Hypnotizing Maria

pages he could have turned to, in a book he felt compelled to buy, his finger came down on this one page, out of—he turned to the end of the book—400 pages. Odds 400-to-one. And this one book out of... how many books? Not coincidence, he thought, destiny, and the Law of Attraction at work.
    That was her theory.
    It’s no theory , she whispered, it’s law.



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
    C anopy cover off and stowed, next morning, Jamie Forbes slid once more into the cockpit of his airplane, mildly concerned about the weather ahead. The cold front had stalled ahead, clouds piling up over Alabama, storms with kilotons of lightning halted, thrashing in mid-air. Hardly a welcome mat for little airplanes.
    Mixture—RICH
    Propeller Lever—FULL INCREASE
    Magneto Switch—BOTH
    Battery—ON
    Boost Pump—ON, two-three-four-five, OFF
    Propeller Area—CLEAR
    Starter Switch—START
    and the welcome twisting blue-smoke thunder.
    He took off watching the weather ahead on his route eastward, white clouds and some dark ones, wondering if he should have filed an instrument flight plan into what was ahead.
    Instrument flight rules, though, don’t allow quite the mental autopilot, the room for reflection on one’s journey that visual flight rules do. He had chosen VFR, staying clear of clouds, because it was more fluid, more fun than instrument rules, which is precision flying by the numbers when you can’t see outside.
    Charles Lindbergh didn’t have to fly charted airways from New York to Paris in 1929, he thought. Lindbergh made his own airways.
    He leveled at a comfortable middle altitude, five-thousand five, smooth eagle-path S-turns around the clouds, hay-quilt farmland below, sky-quilt heaven above. Room to climb, room to glide, room to weave east between Mississippi cotton-puffs.
    Somebody had to decide to become that person, he thought. It wasn’t automatic welded has-to-be. Lindbergh when he started flying was the same unknown as every other student pilot in aviation. He had to decide, choice by choice, to become the man who changed the world with his airplane.
    Oil pressure’s good, oil temperature, fuel pressure. Exhaust gas temp, fuel flow, engine revolutions, manifold pressure.
    Lindbergh had to take every step, attitude-choice-desire thousands of times over, to herd ten trillion imagons first into the likeness of five hundred dollars cash, hammer that next into the shape of a surplus Curtiss Jenny biplane, bend that into a life barnstorming, flight instructing, carrying mail, wondering, as he flew, whether the way across the Atlantic Ocean first time would be alone, in a small airplane instead of a big one.
    Suggestions you can do this , suggestions you can't, he had to choose which, weed some, nourish others. When he picked you-can, he had to see the future in his mind (exhilaron clouds swirling, blossoming outward): a plane would need to be built, something like the M-2 mail plane from Claude Ryan, for instance, but with just one seat, all the rest not mail but fuel (excytons exploding)!
    He must have thought it out in the air, barnstorming, his inner co-pilot flying stunts and passengers: let’s say a hundred miles per hour, that’d be thirty-five hours to reach Paris; thirty-five hours flying at, say, twelve gallons per hour would be ... four-twenty, say five hundred gallons of fuel. At six pounds per gallon, that’s three thousand pounds of fuel. Have to locate the fuel on the center of gravity so the airplane stays in balance, full tanks or empty. A flying gas tank, it would have to be. It’s possible, it’s possible ...
    Could Lindbergh hear the hiss and crackle of con-ceptons over the roar of his engine?
    Same time he was getting serious about the airplane, he was also gambling he might become that Charles Lindbergh lost at sea in a crazy attempt to fly a single-engine airplane, a monoplane, mind you, when everybody knows you need a multi-engine biplane for any such trip. To Paris on one engine—madman, that’s who he was, and now there’s one less Charles what’s -his-name in the air.
    To keep from becoming the Lindbergh of that future, the air mail pilot must have thought, my airplane will need a reliable engine, perhaps the new Wright Whirlwind ...
    Choice by choice, ideas became imajons became lines on paper became welded steel tubing covered in fabric became Spirit of Saint Louis.
    Time to climb, Jamie Forbes decided, as the clouds stormed up into walls ahead.
    Mixture full rich, propeller