Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede by Bradley Denton (my reading book .txt) 📕

her or her car, and she had been following me ever since to exact payment. Either that, or she really did know my identity and was just making sure before bashing me unconscious and hauling me off to the Authorities.

“Uh, I’m sorry,” I said. “Which motorcycle is that?”

I had never before seen a sneer of such loathing. “There’s only one here, roadapple,” she said. “The one that’s blocking the Regular pump so that I can’t get my truck to it.”

Relief made me chuckle. The woman didn’t know who I was. She was nothing more than a powerfully muscled grouch who would hurt me if I didn’t move Peggy Sue. Now.

Her eyes narrowed to predatory green slivers. “Something funny?”

I shook my head, the helmet strap scraping across my chin. “No, ma’am,” I said. “I’m sorry I took so long. I’ll get my bike out of your way right now.”

She jerked a thumb at the door. “So hurry up. You cycle jerks are the most inconsiderate cruds in the world.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again, starting toward the door. I held my bag of CornNuts out to her. “Want some?”

She snatched the bag from me, opened it, and poured the contents into her mouth. “Fangksh,” she said, handing back the empty husk.

I went out and dropped the bag, watching it slide away with the breeze. I was already a fugitive and a thief, so I didn’t think I could do much more damage to my soul by becoming a litterbug.

The woman came out and ran after the bag. “Rancid pukebucket!” she yelled back at me, spewing CornNuts onto the concrete. Her vocabulary was starting to remind me of Julie “Eat shit and die, Oliver” Calloway.

I walked into the pinkish-yellow glow of the lights that hummed over the gasoline pumps and pulled on my gloves. Peggy Sue was waiting on front of a dinged-up white GMC pickup that looked as bad as the ones I’d seen at the salvage yard behind the FIFTY-FOUR MOTOR INN REASONABLE RATES. The bike’s exhaust pipes were making soft ticking sounds.

I was still ten feet from the Ariel when the headlights came on across the highway and a V-12 engine bellowed. I put my head down and ran.

The black Jaguar squealed across the highway and into the convenience store lot, stopping broadside in front of Peggy Sue just as I reached her. The driver’s door opened, and a bald man wearing a long gray coat emerged. He was big. The Jaguar growled.

I had never seen the bald man before, and I had no idea who he was. I didn’t want to either, so I jumped onto Peggy Sue and kicked the starter. The Ariel sputtered and chugged to life, but the stranger grasped the Moonsuit and yanked me from the bike before I could put her into gear. While Peggy Sue coughed helplessly, the bald man dragged me toward the Jaguar.

Scrambling, I got my feet under me and threw an off-balance punch at my captor’s face. I knew that he might be an Authority, but he hadn’t identified himself as one. So as far as I was concerned, I was being assaulted, and I was within my rights to defend myself.

Bullshit. I was terrified. I would have swung at him regardless.

My gloved fist hit the man’s cheek, and I elbowed him in the ribs with my other arm. He paused and glared at me, so I swung my fist again. This time, he let go of the Moonsuit and blocked the punch with a forearm. Simultaneously, his free hand shot under my helmet and gave me a stiff-fingered jab in the throat.

It was as if a grenade packed with nails had gone off in my larynx. I stumbled back against the Regular pump and clawed at my helmet’s chin strap, then slid down and sat on the concrete island.

The bald man kicked me in the helmet, and I fell onto my right side. Then he leaned down, grasped me under the armpits, and began dragging me toward the Jaguar again. I struggled, but I couldn’t get my feet under me. The inside of my head sounded like a chain saw, and the spikes in my throat were cutting off my breath.

In the midst of the noise and pain, I heard a woman’s voice ask, “What do you think you’re doing, bozo?”

I’m being killed, that’s what, I tried to say, but all I could do was wheeze.

The voice came again. “Could you stop screwing around and move your car? I’ve been waiting a long time. I mean, try to overcome your slime-licking alpha-male instincts and show some consideration….”

The chain-saw buzzing began to subside as the woman talked, and I was even able to swallow past the nails. I could tell that the bald stranger was ignoring the woman.

“What is it, anyway? Just because you guys have balls you think that the poison they put into your systems entitles you to act like walking porta potties?”

I had an inspiration. I sagged forward as if I had become unconscious, and then I snapped my head back and up. My helmet rammed into the stranger’s crotch with the desired effect: He dropped me.

I rolled away, lurched to my feet, and ran for the idling Peggy Sue. The muscular woman with the backpack was standing beside her pickup truck with her arms crossed.

“I’ve just about had it,” she said.

I was hit from behind and fell facedown, my helmet bouncing off the pavement. The stranger landed on top of me, grabbing my right wrist and pulling my arm behind my back. Only the thickness of the Moonsuit kept him from twisting it out of its socket.

