Rocket Science (23 page)

“Daddy won’t let her burn,” he said quietly, his voice shuddering.

For a moment we just sat there, as the images on the screen receded. Guilt gnawed at me. First I’d failed my dad, now Mrs. Bellamy.

“Perhaps you would like to fly,” Pegasus finally said. “Use the handles, see what you think.”

Something to do. Something I cared about. Something to take my mind off my mistakes. I took the handles that were built in to the oversized seat I occupied. I hoped that if mine were active, Floyd’s weren’t.

The system was simple. There were no rudder pedals, there was no throttle. The handles had grips and thumb buttons, and swiveled across all three axes. I just moved my hands where I wanted to go, and Pegasus obeyed.

Grasping the handles was odd, though. They were unnatural under my hands. I explored the bumps and the shallow dents for knuckles, and examined the layout of the buttons. These handles had been designed for someone with a thumb like mine but five short fingers instead of four long ones. Someone who wasn’t human.

That little detail more than anything else brought home to me emotionally, personally, that Pegasus was alien.

Flying Pegasus was like my dreams, only better. When I was a kid, sometimes I would dream that both of my legs were strong and whole, and I could outrun the wind. It was like that with Pegasus, only I knew that I never had to wake up from this and stumble out of bed, lame and miserable, aching in my calf with every step of the day. I was free, for a while. I didn’t care what happened to me next.

Floyd finally roused from his misery. “Where...where are you going, Vernon?”

“Augusta,” I said shortly. I’d failed him in failing his mother, at least I could do something constructive for my computational rocket. “We have business in town.”

In point of fact, Pegasus was flying so fast that we had already reached Augusta. I banked Pegasus around the lighted towers of the old White Eagle refinery complex, now Mobil.

“Pegasus,” I said, “There’s more petrochemicals down there than you’ll ever know what to do with. I promise you we’ll get what you need.”

“I have located sources of the appropriate grades to satisfy my requirements,” said Pegasus in its private voice. “How will we compensate the proprietors of this refinery?”

“What?” I was astounded.

“I will not willfully misappropriate private property.”

“You just blew up a barn, two trucks and three Cadillacs, and now you’re worried about a hundred gallons of oil?”

“Perhaps we should locate your father’s remains first, then discuss this when you are being less emotional.”

Wonderful. That was what I needed to hear. Maybe I could somehow make up for Mrs. Bellamy. Those old men
had
to get her out of the root cellar.

I pulled Pegasus into an upward spiral over the refinery complex. “Tell me when you’ve got enough altitude to search for Dad.”

“Climb for fifteen seconds, then level off and cruise in a widening spiral,” replied Pegasus. Obviously, it could have gone on its version of autopilot at any time, but I appreciated the courtesy, and thrill, of flying such a machine. I wished I knew more about the basic principles behind Pegasus’ construction and power sources.

At the same time, I was glad Pegasus didn’t have instrumentation that I could read. I rather suspected that our rate of climb would unnerve me. I counted Mississippis until I reached fifteen, then pulled Pegasus out of the climb into a smooth, widening spiral.

The main screen showed a green-tinged aerial view of downtown Augusta. And pretty much the rest of Augusta too, for that matter. It wasn’t a big place. There seemed to be no traffic at all.

“Floyd,” I called, “what time is it?”

Floyd didn’t answer. I glanced over at him. He had his eyes tightly shut, and his hands trembled as he clutched the arms of his chair in a death grip.

“Floyd!” I yelled. “You’ve got a watch. What time is it?”

Floyd opened his eyes and slowly looked down at his left wrist, twisting it against his restraining strap. “It’s ten after eight.”

“Thanks.” Ten after eight on a Sunday night. Where was the street traffic in Augusta? State Street should be quiet, and the refinery didn’t run night shifts on the weekend now that the war was over, but the highway should still be busy. I studied the aerial view. I couldn’t see any traffic. Had the MPs Ollie talked about shut down the whole town?

“Vernon Dunham,” said Pegasus.

“Yeah?”

“I believe that I have located your father.”

The view of Augusta on the main screen shifted to the simplified schematics I had seen back at the farm. It jumped through several levels of magnification until I was looking at a residential street. Houses lined both sides of the streets, and there were large numbers of bright spots clustered inside of them. One spot in the back of one of the houses flashed purple.

