The voices of the interns could be heard clearly as they came down the hall.

"I'm telling you, he was that reliever, the knuckleballer who got fined for writing a phony Looney article and sending it in past the editors at SI -- the one--"

"No way, man, no way Rawhide was flaky enough to be any kind of pitcher. Besides, he's a born hitter--"

"Are you kidding? With that height and that extra half-inch of bone in his forearm? He was born for the mound. He's built exactly like Stanhouse..."

"Yeah, and where's Stanhouse? One great year with the O's and then a crummy one and suddenly nobody knows the guy's address. Besides, I think he was that slugger, came up from the minors at like 19, spent a year with the Cubbies -- c'mon, you know, the one who blew out the windows on Waveland Avenue before King Kong got onto the team, drat, what was his name? Yeah, Petoski -- remember, Power Alley Petoski, only spent one year on the team, quit'n went to school or something."

"Petoski? Does Rawhide look Polish to you? You're zoned, man, you're grasping at straws..."

The voices fell silent as the two interns came abreast of Rawhide's door, which was cracked open five or six inches. They knocked.

"Yeah." Rawhide was already grinning as they came in. Reno's partially accurate eulogy, apparently being raptly read by everyone on the place, was producing some pretty entertaining inquiries. This looked like being the most fun yet.

The interns, who ordinarily would not have dared to approach Rawhide with a dumb question, let alone a personal and dumb question, came in shyly. "Uh, we were wondering..."

"Yeah?" Rawhide was still grinning, and this, paradox-ically, made them even uneasier. Rawhide was not exactly famous for grinning without specific provocation, and they wondered what they were in for.

"Did you, uh... did you -- when you played baseball, did you play in the majors?"

Rawhide's grin got a notch broader. "I thought y'all had already pegged me for the famous Polish pitcher who blasted 'em out of Wrigley Field."

The interns shared a mortified glance. "We were just, you know..." Rawhide chuckled. Emboldened, one of them said, "Well, were you?"

Rawhide composed his face into a somewhat more serious expression, rolled an imaginary wad of tobacco in his jaw, and sucked meditatively on his teeth. At the end of this performance, a smile broke through again. "That would be telling," he said.

"Awww..." the suspense had been killing the interns and now they spun half around with frustration. Their quarry chuckled again.

"I'll give you a clue," Rawhide said sympathetically. "I'm not a Hall of Famer." He slurped the imaginary wad of tobacco again. "At least, not yet. 'N I'll give you another clue -- I wasn't a Cy Young pitcher. That help?"

"Aw, man," began one intern, then looked up to realize that no matter how jocular his mood might be, this was still Rawhide, who was not to be carped at unless you happened to be Perfect Tommy. But Rawhide just laughed.

"Yeah, thanks a lot," said the other intern, who was dragging her comrade out by the collar of his "No Lights" T-shirt. Their voices, nothing daunted, could be heard as they left the way they came.

"What about that guy who played first base for the Mud Hens but got moved to left field when he came up-- he was only there for a year, what was his name? He was big and fast and had a great glove, you know, split three bats trying to hit Seaver..."

~~~

The putative Warsaw Whammer chuckled as the interns' voices receded. Today the last IV would come out and he would get out of bed. Rawhide stretched luxuriously, systematically clenching and releasing nearly all his muscles. His left leg still refused to answer. He threw the sheet back and gave it a prolonged stare.

There hadn't been time yet for visible atrophy; it just looked like his old regular left leg, nothing the eye could see suggesting either its complete refusal to move or the vague tingle, like an itch or a foot gone to sleep, that he felt there all the time.

He ran his hands down the leg, closing his eyes, running his fingers over the knots and slick areas that marked old breaks and cuts, and the small symmetrical starbursts that memorialized a clean shot through his calf in a skirmish with bravos belonging to the Pasha of the Nine Tails.

What a mess that was -- Hanoi Xan dusting the whole area with mustard gas, heedless of his suffocating minions, a firefight in orange fog with Buckaroo Banzai frantically adapting their Go-Phones and the lining of his jacket into two powered-air-purifying respirators while Rawhide stood over him spraying their last two clips of ammunition at barely glimpsed shapes in the cloud around them. But now he couldn't feel the pressure of his thumbs on the scars; he might as well have been handling a sack of grain.

Rawhide frowned at his leg. It was an expression his strike team would have recognized; they saw it any time they gave less than total effort to whatever Rawhide assigned, whether it was holystoning the Institute's many floors or securing a building held by a sniper from Sabah.

