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

seen some big ones.

For the first time in my life, I knew my duty.

I had been charged to help Buddy Holly, and had not known how. But now I saw that all I could do, all I had ever been able to do, was help myself.

And that was the same thing.

I heard shouting Willyites enter the snack bar.

“Get out of the way and hold the light,” I said, taking the cables and reaching into the toolbox. I had not dropped out of college and become a salesman at Cowboy Carl’s for nothing. Fate had not made a mistake. Fate never did.

I became separate from time. My universe was defined by a mammoth video projector, coaxial cables, and a five-inch color TV. I hummed the “Holly Hop.”

When all was ready, I turned on the TV and projector. The TV screen flickered, but the projector remained dead.

Time started again. The door opened, and a figure with a slingshot was framed by yellow light. Cathy cried, “Darling!” and leaped on him, riding him down as a steel ball ricocheted from the ceiling. Another figure appeared, and Jeremy yelled, “Darling!” and leaped on him as well.

I found a crescent wrench in the toolbox and whanged the projector’s power supply seven times.

Three dazzling beams speared through the night to the movie screen, and a blast of sound with the energy of an atomic bomb exploded from a thousand speakers. Buddy was singing the chorus of “Rave On,” and singing it loud.

On the floor, Cathy and Jeremy looked up.

Beneath them, two ministers of the Corps of Little David looked up.

Beyond, at the counter and grill, a cluster of William Willard’s followers stared through the west windows.

I braced my hands on the projector and stood. Then I hobbled past Cathy and Jeremy, past the ministers and Willyites, and out to the crowded theater lot.

Everyone faced the screen. In the sky to the north, even the lights of the Bonanza seemed motionless.

The song ended with a sharp staccato chord, and Buddy Holly looked down upon us while the echoes died beyond the refinery. Jupiter hung in the black expanse behind him, and the guitar-shaped silver object pulsed above his head. A low thrumming sound accompanied each pulse.

Buddy shifted his Stratocaster and spoke.

“I don’t know just how to say this.” His words reverberated throughout SkyVue with a calm power that made the Reverend’s voice seem puny in retrospect. “I’ve been hearing a voice.” He pointed upward.

The crowd murmured.

“It’s been telling me things,” Buddy said, pushing his glasses up with a forefinger. “Like how it might be decades or centuries before anyone comes to find me. Like how thirty years have already gone by as it is. Like how the world has changed, and how it wouldn’t be home anymore.”

The Bonanza passed over the theater, flying slowly. Buddy tilted his head to look at the silver object, and it was as if he were gazing at the airplane as well.

The object began to descend to him.

“So I’m taking this thing up on its offer,” Buddy continued. “At first I couldn’t decide, so I tossed a quarter. I’m going on tour.” He unslung his Strat and lay it at his feet. “I’m told that I won’t have a body while I’m gone and won’t need one to make music, so I’ll leave this here. If anybody shows up before I do, you’re welcome to use it. So long as you return it when I come back.”

The silver object was so close now that its glow permeated his tousled hair.

Buddy grinned and nodded to us. “See you in the big time,” he said.

The silver object sank lower, and lower, and Buddy melted into it, head to toes, until it touched the ground beside his guitar. Then it rose, passed the image of Jupiter, and shot off the screen. A silver afterimage glowed for a moment before fading away.

All that was left was gray rock and dust, the impassive striped planet, empty clothes, black-framed glasses, and the woodgrain-and-white Stratocaster. SkyVue’s speakers were silent.

We stood as silent as they. The only sound was the buzz of the Beechcraft’s engine.

The picture on the movie screen became faceted, like a mosaic, and gradually dissolved into white light. The speakers crackled.

And the whiteness blossomed into Technicolor. John Wayne returned Natalie Wood to the bosom of her family, and then, satisfied that he had done a man’s job, turned and strode away into the great Western desert. The music swelled, the cabin door closed, and the credits rolled.

The crowd, bathed in reflected warmth, stood mesmerized.

Then the credits vanished and were replaced by an ugly dog dancing on a bartop while pouring beer for a softball team. On a stage in the background, three women in gold bikinis sang, “It’s the winner’s brew/It’s the one for you/Buy me one too/And you won’t be blue/Oop-boop-be-do.”

The crowd erupted, cheering, waving, laughing. They leaped into the air, hugged each other, rolled on the rocks, humped the speaker poles. Tiny TV screens flickered to life throughout the lot, and all of the pictures were different.

Regularly scheduled programming was back. God was in his Heaven, and all was right with the networks.

In the sky, a meteor flared and was gone.

William Willard’s flock, including the Corps of Little David, forgot about their captured demons. Whether they believed that their rally had defeated the Antichrist’s broadcast, or whether they didn’t care what had happened so long as TV was back to normal, I don’t know. In either case, they were finished with SkyVue. One minute after the conclusion of The Searchers, scores of vehicles were trying to leave at both the exit and entrance. Although united in spiritual matters, the Willyites became divided in their cars, and they honked and cursed at each other.

I was swaying and would have fallen if Pete hadn’t shown up to steady me. Gretchen, Boog, Sharon, and Bruce joined us, and I saw that although Bruce was holding his shoulder, he was standing without help.

“Well,” Sharon said, looking around at the departing Willyites, “thank God for short attention spans.”

