Free Killer Dust by Sarah Andrews

it.”
    “Yes. In swimming pools. I learned to swim in prep school, because great woe betides any adolescent who fails to accomplish certain assigned tasks in front of her peers. I managed to sufficiently compartmentalize my paranoia to construct a special case in my aquatic pantheon for water that is contained within four concrete walls and rimmed with tiling and nice little numbers that do not exceed the height of my chin. The deep end of the pool is decidedly not for me. So need I say, oceans are not my thing. I am a child of the land, and the more arid, the better. Which was why I had agreed to even think about doing a Master’s thesis on African dust. May I at least close my eyes?”
    Faye took both her hands off the control wheel to make a who, me? gesture. “Em, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had a problem with this kind of thing.”
    “Well, I do. I’ve tried to get over this, but it hasn’t worked.”
    “It would cost a couple hundred dollars extra just in fuel to take this thing the long way around, and you’d still have water on one side of the plane. We’d also have to land again to refuel to accomplish the extra distance, and that would take us low over the water twice instead of just once.”
    “Forget I ever spoke.” I squeezed my eyes shut.
    “I’d offer you a Valium, but you’re my emergency backup.”
    I popped my eyes open at her. “You’re carrying drugs on this thing? Aren’t you afraid the federales might confiscate your airplane when we pass customs in Florida?”

    Faye laughed. “Florida is not a foreign country, dear heart.”
    “They have kudzu there. That’s foreign enough for me.”
    “Em, have you ever been out of the United States?”
    “I saw a bit of Canada once from a mountain peak in Montana.”
    “But you have been east of the Mississippi before, haven’t you?”
    “I spent two miserable years in a Massachusetts prep school. My maternal grandmother lived in Boston.”
    Faye slapped the control wheel. “Man! I’ve been on all continents except Antarctica! This is amazing! You’re—you’re like some kind of living fossil or something!”
    “I prefer the term ‘autochthonous.’”
    “What the hell does that mean?”
    “Formed in place. It is a perfectly good adjective used to describe rocks ‘that have been moved comparatively little from their original site of formation, although they may have been intensely folded or faulted,’ if I accurately recall the wording.”
    “In whose dictionary?”
    “ The Dictionary of Geological Terms . Don’t you have one, my dear?”
    “No good library is complete without one, I am sure.”
    “Just so. You, by contrast to me, are allochthonous, meaning moved from your original place.”
    “What a relief.”
    “Pleased to be of service.”
    “I was so afraid I might be as bent as you are.”
    “Oh, no, much worse. Allochthons show the wear and tear of transit. They’re full of overthrusting, recumbent folding, and sometimes even … drum roll here … gravity sliding .”
    “Well, I knew life was a downhill ride, but …”
    “Just fly the plane. But what about those clouds to the south of us? Are we going to run into weather or something ?”
    Faye shrugged. “Yeah, there’s some weather building.
It’s hurricane season, and there are several storms bowling across from Africa. One of them is hanging right on the edge of becoming a full-blown hurricane. That’s part of why I wanted to get down here so quickly, get in between the blows. I’m instrument rated, but I prefer to fly when I can see where I’m going.”
    “Well, I’ll take comfort in that, anyway. It looks like a squall line to me.”
    “You nervous Nellie. Yeah, well, you’re right actually; NASA delayed this month’s shuttle launch because of all this mess. But see? I’m threading us in right between the fronts, pretty as you please.”
    “Oh, that really gives me confidence. NASA won’t fly but you will.”
    Faye laughed. “Flying a