~~~

Dropping by before lunch, Reno spotted a thick print-out sitting by Rawhide's bed. The Institute's scribe riffled its edges. "You read this, compadre?" he asked.

Because of the public demand for information, Reno was writing as rapidly as possible about the Jet Car test and ensuing events: Lizardo's escape, the advent of the Black Lectroids and the Yoyodyne strike, and the culminating dogfight between Buckaroo's thermal pod and Whorfin's troop ship in the airspace above Grover's Mills. The sling on his wounded left arm slowed his typing somewhat, but he had nevertheless produced a rough draft in less than three weeks.

Copies of this ms. were already circulating. Billy Travers, anxious to see what would be his first appearance in an Institute chronicle, had bootlegged the text out of Reno's supposedly secure computer. Billy gave a printout to Rawhide, who thus had found himself reading Reno's version of his demise one sunny afternoon.

Rawhide chuckled. "Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

Reno grinned. "You want me to take it out?"

"Nah," said Rawhide. "It's nice and private bein' dead." He thought for a minute. "Stuff about my wife, maybe," he said.

No point in getting sued, Reno agreed mentally. Rawhide was too much of a gentleman to say so, but Reno, an expert in such matters, had detected occasional signs that Rawhide's relation-ship with his former wife was not amicable. Aloud he said only, "dicho es hecho," no sooner said than done. Perfect Tommy and Pecos arrived at this juncture to say hey and collect Reno.

"Well howdy," said Rawhide.

"I bring a message from Garcia." Pecos was beaming. "Ghazal dropped her foal this morning. A filly, rose gray, the prettiest thing you ever saw."

"Y-e-a-h," said Rawhide, greatly pleased.

"And you get to name her, bub," Pecos added. Noor al-Barbazan, Rawhide thought instantly. 'Light of the Prodigal Son': homecoming. Ghazal, despite her name, was really Polish-bred, but the sire was from the Royal Jordanian stables, a thank-you gift to Buckaroo.

"Thanks, Pecos," he said. "I'll think on it."

"Hey there, Rip Van Winkle," greeted Perfect Tommy. "Getting your beauty sleep? Doesn't look like it." This was about par for a visit from the youngest Cavalier. His first words upon seeing Rawhide alive -- notwithstanding that he choked up and could barely get them out -- had been "You know, we could have used you at Yoyodyne."

"Unh-huh." Rawhide was unmoved by this flattery. "What else's new around the place? I keep forgettin' to ask: what happened at Penny Priddy's arraignment?"

"Nothing happened at Penny Priddy's arraignment, because Penny Priddy was not arraigned," Perfect Tommy said primly. Reno gave Rawhide a brief synopsis of Penny Priddy's capture and revival, adding that she had recently gone, at Institute expense, to Cody, Wyoming, to learn a little about the birth family she had only just heard of, and the lost twin sister who had been a living ghost in her heart all these years. "I'll bring you the newspapers."

"Yeah. Bring me some work, too, huh? I been doggin' it long enough."

The Cavaliers laughed. Only Rawhide would consider three weeks in a coma to be laziness.

New Jersey and the Lectroids appeared while they were still enjoying the joke. "Ready to get vertical?" New Jersey was full of eagerness. "How are you feeling today?"

