Buddy Holly Is Alive And Well On Ganymede Part 21

Then, with a sharp bark, he bounded past me and Gretchen and barreled down the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs.

"What's with him?" Gretchen asked, as if Pete or I should know.

Pete followed Ringo. "Mike! Laura!" he shouted as he entered the stairwell. "Everything all right down there?"

Laura answered. "Sure, Dad. I've been broadcasting a beep signal on different frequencies to see if Ringo would respond, and he just did."

Pete came out of the stairwell, and then Laura, Mike, and Ringo appeared as well.

"He won't let us put the blue eye back," Mike said.

"Because it isn't his," I said. "Both of his eyes used to be like the one he still has. I don't know how he came to have the one that popped out."

"If he doesn't want it back by tomorrow, I'm taking it apart," Laura said. "In the meantime, I'll see if I can rig a radio dog whistle. A garage-door remote would be perfect, but Dad's always been too cheap to buy an electric opener."

"Now you know why," Pete said. "You'd have torn it apart and put it back together as something else, and I'd still have to open the garage by hand."

I went to the Moonsuit and retrieved my garage-door remote control. I figured that I might as well let Laura have it, since I doubted that I had a house or garage left anyway. An enraged populace had surely torn the place apart by now. I mourned for my record collection.

Laura accepted the remote control with what seemed to be uncharacteristic shyness, and then she, Mike, and Ringo disappeared downstairs again.

Pete stretched. "Well, Peggy Sue won't fix herself." He looked at Gretchen. "Miss Laird, I hope you don't mind staying another night. I'd take you to Lawton now, but getting Oliver on the road again is more urgent."

Gretchen smiled brightly. It looked weird on her. "I don't mind at all, Pete," she said, "but I wish you'd stop calling me 'Miss Laird.' As long as I'm freeloading, you might as well call me by my first name."

Pete glanced at me. "Uh, sure," he said.

He and I went out to the garage. "Looks like you've got a girlfriend if you want one," I said.

Pete grunted and turned on the lights. "She's a little young for me. Like about twenty years."

"She doesn't seem to mind."

He gave me a narrow-eyed look. "You're a lot closer to her generation than I am. Why don'tyou make amove?"

"Because one, she hates my guts, and two, she scares the p.i.s.s out of me."

Pete laughed. "Well, she doesn't scare me, but she sure makes me feel old. She was probably nursing at her momma's breast in a condo while your uncle and I were sucking on reefer in a pit latrine." He shook his head. "Too much distance there."

"I'm not so sure," I said, nodding toward the Oklahoma Kamikaze. "I think she could relate to a '68 Barracuda. She respects physical power. And mentally, she's closer to your age than she is to mine. It's clear she prefers you."

"You sound jealous," he said, taking the new spark plugs from a paper bag. "No reason you should be, though. After all, she's only a mortal. Why should you want that when you have an Ariel?"

"Don't let Gretchen hear that comparison. She's already accused me of preferring motorcycles to women. I think her basic a.s.sumption is that men, or at least men who ride bikes, are all misogynist perverts."

Pete squatted beside Peggy Sue. "I wasn't comparing women and motorcycles. I was comparing natural with supernatural, using Gretchen as an example of the natural and your Ariel as an example of the supernatural. Even if Gretchen were to attach herself to you, her aid would only be physical. But with the Ariel, why, you're Prospero-you can command your airy spirit to conjure up a tempest."

I stared at him. "Pretty mystical for a welder who drives a Barracuda."

"Not really. I don't smoke dope anymore, but when I did, I smoked alot."

"And that gave you insight into the supernatural?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. But I get feelings for things. For example, when Laura figured out that you were in the area last night, I was already getting ready to leave, because Iknew you were close. I was even pretty sure which stretch of road we'd find you on."

"Did you know Gretchen would be with me?"

"Nope. She was a surprise."

Pete finished inserting and connecting the plugs while I thought about what he had said about Ariel and Prospero. I had taken a Shakespeare cla.s.s at KSU before dropping out, andThe Tempest had been one of the plays I'd read. It began to come back to me.

"Peggy Sue isn't like Prospero's Ariel," I said. "This Ariel is only a machine."

"Is that why you gave her a name and call her 'she' instead of 'it'?"

"It's not like I really believe it, Pete.I never smoked a lot of dope."

"Maybe you should have." Pete stood, wiped his hands on a rag, and gestured at the bike. "Give her a try." I got on and gave Peggy Sue a few kicks. She didn't even come close to starting. "Think the choke needs help?" I asked. Pete nodded and found a screwdriver, and I got off the bike so he could tinker with it.

I watched, chewing my lip, and finally said what I was thinking. "Prospero had to set Ariel free at the end of the play."

"That's true," Pete said. "But only after Ariel had done everything he'd asked of it."

" 'It'?"

"What would you call an airy spirit?" He stood and gestured for me to try the bike again.

I straddled the motorcycle and put my foot on the starter. "I'm not sure," I said.

"Liar."

He was right. I would call an airy spirit "she."

Peggy Sue started on the first kick. She sounded better than she had at any moment since we'd left home.

I killed the engine. "Guess I should be going," I said, and found that I didn't want to. My fervor to reach Buddy's gravesite had been subdued by comfort and security.

"Not just yet," Pete said. "You should wait until deep night. Besides, it's almost time for supper."

We returned to the house, where Mike and Gretchen were preparing salad and baked chicken. They weren't getting along. As Pete and I came into the kitchen, Gretchen said that the country would never find another president to match Reagan, and Mike responded by saying, "Yeah, cue-card readers are hard to find."

