Joker Moon Page 13

  “It shouldn’t.” I had to ask myself, what background did I expect of a conspiracy theorist? It wasn’t likely such a man would be a scientist or engineer.

  I did expect him to be a rich nutcase, but the notes confirmed what Schwartz had told me—that Neal came from money, a family that clearly downplayed their connections, or why else would the son be a roof troll?

  Then there were clippings, most of them from the Lexington Herald-Leader, chronicling the adventures of their “local lunar conspiracy theorist” and his trips to California to picket the main gate of Tomlin Air Force Base. There was even a picture of him outside our shabby little hangar at Tehachapi-Kern Regional Airport, where he was quoted as saying, “Does this look like the launchpad for a flight to the Moon?” With the helpful subhead, BERTRAM NEAL: NEW MOON FLIGHT STORY A FANTASY.

  Well, we had kept it secret—all of us, Sampson for his military career, Eva-Lynne because she didn’t think it was all that important, and me because of Warren Skalko.

  Skalko died in November 1971. (Given the skill and completeness of the research accomplished by Theodorus’s tutors, I half expected to see clippings on my former mob boss.)

  The last clipping was dated eleven days ago and reported that Neal had been “badly injured in a scuffle at a county fair,” that he remained in a coma in the joker wing of Baptist Health.

  “How did you collect all of this so quickly?” I didn’t need to add that he couldn’t have spent much time at the local library, assuming even that they would possess most of these items.

  He smiled. “My parents have hired all these other tutors.”

  “I know. Sometimes I feel I should take a number.”

  “I gave one of them an assignment.”

  “Well, please thank this mystery tutor and researcher,” I said, handing the file back to Theodorus.

  “Oh, no, keep them.”

  I didn’t actually want them. The less I thought about or heard of Bertram Neal the happier I would be.

  And here, wanting to change the subject and undoubtedly triggered by the unique odor, I said, “You should get some plants in here.”

  “What kind?”

  “Flowers. Maybe some vines.”

  “It’s that bad?” He must have realized that the room had an odor.

  “I’m thinking decoration, color, and just general … inspiration.”

  He pondered this, nodding his head and, for that moment, looking human. Then he grinned. “What if I get hungry and eat them?”

  “Win-win.”

  “Plants are the last thing I expect you to bring up.” Fair point. Had I been a contestant on The $100,000 Question with plants as a category, I’d have failed so badly I would not only have been shown the door, I’d have been mocked by people in the streets.

  Maybe it was thinking about Eva-Lynne again. She had brought no pictures, no family mementoes (God, I could only imagine what they’d have been if she had) to our married life.

  But she had turned my little rat shack into a greenhouse, with daisies and camellias and roses—the latter from several rosebushes she nurtured at the side of the house.

  If nothing else, it smelled better. No one who knows me believes this, but I kept those plants alive long after Eva-Lynne left. “I’m more than I appear to be, or at least I hope so.” I was joking, but I must have revealed something of my lack of direction.

  “Cash, what are you going to do? When you leave here?” He didn’t add, though probably assumed, if you’re not in jail.

  “Set up my schedule for fall, when schools are back in session. And I have a few carnivals this summer.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Oh, it sounds fun for a while. Better than being a giant snail in a mansion. But…”

  “It’s not very ambitious.” Which is what everyone from Warren Skalko to Mike Sampson to Eva-Lynne Roderick had said to me at one time. I would have to plead guilty to never having settled on an actual career—forget heavy lifting and what that might have led me to—or finished school. Christ, I didn’t even have hobbies, other than my former drinking.

  I used to fret about this, but from about age seventeen to thirty-four was able to suppress any real worries by, well, drinking. Since then I had told myself I had a career and a direction—I was an “educator.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-nine.” Then I laughed, and not happily. “You know, I haven’t actually said that out loud more than once.”

  “Shy?”

  “My birthday was only six weeks ago, April fourth. And it does sound old.”

  “Wait ’til the next one.”

