JAN LARS JENSEN

THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE ORNITHOPTER

1899

LITTLE REGGIE TODDLED over lawns of the Frost estate with his nanny traipsing
along, blowing bubbles. She'd been given the double charge of laundering clothes
and keeping mind of the boy, while her master attended important business, not
to be disturbed, many important gentlemen, the advancement of science, the glory
of Britannia and preservation of her Majesty's military supremacy. The nanny had
bored of washing clothes. She drifted from her chore, ostensibly to give Reggie 
a breath of fresh air. With a scoop of soapwater she blew bubbles for him to
chase, and she blew them toward the gentlemen's racket.

And what a sight for them both having crested a knoll, cultured greens of grass
interrupted by verticals of gentlemen in suits, her master Edward Frost
included, all of them standing in calm observance, multiplying the verticals of
trees, elms, asps, cedar, and the immense oak where attention was concentrated.
And what an age we were entering, what a time, when adults could be stopped in
their steps, startled by visions as dreamlike as a child's, as the nanny stopped
now, her lips pursed to blow a bubble.

A steam engine clamored on the lawn, pitmans rising from its back to a second
contraption suspended from the oak, a machine that extended great black wings,
great flapping black wings, feathered like a bird's but of a span and girth that
bespoke the size of the dreams of the men who'd made them -- yes, made them,
because even a girl like her with no education to speak of could see that the
beating of the wings depended on the steam-driven strokes from below.

The core of a great mechanical bird? Was that what they had built? Was she
dreaming?

Little Reggie swayed, unsteady, staring at the contraption, close enough to feel
the air rolling from its efforts.

And the gentlemen in suits, they stared at the winged mechanism, withholding
comment.

Everyone was dreaming. It was an age of dreams, and for Reggie's father Edward,
possibly an age of dreams come true.

1902

Man was meant to fly: that much the Royal Aeronautical Society agreed upon. The
issue of debate was simply, by what means?

Opinion shifted with the performance of prototypes built in England and on the
continent, but lately the RAS had leaned toward the idea of a fixed-wing flier.
Sir George Cayley began and ended his pioneering career in the study of flight
with the concept of a craft bearing fixed wings, its propulsive force coming
from a separate source: this was called an aeroplane, and impressive results by
fixed-wing gliders had recently swayed RAS members toward such designs.

But Edward Frost knew better.

Man was meant to fly, yes. But would man be so foolish as to ignore the example
God had given him? Birds, beautiful birds -- the Society should follow their
splendid example, Edward knew, and build an ornithopter, with propulsion
deriving from the wings. He spent much time watching birds in flight but lately 
he'd been going to the window also for solace.

"Edward?"

"Yes of course, cherie."

"I haven't asked you anything yet."

"No, cherie, of course you haven't."

"The iceman gave me a vulgar look this morning."

"I'll have a word with him."

"He left his boots on when he came inside the house. He didn't make an effort,
even, to first clean off the mud."

"The cur. I'll give him a good talking to."

"I was very shocked, Edward. I stood with my jaw dropped and I glared at him.
And do you know? He looked right back at me! He gave me an immodest look." 

"He forgot his place. You poor dear."

"Why would he behave this way, Edward? Why would he look at me this way?"

"The cur. A good talking-to. I'll set him straight tomorrow."

"But what has come over an iceman, to behave in such a way? Why did he give me
such a look?"

"Because you're French, cherie. He thinks he can take liberties with a French
woman."

"Oh. Oh."

Chantel looked down; she smoothed the pages of Aesop's Fables, which she'd been
reading to Reggie. Edward hoped she could not see him flush in the window's
reflection. A lie was acceptable if it should spare someone's feelings, but he
had chosen his lie badly, insulting her heritage, and he could only justify
doing so with the knowledge he was protecting her from much larger pains, real
threats, griefs more tangible than the impudent glances of servicemen.

"Reggie," Edward said. "Come stand with your father."

The boy arched his back to pour himself from his mother's lap. Reggie stood only
as tall as the window sill, and so Edward scooped him up and stood him on the
table, giving the boy a clear view of the sky and shapes swooping against
twilight purple. The boy lifted his hand to point at them, their flight bringing
a smile to his face.

"Yes," Edward said quietly. "Birds. And nobody questions their wealth, do they?
No sum of money could rival the gift of flight."

1903

Members of the Royal Aeronautical Society had returned to the Frost estate. They
stood on the hillside with their arms behind their backs, watching without
comment.

Down the slope ran a set of tracks like those crisscrossing the nation, although
it was no locomotive waiting to hurtle down their length. On the hilltop sat a
more fanciful machine, Ornithopter Number Three, the product of heavy mental,
physical, and financial investment, the fulcrum upon which these very grounds
had been leveraged, the culmination of years of work and countless dreams of
escaping Earthly encumbrances. And to think it could all be delayed by one
reluctant driver! Edward tried to keep a level tone as he prevailed upon the man
sitting in the Ornithopter's chair.

"Harry, be reasonable."

"But sir -- "

"Really, Harry, I must insist." 

"Sir, you pay me to drive horses, not flying machines!"

"We've discussed your qualifications, Harry. You need do nothing more than sit
in that sling and provide ballast; I think that's within your capabilities.
Let's not keep the good people waiting any longer, shall we?"

Harry peered past his employer's shoulder at the distinguished guests standing 
over the hillside, some knighted, one a Windsor. He swallowed. He nodded. Mister
Frost was right. The event was bigger than his misgivings, and Harry couldn't
bear the thought of keeping distinguished men waiting for his cowardice. Edward
leaned over and fastened the canvas belt across Harry's waist.

Ornithopter Three was a vision -- enough to stifle even the most vocal skeptics,
if only briefly. The chassis was a simple upright framework of tubes on wheels
which would follow the track down the slope. Behind the nervous driver, the 
frame supported its motive faculty, a gunpowder engine based on the model by
Trouve, but even this was not the craft's most impressive aspect.

The wings spanned almost twenty feet and looked like something borne of
mythology. Frost and sympathetic members of the Society had spent countless
hours attaching duck feathers to the cambered frames, which were hinged in the
middle and connected to the engine by coiled Bourdon tubes. The engine fired
blank gun cartridges against the tubes, hyper-extending them, and so causing the
wings to flap downward. After this brief explosion, the tubes would relax enough
to bring the wings up again, as the next cartridge fell into place. Frost
distributed wads of cotton batting to his assistants and Harry, who reluctantly
stuffed his ears, then returned to gripping the frame like a prisoner.

The assistants removed and folded their jackets. Edward retreated to a good
vantage. He'd planned to make notes on the Ornithopter's performance but
realized a full sentence would be unnecessary, because this day would be
summarized with a single word.

Success or failure.

He signaled the assistants.

They started pushing the Ornithopter down the tracks, for an initial burst of
speed. When they had covered a third the distance, one of them triggered the
engine: it erupted with a gatling-gun racket, and Harry jumped at the noise. But
attention drew quickly to the wings, the great wings, working as they had been
designed to work, pumping up and down, spreading breadth against the invisible
ocean of air, flapping, flapping, flapping --

The men pushed Ornithopter Three until it got out of their grasp, pulling ahead
of them, and Edward Frost could see his machine fight gravity, battling for
buoyancy, struggling to rise. Further encouragement awaited at the terminus of 
the tracks, a ramp that would shoot the craft skyward. Gulls had been wheeling
about earlier and Edward's mind sprang on a tangent, wondering if the
Ornithopter would burst through their number, surprising them....

The craft shot off the ramp, but surprised no birds.

