The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson Part 14

The streets were nearly empty: a bread truck, scavenging dogs (they pa.s.sed Freds without even a glance-would that give us away?), the old beggar and his young daughter, a few coffee freaks outside the German Pumpernickel Bakery, shopkeepers opening up... Near the Star we pa.s.sed a parked taxi with three men in it, carefully looking the other way. Westerners. I hurried on. "Contact," I muttered to Freds. He just whistled a little.

There was one taxi in Times Square, the driver asleep. We hopped in and woke him, and asked him to take us to the Central Bus Stop. The taxi we had pa.s.sed followed us. "Hooked," I said to Freds, who was sniffing the ashtrays, tasting the upholstery, leaning out the window to eat the wind like a dog. "Try not to overdo it," I said, worried about my Dodgers cap with all that hair taped in it flying away.

We pa.s.sed the big clock tower and stopped, got out and paid the cabbie. Our tail stopped farther up the block, I was pleased to see. Freds and I walked down the broad, mashed-mud driveway into the Central Bus Stop.

The bus stop was a big yard of mud, about five or eight feet lower than the level of the street. Scores of buses were parked at all angles in the yard, and their tires had torn the mud up until the yard looked like a vehicular Verdun. All of the buses were owned by private companies-one bus per company, usually, with a single route to run-and all of their agents at the wood-and-cloth booths at the entrance clamored for our attention, as if we might have come in without a particular destination in mind, and would pick the agent that made the loudest offer.

Actually, this time it was almost true. But I spotted the agent for the Jiri bus, which is where I had thought to send Freds, and I bought two tickets, in a crowd of all the other agents, who criticized my choice. Freds hunkered down a little, looking suitably distressed. A big hubbub arose; one of the companies had established its right to leave the yard next, and now its bus was trying to make it up the driveway, which was the one and only exit from the yard.

Each departure was a complete test of the driver, the bus's clutch and tires, and the advisory abilities of the agents standing around. After a lot of clutching and coaching this brightly painted bus squirted up the incline, and the scheduling debate began anew. Only three buses had unblocked access to the driveway, and the argument among their agents was fierce.

I took Freds in hand and we wandered around the track-torn mud, looking for the Jiri bus. Eventually we found it: gaily painted in yellow, blue, green and red, like all the rest, ours also had about forty decals of Ganesh stuck all over the windshield, to help the driver see. As usual, the company's "other bus" was absent, and this one was double-booked. We shoved our way on board and through the tightly packed crowd in the aisle, then found empty seats at the back. The Nepalis like to ride near the front. After more boardings, the crowd engulfed us even in the back. But we had Freds at a window, which is what I wanted.

Through the mud-flecked gla.s.s I could just see our tail: Phil Adrakian, and two men who might have been Secret Service agents, though I wasn't sure about that. They were fending off the bus agents and trying to get into the yard at the same time, a tough combination. As they sidestepped the bus agents they got in the driveway and almost got run over by the bus currently sliding up and down the slope; one slipped in the mud scrambling away, and fell on his a.s.s. The bus agents thought this was great. Adrakian and the other two hurried off, and squished from bus to bus trying to look like they weren't looking for anything. They were pursued by the most persistent agents, and got mired in the mud from time to time, and I worried after a while that they wouldn't be able to find us. In fact it took them about twenty minutes. But then one saw Freds at the window, and they ducked behind a bus hulk that had sunk axle-deep, waving off the agents in desperate sign language. "Hooked for good," I said.

"Yeah," Freds replied without moving his lips.

The bus was now completely packed; an old woman had even been insinuated between Freds and me, which suited me fine. But it was going to be another miserable trip. "You're really doing your part for the cause," I said to Freds as I prepared to depart, thinking of the cramped day ahead of him.

"No hroblem!" he said liplessly. "I like these 'us trits!"

Somehow I believed him. I weaseled my way upright in the aisle and said good-bye. Our tails were watching the bus's only door, but that wasn't really much of a problem. I just squirmed between the Nepalis, whose concept of personal "body s.p.a.ce" is pretty much exactly confined to the s.p.a.ce their bodies are actually occupying-none of this eighteen-inch bulls.h.i.t for them-and got to a window on the other side of the bus. There was no way our watchers could have seen across the interior of that bus, so I was free to act. I apologized to the Sherpa I was sitting on, worked the window open, and started to climb out. The Sherpa very politely helped me, without the slightest suggestion I was going anything out of the ordinary, and I jumped down into the mud. Hardly anyone on the bus even noticed my departure. I snuck through the no-man's-land of the back buses. Quickly enough I was back on Durbar Marg and in a cab on my way to the Star.

