Perhaps we should be paying more attention to what the broadcast has said: "For a.s.sistance, contact Oliver Vale."

Perhaps he has been chosen as liaison between us and Whomever. Like in that old movie with the giant chandelier.

The radio says that the Ganymede signal has not repeated itself since it began. Technology aside, no human being would have the patience to create three days of that.

But whatever he is, human or alien, Oliver is my friend. And I wish that I could help him.

RICHTER.

Early Monday, his leg and mind well rested, Richter left his Lawton hotel room and drove to the Comanche County sheriff's office. There he presented his FCC identification and asked to see all reports of regional "Oliver Vale sightings." He made it clear that, for security reasons, there was to be no record of his visit.

Most of the "Vale sighting" reports were the ravings of crackpots, but two caught his eye. The first stated that an elderly couple had spotted Vale at two-thirty in the morning, and that he had been in the company of a muscular woman. The second stated that a housewife had observed a certain Peter Holden hauling a motorcycle on his flatbed truck a short time later.

Richter hadn't seen the vehicle that had stopped at the rest area while he had been hiding under the Jaguar, but its engine noise had been that of a truck. It could have been a flatbed.

He handed the second report to the sheriff. "Directions to Holden's," he said. The sheriff shook his head. "Don't bother. A deputy checked this out, and it turned out to be nothing."

He chuckled. "Lucky for that Vale character that hewasn't there. My deputy says Holden's got himself a big old Doberman that like to bit his arm off."

Richter's leg began throbbing.

"Directions," he said.

He would have them this time, and since he was no longer on the a.s.signment, he would have no one to answer to for what he did.

They wouldn't even know that he was coming.

Except that, somehow, they did. He was driving slowly, looking at names on mailboxes to be sure he found the right place, when a white muscle car exploded from a stand of trees and came at him. It happened so quickly that he couldn't see who was inside, and he was barely able to swerve to the edge of the road in time to avoid a collision.

Then he saw Vale. He swerved back, hoping to block the motorcycle or hit it, but he was too late.

Ahead of him, standing beside a mailbox, was the dog who could spit bullets.

For an instant Richter was torn-but if he stopped to try to kill the Doberman, Vale would disappear yet again. Richter turned the Jaguar around and pursued. The muscle car and the motorcycle were already out of sight, but that meant nothing. This time the chase was in daylight. He would find them again soon.

And when he did, he would not aim for the tires.

SKYVUE.

The two smiling, dark-suited ministers of the Corps of Little David emerged from the projection room, Khrushchev glared at them.

"Everything all right?" Eisenhower asked.

"All of our equipment is in working order, praise the Lord," the taller minister said. "Satan's h.e.l.lish waves have no effect on our video projector."

"The Reverend Willard blessed it before we brought it up from Oklahoma City," the second minister said.

"Satan's h.e.l.lish waves wouldn't bother it regardless of whether it was blessed," Khrushchev said. "It's closed circuit, without broadcast reception capability, right?"

The tall man nodded. "Indeed, brother-"

Khrushchev growled. Eisenhower elbowed him. "-for the Reverend Willard wishes to be seen and heard by all in this community and the surrounding region who wish to see and hear him. Even as he stands atop this building, preaching courage during this campaign of the Antichrist, his image shall be relayed from our cameras to the projector, and thence to the screen of this theater, larger than life, a beacon of Truth-"

Khrushchev put a finger into his mouth and made gagging noises.

The minister stared. "I beg your pardon?"

"My a.s.sociate is grumpy because he hasn't been able to watch reruns ofMy Mother the Car on his five-inch color set since Satan's broadcast commenced," Eisenhower said.

"And if you jerks broke that little TV while you were futzing around in there," Khrushchev added, "you can forget about getting your deposit back."

The second minister cleared his throat. "I believe we agreed on a rental fee of six thousand dollars." He handed Eisenhower a check.

"That's right," Eisenhower said. "You do understand that we can't provide security officers?"

"No matter," the tall man said. "The Corps of Little David will provide its own security. After all, the Reverend William Willard himself will be here."

"Weknow, weknow," Khrushchev said. "And we aren't going to collect the admission fees for you either."

"We wouldn't want you to," the second minister said. "We'll have a member of our Ladies' Auxiliary in the ticket booth."

"And I believe that concludes our business for now," the tall man said. "I trust that our equipment, tools, and accessories will remain undisturbed until our projectionist arrives."

"Of course," Eisenhower said.

"a.s.suming that the blessing holds up until then," Khrushchev muttered.

The two ministers left.

Eisenhower regarded Khrushchev sternly.

"What'reyou looking at?" Khrushchev snarled.

"Are you trying to ruin everything?" Eisenhower asked. "What if they'd taken offense and called the thing off?"

"I'd be delighted. As it is, this place is gonna be packed with several thousand w.i.l.l.yites who'll be whipped into a frenzy by their Fearless Leader's apocalyptic hysteria. It's bad enough that your Buddy Holly stunt has instigated violence in major metropolitan areas, but now it's going to happen out here in the sticks too." Eisenhower looked thoughtful. "Could be," he said.

"Doesn't that bother you?" Khrushchev bellowed. "Don't youcare?"

"Yes."