The great wings continued pumping but the Ornithopter did not ascend beyond a
mere inertial arc, hitting the ground, hard, lifting again briefly, not flying
but bouncing, at best leaping, a sort of industrial hopping, punctuated madly
across many yards. Men scattered. Edward felt himself dropping even though he
remained standing. His pencil and ledger became heavy, too heavy, subject to an
unfair share of gravity, as he watched his great design flounder, and it did
resemble a bird, but a bird attempting to toss debris off its talons, or perhaps
kill prey in an unconventional smashing manner.

The assistants found their jackets. Other finely dressed observers did not react
outwardly, they remained fixed in place, as if this scene was fully expected;
they put forward no dismay or disappointment or smug pleasure, because they were
too embarrassed or too courteous or too aloof for such comments. What they
watched -- still firing gunpowder in staccato snorts -- was the failure of
Edward Purkis Frost. The ruin. Not all the men gathered on the slopes were
students of aeronautics. Some were bankers. Money lenders. Men with a financial
stake in the day's results.

Other men, too. Uninvited. They kept back from the crowd so as not to draw
attention. Unknown to Edward, these strangers also would influence his future,
but for now they stood silent, while Ornithopter Three bounced over the grounds,
shedding feathers, making a gaudy show of Edward's downfall, while Harry, still
strapped aboard, fought to shout out,

"Sir...I...respectfully...resign...my...services!" 

Months passed.

The image of Ornithopter Three hopping to its demise tainted Edward's
world-view, not least of all his feelings toward birds. He stood at the drawing
room window and shuddered at the sight of a pigeon flying to the coop.

He trudged through the snow and found the landed pigeon strutting back and
forth. Edward reached inside and untied the small piece of paper rolled around
its leg. The note was from London, from his friend Arthur Hoyt. No good news had
arrived recently and the spare paragraph written here was perhaps the worst yet.

Americans report 12-second flight. First in history in which machine carries a
man and is raised by its own power into the air -- no reduction of speed, landed 
at a point as high as that from which it started. Wilbur and Orville Wright,
Flyer No. 1. Fixed wing.

Fixed wing.

The size of the note allowed for no more details. But this was enough.
Fixed-wing fliers had triumphed. The Ornfithopter, Edward realized, would amount 
to nothing more than a footnote in the history of aviation, an entry small
enough to fit around a pigeon's leg.

1906

Edward developed a near-phobia of pigeons. A pigeon returned to his coop, and he
learned he'd lost his position as President of the Society. A pigeon, and he was
warned of legal maneuvers by creditors. A pigeon, and the Crown relieved him of
his position as magistrate.

How could his situation be worse? He lacked the imagination.

Then, one October afternoon, two strangers came to the estate, and Edward took
the timing of their arrival as bad portent.

It was the same afternoon bailiffs came to seize assets, a burly pair of
dullards lugging the wing of an ornithopter to their wagon; watching the wing 
go, Edward noticed the coach pull up, and two men disembark. Unlike the
bailiffs, these men were slight, even timid, their heads downturned, apparently
embarrassed by the scene in the middle of which they found themselves. They wore
English suits and these seemed awkward on the strangers because, Edward
realized, they were Oriental.

Perplexed, he crossed the lawn to meet them, expecting bows, but the Orientals
extended their hands simultaneously.

"Very pleased to meet your acquaintance, Mister Edward Frost." Their names were
Toru and Hiroto, but if these were too challenging Edward was welcome to call
them Tommy and Henry. Edward could not differentiate them beyond the color of
their suits and the fact one thrust out his chest when he spoke. "We are very
large enthusiasts of your work, on behalf of our master and employer, Okura
Shuko Kan."

"My work?"

"Ornithopters. Our master, very interested in your success."

"News of my `success' seems to have been skewed in translation."

The two men blushed. "We were attending, for the test flight."

"You were here? You witnessed the fiasco?"

"We suggest, Edward Frost, this was not fiasco, to us."

Edward could no longer withhold the question. "Why are you here?"

"Our master, Okura Shuko Kan, he very interested in machine-powered flight. In
replicating the flight of birds."

"You'll pardon me for smiling but I don't think any Chinaman will have better
luck than I. Your race lags too far behind in technology and industry, I'm
afraid, to achieve powered flight."

The pair colored, paused before speaking again. "Sir, we are."

"Japanese, Chinese -- it doesn't change my point, does it.? You haven't the
grasp of modern sciences. I might do your master a favor and recommend he avoid
the expense and humiliation I have suffered for my ambition. Good day, sirs,
you've added an amusing note to a rather dreary day."

Edward offered his hand. One of the men stuck out his chest, said, "Tsar
Nicholas would disagree, I think."

"Tsar Nicholas?"

"He would disagree I think about the Japanese lagging. In industry. In
technology." 

A sound point. Schools of fish no doubt circulated through the Russian fleet
right now, somewhere along the sea floor. The Japs had won the Russo-Japanese
War decisively, and Edward found himself reconsidering the pair who stood before
him. It was "Tommy" who had spoken out, demonstrated some backbone after all
that blushing and deference. Edward gave them a second look, and noted that
however out-of-place their suits looked on such slight frames, they were
nonetheless exquisite, purchased from a Hyde street haberdashery. In a word,
expensive.

"Do you people care for tea?"

They blushed.

Inside the house, Hiroto and Toru halted abruptly. They had returned to their
carriage briefly before coming to the door, and carried between them what
appeared to be a large valise fashioned from hardwood. "Don't trouble with your
shoes," Edward said, as they stood, stopped.

But what stopped them was a line chalked along the floor, down the hallway, into
rooms, dividing the house, and the fact Edward kept to one side of this border.
They avoided looking at the chalk-line. "My wife and I have, ahem, drawn up this
arrangement, until a more permanent solution is effected." Despite his
assurances that guests need not acknowledge the chalk division, the two men
nonetheless kept to Edward's side.

"Please forgive the mess," he said. "An inventor's weakness."

In fact he'd done nothing remotely scientific for months, and the true
explanation for the half-completed prototype wings and piles of unbound
documents in the drawing room was that he hoped to conceal heirlooms from the
bailiffs. "If you can find a place to sit, I'll have the housekeeper prepare
tea."

The men set their case on the floor and knelt to snap open buckles. The nanny
and the housekeeper and the driver had all left long ago, and Edward himself had
to produce tea and biscuits, and find a clean pot, and when he returned to the
drawing room with the fruit of his efforts he almost dropped the works.

"I hope Darjeeling is -- oh. Good Lord."

The Japanese had removed tissue packing and now gently lifted from their case a
set of wings -- immaculate white wings, extending from a bamboo body. A model,
and a superb model at that, gorgeous, and his heart, his heart performed a
maneuver when he saw Toru wind an elastic running through the interior. Hiroto 
looked up at Edward.

"May we?"

Edward managed a nod.

With each wind, tension increased through the model, mirroring his own mounting
excitement. Was he even breathing? And then the Japanese launched the model,
sending it into the air with a gentle toss, and it stayed aloft, its wings
flapped with exact strokes and it climbed, it rose, and Edward felt air thumping
his face as he followed the flight of the ornithopter around the room, soaring
above the tables, lamps, climbing higher, winging toward the ceiling as he
turned and turned with its spiraling ascent.

"Dear God .... "

"We would like to work with you, Mister Edward Frost."

"Dear God in Heaven .... "

"A partnership."

But he was unable to register what the Oriental was saying until the elastic
energy had run its course and one of them darted forward to catch the model.
Edward wanted to see it fly again. He wanted to examine the underpinnings of the
wings, the action. The men repeated what they said. A partnership.

"I wish I had met you years ago," he said. "Your timing, I'm afraid, is abysmal.
Any new endeavors would be interrupted by my previous failures. Look outside! My
creditors are everywhere. I'm ashamed to admit that I can no longer provide the
right environment for aeronautical study."