“The highlighted signature is a human-normal concentration of calcium with an unusual signature of moderately pure steel.”

Something about the street that looked familiar. “Where is that?” I asked.

“Three streets north and three streets east of the central intersection below us.”

“Broadway Street?” It was Doc Milliken’s house. That was why the street looked familiar. I was looking at Broadway Street, the street where I had lived until this morning. Dad was in the back of Doc Milliken’s house. And his spot was bright as anyone else’s.

He was alive! For now.

Had Milliken sold out his war buddy? The things these old men had hidden from us all. “Does that bright glow mean that Dad is still alive?” I whispered.

“I do not detect signatures of decay,” said Pegasus. “His signature is almost fully isomorphic to the normal individuals in the immediate area. I can estimate lowered interior temperature, which I believe is a sign of distressed or subnormal functionality.”

“Can we pick him up?”

“I have no medical facilities for humans,” said Pegasus.

“But we could fly him into Wichita and leave him at the hospital, right?” St. Francis, I figured. They knew all about the hole in Dad’s head. Some of the doctors even knew about the hole in Dad’s heart. Plus Wichita was in Sedgwick County, which meant that it would be harder for Sheriff Hauptmann to get at Dad.

“Where is Wichita?”

Pegasus seemed to know so much about Butler County that I was surprised it didn’t know where Wichita was. “A big city fifteen miles west of here,” I said.

“I am aware of it. Do you wish to land near the structure where your father is being held?”

“Yes!” I yelled. “As close as you can. Surprise will be important.”

Just like with Mrs. Bellamy, except Doc Milliken probably didn’t have two groups of killers duking it out by firelight.

“Let me take control. You do not have the necessary skills to land me in such a restricted approach environment.”

I was disappointed, but Pegasus was right. There was no way I could land it right smack in Doc Milliken’s yard. And I really wanted to see the look on the old bastard’s face when I showed up to claim Dad for good and all.

Chapter Fourteen

A
s we spiraled back down
, the ground below flowing smoothly past the view screens, Floyd finally spoke again. “Are we landing?” he asked timidly.

“Yes.” Despite my hard feelings towards him, I was starting to feel a little sorry for Floyd. Not much — he was still a nasty bastard as far as I was concerned. Literally. But he was shell shocked. Fighting his dad, the trouble his mama was in. Me. No wonder my buddy was in a swivet.

“May I please get out when we land?”

“I suggest that you let him go,” said Pegasus behind my ear.

On the main screen, Doc Milliken’s house rotated toward us in a ghostly shade of green, growing larger with each spin the image took. I stared with longing at the glowing dot that was Dad for a moment before it penetrated to me that Pegasus had asked me to release Floyd.

“No!” I roared. They could both take that for an answer.

“Vernon...” Floyd began.

“Shut up, you filthy little creep,” I growled. “You dumped your mama in an outhouse, I don’t owe you nothing.”

Floyd began to sob, something I hadn’t heard him do since before we started grade school together. “I didn’t want to do it,” he shouted over his heaving breath. “Daddy and Mr. Neville made me.”

Pegasus began to speak. “Vernon Dunham, I do not think—”

“You shut up too, Pegasus. You don’t understand what’s going on here. This human stuff, parents and children, blood relatives. You’re just a God-damned machine.”

I didn’t really want to hurt Floyd any more, but he still disgusted me. He still deserved some kind of punishment, some kind of suffering. Underneath all that blond, white-toothed charm, he had become something nasty. Maybe the war had done it, maybe living in a house of secrets all his life. But either way, I would be damned if I was just going to let him get out of Pegasus and walk away into the night. Floyd was the one bad guy that I had been able to actually get my hands on, and I wasn’t letting go.

“Vernon Dunham,” said Pegasus. “You cannot judge him any more than you can judge me. He lives his own life with his own consequences. Until you have the power to give life or restore freedom, do not be so quick to take either away.”

This, from a computational rocket who would not shoot back at people trying to kill it, however ineffective their attacks.

“As it may be,” I said, hating the cold, hard tone in my voice but unable to control it. “He’s not getting out of here.”

“Vernon...” Floyd said. “You went for my mama. Let me help you.”

