"Sparky, I never meant—"
Sparky sat back in his chair, and waved it away.
"Consider the whole incident forgotten," he said. "You're doing good work on this, Oswald. Don't worry if you aren't able to get us a good deal; we'll pay whatever is necessary."
"On the tax thing," Oswald said, trying to put a good face on matters but feeling as if he were walking through a minefield. "Usually something can be worked out, but it's very difficult with the written evidence that he intended to completely ignore—"
"Don't be nervous, man. He's guilty, no question. My father never pays taxes; he opposes them, on moral grounds. We've been paying his tax bills the whole time he was away."
"I didn't know."
"Of course not. Now, everybody, thank you for coming, and I'd like to be alone for a while. Curly, give me about an hour."
"There's a story meeting in thirty minutes."
"Reschedule it. Or buy them all a drink, on me, and have them wait."
When Sparky was alone he kicked back in his chair and studied the ceiling for a long time. When he looked down, Elwood had parked his elongated body in the chair Curly had been sitting in. "Feeling a bit frisky today?" he asked.
"Don't start."
"No, really, I thought you handled that real well. You were about to say 'You'll never work in this town again,' weren't you? Do you suppose anybody ever had the stones to make that true?"
"Louis B. Mayer, maybe."
Elwood thought that one over. "Well, I know the son of a bitch would have if he could have. But I never heard him say it. And the trouble is, if he did, whoever he said it to would know he could trot his behind over to Columbia, and Harry Cohn would hire him just to stick it in L.B.'s ear."
"Or Jack Warner. Or Hal Roach. Or Thomas Edison."
"Don't know about Edison. He was a little before my time."
"Heck, Elwood, I thought you helped him build his first camera."
"Met him once. With Henry Ford. They were tight, you know. Edison was old Henry's hero. You know, your father's not really crazy."
"Didn't I just say that?"
"No, you told Oswald never to call your father crazy. And the way you said it, the man knows you really do think he's crazy."
"This is silly. He's crazy, he's not crazy. I know he does foolish things sometimes. But we've got to stick together. I can't allow him to sit there and make accusations. His job is to get my father out of trouble, and he can keep his goddam opinions to himself. Father wouldn't let anyone say bad things about me and get away with it."
"Yeah, but he's crazy."
Sparky burst out laughing, and Elwood chuckled along with him. Then he sobered, and looked Sparky in the eye.
"My old friend," he said. "The last thing I want to do is come between a boy and his father. I've never tried to tell you I like him much, because I don't. But I've never told you what I really think of him, either."
"I don't want to hear this."
"But you can't get rid of me, so you will hear it. I don't think of John Valentine as crazy. Crazed, maybe. Full-grown, he's more impulsive than you were when you were five. Has no more control of himself. He's the most egomaniacal man I've ever seen, and I've seen some doozies. He never does anything in a small way. He loves you, and that means he loves you in a big way, too."
Elwood raised an eyebrow, waiting for Sparky to comment. Sparky kept his silence, frowning at Elwood.
"We never talk about it, but you know I had to save your behind once."
"Oh, is that what this is about?" Sparky fumed. "All this time I thought you were my conscience."
"That's why you call me Jiminy Stewart sometimes. I am your conscience."
"So now you want a second job. Guardian angel."
Elwood shrugged. "You may be needing one soon."
"Well, you're neither one. You're a figment, that's what you are. You want to talk crazy? How about me? I'm the one who's been hearing voices most of my life."
"Just the one voice," Elwood pointed out.
"So what? Does that make me only borderline schizophrenic? Isn't one voice enough?"
"I'm not a headshrinker; I don't know. It's safe to say you're not in the pink of mental health, I guess."
"That's what you are. A symptom!"
"No," Elwood drawled. "I'm the best friend you have. The best friend you will ever have, because I don't have anything else to worry about but you. I'm here if you want to talk—"
"Or if I don't want to talk."
"Then, too. I'm here to offer advice—"
"Even when I don't ask for it."
"You don't have to follow it. But it's been good in the past, and you know it. Sparky, I'm here for a lot of things a friend can do for a friend. I just wanted you to know that, from now on, I'm here for something else, too."
"And what would that be?"
"You said it. Guardian angel."
"Elwood, that's all in the past. I'm grown up now. I know he made some mistakes when I was younger, but after... that time, he never laid a hand on me."
"He didn't have a lot of chance to," Elwood pointed out. "And that's all I want to say about it, anyway. Let's hope you're right and I'm wrong."
"Just forget about it," Sparky said. "That's over with. We're going to be a team now."
"Great," Elwood said, then leaned forward, intense. "But the thing that worries me when I watch him, when I listen to him... it seems to me he still thinks you're eight years old."
Hal used a word during our conversation in the spa that I didn't like much, and that word was hijack. didn't think much of it at the time, but it kept coming back to me.
During my life I've broken all the Ten Commandments, if you don't count coveting my neighbor's ox. If I ever have a neighbor who has an ox, I guarantee you I will covet it. I've coveted plenty of my neighbors' asses.
I've broken more temporal laws than I can count. Sometimes it was because they were stupid laws. Sometimes the laws were inconvenient. I didn't have many qualms about breaking them. From time to time I've broken a law I thought was a good law, prohibiting something that ought not be done. I'm not happy about that, but I'm still here, still alive, still not in jail. There is a line, there are things I won't do, even if it means death, or jail.
But hijacking? Somehow, when you use that word, it puts it into a whole different category of stealing. Stealing a spaceship is piracy.
We were pirates, Poly and I. Imagine that.
I'm not saying I felt guilty about it. After all, the pirated object seemed happy to be away from its legitimate owner... or in this case, renter. I like to see myself as a quixotic Robin Hood, stealing only from those too rich to miss it, too stupid to notice it is missing, or too mean to deserve it. Izzy Comfort was certainly mean, and the Charonese were certainly rich. As for giving it to the poor, I think I qualify in that regard. Why pass the profits on to other poor people? They'd probably only squander it on things like shoes for the children, or clothing they didn't really need.
The Halley was by far the finest thing I ever nicked. It would be remiss of me to go on at this point without giving you a short tour. Just the high points; it would take all day to enumerate her luxurious appointments.
I skipped a few things from the end of acceleration to my dip in the spa, because I wanted to clear up that cliffhanger business as soon as possible. You probably noticed, since I could only float in a pool if there was some gravity, or a facsimile. And no rich man is going to spend months in a ship in free fall.