The men glanced at one another.

"We would not impose on your estate," said Hiroto. "We know of your
difficulties," Toru continued. "We invite you to Meboso."

"Meboso...?" 

"A small village, on Honshu. We think you would find agreeable the terms our
master presents." "Honshu...Japan?"

"We will happily provide, if you will allow, passage for two." 

"I...my wife won't accompany me anywhere. Especially not the Far East !"

The Japanese colored. "We were thinking, the boy?"

And Edward turned to see young Reggie standing in the doorway. Reggie must have
seen the demonstration too, because he looked much like Edward felt, a child
with dreams freshly teased.

1908

Edward sat on a cedar bench, crickets making music in the dusk. He was surprised
to find his palms sweaty.

Why should he be nervous to meet any man?

Before relocating to Japan, the notion of rich Orientals had never occurred to
him. But time spent in Meboso forced him to appreciate this idea, to cultivate a
respect for the wealth commanded by the Shuko Kan zaibatsu. Meboso was situated
in a valley pegged by four hills of roughly equal size, and the symmetry of the
setting seemed to please its inhabitants, as this feature had been pointed out
to Edward on more than one occasion. The valley was mostly rice fields and a
smattering of homes, rickshaws or wagons occasionally clattering between. On one
hillside a great kiln could be seen, where potters from Meboso and other
villages came to fire their wares. Edward could see it best after dusk, glowing 
heart occasionally revealed by attendants feeding wood or further pots. To
quaint Meboso, resources came, no matter how scarce, how expensive, they came.
When he requested a Daimler-Benz motorcar, it was delivered within four days,
and in the interval, farmers pulled a plow, breaking ground for the track around
which the vehicle would be driven. The estate in which he lived was owned by the
Shuko Kan zaibatsu, and the village seemed subservient to it in a sense Edward
didn't quite grasp, a relationship both feudal and commercial.

The quality of the English spoken by many locals was another surprise. He'd
worried about bringing Reggie here for an extended period, but those fears were
quelled when he met the men who would serve as tutors, introducing themselves
with a better command of the language than some Society members, back home.

And he found personalities in these people, underneath their courtesy and
similar aspects. Hiroto and Toru were nephews of the master, Okura Shuko Kan;
they were cousins, dissimilar. Hiroto was contemplative, the one more likely to
be found in the aviary, studying the descent of a crane. Toru was the one who
spoke with his chest out, the one who voiced occasional fiery opinion of world
politics, of Japanese prowess, of sunken Russian ships. The two competed for
influence over Edward and the ornithopter's development -- they seemed rivals,
yet he never heard one speak badly of the other. Such politeness! But what
should you expect from a race that lived within paper walls?

He sat in one of the "gardens" within the estate, catching scents of tree sap
and plum blossom. Wondering why he was nervous. Why? Everyone treated him with
respect. He wiped his palms. He tried to calm himself by staring at patterns
raked into gravel.

A cane tapped the path.

He wiped his hands on his pants once more as the small man materialized from
darkness. However diminutive, Okura Shuko Kan could, with a word, stop or start
any venture in Meboso.

He did not look like a magnate. Wiry hairs sprouted from his chin and ears.
Cataract clouded one of his eyes; the other seemed to wander. He looked like he
might have been a sickly child.

"I've heard your name so often," said Edward. "It's a pleasure to finally make
your acquaintance."

"I too have heard much of you."

They sat. Bat song accompanied the crickets, and Okura looked skyward with his
clear eye. "I am told," he said, "that you and Hiroto wish to build a full-size
prototype?"

"Yes. Expanding on your ideas, of course. I think our concept is quite
feasible."

Okura nodded, one eye bright.

"An adaptation of the Daimler-Benz engine," Edward continued. "I can't take all
the credit. My challenge was linking Bourdon tubes to an internal combustion
engine, without reduction by differential gears. You've seen how Hiroto and I
incorporated the Bourdon tubes within your wing design? The crankshaft of the
engine compresses and releases them; they, in turn, beat the wings, according to
your study of wing dynamics. If we can build a working prototype, it will be a
tremendous accomplishment. I believe it's an achievable goal, with a modem shop
available to us."

"You shall have it," the other man said.

Edward exhaled, realizing now why he had been worried. "Excellent. Truly, this
is a capital development for manned flight. We won't disappoint you!"

"But it's too noisy."

Edward paused. "I beg your pardon?" 

"Too noisy. Your engine."

"Mister Kan...what makes you say that? We haven't even started --"

"I've seen the motorcar on the track. I have heard it. I cannot help but hear
it." He frowned as if he'd tasted a lemon.

"With all due respect," Edward said, "please understand that the amount of lift
necessary to overcome the gravity acting on a single man --it's enormous. In
Cambridgeshire, I tried every conceivable type of fuel, gunpowder, compressed 
air, alcohol-fueled boilers, carbolic acid --nothing compares with petrol! No
energy source exists with the same potential."

"What does a bird sound like, rising from a branch?"

When Edward said nothing, Okura replied, "Correct. No motor sound. What would a
forest be, if filled with the racket of your Daimler-Benz? I think it would not
be a forest."

"But nothing can compare with petrol .... "

The frail man pulled himself up by the cane and turned back down the path. "Your
prototype will be built," he said. "But until we eliminate the noise of the
engine, we won't have succeeded."

Okura Shuko Kan left Edward in the dark, very much in the dark. Disappointment
mingled with frustration. Was the man daft? They were on the verge, here, of
fulfilling Edward's dream, of making history, and Kan was concerned about the
engine being too noisy? He must be touched. Such was oft the case with
visionaries, and Edward resolved not to let any madness impede man's conquest of
the skies on flapping wings.

1909

Reggie had put on a kimono. Today was perhaps the most important day of Edward's 
career, and his twelve-year-old son chose to wear a yellow silk gown embroidered
with lilies. Edward stomped in another room and the boy was still wearing the
kimono. Edward slammed a cupboard door, he harrumphed and glared, yet the kimono
continued to exist! The boy must be deliberately trying to aggravate him.
Kimono. Even the word was infuriating. 

The issue had arisen before, Reggie answering Edward's questions in Japanese, or
practicing calligraphy when he should have been studying scripture, or eating
roast lamb with chopsticks, or spending his leisure time in the stone garden
with a rake and non-Christian philosophies. Once, in frustration, Edward had
decreed that the boy should wipe his mind clean of the Japanese language, but
this seemed as difficult to enforce as a previous edict that Reggie stop eating
rice. Edward watched the boy kneeling to tea in the next room wearing what
amounted to a yellow silk dress. He knew not what to do. To say. His son. His 
child.

His little Japanese boy.

Outside, a ruckus.

Shouts.

It had been so long since Edward heard a voice raised in anger (other than his
own) that it drew him to the window. This was a Japanese language he had not
previously experienced, one transformed by volume, by emotion, and more
surprising still, he knew the two young men shouting, the nephews Hiroto and
Tom, down in the courtyard, shoving, their faces so flush with anger that they
too were difficult to recognize. Shoves got harder, onlookers gathered, men in
leather aprons emerging from the machine shop. Tom snatched a bamboo training
sword, the kind used in kendo classes, and swung at his cousin, striking bare
flesh with an awful smack. Hiroto dove into the crowd and emerged moments later
with a matching length of copper pipe. The cousins squared off in the
traditional manner and clashed in bursts. For a change Edward found himself
blushing at the Japanese. He lowered the blinds, turned.

Reggie stood in the room. Still wearing his kimono.

Edward knew what he must say.

"Change."

"Father?"

"You won't be going to the launch. Not dressed in that fashion."

"But everyone will be dressed formally."

