As for keeping Vale alive...

Upon finding his quarry, he would learn what he could, make an evaluation, and act accordingly. Then he would tell his superiors whatever they wanted to hear, just as he always had.

Old pal,his a.s.s. d.a.m.n straight he could handle it by himself.

His throat felt as if it had been rubbed with steel wool. He resolved to revert to his practice of speaking only in monosyllables until he either found Vale or reached Vale's intended destination: Lubbock, Texas.

The final resting place of Buddy Holly.

CATHY AND JEREMY.

Cathy lowered the binoculars and took off the earphones. "The guy in the Jag is a U.S. government spook," she said. "His boss thinks that extraterrestrial aliens are behind the broadcast."

Jeremy was crawling around on the Congoleum floor, occasionally b.u.mping his head against the refrigerator or a table leg. "In other words," he said, "you goaded Vale into running, and now the feds who have come to look for him are one house away from finding us out."

Cathy sighed in exasperation. "Oh, they are not. They don't know thing one about us. Seekers aren't aliens."

"Technicality," Jeremy said, snuffling at toast crumbs at the base of the counter. "We've been gone so long that Earth is hardly our home, now, is it? They could figure that out."

"If they do, it isn'tmy fault. I didn't generate the broadcast, did I? And I didn't goad Vale into running away. I simply decided not to stop him."

"That's not what you said this morning. You said you wanted him pressured to act so that we could get this thing over with. You said-"

Cathy stepped past him, kicking his ribs and knocking him over as she did so, and sat down at the table.

"Don't worry about it. The G-man may even kill the poor schlub. How do you think our cousins in El Dorado will react to that?" Jeremy lay on his side, staring under the microwave-oven cart. "They'll try again."

"Maybe, but by that time someone besides you and me will be stuck with this mess."

Jeremy closed his black dog-eye and looked up at her with his blue human-eye. "You don't really want Vale killed, do you?"

Cathy pursed her lips and looked away. "If I did, I'd be no better then the fleshbound. But if heis killed, I won't have had anything to do with it."

"It would be nice to think so," Jeremy said, getting to his hands and knees. "But one who knows how to prevent a death is guilty of murder when that death occurs, regardless of the active agent. Wouldn't you say?"

Cathy did not respond.

"Well, then, would you like a status report?"

Cathy nodded.

Jeremy closed his blue eye and opened the black one. "Vale has left the motel. He isn't in sight, but the scent of the motorcycle indicates that it's only a few miles ahead of Ringo's current position."

"Is that all?"

Jeremy c.o.c.ked his head. "No. Ringo's lonely."

"Lonely?He's a construct!"

"He's also part Doberman pinscher. Just as you and I are part flesh."

Cathy stood. "If you're going to get nasty, I'm going to watch TV." She left the room.

Moments later, she was back. "I forgot," she said. "Buddy Holly's on every channel."

Jeremy smiled warmly. "Imagine the ratings he must be getting. Probably beating h.e.l.l out of the last episode ofM*A*S*H." He resumed snuffling the Congoleum.

RINGO.

He had reached the motel at midmorning and had dozed among the evergreens until awakened by the siren. Now he sniffed around the base of the dumpster, sorting through the odors of rotten vegetables and burning crude oil.

There: The motorcycle had headed back toward the highway. The wailing automobile that had been here briefly was now following it. Ringo began trotting away from the dumpster, tracking the Ariel.

"Hey, ol' dawg!" a voice called behind him. "Where'd you come from?"

Ringo paused and looked back. Across the fence, among ruined and rusted machines, stood a man with wild red hair. Ringo knew that the hair was red because his new eye gave him images in color.

Sometimes it also gave him a glimpse of the bricklike Congoleum in Cathy and Jeremy's kitchen, but mostly it showed him what he was looking at.

"You hungry, boy?" the man asked, reaching into a pocket on his chest. "I got some beef jerky." The man came close to the fence and held a strip of dried meat between the links. "My name's Boog. What's yours?"

Ringo's implanted chips understood the man's words, and although his modified body did not require food, the dog part of his brain longed to accept a morsel from a human hand. He approached the fence and sniffed the meat. His processors a.n.a.lyzed the odor and concluded that it smelled good.

He took the strip and gulped it down, then pressed his nose against the fence so that Boog could scratch his muzzle.

"You're abig motherf.u.c.ker, ain't you?" Boog said. "How come I never seen you around here before?"

Ringo grunted. The scratching felt wonderful.

"Man, what's with your eyes?" Boog asked.

Ringo closed his eyes for an instant and saw Cathy looking at him sternly.

He gave the big man's fingers a lick, then pivoted and ran for the highway, his chain collar jingling.

"You come back anytime, now," Boog called after him.

Ringo wished that he could stay longer. He liked Boog.

He ran to the other side of the building, then slowed as he saw a fat woman coming toward him on a concrete walk. She was carrying a bucket, and she smelled of bacon. Maybe she was bringing him a treat, as Boog had. He trotted toward her to find out.

She screamed and pulled a bottle filled with blue liquid from the bucket. Ringo stopped, realizing his mistake, but he was too late. The fat woman squeezed a lever on the bottle and sprayed him in the face.

Ringo bolted for the highway, sneezing as he went. His artificial eyes had not been hurt, but his Doberman nose was burning. His processors a.n.a.lyzed his olfactory responses and told him that the blue liquid was called Windex, but he didn't care what it was called. All he cared about was sneezing it away.

He needed his nose clear to follow the scent of the motorcycle.

The fat woman had taught him a lesson. He must concentrate on his mission. He could not afford to indulge his desires for affection and snacks. He would try to forget the man named Boog.