"Pretty good," Rawhide allowed.

"Good, good," New Jersey nodded his head. "Let's try it." His attention was so intense that his eyes were open even wider than usual. "You understand I don't want you to try to walk, just stretch your legs down to the floor."

Rawhide hauled himself upright by the strength of his arms and maneuvered his legs over the edge of the bed.

"OK now, hold it right there for a minute," New Jersey held up an admonitory hand. "What you're feeling is the rush of blood back into your legs. It'll be uncomfortable for about one, one and a half minutes."

What Rawhide was actually feeling was the rush of blood back into one leg. The left leg was continuing with its mild tingling, nothing more and nothing less. He didn't say so.

Reno, Pecos, and Perfect Tommy were leaning against the back wall. It occurred to New Jersey belatedly that Rawhide might prefer to make this experiment in private. But wouldn't he say so? Maybe this is just another way these guys all stand by one another.

"Ok, I want you to touch your toes to the floor, no more than that. Let's not put any weight on it yet," New Jersey continued. "You're sure you're not dizzy, off-balance, your vision's clear?"

Rawhide shot New Jersey an impatient glance. The medico was treating him like an old lady.

It all happened at once: Perfect Tommy snickered with amusement at seeing Rawhide treated delicately; New Jersey, exasperated, turned around to throw the three Cavaliers or at least Perfect Tommy out of the room; Rawhide lurched up to a standing position, poised for a second, and tried to move forward at the exact moment New Jersey's attention was diverted. Pecos jumped and New Jersey whirled, but neither of them was in time. Rawhide set his left foot flat on the floor and collapsed like a felled tree.

"Shit, you can't walk!" Perfect Tommy said spontaneously. His face reflected a terrible confusion.

"This is how the paralysis works?" queried John Parker.

"I knew I didn't get something right," Rawhide said good- humoredly, pulling himself up on his good leg. He had never let Perfect Tommy's volatility affect him much. Still, he might have been a little extra tired as he settled his bulk back on the bed, and New Jersey cleared the room instantly.

~~~

"I'm going to kill you," Pecos hissed at Perfect Tommy almost before the door to Rawhide's room closed behind them. "You must have perfect vacuum for a heart."

"You and what army?" Tommy snarled. He broke stride, and let his tall frame fall back against a wall. "Rawhide could hit me -- Rawhide took me down once," he said miserably. "Shit!"

"Shit yourself," Pecos said, her voice considerably softened. She gave him a poke that was half-anger, half- sympathy. "He's still Rawhide." She moved to join Reno, who had simply turned his back on his comrade in arms and stalked off.

As Pecos reached him, Reno turned around to face Perfect Tommy. "Malo, Tomas, muy malo," Reno growled. Pecos gave Reno's shoulder a rub, and they walked away.

Perfect Tommy looked after them. There was agony in his expression, but he said nothing. They didn't understand. Whatever it was, they just didn't understand.

~~~

New Jersey made sure Rawhide was settled comfortably on the bed and suffering no ill effects from the fall before he left for dinner. He cursed himself every foot of the way to the dining room for having allowed Rawhide to try to walk in front of his friends. I knew they shouldn't be there, he berated himself. I knew it. Why couldn't I have just thrown them out? But he had elected not to, intimidated because his patient and his friends were the Hong Kong Cavaliers.

By the time New Jersey collected his meal, Buckaroo Banzai was polishing off his own light dinner of fugu and bean sprouts, chased with Slivovitz. New Jersey dropped his cheeseburger and fries on the table and sat down opposite his old classmate. He opened a bottle of catsup and poured a small lake of the sauce onto his plate.

This got Buckaroo's attention. New Jersey fidgeted, rolling the bottlecap along the tops of his fingers like a gambler with a silver dollar.

"Nice," Buckaroo approved.

"I think it's time," New Jersey said tersely. "He tried to walk this afternoon."

