“Now who’s moaning?”
“Ah, put a cork in it, soppy.”
“Charming. Didn’t you ever learn to respect your elders?”
“You’re too old to be an elder. You’re an older elder.”
“Very funny. If I was a hundred years younger . . .”
And so the first tendrils of a bond crept between the body and the spirit. And, though Meg Finn didn’t notice it, a few more strands of blue ignited in her aura.
The studios had security on the gate. A big Dublin bruiser with cropped hair and zero tolerance for anyone without an appointment.
“Go away. Far away,” said the guard, whose tag read Dessie.
“Hold on there now a sec,” protested Lowrie. “I’m here to see Cicely Ward.”
The guard looked up from his clipboard. “Yeah, you and every other lovestruck old fool.”
Lowrie decided to have a go at indignant.
“Pardon me, young man, but Missus Ward happens to be a close personal friend of mine.”
“Sure, and I’m Leonardo di What’s-his-face.”
Even Lowrie recognized blatant sarcasm when he heard it. “Did you never learn to respect your elders?”
“If I had a buck for every time I heard that line . . .”
Don’t talk to me, thought Meg.
“You old fellas are the worst, trying to scam your way in for a bit of celebrity-spotting. Go on, get out of here before I call the police.”
Lowrie straightened his tie. “Do I look like the kind of person who would need to scam his way anywhere?”
The guard rubbed the stubble on his scalp. “Never judge a book by its cover. I myself have a degree from Trinity in medieval poetry.”
Meg decided it was time to intervene. “Use the power of your mind, Lowrie.”
“Pardon?”
Bad hearing, thought Dessie. “I said: never judge a book by its cover.”
“Not you!”
“Not me? Who then?”
“Tell him, Lowrie.”
“Tell him what?”
“Tell who what?”
It was all getting very confusing. Meg hovered beside the old man’s ear.
“Just listen, McCall. Don’t talk. While I was inside your head, I unlocked certain powers. Use the power of your mind, Lowrie. Make this numbskull open the gate.”
Lowrie shrugged. This whole mind-control idea was no more incredible than anything else that had happened over the past twenty-four hours. He squinted fiercely at the guard.
“You will open the gate.”
“I doubt it.”
“Concentrate, McCall. Reach out with your thoughts.”
Lowrie gritted his teeth, focusing his will in a tight beam.
“You will open the gates, because I wish it!”
Dessie’s eyes glazed over like two scratched marbles.
“Yes, Master.”
“It works,” crowed Lowrie. “I’m a superbrain!”
“What’s that, Master?” asked the guard. “Turn you around and give you a swift kick in the behind? If that is your command.”
“I didn’t think that!”
“No! I did. Now get out of here quick before I’m forced to call an ambulance, and take that voodoo nonsense with you.”
Lowrie glanced over his shoulder. Meg’s ethereal frame was shaking with mirth.
“Oh, ha-ha, very funny.”
“Sorry,” spluttered Meg. “Couldn’t help it.”
“I should have known better.”
“’Course you should,” agreed Dessie. “I’ve heard every excuse in the book.”
Lowrie closed his eyes. Not a word to anyone in over a year, and now two conversations at the same time. “Now I’m never going to get in here.”
“You can sing that, granddad.”
Meg floated over beside the obstinate guard. “The way I see it, the brain is like a piano. You just have to push the right keys.”
She rolled up her sleeve and plunged her hand into the guard’s ear. It disappeared up to the elbow.
“Urghh,” groaned Lowrie. “That’s disgusting.”
“Watch it now, you, I could turn nasty at any moment.”
Meg ground her teeth as she rooted around. “Here it is now. Prepare yourself for complete obedience.”
Lowrie could almost hear the click as his partner pressed some internal switch. “There we go.”
Dessie did indeed seem different. His knees began knocking together, and his hand jittered as though on puppet strings.
“Hmm,” mused Lowrie. “You know who he reminds me of?”
“Yes, that rock-n-roll singer with the hair.”
And without warning, Dessie launched into an animated version of “Blue Suede Shoes,” complete with pelvic gyrations and wobbly lip.
