Comeback Tour df-4

by Jack Yeovil

  The Needlepoint System was on line.

  "Throw me up a large-scale map of the Cape, and give me manual control. We're going to try a little target practice."

  "…belongs…"

  It had first been said, so the story went, on February 3, 1959, in a small airport near Mason City, Iowa. Charles Hardin Holly, top-lining a mid-west rock 'n' roll tour, had chartered a four-seater Beechcraft Bonanza to take him to Moorhead, North Dakota for the next engagement. Besides the pilot, the plane was already weighed down with Jiles Perry Richardson, The Big Bopper, and there was one seat left. It would go to either Tommy Allsup of the Crickets or the Chicano kid who sang "La-La-La-La-La-La-La Bamba," Richard Valenzuela. The kid won, but was unnerved, his breath frosting in the cold air as he protested to Buddy his lifelong fear of flying. Sometimes, he dreamed of dying in an air crash. "Don't worry Ritchie," said the twenty-two year-old to the seventeen year-old, confident of their immortality, "the sky belongs…"

  "…to the stars!"

  Elvis began to play, not as he had played for the Cajuns, to return a hospitality, or for Shiba, to please an admirer. This time, he played for himself alone, although maybe he hoped his Mama Gladys and Jesse Garon could hear, and he played as he had never done before.

  Always, Colonel Parker had hammered home, he had been a face and a voice and a set of hips, not a pair of hands and a brain and a heart. Now, he was everything.

  He had never been a great guitar player, but now his fingers slammed against the strings as well as Buddy's ever had, and his voice found new heights, new depths…

  Without thinking, he started off with a song he had heard many times but had never sung.before. Buddy Holly's "Everyday…" It must be the association with what he had said.

  It was getting closer, and it-was coming faster than a rollercoaster…

  It was supposed to be a song about a love that had surely come to stay, but Elvis realized as he sang, watching the stricken looks on the faces of the liule group standing around him on that great expanse of blackened and bloody concrete, that it was really a song about darkness, about death, and about what comes after.

  Death had certainly come for Buddy, who had often been compared to Elvis, and to so many others. He sang for Buddy, tapping his foot to add the famous handclap to the song, and he sang for Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper and that nameless pilot. He sang for Robert Johnson, whose ghost must surely be out there in the swamps, for Charlie Parker, for Johnny Ace, for Frankie Lyman, for Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, dead in a car crash in a foreign land, for Chuck Berry, for Jackie Wilson, for Harvey and the Moonglows, for Alan Freed, for the musical dreams of John Lennon, for Jesse Garon, for Reuben, for all those who had served in battle with him, for the Suitcase People still bleeding on the beach, for the murdered indentees of the Delta, for the mind-robbed Josephites he had killed.

  Krokodil was crying, a stream trickling from her one good eye. The ghosts stood solemnly in ranks, solidifying as the song took effect.

  Liquid electricity coursed dirough his veins, and he segued into Johnson's "Hellhound on My Trail," singing of the blues that fell down like hail.

  The girl from underground was sobbing now, falling into Krokodil's arms. With a tenderness the Op had never seen before, his employer stroked the black girl's short hair, and kissed her forehead.

  There were more songs to come. "Jambalaya," he sang, expunging the menace from the melody as he evoked fun on the bayou.

  Raimundo Rex was dancing, his feet crunching into the concrete, his tail lashing.

  The ghosts were coming up through the elevator platform, emerging slowly like conjurer's phantoms. They were all dressed in spacesuits, all hideously mutilated. Elvis had to sing for them.

  Something from an old children's show came to him, and he had to sing it. "I Wish I Were a Spaceman."

  Then there was a Sinatra song, "Fly Me to the Moon."

  And Petya Tcherkassoff's "Soyuz Love."

  There were more ghosts than Suitcase People now. The music fought to get free of him, and he felt like a channel to the beyond through which magic was pouring in an irregular, gushing, dangerous flood…

  He sang the first songs, the ones he had laid down with Bill Black and Scotty Moore in the Sun Studio in July, 1954. The songs that had taken him from truck driver to star. They were the songs, the ones that still meant the most to him, meant the most to everybody…

  "I Love You Because…"

  "That's All Right (Mama)…"

  "Blue Moon of Kentucky…"

  "Blue Moon…"

  Love, defiance, prayer, longing.

