Buddy Holly Is Alive And Well On Ganymede Part 11

"Lousy ratfinkmotorcyclist," the woman said.

My hands slapped her arms, beating out a coded plea for mercy. The thought of slugging her in the face crossed my mind, but I didn't have the strength. If I had, and I had actually tried it, she probably would have killed me.

"You want to say something, lizard p.i.s.s?" she asked, loosening her grip on my throat enough for me to breathe.

"Please get off," I wheezed.

"Why? You got me mixed up with a guy with a gun, didn't you? You ride a motorcycle, don't you?"

"Well, yes," I said, answering the second question.

"All right, then," the woman said. "Ihate motorcycles. I hate men whoride motorcycles. My ex-boyfriend rode a motorcycle. At least, the ancient Mongolian ent.i.ty he channeled for did."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. I was sorry to hear anything that made her want to kill me. "Whenever I come across a motorcycle under five hundred cc," she said, "I throw it against a wall.

Whenever I come across a motorcycle bigger than that, I kick it over. I should have kicked yours over last night when it was in my way, but now I've made up for it. I've kicked it over in the mud."

That fired up my adrenals. I sat up, and the muscular woman tumbled onto the floor between the bed and the wall, landing beside her backpack. "You kicked over Peggy Sue?" I yelled. "What'd she ever do to you? If you've got a problem, it's with me! Leave my bike out of it!"

The woman rubbed the back of her head. "Take it easy, groutbreath," she said, sounding less angry. "It landed soft."

I struggled out of my coc.o.o.n of blankets and rolled away to stand on the opposite side of the bed.

"You're going to clean it up!" I shouted. "That motorcycle's like a dog to me!"

She stared. "You guys are all bughouse nuts," she said. "It's a machine, for G.o.d's sake. It's not like I kicked over your mother or something."

"A lot you know!"

She stood. "You act like I'm the one who's the criminal here.You're the one who wouldn't move your motorcycle from the pump.You're the one the guy with the gun is after.You're the one who fixed things so I'd have to steal his car."

The unfairness of these accusations p.i.s.sed me off. I was having a tough enough time without being held responsible for this woman's problems. "I didn't make you do anything," I said. "If you weren't such a hothead, you wouldn't have tried to move his car and he wouldn't have pulled his gun."

Her face took on a thoughtful expression. "Maybe," she said. "Who is the Bald Avenger, anyway? A cop?"

"I don't know," I said, rubbing my throat to let her know that it hurt. "He could be, I guess. But cops are supposed to identify themselves, and he didn't."

"I noticed. That's why I have to give you to him."

I tensed. "How do you figure?"

"Simple. If he's not a cop, he's something worse. And if he's something worse, he's the kind of guy who won't go crying to the real cops that his car's been stolen. He'll just find me and shoot me. But if I return you and his Jag, maybe he'll leave me alone."

"And maybe he won't," I said, estimating my chances of getting to my contact lenses, the Moonsuit, my shoes, and my helmet and then dashing out before the woman caught me and beat me senseless. I estimated that I had no chance at all. "Maybe he'll just shoot you because he feels like it."

The woman took a few steps and leaned against the door. "Yeah. It's a problem." She smiled humorlessly. "Thought you'd lose me with that cross-country trick, didn't you? But here I am, and you've got to tell me what the deal is with you and the Avenger. You've also got to convince me that you're not lying. Once I know what's up, I can decide what to do."

I realized then that she didn't have any idea of who I was. "Have you watched any TV recently?" I asked. "Since, say, Thursday night?"

She scowled. "I've been on the road since Thursday morning. I was trying to get my worthless GMC to take me from Minneapolis to Houston. Just my luck that the tags are expired. If they weren't, I could've stuck to I-35 and I wouldn't have been anywhere near you."

"Truck have a radio?"

"Broken. You're not trying to be evasive, are you, crudball?" She looked as if she might be thinking of clamping her hands around my throat again.

In most Life Situations, the truth is irrelevant. Once in a great while, however, it's the only things you've got. I sat on the floor and told the woman my name and everything that had happened to me, and because of me, since 1:00 A.M. Friday morning. I also threw in some stuff about Mother, UFOs, Ready Teddy, and my job at Cowboy Carl's Computer and Component Corral to provide color and verisimilitude.

The woman stood against the door with her arms crossed. Her face was as impa.s.sive as an anvil.

I stopped the story at the point where I met her in the convenience store. She was looking at the floor now, and her tongue began moving around inside her cheeks. I guessed that she was trapped in a limbo between belief and disbelief, so I got onto the waterbed and crawled down its length,thud-slosh thud-slosh, so that I could turn on the television set.

Buddy fuzzed into existence. He wasn't singing, but was strolling around and strumming his guitar idly.

Occasionally, he stopped short as if he had b.u.mped into a transparent wall, then changed direction and continued walking. He was exploring the parameters of his bubble, which was proving to be about the size of the inflated Moonwalks you can still see at small-town carnivals. The camera was at the center of the circle, and it tracked Buddy all the way around. Jupiter came in and out of view like an enormous striped UFO.