XV.

I got the cabbie to park almost inside the Star's lobby, and Buddha barreled into the backseat like a fullback hitting the line. While we drove he kept his head down, just in case, and the taxi took us out to the airport.

Things were proceeding exactly according to my plan, and you might imagine I was feeling pretty pleased, but the truth is that I was more nervous than I'd been all morning. Because we were walking up to the RNAC desk, you see...

When I got there and inquired, the clerk told us our flight had been canceled for the day.

"What?" I cried. "Canceled! What for?"

Now, our counter agent was the most beautiful woman in the world. This happens all the time in Nepal-in the country you pa.s.s a peasant bent over pulling up rice, and she looks up and it's a face from the cover of Cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan, only twice as pretty and without the vampire makeup. This ticket clerk could have made a million modeling in New York, but she didn't speak much English, and when I asked her "What for?" she said, "It's raining," and looked past me for another customer.

I took a deep breath. Remember, I thought: RNAC. What would the Red Queen say? I pointed out the window. "It's not raining. Take a look."

Too much for her. "It's raining," she repeated. She looked around for her supervisor, and he came on over; a thin Hindu man with a red dot on his forehead. He nodded curtly. "It's raining up at J-."

I shook my head. "I'm sorry, I got a report on the shortwave from J-, and besides you can look north and see for yourself. It's not raining."

"The airstrip at J- is too wet to land on," he said.

"I'm sorry," I said, "but you landed there twice yesterday, and it hasn't rained since."

"We're having mechanical trouble with the plane."

"I'm sorry, but you've got a whole fleet of small planes out there, and when one has a problem you just subst.i.tute for it. I know, I switched planes three times here once." Nathan and Sarah didn't look too happy to hear that one.

The supervisor's supervisor was drawn by the conversation: another serious, slender Hindu. "The flight is canceled," he said. "It's political."

I shook my head. "RNAC pilots only strike the flights to Lukla and Pokhara-they're the only ones that have enough pa.s.sengers for the strike to matter." My fears concerning the real reason for the cancellation were being slowly confirmed. "How many pa.s.sengers on this flight?"

All three of them shrugged. "The flight is canceled," the first supervisor said. "Try tomorrow."

And I knew I was right. They had less than half capacity, and were waiting until tomorrow so the flight would be full. (Maybe more than full, but did they care?) I explained the situation to Nathan and Sarah and Buddha, and Nathan stormed up to the desk demanding that the flight fly as scheduled, and the supervisors had their eyebrows raised like they might actually get some fun out of this after all, but I hauled him away. While I was dialing my friend in the travel agency, I explained to him how maddening irate customers had been made into a sport (or maybe an art form) by Asian bureaucrats. After three tries I got my friend's office. The receptionist answered and said, "Yeti Travels?" which gave me a start; I'd forgotten the company's name. Then Bill got on and I outlined the situation. "Filling planes again, are they?" He laughed. "I'll call in that group of six we 'sold' yesterday, and you should be off."

"Thanks, Bill." I gave it fifteen minutes, during which time Sarah and I calmed Nathan, and Buddha stood at the window staring at the planes taking off and landing. "We've got to get out today!" Nathan kept repeating. "They'll never go for another ruse after today!"

"We know that already, Nathan."

I returned to the desk. "I'd like to get boarding pa.s.ses for flight 2 to J-, please?"

She made out the boarding pa.s.ses. The two supervisors stood off behind a console, studiously avoiding my gaze. Normally it wouldn't have gotten to me, but with the pressure to get Buddha out I was a little edgy. When I had the pa.s.ses in hand I said to the clerk, loud enough for the supervisors to hear, "No more cancellation, eh?"

"Cancellation?"

I gave up on it.

XVI.

Of course a boarding pa.s.s is only a piece of paper, and when only eight pa.s.sengers got on the little two-engine plane, I got nervous again; but we took off right on schedule. When the plane left the ground I sat back in my chair, and the relief blew through me like wash from the props. I hadn't known how nervous I was until that moment. Nathan and Sarah were squeezing hands and grinning in the seats ahead, and Buddha was in the window seat beside me, staring out at Kathmandu Valley, or the shimmy gray circle of the prop, I couldn't tell. Amazing guy, that Buddha: so so cool. cool.

