“No,” he said.
“Tell me another poem.” Dressed, now, she sat beside him, knees bent, head bowed.
“I don’t know any others from memory. I don’t even remember how the rest of it goes, and I’ve read it a thousand times.”
“Was Beethoven a poet?” she asked.
“A composer. Of music.”
“So was Bob Dylan.”
Nick said, “The world began before Dylan.”
“Let’s go,” Charley said. “I feel like I’m catching cold. Did you enjoy it?”
“No,” he said truthfully.
“Why not?”
“You’re too tense.”
“If you had gone through the things I’ve gone through—”
“Maybe that’s what’s the matter. You know too much. Too much and too soon. But I love you.” He put his arm around her, hugged her, kissed her on the temple.
“Really?” Some of her old vitality returned; she leaped up, spread her arms wide, spun in a circle, arms extended.
A police cruiser, its siren and red light off, came gliding up behind them, silently landing.
“The Cow,” Charley said; she and he sprinted for the Cow, scrambled in, with Charley behind the tiller. She started it up; the Cow rolled forward as its wings extended themselves.
The red light of the PSS skunk car came on; so did its siren. And, on a bullhorn, the cruiser blared at them, words they could not decipher; the words echoed and echoed until Charley screeched with suffering.
“I’ll lose him,” she said. “Denny did it a thousand times; I learned from him.” She crushed the gas pedal, flattened it. The roar of full-throated pipes thundered behind Nick, and at the same time his head was snapped back, as the Cow suddenly gained speed. “I’ll show you the engine in this sometime,” she said, her eyes moving back and forth. And the Cow continued to gain speed; he had never been in a squib hopped-up like this, although he had seen many hopped-up ones brought onto the lot for resale. They were not like this, however.
“Denny put every pop of money he owned into the Cow,” she said. “He built it for like this, for getting away from the pissers. Watch.” She touched a switch, sat back, her hands no longer on the controls. The squib dropped abruptly, almost to the ground; Nick tensed himself—it looked like sure impact—and then, on some sort of automatic pilot system, unfamiliar to him, the ship glided at enormous speed up narrow streets, between old wooden stores—gliding at about three feet from the ground.
“You can’t navigate this low,” he said to her. “We’re lower than if the wheels were down and we were landcrawling.”
“Now watch this.” She turned her head, studied the PSS cruiser behind her—it had followed, allowed himself to fly at their level—and then she yanked the rise-gear network into the ninety degrees” position.
They shot upward, into the darkness, the cruiser right behind them.
And now, from the south, a second cruiser appeared.
“We ought to give up,” Nick said, as the two cruisers joined together. “They could open fire any time, now, and get us. In another minute, if we don’t comply with that flashing red light, they’ll do so.”
“But if we’re caught, they’ll snuff you,” Charley said. She increased their flight angle, and still, behind them, the two police cruisers howled their sirens and flashed their lights.
The Cow dropped once more, deadfall, until the automatic system halted it several feet above the pavement. The police cruisers followed. They dropped, too.
“Oh, God,” Charley said. “They’ve got the Reeves−Fairfax margin control system, too. Let’s see.” Her face worked frantically. “Denny,” she said. “Denny, what’ll I do? What’ll I do now?” She turned a corner—scraping a street lamp, he noticed. And then a bursting cloud of fire manifested itself directly ahead of them.
“Grenade launchers or thermotropic missiles,” Nick said. “A warning shot. Turn on your radio to the police band.” He reached toward the control board, but she savagely grabbed his hand and pushed it back.
“I’m not going to talk to them,” she said. “And I’m not going to listen to them.”
Nick said, “They’ll destroy us with the next shot. They have the authority to do it; they will.”
“No,” Charley said. “They’re not going to shoot down the Cow. Denny, I promise you.”
The Cow ascended, did an Immelmann, did one again, then a barrel roll . . . and the cruisers remained on their tail.
“I’m going—do you know where I’m going?” Charley said. “To Times Square.”
He had been waiting for this. “No,” he said. “They’re not letting any ships into that area; they have it sealed off. You’d run into a solid phalanx of black-and-whites.”
But she continued on. He saw searchlights ahead, and several military vehicles circling. They were almost there.
“I’m going to go to Provoni,” she said, “and ask him for sanctuary. For both of us.”
“For me, you mean,” he said.
Charley said, “I’ll ask him straight-out to let us into his protective web. He will; I know he will.”
“Maybe,” Nick said, “he will.”
Abruptly, a shape loomed ahead. A slow army vehicle, carrying ammunition for hydrogen warhead-firing cannon; it had its warning lights lit from end to end.
Charley said, “Oh, God I can’t—” And then they hit.
Chapter 25
Light flashed in his eyes. He heard—felt—movement about him. The light hurt and he reached to put his hand up, to shut away the light, but his arm would not move. But I feel nothing, he said to himself. He felt completely rational. We’re on the ground, he said to himself. It’s a PSS occifer shining his flashlight into my eyes, trying to see if I’m unconscious or dead.
“How is she?” he asked.
“The girl in the ship with you?” A leisurely, calm voice. Too calm. Uncaring.
He opened his eyes. A green-clad PSS occifer stood over him with a flashlight and gun. Wreckage, mostly from the ammunition carrier, lay spread out everywhere; he saw an ambulance, white-clad men working.
“The girl is dead,” the PSS occifer said.
“Can I see her? I have to see her.” He struggled, trying to get to his feet; the occifer helped him, then brought out a notebook and pen.
“Your name?” he asked.
“Let me see her.”
“She looks bad.”
Nick said, “Let me see her.”
“Okay, buddy.” The PSS occifer led him, by the use of his flashlight, through the mounds of debris. “There she is.”
It was the Purple Cow. Charlotte was still inside. There had never been a doubt from the first as to whether she was alive: her skull had been neatly halved by the tiller, into which she had fallen with enormous force when the Cow hit the big tub of an ammunition ship.
Someone had, however, dragged the tiller away from her, leaving the opening the tiller had made. The cerebral cortex could be seen, wet with blood, convoluted, pierced in half. Pierced, he thought, as in the Yeats poem; pierced by my glad singing through.
“It had to happen,” he said to the cop. “If not this way, then some other way. Some fast way. Maybe someone on alcohol.”
“Her ID cards,” the cop said, “say she’s only sixteen.”
“That’s right,” Nick said.
A tremendous boom sounded, shaking the ground under them. “H-head cannon,” the cop said, busy with his pad and pen. “More firing at that Frolixan thing.” He braced himself. “It won’t do any good. It’s into people’s mind all over the planet. Your name?”
“Denny Strong,” Nick said.
“Let me see your mandatory ID.”