“Oops,” said Meg. “Wrong button.”
She tried again, like a bear feeling around for a beehive. “There, I think.”
No good. Now Dessie was whinnying like a horse.
“Oh, just possess him, for goodness’ sake.”
“No chance. It’s bad enough having your memories floating around my head. Never mind a whole heap of medieval poetry. Anyway, I’ve got it now.”
Click. And Dessie was docile as a kitten, big hairy arms swinging at his sides.
Lowrie coughed painfully. “Desmond. Would you kindly open the gate?”
Dessie grinned. “Sure, man. And do you know why?”
“No, Desmond, why?”
A tear crept from the corner of the guard’s eye. “Because I love you, man. I love you and all the little flowers, and I love the double-decker buses, and I even love the students from Trinity with their smelly coats and wise-ass comments. I love the universe, man.” Sobbing gently, Dessie buzzed open the gate, rubbing the mechanism fondly.
“Oh, Desmond. Could I have a visitor’s pass, please?”
“Sure, man. And why don’t you crash in my pad later, man? We could share some good vibes.”
“That sounds very interesting,” said Lowrie, with absolutely no clue as to what the guard had just said. He turned to his floating partner. “What did you do to that poor chap?”
Meg shrugged. “I just saw a pink happy-looking box at the back of his head and opened it up.
“I think I preferred him as a bruiser.”
Lowrie strolled down the broad driveway, his confidence growing with each step. With the pass clipped to his lapel he could freely infiltrate every area of the studios, including, he hoped, the Tea with Cicely set.
TV soundstages look different in real life. Smaller for a start. And on television you don’t see the edges. It was as though some giant had taken a bite out of a suburban house, and then realizing the decor was horrendous, spat it out in Donnybrook. Lowrie was a bit let down. His disappointment flowed out of him in violet streams.
Meg couldn’t resist a dig. “Ahhh. Did the baby think it was weal?”
Lowrie bit his tongue. He wasn’t going to be ejected for insanity now. Not when he was so close.
Meg giggled. “Bugs Bunny is not weal either. Just pwetty pictures that move weally fast.”
Lowrie shot her a warning gaze. And in Meg’s world you really could shoot a gaze. Concentrated orange venom spiraled from the old man’s eyes and splurged all over her head.
“Hey! Give it up!”
“Less of the wisecracks then,” hissed Lowrie, maintaining a pleasantly smiling face.
The audience consisted of the white-haired, the blue-haired, and the no-haired. Their auras betrayed their true thoughts, though. Stories of struggle and pain mingled in the air above them in a gaseous tableau. Love was the predominant emotion. Love and family. Almost every soul held the face of a lost loved one precious in their mind.
The warm-up man stopped cracking lame jokes, listening to a message through his earpiece. He began clapping and screaming like a lunatic. The audience followed suit. Just the clapping. No screaming. This wasn’t a Backstreet Boys concert, after all.
r /> “Here we go,” whispered Meg.
Lowrie mopped his hands with his new silk hanky. They were sweating like sponges.
Belch’s canine smile stretched across his snout, revealing an unfeasible number of teeth.
“I don’t believe it,” he chuckled.
Elph flitted to his shoulder.
“Disbelief is often the reaction of the mentally challenged. That and superstition. All phenomena can be reduced to mathematical terms. Even heaven and hell can be expressed as spatial equations.”
Belch frowned. “You are such a nerd, Pixie.”
“That’s Elph.”
“Whatever.”
Elph blinked, accessing his thesaurus. “Hmm. Nerd: geek, square, one unskilled in social interaction.”
“Just shut up and look at the television.”
Elph buzzed over to the screen. “Ancient technology. Not even digital. Subject to environmental interference.”
Belch could feel an attack of doggy rage coming on. “Never mind that! Just look at what’s on the screen.”
Elph’s eyes spiraled into zoom. “A series of colored dots, transmitted in specific order to create the illusion of . . .”
“Shut up!” howled Belch, leaping to his feet. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Arf arf aaaaarffff!”