I think Gretchen was about to stab Mike with a carrot peeler when Pete upbraided his son for being rude. He concluded by saying, "Political arguments have no place in the kitchen. Kitchens are for food."

This was directed as much toward Gretchen as it was toward Mike, and I was glad to see her look abashed. She could do it better than I would have guessed.

While waiting to eat, Pete and I sat at the table and listened to the kitchen radio. The latest news was not good. The riots in the cities were getting worse-an undetermined number of people in New York City had been killed-because mobs hungry for Sunday evening movies had stormed theaters and fought over tickets. And now the U.S. Naval Observatory had confirmed reports that the primary Buddy Holly broadcast signal did indeed originate on Ganymede. The worldwide frustration of having no TV (other than Buddy) was rapidly becoming compounded by the fear of an extraterrestrial invasion.

"Personally," Pete said, "I would've been surprised if they'd discovered that the unknown Buddy Holly fanwasn't an alien intelligence."

"All I know is thatI didn't have anything to do with it," I said. "In fact, with this news, even the FCC must realize that I'm innocent." "Either that, or they think that you're an extraterrestrial," Mike said. "And they won't be the only ones. If I were you, I'd watch out for the Corps of Little David and for Bavarian villagers carrying torches."

"And for the Bald Avenger," Gretchen said.

"In any case," Mike said, "if the news media have only now confirmed the source of the signals, you can bet that our government and others have known it for a day or more. Your pursuers don't want to incarcerate you; rather, they want to hand you over to the latter-day equivalents of mad scientists and have you dissected."

Laura came into the kitchen. "Who's dissecting what?"

"Here's one now," Mike said. "Run for your life."

Laura gave him a puzzled look, then came to the table and sat in the chair beside me. She put my garage-door remote control in front of me.

"You can call Ringo from up to half a mile away," she said, pressing the bar.

Ringo romped into the room, put his front paws on the tabletop, and nosed the remote control into my lap.

"Impressive," Pete said.

"Uh, yeah," I mumbled, drawing back from Ringo's fetid breath and picking up the remote. "You should keep this, Laura. Ringo's staying with you, right?"

Laura frowned. "Aren't you too, Mr. Vale?"

Pete cleared his throat. "Oliver's got to get on to Lubbock, honey."

"I know," she said. "But he's coming back, isn't he? Since he's your friend's nephew, I thought..." Her voice trailed off.

Pete gave me a meaningful look. "He's welcome here any time, as one of the family. But he has his own home, too."

I wasn't sure that was true anymore, but I didn't say so. Instead, I held out the remote control to Laura.

She shook her head. "I want you to have it. You can used it whenever you visit. It'll help you and Ringo become friends." She stood and patted the dog, who lowered his front paws to the floor, and then she crossed the room and looked into the oven.

I left the table and went to the utility room to replace the remote in its Moonsuit pocket. Pete followed.

"She has a crush on you," he said.

"I don't know why."

"Me either. h.e.l.l, what father ever knows his daughter's mind? But my guess is that she sees you as someromantic, questing Don Quixote figure."

"Don Quixote was a deluded fool."

"Uh-huh."

"Don't worry about it," I said. "I won't do anything to encourage her. Even if she weren't your daughter, she's way too young."

"Got that right," Pete said. He looked at the floor and stroked his lower lip. "Y'know, it just occurred to me that there's a smaller age difference between you and Laura than there is between me and Gretchen."

"Laura's sixteen. Gretchen's twenty-three. The comparison isn't valid."

"Maybe not, but it's still a sobering thought."

"Not as sobering as the thought that the human race is trapped under the thumb of extraterrestrial video dictators."

"Says you. Bug-eyed monsters are easy compared to women."

I disagreed. It seemed to me that they were about the same.

From the kitchen, Mike called, "Supper!"

During the meal, I had no thought of the rioting in the cities or of those who might be behind it. I sat with the Holdens, and with Gretchen, and even with Ringo, and savored the chicken. Whatever would happen to me was coming fast, and time was draining like water, but I relaxed in that house in Oklahoma and took my time. Time, after all, is an illusion. At least, that's what they say.

CATHY AND JEREMY.

Jeremy clapped a hand over his dog-eye and gasped.

Cathy glanced at him as she drove. "What is it?"

Jeremy swallowed. "He's gone. The eye-link has been removed."

Cathy clutched the steering wheel. "You can't feel him? You can't see what he sees?"

Jeremy shook his head.

Cathy drove on for another mile, then said, "But you know how to get to where he is now, right?"

Jeremy popped out the dog-eye. It glistened in his palm like a black jewel. "I think I saw the whole route in his memory. I think I can remember it."

"All right, then. Are we still on track?" Jeremy looked out at the countryside. "We're in Oklahoma," he murmured.

"Iknow that. Are we still on Ringo's route?"

"I think so."

Cathy glared. "I wish you'd stop saying that. Saying 'I think' is like saying 'I'm guessing.' "

Jeremy replaced the dog-eye in his socket. "Still nothing. d.a.m.n it, Cath, I might as well be guessing.

Even if I can get us to where Ringo and Vale were when the link was cut, Vale won't be there anymore."

"If he's not, we'll catch up at Lubbock."

Jeremy gave her a grim look. "He'll never reach Lubbock. If he leaves his current hiding place, he'll be lynched before reaching Texas."

"You don't know that."