  “Don’t be mean, Theodorus.”

  “You just told me my room stinks.”

  He had me there.

  The next week was a blur. I found myself spending only mornings with Theodorus, as other “tutors” began to take up his afternoons.

  Ridley drove in and out, bringing pieces of aluminum, rented welding gear, then various cylindrical tanks. “I’m not a rocket scientist,” I told him after a particularly unique collection of equipment showed up, “but it looks to me as though you’re getting Quicksilver ready to go into space.”

  He actually blushed. “Who told you?”

  Sometimes Ridley is a bit dense. “No one, and I’d just like to know why.”

  “It just seemed the right thing to do. I hated seeing it take off with holes in its side.”

  “I appreciate that and approve. But tell me how, or who’s paying, because there’s no way you’re buying all this with a couple hundred—”

  Not only is Ridley sometimes dense, he is frequently stubbornly silent or deflective. He got a familiar faraway look in his eye and I was afraid I was going to have to battle for answers. Then he said, “Ask him.”

  “Who?”

  Ridley pointed past me, so I turned.

  Striding toward me was a red-going-gray-haired man in his mid-forties dressed in khaki trousers and a short-sleeved blue shirt.

  None other than Michael Sampson, Major General, USAF (Retired).

  He had returned from our 1968 excursion determined to keep it quiet—not only was our flight funded by criminals, off the books, but it was an unauthorized activity forbidden to an active-duty officer.

  Some of the troops at Tomlin knew immediately, of course. They tracked air traffic and saw us coming and going. They told NORAD, of course—I think those boys were happy to be tracking something human headed for the Moon, not some alien piece of crap headed this way.

  I heard later that they also got Mount Wilson, Jodrell Bank, and some radio telescope in Australia to track us, too. And they intercepted our air-to-ground with Tuominbang.

  Ah, yes, Tuominbang the visionary ahead of his time, hoping to place a relay unit on the Moon that would allow him to make “wire” transactions that were untraceable and untaxable.

  Fortunately, Sampson reported to a wing commander who liked him and liked audacity, and got him promoted to colonel quickly, “because he figured that the first Air Force pilot to go to the Moon had earned it.”

  Then the general select commanding the Hornet spaceplane development died suddenly, and Sampson was given his job, which got him to brigadier general two years later. “I became a fast burner.” Actually, he was being modest: with test pilot and combat experience, and a degree from Caltech, he was already being groomed for leadership in the Air Force even without the flight to the Moon.

  But it shortened his path to major general by four years. Then the whole story came out, and there was a bit of a bobble, since the Air Force leadership was heavy on joker-haters, and even the hint of associations with such types as, well, Cash Mitchell, was enough to stall Sampson’s rise. Fortunately, in a Pentagon assignment he was able to work enough secret magic to help establish me in my new career as a carnival barker.

  He languished at the Pentagon, hoping for another promotion and a final major command. “I had gotten the Hornets to
fly and I wanted to run the ops.” But no. He was forced to retire and, as often happens with high-ranking ex-military types, made a smooth transition to corporate boards and consulting, including … Dayton Enterprises.

  We shook hands. Then, shockingly, he hugged me. I barely suppressed a comment about the new homoerotic Air Force, settling for a basic hello, leading to, “What have you and Ridley been doing?”

  “Henry and Malachi told me about your, uh, teaching job.”

  “So you really are a friend of the family.”

  Sampson gave me his basic crinkly-eyed, indulgent smile. “Just took advantage of the, uh, confluence of events to see Quicksilver again.”

  “And help restore it.”

  “It needed some help.”

  “I’m not objecting.”

  He laughed. “How is it that we seem to disagree, but actually don’t?”

  “Different styles, I guess.” Sampson was five years older than me, but we had enough shared experiences that I could describe him as “my good twin.” He was smarter than me, clearly more moral, more even-tempered, and generally just a more productive citizen.

