Somewhere in there my self tried to go to a place from which it would not be able to find its way back.
But a swarm of Muskies prevented it, and stayed with it until it was well.
Their name was Mistral.
I opened my eyes.
My own bedroom. Late afternoon. Lying on my own bed for the first time since forever. There was my guitar. There was my bookshelf and the twin speakers. There was my hookah.
There was Dad.
It's all been a dream, that's it . . .
Nuts.
"Hi, Dad."
"Hello, son."
Neither one of us spoke again for a long while. I was studying him, looking for something I could not name. I was a long time looking. It's curiously difficult to actually see your father's face, I found—you tend to assume it. But I made the effort, and found whatever it was I was looking for, knew all at once the identity of the last of the three selves in whom I had seen reflections of my own (Collaci, I'd learned on the mountainside, was the second).
By damn, my old man loved me very much. Why hadn't I ever seen that before?
"You're looking good, for a corpse."
"Don't try to get up. You rolled a way downhill after you fell, and gave your head a nasty crack."
"Wouldn't dream of it. I was thinking of skipping school today."
That got a quick smile, gone in an instant. It got me thinking that I'd like to see another. "Dad?"
"Yes?"
"I'm delighted to see that the reports of your death were exaggerated."
This smile was huge, but it dissolved in moments into tears, and we embraced awkwardly. "I'm sorry, Isham," he sobbed brokenly. "Oh, son, I'm sorry."
I discovered that I was weeping too, just as loud. "I felt just shitty without a father," I managed, and then I could not speak for crying. We held each other and bawled together for a very long time. It brought me—and him, I knew—back to the night Mama died. The family's back together again, I thought crazily, and wept anew.
Finally we disengaged and blew our noses. The honking produced enough comic relief to get us both grinning like idiots, and I decided to turn my mind to practical matters before it melted into mush. "Did you hear my proposal to Jordan?"
He sobered. "I heard the whole performance as I ran from Sarwar's home. He was wired for sound."
"How do you feel about my proposal?"
"Like a damned fool. If I had had your wisdom when I was your age, or even my age . . . yes, by all means, let there be peace. I don't want to rebuild everything I destroyed."
"Where's Jordan?"
"Gone. After you'd been carried back downhill, I went to him. I begged his pardon for closing my mind to him for so many years, for assuming an uneducated ex-Techno had nothing to teach me, and asked him to join the Council. He was like a man who'd been sandbagged; I wasn't sure he'd heard me. Then he looked up, and his mask was soggy, and he begged my pardon right back. He was so sincere he startled me. He offered to meet the Council over breakfast tomorrow, to `discuss how he could best help us,' and I said that would be just fine. Your . . . your friend High Mistral . . . er . . . gave us to understand that he would also attend the conference. Then Jordan shook my hand and left, still looking sandbagged, and within ten minutes there wasn't an Agro left on the Nose. Did your Musky friend do all that to him, son?"
"No way," I said. "Jordan did it himself. All he had to do was decide to be afraid, and High Mistral couldn't have touched his mind at all. Since he's a brave man, the old plasmoid was able to get inside and give him a massive dose of the thing whose lack had twisted him, the thing he'd thought he could never have with a bad joke for a face: love. High Mistral forgave Jordan for being bitter; Jordan did the rest alone." I was suddenly very tired.
Dad shook his head. "I hope he feels the same tomorrow morning. Sarwar says I'm insane to trust him."
"He will," I said positively. "When you've waited as long as he has for hope to come back, you don't let it go. Dad?"
"Yes?"
"How's Helen?"
He smiled suddenly. "Very well indeed."
"She thought you were dead, too."
"So did everyone but Sarwar."
"A pretty dirty trick."
"I know. I can't for the life of me understand why she's agreed to marry me."
"Dad! That's wonderful! That's . . . sufferin' Jesus, that's terrific. Congratulations, man, congratulations." My head swam, but the fatigue that lay on me lessened some. "I hope you'll both be very happy. I've been wanting to build me a house of my own for a while now."
"You'll always be welcome here, son."
"Not with a family of my own. Alia's carrying my baby."
He blinked violently. And then he smiled again. "It looks as though the congratulations are mutual, Isham."
It was all too much. I hadn't exchanged this much juice with my father in all my twenty years, and while it felt good, the unfamiliar intensity was exhausting. There were a thousand questions I wanted to ask, and the sheer weight of them made my eyelids suddenly heavy.
"Gonna fall asleep," I said faintly. "Hey Dad. What did George say when he saw you?"
"Hollered for five minutes about how nobody tells him nothing around this goddamned place, and then he shook my hand. He said to tell you he's sorry, by the way. Er . . . Helen still bears traces of a grudge, but I'm sure she'll come around."
"I'm sure she will," I agreed groggily. "Me too."
"We all will, sooner or later," Dad said, "Now sleep."
I slept.
(High Mistral?)
(YES, ISHAM?)
(Why did it take our races so long to get together? We could have used you, the past couple thousand years.)
(AND WE YOU. A MINIMUM POPULATION IS NEEDED FOR SATISFACTORY ((untranslatable))ING. THANKS TO YOU, WE CAN NOW MAINTAIN THAT LEVEL, AND OUR ((untranslatable)) WILL BE ((untranslatable)). BOTH RACES WERE SLOW TO PERCEIVE THEIR NEED, AND NEITHER COULD HAVE KNOWN THAT THE OTHER FILLED IT.)
(What you need is always there. Just a matter of finding it.)
(SO I/WE BELIEVE.)
(Nice working with you, pal.)
(LIKEWISE.)
(See you tomorrow.)
(IT IS/WILL BE WELL.)