Elph gave him a little shock, partly out of necessity, partly because he enjoyed it. “Are we rational now?”
“Woof.”
“I’ll take that as an affirmative. Now, what were you trying to tell me, in your own Cro-Magnon fashion?”
Belch patted a smoking patch of hair over his ear. “Look. It’s him. On television.”
The virtual help’s eye lenses whirred again.
“You are correct. I have an eighty-nine–percent matchup probability.”
“He looks different. Not as pathetic as usual.”
Elph sank an immaculately manicured hand into the screen. Waves of red sparks rippled across the screen, obscuring the picture completely.
“What are you doing? This could be a . . . what do you call it? A Sherlock Holmes thing . . . a clue!”
Elph blinked, a pulse of light shimmered along his arm and into the television.
“I have located the signal,” he said presently. “It is a live broadcast. I am relaying the coordinates back to the Master’s mainframe.”
Belch could feel the saliva glands in his hooked jaws going into overdrive. The bloodlust was aroused in him. This dog thing wasn’t too bad.
“How soon can we be there?” he said, more than a hint of the hairy half in his tones.
“Look around you, cretin,” muttered Elph. “You’re already there.”
Cicely Ward swanned onto the soundstage, and poor old Lowrie nearly fell out of his seat. Four hundred knees creaked painfully as the audience rose for a standing ovation.
“Right so, Lowrie. What’s the plan?”
McCall blinked a bead of sweat from his eye. “Plan? You know. Kiss her.”
“That’s it? Kiss her?”
“Well . . .”
“God. You’re about as good a planner as General Custer.”
Dark patches began to appear on Lowrie’s shirt. “I’m new to this sort of thing. I thought you’d help out.”
“I’m not kissing her. It was bad enough kissing my own granny.”
“You’re dead right you’re not kissing her. If there’s any kissing to be done, I’ll do it!”
“Correct.”
“Right.”
“Good.”
“Okay. When I give the word, you take over. Get my old bones down there and I’ll do the rest.”
Meg nodded. “I can do that. Now, shut up talking to yourself, they’re sitting down.”
Cicely quieted the audience with a wave of her elegant fingers. She was a striking woman, tall, with steel-gray hair and round brown eyes. It was easy to understand Lowrie’s attraction.
“Good evening, my friends.” She winked conspiratorially. “I have to pretend it’s evening because of the Saturday rebroadcast.”
It was vintage Ward. The editors would leave it in for both shows. The audience tittered fondly, their worries instantly forgotten.
“Our show this evening concentrates on an issue that has affected us all at one time or another. Today we’re going to talk with our panel about lost love.”
Lowrie nearly threw up. His perspiration glands began to pump out gallons.
“Lost love?” giggled Meg. “This is unbelievable.”
“Oh, no,” moaned Lowrie. “It’s too much. I can’t.”
A concerned woman tugged at his sleeve. “Are you all right, honey?”
Lowrie felt as though there were a foot pump feeding into his brain. “I’m okay. Thanks. Fine. I just need a bit of air.”
He stood on shaky legs, suddenly feeling ridiculous. New clothes? Kissy Sissy? What had he been thinking?
“Where are you going?”
“Home. Home. Where I belong!”
Meg hovered before his face. “No! You can’t. We’ve come this far!”
“Get out of my way!”
Of course they were in the middle of a row. Heads began to swivel on both sides.
“Sit down!”
“I can’t.”
“What are you going to do? Run off home and die?”
The blood hammered in Lowrie’s ears, drowning out his thoughts.
“Yes!” he shouted over the pounding. “Yes! I’m going home to die!”
A statement like that gets everyone’s attention pretty fast. There was total silence on the soundstage. Even the cameramen stopped chewing gum.
Cicely Ward shielded her eyes against the TV lights. “Are you all right, sir?”
Lowrie’s throat was dry, and his palms were wet. Typical.
“Let’s do it!” said Meg.
“No . . .”
“No, you’re not all right, sir?”
Big security guys were nonchalantly converging on B Section.
“Come on, partner! This is another wrong decision.”
