Sean, being a Texan and all — healthy, strong, and all that jazz — was probably pretty good with his fists. Texas kids still tended to be sluggers in those days. But there were so many ways that he wasn’t a typical Texan, who could be sure? Still, he might be a fighter.
Groovy. That’s one.
(The cop was closer now, having trouble pushing through the crowd. Good old crowd. A ticket — the least I was prepared to expect from him — would cost us a good fifteen minutes, and we were running out of time. But Mike, cursing blandly, was adjusting the motors in a leisurely manner that threatened fair to overload my worry circuits.
(Then — BanG KlunK, ROAR — the motors suddenly meshed. The Tripsmobile rose its full eighteen inches from the pavement, the crowd cheered cynically, the cop looked disappointed, and we floated away up Sixth Avenue. But I continued to worry, of course.)
The band and Sean, alas, were the cream of our little army. The rest… words fail me. Look at them.
There was Andrew Blake, looking as though he weren’t quite sure what he was doing in our company and most likely feeling the same. He might easily talk the lobsters to death, given time, or con them out of their evil scheme and everything else they owned, but he’d never impressed me as having any native gift for violence.
Karen Greenbaum, I decided, could be counted on to faint at the sight of almost any six-foot-tall blue lobster.
Little Micky was crazy enough to be, perhaps, pound for pound a real ferocious critter, but he didn’t have pounds enough to matter much. I mean, he could doubtless lick anything his size, but he was only five feet tall and undernourished, and I couldn’t offhand think of anything his size that needed licking.
Sandi Heller and Leo might be dangerous as a team, he being strong and wiry and she being a dancer, unless they happened to flip out, which they both tended to do from time to time, usually together. And if what she told me in The Garden (“Mutter jumble mutter garble Baby,” with gestures) meant what I feared it might, the odds were she was pregnant and all bets were off.
(This catalog of worries didn’t take as long to make as it’s taking to tell. A moment’s glance at each face was sufficient, and I’d ordinarily spare you all these personnel details, but I think you ought to know what we had to work with. Why should I be discouraged all by myself when I can bring you along for company? And the action later on will much more nearly make sense if you know who’s doing it, perhaps.)
But the thing that really worried me was this: as long as we had this busload of question marks to begin with, wherefore I was going into battle feeling more like a keeper than a general, why in God’s personal name did our army have to include Gary the Frog and Harriet? Oh, I knew how we got them. Mike and I called them in on this out of habit, because we call them in on everything.
But Gary the Frog was anemic, full of parasites, extravagantly stupid, and a coward, and Harriet weighed more than three hundred pounds and had barely strength enough to climb a flight of stairs. This we needed?
Furthermore, Gary the Frog and Harriet liked Laszlo Scott (a chilling concept). In fact, they were even friends of his. He was one of their heroes. Ten to one they were on his side. I couldn’t help thinking that, though there wasn’t much they could do for us, if they wanted to help Laszlo, there was a hell of a lot they could do to us. What business did we have carrying Laszlo’s spies into action with us?
I was runner-up last year in the World’s Championship Worrying Contest at Poughkeepsie, but I think the winner cheated.
21
“MICHAEL,” I said, taking care not to let the others hear me, “Michael, I’m worried.”
“Swell.” He was riding the controls like a cowpoke on a bronco, strenuously, almost fighting them. The two steering levers moved like willful live things trying to escape him. Mike struggled with them grimly. Sweat, a rare sight, stood in beads on his upper lip and brow, ready to pour down his face at any moment.
Groovy, said my worrying machine. Mike’s having trouble keeping the bus under control. We’re in trouble. Hell, we’re doomed.
“What are you worried about?” He didn’t look at me when he spoke — a bad sign.
“What’s wrong with the bus?” I asked, neatly putting first things first.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Running like a… like a Bus. What makes you think there’s something wrong with the bus?” He didn’t sound concerned, but I was not deceived.
“Why do you have to fight so hard to keep it under control? What’s wrong with it? C’mon, tell Uncle Chester.”
“Fight?” Now he looked at me: one of his prime puzzled looks. Then, “Oh. I’m not fighting. Look.”
He relaxed. The steering levers stopped having a life of their own. The bus continued to ride as smoothly as before. Oh yeah?
“Explain?” I said unpleasantly,
“I was just playing astronaut.” He had the grace to grin sheepishly. “You know, landing the capsule and all that”
“Playing astronaut.”
“I didn’t realize it’d bother you. Sorry.”
“Great.”
“That what had you worried?”
“In part. Look…” I itemized our fighting crew’s deficiencies in some poetic detail, devoting lots of extra fine rhetoric to the untrustworthiness of Gary the Frog. He listened to it all as politely as he could — intent sufficing for the deed — but devoted most of his attention to driving. We were in the midst of the usual traffic jam at 36th Street, and the bus was trying to mount the car ahead of us. This would’ve been impolitic. It was another police car. Our bus had amazingly strong preferences.
When I was finished, Michael said, “Are you finished?” and I said I was.
“Swell. Now stop worrying.” I started to object, but he went on. “Believe me,” he said with galling patience, “I understand what you’re worried about. I know why you’re worried. But there’s nothing to worry about, honestly. I’ve got it all figured out, really I do, and it doesn’t much matter whether they can fight or not. As soon as we get out of this damn traffic I’ll explain it to you, okay?”
I was dubious and said so.
“Why don’t you go back and play your harpsichord?” he shrugged me off. “And don’t worry about it.”
There’s not much can be done with Michael when he acts like that, so, trying hard not to worry, I shuffled to the back of the bus and sat down at my little solid state harpsichord.
En route, I collected another worry. We had nothing to fight with. No weapons. The closest thing to a weapon that we had, in fact, was my briefcase, which might be good to swing in a crowd but wasn’t likely to make much of an impression on a hard-shelled blue lobster. But Mike had probably taken the lack of weapons into account, too. I carefully worried as little as I could and tried to play The Carman’s Whistle.
(The trouble with letting Michael manage things is that three times out of five he takes everything into account, and two times out of five he doesn’t, and there’s no way to tell which he’s done this time until things start to hit the fan. When his managing works, it works very very well, but when it doesn’t, you notice. Boy, do you notice!)
The Carman’s Whistle attracted Stu, Pat, and Kevin. They filtered back to the practice area, grabbed their axes, and wailed. We segued instantly into “Songwind”, an incomprehensibly poetic, hyperromantic, hard-driving modal rock tune we were hoping to hit the charts with.
I played bass with my left hand and raga riffs with my right, Stu beat out something like a demented 16-stroke tala, Pat played poignant lead lines based on the Kyrie cum Jubilo, Kevin’s 12-string provided architectural solidity, I forgot to worry, and Sativa came back to sing.