I was sitting in a comfortable chair by a crackling fire that warmed the autumn night. It felt inexpressibly good to be back home, to know that you Can Go Home Again, and find it a better place than you left it. Mike, Krishnamurti, Collaci and Wendell were ranged about the room in other armchairs, and Alia was at my side. Helen was at the chapel, praying, and I was sure she wasn't alone.
"So you did have a sense of smell all these years," I said wonderingly.
Standing by the fireplace, back to us, Dad nodded. "How else would I have detected the bomb in the bathroom? I triggered it with a broom handle and thought hard for several hours before going to see Sarwar. I had been horrified at the loss of your arm, and when I realized the only reason you could have for setting such a trap I had my nose literally rubbed in the fact that it had been my own fault.
"Then I found and played your tape recording.
"I believed that if you learned I had not been killed after all, you would return and stalk me again—no doubt with better success. And so I crept through the dark to Sarwar's home and told him to announce my successful murder." Krish shuddered at the memory. "Since Alia no longer lives at home, I was able to stay out of sight in his attic for weeks, totally alone, eating whatever he brought me. I was trying to come to terms with myself.
"In that time I finally confronted the insanity I had committed upon you.
"You see, son, I never believed for a moment in all these twenty years that Wendell was actually still alive. I had left him unconscious in his laboratory and was convinced I had killed him. I struck him quite hard.
"But I knew that the world would need a target for its horror and fury, and there was a chance that the Hyperosmic Virus could be traced to me. To protect myself, I concocted the story of the archvillain living in exile.
"It seemed only a natural extrapolation of my lie that I should raise up my only son to kill the villain I had created. May God forgive me, son, I used you as an object, a brace to shore up a topheavy lie. I suppose I expected that you would eventually return from New York with the news that Wendell was nowhere to be found. That would have allowed me to reluctantly declare him dead and lay to rest a ghost that had long outlived its usefulness."
"And instead," Wendell said gently, "Isham has raised two ghosts to life." He and Dad exchanged a glance.
"But why did Krish sic Collaci on me, and why didn't you step forward after I first talked to the Council?" I asked.
"Sarwar was trying to force me from my isolation in his attic by having you brought back. Since you had to be publicly fetched, he had to hold a Council. Although I refused to sit on it, Sarwar's plan nearly worked. I decided I would come to your cell that night at midnight. And then when Jordan attacked Fresh Start and carried off you and Alia, and Dr. Gowan disappeared with our only truck, I realized how grossly I had neglected my responsibilities while reflecting on my sins toward you, bathing in new and old guilt. I decided my best move was to make a dramatic public reappearance, with just the right timing to defuse the coming violence. For the second time, Jordan moved before I was ready."
He turned to face me, meeting my eyes squarely. "All of which only proves that I am too damned old and stupid to keep on bossing this town by myself. Let alone negotiating a relationship with several thousand plasmoids. Will you help me, son? Will you help us all?"
All eyes in the room were now on me.
"I'll help you all I can, Dad," I told him. "So will Wendell. So will Jordan. We'll all help."
"Yes, we will," Wendell agreed.
The tension went out of his shoulders, and his eyes were softer than I'd ever known them. He came forward, and Wendell and I both rose to meet him. We three embraced, for a long time. When I looked around, Mike and Teach' and Alia were grinning like demented pumpkins.
I found that I was too.
"Well, people," I said happily, "we've got a treaty to work out with some plasmoids. I volunteer to be interpreter. But for ambassadors, I nominate Wendell Morgan Carlson and the elder Stone."
And a cheer went up from the other four.
An hour later the congregation had dwindled down to Dad and Alia and me, and we were getting sleepy ourselves.
"Well," Dad was asking, "what are you going to call the baby?"
"Jacob Wendell Stone," Alia said at one, "or Anne, after my mother." I nodded.
"Make it `Wendell Jacob,' " he said, and I nodded again. After a second Alia did too.
He yawned, and the two of us of course did too. "That's the sign," he said. "Good night, you two."
I stood and hugged him again, and Alia kissed him on the cheek. "Good night, Dad," I said. "Don't worry—the world's getting steadily better. Even Teach' has achieved his lifelong ambition—he's unemployed. Why, you can even start smoking your pipe again if you want to."
"Eh?"
"Forgot to tell you; half of the Hyperosmic Plague is wearing off its victims. We still have supersensitive noses—but the suppressor mechanism is starting to come back."
"You're joking."
"I lived in New York for weeks without plugs. After the first few hours it was tolerable. In a day or two I began forgetting that it smelled bad at all. And that's in a city over which the High Muskies were somehow maintaining an efficient heat sink, that they'd been using for twenty years as a pollution pantry. Mike could have done it too—if he'd had to, or believed he could."
He shook his head. "Too much for one day."
"It's not important. The point is that things are getting better all the time."
"They are at that," he agreed, and started to leave. He paused and frowned. "One thing I don't look forward to is having breakfast with Jordan tomorrow morning. Will you cover for me, son?"
"Not a chance."
"Oh, I know he has a valid viewpoint, and I concede I could learn much from him. I'll make a genuine attempt to learn from him, too. But the man is such an infernal jackass."
"Dad," I said very gently, "so are you. So am I. So is every person I have ever met, seen or heard of. Only a jackass could have released the Hyperosmic Virus, and only a jackass could have spent his left arm and endless weeks of head banging to learn the simple repeated lesson that fear breeds violence, which don't breed nothing at all but bones. Everybody that ever walked or rode the wind has been a jackass, to X degree, for X periods of his life. But if there's one thing you and I are learning, it's that you've got to learn to live with all those other jackasses, somehow.
"Or else you'll have to die with them."