Buckaroo's shoulders squared slightly. "He has tingling."

"-- but no motion," New Jersey returned. "I think it's ghost pain, like an amputee's." New Jersey's tone moderated as he watched Buckaroo agree with this distressing judgment. "By now, he's working things out for himself."

"Yes," Buckaroo said. A little voice in the back of his mind said no. "Sid, there's something not quite right with this prognosis."

New Jersey wolfed half his cheeseburger. "Buckaroo... what? What?" He gestured with the remains of the burger. "Do you want to run more tests, call in a third opinion, what? If I'm wrong--"

"It isn't that we missed something," Buckaroo murmured. "But it is that there's something we haven't found."

"That's a paradox, and we have a patient." New Jersey folded his arms, then hastily pulled them apart, realizing he'd decorated his lab coat with cheese and catsup. "Anyway, it doesn't change what I'd tell him, because most of what I have to say is 'I don't know.' He needs to hear it, Buckaroo."

Buckaroo nodded.

"Right after dinner," New Jersey pressed.

Buckaroo sighed. "Okey doke."

New Jersey drummed his long fingers on the table, then philosophically reached for another fry. This deference from Buckaroo had been terrifying at first. Ever since the captured Red Lectroids' first revelations in the course of interrogation that humans could survive arachtoid stings, Buckaroo had pushed his agitated colleague to the forefront on every occasion.

No, not pushed. Buckaroo did nothing more than wait with an air of calm expectation for his pal Sidney to voice a diagnosis, explore an observation, suggest a procedure.

And Sidney Zwibel, hideously nervous and thrillingly self-assured by turns, had filled each one of those silences with his best judgment, often receiving no more than a quiet "I think so, too," in response from Buckaroo Banzai.

