[The OOC thread is here.]
"Move the air show? What do you mean, move the air show? You can't move a whole air show."
"Why not?" Colonel Kim Cho leaned her chair back until her long black pony-tail almost brushed the floor. "If we can move an army, we can move a little thing like an air show."
"But it's tomorrow."
"I've moved my regiment from North Beach to Fat City in less time than that."
"But...."
"Look, we're busing most of the visitors in, so we already control that. We just have to give the drivers the new destination. For people who are driving in, they'll be directed by the police. For people who are flying in, they'll be directed by Air Traffic Control. The vendors will find us on their own. We could move to the top of a volcano and they'd find us."
To some people, the Fatatatutti International Air Show Committee was named FIASCo with good reason but the Colonel seemed very relaxed and the little heavyset man in the Hawaiian shirt seemed to have run out of objections. The other committee members, some of them military and some civilians, had a range of expressions on their faces from bewildered to satisfied. They were what passed for an "organization" in Fatatatutti and they were close to the end of the organizing process, which no doubt was a relief for most of them.
"All right then," the chairman gathered up a sheaf of papers in a gesture that was more theatrical than necessary. "Let's make some calls and get those birds in the air." He wasn't about to show himself up by asking anybody where the new location was. He would probably take a bus.
The hangar was quiet, which was neither usual nor unusual. Here and there a tool rattled in a tray or clanked accidentally on the floor. It was fairly dark inside except for the worklights but outside the open doors the sun blazed in a bright blue sky.
The "Pig" was essentially a thirty-millimeter Gatling gun with wings and engines. A place for the pilot had been added almost as an afterthought. It didn't look much like a pig at all. In fact, it was so named because the sound of the gun supposedly resembled the sound of a wild pig crashing through the undergrowth.
In characteristic Fatatatutian style, the Pigs were older than most of their crew members. "As long as they'll fly we'll keep bolting new parts on them," the Chief Warrant Officer was fond of saying. And that was what the ground crews were doing.
Suddenly a klaxon went off. Within seconds the Chief himself appeared, having just gotten off the phone with Air Ops. "Let's get these Pigs in the air," he said. The idea of flying pigs always amused him slightly. "Get those access panels back on, lively now. This is no time for Things Falling Off Aircraft." The idea that the access panels held everything in also amused him.
A scramble was not an unusual event. Though Fatatatutians were fanatically pacifist and notoriously laid-back, their armed forces were on constant alert and many foreigners would have been surprized at how efficient they could be.
"Don't worry about your weekend leave," the Chief added. We're just moving up the coast for a few days. They're bringing the air show here."
A Chinese dragon that seemed to appear everywhere in Fatatatutti was winding its way down the street among a disorderly "line" of buses, most of which were painted purple and all of which were clearly labelled "Bus" to avoid confusion.
The taxis, on the other hand, were not marked. Many of them were yellow but it seemed that about three quarters of the cars in Fatatatutti were yellow and almost all of them were more than fifty years old. In fact, many people supplemented their incomes by using their cars as taxis in their spare time.
There was a buzz among the pushcart vendors and other street hawkers that the air show was being moved. Their intelligence service was much envied by the armed forces though it could not be duplicated. Most likely they would be at the new venue before the Air Corps.
At the same time, thousands of Fatatatutians walked the streets oblivious to the fact that an air show was going on. They walked because traffic was jammed up even more than usual by all of those buses. Something may have been up but life goes on in Fatatatutti. A few million extra tourists weren't going to turn anybody's head, not on a weekend when there was an Alphonse impersonators convention in town.
The police officer was clearly identified by the word "Police" on his T-shirt. He would have been wearing a baseball cap with "Police" on it too but it interfered with his dreadlocks. The visitor could have passed for a Fatatatutian, with his Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts, but he gave himself away as a tourist when he asked, "How much?"
"Admission is free," the officer replied in a strong Caribbean accent.
"What?"
"Admission is free," the officer repeated. "You know, Fatatatutians love to haggle over everyt'ing, so it would take a week to get dem all in."
"How can you put on an airshow for free?" the tourist asked, suspiciously.
"We get you wit' de marketing," the officer smiled. "De Alphonse T-shirts alone will pay for de whole show."
The tourist looked at him blankly. It was not clear whether he was confused by the concept of a free show or by the concept of Alphonse.
"Go ahead in," the officer said. "Try de jerked pork."
The tourist hesitated and then moved on reluctantly and disappeared into the crowd.
A foreign general had once said that plans are worthless but planning is essential. General Marie-Louise Castro-Stalina had that thought going through her mind as she walked slowly toward Air Ops. She was acknowledged as one of Fatatatutti's foremost authorities on mobile warfare but she hadn't known that the air show was being moved until her aircraft was diverted. She was in effect a walking brigade headquarters but she had had little to do with planning this operation. She was herself a competent pilot, certified for both multi-engine and rotary-wing aircraft, but she wasn't here to fly.
She walked past the bleachers that the carpenters were still building at the edge of the tarmac. The smell of new wood took her back to her teenage years working for her father. The Castro-Stalina name was on every second construction project in Fatatatutti, it seemed, but she wasn't here for her name either.
She was here for her face, according to General Kono, the de facto head of the Council of Generals and, arguably, her only senior officer. She was the face of the Army, he said.
She paused briefly as a Chinese dragon wended its way between her and the control tower in a cacaphony of gongs and firecrackers.
