Jay Lake - Rocket Science

“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.

As 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.”