We rose out of the green, terraced, faintly Middle-Earth perfection of Kathmandu Valley, and flew over the mountains to the north, up into the land of snows. The other pa.s.sengers, four Brits, were looking out their windows and exclaiming over the G.o.dlike views, and they didn't give a d.a.m.n if one of their fellow pa.s.sengers was an odd-looking chap. There was no problem there. After the plane had leveled out at cruising alt.i.tude one of the two stewards came down the aisle and offered us all little wrapped pieces of candy, just as on other airlines they offer drinks or meals. It was incredibly cute, almost like kids playing at running an airline, which is the sort of thought that seems cute itself until you remember you are at seventeen thousand feet with these characters, and they are now going to fly you over the biggest mountains on earth in order to land you on the smallest airstrips. At that point the cuteness goes away and you find yourself swallowing deeply and trying not to think of downdrafts, life insurance, metal fatigue, the afterlife...

I shifted forward in my seat, hoping that the other pa.s.sengers were too preoccupied to notice that Buddha had swallowed his candy without removing the wrapper. I wasn't too sure about the two across from us, but they were Brits so even if they did think Buddha was strange, it only meant they would look at him less. No problem.

It wasn't long before the steward said, "No smoking, if it please you," and the plane dipped over and started down toward a particularly spiky group of snowy peaks. Not a sign of a landing strip; in fact the idea of one being down there was absurd on the face of it. I took a deep breath. I hate flying, to tell you the truth.

I suppose some of you are familiar with the Lukla airstrip below the Everest region. It's set on a bench high on the side of the Dudh Khosi gorge, and the gra.s.s strip, tilted about fifteen degrees from horizontal and only two hundred yards long, aims straight into the side of the valley wall. When you land there all you can really see is the valley wall, and it looks like you're headed right into it. At the last minute the pilot pulls up and hits the strip, and after the inevitable bounces you roll to a stop quickly because you're going uphill so steeply. It's a heavy experience, some people get religion from it, or at least quit flying.

But the truth is that there are at least a dozen RNAC strips in Nepal that are much worse much worse than the one at Lukla, and unfortunately for us, the strip at J- was at about the top of that list. First of all, it hadn't begun life as an airstrip at all-it began as a barley terrace, one terrace among many on a mountainside above a village. They widened it and put a wind sock at one end, and tore out all the barley of course, and that was it. Instant airstrip. Not only that, but the valley it was in was a deep one-say five thousand feet-and very steep-sided, with a nearly vertical headwall just a mile upstream from the airstrip, and a sharp dogleg just a mile or so downstream, and really, n.o.body in their right than the one at Lukla, and unfortunately for us, the strip at J- was at about the top of that list. First of all, it hadn't begun life as an airstrip at all-it began as a barley terrace, one terrace among many on a mountainside above a village. They widened it and put a wind sock at one end, and tore out all the barley of course, and that was it. Instant airstrip. Not only that, but the valley it was in was a deep one-say five thousand feet-and very steep-sided, with a nearly vertical headwall just a mile upstream from the airstrip, and a sharp dogleg just a mile or so downstream, and really, n.o.body in their right minds minds would think to put an airstrip there. I became more and more convinced of this as we made a ten-thousand-foot dive into the dogleg, and pulled up against one wall of the valley, so close to it that I could have made a good estimate of the barley count per hectare if I'd been inclined to. I tried to rea.s.sure Buddha, but he was working my candy wrapper out of the ashtray and didn't want to be disturbed. Nice to be a yeti sometimes. I caught sight of our landing strip, and watched it grow bigger-say to the size of a ruler-and then we landed on it. Our pilot was good; we only bounced twice, and rolled to a stop with yards to spare. would think to put an airstrip there. I became more and more convinced of this as we made a ten-thousand-foot dive into the dogleg, and pulled up against one wall of the valley, so close to it that I could have made a good estimate of the barley count per hectare if I'd been inclined to. I tried to rea.s.sure Buddha, but he was working my candy wrapper out of the ashtray and didn't want to be disturbed. Nice to be a yeti sometimes. I caught sight of our landing strip, and watched it grow bigger-say to the size of a ruler-and then we landed on it. Our pilot was good; we only bounced twice, and rolled to a stop with yards to spare.