The woman had stepped away from the door to come closer to the TV. I flipped around the channels to show her that the same scene was on all of them.

"This is just a tape the motel is playing," the woman said. "It's a sci-fi s.m.u.t flick, and any second now a naked s.p.a.ce bimbo is going to show up."

As she spoke, Buddy approached the camera and read my name and address again. Then he started singing "Dearest."

I crawled off the bed, fetched my wallet from the Moonsuit, and showed the woman my driver's license.

She looked at it for a few seconds. "Glad to meet you, Ollie," she said in a faraway voice. "I'm Gretchen Laird."

"Glad to meet you too, Gretch."

Her back stiffened, and she glared at me. "I hate being called 'Gretch,' " she said.

"I hate being called 'Ollie,' " I said. She looked back at the TV and turned down the sound. "The way I figure it," she said after a minute or so, "the Bald Avenger must be a foreign agent-say Russia or Poland. If he were American, he'd be driving a Ford or GM product, right? Besides, I took a look in the Jag's trunk and there are about thirty different license plates." She paused. "Guess I might as well keep it. n.o.body's going to care that I swiped a car from a Communist."

"What would Russia or Poland want with me?" I asked.

"Well, you're obviously a valuable guy if this stuff is coming from another planet," Gretchen said, gesturing at the TV. "If I were a president or a dictator or whatever, I'd sure want to be the first to get hold of you and dissect you. It'd be a real feather in my cap."

For the first time, it occurred to me that I might have more than domestic Authorities to worry about. I grabbed the Moonsuit and began pulling it on.

Gretchen frowned. "What are you doing?"

"If you found me, he can too," I said as I struggled with the Moonsuit's flapping arms. "He probably took your truck when you took his car."

She grinned. "If he did, he didn't get more than twenty miles. The radiator leaks like a rhinoceros p.i.s.ses.

I've had to stop and refill it every forty miles ever since Kansas City. I was gonna take care of it right after getting gas, but the Jag showed up. Right about now, the Bald Avenger is stranded with no idea of where we are."

I stopped struggling with the Moonsuit. "So what was all that c.r.a.p about turning me over to him?"

"That's still an option," she said. "And that's why I'm not letting you out of my sight for a while. See, I'm a capitalist, and capitalists are realists. I'll do whatever's necessary for my own best interests."

I sat down on the bed, my rump hitting the floor hard. "Why's a capitalist driving a truck with expired plates and a busted radiator?"

She gave me a dark look. "That isn't my fault," she said, and proceeded to tell me the story of her life.

I lay down and wrapped myself in the blankets again. As long as she didn't try to strangle me anymore, I didn't much care what she did. Besides, it was kind of nice to have some company.

Gretchen told me that she had been born in 1967 to San Francisco flower children who became embarra.s.singly wealthy marketing lava lamps. Unfortunately, by the time Gretchen had turned fourteen, the bottom had fallen out of the lava-lamp market, and her parents had cut off her allowance. As a result, she had rebelled against their liberal politics and had become a hard-core conservative. She had left home after graduating from high school at the age of seventeen (her parents had "gone back to the land,"

which had disgusted her) and had been wandering from city to city ever since, a materialist without material, a money-lover without money. She had garnered enough grants and loans to attend college, but had dropped out of the University of Illinois during her soph.o.m.ore year.

"This fruit of an English professor wanted us to write a twelve-page paper on the Beat poets," she told me. "You know, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs, that bunch?" "I've heard of them."

"They were a bunch of f.a.ggots and junkies," Gretchen said vehemently. "So I asked the prof, why should I want to write about drugged-out, left-wing, unpatriotic mental popsicles? Besides, what did any of that literary Bob Dylan c.r.a.p have to do with my double major in Business Administration and Physical Education, I'd like to know?"

"It's a puzzle," I acknowledged.

After dropping out of college, Gretchen had worked for the Illinois Republican Party for a year and had found it emotionally, if not financially, rewarding. Then she had become romantically involved with a law student and had quit her job to move to Minneapolis with him. She had supported him with her savings account while he worked on his J.D., confident that when he graduated and pa.s.sed the bar, she would at last have the secure, conservative life she deserved.

Unfortunately, the young man's studies had slipped when he had become a trance-channeler for a member of Genghis Khan's horde who had a penchant for expensive motorcycles. At first, Gretchen had embraced the New Age channeling phenomenon, for although she had long been certain of her politics, she had never been able to decide upon an appropriate spiritual life. Her trust and belief had been crushed, however, when her Mongolian-possessed boyfriend had cleaned out their bank account, stolen her Penny's credit card, and left her for a middle-aged vegetarian Democrat.

"So here I am," Gretchen told me. "My politics are beyond reproach, and I'm in perfect physical shape.

Yet I'm almost broke and spiritually void. Even if I were to get hold of lots of money, I have this sick feeling that I'd still be unhappy. I've been trying to get to Houston because a college friend just opened a health spa there and might give me a job, but even that doesn't thrill me. Nothing seems to matter much these days." She gave me a piercing look. "At least, nothing seemed to matter until I ran into you last night. You gave me something to care about, to get mad about."