  It was music to reclaim the stars.

  “We haven't got time to take heat pattern readings, just tell Keystone to strike down everybody above ground within a five mile radius of this installation…"

  Addams' tired fingers paused over the keyboard. She was on the lip of questioning an order from the Prezz.

  Fonvielle knew what was needed. Direct, unhestitating action. If the Dream was to be preserved, he would have to get into the cockpit and haul on the stick.

  He elbowed the woman aside, and slipped into her chair. It was a keyboard and a screen, not a joystick and a windshield, but he was a fighter jock again.

  He fed in the co-ordinates.

  The Prezz laid a supporting hand on his shoulder.

  The ghosts were ascending through the ceiling. Grissom was the last to go, with a sad wave. Fonvielle was too busy communicating with Needlepoint to pay attention.

  "Target co-ordinates locked in, Mr President…"

  The Prezz squeezed his shoulder.

  "Firing…"

  The kid had come into the studio to cut a presentation record for his mother. Marion couldn't imagine anything more square, and yet there was something about his sulky good looks, and the way he shifted about on his feet. He looked a bit like Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, and dressed like a motorcycle hoodlum.

  "What kind of singer are you?" she asked as they were setting up.

  "I sing all kinds."

  "Who do you sound like?"

  "I don't sound like nobody."

  "Hillbilly?"

  "Yeah, I sing hillbilly."

  "Who do you sound like in hillbilly?"

  "I don't sound like nobody."

  Elvis sang, surrounded by a swirl of ghosts. Across the site, by the gantry, the ghost rocketship was taking shape. The ghosts seemed to be converging on the thing, melding into it, giving it substance.

  He couldn't stop himself. As he sang and played, his feet moved, his hips moved. The music shook him.

  He was all shook up.

  "…NOW!"

  Fonvielle stabbed the RUN key, and the instructions were downloaded from Keystone into the entire Needlepoint Ring. There were two satellites who could bring their lases to bear on Florida.

  Duroc's fist clenched and his breath caught.

  Within seconds…

  "You know, Marion," Sam Phillips had said, listening to the ten-inch acetate the kid had made, "that boy has got something. That boy has got the power!"

  Krokodil felt the channels opening up as the Op sang. The music was getting into her too, shaking her down to the depths, the depths where the Ancient Adversary lived.

  The whole Cape was shaking.

  The gantry creaked enormously as it collapsed, leaving the shadow ship standing, smoke pouring from its base.

  The spirits were clustered close around the rocket.

  Elvis sang "Jailhouse Rock."

  A lizardman burst into flames, and fell in ashes. Krokodil looked up at the sky.

  "I wouldn't let my daughter cross the street to go to an Elvis Presley concert," declaimed the shouting preacher in 1958, "with his lewd behaviour, his jungle rhythms, his obscene movements, his suggestive lyrics, and raucous jangles that barely qualify as music, that boy is an instrument of the Devil!"

  Nguyen Seth's consciousness nestled inside Keystone, and looked down with a strange detachment a
t the State of Florida. The hair-thin beams were striking down meticulously, criss-crossing the Cape Canaveral site, snuffing out the inconvenient creatures.

  And yet there was a disturbance in the Outer Darkness. A great magic was being worked down on Earth. The Ancient Adversary was exerting its baleful influence.

  Krokodil was there. And another shaman, a pure human with great powers.

  Seth's anger spurted through the circuits of the satellite. The death rained down with redoubled fury.

  Shiba didn't know what was happening. People all around him were exploding in flames.

  Captain Marcus shouted to everyone to "take cover, take cover…"

  Elvis kept playing, too caught up in the music that possessed him to notice the chaos around him. Shiba wondered if the music was doing this, causing people to explode…

  In Japan, they had always said that rock 'n' roll was bad for you.

  No, he thought. Whatever this effect is, the music is set against it. If the Op keeps playing, maybe there's a chance that the fires from above will stop.