XVII.

And so we came to the end of our brief a.s.sociation with Buddha the yeti, having successfully liberated him from men who would no doubt become major lecturers on the crank circuit forever after.

I have to say that Buddha was one of the nicest guys I've ever had the pleasure of knowing, and certainly among the coolest. Unflappable, really.

But to finish: we collected our packs, and hiked all that afternoon, up the headwall of that valley and along a forested high valley to the west of it. We camped that night on a broad ledge above a short falls, between two monster boulders. Nathan and Sarah shared one tent, Buddha and I another. Twice I woke and saw Buddha sitting in the tent door, looking out at the immense valley wall facing us.

The next day we hiked long and hard, up continuously, and finally came to the site of the expedition's spring camp. We dropped our packs and crossed the river on a new bridge made of bamboo, and Nathan and Buddha led us up the cross-country route, through the forest to the high box canyon where they had first met. By the time we got up there it was late afternoon, and the sun was behind the mountains to the west.

Buddha seemed to understand the plan, as always. He took off my Dodgers cap and gave it back to me, having shed all the rest of his clothes back at camp. I had always treasured that cap, but now it only seemed right to give it back to Buddha; he nodded when I did, and put it back on his head. Nathan put the fossil necklace around Buddha's neck; but the yeti took it off and bit the cord apart, and gave a fossil seash.e.l.l to each of us. It was quite a moment. Who knows but what yetis didn't eat these sh.e.l.lfish, in a previous age? I know, I know, I've got the timescales wrong, or so they say, but believe me, there was a look in that guy's eye when he gave us those sh.e.l.ls that was ancient. I mean old old. Sarah hugged him, Nathan hugged him, I'm not into that stuff, I shook his skinny strong right hand. "Good-bye for Freds, too," I told him.

"Na-mas-te," he whispered.

"Oh, Buddha," Sarah said, sniffling, and Nathan had his jaw clamped like a vise. Quite the sentimental moment. I turned to go, and sort of pulled the other two along with me; there wasn't that much light left, after all. Buddha took off upstream, and last I saw him he was on top of a riverside boulder, looking back down at us curiously, his wild russet fur suddenly groomed and perfect-looking in its proper context; my Dodgers cap looked odd indeed. That yeti was a hard man to read, sometimes, but it seemed to me then that his eyes were sad. His big adventure was over.

On the way back down it occurred to me to wonder if he wasn't in fact a little crazy, as I had thought once before. I wondered if he might not walk right into the next camp he found, and sit down and croak "Namaste," blowing all the good work we'd done to save him from civilization. Maybe civilization had corrupted him already, and the natural man was gone for good. I hoped not. If so, you've probably already heard about it.

Well, things were pretty subdued in the old expedition camp that night. We got up the tents by lantern light, and had some soup and sat there looking at the blue flames of the stove. I almost made a real fire to cheer myself up, but I didn't feel like it.

Then Sarah said, with feeling, "I'm proud of you, Nathan," and he began to do his Coleman lantern glow, he was so happy. I would be, too. In fact, when she said, "I'm proud of you too, George," and gave me a peck on the cheek, it made me grin, and I felt a pang of... well, a lot of things. Pretty soon they were off to their tent. Fine for them, and I was happy for them, really, but I was also feeling a little like old Snideley Whiplash at the end of the Dudley Do-Right episode: left out in the cold, with Dudley getting the girl. Of course I had my fossil seash.e.l.l, but it wasn't quite the same.

I pulled the Coleman over, and looked at that stone sh.e.l.l for a while. Strange object. What had the yeti who drilled the little hole through it been thinking? What was it for for?

I remembered the meal on my bed, Buddha and me solemnly chomping on wafers and picking over the supply of jelly beans. And then I was all right; that was enough for me, and more than enough.

XVIII.