"You're welcome," I said.

"But now that we've talked, I don't feel mad anymore," she continued. "Instead I feel, I don't know, antic.i.p.ation. I feel like maybe it was Fate that I met you."

That made sense. Fate and I go way back.

Gretchen nodded at the TV. "I mean, there's something spiritual about Buddy Holly coming back to life, isn't there? Didn't he die a long time ago, back in 1963, like Kennedy? It has to mean something, doesn't it? And him reading your name-that has to mean something too, right?"

"He died in 1959," I said. "And, yeah, I think his resurrection must 'mean something'... if he really has been resurrected." I hesitated. "That's why I'm going to Lubbock. To find out whether he's arisen."

Gretchen slapped one of her rock-hard thighs. "That settles it. The Jag and I are going to Lubbock with you."

I shook my head. "I appreciate the offer, but I don't think-"

"That's right," Gretchen said, leaning over me and flexing her right arm. A vein popped up on the biceps.

"From here on,I think. You need help. And if you bug out on me between here and Lubbock, you'll need more help than you can get on this planet, skunknuts." I resigned myself. "Whatever you say."

"Got that right. Now get off the bed. It's my turn. If you try to leave while I'm asleep, I'll hurt you."

"I've only got the room until three-thirty."

"Okay, I'll chip in my share and keep it until seven or so," she said. "We shouldn't travel until after dark."

She went to the door. "Be off the bed when I get back."

When she was gone, I went to the window and pulled back the dirt-stiff curtains to watch her walk to the office. Her tight, round rump was sharply defined by her red warm-up pants.

"Forget it," I told myself.

I was on the floor with a blanket and a pillow when she returned. Buddy was singing "It's So Easy."

"Hey," Gretchen said, "isn't that an old Linda Ronstadt song?"

I turned away from her. She stepped on my leg on her way to the bathroom. I closed my eyes when she came out.

The TV snapped off, and the waterbed sloshed as Gretchen lay down. "One more thing, mushface," she said. "I'm your worst castration anxiety come to life. Don't try anything cute with me just because I'm horizontal."

"Well," I said, "all right."

I considered telling her not to try anything cute with me either, but thought better of it. She might have started strangling me again.

RICHTER.

The rattletrap GMC pickup overheated only fourteen miles from the convenience store. Richter brought it to a halt straddling the center line, but he left the lights on. He wanted someone to stop, not crash. He climbed out of the truck and walked across the road to stand on the west shoulder.

The first three vehicles to come by swerved around the pickup and drove on, but the fourth, a candy-apple-red Ford crew-cab truck, came barreling down from the north and squealed to a stop. The Ford's right front fender came within six inches of hitting Richter.

Richter walked around to the driver's side. The window slid down as he approached.

"Hey, skinhead!" the driver yelled. "Got a problem?"

Richter came close to the window and saw three men in the green glow of the dashboard lights. They were laughing. Each held a quart bottle of beer. "Yes," Richter said, resigning himself to the fact that he would have to speak an entire sentence to get what he wanted. If he simply drew his pistol at this point, the Ford's driver might be quick enough to escape. "A wh.o.r.e has pa.s.sed out drunk on the seat of my pickup."

Richter stepped back as the crew cab's doors flew open and its occupants scrambled out, spilling beer.

"s.h.i.t!" one of them said. "That sounds bad!"

"Yeah, she could drown in her own puke!" another cried.

As the three men headed for the GMC, Richter climbed into the Ford, closed and locked both doors, and rolled up the windows. The vehicle was an automatic, so he put it into Drive and stepped on the accelerator. As he did so, he glanced in the rearview mirror to see whether any of the three furious men had produced firearms.

What he saw was a two-weapon gunrack in the crew cab's rear window, and beyond that, an enormous Doberman pinscher with a galvanized chain collar jumping into the truck bed. The vehicle rocked as the dog landed and lay down.

Richter wondered whether the dog belonged to one of the three men, or whether it had been in the GMC without his knowing it, or whether it had just happened along at that moment and decided to hitch a ride. Whatever the case, he decided, the animal's presence was an irrelevancy. If it bothered him, he would shoot it.

When he was well down the road, he reduced speed and took an inventory of the truck's accessories.

He had gotten lucky. A CB radio and a police scanner were bolted to the underside of the dash. If he kept his cool, his superiors need never know that two j.e.r.k.-.o.f.f. civilians had made a veteran operative look like a fool.

After switching on the CB and the scanner, Richter glanced back to see what else he had gained. The gunrack held a Remington 20-gauge shotgun and a Winchester .30-06 rifle, either of which might come in handy. His 9mm plastic pistol was only effective at close range.

Richter turned off the cab light and pushed the Ford up to seventy, then took an amphetamine from the silver case he kept in his coat. He listened to the crackly voices on the radios, alert for any mention of a black Jaguar or a blue-coveralled man on a motorcycle.