"Yes, but we are a different race, and we mustn't forget that, Reggie. We must 
show the Japanese what we are, so they too remember."

"But this is what I want to wear." Reggie seldom whined or scowled; he was too
reasonable. "It's what I like. It's comfortable."

"Lucky thing a corset is uncomfortable, or I suppose I'd find one under that 
dress! No. You will change into proper English clothes, and that's the last word
on the subject, or you won't come with us, not at all. I'll tell Shimbo to take
you to the ocean instead. You will spend the day reading scripture. Reciting
Exodus, over the noise of the surf."

The boy stood, taking on the slightest hue. Edward could see him trying to think
a way through this disagreement. The boy cocked his head, to the window, to the
shouts outside, the ongoing shouts, clattering parries.

"Shouldn't you be flying the ornithopter, Father?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"It's your dream, aren't you always saying? The omithopter is your dream."

"The lads have more practical experience --"

"Why wouldn't you want to fly your own machine?"

"Ah. Now I understand. You're getting back at me."

"Father, is it because you're scared?"

"Scared!"

He caught himself before answering, before launching into an explanation that
sometimes it was more important-- even braver! -- to observe from the sidelines.
It would sound too much like an excuse.

"Go get changed," he said instead.

And Reggie turned and walked quietly to his room.

Scared. What did a boy know about being scared? Edward watched him go.

Change, he thought. Change.

Later, they stood at the airfield with zaibatsu members. Shuko Kan family
members had come to watch from afar, everyone aware of what was happening and
everyone displaying humble anxiety. Not in attendance was Okura Shuko Kan,
although perhaps he watched from one of the recently constructed towers. A
Shinto priest performed a ritual, chasing demons from the airfield. 

Hiroto arrived. His face was bruised from the fight and he appeared profoundly
humble. Why doesn't he come stand with us? It must be humiliation, Edward
decided. He must have lost the fight.

A roar of engine, and all faces turned to Omithopter Four.

It was built largely of bamboo -- a material the Japanese could manipulate to
incredible strength -- and the carriage looked like a woven basket, or a bird's
nest. Toru wore a handmade flightsuit of crimson silk, and he bowed to various
points in the crowd before climbing inside. Edward glanced at Hiroto, with a
realization: the cousins had fought over which of them would take the test
fight. It meant so much to them that they had taken up weapons. They had come to 
blows over the privilege.

Edward swallowed dryly.

The engine snorted, and wings flapped.

Edward's prototypes back home had flapped with a simple up-down motion, replaced
here with the dynamics Okura Shuko Kan had captured, every stroke combining
several avian motions, primary feathers turning with upstrokes, the whole
framework contracting and expanding. Edward's versions were crude monsters by
comparison; this was an achievement worthy of men and birds, majestic wings now
pulling the craft forward, without assistance. The crowd murmured, excitement
growing as the craft left the ground, carriage leaving the wheels behind. The
omo rose, it flew, like a bird, wingstrokes carrying it higher, and Toru inside,
steady.

Toru was flying. Twenty or thirty feet over the heads of the crowd and still 
climbing into the sky.

Edward could feel the crowd's admiration. Should it be me? Maybe that was the
crux of the Wrights' success, maybe that was why a pair of American
bicycle-builders had surpassed the Royal Aeronautical Society, because they flew
their crafts themselves, lying prone in their own creations, flying, as it was
noted, by the seat of their pants. 

Perhaps a man could never succeed unless he valued his dream as highly as his
life.

Edward refocused on the omithopter as the crowd cheered it on, flying over the
valley and toward the mountains, before Tom applied the wingwarping controls,
turning the craft. Another swell of enthusiasm, as Omithopter Four flapped back.
A triumph. The craft passed above the crowd, wings moving in beautiful strokes,
flying over homes and pagodas and towers of the keep, and the crowd still
cheering, even when they could see Toru struggling -- perhaps screaming, it was
impossible to hear him for the engine -- and flames spread from there, fuselage
burning and Tom struggling for control while also beating at a fire. The crowd
continued to cheer even though the flight became erratic and the ornithopter did
tight orbits above the keep, one wing burning, one flapping, burning wing, bird
on fire, the craft spiraling into a tower, flight arrested but fiery wings still
flapping as the craft toppled back, plunged, smearing flames to the ground.

The noise of the crowd changed. People ran toward the crash.

Edward stood frozen a moment, and glanced at Reggie, standing straight in his 
proper English outfit, looking up at his father now with a gaze that said, This
is why you should have been flying your own dream. Edward broke into a run.

1910 -- 1918

He would no longer shy from problems, mechanical or personal.

The sublime debut of the Japanese ornithopter-- rising so gloriously, crashing
so spectacularly -- recharged both him and Hiroto, who would never forget that
he had landed blows against his cousin for the "privilege" of testing the craft.
Toru had been transported to a northern island for convalescence, while Edward
and Hiroto toiled at designs that would better shield the pilot from petrol's
demonic power. They also better harmonized the crankshaft with wing motion, and
added "tail feathers" to parallel the cruciform tail unit which had helped
stabilize fixed-wing fliers of the West. Edward and his team had completed six
more ornithopters before the first significant slowdown.

With the Great War's approach, the zaibatsu shifted resources to naval
endeavors. Edward, however, saw a way that the situation in Europe might benefit
the omithopter. And himself. Wouldn't it serve the Royal Air Force well? And if
Japan's British allies were sold on the craft, wouldn't that make a profitable
situation for the zaibatsu?

Paved roads replaced their dirt predecessors in Meboso while he strategized. The 
airfield was expanded and improved, with an accompanying hangar, so principles
of assembly line production might be applied to the omithopter. When he wasn't
making suggestions or requests to the zaibatsu, Edward penned letters to the RAF
and former colleagues in the Aeronautical Society, urging them to arrange for a
demonstration of "the first machine capable of true flight."

His early letters were ignored, much to his irritation.

It wasn't just the ornithopter Edward wished to take home.

As Reggie had entered his late teens, the rift between them had grown deeper
than puberty itself. Reggie was never disrespectful or impertinent; that might
have been a relief. Rather, he rebelled with quietness, with grace, with
understatement: he was behaving, to his father's distress, more and more like a
perfect young Japanese man. The final straw had been a romantic dalliance with
one of the zaibatsu granddaughters, and after intervening, Edward had formulated
a plan: he would take Reggie back to England and leave him in the care of his
uncle, a Cambridge professor who had agreed to oversee the boy's admission at
Hughes Hall and his education as a man, as a Briton.

"Will you come to England with us? It would mean very much to me."

Reggie looked up from calligraphy. "England?"

"The RAF has asked for a demonstration of the omithopter. For the war. I'm going
and Hiroto. It'll be an adventure, and...an education. You can see where you
were born; surely you must be curious?"

"How long would we be gone?"

"Oh. A few months. Maybe more."

The boy accepted the idea as placidly as a pond accepting a stone; moments later
the subject disappeared from his face. They would go. And Edward had plenty of
time to break the news.

The voyage seemed interminable. While the crew worried about German submersibles
rising from the depths, Edward struggled for the right way to tell Reggie that 
he must stay in England. Their frigate joined a convoy returning from the
Dardanelles for the final leg, and Edward decided to wait until they arrived;
telling the boy would be easier with soil under their feet. Solid ground would
make the proposition appealing. When Reggie saw the majesty of England, he would
love the idea of staying.

Across the Channel they could hear a boom boom boom, the sounds of artillery,
mortars, sounds of war that had chilled him repeatedly. They docked in
Folkestone on February Third, 1916. He thought of his fellow countrymen waiting
for them on the airfield in Lympne. Here people had been making sacrifices,
while he had been isolated, even pampered, a world away. From his trunk he
removed a crisp suit, one he had reserved for this day. He dressed with pride,
then went to the cabin where the Japanese were staying.