New Jersey reached for another fry. Twenty-seven days ago, he'd been lost inside an Eskimo's skull somewhere near the vein of Galen and had to beg his old classmate to come and bail him out. You didn't screw up, he told himself. Because you know for sure if you'd made the tiniest wrong move with Rawhide, he'd have been on your back like a case of hives.

~~~

The sun, barely past solstice, was still westering when Buckaroo and New Jersey climbed the stairs to the infirmary. Its rich orange-red light gave Rawhide's room an elegiac feel, which was accented by the piano player's expression. As New Jersey predicted, Rawhide had begun to assess his condition.

"How're you doing, pal?" Buckaroo breezed in, New Jersey on his heels.

"Getting along," Rawhide said. "They pulled my plug, any-how." The IV tubes were out. He picked up the sense of purpose in the two doctors. "Have you come to give me the medicine?"

"Yah," said New Jersey. No use mincing words with this man. Rawhide looked him straight in the eye as he folded his arms, then pulled one hand free to gesture. "Here it comes:

"You are suffering some transient and predictable aftereffects of trauma to the spinal cord; these include the intense pain in the lower back that you're experiencing, as well as possible dizziness, nausea, occasional disorientation. Transient, much more likely than not," New Jersey emphasized.

"OK. The other part is that you're experiencing residual paralysis of unknown etiology in the lower body, primarily or perhaps wholly localized to your left leg. The prognosis for that--" New Jersey broke from his stiff, intense posture.

"The prognosis is also unknown, but there are no current indications of change." He took a deep breath. "That's all of it."

Rawhide's eyes hadn't wavered from his for even an instant, but now they swung to Buckaroo. Buckaroo nodded. "That's my assessment, too," he told his friend.

"This medicine tastes kinda nasty, Buckaroo," Rawhide said. He pulled a smile out of sheer willpower.

Distressed for the pair of them, New Jersey started up again. "You'll be able to ride," he said quickly. "With the brace, you'll have enough control of your legs to ride."

Rawhide stared at him. Dr. Zwibel -- New Jersey -- meant well, certainly. Enough control of your legs-- With the brace, you'll have enough control of your legs...

He'd been 6'4" and bulky by the age of 14 and had had more than twenty years since then to bring his size under control. Unlike many big men, he'd been quick; he'd had the kind of speed that could spot a baseball travelling 90 m.p.h., react to its arc, and put a bat's sweet spot onto it for a trip out of the park. The kind of speed that could beat a throw to second nearly all the time; the kind of speed that dared to steal third.

It was the kind of speed that survived, unarmed, a back-alley attack in MetroManila by three of Xan's bravos wielding sugar-cane scythes. And it had always been enough speed to put Rawhide between Buckaroo Banzai and anything that shouldn't reach him. Like an arachtoid. With the brace, you'll have enough control...

"Any questions?" New Jersey was intent on his reactions.

Rawhide shook his head. "Guess I've heard enough for one evening," he answered.

"Uh-huh. If you want me, I'm around." New Jersey left, hoping Rawhide would be able to talk to Buckaroo.

"So?" said Buckaroo, hoping the same thing. "How are you?"

Rawhide waved a hand. "I'm up to bouillon, and tomorrow, Jello. I'm finer than frog's hair, I reckon."

Buckaroo waited. For Rawhide to show discouragement, or even to feel it, was nothing less than extraordinary.

Rawhide knew it, too. He looked at Buckaroo somewhat apologetically. "Residual paralysis of unknown etiology," he said. "Prognosis also unknown, but no current indications of change." He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin. "All it means is, I can't hardly move my left leg and there's no particular reason to expect I ever will."

"Yup." Buckaroo was still waiting. Outright defeatism was not Rawhide's style.

"Also means there's no reason to expect I won't."

"Yup, that's what it means," agreed Buckaroo. "What're you going to do about it?"

"Eat my damn Jello." This was spoken with a tone of deep disgust that broke a laugh out of both men.

"You could punch out a window," Buckaroo suggested reflectively, looking out at the sunset again.

"That one? Seventy-nine ninety-five, if we install it ourselves," said Rawhide. Buckaroo grinned. "Now that chair you're sittin' on only ran to nine dollars, but I don't think I could bust up aluminum tubing." The cowboy paused to consider. "Might be satisfyin' to try," he allowed.

"What about this lamp?" Buckaroo was pointing to the one at Rawhide's bedside. It was white porcelain, vaguely spherical, with a pinkish design of unknown intention adorning its base.

"Thirty-five bucks," said Rawhide.

"It's pretty ugly," Buckaroo commented. "We might do better next time."

Rawhide chuckled. "Beauty of environment, huh?"

"Are you telling me I don't practice what I preach?" Buckaroo sounded hurt.

"Seems more like you're tellin' me I don't practice what you preach," Rawhide returned. "You can case the Salvation Army store from now on, if that's how you feel about it." He grinned.

Buckaroo looked intently at Rawhide. After all these years, it hardly even occurred to him anymore to think in detail about the job Rawhide shouldered as the Institute's chief administra-tor. "Maybe I ought to," he considered.

"Sure thing," Rawhide said easily. "The next time I'm dead."

~~~

"OK," said New Jersey. "This is it." He'd a let a day go by before returning to this touchy subject, but even a star patient had to face facts. Inevitably, John Kildare and his faithful translator John Parker had tagged along.

New Jersey's tall form was curled above Rawhide's hospital bed and his long fingers were tangled into a mechanical contraption that Rawhide already knew he didn't want any part of.

"It fits on your leg like so, see," New Jersey wrapped the object around his own long, skinny shank, "and you can adjust the knee either to be fixed straight or to bend while you're sitting." New Jersey's voice wavered as he noticed the storm clouds in Rawhide's eyes. "And it hardly weighs a thing," he ended. "Any questions?"

With their usual literalness, the Lectroids assumed the invitation included them. "So now will Mr. Rawhide run and jump as forever before?" queried John Parker.

