There was a terrible hollow-gut feeling in me as I left Gowan's house. Very little of it had to do with the awareness of mortal danger. The largest element was ego-bruise. People who knew me had ordered my death. Hell, they were practically my aunts and uncles—they'd watched me grow up. They say an impersonal killer is a terrible thing—Collaci makes a lot of folks uneasy. But as we walked through the cool quiet of the West Forest I reflected that personal involvement doesn't make killing much prettier. A vagrant flutter of thought began: Who are you to talk? but something smothered it before it really came to my attention. My limp increased.
Collaci took his instructions literally. Krishnamurti had said "Let him see no one," and Teach' did his level best. We collected two entirely trigger-happy Guards outside the house and, rather than going straight to West Avenue and through the heart of Northtown, Teach' led us through the forest, around behind his own house, turned east past Dalhousie's place and brought us out of the forest at the big intersection of the Loop with South and West Avenues. At that hour it was deserted—the herd going to work had passed nearly an hour ago. I heard the truck in the distance, but it was heading away from us.
Where we stood the huge granite foot of the Nose took a big bite out of the southern sky (if you'll pardon a triply-mixed metaphor); beyond it, downwind of course, lay the factory-lab complex of Southtown. In that complex the bulk of Fresh Start's population were now hard at work rebuilding the world—or trying to. I felt sudden kinship with them, and fear for them.
To our left, the two-story bulk of the Tool Shed cut us off from the view of any slugabeds in the dorms of Northtown. The Shed is an immense brick warehouse in which virtually all precious and irreplaceable scientific equipment and tools are stored when not in use—everything from titration flasks and microscopes to metric wrenches and thermocouples. Given the universal antipathy toward cities and other Pre-Exodus centers of civilization, those tools are just too precious to risk. The Shed has a small stockade on its flat, high roof, from which a Guard with some excellent firepower was regarding us with a bored eye. Another sign of unrest in the kingdom. The building had survived countless Agro raids in the old days, but it had not been deemed necessary to man the battlements for years now. It gave me a hell of an idea.
The trigger-happy Guards actually made it easier. As I was trying to work out a plausible approach, I stepped quite accidentally in a pothole. With a small cry of genuine fear, I went down heavily. Knowing the Guards were on edge, I rolled sideways as I hit, which would have been fine except that Collaci also knew his men were edgy and struck both their gun barrels aside as I went down. One flailing barrel tracked me as I tumbled, and a slug smacked into the earth by my head. I lay still, oh very still, and blinked at Teach'.
"You didn't think I'd let these clowns shoot me?" I asked plaintively.
"You didn't think I'd let them?" he returned sourly, and glared at his men. "Come on, son. On your feet."
I got up, limped tenderly off the road and sat down in the shade, next to a bracing strut of the right-hand loading dock.
Collaci looked disgusted. "Isham . . ."
"Teach'," I broke in wearily, "you can pick me up and carry me the last couple of hundred yards, or you can wait two minutes while I get my breath back. Besides, I think my heel is coming off."
He sighed, and turned to the ape who'd nearly shot me. "Go to the Hospital and have a paramedic sent to Gowan's home—Cole and Jalecki'll be needing skull transplants. Then go on home and get some sleep." The man turned to go at once, mortally embarrassed. "Andrews." He turned back. "Your reaction time is commendable. But next time just kick his teeth in—it's not such a final mistake."
"Yes, sir."
"Get." Teach' came and sat near me, sitting with instinctive caution on my armless side. My idea was taking shape. A flat stone under my right thigh decided me. I shifted slightly so that the stone was between my legs, then pulled my left foot up on my lap with a great show of weariness.
"Feet hurt," I wheezed, and examined the shoe mournfully. The heel was indeed coming off—I decided I was a hotdamn commando but a terrible cobbler. "Now I've gotta walk around like a duck." I worked the heel the rest of the way off.
"Not much further."