"I'll fly the orno today."

The zaibatsu members and mechanics looked at him, silent for a moment, stunned,
before raising a general protest. The man scheduled to pilot the craft
complained loudest, but Hiroto interceded. 

"This is Edward's homeland," Hiroto said. "And we should allow him this glory."

He smiled and nodded. He understood, it seemed. He could make the others
understand. They agreed that after meeting the RAF representative here in
Folkestone, Edward would depart, launching from the deck and flying to the
airfield. An appropriately dramatic debut.

They went up as a group to perform a final check on the aircraft and this was
where dreams again crashed back to earth, because in the morning sun, the bright
mist and familiar smells of seashore, the deck was empty, except for one
startled crew member and the wrappings under which the ornithopter had been
stored.

Gone.

"Germans..." Edward breathed. "We've been sabotaged!"

But the guard shook his head, no. "Your son. Such a good boy."

"Reg...?"

"Your son. He told me he was to test engine."

"Reggie...?"

"Testing engine, he told me."

"It's not possible .... "He looked at the empty space the ornithopter had
occupied, the bindings which had tied it in place. "...what did he...?"

"He flew. He said nothing to me."

"Edward, we must inform the commanders in Lympne," Hiroto said quickly.

But awful things were dawning on Edward, and he said, "Reggie didn't fly toward
Lympne. Did he?"

The guard shook his head. "East."

"East?" said Hiroto. "Over the water?"

"But why?" said one of the others. "To France?"

Edward looked into the sky as he felt control slipping out of his grasp, he felt
the sun, he felt everything falling apart. A person could fall without having
risen. Plans could come apart like loose feathers, fluttering away like hopes
and ambitions until you were left in the air without means of support.

From another vantage, those same blocks of sunlight and cloud seemed anything
but despairing.

Reggie was flying. He was doing it. Flying over the Channel! 

This was not the first time he had piloted an ornithopter, but it was the first
time anyone had attempted to cross this body of water by orno. And he would make
it. He would. The carriage was so narrow that the orno's ribs cradled him, and
he could feel the essential motion through the framework, compressing him,
releasing him: the wings were his own. On both forearms he wore leather braces
connected to cables which warped the wings, furthering the sense of integration.
He could, pulling or twisting or by a combination of both, change the rate of
wingflap, or alter the inclination of either wing.

He was immersed. And he could look down to the green ocean below, peeling with
waves. Between him and the water, gulls wheeled, oblivious to his presence,
accepting it. Mist broke across the carriage as the wings beat strongly,
smoothly, pulling him through the sky.

He would make it.

It had not been his plan from the outset. He'd suspected his father wanted him
in England for personal reasons, for English reasons, and as Reggie had watched
the mechanics tinkering with the orno, the realization had struck him. He must
see his mother. She would understand him. Reggie would find her, and they would
protect one another, and after the war Reggie would return to Japan, alone.

He had not corresponded with his mother in ten years. A minor detail. Compared
to a young man flying over the Channel? It was the smallest of minor details.
Ahead, coastline materialized, and the orno pulled over land, and the land
resolved beneath him, gloomy and scary and pocked by war.

What had he expected? Something other than the haunted field below, burned trees
with blackened branches fracturing the mist, and pools of water collected in
depressions of unknown origin. Bomb-bursts perhaps, or the movements of heavy
artillery. There was nobody below, a few farmhouses and outbuildings, but all
was deserted, bleak. He felt, with his wings flapping on either side of him,
like a giant scavenger, or a harbinger of future nightmares.

Then, an unfamiliar sound.

A motorized buzzing, somewhere behind him.

He tried to look but the carriage allowed minimal movement, and the sound grew
into a cylindered whine, and he saw two biplanes, fixed-wing, zooming in on him.
They approached with astounding velocity, one dogging the other, passing him,
and his chest clutched his heart. He'd never seen a fixed-wing plane in flight
-- and while in flight himself! They zipped ahead, and his first fear, that they
were German, was relieved with a flash of livery over the tail-fins, blue, white
and red indicating these were British aircraft, Sopwith Camels. In the blur of
motion he'd also glimpsed the pilots turning their heads, looking in his
direction, obviously startled.

They had never seen an ornithopter before.

As the biplanes receded, Reggie wondered how his father and the Shuko Kan
zaibatsu hoped to compete with these machines: there was no way an orno could
match such velocity, such packaged fury. He stared, spellbound.

And then...what?

Far ahead, the aeroplanes banked.

Turning.

Coming back at him.

The pilots had never seen an omithopter before. And no markings were emblazoned
over it, no indications of origin; his father had requested this be so. No sign
of nationality.

Another sound cut through the engine noise. Brappp...brapp ....

Gunfire.

Reggie yanked his warping cables, reducing lift on the right wing and so turning
the omithopter hard in that direction. It performed a tight descending circle,
blood rushing into his head. The Sopwiths fired into the place where he had been 
and zipped above. He looked up, saw them climbing, rolling. Turning themselves
for another run. He had a few moments before they descended to his level.

Reggie increased the wingflap and warped into an ascent only a few degrees off
the vertical: his rapid climb confounded the biplanes' attack. They fired into
empty space and buzzed into another long turn. Reggie's heart beat as fast as
his wings. How could he signal that he was an ally? How could he save himself?
If only the pilots could hear his father -- he was British, for the love of God!

But there would be no communication between them, not over the drone of engines.
If he was to survive this episode he would have to pioneer an art, right now,
right here, the art of combat between flapping and fixed-wing aircraft. The orno
lacked guns, but perhaps hope existed in those long, luxurious turns the
biplanes made. He countered with the orno's ability to rise or fall swiftly,
letting the Sopwiths commit to a line of flight just before he dropped or jumped
out of it. This worked for three more runs before the British pilots worked out
a counterstrategy, one staying high, the other low, waiting for the other to
flush Reggie into a line of fire. One more peal of machine-gun fire sent
feathers flying, and through the warping cables Reggie felt compromise in his
wings. His mouth was terribly dry, and he believed it now.

They would kill him.

He tried to clear his mind of distracting thoughts.

What did he have that they did not? What about the orno could save him?

He descended, decreasing the wingflap, slowing further as the Sopwiths zigged
and zagged with the persistence of mosquitoes. They had speed, the orno had
slowness. He dropped again, until he flew less than thirty feet over the ground,
slow as he could manage, rising and falling with the landscape. A lone cow
galloped at the sight of him. The Sopwiths made runs overhead, firing in bursts
before they were forced to pull up and bank. Reggie headed for trees. The orno
was flying slowly, so slow, great wings beating, a bird, entering the forest.
Starlings burst. He swooped under branches, bounced off the ground, banked to
avoid a trunk and rose again through boughs and branches. He was flying through 
forest. Branches swatted the fuselage, rattled his bamboo cage.

The biplanes persisted. They made further extravagant runs, pouring ammunition
down, and he was showered with leaves and branch-parts and feathers. The second
major strike against a wing, he knew the fight was over. The orno could no
longer flap enough to stay aloft, he hit the ground, bounding, once, twice, and
the third leap threw the craft into a tree for a jarring halt. 

He pulled himself out of the cockpit, the wreck still limply beating its wings.
He fell, got up. The sound of the fighters was the voice of mechanized death.
His heart pounding, he staggered back from the orno, stumbled. Overhead the
Sopwiths continued their runs, shooting where he'd crashed -- the pilots must
have thought he was still inside, and he ran, he ran, and they strafed the
trees, leaves and branches failing on either side of him, in front of him, he
changed directions, jangled, confused, nowhere to go as they hacked away,
searching for him with fingers of machine-gun fire.