  If he had a flaw it was that he tended to trust in people’s honesty. Of course, I knew him best circa 1970—I’m guessing a few years as an Air Force general, Pentagon staffer, and now corporate leader might have enlightened him.

  I turned to Ridley, who had been standing to one side, mute. “You two obviously met. What do you have planned?”

  “Fuel her up,” Ridley said.

  “And take a short hop,” said Sampson.

  “I don’t think I’d be comfortable lifting her here.” I had been able to set Quicksilver down here, but lifting, with the overhanging trees and nearby windows, was another matter.

  “We don’t need you for the hop,” Sampson said. “We’re going to use the jets.” Quicksilver had small but powerful hybrid motors that were originally designed to get it off the runway and, after in-flight refueling, into low Earth orbit. For our Moon mission, they had served to get us clear of a commercial airport—and to ease our landing on the Ocean of Storms.

  “Those motors will blow this place apart.”

  “Oh, heck, we’re going up to the road,” Sampson said. “There’s a small base called Goose Creek. The director of ops used to work for me and is going to let us play a bit.”

  I was always struck by the web of connections within the military, where everyone seemed to have served with or under someone else who might be useful. “What else haven’t you told me?”

  And here Sampson looked at Ridley, who just looked away.

  “I’m not your only visitor.”

  I had no idea what he meant.

  “Cash?” Alice Witherspoon was at the back door. “Would you come with me, please?”

  Feeling that I might be facing arrest, but curious nonetheless, I followed Alice and Sampson into the house.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as we headed for the front door.

  “Call it a surprise,” Sampson said.

  And so I found myself standing in the majestic doorway, recently widened for Theodorus, with General Sampson and Alice Witherspoon and, naturally, Malachi Schwartz. It must have looked like the receiving line at a poorly planned wedding.

  A car, one of the Witherspoon sedans, had already pulled up to the front door.

  James and another retainer were there to assist the arrival. And behind me I heard the thumps and slithers of Theodorus’s arrival. He was never going to be able to sneak up on anyone.

  A slim blonde woman I judged to be fifty emerged from the back seat.

  Eva-Lynne Roderick Mitchell, my lost love, my ex-wife.

  I could not have been more surprised if Dr. Tachyon himself, or the Easter Bunny, had emerged.

  My first thought was that she looked and moved like death, or at best one step removed. But when she smiled and said, “Hi, Cashie,” the apparent years slipped away.

  We hugged and while I found her thinner, she fit in my arms as she once did. Something was off, though I wasn’t sure what. “Where were you?” I said, realizing as I said it that it sounded judgmental.

  “Las Vegas.”

  “Why don’t we let her get settled?” Alice said, slipping into gracious hostess mode.

  “Thank you for having me,” Eva-Lynne told her. She raised her head. “This might be the biggest house I’ve ever been in.”

  “I’ll give you the tour.” Alice let Eva-Lynne slip past her into the foyer, all the while shooting me a look that said back off, be kind.

  The retainers carried Eva-Lynne’s luggage inside, and I was left with Theodorus and Sampson. Before I could utter the obvious question, harshly, Theodorus said, “It was my idea.”

  “But I agreed,” Sampson said.

  “I’m happy to see her, but … why? Old times’ sake?”

  Theodorus and Sampson exchanged glances, and I had the unpleasant feeling that I had been the subject of considerable discussion. “That would cover it,” Sampson said.

  Of course, I didn’t believe that.

  The surprise was that straight arrow Michael Sampson had, in middle age, learned to shade the truth.

  Eva-Lynne and Sampson were guests at dinner that night—another vegetarian dish, though more successful—with Alice and Theodorus and me. No Mathilde. Henry was in D.C. but expected in a day or so.

  “Do you see Henry often?” I asked Sampson.

  “The first year,” he said. “Not so much … lately.” He had been about to say “the last two,” I believe, and his embarrassed blush confirmed it.