"You know, Teach', a few months ago I'd have been good and pissed off at old Andrews there. But I did a very similar thing myself in New York when I first arrived." I inspected the heel and its protruding nails disgustedly, and dropped it in my lap. It slid to the ground between my thighs. "It's not good to think with your adrenals—but sometimes you can't help yourself." I gazed at the mountain, and shielded my eyes against the sun. "Got a joint?"
"Smoking a lot lately," he said, lighting and passing a rather large doobie.
"Only when I get uptight." I took a deep hit, carbureting with air, and passed it back.
"Ride your nervous system," Collaci advised. "Don't let it ride you."
I exploded. It was easy—I actually was a bit uptight. "God DAMMIT," I bellowed, "I have lost an arm, killed my father, found out that my best friends on earth are Wendell Carlson and the Muskies, been busted and dragged a couple hundred miles, been condemned to death by my aunts and uncles, and my fucking heel has come off!" I reached between my legs, grabbed the flat rock and hurled it at the mountain. "I don't need a laconic flatfoot telling me to stay on top of things!"
It was a critical moment. I had no idea how closely the stone resembled a broken-off heel—for all I knew it was bright blue—nor could I sneak a glance as I flung it. I used my eyes to hold Collaci's—but what about the remaining Guard?
At any rate, my aim was good. Instead of landing on rock, where it would have made the wrong sound, the stone landed in a patch of scrub grass where it made no appreciable sound at all ". . . See?" I finished, hoping he didn't.
He looked at me evenly, not speaking, and I flushed convincingly. He passed me the joint. I took another toke and stared at the ground.
"I think you've got your breath back, son," he said finally, and rose, unholstering his pistol. I made a song and dance out of getting to my feet, managing to palm the heel and slap it against the underside of the loading dock without being seen—difficult without another hand to misdirect with. To my intense relief the nails sank relatively silently into the big platform, nothing shuffling my feet couldn't cover. The heel remained when I took my hand away, visible only to a man lying full-length under the loading dock.
Since all this involved leaving the joint hanging from my mouth, I took another huge hit. Then, under the prodding of Teach's gun, I started walking east again, straining to still look harassed when I felt triumphant. Trying to walk with one leg stiff and the other missing a heel supplied the necessary irritation—a double limp that wasted energy and slowed me up enough to keep Collaci chivvying me to hurry. We passed the empty athletic field, the Pantry (an enormous food warehouse bursting with fruits, grains and vegetables), and finally the Hospital, just short of the mouth of the Linkin' Tunnel. It was there that Teach's luck ran out.
Three people stood just inside the Hospital door, two visiting farmers and a Techno woman. Since the Hospital must always be well ventilated, the door was naturally open, and they saw us at once.
I guess there just aren't too many one-armed black men around—they recognized me, and their conversational buzz died as though the needle had been lifted off the record. There went the secrecy—for efficient information dispersal, you just can't beat idle chatter.
I felt a brief impulse to shout out the results of my trial, and I believe if I had been acquainted with any of the loitering three I would have. Even less than I liked the idea of my execution did I like the idea of a lid on it. Let the people know the truth.
But I reflected, and the impulse passed. An informed populace would be no help to me in the next twenty-four hours, and a pissed-off Collaci would actively hamper me. The hell with the people. Hi there. Just out fora walk with my good friend Teach', and this gorilla here kindly consented to carry my bazooka for me. Say, have you seen my keen new stump? I gave the three what I hoped was an enigmatic smile and passed on. Collaci said nothing, but the idlers scattered when they saw his face.
On the opposite corner of Main, beyond the tunnel, stood Security Headquarters, a rather small sturdy ferrocement building colloquially known as "the cop on the corner." Directly across South Avenue, to our right, a wooden stairway led up the steep slope of the Nose to a heaped-rock emplacement on the north face. From this bunker embrasures ran in either direction, disappearing almost at once among the rocks—Line Two, Fresh Start's second line of defense. Any Musky raiding party that gets past the armed men at Line One (between Northtown and the Lake) runs into more sharpshooters and a wall of alcohol-jet flame when it reaches the Nose—only rare individual Muskies ever threaten the dozens working, plugged, in Southtown.
