances. "Two things, general. First, within
a month, the people we're trying to rescue will be at least decimated,
possibly incarcerated, conceivably wiped out. Secondly, we've already made
your airfield."

He shook his head. "You have no idea," he said. "It isn't just a matter of
chopping down a few trees. We need an area flattened, and then concreted over.
These planes are heavy, their wheels would just sink into grass or earth."
Wendy frowned. "Is it OK to tarmac over the concrete?" she asked. "No time for
that, young lady," he said, "we'll make do without the tarmac." She smiled.
"Oh, you had me worried for a moment, I thought I might have to strip the
tarmac off the concrete." Concrete? She's poured concrete? And tarmac? All I
said was, make an airfield. Well, I suppose she must have asked Duncan what
was needed. "Tell him what we have, Wendy." I couldn't do that myself, because
I hadn't a clue what she'd done. "Area one mile by one mile, all trees felled,
topsoil removed back to limestone underneath, twelve inches of crushed rock,
then twelve of concrete, then two inches of tarmac." I wondered where she'd
found that much concrete.

The general shook his head. "Can't be, there's nothing out there anything like
that." "No," she said, "that's why I had to make it." I chipped in with "It'll
save a month, and that will save a lot of lives." General Marston looked
startled. "You made it?" Wendy nodded. "Without heavy construction equipment?"
"General, she IS heavy construction equipment, think of her as a flying
bulldozer." He thought for a moment. "Maybe I can use it, I'll have to send a
team out there to check it. You made it flat, really flat, bumps are bad news
when a plane is rolling down the runway at 150 knots?" "Really flat," she
said, "I used a backhoe, a grader and a very heavy roller." My Wendy, the
flying bulldozer, also does imitations of other heavy construction plant. "No
problem," I said, cheerfully, "now tell me, what's your biggest problem that
will delay this project?" "Flying 100,000 people a distance of several
thousand miles. The biggest problem is fuel. The planes will need to refuel
after they land. I can't get the fuel out by ship, there's no port nearby. So
I'll either have to ship it and build a pipeline to the airfield, which will
take months, or else I'll have to fly the fuel in." "How much fuel will you
need there," I asked. "I'm looking for twenty five million pounds." "Twelve
thousand tons", I said, and I looked at Wendy. "Sure," she said, "no problem."
Put a tank there, show me the tank here, and I'll do the rest."

Silence. "You what?" asked Marson. "I'll transport your fuel." "How?" Wendy
looked at me. He probably wasn't going to believe the truth, so I came up with
a sanitised version. "You read about the Melbourne fire she put out?" "Yes"
"She transported fifty million tons of water to do that. She'll do this the
same way." "Yes, but how." "Need to know, Marston. You aren't cleared for
this." "What will she transport it in?" "Internal resources," I said, vaguely.
I mean, this is a Californian, for heaven sake. If I tell him she'll drink it
here and piss it out there, he'll have a cow.

"But if she can do that, why can't she just carry the passengers out in the
first place? What do you need us for?"

Knock me down with a feather. Why didn't I think of that? My personal
experience was that Wendy made a great people-carrier. I looked at her. "I
can't," she said. "Why not?" said Marston. "How would I do it?" she asked. "I
don't know," said Marston, "but if you can transport 50 million tons of water,
why can't you transport 50 thousand tons of human beings?" Very good question.
I was beginning to wonder how I'd missed that. And how Wendy had missed it.
Not to mention our pocket genius back home.

"Because people aren't freight. You can't carry people like you can carry
goods. And water is especially easy, you can just compress it, scrunch it up,
and when you unscrunch it, you still have water. If you do that with people,
then when you unscrunch them, you have hamburger." "OK, but could you put them
in a ship, maybe a big cruise liner, and carry the ship?" "No. We did think of
that, but the problem is that if I pick up a ship, it breaks. They're designed
to be supported all along the hull; if you try to support a ship at just one
point, then it breaks its back."

"What about a building, then? Put them in a building and fly that?" asked the
general. "No, that's even worse. Buildings are designed to rest on a
foundation. Pick one up by a corner, and it'll fall apart. Just about the only
think I could lift by supporting just one point, without it breaking, is an
airplane, because they're designed to be supported on the wing spar. But you
won't get more than a few hundred people in an airplane, and I can't fly it
much faster than the design speed, or it'll break up. So any of your pilots
would do as well as I could there." "Surely there's something you could use?"
"Not that we can think of, and we have thought about this. You see, what I'm
really good at, is breaking things. Breaking, smashing, destroying and
demolition. I'm not really designed as a transportation system."

I guessed Duncan had given this a lot of thought, without success. "If you can
think of something that I could lift via one point of support without it
breaking apart, then let me know. But I can transport your aviation kerosene,
I can scrunch it up and carry it inside me, like I did the water." "Inside
you?" She nodded. "How?" "General, you don't need the technical explanation
for this. Just show me where to get the kerosene, and set up a tank to receive
it." "That'll take a couple of days." "Fine, she said, "let me know when
you're ready, here's my phone number." "I phone you?" "Either that, or switch
on the bat-signal." I closed my eyes, and thought, Wendy, stop it, not
everyone has a sense of humour.

"So, thanks for your hospitality, General Marston, but we really do have to
fly now, things to do, you know?" He stood up and snapped off a salute. I was
a bit non-plussed, I don't know how to do those, marketroids do run things up
the flagpole to see who salutes them, but no-one ever does. But Wendy knew
what to do. She just waltzed up to him as he was saluting, and kissed him on
the cheek, another one of those full-body-contact kisses that is more about
what she does with her body against his than with her lips. So then the
general was saluting double, and I was struggling to keep a straight face, and
Wendy said "Come and watch us take off", which made me nervous because it
meant that she had something spectacular in mind, and I had no idea what.

So the General escorted us outside the building, and then asked "Where's your
aircraft?" which I thought was a pretty silly question, so I answered it with
"Our aircraft just kissed you." She put her arm round my waist, yelled "Up, up
and away", threw me forward and before I knew it, we were in the air. I had
hoped she'd just rise up and head west. Oh no. First, she buzzed the General,
then the Officer's Club, and then we headed straight for the control tower at
a couple of hundred knots, breaking aside at the last minute to pass it so
close I could almost smell the wet trousers of the terrified air traffic
controllers, one loop around it, and only then did she zoom straight up until
we were above the atmosphere, and then set course westwards. "Wendy?" "Mmm?"
"You shouldn't have done that." "I know. Aren't I wicked?" "Yeah, but." "Were
you scared?" "Me? Scared? Nah." Actually, I'd quite surprised myself, I'd have
thought I'd be terrified, but you know, it turns out that as long as Wendy has
her arm round me, it's really difficult to be scared of anything. And I told
her that, and she was even more affectionate than usual on the long suborbital
over the Pacific. "Where did get all that concrete, Wendy?" "I made it. It's
just gravel, sand, cement and water." "So where did you get the cement?"
"Silica, lime and a few other bits, it isn't exactly difficult to make this
stuff, George, the Romans used cement." "I suppose so. I usually buy it in
small sacks at my local hardware shop," I explained. "Yes, you'd want about a
million of those," she said, "never buy retail if you can go wholesale."