1920-1930

Edward was startled to see the young Japanese woman at his door.

"This is a surprise," he said. "Won't you come in?"

Her name was Asa Tokugawa and she was related to Okura Shuko Kan, just as
everyone in Meboso seemed to be related at least by marriage to the master.
Edward and Asa had never spoken before, although he'd given the girl much
thought.

Edward offered her tea, but she declined. He wasn't sure what to say.

"Shouldn't you be busy with...preparations?"

"Most everything is ready. I need only to speak to you."

"By all means."

"Your son, he very dear to me. You believe that, yes?"

"I have decided to attend the wedding tomorrow, you needn't convince me."

"I am glad you will attend our wedding, Mister Frost, very glad. What I hoped 
was that you might also be happy for Reggie and me. Maybe give us your blessing
even, and good wishes."

He sighed. "Oh, dear. My dear girl."

"Do you object to us as a people? We Japanese?"

"No! That's not it at all! I think yours is a grand race, and I'm proud of what 
your uncles and I have achieved. Nevertheless. Some things don't change. It's
simply not right for a British man to marry a Japanese woman."

Her eyes flashed.

"It's about heritage," Edward tried to explain. "Reggie should be proud of his
heritage. Instead he looks for every opportunity to squander it, and I'm afraid
marrying you is one more attempt. That sounds terrible, I know. But a man's
nationality is a terrible thing to waste."

Asa looked hurt.

"I believe," Edward continued, "that your family had similar misgivings."

At this she lifted her eyes.

In fact Edward's protests paled in comparison to the Tokugawa's. Following that
disastrous trip to England, Reggie returned to Japan a changed man -- no longer
a boy, to be sure, and those panicked moments with the Sopwiths had seeded in
him an irrational and passionate hatred, not merely for Britain, but for all of
Europe, all the West, and the idea of depositing him in Cambridge became
suddenly ludicrous. Reggie would no longer water down his allegiance to Japan,
and when he announced that he would marry Asa Tokugawa, a daughter of a cousin
of Okura Shuko Kan himself, Edward realized that all his misgivings would not
stand in the way.

But Asa's family had been more actively opposed. The family believed it was
wrong for Asa to marry outside her race, and they might have prevented a 
wedding, if not for one factor.

A fleet -- or rather, flock -- of twenty high-performance omithopters sat on the
Shuko Kan airfield. Several had been sold to other zaibatsu, for private
enjoyment of the wealthiest members of Japanese society, and the craft could be
seen winging from island to island, symbols of the better future promised by
Japanese innovation. Most everyone in Japan had seen or heard of the
ornithopters, and public interest had fermented. With the orno's romanticization
as a Japanese technology, interest also grew in Reggie Frost and the story of
his harrowing flight to France. The Japanese interpreted the incident as an
example of antagonization by the West, fixed-wing gnats firing on a defenseless
orno, and it was a wrong that the Japanese public wished collectively to right.
Reggie became something of a folk hero for rejecting his roots and returning to
become a pilot. When rumors circulated that the Shuko Kan zaibatsu wished to 
prevent his wedding to Asa, there was public outcry. Zaibatsu were criticized in
the press for their influence over national affairs, and further bad publicity
was unwelcome. In the end, Asa's family decided it was better to yield a
daughter than risk ceding any of the zaibatsu's power.

"My family will see that we were right," said Asa. "This is a union based on
right principles."

Edward forced a smile; he could not agree.

"I do wish you both well," he said instead. "Every success, every happiness."

This seemed to please Asa, and the next day, as he stood at their wedding with a
Union Jack pinned to his lapel, he found himself not unhappy. Would he have been
more opposed to this marriage, if he had received a warmer reception in England?
He'd speculated that maybe he too would stay there, as a representative of the
Shuko Kan ornithopter industry. But even after a successful demonstration of the
aircraft, he had found his countrymen uninterested, disdainful, unable to see
the orno as anything more than a gawky distraction from their fixed-wing
efforts.

So he had returned to Japan.

To Meboso. It wasn't terrible. Modern buildings had replaced rice fields;
traffic was steady, and neighborhoods expanded as people moved here to take jobs 
in industries spurred by the omithopter. Only one farm remained in the valley
and it produced geese, for feathers. As the city grew, military zaibatsu members
visited more frequently, and Edward felt a pang of nervousness whenever he saw
uniformed men touring the factories.

They have no influence over me, he assured himself. The Japanese mood could not 
impede the orno.

1935

It looked like a feather. It was soft. It floated to the ground like a feather
if he let go. But when he held it under his nose, it smelled like...petrol.

The "feather" was manmade, a homogenous product without a discrete stem or
fronds, and although Edward doubted it could rival anything plucked from a
goose, the ramifications were not lost on him. It would be improved. And if it
could be made once, it could be made a thousand times, a million times.

He put the artificial feather in his pocket and went looking for Hiroto.

Neither of them had requested a manmade substitute for feathers; the goose farm
was doing well, with publicity campaigns steering the local appetite toward
poultry. This morning, the head of the materials research group had simply
handed the feather to Edward.

On whose initiative had it been developed?

Edward couldn't say when, precisely, but at some point the research had slipped
away from him. Materials science, engineering, wing-flap physics: by necessity
these studies had been parceled to other groups. He could no longer keep abreast
of advances being made in each, and he realized that although meetings between
departments began with English translation, they quickly turned all-Japanese,
and nobody protested, or even seemed to notice, if he slipped away before they
finished. The feather was one more innovation that happened without him. He had
no more control over the evolution of orno technology than he did that of Meboso
itself. The rickshaws, gone. The kiln on the southern hillside was extinguished,
last breath of fire sucked from its belly. Blocks of affordable housing obscured
that end of the valley, and a new technical institute had arisen nearby. Even
the next valley over was starting to develop, a fact Edward hadn't appreciated
until he noticed towers rising from an unnamed industrial concern.

Maybe he didn't look up often enough from his work.

On the airfield more than a hundred ornos sat in rows, wings folded against
their hulls, awaiting purchasers. Ornos flapped down to the airstrip or toward
Kyoto at almost every hour of the day. Dramatic increases in the lift generated
by wings meant that ornos could transport supplies, or passengers. Or troops. Or
armaments. Edward had seen, although not participated in the design of, an orno
whose primary cargo was ammunition and a single gun of terrible caliber.
National enthusiasm was developing into something bigger than Edward, bigger
than the zaibatsu. Eat a goose for national security. Young boys through the
islands strove to grow up on goose meat yet keep a low enough weight to make
themselves ideal candidates as pilots. Contemporary Japanese architecture
dictated that structures have roosts extending from their summits; in Tokyo,
ornos flapped from building to building, shuttling the elite of Tokyo society
high above pedestrian traffic. It was all part of a general, expanding
enthusiasm that made Edward nervous, because it was linked to the growing
nationalism, the fixation on Asian neighbors in rhetoric and demagoguery.

He found Hiroto weeping.

Edward considered walking on, leaving the man alone with whatever grieved him.
Wasn't that the polite thing to do?

Maybe. But he forced himself, instead, to sit on the bench opposite.

"My hands," said Edward.

Hiroto looked up.

"I was never much for examining my face in the mirror," Edward went on. "But my
hands I can't ignore! When did they become so old? All cracked and bony, curled
up on themselves. They look like -- "

"The talons of an eagle," suggested Hiroto.

They laughed. Edward indicated his eyes. "To go with my crow's feet!"

Again they laughed.

And then a moment of shared quiet, in which Edward did not reveal the plastic
feather.

He said, "It's your cousins that have upset you."

Hiroto nodded.

"They're getting their way, are they? The military men."

"Everyone is military now. Except you and me."