I took one last deep toke, gazed wistfully at the Nose while I held it, then pinched and pocketed the roach. Sighing, I preceded Collaci and the Guard into Security HQ. Do not collect two hundred dollars.
It was darker indoors—my eyes were a moment adjusting. "Hi, Shorty," I called out, smelling an old friend. "What's new?"
"Howdy, Isham. Noth—"
"Shut up, Shorty," the Guard behind me snapped. "This son of a bitch talks to nobody. Krish's orders."
Shorty Pfeil looked him over, got up from behind his desk and smiled. They call him Shorty because he stands six-five. If you shipped a barrel inside Shorty, it'd rattle a lot. "Cal," he said gently, "that running of the mouth'll land you in the Hospital yet." Cal shut up. "As I was saying, Isham: `Nothing much, what's new with you?' "
"They shoot me tomorrow morning."
He nodded. "Yeah, if it ain't one damn thing it's another. We're on the downhill slope; got to run faster all the time just to stay on our feet. He get the executive suite, chief?"
Collaci nodded.
"TV's busted, Isham, and I'm afraid room service ain't what it used to be—but for you, it's on the house."
"I'll take it, Shorty," I said. "Thanks." I really was grateful—Shorty's chatter was the first friendly words I'd heard all week. I thought of a leopard in Central Park, and smiled. I was glad I'd left my heel at the Tool Shed. It didn't belong here.
He produced a ring of keys and opened up the larger of the two cells that make up the rear of the building. It was a stone cube with a barred window on the far end. Mattress on the left, toilet on the right, three feet of clearance in the middle. My nose told me that the last tenant had been Marv Cassidy—drunk again. The door was a really impressive steel-bar affair that must have weighed a quarter ton. If Fresh Start were suddenly overrun by rampaging brontosaurs, I'd be perfectly safe—but by and by I'd get hungry. I stood in the entrance for a moment, feeling decidedly at bay. On the other hand, that mattress looked mighty good. I entered the cell. But there was one last bit of business to be played out first.
Teach' followed me in, and stood waiting. "I don't tip bellboys," I said. "No luggage."
"That's what interests me," he admitted. "Let's have that belt, son."
"Eh?" Shrewd bastard.
"Open it. Slowly."
I complied. There wasn't any way to hide the knife blade built into the buckle. I looked disgusted and passed over the belt. My scalp itched.
"Christ, Isham," Collaci said, shaking his head. "I taught you that gag." I nodded ruefully. "And I also taught you that one concealed weapon isn't enough."
That shrewd. Damn him.
"Let's see. A smart young fella like you would probably pick a place you expect people's gaze to avoid. Let's unpin that empty sleeve."
What do you know? There was a sap strapped to my stump. I tried to look unconcerned, but Teach' was cannier than I'd expected. My scalp itched something awful.
He stepped outside and closed the door, which snapped shut with a meaty thunk. I sank down wearily on the mattress, feet under me in lotus. "Don't forget that transcript, Teach'."
He paused on his way out. "I don't expect any surprises."
"Uncle Phil . . . do you like to fight? Or do you just like to win when you must fight?"
The question took him by surprise; I hadn't called him that in ten years. He got a thoughtful look. At last he said, almost to himself, "I think you have to get to where you like it, if you intend to keep on winning, every time." He frowned, and his voice softened. "Sometimes I get to thinking I'd like to kick the habit and lay up awhile. But it seems like they just keep a-coming. Fights, I mean, one kind or another. If I ever get me a sustained break, maybe I'll—" He frowned and grinned at the same time, squinting his wolf's eyes. "Yeah, I like it. Why?"
"You looking forward to the next twelve years of it?"
He pursed his lips. "Isham, every morning I get up and I put my pants on one leg at a time."
"And then strap on an arsenal and you're ready to shave. You sleep with one eye open and you never use plugs, even when the wind's from the south. I grew up with this crazy world, but don't you ever get tired? You told the Council and you told 'em true. It gets worse from here."
