Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede, Bradley Denton [libby ebook reader .txt] 📗

long time ago, back in 1963, like Kennedy? It has to mean something, doesn’t it? And him reading your name—that has to mean something too, right?”

“He died in 1959,” I said. “And, yeah, I think his resurrection must ‘mean something’… if he really has been resurrected.” I hesitated. “That’s why I’m going to Lubbock. To find out whether he’s arisen.”

Gretchen slapped one of her rock-hard thighs. “That settles it. The Jag and I are going to Lubbock with you.”

I shook my head. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think—”

“That’s right,” Gretchen said, leaning over me and flexing her right arm. A vein popped up on the biceps. “From here on, I think. You need help. And if you bug out on me between here and Lubbock, you’ll need more help than you can get on this planet, skunknuts.”

I resigned myself. “Whatever you say.”

“Got that right. Now get off the bed. It’s my turn. If you try to leave while I’m asleep, I’ll hurt you.”

“I’ve only got the room until three-thirty.”

“Okay, I’ll chip in my share and keep it until seven or so,” she said. “We shouldn’t travel until after dark.” She went to the door. “Be off the bed when I get back.”

When she was gone, I went to the window and pulled back the dirt-stiff curtains to watch her walk to the office. Her tight, round rump was sharply defined by her red warm-up pants.

“Forget it,” I told myself.

I was on the floor with a blanket and a pillow when she returned. Buddy was singing “It’s So Easy.”

“Hey,” Gretchen said, “isn’t that an old Linda Ronstadt song?”

I turned away from her. She stepped on my leg on her way to the bathroom. I closed my eyes when she came out.

The TV snapped off, and the waterbed sloshed as Gretchen lay down. “One more thing, mushface,” she said. “I’m your worst castration anxiety come to life. Don’t try anything cute with me just because I’m horizontal.”

“Well,” I said, “all right.”

I considered telling her not to try anything cute with me either, but thought better of it. She might have started strangling me again.

RICHTER

The rattletrap GMC pickup overheated only fourteen miles from the convenience store. Richter brought it to a halt straddling the center line, but he left the lights on. He wanted someone to stop, not crash. He climbed out of the truck and walked across the road to stand on the west shoulder.

The first three vehicles to come by swerved around the pickup and drove on, but the fourth, a candy-apple-red Ford crew-cab truck, came barreling down from the north and squealed to a stop. The Ford’s right front fender came within six inches of hitting Richter.

Richter walked around to the driver’s side. The window slid down as he approached.

“Hey, skinhead!” the driver yelled. “Got a problem?”

Richter came close to the window and saw three men in the green glow of the dashboard lights. They were laughing. Each held a quart bottle of beer.

“Yes,” Richter said, resigning himself to the fact that he would have to speak an entire sentence to get what he wanted. If he simply drew his pistol at this point, the Ford’s driver might be quick enough to escape. “A whore has passed out drunk on the seat of my pickup.”

Richter stepped back as the crew cab’s doors flew open and its occupants scrambled out, spilling beer.

“Shit!” one of them said. “That sounds bad!”

“Yeah, she could drown in her own puke!” another cried.

As the three men headed for the GMC, Richter climbed into the Ford, closed and locked both doors, and rolled up the windows. The vehicle was an automatic, so he put it into Drive and stepped on the accelerator. As he did so, he glanced in the rearview mirror to see whether any of the three furious men had produced firearms.

What he saw was a two-weapon gunrack in the crew cab’s rear window, and beyond that, an enormous Doberman pinscher with a galvanized chain collar jumping into the truck bed. The vehicle rocked as the dog landed and lay down.

Richter wondered whether the dog belonged to one of the three men, or whether it had been in the GMC without his knowing it, or whether it had just happened along at that moment and decided to hitch a ride. Whatever the case, he decided, the animal’s presence was an irrelevancy. If it bothered him, he would shoot it.

When he was well down the road, he reduced speed and took an inventory of the truck’s accessories. He had gotten lucky. A CB radio and a police scanner were bolted to the underside of the dash. If he kept his cool, his superiors need never know that two jerk-off civilians had made a veteran operative look like a fool.

After switching on the CB and the scanner, Richter glanced back to see what else he had gained. The gunrack held a Remington 20-gauge shotgun and a Winchester .30-06 rifle, either of which might come in handy. His 9mm plastic pistol was only effective at close range.

Richter turned off the cab light and pushed the Ford up to seventy, then took an amphetamine from the silver case he kept in his coat. He listened to the crackly voices on the radios, alert for any mention of a black Jaguar or a blue-coveralled man on a motorcycle.

The Doberman in the truck bed shifted his weight.

Take it easy Fido, Richter thought. Be a good dog, and I’ll give you their bones.

CATHY AND JEREMY

Jeremy lay under the kitchen table while Cathy sat with her feet on him, reading the Saturday Capital-Journal and listening to a transistor radio.

“I suppose it was only a matter of time,” Cathy said. “Look at this.” She tossed the front section of the newspaper under the table.