  Theodorus spoke up. “I wish Dad and the Air Force would listen to you, General.” It turned out Sampson was famous in the space underground for his promotion of robot battle stations in Earth orbit, and at least one if not two bases on the Moon. “We need that Farside Base,” Theodorus said. “What if somebody attacks us again?”

  Alice laughed nervously. “Theodorus, that is highly unlikely.”

  “Not as unlikely as the Takisian event,” Sampson said, his drive for honesty overwhelming his sense of dinner decorum. “Until 1946 we could have believed we were alone in the universe, for all practical purposes.

  “But being invaded once by a race that possesses star travel and is perhaps only two centuries more advanced than we are—it only proves that there are dangers everywhere. We are not only defenseless, we are largely blind. The Air Force has developed useful surveillance systems aimed at the Soviet Union and China, but they look down, not up. We are unprepared.”

  “Well,” Alice said, summoning every bit of her considerable charm, “we can only hope that you and Henry are able to change that situation and make better use of the Moon.”

  All through this, and most of dinner, Eva-Lynne was quiet, her usual mode in gatherings with strangers even a dozen years ago. I did note that she frowned when Theodorus and Sampson began talking about the Moon. Well, she was one of three people who had been there: perhaps she felt proprietary.

  No wine was served, whether in deference to my weakness or to Sampson or Eva-Lynne’s preferences, I don’t know. All in all, it was still my best experience at a sit-down dinner in the main room, but, then, the bar was pretty low.

  As we rose to separate, Theodorus attached himself, metaphorically speaking (though only barely), to Sampson, and they went off to plan the future exploration of cislunar space.

  I was left with Alice and Eva-Lynne. Alice said, “I am going to see to the cleanup. You two surely have matters to discuss.” Before either of us could object, she was gone.

  Eva-Lynne glided into the vast living room, going to the window to gently touch the lace curtains.

  “How did you settle on Las Vegas?”

  “Close to where I grew up,” she said. “And not that far down the road from Palmdale.”

  “Only two hundred miles across the nastiest desert in the U.S.”

  She smiled. “Well, I guess I needed a barrier.”

  “Between you and me?”r />
  She didn’t say no, but instead, “Between me and that life.”

  “I would have thought you wanted to keep the barrier between you and your Mormon life.”

  She turned toward me, and she took my hand. At that point I realized that there were two things about Eva-Lynne that were different.

  One was that she had a different fragrance. I have said that I’m unusually sensitive to smells—I can detect a cigarette smoker at fifty paces—and each person has their own. Eva-Lynne’s had changed, and not due to booze or cigarettes, either. It was the touch of her hand that gave me the larger surprise—she had always worked and her hands, while never rough, were those of a working woman. Now her hands felt like smooth leather, and when I looked at them I saw new lines, squiggly filigree, not grids.

  I must have reacted. We were both older, but not that much older. “Yes,” she said, “my card turned.”

  I was surprised; she came from a community that, due to isolation, had the lowest percentage of wild cards in the whole United States. “How does it manifest?”

  “My doctor isn’t entirely sure. He calls it a slow burn.” She laughed.

  “So you don’t know the endgame.”

  She shook her head. “But Cash, please, all that … foolishness?” Not the word I would have used to describe her drinking and sleeping around. “It made me feel better for a while, more human. Not much of an excuse or an apology.”

  “Good either way,” I said.

  “It was also one of the reasons I didn’t want children.”

  That made sense. But I took the hint. “There were other reasons?”

  “Two of them.”

  She walked back to the dining room and retrieved her purse, taking out two snapshots.

  Both showed jokers, one a kind of lizard that resembled a human-sized javelina, the other even more grotesque, looking like a squarish thing made out of rock, with deep, vacant eyeholes. “Amos and Orson. My sons.”

  I’m a joker; I’ve been around seriously “diverged” (from human form) jokers since I was a child. Amos and Orson were about as bad as I’ve seen. “I thought you’d lost touch with them.”

  “Yes, after I had to run away. Nat boys are usually kicked out of fundamentalist communities, but they keep the jokers because…”