3.1 The Abyss of WonderLand
The two males made a couple of phone calls, then Timothy took my hand and hurried me out the door, once more carrying my satchel. “I canceled our earlier flight and made a new one. It means that we won’t have time to do much when we get to San Diego today, but we can take a couple more days to see the city properly. No worries.” We climbed into the usual limo, but Andrew wasn’t driving. Instead, we had a new guy named Ricardo. He had a nice smile, but was otherwise, unnoticeable: fair hair, dullish eyes, an overly pronounced nose, and a body that looked like he really needed a good meal. “Thanks for driving us,” I said, and he grunted, also lacking Andrew’s personality and renown sense of humor. “Sit back, darling. Ricardo is new and needs to concentrate on the roads. I think we may be hitting some traffic soon. It’s a little before peak time, but San Jose traffic starts early.” I relaxed back on the soft leather, admiring it as I always did. The smell of saddlery and whatever they used to clean it stroked my nose pleasantly. I inhaled and smiled at Timothy. “That golf man isn’t going to follow us on our trip to the airport, right?” Timothy squeezed my hand. “I don’t know, Penelope, but if he does, it will be taken care of. Ricardo has had training for that. He knows how to avoid someone who decides to invade our privacy.” I was getting really excited about our trip. The number of times I’d been on an airplane: zero. I mentioned that to Timothy, and he shook his head and made a noise with an unidentifiable meaning. “What?” I laughed. “I’m sure there’s lots of people who’ve never flown before.” “I know of only one,” Timothy said, dotting a kiss on my forehead. “Will you be afraid?” “No. I know that theoretically, planes are safer in the air than cars are on the freeway. It’s only the take-off and landing that rank as dangerous. Except, even though I know a little bit about aerodynamics, a plane is so much heavier than a bird. It makes no sense that it could open its doors for a hundred people and then lift both its metal body and all those people into the air.” “If something happened to our plane, my darling, I’d shape change and fly you down to the ground. You have nothing to fear.” The idea of Timothy shape changing into some gigantic bird with me in his claws didn’t ease my anxiety. It probably just added to it. But I didn’t say anything. Despite the traffic, Ricardo oozed us along faster than I would have expected. We’d arrived at the San Jose Airport in less than half an hour. As we walked in, two burly guys stepped forward. “I have the QR codes for all four of us,” Timothy told them. “You have your passports and driver’s licenses?”