“I’m not talking to you,” Jeremy said. “You’re forcing me to live like a dog.”

“One of us has to be the link, and Ringo likes you better.”

“He doesn’t like either one of us. Neither do I.”

“Look at the top story on page two, will you?”

Jeremy read, ” ‘New Mexico Radio Astronomer Says Ganymede Broadcast May Be Genuine.’ So what?”

“Don’t you see?” Cathy said. “Now that the fleshbound population is about to find out that the broadcast isn’t Earth-based, we can count on them to show their true maniacal colors. Listen to the radio: Scientific, sociological, and religious ‘experts’ are fighting with each other about what it might mean if the signal turns out to be from space. Sounds pretty good.”

“Yeah, great,” Jeremy said, scratching his neck with a heel. “World leaders are behaving like lobotomized dingos, the public is reacting with shock, anger, and fear, and a number of religious cults, including the Reverend Bill Willy’s, are girding their loins for Armageddon.”

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Cathy said. “With all of that going on, our pro-flesh cousins will realize that they’ve misjudged the fleshbound. We’ll be out of here by Valentine’s Day.”

Jeremy crawled out from under the table. “Don’t start packing yet. Didn’t that scientist on the box say that if the Holly broadcast is from Ganymede, that it’s ‘a wonderful opportunity to expand human knowledge’? That’s a point for the opposition, wouldn’t you say?”

Cathy made a noise with her lips and tongue that she had learned from watching reruns of All in the Family. “How many members of the fleshbound masses do you think will listen to him? He’s making sense, and they don’t respond to that. I’m telling you, they’re going to prove themselves to be complete wankers.” She paused. “I just hope they don’t hurt themselves. Not that it’s our fault if they do.”

Jeremy cocked his head. “In other words, the fact that we’ve come back to our place of origin doesn’t imply that we have accepted any responsibility for our fellow humans’ fate?”

“They aren’t our fellow humans. They’ve remained fleshbound. Now shut up, will you? I want to hear what the police are saying.”

On the radio, a Kansas State Trooper was explaining that the search for Oliver Vale was no longer a priority. “I’m sure that any officer would take Vale into custody if the suspect happened to show up,” he said, “but frankly, we now have to view the situation as a strictly Federal matter. The rest of us are going to have our hands full keeping folks from panicking and looters from taking advantage.”

“Taking advantage of what?” a reporter asked.

“Well, with no TV programs to speak of,” the trooper said, “we’re projecting that people will be going out of their homes more, leaving their possessions vulnerable to burglars, vandals, and malcontents.”

Cathy laughed and clapped her hands. “This is great! Modern humanity at its finest—that is to say, terrible!”

Jeremy lay belly-down on the floor with his head on his hands. “I’m worried about Vale,” he said, “and I think it’s our ethical duty to go after him and protect him. It isn’t his fault that the El Dorado faction broadcast his name.”

Cathy snapped off the radio. “He’ll be fine,” she said irritably. “Didn’t you hear? The police aren’t after him anymore.”

“What about everyone else?” Jeremy asked. “What if the public goes nuts for fear of an alien invasion and takes it out on him? And what about that Federal agent?”

“I thought you said that Vale got away from him last night.”

“Temporarily. The agent must still be close, because if he weren’t, Ringo wouldn’t be riding in the back of the truck he stole.”

Cathy sighed and began reading the comics page. “My ancient love, this thing is almost over, and you yourself just said that Ringo is on the job. If the G-man finds Vale again and does something dangerous, you can use the eye-link to order Ringo to block it—”

“I’m not sure he’ll respond.”

“—but otherwise, as long as we know where everyone is, more or less, I see no reason to run all over the countryside. Being in the flesh is bad enough without exposing it to the elements.”

Jeremy rose to his hands and knees and crawled under the table again, where he curled into a tight ball and shivered.

“Tell me about it,” he muttered.

6

OLIVER

Volume IV of Mother’s diary begins gloomily. The year was 1968. Frankie Lymon (a minor deity, yet still a member of the pantheon) died in February… but his death was not like that of Buddy or of Otis, who had both died at the hands of Fate. It wasn’t even like that of Sam Cooke, who had died at the hands of a mortal. Instead, Frankie Lymon’s death was his own doing. His and heroin’s.

Not that he was the first pop star to die from self-destructive behavior. Johnny Ace had blown out his own brains in a game of Russian roulette in 1954, and Bobby Fuller had died of either carbon monoxide poisoning or drugs (reports varied) in 1966. Even “country” Hank Williams had booze-and-pilled himself to death as far back as 1953.

But Frankie Lymon was the first one to check out after the Summer of Love, and although he had been something of a has-been for a decade, the nature of his death seemed to Mother to be yet another omen.

No one will pay much attention to his passing, she wrote. He was “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” not “Strawberry Fields Forever” or “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” He wasn’t part of the Movement, part of the new g-g-generation. And even if he had been, well, he didn’t die of the hip drugs, of acid or grass. He died of heroin. In the newspaper it says that heroin