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

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. Assuming 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.

“Unscrewing 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 projection resolved 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 snatched the sheet of paper from Laura’s hand and chewed it to shreds.

“He’s telling us something,” Laura said.

Mike nodded. “Dad’s gotten himself into trouble.”

“We don’t know that for certain.”

“Ringo does. Let’s call the highway patrol.” He started for the door.

“What?” Laura was incredulous. “Mister Anti-Establishment wants to call the cops? Mike, Dad’s with Oliver Vale. Besides which, the Bald Avenger is probably a cop of some sort himself. If we’re going to help, we’ll have to do it ourselves.” The Doberman nuzzled her arm. ” ‘We’ including Ringo, of course.”

Mike stopped and glared at her. “We can’t very well catch up with Dad in an old Dodge Dart, can we?”

“No.” Laura smiled a thin, sure smile. “But we can in an old Beechcraft Bonanza.”

Ringo yipped and ran for the stairs.

The red-and-white V-tail Bonanza stood out like a mutant in a row of Cessnas and Pipers. Ringo thought it was beautiful.

“Have you ever flown in the dark before?” Mike whispered as he and Laura unfastened the tie-downs.

“Once. I almost collided with a smokestack. Instructor Bob practically wet his pants.”

They climbed inside. Ringo took the copilot’s seat, and Mike sat behind.

Laura put on a headset and flipped switches, and the instrument dials glowed. “Fuel’s almost max.” She bit her lower lip. “Listen, I know this was my idea, but tell me again why it isn’t stealing.” She activated the starter.

“Taking this aircraft for personal gain would be ‘stealing,’ ” Mike said, shouting to be heard over the sudden roar. “Taking it for the purpose of helping someone else is ‘commandeering into the service of the people.’ Besides, you have to perform a solo for your license anyway, and we’ll pay for the fuel and flight time. Eventually.”

“I’m not even sure we’ll be able to find Dad!” Laura shouted as the Beechcraft taxied across the field toward the grass runway. “I won’t be able to help you interpret the eye’s projection and fly the plane too!”

Ringo barked.

“We accept your offer,” Mike said. He took the eye halves from his coat, screwed them together, and pushed the sphere into Ringo’s right socket.

Ringo blinked. If he concentrated, he could see and hear what Jeremy saw and heard. It was unpleasant, but he would put up with it.

“Two barks warm, one bark cold,” Laura said. “Got it?”

Ringo barked twice.

“Lassie should have been a Doberman!” Mike yelled.

Laura revved the engine. “This is against the law!”

“All laws, both of nature and of man, have been suspended!” Mike cried. “Haven’t you heard? Buddy Holly is alive and well on Ganymede!”

The Bonanza roared down the runway and rose into the February night.

11

OLIVER

I’ve never dropped acid, but I’ve read Volume VII of Mother’s diary. In February 1981, she wrote, The signals of the other world crackle about me like miniature ships of light. They hop along my sweater and jump to the TV screen and back again, zip zap. Soon I will discover how to decipher their meaning, and then I shall prepare the Earth for what is to come. In the meantime I glimpse cosmic jellyfish and the whale that swallowed Jonah. Buddy rides astride its back, singing “Blue Days, Black Nights.”

Other than UFOs, mystical beings, and vintage rock ‘n’ roll, the only things that Mother now recognized as marginally real were me (when she wasn’t calling me “Buddy”), Ready Teddy, a few TV shows, and her job at KKAP. The latter wasn’t to last much longer; she became critical of the station’s Top 40 format, and she often entered the booth and told the midday disc jockey that if he didn’t play “Rock Around with Ollie Vee,” he was a traitor to the human race.

Before the station could fire her, I suggested that she quit and let me support us. I was making good money because Cowboy Carl’s Component Corral had expanded to include Cowboy Carl’s Computer Corral, and Apples were selling better than amplifiers. Mother agreed to early retirement, and I sold her Nova. Thus, since I drove the Dart to work every day, she was trapped safely at home.

She was only forty years old, but I treated her as if she were a doddering crone. By encouraging her to leave her job, I forced her to abandon her one concrete link with the here-and-now. Father, forgive me. The seances in the basement became more frequent, and flakehead magazines filled the coffee table.

One day in June 1982, Mother called me at work to tell me that Ready Teddy was dead. When I rushed home, however, I found him bouncing in the driveway, as energetic as ever. I asked Mother what the big idea was, and she explained that she’d had a vision of him lying dead. Muttering about sending her to Menninger’s, I drove back to Topeka… and that evening Ready Teddy didn’t appear for his supper.

I found his body on a gravel road a mile away. He had been run over and scraped to the side by a county grader. We buried him in the backyard.

Neither Mother nor I said another word about her premonition. What we said instead was that we would go to the shelter and adopt a puppy as soon as the hurt of our loss had subsided.

But a few weeks later, I bought my Ariel Cyclone, and the subject of getting a puppy never came up again. Mother didn’t approve of the motorcycle, but beyond a few obligatory you’regoing-to-get-yourself-killed comments, she let it be. Even in her “other world” dreamland (perhaps especially there), she must have known that it’s easier to love a machine than to love a living thing. When machines break, they can be fixed.

The next year, Mother made an impulse purchase of her own. I came home one spring evening and found a partially assembled satellite dish next to Ready Teddy’s grave. Mother stood beside it, gazing into the parabolic shell. I was not happy.

“I used my own savings account and cashed in some bonds,” Mother said. “You’ll still have money for new shingles.”

“That isn’t the point,” I told her. “If you absolutely had to have one, I could’ve ordered a better brand through work, and we’d’ve gotten it at a discount.”

She patted my shoulder. “This is the one I want, Oliver. It will provide a direct link to the other world, and we’ll get free HBO to boot.” She produced a shiny new ten-inch crescent wrench. “Here, this came with it. Be a dear and put it all together, will you?”

But the SkyVue malfunctioned from the beginning. I connected everything properly (by now I was Topeka’s fastest and greatest expert on video hookups), but at random intervals, whatever channel we were watching would dissolve into snow. Adjustments made according to the manual and according to my experience were never effective for long, and my calls to the El Dorado factory were never answered. Finally, I ran out to the dish and whanged the block converter with the crescent wrench.

“That’s it!” Mother cried from inside the house.

From that day on, whenever our picture went screwy, I would go out and whang the SkyVue until Mother shouted that the reception was fine again. What I didn’t know until after her death was that she believed my violence against the converter put her in touch with “other world” beings.

She wrote,