"So?"
"Play the transcript."
"I will. But I'm dismally afraid you've figured out How to Save the World."
"And that in your considered opinion can't be done? May we quote you, Chief Collaci?"
"So long, Isham." He left, Cal following like a well-trained gorilla. I'd done the best I could, sown all the seeds I'd brought with me.
As soon as Shorty Pfeil took his traditional siesta, I shook the lockpicks out of my afro and tried them, pausing to scratch my scalp thoroughly. The third pick worked, the same one that had let me into Columbia University a hundred years ago. I pulled the door closed again, replaced the picks in my hair, and then I went to sleep. I had a long night ahead.
The first visitor didn't blow my mind at all. In fact, I'd been expecting him.
Dr. Michael Gowan arrived late in the afternoon, just as I was waking up. As usual, he managed to make stained overalls into a Techno Tuxedo. I've seen him look dapper in the shower, and dammit, he's too old to be dapper. Not many real blonds can carry off a Van Dyke, but he manages. A rather short man, elegant and awesomely learned. With a variable staff, he's kept school runing at Fresh Start—a school open to anyone, Techno, farmer or Agro alike—for over fifteen years, constructing curricula, organizing softball teams, teaching endless tireless hours, riding hard on a gang of yahoos with fairness and dignity and turning them into educated adults. He always has a spare half an hour for you, and as far as I know he sleeps on every third Thursday. He was my teacher all my life, my personal tutor through early adolescence, and the first adult I ever relaxed with. If Dad was the father of my body, "Docta Mike" was the father of my mind.
On my sixteenth birthday, he and I got drunk together on his home-brewed beer, went for a walk in the woods with three jugs of home-foam, and woke up two days later in an abandoned warehouse miles from home. The warehouse turned out to be the Hudson Valley Textbook Supply repository—that is to say, about half of what you'll find in the School Library today. We stayed for a week, and both caught hell from Dad when we returned.
I had drifted away from Gowan in the last few years. Dad subtly disapproved of the things he taught me, and saw to it that I spent an equal amount of time with Collaci. Both tutors challenged my intellect, but Collaci was clearly the more glamorous role model—and cynicism a more attractive posture to a young man. And so I stopped coming by the book-filled library with the picture window, tapered off the evenings of conversation and discussion, ducked the pesky questions I could not answer about the thing I had to do. Collaci's kind of teaching was easier to reconcile with the indoctrination I was getting at home.
When I blinked away the thick fog of sleep and saw Gowan standing at the cell door, I discovered with a detached amusement that I had missed him very much.
"Hello, doc. Sorry I bust your window."
`The pain was transient."
"No puns, please. A mouse has died in my mouth. We missed you at homeroom."
"You think I enjoyed being evicted at two in the morning? Had the misfortune to be the only window lit when they needed a place to park you. Shorty, old fellow, a glass of water for Isham here. I spent the night on Krishnamurti's couch and the day asking questions that didn't get answered. Fortunately I had the sense to bug my own study before I left."
"Doc," I said with genuine relief, "you've just saved me pages of dialogue." I was a little tired of recapitulating the events of recent months.
"You should have saved them this morning. Really, Isham, were you that naïve? Or was it simple ignorance?"
"The old college try. The truth shall make you free."
"If you can say things like that, I can make puns. Isham, the Council, individually and as a group, had to ignore your words."
"I know—Collaci has explained the political situation. Jordan's Agro gang is bigger than ever; they've been raiding some of the smaller farmers that trade with us and threatening the bigger suppliers. One of those suppliers was killed by Muskies last week, and public sentiment is turning against us. To announce that our founding father was the man who dealt this mess in the first place, and that his son has been collaborating with Muskies, would be asking to have this place burned to the ground."
"Spurious argument, Isham."
"Say what?"
"Specious and spurious. And probably exactly what those three have been telling each other all day. `Expediency—that's why we closed our minds.' Claptrap! A good politician can sell anything—even the truth."
