Buddy Holly Is Alive And Well On Ganymede Part 18

SHARON.

Notes on client Oliver Vale, continued... Sunday, February 5, 1989. 10:20 A.M.

I should never have tried to do this thing with Bruce. He isn't the only lawyer in the world.

Once we made it through Oklahoma City (after hours of struggling through crowds and traffic jams), I told Bruce, who was driving, to take a state highway that I hoped would not be well patrolled. I was afraid that the authorities might be looking for us by now and that someone in the city might have spotted us.

Bruce refused. The mess in Oklahoma City had been the last straw, he said. If I wanted to go to Lubbock, Texas, fine, but we wouldn't skulk about like fugitives. "That," he said, "is a method I'll leave to your friend Oliver the Geek."

Despite my protests, he turned the car around and drove north to I-40, here he turned west. We would do the sensible thing, he said, and drive directly to Amarillo, then south on I-27 to Lubbock.

I tried to explain. The KBI agents had told me to stay in Topeka. If we were caught- Bruce scoffed. The KBI had neither placed me under arrest nor delivered a court order requiring me to stay put, so they didn't have a legal leg to stand on.

We reached the Texas border about 7:00 A.M., and a mile after we crossed it, we encountered a Texas Highway Patrol roadblock. The patrolman who looked in at us said, in a West Texas drawl, that he was sorry for the inconvenience, but that it was the opinion of the Texas Highway Patrol that the Federal fugitive known as Oliver Vale might be headed for Lubbock, and as of this morning the patrol was stopping traffic on all major highways coming into the state. Could he please see our identification, and had either of us seen anyone riding an old motorcycle or fitting Vale's description?

We had no choice. Bruce and I both had to show him our Kansas driver's licenses. He took them and asked us to wait a moment.

While traffic began to pile up behind us, the patrolman went to one of the four cruisers sitting on the highway and spoke into a microphone, reading from the licenses. I rolled down my window to hear the reply, but all I could make out were static-filled squawks.

When the patrolman returned, three of his colleagues came with him. "Would y'all step out of the vehicle, please?" the patrolman said.

Bruce scowled his best don't-hara.s.s-me-you-fool-I'm-an-attorney scowl. "What is this?" he demanded.

"Are we under arrest?"

"No, sir."

"Then we're not stepping out," Bruce told him. "I'm a lawyer, and I know my-"

"Sir," the patrolman said, interrupting, "you aren't under arrestnow. However, if you refuse to cooperate with the Texas Department of Public Safety in our efforts to apprehend a possible felon, we'll have just cause to suspect you of aiding that felon.Then we'll arrest you."

"This is coercion!" Bruce thundered. The patrolman smiled. "No, sir," he said. "This is Texas."

They put us in a cruiser and took us to a Texas DPS building in the town of Shamrock (a.s.suring us that Bruce's car would follow via tow truck), and that's where we've been for almost three hours now.

Every fifteen minutes, two suit-and-tie Texas Rangers come into the room and ask the same questions.

Do you know Oliver Vale?

Is Oliver Vale responsible for the takeover of television communications?

Did you help him do it?

What are Vale's intentions?

Why Buddy Holly?

Are you going to Lubbock? Is that where Vale is heading? Why?

Each time, I answer their questions as honestly as I can. Yes, I know Oliver. I don't know whether he's responsible. I didn't help him. I don't know his intentions. He identifies with Buddy Holly, but that doesn't mean that he did it. Yes, we're heading to Lubbock. Maybe. I don't know.

The Rangers can only hear me part of the time. The rest of the time, Bruce is bellowing about deprivation of civil liberties and ma.s.sive legal retaliation.

The way I feel now, I myself may retaliate by depriving myself of Bruce.

RICHTER.

After the slug was removed and the st.i.tches and bandage were in place, Richter got down from the table and pulled on his pants despite the doctor's advice.

"You should rest for a few hours," the doctor said. "You had quite an ordeal, waiting all that time out there. Lucky for you that you had a car phone."