“I can’t.”
Cicely Ward squinted. “Don’t I know you?”
Lowrie took a deep breath and met her inquiring stare. “Hello, Sissy.”
“Sissy? No one’s called me that since . . . Oh my God—Lowrie?” The hostess made a faltering move backward, almost tripping on a low step.
The security guards were hurrying now, making real professional-looking hand signals.
“Let’s go, Lowrie!”
McCall stared at his girlfriend from nearly half a century ago. Her eyes were the same. The very same.
“Okay, partner. Get me down there.”
“About time,” said Meg, sliding into the old man’s frame. Lowrie instantly took a backseat, like a passenger on a fairground ride. But he could feel. He could feel the strength and passion of youth buzzing through his old frame.
“Hey, Sissy,” called Meg. “You stay right there, honey. Lowrie’s got . . . I mean, I’ve got something for you.”
Inside his own head, Lowrie groaned. That girl watched too much American television.
The security men dropped all pretense of composure, and charged like a herd of particularly annoyed rhinos. Their leader seemed to be roaring up his sleeve.
“We got a possible obsessive, section B. Double quick.”
“Oops. Time to go.”
Meg hopped up on a backrest, narrowly escaping the questing fingers of the nearest guard. Two more clashed heads, diving for where Lowrie’s feet had been. She giggled. It was just like the time she’d had an entire rugby team chasing her for calling their jerseys girly. They hadn’t caught her then either.
Careful not to snag the audience on their heads, Meg skipped down along the seat rests, very dashing in her tailored suit.
Cicely was staring in disbelief. “Lowrie . . . I . . . Oh dear!”
Meg vaulted into the aisle. “With you in a sec, dollface.”
Lowrie cringed. Dollface?
&
nbsp; The cameramen recovered their composure, swiveling lenses like tank turrets. This extraordinary old man could provide the shot of the year! One overenthusiastic bouncer threw a punch. He pulled it though, not wishing to crush the old guy’s skull. The delay gave Meg ample time to snatch a knitting basket and place it in the path of his fist. Judging by the yelps, the bouncer had made contact with a concealed pincushion.
“0lé!” shouted Meg, drumming her heels dramatically.
“0lé!” shouted the crowd. They couldn’t help it. Meg’s enthusiasm was contagious.
A railing led to the stage floor. Tubular and smooth.
“Oh, God, no,” groaned Lowrie.
“I’m afraid so,” chuckled Meg and mounted the banister sidesaddle. She whooshed down its length, snatching a rose from a flower-bedecked straw hat on her way past.
There was only one beefy obstacle left, and the boom man took him out trying to get the mike in over Lowrie’s head.
“Olé!” shouted Meg.
“Olé!” responded the audience.
Cicely’s face was flushed. It was like something out of those old pirate films. That was what oldies liked, so that was what Meg was giving them.
She handed Cicely the rose. “For you, my precious jewel.”
“Lowrie? Is it you? What are you doing?”
“What I should have done forty years ago.”
Meg swept the presenter into her arms. The audience was enthralled; hankies were popping out like weeds after rain.
It was perfect. Romantic, forbidden, exciting. Perfect. Then, of course, all hell broke loose.
Belch looked down. He was floating two hundred feet above the ground.
“Arf,” he yelped. “Arf arf ooowwwww!”
“Woof, eh eh ruff,” grunted Elph in flawless pit bull. Which translated as: Relax, cretin, you’re already dead.
Belch licked a rope of slobber from his chin. “Okay, smart aleck. It just takes a while to get used to all this death stuff. Zooming off all over the world.”
The hologram tried to explain. “We are not solid matter, you see. Of course, strictly speaking, that’s not exactly true if you consider it at a subatomic level. . . .”
Elph paused, noticing the ‘I-have-no-clue-what-you’re-talking-about’ look plastered across Belch’s face. “Or, to put it in dullard’s terms, we can go wherever we want to be, so long as we know exactly where that is.”
“Oh,” said Belch, not really any the wiser. “Where I want to be is beside that old geezer with my fingers around his throat.”