On the Wing by Eric Kraft Page B

cross-country trip that I made when I was a teenager,” I said. “On that earlier trip, nearly every morning, someone in the town where I had stopped for the night would take me aside and offer me a bit of advice before I got back onto the road and resumed my travels. Would you care to participate in the re-creation of that trip by offering me a bit of matutinal advice?”
    â€œUs,” said Albertine.
    â€œWould you care to offer us a bit of advice?”
    â€œI gave you my advice last night,” said the woman. “I told you to remember the significance of that little t. ”
    â€œActually,” I said, “that was more like advice to yourself. You said that you always tell yourself to remember the significance of the t. You didn’t actually advise us to do that.”
    â€œWell, I’m advising you now,” she said.
    â€œAnd you?” I asked the man.
    â€œDon’t talk to strangers,” he said, and he turned his attention to the clerk.
    When we were back in the car and on our way out of the parking lot, while we were paused for a moment, waiting for a break in the traffic, it took only a look to elicit the morning’s advice from Albertine: “If they’re giving out samples of chocolate, take all that you care to eat.”
    â€œNot all that you can eat?” I asked.
    â€œNo, no. You don’t need a river of chocolate. Enough is enough.”

Chapter 9
    Frontier Justice
    WHEN WE WERE ON THE ROAD AGAIN, Spirit coughed once to get my attention, then cleared her throat and asked, “‘Piloted’?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I asked, though I knew perfectly well.
    â€œI very distinctly heard you tell the sheriff back there in Mallowdale that you ‘piloted’ your aerocycle into town.”
    I guess I was running out of patience with her. I pulled her to the side of the road, set her on her kickstand, took my copy of Elements of Aeronautics from the little luggage bin where it lay beside Gestes et Opinions du Dr. Faustroll, found the relevant passage, and read it to her:
    Piloting, as a general term, means merely steering a vessel or flying an airplane. The term piloting has been used technically, however, to denote the kind of navigating one does in getting to one’s destination with the help of a chart or map; by following a highway, railroad, transmission line, river, or other such course; or by flying from one landmark to another which can be seen, as flying first to a mountain, then to a lake which can be seen from the mountain, then to a city which can be seen from the lake, and so on. Piloting as a method of keeping track of one’s position and of getting to one’s destination hardly needs comment as a science. It is like finding one’s way by map while motoring.
    â€œOr like finding one’s way without a map while motoring,” I said triumphantly. I stowed the book, mounted Spirit, and roared onto the road again.
    â€œJust a minute! There is nothing in there that says that piloting is motoring, only that it is like motoring.”
    We might have continued in good-natured contention along those lines for some time, but we were interrupted.
    Red light swept across Spirit ’s wings, light from an old bubble-top cop car, a light with revolving innards like those of a lighthouse, primarily a mechanical device, not unlike the revolving light that I had made from a camper’s lantern and an old windup record player years earlier, back in Babbington, back at home, for a game.
    After I saw the light, I heard the siren, just a short burst or signal, a whine, briefly rising, quickly falling, to let me know that I was the object of the cop’s interest, to tell me to pull over. I did. I twisted on my seat, and looked toward the rear, into the headlights. The car was black and white, clean, shiny. The cop, when he got out and walked toward me in the light, looked clean and shiny, too. He wore high