It was a bonny fine day, the air fairly gleaming, polished by yesterdays soft rain. The post-cart bowled along the rural lane, wind off the port quarter, wheels hissing on the macadam, the airmotor singing pocketapocketapocketa to itself, happily charging the storage tanks while the kite train hauled on the traces...aye, a fine day indeed!
Clever lad, young McGregor, to have determined a way to rework old interceptor pods, too strained or patched for further combat service, into sleek three wheel airmotor cars, and at a price most workmen could afford. The redundant pods been going for a song on auction, and a few had been cut up and turned into swift wee sailboats, but their flattened teardrop shape, light weight, and tough laminated wood skin made them ideal velocars, once you managed to affix three cycle wheels, steering, and a motor to them without weakening their structure. It helped that their original hydrogen tanks made grand air reservoirs, holding enough charge to run a small double expansion air motor for an hour or so, and that public high pressure charge taps were becoming common in most towns now, what with wind driven compressor farms sprouting like weeds on every exposed headland.
Taking Pocock's kite drawn wagons as inspiration, it had been Bill's own idea to use kites for long distance travel, where charge stations were far between. Arranging the valving to let the motor work as a compressor when desired...that had been a trick, but when young Mac had seen that worked out, and the kite launcher, and pedal winch, he'd offered stock in his new company, plus a small licensing fee for each duplicate sold. That had turned into a nice little sum over the years, and neither of them had come to regret the arrangement in the slightest. There were always the pedals, if it came to that... assisting the wee motor on long climbs upwind several times a day probably had something to do with the lean frame Bill still carried, closing in on his sixth decade.
When he'd taken on this rural route ( twenty two years ago now, was it? ) the post-cart had been horse drawn, and the route took near a week to complete. After Bill purchased the speedster, and received permission to complete the route in three loops, rather than the single long one that it had been for close to a century, he'd been able to fit all the letters and parcels for each loop into the car and a small trailer, even when the population on his route had more than doubled. Bill was rather proud of the trailing cart. His own design; single wheeled, streamlined, and low slung, built in his garden shed, it was a sweet rig. Old Meg, his faithful mare, had spent her last years lazing about, though he was certain he'd seen her curl a lip at the aircar and trailer as it sped past her pasture.
With the track veering west, and the steering loading up as he had to kerb the cars desire to follow the pull of the kites, he unlocked the tacking bar, put steady pressure on one end with a foot until the string was more in line with the lane ahead, then locked it down again with the hand lever. Checking over his shoulder, seeing the trailer was running easy, and noting that the tanks were nearing full pressure, he de-clutched the motor drive, and the car surged ahead, as the kite's pull was freed of the work of compressing air.
It would be nearing the luncheon hour when Bill arrived at his next stop, and he hoped that Winifred would close the post office and take him upstairs, as she often did when he arrived mid day. He thought again of asking Winn to be his wife. With her randy ways, curvaceous frame, talented mouth, and sweet disposition, he'd not lack for warmth of a night... but images of the other women along his route who had taken him to heart (and bed) for so many years, pushed that thought aside...he wasn't old enough to settle down yet, even nearing 60. Besides, spending every night with Winnie might very well kill him, twice week was about enough.
None of his lovers seemed to mind the scars of the war, mental and physical, but halfway whole men of his age were thin on the ground. The war had eaten or maimed a large portion of his (and neighboring) generations.
Had that been worth the price? Stepping in against the Prussians, taking the side of ancient enemies, had cost many a Scot their lives or sanity, but it had ended, for good and all, the decades of open and hidden conflict between the once subject Scotland and the fading empire that wished it back under the British thumb. Obligate military service for all Scots between 17 and 21 (both male and female) the barracks in every town large enough to have a wind farm worth defending, and the culture of that barracks camaraderie remained as a legacy of those times.
His own legacy was the dreams... of falling in flames through a suddenly hostile sky, the surge of the launch, with 5 times his normal weight crushing him into the sling, and the gut loosening free fall at apogee, in that critical moment as you triggered wing extension, locked them, lit off the hydrox turbine, and sought your target. It must have been much worse for the men in the trenches; seeing their messmates blown to bits, the stupefying concussion of a string of nearby explosions, the constant reminders of the randomness of grisly death. The air war had been clean and remote by comparison.
Shivering, he turned his face to the sun and breeze...that was long ago, past and gone...forever, or so one hoped.
As the road curved again, and began the long sweep down to Askernish, built, like most of the new towns, into a south facing slope with high ground for the wind farm above, he adjusted the tacking bar again, engaged the winch, and began pedaling down the kites. It wouldn't do to leave the string up while he dawdled with Winnie for an hour...village folk were tolerant, but you helped them ignore what they wished to not see. Besides, the younger lads got a kick out of watching him launch the string( and a parked kite car with its string up was far too tempting a bait for village boys with trouble in mind)
Parking brake set, kites lashed to the bonnet, he fished the two canvas bags stenciled ASKERNISH out of the trailer, and swung them in through the back door of the combination post office and pub that made up the lower floor of Winnie's home. Her oldest daughter, Nell, greeted him with a wink, a grin, and a pint of cider, saying..."Mum's freshening up, she'll be down in a mo'" Returning the grin, he carried the mailbags into the little room that served as the village post office, and dumped them in the bin bellow the wall of pigeonholes labeled with local's names. Then he snagged the outgoing bag, and took them all back to the trailer. He'd help Win sort and pigeonhole while they caught up and ate lunch.
Later, sated, her head on his chest, fingers toying with the graying thatch there, and sweat cooling the sheets, she'd asked..."Do you think you'll ever turn over your route and settle down, Bill? I know you have a string of women, and you keep me happy to be one of them, but I wouldn't mind you in my bed every night. You're well liked here...you'd make a grand publican.".
"Aye, Win, I've thought on that, but you've never had to sleep the night with me. I thrash, and shriek, and wake in a sweat many a time, even now. I'm not a bit sure I'd make a good husband for you. Besides, I'm 60 to your 40...I'd leave you a widow, sure."
"I'd not mind that much, if I had the memories to keep me warm"
"We haven't made memories these last years, luv? You'd barely passed your 26th birthday the week you winked at me that first time. I couldn't imagine what a bonny lass like yourself would want with a beat down and scarred auld sod like myself. You've been the saving of me, true, and it would be poor thanks to saddle you with my damaged soul."
"Pish and blarney...myself, and a dozen other women that I know of, over the years. Women talk, and men like yourself are worth holding on to, even if that means sharing. We've mostly come to an arrangement. That wouldn't have to change"