"Then why let Bill w.i.l.l.y come to our birthplace and pollute it until it's as rotten as the rest of the fleshbound world?"

Eisenhower went to the projection room's doorway and looked inside at the video projection equipment.

"Because," he said, "everybody likes a good show."

part 4 - raving on

10.

Oliver.

The last entry in Volume VI of Mother's diary is dated Monday, December 8, 1980. My twenty-first birthday.

Mother wrote,The radio has just given me the news.

John has left for the other world.

Now I understand.

It was almost midnight when I arrived home. I had worked late, and then I'd had dinner with a woman to whom I'd sold a tape deck. The fact that it was my birthday hadn't induced her to give me anything special.

When I came into the house, "Peggy Sue" was playing. That in itself wasn't unusual, but the version being played was not the original, but the cover that John Lennon had recorded. Mother was sitting on the livingroom floor in the midst of scattered Beatles and Lennon alb.u.ms. I had seen this sort of thing before and would have been afraid, except that she was smiling and happy.

"Oliver!" she cried over the music. "Happy birthday!"

I went to the stereo and turned down the volume. "Is everything all right?" I asked.

She beamed at me. "Haven't you heard?"

"Heard what?"

"John Lennon has been shot." Stunned, I sat on the floor beside her. "Is he dead?"

Mother put a hand on my shoulder. "So they say. But they're wrong. Buddy, it's all right. I understand now."

I looked at her eyes and saw the glow of her insanity. "What do you understand?"

"That I've been wrong all this time," she said. "I thought there was a battle raging in the other world, and that the agents of the malevolent ones were making us destroy ourselves. But now I know that can't be true, because the Seekers who love us wouldnever let John die."

"Why not?"

"Don't you see? John was one of our best, like Buddy. He was 'Strawberry Field' and 'Give Peace a Chance.' If death were bad, he would have been protected from it. The only way that someone could kill him would be if the body's death were in fact a transition to the other world, where humans exist as energy, as ships of light."

"Ships of light."

She shook me. "The Unidentified Flying Objects! They're the visual manifestations of the other world!

Remember when we saw Elvis leave? His body died, but that was all right because the ancient Atlanteans, the Seekers, showed him how to reach the other world!"

"But you mourned for Elvis," I said.

"No. I mourned for us, because we had lost him."

"And we haven't lost Lennon?"

The bright madness flickered. "We never had him," she said. "We neverdeserved him. He always was of the other world, but he loved us and wanted to help save us from ourselves, so he stayed. Until now, when he decided to leave."

"You said he was shot."

"Hisbody was shot. By a man in New York."

"Then he didn't leave of his own will," I said. "He didn't 'leave' at all. He was killed. And not by an Atlantean, but by some s.h.i.t of a human being."

Mother looked back to her scattered alb.u.ms and stroked the cover ofAbbey Road with her fingertips.

I went to my room. I wanted to believe that John Lennon lived on somewhere, but I knew better. There was no "other world" except in Mother's mind. She had chosen delusion over reality. Over death.

I saw that being an adult would mean that my mother would no longer take care of me. Instead, I would have to start taking care of her. Throughout the next few months, I tried to persuade her to see a psychological counselor, but she would have none of it. She wasn't the one with the problem, she said; I was. She was able to accept the existence of the other world, and I wasn't. So which of us needed help, hmmm?

Eight years later, I still don't have the answer. How crazy, after all, is Mother's "other world" in comparison to my own "Spirit Land"?

Of course, I don't really believe in the Spirit Land. It's just something I got from a John Wayne movie.

It's only a concept. A thought construct.

And I'm not afraid to die... just so long as I can keep my eyes.

At each flat stretch of road, I looked back and saw that the Jaguar was within a few miles, but getting no closer. Peggy Sue's pace was eighty-five miles per hour, which is nothing to a Jag-so I figured that the Avenger didn't want me or the Kamikaze to crash, but preferred to catch us standing still so that he could shoot us.

Since there was no point in sticking to the back roads if we were dead anyway, I took Peggy Sue onto I-35 just south of Oklahoma City. Pete was able to stay close, so we weaved in and out of the city traffic to put more s.p.a.ce between us and the Avenger. I saw only one cop, and he was busy in the southbound lanes with a jack-knifed tractor-trailer. I congratulated myself on my shrewdness.

Then we reached the city's northern edge and hit the biggest tent-revival and traffic jam in the history of the interstate highway system. We made a little headway by driving on the shoulder, but then we stopped dead still.

Vehicles crammed the pavement, and people packed the ditches and fields on either side. Men and women stood on vans and preached through bullhorns; others blew their car horns; others sang; others merely screamed. Fences had been trampled flat, and power poles and billboards had been toppled.

With Peggy Sue in neutral, I backpedaled so that I could talk to Pete. A ruddy, overweight man who occupied the Jeep beside us gave me a dull look and spat a stream of tobacco juice onto my left Nike.

Pete rolled down his window. "Ain't this a b.i.t.c.h?" he shouted.

Gretchen turned in her seat and looked back. "At least the Avenger's nowhere in sight. Then again, he could be three cars away in this mess, and we'd never know it."

I leaned down. "He's only part of our troubles. If we don't get out of here soon, the natives are going to recognize me and Peggy Sue. And then we're skinned."