"What about Okura Shuko Kan?"

"He is...old. He lacks the strength to resist."

Edward exhaled and leaned back. He shut his eyes, and felt overcome by a sense
of defeat that had long been approaching. "So we're out of business. The army
will be commandeering the factories for tanks and munitions, I suppose."

Hiroto looked at him sharply.

"Oh no," he said. "No, no."

1940 -- 1948

Hiroto and Edward stood apart from the crowd. The crowd cheered and even Edward
felt charged by this choreographed event. The sprawling Shuko Kan shipyards made
for an inspiring setting, testimony to an enormous capacity for industry.
Thirty-nine ornos sat on the deck of an aircraft carrier, red circles dyed into
their wings. This symbol was everywhere: when the fortieth orno flapped into
view, the crowd cheered even louder, because its underside was white with a
central red circle, rays of red extending through the wings. The crowd roared
and waved back little flags bearing the same symbol.

"The Rising Son," said Hiroto.

Edward smirked. Their friendship had reached the stage where he could hear the
other man's puns.

"Reg is a confident showman," Hiroto continued.

"He didn't get it from me."

The orno perched momentarily on a conning tower to spread its wings and display
its livery, before it hopped off and glided to the last open space below. The
cockpit opened. Reggie, in flight gear, stepped out to receive one of the
crowd's noisy salutations. On a nearby platform, Asa appeared with their two
daughters, and the trio bowed to the hero, husband, and father, before they
stepped back into obscurity. Reg's gunner, a young Okinawan who had gained some 
celebrity by association, made a brief appearance before climbing back into the
rear compartment.

"Never in my wildest dreams," said Edward.

"Your wildest dream?"

"My flesh-and-blood. Poster-boy for a Japanese war industry."

"You wish that things had worked out differently."

Hiroto's tone implied a great span of alternate possibilities, and Edward shook
them away, saying only, "I loathe war."

"The Asian campaigns are not expected to last long."

Edward was unsure. The war with China dragged on indefinitely. In the early
months of World War II, the Japanese enjoyed many successes, nightmares twisted
from Edward's dreams, flocks of ornithopters darkening skies over the
Philippines and Dutch East Indies, the sound and sight of great flapping wings
terrorizing villagers, as the ornos swooped clown in advance of ground forces,
while the Navy blocked sea access and poured troops and equipment into the
mainland. The Japanese had developed their own fixed-wing fighter, too -- the
zero -- but it was ornithopters facilitating the invasions, with their ability
to fly over treacherous terrain or swoop down and flap from rooftop to rooftop
in ground battles. They engaged fixed-wing craft then dropped into jungle cover,
flying through the trees as slow as herons, perching on branches if necessary.
Or they hovered high, out of range of land-based retaliation while their gunners
picked targets on the ground. Edward suffered through propaganda screened at the
local theater, he had seen newsreel footage of an orno flying inside a temple,
flapping before the benevolent gaze of a giant, golden Buddha. Ornos transported
the Imperial Japanese Army from Eastern China in all directions, advancing its
agenda in places where no roads or airfields reached. Images woke Edward in the
night, in cold sweat, breathing hard, heart racing.

This would be history. Images would filter through the generations, by newsreel,
by oral account, by modern myth-making: people would remember a Rising Sun
advancing over Asia on terrible feathered wings.

He had lost control of his dream.

He tried telling himself nobody had control over an idea but couldn't convince
himself. Early in the conflict, when the jingoism and hyper-nationalism had
still been mostly talk, Edward had made an effort, one desperate effort to avoid
that which he feared most.

The idea came to him when Toru returned to Meboso. Toru, who still walked with a
limp due to his ill-fated test flight. He returned not for further study of
ornos or any aspect of science, but wearing a full uniform and ceremonial sword.

"Hello Tommy!" Edward had called to him cheerfully. But Toru looked the other
way.

The zaibatsu placed Shuko Kan family members in all corridors of Japanese power
-- economic, government, military. These men came to Meboso in showy cars to
discuss policy and coordinate their efforts in the zaibatsu's interest. When
Edward saw Toru among this group of elites, early during the Chinese conflict,
he requested an audience.

He joined a group of eight politicians and generals, including Toru, for dinner.
Hiroto introduced Edward to these men, and he recognized some names from
national affairs. They sat on the floor (Edward with a pillow), and were served
works of art: rice cakes wrapped in cherry leaf, wild mountain vegetables served
on papers folded to resemble cranes. Conversation progressed in Japanese, and
Edward, the only one with a fork and a baked carp, poked at his dinner. He
waited for a lull in the conversation. When it came, he found the power-brokers
looking at him with interest.

"They, ah." Hiroto seemed embarrassed. "They wish to hear your point of view.
Your opinion. How you think Japan will fare in the coming conflicts. I'm sorry,
Edward. I'll tell them you are not interested in politics, only flight."

"No," said Edward. "It would be my pleasure." 

He returned their gazes.

"Tell them they can take everything they want in Asia. If they do not drag
Britain into the conflict."

Hiroto paused, then began translation.

"The West will look for reasons to avoid adding a Far Eastern front to their
troubles," Edward continued. "You must give them good reasons. Make arrangements
with them, behind closed doors. Allow for concessions and negotiate. The
Americans, too. The American public opposes military action, and if you make
bargains, their leaders will have no mandate to stop you. Don't force the West
into a situation where they must fight. Decide what to concede ahead of time,
and let them forgive your true ambitions. You can succeed, but only by avoiding
Western enemies."

He spoke rapidly, with an edge to his voice, but filtered through Hiroto, his
opinion emerged in level, uninflected Japanese. The men leaned toward Hiroto as
he spoke. For all Edward knew, his friend could be editing, diluting the
message, perhaps saying something completely different. He was at the mercy of
translation.

When Edward finished, Tom spoke with a sneer. Hiroto interpreted.

"Toru suggests you say these things only to avoid war with your homeland."

Edward nodded. "Yes. For personal reasons, I dread the prospect of Japan warring
with Britain. But what I tell you also happens to be true, that you will be 
pitifully sorry if you extend your hostilities beyond Asia. And Reggie -- Reggie
won't endorse military efforts against England. He won't promote your ambitions
if it means betraying his homeland. You will lose a valuable asset, I promise."

Hiroto translated, flushing slightly. Perhaps the generals knew this was a lie.
Perhaps they didn't value Reggie's propaganda value as highly as Edward
presumed. Or perhaps they believed in nationalism enough to think it ran into
the flesh and blood of a person, that Reggie might in fact denounce their goals,
if faced with fighting his own people.

How curious. Here Edward found himself again speaking of the fictional Reggie,
the patriot, the son he imagined rather than the son he had. Speaking to
zaibatsu power-brokers was the last gambit Edward would make on that imaginary
Reggie. He watched the men sit back, in the wake of his translated words, and
tried to read their expressions.

In a few years none of this would matter. In a few years this effort would seem
pathetic, after his worst fear's realization. 

In 1943, the United States joined the war. With U.S. support, the Allies began
to turn the tide in Europe, and not long after, word spread of warships leaving
the Atlantic for Asia. 

The Allies added Japan to their list of enemies, for the expansionism that had
gone more or less unchecked since Manchuria. The American navy blockaded the
islands, trying to force capitulation by economic strangulation, but the
Japanese were entrenched in their conquests, and stealthy lines of supply by
ornithopter proved difficult to disrupt. Ornithopters -- often in flocks a
hundred strong -- flapped along the coastline, guarding against land invasions
which the Allies were rumored to be preparing. Edward became obsessed with the
war, demanding English language newsreels and asking Hiroto to translate long
articles and editorials. In vicious battles the ornos defended their conquests,
feathers littering waters, bodies floating in tangled frames of bamboo and
paper.