"Yes," Richter said, sitting on the table again to put on his shoes.

The doctor coughed. "Um, you should also stay because, um, I have to report a bullet wound to the police. They'll want to ask you how it happened."

"No," Richter said, and limped out of the cubicle past the wide-eyed nurse. He had too much to do to waste more time here, and he didn't think that the doctor would have much of a chance to call the police.

He had to push his way through the packed Emergency waiting room toward the exit. Lawton was not a large city, but it was currently experiencing an epidemic of physical injuries ranging from sc.r.a.pes and broken bones to almost-severed limbs. The Bill w.i.l.l.yite/Couch Potato Riots were in full swing here. Oneof the ambulance attendants had told him that a large number of soldiers from Fort Sill had been given weekend pa.s.ses and that they had become enthusiastic contributors to the violence of the demonstrations.

"Hey, is your name Richter?" a voice boomed over the noise in the waiting room.

Richter saw a beefy policeman pointing at him from a doorway. He kept moving toward the exit, but his leg slowed him down too much, and he didn't make it. The policeman's hand clamped on his shoulder.

In this crowd, it would be difficult to break free and stay free without killing his opponent. It was unfortunate, but...

"You've got a phone call," the policeman said, pulling Richter toward the doorway from which he had come.

Richter shook himself from the officer's grip, then followed him down a hall to a bank of pay telephones where another officer was holding a receiver. Richter took it, and both officers walked away.

He leaned against the wall to take the weight off his right leg, and he spoke into the receiver, "Yes?"

"Richter." It was his superior. "I thought I would call and save you the bother. Youwere going to call when you were out of surgery, weren't you?"

"Yes," Richter lied.

"Mmmm. I wondered, because the credit card you gave the towing company and the hospital receptionist is one that you obtained using an alias that we did not a.s.sign to you. If I didn't know better, I would suspect that you didn't want us to know you were in a hospital in Lawton, Oklahoma. Nor that you had been shot. Nor, by extension, that you were having difficulty with your a.s.signment. That wasn't the case, was it?"

"No," Richter said. He was weary. The amphetamines had long since worn off, and he ached in more places than his leg.

After the Doberman had run off, Richter had crawled to the Jaguar and had been about to get inside when a flatbed truck had pulled into the rest area. Richter had belly-slid under the car and had drawn his pistol, waiting there while the truck's occupants had honked their horn and shouted, "Is anyone here?," a hundred times. Richter had nearly pa.s.sed out, but even so he had been certain that he had heard someone yell, "Is Oliver Vale here?" He hadn't had a chance to investigate that, though, because the truck had left.

He had crawled out from under the car, gotten inside, and called for an ambulance and a tow truck.

Both had taken over an hour to arrive, with the tow truck showing up ten minutes before the ambulance, but he was fortunate in that his wound had bled only a little. He had known that he wouldn't die. It was a small comfort.

"I'm glad to hear that you haven't forgotten me, Richter," his superior said, "for I certainly haven't forgotten you. You are my best operative and have been for a number of years-"

"Yes," Richter said. "-which is why I regret to inform you that you are removed from your a.s.signment. Other arrangements will be made about the matter. As soon as your vehicle is repaired, you will proceed to the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City and fly home."

Richter smoldered.

"You can't be surprised, Richter. Did you think that I would speak with you via an unsecured telephone line if I were going to say anything else?"

"No," Richter said. He tried to keep the anger out of the word and did not succeed.

The tone of his superior's voice became consoling. "Sometimes the simplest-looking jobs turn out to be the most complicated, my friend. This one wasn't your type, anyway. Come home, and I promise something good for you. You aren't so old that we're putting you out to pasture. There's an individual representing a certain foreign company who has been taking advantage of the current social disorder to engage in unfair business practices. You may be able to persuade him to desist. Yes?"

Richter almost said "Yes," but stopped himself.

You aren't so old that we're putting you out to pasture.

It was a lie, but it contained the truth.