"What do you figure, then? Please don't tell me they have a vested interest in anti-Musky munitions."
"Any of them would infinitely rather be producing solar-power units—which we can't spare the time or man-power for now. No, Isham. Politics is made of people."
"Explain."
"Each of the three members of the Council has their own reason for reaching this morning's decision. Their motivations are subtly different but amount to the same thing: they will let no political, social or moral considerations prevent them from punishing you for Jacob's death."
"Look, Dr. Mike, at this point anger would be a comfort. But I can't see them as that hypocritical. Maybe it'd be simpler and easier to look on them as villains—but I don't."
"Good lord, boy, neither do I. They're people. People always do what they must—you of all people should know that. Don't interrupt. You hit each of those three in a vital spot, the kind of hurt they can't consciously admit because that would involve recognizing and acknowledging the vital spot. You opened scars they do not wish to remember they have. And so they find other, urgently necessary reasons to crush your head between two boulders. That's not hypocrisy—just rationalization. Which may be just as frustrating to deal with, but not as culpable—the subconscious can plead self-defense."
"They loved Dad that much?" I was not convinced. Helen aside, there had been no great warmth between Dad and his lieutenants. Respect, sure; friendship, certainly. The four were together a long time, went through a lot together while I was still learning to use the potty. But not warmth. Hell, I'd never gotten any real warmth from Dad—bare approval was an achievement.
"Perhaps Helen's prime motivation is close to love—in the fifteen years since your mother died she's never stopped believing that one day Jacob would warm to her and return her love. And then you went and cut him down before he could. If you're ever captured, don't let them give you to the women. Not alive.
"But equally important, Helen cannot accept the new version of Jacob. She's a proud woman, boy—you'd have to know how women used to be treated to understand how proud. If what you claim of Jacob is true, then she displayed execrable judgment in falling in love with him, in failing to see through him all these years. She can't accept that. So you must be a liar."
"All right. That figures. But what about George and Krish?"
"George is the one you couldn't have known about . . . though you might have guessed. Not many celibates around these days."
"I don't get you. So George is a loner. . . ."
"George is exclusively homosexual. Was, I should say, as he hasn't functioned sexually at all in all the years I've known him."
"So what?" I was mildly surprised, but I knew what homosexuality was; I'd seen and smelled it in animals. Only the "exclusive" part puzzled me. Seemed silly.
"Isham, the kind of persecution such people used to incur is another of those things you'd have to have lived through to understand. We don't seem to have homosexuals anymore—it must be a Civilized luxury—but when we did we hated them. They were called sick, evil, degenerate, deranged—and indeed many were driven off the rails by inner or outer pressure. It was infinitely harder for such a man or woman to find a satisfactory partner, to build a lasting relationship.
"George was apparently one of the very lucky few. In his late teens, he met and ultimately moved in with an engineer named Tom Wocjik, and they lived together for nearly ten years. Wocjik was driven into autism by the Hyperosmic Plague. George kept him alive somehow for six weeks until a Musky got him while George was out foraging. He returned in time to kill the Musky with a cutting torch."
"So George isn't disposed to make peace with Muskies. But you say he wants to punish me for killing Dad. Do you mean he has the same motivation as Helen?" The notion seemed weird—unsettling, somehow.
"No, Isham. But when your father first began organizing Fresh Start, George's sexual orientation caused some controversy. Sarwar learned of it somehow and argued that George should be driven out as an `undesirable.' You know George—he'd die without projects to boss. Your father spoke up for him, with considerable fervor, and told Sarwar that if he ever mentioned George's sexual proclivities again, he would be asked to leave."
"Oh." Light dawned.
"Yes. With the passing of years, George and Sarwar seem to have buried the hatchet—but I suspect that a bit of the handle is still visible. George was extremely grateful to Jacob; thanks to you he's now under the direct authority of a man who, he believes, considers him less than a man."
I felt a flash of pity for George, but it didn't last long. Poor old fellow has to kill me; how sad for him. I laughed.