  "…take cover," shouted Marcus, his head smoking, "take…"

  The Captain's blood boiled over, leaking out of his mouth, eyes, nostrils and eardrums. He pointed his pistol into the sky, and fired…

  His clothes were burning now. Marcus struggled to hold himself together, but it was hopeless.

  He burst apart, spreading sizzling scraps around him.

  Fonvielle's elation was ebbing.

  The Dream was working. Needlepoint was on line. The program would be up and running again.

  But the console in front of him was doing funny things.

  "T-minus ten…" said a rasping computer-generated voice.

  "What?" asked the Prezz.

  "It's initiated a launch sequence."

  "T-minus nine…"

  "What has?"

  "T-minus eight…"

  "The equipment. Something is cleared for take-off…"

  "T-minus seven…"

  "…according to the readings, it's the Circe IV…"

  "T-minus six…"

  "…but that blew up years ago…"

  Simone ran, the invisible beams all around her. The Suitcase People were being cut down like stalks of wheat.

  The ghosts were together now, in the body of the ghost ship. Great clouds were being discharged from the manitou.

  She just hoped she lived to see it take off.

  "T-minus five…"

  Duroc had turned to ice. Not since the Jibbenainosay, had he felt such a dread.

  'T-minus four..,"

  "Fonvielle, abort take off."

  'T-minus three…"

  "I'm trying, Mr Prezz, but the instruments…"

  "T-minus two…"

  "…don't respond."

  "T-minus one…"

  Duroc hoped Krokodil was dead by now.

  "Ignition."

  The bunker staff were looking at each other, bewildered. Sister Addams was hugging her knees, tears on her face. Fonvielle was chewing his entire beard.

  "Lift-off," said the mechanical voice, "we have lift off!"

  "The only possibility in the United States for a humane society," said Phil Ochs, "would be a revolution with Elvis Presley as leader."

  It was over. He was exhausted, emptied of music.

  Surrounded by burning people, Elvis dropped his guitar and ran.

  The dark shape was rising from the Cape, stabbing into the sky.

  Krokodil was tearing at the ground, possessed again of an enormous strength, ripping through the elevator platform.

  An indentee, down on his knees praying, exploded, spattering Elvis with burning fat. He wiped the fire spots from his jacket.

  To the East, the sea was boiling. A tidal wave of boiling steam swept across the base.

  Elvis's face and hands stung.

  "Something's coming through," Tozer shouted, firing up into the elevator shaft.

  "Resist it," Duroc ordered.

  Waltons crowded into the shaftbed, trampling underfoot the remains of the sacrifices.

  "It's exiting earth atmosphere," Fonvielle said.

  Duroc knew where it was going. He swore under his breath.

  The Commander was plotting the phantom's trajectory.

  "It will intersect with Keystone, sir…"

  There was only one thing for it.

  "Cease the ground attack. Order Needlepoint to defend itself."

  A large chunk of something fell down the shaft, crushing a Donny.

  Fonvielle communicated with Needlepoint, rapidly reprogramming it.

  Keystone responded, its defensive systems activated.

  The rain of death had stopped, Shiba realized, and he was still alive. He looked around to see who else had survived. Raimundo was nowhere to be seen, and that was a bad sign. He should be impossible to miss. Krokodil had torn open the elevator shaft. The black girl from under the ground was wandering out of the smoke, her thin dress wet through. And Elvis was slack-jawed, astonished at what had been torn from him.

  The steam felt good on his hide.

  Seth withdrew from Keystone, and watched sadly as the Needlepoint System tried to defend itself. Its lases sliced accurately through the sky and passed harmlessly through the smokeshape of the Titan 7 rocketship.

  The object was a cluster of angry ghosts.

  "We've screwed the pooch, Mr President," Fonvielle shouted, "the Dream's not for killing. Needlepoint's been rotten from the start. It's an insult to the dead. That's why they want to stop it."

  The Prezz had a gun. Fonvielle saluted his chief, but knew that what he had done was an obscenity, a perversion of the great work…

  Fonvielle knew he had to take what was coming to him. He knew he had to join the knot of spirits in the manitou of Circe.