Another golden moment in Lectroid bedside manner, fumed New Jersey. What did they do, take some class on how to say exactly the wrong thing? "He'll be entirely mobile," New Jersey said tensely. It was a lie -- a therapeutic stretcher, he soothed his conscience. John Kildare was playing with the brace on New Jersey's leg, snapping the knee guard back and forth.

"What I'll be," said Rawhide in his no-nonsense way, "is lame."

New Jersey straightened to his full height, focusing a fiercely frustrated stare on Rawhide. "Neurologically speaking, you are the luckiest individual I have ever seen. You had 98% of a miracle, and now you've got 99." He waved a hand at Rawhide's newly painless lower back.

"99% is not an acceptable performance in this outfit," Rawhide pointed out.

"Ah!" exclaimed John Parker, with the tone of one who has suddenly seen through a great mystery. "This is why the cry-o-gen-ic procedure is used? If you are not enough dead?"

New Jersey rubbed a hand over his mouth to hide his smile. Rawhide's expression had lost a good deal of its truculence.

"You're not strong enough to get up yet anyway," New Jersey said smoothly. "I'll leave this here." He left the brace propped against the beside table and bent a moderately stern look on his patient. "Try it on."

Buckaroo Banzai materialized in Rawhide's room that evening. "Band practice at ten," he said.

Rawhide wasn't fooled. He picked up the brace. It was aluminum, efficient, funny-looking.

I don't want to wear a damn brace, he told himself. He considered this proposition, and amended it. I don't want to wear a fucking brace.

He held it up. "Look at this, Buckaroo. It's the sort of thing only the Grand Inquisitor could love." He snorted. "The Lectroids think it's funnier than a whoopee cushion."

Buckaroo shrugged. "You don't have to love it or laugh at it. You don't have to think or feel. You have to do. And band practice is at ten."

Rawhide was a much less flexible personality than Buckaroo Banzai, a trait that frequently stood Buckaroo's Institute in good stead. But today it meant that he shook his head at his boss, and made it stick. Buckaroo Banzai crossed his ankles and leaned against the window frame, contemplating human nature.

"There's a pair of cardinals nested in that maple." Rawhide pointed out the window. "Chicks haven't fledged out yet."

Buckaroo was barely able to make out the shape of a nest in the blue of late evening. He ran his fingers over the windowsill and up the frame. When he spoke, his voice was very quiet.

"Rawhide, what do you remember?"

"Not a thing," Rawhide said. "It seems like there might have been something, but it's like a dream you forget right when you wake up." A memory stirred, and he met Buckaroo's eyes. "Didn't see Peggy," he said, and then, reminded, added, "About the penny paradox..."

"Yes?" Buckaroo's voice betrayed him. Rawhide realized how eager his friend had been for this memory to return.

"You could have asked," he admonished Buckaroo, who shrugged a little sheepishly. "I ain't that delicate." He shook his head with amusement, then went on seriously.

"Penny Priddy checks out as a real person, right?" Not even waiting for Buckaroo's nod, Rawhide continued, "but she has unaccountable scraps of Peggy's knowledge, maybe even some of her mannerisms?"

Buckaroo's brows drew together. Penny Priddy had been absent in Wyoming since before Rawhide's recovery. Rawhide had heard her amazing outburst at the press conference, but couldn't have seen that Penny tossed her head with a gesture that had been right for Peggy's shoulder length hair but was wrong for her own New Wave bob, or that Penny had surprised even herself one morning by flicking a finger at Buckaroo's chin in a way that everyone recognized instantly as one of Peggy's casual caresses.

"When I was fadin', I saw her superimposed on Peggy," Rawhide said. "It came to me that she might be both of them. Not how, just the vision of it."

"She has scars on her scalp," Buckaroo told him. "Not plastic surgery. We can't find any implants. Her memories are continuous -- no contact with Hanoi Xan or anyone we can connect with him. She's a hard-luck lass from Laramie, Wyoming." Buckaroo indulged in a rare sigh and looked back out the window. "And then she pops out with a discourse on Hilbert's posers and n-dimensional space."

