day when Nathan launched himself off his garage roof. His technique was perfect. The paratroop training ceased, and the boys did not return to the hill until that spring when the digging began.
It was a walk of twenty minutes for a small boy to circumnavigate the plane. Grassed dunes around him gave rise to scattered trees that grew at an angle, suggesting that a fierce wind as yet unfelt was resident here. Jeremy and Ian were kicking their legs over the wing when he returned. Death was at their side, although whether they were aware of his presence Nathan could not tell.
"There's nothing around here," he observed wearily. "No bodies or anything.”
"I checked the cockpit too," said Ian. "No-one in there. I tried to start the engines but they wouldn't work.”
Ian was keen on playing Hostage Rescue, but the other boys were reluctant. The aircraft had a serenity to it, sureness of purpose that they were loath to sunder with shouts and weapon-screams. When he was very young, Nathan had been taken to a large cathedral in the city. He remembered alcoves of hushed dark that smelt of stale incense and rosewater. During the service, he had watched a patch of sun steal across the pews and into the side grotto honouring a saint. At the instant when the white spot touched the statue's feet, he had imagined that it was put to flame, and could not watch, burying his face in his mother's neck.
Again, Death was their guide through the low scrub. A flock of small birds scattered when Death approached. Jeremy nudged Ian. Surely the birds would feel the wrath of the Grim Reaper. But no scythe blades cleaved the air, and the birds took wing intact. Jeremy felt disappointed. Jogging ahead, the boy tugged at Death's robe.
"Excuse me," he said. "Are they already dead? I mean, is this the underworld or somewhere else?"
The skull rotated and looked at Jeremy. Folds of black shifted away from its claw as it rose to almost touch Jeremy's forehead. Without a sound, Jeremy darted back to be with his friends. Before resuming his long-striding gait, Nathan was sure he saw Death pause for just an instant. Now beside him, Jeremy's gaze was distant.
"What did it show you?
Nathan looked down. He could not bring himself to admit that the concept of a mission was his alone. Instead, he mumbled that Death was not very specific.
"Let's make a pact. We won't have him show us anything more unless we all agree on it.”
Ian and Nathan nodded.
"I saw our trench with real soldiers in it," said Jeremy. "I saw him take them all. But you know what I think? He's seen everyone die.”
He flipped himself forward into a thicket of grass in a quick combat roll.
"And he remembers it all too."
The boys ruminated on this for long minutes. Soon the dunes began to flatten with every step. A great desert plain took shape when the sand's long slope guttered among smooth pebbles. When they reached the dune-bottom, Nathan glanced backwards. His tsunami was suggested there in the cresting sand, a bloodied king sliding from his throne. And on either side, as far as his eyes could see, a flanking brotherhood of monarchs recumbent. The yellow rock upon which his sneakers rested was rilled with tiny striations.
The sun still touched their heads with spring, a benevolent warmth that belied the heat-shimmer beyond where sky met land. Nathan blinked at the light for a moment.
When it's like this, you can see it's a star, he thought. It's hanging there in space, just a big ball of burning gas.
He lay down on the cool rock and shut his eyes. By turning his head and keeping it flat on the ground, Nathan could feel the Earth's entire weight swelling against his spine. The sun's gravity pulled him to its embrace. He imagined the atmosphere stripped away by a searing corona of fire, blasting all life to ash in a heartbeat. He remembered his excitement when the Solar System's eventual fate was revealed in school. The Sun ballooning to a Red Giant, swallowing the inner planets whole and putting its outlying satellites to the torch. His thoughts turned to the metaphysic:
So all trace of me will one day disappear. For even if I made something out of pure diamond, and put that in a safe of stainless steel, and put that safe in a huge vat of concrete and threw that to the bottom of the sea once it had set hard, it will still all be charred to nothing one day.
"One day," Nathan said softly. Then a realization struck him. He rose and ran to catch up the other boys.
"One day, Death will die. I mean, when the world is destroyed by the sun.”
"No," said Jeremy. "He will die when there is no life left on the world, long before that.”
The pair looked at Ian. Jeremy's eyes pleaded for at least acknowledgment of the intellectual superiority of his reasoning.
"When the sun burns everything up, then he will burn up too. There will be nothing left of him.”