  The Prezz shot him through the heart. "Thank you, Mr…"

  "Prezzzzz…"

  He was with the others now. Grissom, Capaldi, Metelkina, Poole, Kuhn, Sementsova, Griffith, Collins, Tracy, Lazarev, Mihailoff, Breedlove, Bowman, Rusoff, Gagarin, Victorov. All of them.

  Their bodies had some substance. Not flesh, exactly. More like electricity, or fire…

  The Circe IV sped towards its target.

  Krokodil dropped frags into the shaft, and ducked away from the blast. This battle was nearly over. She knew now that Elder Seth wasn't down there, that she would have to face the preacher on some other field. But she knew that the Adversary had won a victory today, a victory that would tell…

  Duroc looked at the monitor. Underneath the splash of Fonvielle's blood, the Circe IV blip .was nearing Keystone. Only moments until impact.

  Seth was hurled out of Keystone as the Circe IV phantom enveloped the satellite, and tugged back to his body in Salt Lake City.

  In the daytime sky, a star blazed brightly for an instant.

  "Sir, sir," shouted a junior lieutenant at Edwards Air Force base, "we're getting some wild readings from earth orbit."

  "Shee-it," swore his superior, "this is like last year's fiasco all over again."

  "So, do we log it?"

  The officer swilled hot recaff, and knew he was going to regret it, "Yeah, log it…"

  The tracking screens were flashing like strobe lamps.

  "…but be prepared to swear we're talking instrument failure."

  Simone knew Roger was down in the hole. He would be angry with her. But she owed him something.

  The Krokodil woman was leading the surviving Suitcase People, readying for a strike into the depths, to wipe out the Josephites.

  Simone didn't know what to do.

  Duroc watched it on the big screen. Keystone went first, flaring and leaving a black hole amid the light readings. Then the others, one by one, until all twelve were gone.

  Addams was back at her monitor. "Needlepoint is down," she said.

  There was fighting in the elevator shaft now. Tozer was dead, and the Suitcase People were abseiling down. Most of the Waltons were finished.

&
nbsp; The bunker staff mainly sat quietly at their consoles and waited. There were several fires raging as the Needlepoint circuits burned out.

  The big screen cracked across, and sheets of glass fell.

  There was water on the floor. Hot, salt water.

  Duroc threw away the headset he had been gripping throughout, and left his command position.

  It was time to pull out.

  "Premier Yeltsin, we thought you should know the Americans have been getting rid of some of their astro garbage."

  "Does this violate any of the treaties?"

  "Most of them."

  "Ah well, call up Oliver and give him a bollocking. If he squeals too much, insist on a UN inquiry. What are GenTech…I'm sorry, I mean…what are the Japanese Government doing?"

  "Nothing."

  "It is good."

  Raimundo Rex roared out of a pile of rubble, tail whipcracking, and jumped past Shiba into the elevator shaft.

  Krokodil signalled the Suitcase People to follow.

  Elvis took a rope, and plunged downwards into the fiery dark.

  Shiba followed.

  "Holy Father," said Father O'Shaughnessy, "it is happening again. Another major tremor."

  Pope Georgi unconsciously popped his ring into his mouth, and pondered.

  "Pray, Declan," he said, "pray…"

  Elder Seth erupted from his isolation tank, still shaking. In the Outer Darkness, the Dark Ones raged at him. Another failure.

  Elvis hit the bottom of the shaft, and sprayed gunfire at the Waltons. The fighting was almost over. Raimundo had finished most of the surviving bunker staff off.

  There were fires, and water was coming in from somewhere.

  "Bye-bye, Gavin," sang Sonny Pigg, backed in this special commemorative concert by most of The Mothers of Violence and the bassman from Bolt Thrower, "I'm a gonna zap you…" So long, Gavin, you're just a piece of crap, you "Won all that cash, but it was gone in a flash…"

  Duroc crammed himself into the escape canister, and pulled levers. This should shoot him three hundred yards through a disused ventilation tunnel, and bring him up in the saltmarsh.

  He didn't have time to be angry about the collapse of the Needlepoint Project.

  He had to survive, to serve the Summoner again.

  Krokodil ran through the corridors, searching, firing into empty rooms.

  She was her own self again, the monster receding. There were alarms going off everywhere around her.