They weren't going to give him a sanction when he had failed at an apprehension. An operative only failed once, and then he was no longer an operative. Usually that was because he was dead, but there were a few who survived and were merely considered incompetent.

"Problem," Richter said. His throat began hurting.

"What is it?"

"Leg's hemorrhaging. Request two days recuperation."

There was a long silence. At last his superior said, "Very well. We'll a.s.sign another man to the business problem. I a.s.sume you'll be coming home for your R and R."

"No. Possible concussion. Dizziness. Don't want to fly until it's gone."

Another silence. "Your order to return home will be in force in forty-eight hours." The line clicked.

Richter hung up the phone. Whatever happened now, his career was over. His life was over.

They had done it to him. Vale. The woman. The dog.

The dog that could catch bullets in its teeth and spit them out again.

Richter didn't care. n.o.body did to him what they had done. n.o.body made him look like a fool.

He limped down the hall to Emergency and struggled through the packed bodies again. He had paid the men in the tow truck quadruple their usual rate in exchange for a promise that they would replace the Jaguar's blown tires and bring the car to the Emergency parking lot. He found that they had fulfilled thatpromise.

Richter slid behind the wheel and sat for a few minutes until the throbbing in his leg subsided to a tolerable level. Then he reached under the seat and took his weapon and shoulder holster from the compartment where he had hidden them. He removed the pistol from the holster, ejected its ammunition clip, and checked the action. Then he replaced the clip and started the Jaguar.

Amphetamines would not relieve his fatigue now, so he would take some time to recuperate, just as he had said he would.

But not much.

CATHY AND JEREMY.

Jeremy sat on his haunches in the pa.s.senger seat of the Datsun and scratched himself behind an ear. "We should've had this car fumigated when we bought it," he said.

"Which way at the next light?" Cathy said, holding her nose with one hand and steering with the other.

The stench of crude oil was heavy even thought it was Sunday morning.

"Left," Jeremy answered. "Past the refinery."

"Wonderful," Cathy muttered, taking the corner and accelerating.

"Sorry. This is the way Ringo went."

Cathy's eyebrows rose. "I just had a thought. Can you see where he is now?"

Jeremy closed his human-eye and opened the other. "He's caught up with Vale again. He's lying among some trees and watching the house where Vale's hiding."

"Great. Let's buy a road map and justgo there. There's got to be a more direct route."

Jeremy shook his head. "I can see what Ringo sees, so in one sense I know where he is-but I don't knowwhere he is. I couldn't even figure out his current location by trying to trace his route on a map, because he doesn't care about north or south, east or west. He just follows the motorcycle and occasionally looks at the scenery. So the scenery's all I've got to go by."

They came up on the oil refinery tower, its flame burning bright orange in the gray dawn. Cathy shuddered. "How can they stand it? All these odors flooding their senses for their entire lives...."

"Human beings can get used to anything." Jeremy stiffened as he spoke and looked to the east.

"What?" Cathy asked. "What's wrong?"

"Pull onto the shoulder and stop."

Cathy did so, then looked out to see what Jeremy saw. "Can you feel them?" he asked.

She nodded. "I knew they were here somewhere, but the stink kept my senses occupied."

"So this is SkyVue," Jeremy said.

"Not an impressive place."

"Impressive enough. Read the marquee."

Cathy did, and grimaced. "Bill w.i.l.l.y? Here? Are the pro-fleshiestrying to defeat themselves?"

"Sort of looks that way. Should we drop in and say h.e.l.lo?"

Cathy steered the Datsun onto the road again. "Why? To gloat? With all that's happened in the past two days, our point's been proven. The fleshbound peoples of Earth aren't ready for the responsibility of noncorporeality. All that you and I have to do now is see to it that Vale remains unharmed, and our consciences are clear."

"What about the rest of the world?" Jeremy asked. "A lot of people besides Vale stand to get hurt.

Some already have been."

Cathy jerked her left thumb at the receding drive-in theater. "That's the responsibility of our two cousins back there. The only part of it that you and I have had anything to do with is Vale. And he's going to be fine. Right?"