"Pretty ironic, doc. One of the most crucial people in human history blows the big one on account of a taboo that's been dead for twenty years. Civilization persists in completing its suicide." He didn't seem to appreciate the humor. "How about Krish?"
"Sarwar's case is an altogether subtler one." Gowan studied his fingernails. "His biochemical knowledge aside, Isham, your father was a dreamer of magnificent scope—but a shockingly undereducated man. His first big dream resulted in the world we live in today." Well, at least one person believed me. "Fresh Start was a better dream, but he was no more equipped to execute it than he was the first time around. Again, he needed a stooge. He was the dreamer—but Sarwar was the planner, the systems specialist, the design engineer. Tell him you want living quarters for a hundred-fifty technicians, and he'll devise buildings and water and sewage systems to your parameters. Tell him you want a newspaper, and he'll locate presses, form a staff, arrange distribution. He's a realizer of dreams.
"But he's not a dreamer. Faced with hostile neighbors, it took him to get Got News and WFS working—but it took Jacob to think of them. Sarwar lacks originality, and his vision is of a unique kind, as limited in its way as Jacob's. He tends to see the inside, the workings, whereas Jacob saw the outside, the goal. Without Jacob, Sarwar is a man with his head cut off. He has no dreams to forge."
"And I cut off his head, and rubbed his nose in the fact that even with that head, all he ever was was the second Wendell Carlson. Oh, Jesus!" It all fit now, and the completed jigsaw picture was sickening. What a tangled concatenation of bullshit for the fate of the race to be decided by! I began to get angry, a deep anger I didn't entirely understand. "I felt better thinking they were just stupid and ruthlessly practical. That's a dumb bunch of reasons to die you just gave me, Dr. Mike. Why, they're worse than hypocrites. They're—they're—"
"Human. Just like Jacob was human, lad. Just like you."
"Me?" I leaped to my feet, enraged.
Gowan stood his ground. "What other reason did you have for killing Jacob than personal outrage? Don't tell me you really believe that `Hand of Man' guff he used to give you? Have you really `slept easier' lately?"
My voice was low and dangerous. "That's none of your goddamn business."
"Suffering Jesus, boy, how can you condemn the Council for their rationalizations when you won't look at your own? All right then, tell me: why did you kill Jacob?"
"Hey, listen—he loaded, cocked, and aimed me. All I did was go off."
"Oh, crap! You're a man, not an artifact; you made a free-will choice. The cleverness of the method used shows that you applied your reason to the matter—do you seriously claim you're a tool of your conditioning? Is that why you associate with our enemies and try to sell a peace nobody wants?"
"Shut up." I blazed, startling myself considerably. I don't think I'd ever said that phrase before in my life. "I don't need this shit! What I need is someone to help me get through to the Council, not somebody to tell me they're just as right to kill me as I was to do what they're killing me for."
"What you need, Isham, is to learn to forgive them—and your father. If you don't, you can't justly forgive yourself—and if you can't do that, you might as well not wait until tomorrow morning to die."
I didn't plan on dying any time in the near future, but I couldn't say that with Shorty listening—he's my friend, but he has a strong sense of duty. Besides, it was irrelevant. I stood clutching the bars of my cell with my one hand, and for an awful moment I was back on top of the Empire State Building, reeling at a great height. It may be necessary, but is it right? As you sow, so shall you reap. One good burn deserves the other cheek for an eye have been used goddammit used by that sanctimonious . . . I burst into angry tears and sat down hard on the stone floor.
"Isham, one of the hardest things for a young man to realize and accept is how many of his father's worst traits he has acquired unconsciously." Gowan's voice was soft, compassionate. "Perhaps there are valid grounds for execution—perhaps they even obtain in your case. But you killed Jacob for personal reasons."
"As he would have had me kill Wendell," I muttered into my lap.
"Precisely."
