Dad and the baritone Haymaker had been singing:
Halfway home, boys, halfway home!
Jimmy jimmy jimson weed,
Nono nono no m-
Ore alone!
With my little bitty buckaroo baby
Sa-sa-saddled by my side,
My honey bunny sonnyboy,
Let’s ride!
Halfway h . . .
And there they swarmed, Shaman’s Space People, a dozen humans swathed in what looked like twisted bedsheets. They swept straight for us over the sand. Dad and the Haymaker fell silent. Izzy started beeping.
“No!” Izzy pulled out the beeper and examined it. “Three point five and rising. Damn! Shaman’s trying an epochй.” The air shimmered with heat waves. The Space People advanced through a mirage of shining sand that looked like the Great Salt Lake. As we continued to advance, it cleared, and behind them, suddenly, nearer than the chotchke market of Nazlet El-Semman, there appeared a large concession complex that had not been there a moment before, although everyone in the world except Izzy, Johnny and I?and Shaman?remembered its being there.
The Texas state flag hung limply from a huge pole beside it. In addition to the entrance at the base, there was another entry on the upper story, a pair of glass doors opening into empty space. It looked exactly like a highway rest stop cafй, with the overhead passenger walkway amputated.
“Lila,” Izzy asked her, “how’s the Vietnam War going?”
“The what?”
“The Vietnam War. This is important.”
“Well, Iz, last I heard anyway, the VC were still holding onto Manhattan, Washington, and most of the American east coast, but the government in Memphis is making them fight like hell to advance inland. Why?”
36. Plan B
“And who’s president? C’mon, Lila, honey, I gotta know the score before Shaman leaves the dishwasher.”
“What president?” Sarvaduhka interjected. “The last president was Kennedy, in nineteen hundred and sixty-three. Since then, it’s been a monarchy. Are you completely crazy, besides being a back-stabbing fornicator?”
“Well, boys,” Izzy said, “better switch to Plan B. Looks like we’re not gonna make it to customs before midnight?Do we still have midnights. . . ? Hey! Where’s the baritone?” The Haymaker’s horse was snorting nervously. Its saddle was empty. At its hooves was a dead asp with a bolo tie around its eyes.
“Dang!” Johnny said. “There goes the best Earther baritone you ever saw.”
“Phooey!” Sarvaduhka spat and tramped forward, biliously abreast of Izzy. “It was stupid to bring a horse to carry that asp in the first place.”
The Space People huddled about two hundred yards away. Someone had appeared against the double doors of the cafй. “That’s Gypsy or I’m a mute coyoot,” Johnny said. “I ain’t seen that boy since we chain-ganged together on the Magellanic Stream.” Gypsy was banging on the glass. Banging, banging. Then sliding down slowly, leaving a trail of ichor. And revealing behind him, as he fell, a tall figure dressed in white. There was a catch in Johnny’s voice: “And that’s gotta be Shaman.”
Where’s Nora? I thought?I Mel?eyes closed, swooning at the cafй table. Is she okay?
“Sure she’s okay,” Izzy said, down on the desert. “She’s batting a thousand, kid, only we may not be doing so good. I don’t like the way Shaman’s smiling.”
Johnny Abilene was unzipping his human skin. My father! The big hat fell down around his dendrites. The spurs and boots slid down his horse’s flanks and slithered, still stuffed with feet, to the sand below. The horse, spooked, took off toward the Pyramid of Cheops, leaving Johnny hovering there for a moment before he fell to the ground, at noticeably less than 32 feet per second squared.
Lila Kodzi petitely threw up.
Sarvaduhka dismounted, ran to Izzy and fell on his knees. “Izzy, we are okay, yes? The Space People will not hurt us, yes? You have Plan B? Izzy, what is Plan B?”
Izzy slapped the Haymaker’s mount on the rump and watched it gallop toward the Space People, followed by Sarvaduhka’s horse. “Let me think a minute,” he said.
37. Drunken Tarrier
“Nora?” It came out of my throat like a death rattle. “Mom?” I lifted my head from the table. My cheek was wet?I had been drooling. She was cold. She didn’t move. I saw Shaman standing at the glass doors, Gypsy slumped at his feet. An acrid vapor rose from Gypsy’s flesh. The color was steaming out of it, yellow to grey to black. “Nora?”