Buddy Holly Is Alive And Well On Ganymede Part 26

We eventually reached clear pavement, and now we are rushing northward, trying to overtake the man who must be Oliver. Soon after regaining the interstate, we pa.s.sed wrecked cars and armed men wearing camouflage fatigues. I became even more sure that Oliver had come this way.

Traffic is increasing. Bruce must speed up and slow down, speed up and slow down again, and my handwriting scrawls across the page in what may be indecipherable squiggles. Despite that, I am glad for the traffic, for we are not the only ones it has slowed. I can see the bald man on the motorcycle several vehicles ahead of us. As soon as I catch his attention, everything will be all right.

Bruce remains unconvinced.

RICHTER.

His pursuit of Vale was slowed when the Doberman pinscher appeared at the end of the mud road, blocking the way onto the highway. The dog would have had to run crosscountry at an impossible speed to get here first, but here it was. It stood at the edge of the pavement, snarling.

The dog's right eye was missing, and Richter decided to put out the other one. He readied his pistol and touched a b.u.t.ton to lower the window.

With the first electric whine, the Doberman was beside the door. Richter took his finger off the b.u.t.ton. If he lowered the bulletproof gla.s.s far enough to shoot, his gun and his hand would be in the dog's stomach before he could squeeze the trigger.

But now that the Doberman was beside him- He hit the accelerator, and the Jaguar leaped toward the highway.

The Doberman was there first.

The Jaguar struck the dog, throwing it into the opposite ditch. Richter turned the wheel and sped north, then looked in his mirror. The Doberman was standing in the highway again. It didn't follow, but Richter knew that it could do so if it chose.

He shuddered, and then was angry with himself. Fear was counterproductive. If he should encounter the beast one more time, he promised himself, he would find a way to kill it. It was only a problem to be solved, like anything else.

Despite the lost time, he soon had the white muscle car in sight again. It was easy to follow, so he would be able to wait for the kill until he could see Vale's face. When he hit the traffic jam, he knew that he should have run Vale off the road when he had the chance.

Even when he stood on the Jaguar's roof, he could see neither the motorcycle nor the white car, which mean that Vale and his friends had found a way to break through.

A few vehicles were making headway by driving in the ditch, so Richter climbed down from the roof, drew his pistol, and pointed it at the driver of the car that was occupying the shoulder beside the Jaguar.

"Move," Richter said. The car skittered into the ditch and almost ran down a cl.u.s.ter of men and women who were singing hymns. One singer jumped onto the hood of the car, and the others dove aside, hitting the trampled mud face-first.

Richter almost smiled.

He reentered the Jaguar, took it into the ditch, and drove north. It was slow going because of the wet ground and because of the slope of the ditch, but Richter knew that he would make it as long as the throng of idiots got out of his way. The singers were now running on the uphill side of the Jaguar, shouting curses at him. He gave them the finger and considered lowering the window to take potshots.

He considered too long. The singers rushed the Jaguar, shoving it, and it slid down the muddy slope.

Richter pushed the accelerator to the floor, but that only spun the tires and made the slide worse. Richter lifted his foot, and the Jaguar stopped. He started to lower the window, but then the singers and fifty of their friends came at the car in a human wall and turned it onto its right side.

Richter wasn't wearing his shoulder harness, and he clutched the steering wheel to keep from falling. His pistol clattered onto the pa.s.senger window. Outside, the mob was cheering.

He switched off the ignition and swung his legs out from under the wheel. His wounded thigh struck the shift lever, and he collapsed onto the pa.s.senger door beside his pistol. His leg felt as if it were filled with acid, but he had no time for pain. The car had begun to rock, which meant that the mob was going to roll it onto its roof.

He picked up the pistol and holstered it, grabbed three ammunition clips from the compartment under the seat, and reached up to open the driver's side window. As the gla.s.s slid away, a blob of mud flew in and spattered his suit. He stood, pulled himself outside, and sat on the edge of the roof.

The people surrounding the Jaguar bellowed and began rocking it wildly, so Richter drew his pistol and shot the nearest one in the stomach. The people screamed and surged away, taking the wounded man with them.

Richter stood up on the door and surveyed the area. There were plenty of vehicles, so if he couldn't push the Jaguar onto its tires again, he would be able to commandeer something. He would have to hurry, though, because the mob would return as soon as their rage overwhelmed their cowardice. Even now, some of them were flinging rocks from a distance. He started to sit again so that he could slide across the roof to the ground with a minimum of trauma to his leg.