“Or whoever the fuck’s in charge,” Boog said.

Ringo emerged from among the crowd’s stragglers, dragging the Bald Avenger across the rocks to us. The Avenger’s body was limp, but as the Doberman released his coat collar at my feet, he looked up at me.

“All of you,” he said hoarsely, “are under arrest.”

Gretchen raised an eyebrow at his torn pants. “Cute butt,” she said.

The Avenger closed his eyes and sighed. “Okay, forget it.” He sounded relieved. And old, and tired.

Above us, the Bonanza’s engine throttled back, and we watched as the airplane, illuminated by a diaper commercial, descended to land in the field east of the theater lot. Ringo bounded away and leaped over SkyVue’s back fence to greet Laura and Mike.

“Rotten kids,” Pete said with pride.

I saw the plane come to a stop just short of the refinery fence, and then, my eyes stinging from a breeze full of oil-rich smoke, I looked away and down.

Several speaker poles away, Peggy Sue lay trampled on the white rocks. A black pool had formed beneath her. With Pete’s help, I hobbled to her, and my friends followed. We left the Avenger behind.

My Ariel’s chrome was bent, her headlight smashed. Her handlebars were twisted, her fuel tank crushed. Both tires were flat, and spokes jutted like exposed bones. Her drive chain had snapped and fallen from the sprockets.

All of the violence that had been aimed at me, she had taken upon herself. I heard distant, mechanical wailing.

“I’m so sorry, Oliver,” Sharon said.

“Me too,” Pete said. He was looking across the lot at the Oklahoma Kamikaze, which seemed intact except for its missing glass.

Boog squatted beside the bike and touched the carburetor, then grinned his usual grin. “Don’t be sorry yet. My hands have the power to heal the sick and raise the dead.” Hearing him say it, I knew that it was true.

Light snow began to fall as Mike, Laura, and Ringo ran to us. While the kids collected hugs from their father, the first carload of Authorities rolled through a jumble of civilian vehicles into SkyVue.

“I hope there’s an ambulance,” Sharon said, shivering as the snow came harder. “Bruce and Oliver need a doctor.”

“Bullshit,” Bruce said. “Just get me a goddamn pair of pliers to pull out the bone chips.”

I laughed. Bruce had transformed since the last time I had seen him.

“You seem to be in a surprisingly good mood, Mr. Vale,” Mike said, “for a man about to be taken into custody by the musclemen of bourgeois repression.”

Gretchen glanced at the approaching car. “Uh, Oliver,” she said, “the cops are coming.”

My contacts were hurting me, so I removed them. “I know,” I said, my hands before my face. “That makes it tough.”

When I lowered my hands, the movie screen had gone black. The refinery flame blurred. I leaned back and opened my mouth so that I could catch the last snowflakes before the end of the world.

CATHY AND JEREMY

They sat on the bench in the dark projection room, staying quiet long after the sirens had droned away and SkyVue was silent.

“It didn’t turn out the way I expected,” Cathy said at last.

“What way was that, love?”

“I don’t know. I had a vague notion in this defective head that we could distract the crowd long enough to hustle Vale away. But when you couldn’t get the projector working, and Vale had to do it himself… things happened.”

Jeremy patted her hand. “We couldn’t have known that Holly was about to end the broadcast.”

“Even if we had,” Cathy said, “I wouldn’t have guessed that a mob of the fleshbound would just stop like that.”

“Me either. We didn’t do a damn thing to help Vale, and we didn’t have to. I can’t figure it.”

There was a low chuckle from the doorway. “Can’t, or won’t? The truth is that you did do something to help him, but you aren’t willing to admit it.”

A light came on, and Dwight D. Eisenhower entered the cubicle, followed by Nikita Khrushchev.

Cathy and Jeremy stood. “Where the hell have you two been?” Cathy demanded. “This mess was your fault—”

“—and when it hit the fan, you were gone,” Jeremy concluded.

“We were around,” Khrushchev said. “In fact, I butted in when Vale was about to die in a head-on collision, and again when he was being stoned.” He glanced sidelong at Eisenhower. “Even though I wasn’t supposed to.”

Eisenhower smiled. “Oh, no? I swore that I wouldn’t intervene, but I didn’t say anything about you.”

Khrushchev glowered. “You’re a jerk!”

Eisenhower chuckled again. “Despite that, our job is finished, and we can return to noncorporeality.”

“What do you mean, ‘your job is finished’?” Cathy said. “If anything, the violence of tonight’s mob, and of the mobs all over the world, has proven that the fleshbound have no right to Seeker status. You were wrong, and we were right.”

Eisenhower raised an index finger. “Except that you two are already Seekers, and yet you also committed violence. You each leaped upon a man and forced him to the floor without considering that you might harm him.”

“That was necessary!” Jeremy said.

“And spur-of-the-moment!” Cathy added.

Khrushchev gave them a stern look, and they bit their lower lips.

“Gotcha,” Eisenhower said.

“We tried another way first,” Jeremy said. “You’ve got to give us that.”

Eisenhower nodded. “Indeed. By projecting Holly’s image—or rather, by helping Vale do so—you achieved our pro-flesh goal. In effect, you defeated yourselves.”

Cathy crossed her arms and glared. “How’s that?”

“First,” Eisenhower said, “you proved that Seekers themselves