The Weapon - Resurrection - part 21
By Diana the Valkyrie
The theory of flight
Update: 17/06/2003 to valkyrie05



She opened the box of food we'd brought, and started to feed me slices of
tomato. I tried to take the tomato from her, but she wouldn't let me, so I
just ate from her fingers. The tomato was followed by sardines in olive oil,
and then some bread. I have no idea how she'd come up with such an unusual
menu, but it was very pleasant to lie there talking with her while she fed me.

"Tell me how you do the flying thing." She thought for a moment. Or she
pretended to. Or she emulated pretending to. No, I've got to stop thinking
about that, there's no point. She thought for a moment. "It's like, a moving
electric charge creates an electromagnetic wave, a photon, which moves off at
the speed of light, and creates a reaction in the opposite direction. But I
don't use electromagnetics for flying." "Why not? So what do you use?"
"Electromagnetics aren't efficient enough for that. But a moving mass creates
a gravitational wave, a graviton, and that also creates a reaction in the
opposite direction. Of course, you have to move a highly concentrated mass,
and then you get a high frequency wave, with lots of power to it. Which gives
you a big reaction. And that's how I fly. It sounds a lot more complicated
than it is, if you tried to explain how you run upstairs, you'd also make it
sound complicated. In practice, if you had to think about where you put your
feet and how you did the balancing, you wouldn't be able to do it. Same for
me. I can fly because I'm used to it. Or, currently, I can't."

I changed my position, so I was lying down, my head on her tummy. She started
to stroke my hair. "Tell me again about this solid block of steel. You really
could sink your hands into it?" "Yes, that's why I can't just pick up a ship
or that aircraft carrier, I have to make a force sheet to cradle it in." "So
what does it feel like when your hands penetrate a block of steel? Like
putting them in jelly?" "No, more like water. Or maybe more like a heavy fog."
One of those hands was stroking my forehead. "Er, Wendy? What about, well, a
man's head? Isn't that, sort of ... don't you have to be very careful?"
"David, I'm very gentle, when have I ever hurt you?" "I remember you walked
straight through that door at St Hildas like it wasn't there." "Light mist."

The sun was warmish, the orange juice was cold, my PDA was recording
everything. Wendy seemed to be perfectly happy to answer every question. And
now that I could ask her stuff without her getting tearful, it went very well.
I could envisage half a dozen very meaty papers being published out of this
raw material.

But what it was adding up to, was enormous power, together with enormous
restraint. The power was so great, it was scary. I'd heard that she could
extinguish a star, I hadn't heard that she could out-power a thousand stars.
"Wendy, with that level of power, people are going to be pretty frightened of
what you can do." "I know. They'll just have to trust me that I won't do it."
"And if they don't trust you?" "Then they'll have to stay frightened. I
already showed people that it isn't a good idea to fight me." "Oh, I don't
know about that," I said, and rolled over onto my hands and knees, and
attacked her.

Ten minutes later, she finally paid attention to my screaming, and stopped
tickling me. I panted until I'd caught my breath, and asked her, "Land sakes,
Wendy, where did you learn to tickle like that?" I felt like I'd been put
through a mechanical wringer. "Oh," she replied, "Duncan liked it. You're not
that different from him; same places, same touch. The thing is, you can't stop
me, that's what makes it so bad." "So good." "So bad and so good. Tickling is
an art, you have to practice." "Wendy, are you ticklish?" She smiled down at
me, and said "Emulation". I tried to have a go, but she was holding my wrists.
"I'll let you try when we get home," she promised.

The sun sank lower in the sky; shadows started to lengthen. The slight warmth
of the day dissipated into the cold of the evening, and a breath of wind
brought up gooseflesh on my bare arms. "Time to go inside, baby," she said,
and I found myself being pulled to my feet. I hung onto her hand after she
pulled me up, and we strolled across the grass, homeward bound, hand in hand.

As we came to the edge of the park, there was a group of children around a
tree, staring up into it. "Can you see what they're looking at, I can't see at
this distance?" I asked Wendy. "Yes, there's a kitten stuck in the branches." I
wondered how she could see it, this far away. Another question for later.
"Let's get it down for them," I suggested. "I can't fly," replied Wendy. "You
could climb the tree." "No I couldn't. Bipedal locomotion is tricky enough,
climbing trees is beyond my competence." She can outshine a thousand stars,
but she can't climb a tree? "David, there's a lot of things I can't do. The
ability to do one thing doesn't confer an ability to do something completely
different." I suppose. Well, in my younger days, I climbed the occasional
tree. "Ok, I'll do it if you can't. But at least you could give me a boost up
so I can get hold of one of the lower branches."

She practically threw me up into the tree. I didn't need to climb the first
ten feet, and I got a good grip on a nice thick branch. Then I clambered up;
the branches were almost horizontal, and not too far apart, so it was almost
like climbing steps. When I got to the branch that held the kite, I edged
carefully out along it, wondering what sort of lunatic would put his life at
risk for a dumb little kitten. I suppose I was acting out my hero fantasy, 
but all I felt at this point, was stupid.

I felt even more stupid when my knee slipped off the branch, and I swung
around it, so I was now underneath the branch clinging on. I held on with both
hands, and thought about getting my legs up around the branch. But I wasn't a
lithe teenager any more, I was a paunchy middle-aged man, whose idea of
exercise was to walk to the kitchen and back. I wriggled around for a bit,
found that I wasn't getting anywhere. Worse, I was starting to lose my grip on
the branch. And at some twenty feet from the ground, this was going to be a
fall that breaks a few bones, at least. Suddenly, I wasn't an academic
struggling to understand some esoteric issue; suddenly I was a monkey in a
tree, about to fall. "Wendy!" I screamed. By the time I'd got was far as "W",
my hands had slipped off the branch, and I screamed out the "e" as I fell.

I was ready for the terrible pain of impact, ready for the plaster cast, ready
for six weeks in traction. What I wasn't ready for, was a pair of strong arms
gripping me almost as soon as I let go the branch, and the scent of her hair
in my nostrils as she hovered twenty feet from the ground, holding me safe in
her arms, the kitten held in one of her hands. I stopped the scream, I didn't 
feel likely to fall any more.

"Wendy," I said, "you're flying." "So I am," she replied, smiling like a sunrise.

. . .