Back in Kathmandu we met Freds and found out what had happened to him, over schnitzel Parisienne and apple strudel at the Old Vienna. "By noon I figured you all were long gone, so when the bus stopped for a break at Lamosangu I hopped off and walked right up to these guys' taxi. I did my Buddha thing and they almost died when they saw me coming. It was Adrakian and two of those Secret Service guys who chased us out of the Sheraton. When I took off the cap and shades they were fried, naturally. I said, 'Man, I made a mistake! I wanted to go to Pokhara! This isn't Pokhara!' They were so mad they started yelling at each other. 'What's that?' says I. 'You all made some sort of mistake too? What a shame!' And while they were screaming at each other and all I made a deal with the taxi driver to take me back to Kathmandu too. The others weren't too happy about that, and they didn't want to let me in, but the cabbie was already p.i.s.sed at them for hiring him to take his car over that terrible road, no matter what the fare. So when I offered him a lot of rupes he was pleased to stick those guys somehow, and he put me in the front seat with him, and we turned around and drove back to Kathmandu."

I said, "You drove back to Kathmandu with the Secret Service? Secret Service? How did you explain the fur taped to the baseball cap?" How did you explain the fur taped to the baseball cap?"

"I didn't! So anyway, on the way back it was silent city behind me, and it got pretty dull, so I asked them if they'd seen the latest musical disaster movie from Bombay."

"What?" Nathan said. "What's that?"

"Don't you go see them? They're showing all over town. We do it all the time, it's great. You just smoke a few bowls of hash and go see one of these musicals they make, they last about three hours, no subt.i.tles or anything, and they're killers! Incredible! I told these guys that's what they should do-"

"You told the Secret Service guys they should smoke bowls of hash hash?"

"Sure! They're Americans, aren't they? Anyway, they didn't seem too convinced, and we still had a h.e.l.l of a long way to go to Kathmandu, so I told them the story of the last one I saw. It's still in town, you sure you're not going to see it? I don't want to spoil it for you."

We convinced him he wouldn't.

"Well, it's about this guy who falls in love with a gal he works with. But she's engaged to their boss, a real crook who is contracted to build the town's dam. The crook is building the dam with some kinda birds.h.i.t, it looked like, instead of cement, but while he was scamming that he fell into a mixer and was made part of the dam. So the guy and the gal get engaged, but she burns her face lighting a stove. She heals pretty good, but after that when he looks at her he sees through her to her skull and he can't handle it, so he breaks the engagement and she sings a lot, and she disguises herself by pulling her hair over that side of her face and pretending to be someone else. He meets her and doesn't recognize her and falls in love with her, and she reveals who she is and sings that he should f.u.c.k off. Heavy singing on all sides at that point, and he tries to win her back and she says no way, and all the time it's raining cats and dogs, and finally she forgives him and they're all happy again, but the dam breaks right where the crook was weakening it and the whole town is swept away singing like crazy. But these two both manage to grab hold of a stupa sticking up out of the water, and then the floods recede and there they are hanging there together, and they live happily ever after. Great, man. A cla.s.sic."

"How'd the Secret Service like it?" I asked.

"They didn't say. I guess they didn't like the ending."

But I could tell, watching Nathan and Sarah grinning hand-in-hand across the table, that they liked the ending just fine.

XIX.

Oh, one more thing: you must not tell ANYONE about this!!! you must not tell ANYONE about this!!!

Okay?

Remaking History

"The point is not not to make an exact replica of the Teheran emba.s.sy compound." Exasperated, Ivan Venutshenko grabbed his hair in one hand and pulled up, which gave him a faintly Oriental look. "It's the to make an exact replica of the Teheran emba.s.sy compound." Exasperated, Ivan Venutshenko grabbed his hair in one hand and pulled up, which gave him a faintly Oriental look. "It's the spirit spirit of the place that we want to invoke here." of the place that we want to invoke here."

"This has the spirit of our storage warehouse, if you ask me."

"This is is our storage warehouse, John. We make all our movies here." our storage warehouse, John. We make all our movies here."

"But I thought you said we were going to correct all the lies of the first movie," John Rand said to their director. "I thought you said Escape from Teheran Escape from Teheran was a dumb TV docudrama, only worth remembering because of De Niro's performance as Colonel Jackson. We're going to get the true story on film at last, you said." was a dumb TV docudrama, only worth remembering because of De Niro's performance as Colonel Jackson. We're going to get the true story on film at last, you said."

Ivan sighed. "That's right, John. Admirable memory. But what you must understand is that when making a film, true true doesn't mean an absolute fidelity to the real." doesn't mean an absolute fidelity to the real."

"I'll bet that's just what the director of the docudrama said."