Then he saw Vale's motorcycle. It was lying on its side less than a hundred yards north of him, and some members of the crowd were piling trash around it. The white muscle car was still nowhere to be seen, so he suspected that Vale might have escaped in it; but he had to know for certain. If Vale was here, he belonged to Richter, not to these crazed subhumans.

Richter slid to the ground and headed for the motorcycle in a limping run. When he reached the cl.u.s.tersurrounding the Ariel, he punched and clubbed his way through. Two people turned to fight him, and he shot one of them. The other backed off, and Richter broke through to stand beside the pyre of trash.

He turned his back to the motorcycle and scanned the mob's front line, waving his pistol. He had thought that they might be forcing Vale to watch his machine being destroyed, but Vale was nowhere to be seen.

Another possibility was that Vale was buried in the pyre, so Richter began kicking the trash away. He didn't find Vale, but discovered that the trash had been splashed with either gasoline or charcoal starter.

He knew then what would happen if he stayed any longer, and with a surge of adrenaline, he jerked the motorcycle upright.

A paper torch flew from the crowd and hit the trash, igniting it. Richter holstered his pistol, then leaped onto the Ariel and kicked the starter. The engine caught, so he twisted the throttle and released the clutch. The rear tire threw flaming sc.r.a.ps at the crowd, and the motorcycle surged northward. Most of the people in its path jumped aside, but one didn't, so Richter ran him down.

Vale had escaped in the muscle car. Richter was sure of that now, because this mob would have been burning Vale with his bike if they'd had him. Abandoning the Jaguar was hard, especially since Richter didn't like motorcycles, but he couldn't stay here any longer. The frustration of losing Vale time and again had given way to a cold determination. He would not stop. Not now, not ever.

He regained the interstate and sped toward Guthrie, his long gray coat flapping behind him like a cape.

The wind chilled and then numbed him, but he didn't care. He would obtain a better vehicle if and when it became necessary. For now, though, he knew that he was close to Vale, because the mob could not have had the Ariel for long. The white car was no more than a few miles ahead of him. He hoped that it would stay on the interstate until he had it in sight again.

He was actually beginning to be glad for the hardships he was enduring. They would make the kill, when at last it came, all the more sweet.

CATHY AND JEREMY.

The Datsun puttered southward on I-35 while Cathy cursed both it and Jeremy. "Junk, the both of you,"

she said. "Poor design. Poor craftsmanship."

"It's not my fault that my flesh-brain didn't retain everything Ringo saw," Jeremy said.

"It most certainly is. You designed it."

"Yes, but according to normal fleshbound parameters, because we're supposed to appear normal.

Besides, things aren't hopeless. Ringo didn't take this highway, but I'm sure he was on roads near here.

We're still getting where he was going, only faster."

"You say."

"Look, if you don't want-" Abruptly, Jeremy turned in his seat and gazed out the back window.

"What? What?" Cathy snapped. "What is it?" "That white car that just went by. Going north."

"What about it?"

"The people inside. Ringo saw them before he lost the link. I only got a peripheral glimpse just now, but as I did, I felt a tremendous sense of loyalty. Ringolikes those people."

"Could they be the ones who popped the eye?"

"Maybe. They flashed by too fast for me to tell."

Cathy studied the rearview mirror. "So should we go after them, or continue toward a place that we may or may not find and where Vale may or may not still be hiding?"

Jeremy faced forward, took Ringo's eye from his pocket, and rolled it between his fingers. "Beats me."

He sighed. "Do you suppose that the fleshbound feel this indecisive very often? It's awful."

Cathy didn't answer. She was now staring at a point on the southern horizon.

"Cath?"

"I just decided," she said, pointing.

A motorcycle appeared in the far northbound lane. As it approached, Jeremy saw that the rider was bald and that he was wearing a mud-spattered gray overcoat.

"The government man," Cathy said. "On Vale's bike."

The motorcycle flashed past, and Cathy hit the Datsun's brakes. Jeremy's forehead bounced off the dash, and his human-eye popped out of its socket.

"Thanks one whole h.e.l.l of a lot," he said, leaning down to grope the floor. "Now I can't see anything."

"You don't have to. I know where I'm going, no thanks to you." The Datsun lurched onto the clumped gra.s.s of the median.

Jeremy pressed the dog-eye into place as Cathy started to pull into the northbound lanes. "Look out!" he yelled. "There's a car coming!"

"Screw it," Cathy said.

