Waiting for the Galactic Bus (29 page)

“You have riven meaning from existence. If you and these misbegotten sprites are gods —”

“You said it; I didn’t,” Barion countered. “You and your agonized ilk made it into heaven and hell,
I
didn’t. The question was never fall and redemption but simply where and how high you can reach. There was a time when thunder and lightning were gods to your kind. The Egyptians improved on that. Moses built on them. Someone will build on you. That is the process.”

“Barion, will you get back to relevance and stop wasting time on this creature.” Sorlij jabbed a finger at the stricken Augustine in utter disbelief. “You think he understands any of this? You’re talking to an
ape.”

“Well, that’s the heart of it. I think he can. As long as I’m going to jail, one of the best minds up here along with Yeshua and Tom More ought to know what’s happening.” Barion regarded Augustine with a deep respect for that strong man’s convictions and his own. “You
can
understand; I built you for it. You see, a long time ago, not far from where you were born, there was this monkey...”

    31   

Roy Stride and the First
Amendment

At the bar, Charity had one for the road with Elvira to say goodbye. She was very pleased with herself. “See old Virgil finally walk out? Guess I did the Lord’s work today.”

“Topside’s very nice when you’re ready for it, dear. Hello, Mr. Pebbles. Mineral water as usual?”

“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Grubb.” Leon set a tight-wrapped package by his stool. Charity tapped it with her toe.

“What’s that? More health food?”

“Absolutely,” said Leon, even more febrile than usual. “Makes the system efficient.” He scooped up his drink and package and headed for an empty table near the bandstand.

“Don’t know what I’m ready for, Elvira,” Charity reasoned, “but I sure know what I’m finished with, so I guess it’s time to go.”

“Good luck, dear. By the way, someone’s been asking for you over on the bandstand.”

Out of self-preservation, Charity always ignored the Club band, but today they sounded good enough for most of the tables to quiet down and listen; two soft trumpets in a relaxed, meditative rendition of “Body and Soul.”

“That’s an old one,” Charity murmured into her drink. “Used to be one of Woody’s fav —” When the thought connected, she did the largest double take in the annals of American romance. “WOODY!” And shot across the room, dodging tables and customers in a broken-field run to hurl herself into the arms of the most beautiful man she ever found too late.

“Woody.” Charity crushed herself to the marvelous reality of him. “Oh, Woody, am I glad to see you. I was just leaving for Topside’n’ thinking I’d never see you again, and —”

“Hey, doll,” the other musician broke in, wry and gentle, “We’re doing a gig.”

“Forget it.” Woody introduced them warmly. “Char, this is Milt Kahane, my buddy from the Corps. This is Char Stovall, and she’s with me.”

“Don’t you know it,” Charity breathed.

“Time for a break, anyway, Milt.”

“So it is.” Milt took up the mike and addressed the tables. “Gonna take a break, timeservers. End of the set, but don’t you fret. We’ll be back on our stools with some oldie jewels.”

“Hey.” A drunk wobbled erect at a near table. “Can you play ‘Unchained Melody’?”

Milt frowned at him. “Not with a clear conscience. Don’t applaud, just grovel and throw large bills. Hey-y.” His dark eye brightened with incentive as a thin woman undulated past the bandstand. “Who is
that?”

“Essie Mendel,” Charity filled him in. “Sort of engaged to a Jewish guy in Accounting. She’s very Orthodox.”

“I knew it; I can spot a
shayna maidel
at a hundred yards. They’re always ripe for a little reform.” Milt took a deep, zestful breath and clapped his hands together, a man about to party. “Take ten, Barnes.” He sauntered away in Essie’s wake.

“Woody.” Charity still couldn’t believe he was here next to her. “What are you — I thought you were Topside.”

“Oh, things were kind of slow, and we heard the burritos were good here, and — honest to God, Char, ain’t this a trip?”

“Yeah,” she agreed with some irony, “how they gonna keep us down in Plattsville after we’ve seen Below Stairs? I didn’t know you like Mexican food.”

But then, come down to it, how much did she ever really know or see about Woody Barnes? Except he’d been her friend forever. She could recall him at any given moment, but never, she realized now, in clear detail: how the wiry hair over his forehead sort of shone with red hints under the bandstand light, or how good-humored his blue eyes were. Or how, while no taller than Roy, Woody’s frame was lankier and more relaxed. She never looked or noticed any more than she really saw the rest of the world around her. Like the thin pale scar between thumb and forefinger that streaked two inches across the back of his left hand. She’d never noticed that. Charity wondered fleetingly if left-handed people ever looked much at other people’s right.

“Where’d you get that scar?”

“This?” He turned the hand over, taking a second to recall. “Beirut; the day Milt and I got fragged. Corpsmen loading me on a stretcher, my damn hand fell over the side right onto broken glass. Couldn’t win for losing that day.” He stretched out the hand to touch her cheek. “Really missed you, Char.”

“Same here,” she said fervently. “A lot.”

“Guess I was a damn fool just standing around letting Roy have you.”

“That’s done.”

“But that’s the way it was.” Woody fussed with his horn. “You couldn’t see anyone else.”

That plus the old Plattsville brainwash bullshit, Charity remembered honestly. Save yourself for marriage and marry as soon as you can, before you know anything at all, let alone how to love. By the time you do, it’s worn out as the car and the furniture. “Jeezooee, I was dumb, Woody. Anything worth doing takes practice, doesn’t it? Like playing the trumpet.”

“Sure. If you’ve never been bad, how do you know when you’re good?”

“Or being a doctor or even roller skating. But they expect us to be good at love right off.”