Ivan hissed, which he did often while directing their films, to show that he was letting off steam and avoiding an explosion. "Don't be obstructionist, John. We're not doing anything like that hackwork, and you know it. Lunar gravity alone makes it impossible for us to make a completely realist film. We are working in a world of dream, in a surrealist intensification of what really happened. Besides, we're doing these movies for our own entertainment up here! Remake bad historical films! Have a good time!"

"Sure, Ivan. Sure. Except the ones you've you've directed have been getting some great reviews downside. They're saying you're the new Eisenstein and these little remakes are the best thing to hit the screen since directed have been getting some great reviews downside. They're saying you're the new Eisenstein and these little remakes are the best thing to hit the screen since Kane Kane. So now the pressure is on and it's not just a game anymore, right?"

"Wrong!" Ivan karate-chopped the air. "I refuse to believe that. When we stop having fun doing this"-nearly shouting-"I quit!"

"Sure, Sergei."

"Don't call me that!"

"Okay, Orson."

"JOHN!".

"But that's my my name. If I call you that we'll all get confused." name. If I call you that we'll all get confused."

Melina Gourtsianis, their female lead, came to Ivan's rescue. "Come on, John, you'll give him a heart attack, and besides it's late. Let's get on with it."

Ivan calmed down, ran his hands through his hair. He loved doing his maddened director routine, and John loved maddening him. As they disagreed about nearly everything, they made a perfect team. "Fine," Ivan said. "Okay. We've got the set ready, and it may not be an exact exact replica of the compound-" fierce glare at John-"but it's good enough. replica of the compound-" fierce glare at John-"but it's good enough.

"Now, let's go through it one more time. It's night in Teheran. This whole quarter of the city has been ga.s.sed with a paralyzing nerve gas, but there's no way of telling when the Revolutionary Guards might come barreling in from somewhere else with gas masks or whatever, and you can't be sure some of them haven't been protected from the gas in sealed rooms. Any moment they might jump out firing. Your helicopters are hovering just overhead, so it's tremendously noisy. There's a blackout in the compound, but searchlights from other parts of the city are beginning to pin the choppers. They've been breaking like cheap toys all the way in, so now there are only five left, and you have no a.s.surances that they will continue to work, especially since twice that number have already broken. You're all wearing gas masks and moving through the rooms of the compound, trying to find and move all fifty-three of the hostages-it's dark and most of the hostages are knocked out like the guards, but some of the rooms were well sealed, and naturally these hostages are shouting for help. For a while-and this is the effect I want to emphasize more than any other-for a while, things inside are absolutely chaotic. No one can find Colonel Jackson, no one knows how many of the hostages are recovered and how many are still in the emba.s.sy, it's dark, it's noisy, there are shots in the distance. I want an effect like the scene at the end of The Lady from Shanghai, The Lady from Shanghai, when they're in the carnival's house of mirrors shooting at each other. Multiplied by ten. Total chaos." when they're in the carnival's house of mirrors shooting at each other. Multiplied by ten. Total chaos."

"Now hold on just a second here," John said, exaggerating his Texas accent, which came and went according to his convenience. "I like the chaos bit, and the allusion to Welles, but let's get back to this issue of the facts. Colonel Jackson was the hero of this whole thing! He was the one that decided to go on with all them helicopters busting out in the desert, and he was the one that found Annette Bellows in the emba.s.sy to lead them around, and all in all he was on top of every minute of it. That's why they gave him all them medals!"

Ivan glared. "What part are you playing, John?"

"Why, Colonel Jackson." John drew himself up. "Natch."

"However." Ivan tapped the side of his head, to indicate thought. "You don't just want to do a bad imitation of the De Niro performance, do you? You want to do a new interpretation, don't you? It seems to me a foolish idea to try an imitation of De Niro."

"I like the idea, myself," John said. "Show him how."

Ivan waved him away. "You got all you know about this affair from that stupid TV movie, just like everyone else. I, however, have been reading the accounts of the hostages and the Marines on those helicopters, and the truth is that Colonel Jackson's best moment was out there in the desert, when he decided to go on with the mission even though only five helicopters were still functioning. That was his peak of glory, his moment of heroism. And you did a perfectly adequate job of conveying that when we filmed the scene. We could see every little gear in there, grinding away." He tapped his skull.

"De Niro would have been proud," Melina said.

John pursed his lips and nodded. "We need great men like that. Without them history would be dead. It'd be nothing but a bunch of broken-down helicopters out in a desert somewhere."