"Hmmmm." Rawhide was pensive.

"What?"

Rawhide scratched the back of his neck and was startled at the length of his hair. "I need a haircut," he said.

Buckaroo waited. "But, uh--I was thinkin' about some of Georgiana's stories about twins-- the two brothers who'd been adopted out, never met, both married women named Susan, both became engineers, and the two little girls with a language of their own that they forgot when they grew up, those kind of stories?" Georgiana Albricht of Duke was a parapsychological investigator whose integrity Buckaroo trusted entirely.

"Well, so this Penny Priddy's an unknown twin, with some kind of special pipeline into Peggy, wherever she is, and--" Rawhide shot a quick look at Buckaroo "--and whatever condition she's in."

"Penny Priddy," Buckaroo said softly. "Rawhide, she turned out to have a lot of grit. The Lectroids did everything but vivisect her, and she never told them the Overthruster was right there in her purse."

"Her own grit, or Peggy's?"

Buckaroo sighed again. "Maybe that's a difference that makes no difference?"

"Yeah, and maybe it ain't," said Rawhide. He scratched his scalp, not particularly wanting to say what had to come next.

"What came to me was that one light was growing and the other was fading-- not like a spark jumping flame from house to house, but like water pouring out of one vessel into another. One penny's perspective to the other, y'know? Like the penny paradox never was about fact, but about perception. But you couldn't have either without both. Which would mean Peggy's alive somewhere."

Buckaroo's eyes filled with pain. Thirty months had gone by since he'd thrust that possibility away from the center of his thoughts and gone on with the rest of his life. If Marguerite Simpson had never met me... During how many sleepless nights had he told himself he'd done everything humanly possible, had done what should have been impossible and penetrated the walls of Xan's jungle fortress, hunting for his wife? And there had been no trace of her.

He looked at Rawhide, who read the grief in his eyes and returned grief and concern of his own. Buckaroo rubbed his temples. "We did but greenly..." he said.

in hugger-mugger to inter her, Rawhide finished the off-quote mentally. Peggy Banzai had been buried in the family plot in Texas and her body had disappeared; since then, Institute casualties had gone into cryo in the Institute's safe-keeping -- a circumstance that made his own revival possible.

"You don't blame yourself," Rawhide said. It was advice, but he stated it as a fact.

Buckaroo shook his head and answered with an aphorism. "If something could have happened differently, it did."

"Buckaroo, I think it means she's out there," Rawhide said finally. "And I'll be back in the saddle real soon."

