"Wait a minute!" said the boy. "Wait a minute!" He stumbled past the
girl into the empty seat beside Caine. His thin mouth was suddenly
hard. "I'm paying quite a little money to see this rotten country and I
want to see it."
"We've been up an hour," Caine said.
"All right," the boy said sarcastically. "We'll stay up six hours then,
friend."
Caine felt his hands turn wet in the palms.
"I'm paying for this," the boy went on, his voice taunting, "and you're
just the driver. You don't want to forget that. Now if I want to fly
over this crap from now until Christmas you're going to do it. Isn't
that right, friend?"
Caine's heart was hammering and he knew the anger was showing in his
face. Any other time he would have handled this with a crack of his
voice, or, if he had to, a crack of his fist. But not today. Today he
didn't want any trouble. He wanted nothing to go wrong. All he wanted
was to get it over and to get out.
"Did you hear me, friend?" the boy said.
"Yes, I heard you," Caine said.
"All right," said the boy, grinning meanly. "That's fine. We understand
each other. Put her down again."
Caine snapped the nose of the ship down and the boy tumbled back into
the cabin. "Hey!" he yelled. "Lookee, lookee!"
Caine cut between the tips of the tree-vines. He nearly touched his
wheels against a clearing. He climbed. He dropped. He fought the anger.
The boy worked his camera and the girl watched Caine through the
mirror. There was a different look in her eyes now, Caine saw. A kind
of mocking look that made the anger inside of him swell and beat
against his temples.
He knew she was going to start and he asked himself, "Why? Why couldn't
they leave him alone just this one day, this one time, so that nothing
would go wrong?"
But he knew this had been that kind of a day from the time it started.
He knew as surely as he was flying the jetcopter that nothing was going
to be right about this day.