Jeremy looked down and kicked his heels. Seeing this, Ian put his arm around his friend's back.
"That is when we can be sure.”
Nathan almost wished for their guide to rush back at them in a tempest of fury. But if he heard them, Death gave no indication that their words meant anything more to him than the breeze picking at his robes.
Ian ran ahead of the group. He set a good pace, and was almost lost to sight where the horizon smouldered, but a minute's sprint away. Jeremy had followed his friend's progress from a kneeling position, an imaginary grenade launcher lowering in accordance with Ian's trajectory. When he spoke, his voice was high.
"What is that?"
A series of V-shapes was ahead in the sky, their outline almost defeated by the low heat-haze. None of the three gave voice to their thoughts on what they might prove to be. Nathan tried to see them better, but his eyes failed him. Then Jeremy was running, and Nathan too, leaving Death behind them.
The SR-71 Blackbird is a large aircraft. Three bus-lengths of black-clad titanium, every inch wrought solely to defeat the air's impedance. At each delta wing's mid-point blooms a huge conical engine intake, the angular airframe seeming too flimsy to accommodate the thrust avowed by their bulk.
Three such jets were poised nose-down in a triumvirate structure, their wingtips supporting each other some thirty metres above. Then Nathan saw that the planes were actually resting upon the very tips of slender tubes that projected his own body's length from the nose cone. The impossibility of this was apparently not lost on Ian, who scaled the nearest spike to the point where it met the fuselage.
Ian hung from one hand and lolled his head back toward the other boys, chimpanzee-style. A heavy, viscous glob struck Jeremy's forehead, and he jumped. The sand spotted briefly where more drips fell. Jeremy wiped it away and smelt the liquid with a child's imperative.
Kerosene? He wondered. Noontime was almost upon them, and the sun's white blaze was in his eyes when he looked above. Nathan spoke, and Jeremy saw drops of the oil strike his upturned palms.
"My real dad gave me a book on planes.”
Jeremy could see his friend's face tighten with concentration.
"This is a Blackbird spy plane. When it was sitting on the tarmac, it would leak fuel, because it got so hot when it flew that the plates in the body would expand.”
Satisfied with the consistency of his explanation, he ran to join Ian upon the nose spike. Jeremy's mind seethed suddenly.
Has it been leaking fuel for years, or did us coming here make it start?
Nathan and Ian hooted at each other as they played. Jeremy sought refuge in the real. He ran to Nathan and grabbed his shirt, urging:
"They had to make ... to make ...” When the term came to him, it was accompanied by a grimace of pure pleasure. "Allowance for the expansion in their planning.”
Nathan nonchalantly dropped to the ground. His delivery was studiously cool.
"A structural allowance, I think you'll find, Jeremy.”
Nathan's friend had never struck him before, but did then. It was a weak right fist to the temple and Nathan avoided most of its power by an instinctive flick of his head. He had been hit that way before, by a kid who seemed to make a project of his blows e
very day as he passed in the school corridor. They were flinch-punches at first. Nathan even believed it was a game in which the boy had involved him in spontaneously, perhaps as a prelude to friendship. When that forlorn belief was shattered the next day, Nathan had welcomed the loss. Jeremy's creed had a resonance now.
Let's give them their target.
Spitting his friend's words back at him, Nathan jumped on the smaller boy and wrestled him to the dirt. Ian was upon the pair immediately, and separated them. Jeremy heard Ian yelling something, and it startled him.
"Don't let him win!”
At first his heart sank; should Ian side with Nathan, the alchemical mystery upon which their friendship balanced would fail. But this admonition was hissed to both boys. Nathan rose and helped Jeremy to his feet.
"Ian, soldiers of death. Soldiers of death.”
Ian shook his head.
"We aren't soldiers.”
"Soldiers follow orders, Ian. If they don't then it's a … a … drumhead court-martial.” Jeremy replied. It was thrilling to be able to use that term.
"Ask our commander" said Nathan suddenly.
"Yes Nathan," replied Jeremy archly. "Let's ask him what the penalty is for mutiny.”
Ian faced the skeleton and raised his hand, the way he would in class. Death did not acknowledge him. The boy went up and tugged his robe.
“Are we soldiers or aren’t we?” he asked. “I mean, we need guns and training and all the rest of it.”
“In order to complete our mission” added Jeremy