"This time we bring her home," said Buckaroo Banzai, suddenly fierce.

~~~

Five a.m. Mrs. Johnson climbed the inner stairs a bit wearily. Her shift was over, and her ears had been worn out by the tinny tintinnabulations emitted from a demo tape submitted by a group of would-be apprentices who called themselves Dog's Breath. It was pretty clear that there wasn't a lick of talent anywhere in the group. On the other hand, the sound engineer had obviously made the best of a very bad situation, and should probably be recruited. Clyde Von Drake-- was that a Blaze name or was the poor devil born with it?

Mrs. Johnson paused on the third floor landing, thinking a short spell with a soft-spoken pianoman might be the perfect antidote to the ringing in her ears.

She knew Rawhide was likely to be awake, though she walked softly down the hallway just in case he wasn't.

On an ordinary morning, Rawhide would be coming down the stairs just as she was going up, headed out for his regular morning exercise throwing around bales of hay to feed the stock down in the stables. It was scutwork that Rawhide never delegated, starting a day in the not-yet-light hours of the morning alone with the pleasant familiar noises and smells of the stable, the horses stirring and coming forward with their ears up, looking for hay and hoping for mash.

Buckaroo, who hardly slept anymore since Peggy's death, occasionally would find his way down to the stables and join Rawhide in his morning chores. The two men would work together in a wordless rhythm for an hour or two, and maybe saddle up and ride out to the East Forty to watch steam roll away from the sloping fields where the Institute grew its hay and oats and corn. The dawn fog clung to the border of the woods where, some mornings, they would see owls making a last few flights before the sun came up and lit and dried the ground.

Turning soundlessly into the hall where Rawhide, Sam and Mac were quartered, Mrs. Johnson almost plowed into a motionless figure topped with a snowfall of peroxided hair. The bassman for the Hong Kong Cavaliers was leaning on the wall opposite Rawhide's door, staring at the wooden expanse as if he might read there the answer to a question that held him in its grip.

Perfect Tommy's right foot checked itself half a millimeter below Mrs. Johnson's jaw.

"Hey, Mr. Low Notes, how ya doin?" said Mrs. Johnson gently. Everyone knew how upset he'd been.

Perfect Tommy held a finger to his lips.

"He's probably awake," she whispered. "It'll shock him out of his socks to see you up at this hour."

Perfect Tommy scowled and shook his head, hard. He's not going in, Mrs. Johnson realized. He isn't being considerate; he doesn't want Rawhide to hear his voice.

"Oh babe, you gotta bop through this," she said sadly. "He's gonna be righteous, you'll see."

Perfect Tommy shook his head again, but slowly. The scowl had been replaced by the same pained incomprehension Mrs. Johnson had glimpsed as she came around the corner.

Mrs. Johnson wrapped both her arms around Perfect Tommy's right arm and nestled her cheekbone very lightly on top of his shoulder. Buckaroo, Rawhide, Reno, Flyboy, and many of the others had brought fully-formed selves to New Brunswick; but Perfect Tommy was like her, and had only truly found an identity in his life at the Institute. It was not an easy process, Mrs. Johnson remembered. Many, many times, Peggy Simpson Banzai had had to coax her out of the mopes when she despaired of ever being a regular person. She recognized traces of that same feeling in Perfect Tommy's expression now.

"Sing on the wing, sweetie," she comforted him. "It's the o-o-only way to fly."

A moment later, Mrs. Johnson was saying quietly, "Hi there, cowboy," and Perfect Tommy had vanished into the stairwell.

~~~

... League had acquainted themselves with our itinerary. Thus, when B. Banzai and the other members of his scientific team (which included the biochemist Rawhide, the molecular geneticist Zoo Story, and the homeopathic botanist Hollywood, with myself along as a 'ringer' whose sole concern was to detect any hidden chemical-biological warfare experiment that might be lurking in this research) strapped on the breathing apparatus which would sustain us in the otherworldly air, we in fact supplied ourselves with cylinders charged not with lifegiving oxygen but with slow poison.

It was as we were donning our protective gear that Perfect Tommy announced his decision not to accompany us. More interested in the creation and maintenance of a Venerian atmosphere than in the actual environs of the lab, he elected to remain outside the growth chamber. As he apprised us of this choice, he was leaning on the desk of a research associate at the lab on whose desk was an open copy of Laura Fermi's Atoms in the Family, a doctoral candidate at one of our great universities to whose green eyes, auburn hair, and chiseled features I am doing scant justice by characterizing her as extremely attractive. I remember vividly the short colloquy between himself and Buckaroo:

Perfect Tommy: You kids run along and have a nice time. I'll just stay here and read a good book.

Perfect Tommy flushed crimson, and the researcher's giggles rang unpleasantly in his ears, but before he could frame a retort, we had masked up and entered the chamber where our lives were so nearly to end. We were sixty feet from the entrance before the poison . . .

TO BE CONTINUED . . .

 excerpt from Bastardy Proved A Spur, Reno Nevada, Granite Press (1979)

reprinted by permission

~ 30 ~

~ Go to Ballad of a Well-Known Gun Part 3 ~