“No.”
Why had he offered
?

We touched down on Doc Milliken’s lawn. I unbuckled my belt and hobbled over to Pegasus’ hatch. I hadn’t realized it lying down, but my hip was killing me. I must have hurt it real bad in the fall I took back in the barn. Just to make things worse, it was my left hip, my good leg, so I limped with both feet. It hurt to walk. “Crud,” I hissed quietly. “Let me out.”

Pegasus opened the hatch. “Be safe, Vernon Dunham,” it said.

“Whatever you do, don’t let that little creep go,” I warned, slowly stepping through the hatch.

“Be careful,” Floyd mouthed, so low I almost couldn’t hear him.

Pounding on Doc Milliken’s door, I realized I had no plan for dealing with the situation. Heck, he was getting old. I had thirty years on him. Even banged up as I was, I could just knock him down.

I heard sirens down on the Wichita Highway. Probably I had a couple of minutes’ grace before the Sheriff’s Department, the Police Department and the United States Army showed up in the front yard. Landing an airplane on a residential lawn was pretty much guaranteed to attract attention, especially in a town as tightly wound as Augusta must have become today.

Certainly no one would be surprised to find me at the heart of things yet again.

The lights came on in the Millikens’ front room. Ruthie Milliken pulled back the lace curtain on the glass of the front door. Her mouth made an ‘O’ of surprise as she saw me, then she threw open the door.

“Vernon, you look awful,” she exclaimed. “Come in you poor dear. Merriwether isn’t here, he’s out with—” She stopped as she looked over my shoulder at Pegasus parked on the lawn. “Oh my stars,” she said. Behind me, the sirens getting closer. “What is that?”

“Top secret experimental project from the Boeing plant,” I said. “I stole it,” I added with my best imitation of an evil grin. “Now, I’m here for Dad. He’s in the back, in Doc’s surgery.” Too bad the Doc wasn’t there, too, I thought, but that also meant one less hassle for me tonight.

“Vernon, you must have had a bad knock on the head. Merriwether sent your father into Wichita to the hospital, and he—”

I pushed past her and hobbled through the parlor towards Doc Milliken’s office door.

“Hey, young man,” she called behind me. “You can’t just go in there!”

I tried the door, but it was locked. I stepped back and threw my weight against it. The door popped open and I landed shoulder first on the floor of Doc Milliken’s office. His old pigeon-hole desk towered above me. I had narrowly missed the pedestal in my collapse. Desk or not, the impact with the floor hurt like the blazes, so much I could barely stand up again. Good thing that lately pain had become an old friend to me. And I had to find Dad.

Ruthie Milliken came up behind me, grabbing my elbow as I reached my feet. “Vernon, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I can try to help.”

“Shut up!” I was instantly sorry, for Ruthie Milliken had always treated me well, ever since I was a child. “Your husband’s a foreign agent, he tried to kill Dad, and I think he tried to have me killed.” I thought of old Mrs. Swenson and her boarding house on fire. “He’s holding Dad prisoner back in the surgery.”

Mrs. Milliken put her hands on her hips and glared at me. “Vernon Dunham, how could you say such things? You have lost your wits completely.”

I turned away from her and gingerly walked across the office to the door of the surgery. It was locked, too. My right shoulder was telling me it had done all the door breaking it was going to do, and my left shoulder was just about the only part of my body that remained uninjured. I was pretty sure I couldn’t break this one down. Outside, sirens shrieked and tires squealed as the cavalry arrived. Unfortunately, they weren’t here to rescue
me
. I’d gone over to the side of the Indians, and everyone knew how that always turned out.

“Do you have the key to this?” I asked.

She glared at me. “If you think I’m going to—”

I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Mrs. Bellamy’s dead because of your husband.” Not precisely true, but it would do in a pinch. Besides, maybe they got her out before the fire swept the house. The very thought made me sick all over again. “My dad’s dying in there, and those cops outside are definitely here to shoot me first and ask you questions later. I don’t have time to argue. Now open the God-damned door. If Dad’s not in there, I’ll just sit down quietly on the floor and you can turn me over to the police yourself.”

Mrs. Milliken opened a drawer in the instrument cabinet by the door and pulled out a key. “I can assure you, Vernon, that no one is in here,” she said, opening the lock.