The knot in my gut refused to loosen. In all the weeks since I had booby-trapped the bathroom I had, by an effort that only now seemed remarkable, entirely avoided thinking about the matter at all. Poor Wendell had accepted the news with no comment at all—I don't suppose he felt qualified to make moral judgments anymore. And so there were no rationalizations to surrender, no defenses to come tumbling down around my ears. There was only the pain, the horror and the pain that formed a molten lump in my belly. It was plenty.
The words clawed themselves up my throat with ragged talons, pried open my teeth and escaped. "I loved him! I l-loved him. The bastard, the motherfucker, I loved him. Cold-hearted self-serving madman I loved him killed him HATE HIM!" I was screaming, beating my thigh with my hand, stump flailing.
Gowan reached through the bars and captured my hand in his. I'd never thought of him as a strong man, but his grip was unbreakable. The painful pressure of his fingers was an input from the world outside my skull, and I could not break the connection; it anchored me to reality. All the tension that made my body shiver and spasm seemed to drain off down my arm and into those clenching fingers. For an endless time I seemed to be dangling from them over some bottomless abyss, and just as the pain reached the breaking point it began to ease, until finally I was only sitting on a hard floor with a wet face and a sore arm.
" `Can any man,' " Gowan quoted softly, " `be asked to be more than a man?' You did what you had to do, Isham. You were who you were, and are now someone different in consequence." His voice was somewhat hoarse. I smelled sweat, glanced up and saw his face beaded with it, his hand white in my grip. I released it hastily.
He held my eyes, and suddenly he laughed and stood up. "First my window, then my hand. You've got a blacksmith's grip, friend."
I seemed to be looking up at him out of a well. "I had the idea you were holding me." I wiped my nose.
"I guess I was, at first."
"I . . . I'm glad you came."
"How do you feel?"
I thought about it. "At peace," I said at last, surprised. "First time in—a long while."
"Then I'm glad I came too. I was going to bring you some books, but I forgot. I'll come back with them tonight. Have you read The Count of Monte Cristo?" He winked gently on the side away from Shorty.
It was beautifully done. The sudden chatter sounded natural after the extreme intensity of the moment past—and Shorty is completely illiterate.
"As a matter of fact I already have, yes," I told him, smiling. "I liked old Valjean—he did things for himself."
No, I don't need any help in escaping.
"I should say so. Well, do you need anything, then?"
"No, thanks. You've given me the only help I needed."
His lean face lost twenty years' worth of tension. "I'm glad, Isham. I'm glad. You always were one of my brighter pupils. If only you weren't so utterly undisciplined . . ."
I waved my arm in silent pantomime, mouthed "Avoid the Tool Shed" with exaggerated clarity.
". . . you might have amounted to something," he continued without missing a beat, nodding when I finished.
"Not me. I'm going to be a teacher when I grow up," I replied aloud.
He grimaced. "Enough of my pupils are Stoned already, thank you."
I awarded the pun a wince. "As opposed to cap-and-Gowaned?" I asked, then peered at him closely. "Your pupils don't look stoned to me." He winced right back, and we almost smiled.
"Enough of this chitchat, Isham. I've got Sarwar's ear to bend, and George's, and especially Helen's. In fact, I believe I'll see her first. Tomorrow is a long way off. Be of hope."
"I am, Dr. Mike. Thanks for stopping by."
"Be seeing you, lad." He left with his usual jaunty stride, and the memory of his smile, framed in wispy blond beard, stayed with me longer than his spoor.
I went to the cell window. It faced on Town Square and the Pond, a macabre touch. I spent about ten minutes watching children sail small wooden boats in the shade of the weeping willows, wishing for a good case of amnesia.
I found myself thinking of Wendell. I was desperately anxious to know if he still lived. He was an old man; his heart wasn't up to running around the city, jumping in and out of subway tunnels. But the transmitter which had been causing me to limp for so many miles had barely enough range to set off the bomb at the Tool Shed, and no receiving capacity. There's a limit to how much you can build into a hollow heel, even if you know what you're doing and have all the resources of New York City to draw from. There was no way for Wendell to tell me if he lived.
I gave it up and put in an hour's hard thinking on Gowan's words.