And the folk hero continued to refuse promotions. Edward read that Reggie Frost
had been offered positions of command several times, and each time, he refused,
preferring instead to fight on the front line, against the Western forces which
he despised so much.

How can you be so stupid? How? 

Edward said to Hiroto, "He has taken this too far! Killing fellow countrymen!
Choosing to do so, when he could simply accept a position behind battle lines!
It's cold-blooded, it's...sick."

Hiroto would nod, not necessarily agreeing with these outbursts but
understanding their inspiration.

How can you be so stupid? Edward thought.

He longed for an end to the war -- any ending, victory, defeat, he wasn't sure
what to hope for -- he just wanted it to be done with so he might confront
Reggie and force him to answer for his stupidity. Casualties mounted, while
rumors circulated of an American invasion of Japan.

It never came. Apparently, the Allies had banked on first softening resistance
with some secret weapon of unprecedented power, but it had been turned back,
twice, by ornos and zeros on patrol. Once, in the summer of '45, buildings on
Honshu quaked enough for glass to shatter, but the Japanese government and
zaibatsu leaders didn't equate this seismic event with the B-52 downed somewhere
over the Pacific.

The war fizzled. Four years after making mutual declarations of war, both Japan
and the Allies found themselves exhausted, depleted, weary of conflict. The
Americans had come to view the Japanese occupation of China as a desirable 
distraction for Russia, which was becoming their greater concern. In 1948, the
U.S.S. Missouri docked in the Shuko Kan family shipyard for the signing of the
armistice that would end hostilities. A percentage of the Japanese public came
towitness this moment in history, crowds much quieter than at the event Edward
had earlier attended. Today the people erupted only once, as ornithopters
carrying Japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro and General Hideki flapped into view,
gliding down to their appointment.

Edward might have found satisfaction in their choice of transportation, had he
not become suspicious of excuses the Japanese military gave him for Reggie's
absence from this ceremony, and others.

1953

Edward knocked on the door. Asa pulled it open.

"Edward," she said. "How very nice to see you." 

Her English had improved. In the background he heard the girls squeal ojiisan!
and rapid little footsteps preceded their appearance, Fumiyo and Junko, flying
at him, wrapping themselves around his legs with such oompf he was almost bowled
over. He laughed. Asa looked aghast, but before she might rebuke them, Edward
said, "Please, please, this is what I came for!"

The girls looked up, beaming.

"Won't you come inside Edward for a...spot of tea?"

"Perhaps later. I'd hoped the girls might take me for a walk."

They hopped up and down.

"Yes, ojiisan," said Fumiyo, "A walk! A walk!"

Before they left, Asa said something to the girls in Japanese, which Edward
guessed might be translated as: Take care of your grandfather. He's a very old
man, and needs assistance. The girls nodded solemnly.

He was about to go, but paused and said to Asa, "I hope it's not too late for an
apology. For not being enthusiastic when you came to see me that day, years ago.
You were right. You and Reggie made a fine couple."

Asa smiled and nodded slightly.

The girls walked him through gardens, patterns in stone having varied not much
over the decades, a slightly different fingerprint whorling about them. The
girls appeared healthy and happy. His worries were always alleviated when Asa
came to Meboso. She and the girls were managing okay without Reggie: surviving.

Reggie had been killed during the war, sometime in November of '46, near the
island of Okinawa. An air battle, his orno shot down over water. The Japanese
military had suppressed this news. They needed tales of heroism to bolster
morale, they needed to claim Reggie was alive and demanding to stay on the front
lines of air combat, to inspire young Japanese soldiers. The military had, after
his death, invented the Reggie they needed.

Edward couldn't shed his own version of Reggie until after the poor boy, the
real boy, had been killed.

"Tell us about England," said Fumiyo, as they walked. "Tell us about Kew
Gardens. And the Queen of England."

"Again?"

"England is our country, too. Isn't it? We're English girls, in a way?"

Fumiyo looked up at him with bright almond eyes. Edward smiled; he stroked her
black hair, and her sister moved to receive his other hand's adoration. Sherwood
Forest. Cliffs of Dover. The Mersey. The girls drove their mother mad with
England, and Edward loved them so much his chest ached. "I think it would be
nice if we could go to England together," Fumiyo announced.

"I'm going too!" said Junko.

"You have all the time in the world," Edward assured them.

"And you'll come with us, ojiisan?"

He didn't answer with more than a smile, and the girls became quiet.

"There's something I want you to see."

It wasn't just a walk he wanted but a full hike, up a trail out of Meboso. It
was nice to get out of the city. Along the way, Edward paused to look at the
remains of the old kiln, reduced to an outline of bricks around a rectangle of
scorched earth. The trio climbed further, until they could look down on Meboso's
crowded streets. New high-rises were designed with oval holes in their upper
heights: ornos landed in these openings, and passengers could get on or off
before the craft proceeded out the other side. Edward counted a dozen buildings
with such holes to the sky.

Junko complained once or twice as they walked. For a while, Edward carried her
in his arms, while Fumiyo talked and talked. She spoke of school, of rules she
was learning about thermals and wind. She was also studying the code of conduct
which governed air traffic, and tried to explain it to Edward.

A bulky transport flapped through the air like an albatross. Another long orno
soared overhead bearing the symbol of Winged Bliss, a commercial enterprise. All
traffic was governed by the code, crafts pausing, dipping, turning polite right
angles to one another. To Edward it seemed overly formalized -- flight shouldn't
be decorous as a tea ceremony -- but the code had enabled a huge expansion of
popular flight. Fumiyo talked about the code and sundry other topics, but she
most often returned to one theme.

"I want to see England."

"Of course you will."

"We could fly over Cambridgeshire together," Fumiyo said. "We could fly over the 
Tower of London."

"All the famous sights."

"I'm coming too!" Junko reminded them.

They arrived at a ridge overlooking the next valley, which was more industrial
than Meboso and centered around a sprawling power plant, though Edward saw no
coal, no wood, and there were no rivers nearby. The three of them found rocks to
sit on. What kind of power did that leave?

"It's ugly," Fumiyo said.

"True," he replied. "But there's something I want you to see."

They waited and watched, until at last, it appeared. Where? Where? Edward
pointed it out, the strange craft built perhaps entirely of plastic, with wings
unlike anything Edward had seen before. It had emerged from a niche in the power
plant's east wall. Fumiyo and Junko stared at the orno. The wings were the most
striking anomaly: diaphanous sheets spread from the body and beat with a liquid,
sine-wave motion. But perhaps the more significant difference was what this
craft lacked: the noise of a petrol engine. It had no engine that Edward could
see, nor accommodation for a fuel tank along its slender, dragonfly fuselage,
and his best guess was that the craft received power not from an internal
source, but from the power plant, energy somehow transmitted from the concave
disks on the roof.

The craft rose higher, zipped forward, wings a mathematical blur, and still no 
sound apart from a gentle churning of the air.

"I met a man," said Edward, "with a dream." 

"What man?"

"Okura Shuko Kan. He dreamt of an orno that made no noise."

"He's not alive still, is he, grandfather?"

"Not in the conventional sense."

They watched the silent orno skim around the power plant some more, looking both
frail and revolutionary in its infancy; then it returned to the cubbyhole in one
of the towers. Edward watched his girls, he listened to them, he listened to
Fumiyo's talk of England, her fantasies of flying over Cambridgeshire and the
cliffs of Dover. He might have told her something that had taken him a long time
to discover, a realization that gratified him immensely as he sat with them on a
mountain ridge in Japan: it was not so much seeing dreams come precisely true
which mattered, but the privilege of having them to begin with, the joy of
seeing them realized in ways that surprised even the dreamer.