". . . and when I came to, Carlson was dead with a slug through the head and the last Musky was nowhere in smell. So I reset my plugs, found the campfire behind the hedges and ate his supper, and then left the next morning. I found a Healer in Jersey. That's all there is, Dad."
My father chewed the pipe he had not smoked in eighteen years and stared into the fire. Dry poplar and green birch together produced a steady blaze that warmed the spacious living room and peopled it with leaping shadows.
"Then it's over," he said at last, and heaved a great sigh.
"Yes, Dad. It's over."
He was silent, his coal-black features impassive, for a long time. Firelight danced among the valleys and crevices of his patriarch's face, and across the sharp scar on his left cheek (so like the one I now bore). His eyes glittered like rainy midnight. I wondered what he was thinking, after all these years and all that he had seen.
"Isham," he said at last, "you have done well."
"Have I, Dad?"
"Eh?"
"I just can't seem to get it straight in my mind. I guess I expected tangling with Carlson to be a kind of solution, to some things that have been bugging me all my life. Somehow I expected pulling that trigger to bring me peace. Instead I'm more confused than ever. Surely you can smell my unease, Dad? Or are you plugs still in again?" Dad used the best plugs in Fresh Start, entirely internal, and he perpetually forgot to remove them after work. Even those who loved him agreed he was the picture of the absentminded professor.
"No," he said hesitantly. "I can smell that you are uneasy, but I can't smell why. You must tell me, Isham."
"It's not easy to explain, Dad. I can't seem to find the words. Look, I wrote out a kind of journal of events in Jersey, while the Healer was working on me, and afterwards while I rested up. It's the same story I just told you, but somehow on paper I think it conveys more of what's bothering me. Will you read it?"
He nodded. "If you wish."
I gave my father all the preceding manuscript, right up to the moment I pulled the trigger and blacked out, and brought him his glasses. He read it slowly and carefully, pausing now and again to gaze distantly into the flames. While he read, I unobstrusively fed the fire and immersed myself in the familiar smells of woodsmoke and ink and chemicals and the pines outside, all the thousand indefinable scents that tried to tell me I was home.
When Dad was done reading, he closed his eyes and nodded slowly for a time. Then he turned to me and regarded me with troubled eyes. "You've left out the ending," he said.
"Because I'm not sure how I feel about it."
He steepled his fingers. "What is it that troubles you, Isham?"
"Dad," I said earnestly, "Carlson is the first man I ever killed. That's . . . not a small thing. As it happens, I didn't actually see my bullet blow off the back of his skull, and sometimes it's hard to believe in my gut that I really did it—I know it seemed unreal when I saw him afterward. But in fact I have killed a man. And as you just read, that may be necessary sometimes, but I'm not sure it's right. I know all that Carlson did, to us Stones and to the world, I know the guilt he bore. But I must ask you: Dad, was I right to kill him? Did he deserve to die?"
He came to me than and gripped my shoulder, and we stood like black iron statues before the raving fire. He locked eyes with me. "Perhaps you should ask your mother, Isham. Or your brother Israfel. Perhaps you should have asked the people whose remains you stepped over to kill Carlson. I do not know what is `right' and `wrong'; they are slippery terms to define. I only know what is. And revenge, as Collaci told you, is a uniquely human attribute.
"Superstitious Agro guerillas used to raid us from time to time, and because we were reluctant to fire on them they got away with it. Then one day they captured Collaci's wife, not knowing she was diabetic. By the time he caught up with them she was dead for lack of insulin. Within two days, every guerilla in that raiding party had died of a broken neck. Fresh Start has not been raided in all the years since. Ask Collaci about vengeance."
"But Jordan's Agros hate us more than ever."
"But they buy our axheads and wheels, our neosulfa and our cloth, just like their more sensible neighbors, and they leave us alone. Carlson's death will be an eternal warning to any who would impose their values on the world at large, and an eternal comfort to those who were robbed by him of the best of their lives—of their homes and their loved ones.
"Isham, you . . . did . . . right. Don't ever think differently, son. You did right, and I am deeply proud of you. Your mother and Israfel are resting easier now, and millions more too. I know that I will sleep easier tonight than I have in eighteen years."
That's right, Dad, you will. I relaxed. "All right, Dad. I guess you're right. I just wanted to hear someone tell me besides myself. I wanted you to tell me." He smiled and nodded and sat down again, and I left him there, an old man lost in his thoughts.
I went to the bathroom and closed the door behind me, glad that restored plumbing had been one of Fresh Start's first priorities to be realized. I spent a few minutes assembling some items I had brought back from New York City and removing the back of the septic tank behind the toilet bowl. Then I flushed the toilet.
Reaching into the tank, I grabbed the gravity ball and flexed it horizontally so that the tank would not refill with water. Holding it in place awkwardly, I made a long arm and picked up the large bottle of chlorine bleach I had fetched from the city. As an irreplaceable relic of Civilization it was priceless—and utterly useless to modern man. I slipped my plugs into place and filled the tank with bleach, replacing the porcelain cover silently but leaving it slightly ajar. I bent again and grabbed a large canister—also a valuable but useless antique—of bathroom bowl cleaner. It was labeled "Vanish," and I hoped the label was prophetic. I poured the entire canister into the bowl.
Hang the expense, I thought, and giggled insanely.
Then I put the cover down on the seat, hid the bleach and bowl cleaner and left, whistling softly through my teeth.
I felt good, better than I had since I left New York.
I walked through inky dark to the lake, and I sat among the pines by the shore, flinging stones at the water, trying to make them skip. I couldn't seem to get it right. I was used to the balancing effect of a left arm. I rubbed my stump ruefully and lay back and just thought for awhile. I had lied to my father—it was not over. But it would be soon.
Right or wrong, I thought, removing my plugs and lighting a joint, it sure can be necessary.
Moonlight shattered on the branches overhead and lay in shards on the ground. I breathed deep of the cool darkness, tasted pot and woods and distant animals and the good crisp scents of a balanced ecology, heard the faraway hum of wind-generators storing power for the work yet to be done. And I thought of a man gone mad with a dream of a better, simpler world; a man who, Heaven help him, meant well.
Behind me in the far distance came the sound of a flushing toilet, followed by a hideous gargling noise, and suddenly I laughed with real amusement, choking on smoke. The sound of justice: whoosh-splash-gllgh! It was the grandest joke in the universe; I laughed until I couldn't cry any more.
Then, taking my time, I recovered the hidden pack and supplies I cached on my way home. As I strapped up, I thought of the tape recording I had left behind on the Sony in the living room, and wondered briefly what Collaci and the Council would think of it. But I didn't really care much. For the first time in eighteen years, I was at peace. The Hand of Man had retired.
I set out for New York City.