Ringo ran down the shoulder of the highway, ignoring everything in the world except the trail of the Ariel.

The twilight became night.

SKYVUE.

Khrushchev sat on a Naugahyde-covered bench in the projection room, his eyes closed and his face puckered in concentration. Eisenhower lounged beside him, munching popcorn while watching Buddy Holly perform on a five-inch color TV that hung from the film projector.

Khrushchev's eyes opened abruptly, and he clambered to stand on the bench and look through the projection window. Gazing across acres of speaker poles, he said, "There goes your boy, right past us.

Did you plan that?"

Eisenhower swallowed. "No. It's Fate."

"And here come the cops after him. Is that Fate too?"

"Don't be sarcastic."

Khrushchev turned away from the window and sat down with a thud. "I'm not being sarcastic. I'm merely curious as to how much of this you're orchestrating and how much you're just letting happen. I mean, since I'm not directlyinvolved anymore, curiosity is all I have."

Eisenhower gave him a look of sympathy and sincerity. It was an extremely presidential sort of look.

"I'm orchestrating nothing. Everyone is free to react to the broadcast as he or she wishes."

"In that case, we might as well give up on these people and convert back to noncorporeality right now."

Eisenhower's expression became stern. "You sound as though you're on the anti-flesh side."

"Not at all," Khrushchev said, folding his arms. "I believe in the right of the fleshbound to attain Seeker status. However, I admit that I do understand the anti-flesh position."

Eisenhower nodded sagely. "As do I. That's why I prefer not to intervene in whatever events the broadcast may foment. Nevertheless, because I selected the catalyst, I must accept responsibility if the outcome is tragic."

Khrushchev's eyebrows rose. "How so?"

Eisenhower looked back at the TV and stuffed a handful of popcorn into his mouth. "I shall pay the price along with them," he said, his voice m.u.f.fled.

"You meandeath?" Khrushchev exclaimed. "Are younuts? I should open your head and-" He stopped in mid-sentence and climbed up to look through the window again. "There goes the opposition's canine computer."

"He isn't theirs," Eisenhower said. "He does their bidding, but he belongs to himself."

"If you say so. But maybe we ought to divert him before he catches your boy and chows down." Eisenhower shook his head. "He won't do that. At least, I don't believe so. In any case, he too is part of Fate's random plan, and therefore we shouldn't interfere."

" 'Fate's random plan'?" Khrushchev said. "Sounds like more bulls.h.i.t to me. I mean, how can a plan be random? How can randomness be planned?"

Eisenhower leaned forward and turned up the TV's sound. "Let's stay tuned and find out, shall we?"

Khrushchev sat down again. "You've been here too long, Ike. Your brain's turning to video kibble."

"Hush. I want to hear whatever Buddy's going to play next."

"You don't already know?"

"Of course not." Eisenhower picked a popcorn hull from his teeth with a fingernail."He belongs to himself too."

Part 2 - the pilgrimage of the physically fit

4.

OLIVER.

My grandfather died in April 1965 as the result of an accident at the Goodyear plant. No one would tell me what happened, and Mother didn't explicate it in her diary, so I have always imagined that he went to work drunk (as he often did), fell into a vat of bubbling black goo, and ended up rolling down the highway under somebody's Ford. The closed casket at the funeral made a hollow sound when I knocked on it, so I wasn't convinced that he was in there.

Five-year-olds do things like that. At least, I did. Four months had pa.s.sed since Sam Cooke's demise, and a portion of my fear of death had metamorphosed into an intense curiosity about just what it was that separated death from life. So I knocked on the casket to see whether anyone was home.

Fortunately, Grandmother was talking with the pastor in the vestibule when I did that. If she had witnessed it, she would have whipped the snot out of me. As it was, the only witness was Mother, and she knocked immediately after I did.

"Knock, knock," she whispered.

"Who's there?" I asked. I had become a skilled straight man at knock-knock jokes.

"Coffin," she said.

"Coffin who?"

"Coffin your handkerchief or don't coffat all!" I giggled. I was only five.

On Mother's birthday, Thursday, May 13, Grandmother left for Des Moines for a two-week visit with Uncle Mike, who was supposed to have come to Topeka for the funeral but who had missed it because the Greyhound bus bringing him had broken down. Mother and I were specifically not invited along on Grandmother's trip, because she felt that our sinful and illegitimate presences would have a deleterious effect on her seventeen-year-old son.

Mother cried the night before Grandmother left. She had not seen her brother in six years, and now he was almost grown up and she didn't even know him.

Being denied a trip to Des Moines turned out to be only a prelude. As we said good-bye to Grandmother at the bus station, she informed Mother that by the time she returned, we had better be out of the house.

I remember that much. For further details, I must refer to Volume III of Mother's diary: So there I was this afternoon, just turned twenty-four without so much as a Happy Birthday, waiting with Mama and Oliver at the bus station. Oliver was sitting on the floor playing with his Matchbox fire truck, and Mama said, "Get that child off the floor, Mich.e.l.le, what's the matter with you? He'll catch a disease." So I picked him up and held him on my lap, although he's getting big. It's always best to let Mama feel like she's running things. Which she is. Except for not getting to go see Mikey so that Oliver could meet his uncle, I was looking forward to the next two weeks without her.

Then the man with the microphone announced the bus, and we all stood. I was still holding Oliver, so I hugged Mama with one arm. She didn't hug back, which had been typical for a long time now. She is still Mama, though, just like Daddy was Daddy and I miss him even though he was pretty awful for the last five years.

Mama picked up her little blue suitcase and said, just as if she were commenting on the weather, "When I come back, you have to be gone."