Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede - Bradley Denton (best thriller books to read TXT) 📗

to ask if you’ve seen anyone on a motorcycle.”

“Lots of times. The Harrisons down the road own four.”

“Yeah, right, but see, we got a report this morning from some snowbirds on their way to Texas. They said they saw Oliver Vale—you know, the one who did that”—I imagined him nodded at the TV—“about eight miles from here, out on sixty-five. Wondered if you’d seen anything like that.”

Pete clicked his tongue. “Curt, folks are getting so upset over doing without their boob tubes that they’ll think anybody on a bike is Vale. Those snowbirds probably saw one of the Harrisons.”

The deputy coughed. “Well, uh, Pete, I talked to the Harrisons and looked at their motorcycles. Didn’t fit the description. Besides which, they don’t ride at three in the morning, do they?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Me neither. And, well, Pete, Mrs. Harrison said you drove your truck past at about the same time. She had insomnia and was in the kitchen, and when the truck went past, she looked out and thought she saw something in the back that might’ve been a motorcycle.”

There was a brief silence. “Let me get this straight, Curt,” Pete said then. “You think I’m actually Oliver Vale and that I took over every TV in the world because I’m a Buddy Holly fan.”

The deputy chuckled again, but nervously. ” ‘Course not, but I’ve gotta check things out.”

“Okay, you’ve checked.”

Another silence. “You know, Pete, I remember that back in high school you used to get out of trouble by taking the teacher’s questions and giving it a sort of judo throw. You never lied, but you never answered quite straight. You’re doing the same thing now.”

Ringo snarled, and his collar rattled.

“Hey, down, boy!” Pete cried. “Sit! Good dog!”

“He doesn’t like me much, does he?” the deputy said.

“Guess not.”

The deputy sighed. “So I guess I’ll go check out another report. To tell you the truth, I don’t want to catch the sum-bitch even if he is around here somewhere. People in town are so foul-tempered about this business that we’re thinking about asking for Guard troops to keep ‘em from busting things up. If we apprehended Vale and tried to keep him in temporary custody in our jail, we’d be buried in the rubble before the Federal boys could catch a plane.”

“Sounds like it’s lucky for you that you haven’t found him,” Pete said.

There was a final silence, and then the deputy said, “Yeah, real lucky. See you, Pete. And congratulations on the new dog. He ought to keep the place good and safe.”

“You know it.” The door closed.

I waited, listening to be sure that the deputy was gone. I was poked in the ribs from behind and almost fell down the stairs.

“He’s gone, turkeybutt,” Gretchen said.

I went into the living room. Pete was standing beside the closed front door, scratching Ringo behind the ears.

“Think Curt is satisfied?” I asked.

Pete shook his head. “He won’t be back today, but he’ll keep thinking about it until he’s sure you’re here, and then he’ll show up with a buddy or two. Tomorrow afternoon, maybe. We’ll have you out of here by then.”

Unexpectedly, Ringo, who had looked relaxed, jerked his head away from Pete and pricked up his ears. Then, with a sharp bark, he bounded past me and Gretchen and barreled down the basement 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’t you make a move?”

“Because one, she hates my guts, and two, she scares the piss 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 assumption 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 a lot.”

“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 I knew 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 class at KSU before dropping out, and The 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 fan wasn’t an alien intelligence.”

“All I know is that I 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