The approaching car braked, and Jeremy saw terror and anger in the faces of the man and woman who occupied it. He rolled down his window and called, "Sorry! We're fifteen thousand years old, and we don't obey traffic laws!"

"Oh, shut up," Cathy said. She accelerated after the motorcycle.

With the help of Ringo's eye, Jeremy found his own and replaced it in its socket. He looked back at the car that Cathy had almost creamed.

"You know," he said, "that woman looks familiar too." "They all look alike, if you ask me," Cathy grumbled.

RINGO.

He watched the Jaguar speed away and decided against pursuing it. He had given his friends a head start, and that was good enough. His days of chasing vehicles across hundreds of miles were over. His new job was to be the protector of the Holden estate, so he left the highway and trotted home. Once there, he curled up on the porch and dozed until Laura and Mike drove in that afternoon.

"The garage is open and the Kamikaze's gone," Mike said as he emerged from the Dart. "That means that Dad has taken Mrs. Mussolini to the bus station, but the buses won't be running, so we'll be stuck with her for another night. a.s.suming that Dad doesn't get caught in a couch potato riot."

"Just because we almost did doesn't mean he will," Laura said. "Dad can take care of himself. I'll bet that Ms. Laird can too." She patted the Doberman, who was dancing and jumping to demonstrate his joy that they were home. "Want to watch me take apart Ringo's rejected eye?"

"I suppose so. There's not much on TV."

Ringo followed them inside and downstairs to Laura's room. Mike sat on the worktable in front of the Mac while Laura picked up the eye and held it under a lamp. "The division between the halves is a hair-thin line," she said. "I don't see any notch to accommodate a tool."

"Just hit it with a hammer," Mike suggested.

"Oh, sure. And destroy the works."

Ringo whined. Pete had wanted the kids to look at the Mac screen, but Mike was blocking it. He nudged the boy with his nose.

"See?" Mike said. "Ringo agrees with me. The worst that can happen is that the thing will explode and kill us."

Laura grasped the eye and twisted the halves counterclockwise. They parted. " 'Hit it with a hammer,' "

she sneered.

"Uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it was going to be my second choice."

Laura examined the halves. "The inner surface of the posterior half is coated with a silvery substance,"

she said, "but the anterior half contains what looks like a camera." She held that half before her own right eye. "Hey, it's projecting! But the images are too small for me to see what they are."

Mike jumped down from the table, went to the wall switch, and turned off the ceiling light. "Get the lamp," he said, returning to the table and tearing a sheet of paper from the computer printer.

Laura switched off the lamp, leaving the video monitor and the Mac screen as the room's only sources of light,and Mike held the paper behind the half eye. He moved the sheet back and forth until the projectionresolved into an inverted image of a two-lane highway as seen from a moving automobile.

"Rad," Mike said. "Can you get it right-side-up?"

Laura turned the eye, but the image remained inverted. "Not without an additional lens. Apparently, the image projected onto the artificial retina is upside-down, and since we're looking at the projection from the wrong side, it's backward too. That road sign really says 'U.S. 177 North.' " She took the paper from her brother. "Turn off the monitor and the Mac, will you? I want to see if I can make out what's on the road ahead."

Mike blanked the video monitor and was reaching for the Mac when Ringo put his nose on the screen.

Mike saw the note at last. "Message from Dad," he said. "He's escorting Mr. Vale to Topeka, expects to be back tomorrow. We're supposed to take care of ourselves and stay out of trouble. 'P.S. Don't forget to feed the dog.' "

"Oh-oh," Laura said.

" 'Oh-oh' what? We've managed by ourselves before."

"That's not it. Look at this." The projection was clearer in the reduced light, and it showed an upside-down motorcycle and rider. "That's Mr. Vale's Ariel."

"But Mr. Vale isn't bald," Mike said. "And he has blue coveralls, not a coat."

Ringo squeezed between the brother and sister to get a better look at the projection, and then he growled. He recognized the bald man. He should have stopped him that morning... except that the only way to stop him for good would have been to kill him, and Ringo couldn't do that.

"He doesn't like what he sees," Laura said.

"Neither do I. Why is someone else on Mr. Vale's bike? And if Dad was going with him, where's the Kamikaze?"

Laura shifted the paper. "Maybe that white speck down the road?"

"Could be." Mike turned the lamp back on. "Do you remember Ms. Laird saying something about a 'Bald Avenger' who was after Mr. Vale?"

Ringo s.n.a.t.c.hed the sheet of paper from Laura's hand and chewed it to shreds.