A pair of Reeboks walked past my face. “I’ll move them both myself, you adolescent armpit kernels,” the woman said.

The stranger yanked me to my feet, which hurt a lot, and spun me so that I faced the Jaguar. The muscular woman was entering the car.

“No!” the bald man shouted, shoving me aside so that I collided with the Regular pump again.

I grabbed the pump to keep from falling, and then I turned to try to get to Peggy Sue. As I did, I saw that the man had produced a pistol and was aiming it at the woman, who was now behind the wheel of the Jaguar.

She didn’t wait to find out what he would do next, and neither did I. She ducked, and the Jaguar bellowed and sped backward. I jumped onto Peggy Sue, kicked her into first gear, and opened the throttle.

The stranger fired his pistol as Peggy Sue and I rammed him. A small hole appeared in the Regular pump, and the bald man hit the concrete. Peggy Sue ran over his arm, and the pistol skittered away.

The Jaguar laid rubber in reverse in a semicircle around the gasoline pumps, and I glanced at my right mirror just in time to see the car crunch trunk-first into the GMC pickup’s right front fender.

At that point, Peggy Sue and I missed the driveway and dropped into the ditch, adding a bitten tongue to my aching head and throat. I hung on tight as the bike churned up to the highway, spraying dirt and dead grass. By the time I regained control, we were a few hundred feet down the road. The mirrors showed me that the Jaguar, with the muscular woman at the wheel, was whipping out of the convenience store lot in the correct fashion, via the driveway.

Well, if she wanted to steal an Authority’s car—if the bald man was an Authority—that was her business, and her problem. Peggy Sue and I accelerated and got the hell away from there.

And the Jaguar kept pace with us. No matter how fast we went or what side roads we ducked down, those headlights wouldn’t fade away. I tried to pray for them to disappear, but my throat and tongue were too sore to sing.

SHARON

Notes on client Oliver Vale, continued…

12:46 A.M. Bruce and I are in bed in a Ramada Inn in Wichita. He is angry with me for a number of reasons. One of these reasons is that I have just told him where we are going and why, and he does not like it. Neither does he like the fact that we are using one of his firm’s Chevrolet Celebrities. He tells me that to use it for this purpose is unethical.

I disagree. After all, Oliver will almost certainly become Brace’s client once we find him, so we are at least partially on legitimate business.

What Bruce is most angry about, though, is the fact that I have cajoled him into this trip but do not want to make love. After all our time together, he still has not managed to grow beyond the notion of sex-as-reward. His attitude seems to be that as long as he is doing something for me that he does not want to do in the first place, the least I could do in return is give him head.

I’m not in the mood. I too am angry. I’m angry because he insisted that we stop here after traveling such a short distance. At this rate, Oliver will reach Lubbock, do something foolish, and be arrested long before we can get there.

I have to do something to help Oliver, though, so I am watching Oliver/Buddy perform on the room TV. I keep hoping that he will do or say something that will give me an insight into how best to direct his therapy.

Not much luck so far. But, my God, can he play the guitar and sing!

Can that really be Oliver?

I am beginning to wonder.

RICHTER

He rose from the pavement and watched the Jaguar’s taillights disappear down the highway. Vale and his motorcycle were somewhere ahead of them.

Richter looked down at his right arm and probed it with his left hand, then flexed his right fist. The forearm was going to bruise where the motorcycle had run over it, but nothing was broken or sprained. He would still be able to squeeze a trigger.

That was one thing he would do sooner next time, he promised himself as he stooped to pick up his plastic pistol from where it had fallen.

This was for the second mistake he had made in twenty-four hours, and it had been far more serious than the first. He had lost an opportunity to apprehend Vale, who now knew him by sight and would be watching for him. Worse still, he had allowed a bystander to interfere with his duties. She had even stolen his Jaguar, which was government property… although it couldn’t be traced as such.

Richter had gone to a great deal of trouble only to let it be wasted. He had been driving south on the Kansas Turnpike when his police scanner had told him that Vale was being pursued by a sheriff’s deputy on a county road near El Dorado, so he had left the turnpike and had used the Jaguar’s computerized map display to guide him there. He had then driven at dangerous speeds until he had overtaken the patrol car and forced it into the ditch. Having eliminated the competition, Richter had continued driving at a high rate of speed, confident that he would overtake the motorcycle in twenty or thirty seconds.

He had not, which meant that Vale had left the road to hide from the pursuing deputy. Richter had pulled off at a picnic area to wait, and sure enough, Vale had come by several minutes later. Richter had begun following him then and had come close to apprehending him at the Kaw Reservoir, but Vale had hidden again, almost evading Richter entirely. Richter had been