That one true love stuff never did much but sell houses and diapers and keep dummies like me off welfare as unwed mothers. There’s no more one true love than one true song to sing or dress to wear. Totally ridiculous, but so was I for buying it.

But — here she was being intelligent for a change, even if she had to die to achieve it, and Woody Barnes was laughing at her, grinning like a stupid kid.

“What the hell’s so funny?”

“No... no. Just you look kind of different.”

“I feel beautiful, Woody. Just when I thought I lost you for good, I find you when I’m going Topside myself. Now we can go together.” She snuggled close to Woody, reveling in the security of his arms around her.

“I always loved you, Char. Took me a while to know it, too.” A beautiful thing to say — too beautiful for the fresh convulsion of giggles that followed. “Listen, you have to trust a little, okay?”

“Maybe I will if you’ll stop laughing like a fool.”

“I can’t go with you, Char.”

She looked up at him in surprise. “You’re not gonna stay here, are you?”

“Well, no.” Woody seemed to be choosing his words with excessive care. “There’s a lot I can’t tell you.”

Charity felt a chill grow over her happiness. “Why not?”

Woody Barnes was not supple at evasion. “Well, I’m not dead.”

She didn’t understand that at all. “But — your friend Milt, you said he died in Beirut, and here you are with him. There’s not a lot of rules around here, Woody, but that’s one of them. What do you mean, you’re not dead?”

“Just sort of drafted. For the duration.”

“Duration of what?”

“Well, that’s what I can’t tell you. Just my part’s done, so I’m going home.”

Too damned much. Staring at Woody, she felt the second loss of him like a physical ache. Lost once out of ignorance and now again for no reason she could understand, and here he was telling her to trust... men.

“Always telling me what to do!” she flared suddenly. “First Roy, now you. Goddamnit, Woody Barnes, you are not in charge of the world —”

Only one answer. Woody Barnes finally made the right one. He kissed her. Thoroughly. In the lovely middle of it, Charity knew even more poignantly what she’d missed and would be missing for forever yet to come, but now at least she had some experience to judge from. Woody didn’t have Dane’s electricity or the bitter-tangy fascination of Jake, but... oh, yes. The kind of kiss you could live with a long time like a good, comfortable bed, and it tore her heart out with so much wisdom come too late.

“Damn, Woody,” she said weepily against his cheek. “You’re going home and you’ll be married to someone else —”

“No way, Char.”

“Come on, be real. You’ll find someone else’n’ have kids and a whole life to live. And when I see you again, if I ever do, there’ll be so much you lived that you can’t share with me, and it’s so damn, rotten un
fair
 — and here I am putting my heart out for you to walk on and what the hell are you
laughing
at?”

All through her bittersweet lament, Woody’s grin had grown even broader. “I can’t tell you, but will you trust a little?”

“Like a stupid hyena: yuk yuk yuk.”

“Girl.” Woody kissed her again. No mistake, he was very good at it.
Talk about can’t win for losing,
she lamented through his embrace. “I promise you, Char Stovall, you won’t miss a thing. Whatever comes to me, I’ll share with you.”

She punched his arm in frustration. “How about sharing the joke?”

He still shook his head with that stupid-pleased grin. “No joke.”

“Not to the late Miss Stovall it ain’t.”

“But it’s big, Char. I don’t know if anything like this ever happened before in the whole world.”

“That’s a safe bet.” Charity glowered.

“I told you to listen, okay?” Woody shook her gently by the shoulders. “We’ll see each other again. Trust me, okay?” He brushed the hair from her forehead delicately as if just discovering it. “Don’t be sad, honey.”

“Easy for you to say.” With feminine practicality, Charity thought of Jake. She could go anywhere and, face it, a girl could do her waiting with a good deal worse. “I’ll try not.”

“Fall in, Barnes!” Milt reappeared, balancing a platter of burritos in one hand, Essie Mendel latched on to the other. “They didn’t lie about the nosh, it’s great. My treat, enjoy. This is Essie, also a winner.”

Her own feelings very sensitive just now, Charity could read them in Essie like a neon sign. She clung to Woody’s good-looking friend close as after-shave, and her introduction was clearly proprietary. “Char, this is Milton Kahane. He’s Reform from Long Island.”

“Reform?”

“The next thing to Unitarian,” Milt translated. “Let’s grab a table and assimilate.”

They were moving to join Leon Pebbles at his eager invitation when the front doors exploded inward like a broken dike, loosing a tide of armed Paladin guards. The shock squad fanned out from the entrance, leveling submachine guns and bad dialogue at the startled customers.

“Freeze, mothers!”

“Nobody move!”

“Hold it, turkey — don’t even think about it.”

“Me?” Woody eased between Charity and the weapon trained on them. “Mind not pointing that thing at me?”

“Shut up, pussy.” The gun muzzle swung on a slight movement from Milt. “Don’t try it, dogshit. I’ll mess you all over the wall.”

“Please, not again.”

“Everybody over toward the bar. Move.”

Charity had a bad feeling that she understood more of this than she wanted to. The next moment proved her dismal theory. Fat little Drumm strutted through the door, flicked his clams-under-glass over her, then the room at large, and motioned to someone outside. Roy Stride stalked into Club Banal in SS black, whip in hand. He took the moment, giving them all, including Charity, the full effect of his absolute power.

“Hi, honey. Said I’d find you. C’mere. Okay, Drumm, everything’s cool.”

“This is not a general raid,” Drumm announced. “We want only Miss Stovall. No one but her abductors will be arrested.”

“Come on, Charity.” Roy gestured with his coiled whip. “You’re rescued.”