He had found his work, and it was his bliss, as well.
A brilliant boy and superb student, the top of his class, he naturally turned to education to seek a greater understanding of his special role in life. In school and books he found every answer that he wanted.
While he learned, he practiced. As a young man of great wealth and privilege, he was much admired for the unpaid work he performed in nursing homes, which he modestly called “just giving back a little to society in return for all my blessings.”
By the time that he went to university, Preston determined that philosophy would be his field, his chosen community.
Introduced to a forest of philosophers and philosophies, he was taught that every tree stood equal to the others, that each deserved respect, that no view of life and life’s purpose was superior to any other. This meant no absolutes existed, no certainties, no universal right or wrong, merely different points of view. Before him were millions of board feet of ideas, from which he’d been invited to construct any dwelling that pleased him.
Some philosophies placed a greater value on human life than did others. Those were not for him.
Soon he discovered that if philosophy was his community, then contemporary ethics was the street on which he most desired to live. Eventually, the relatively new field of bioethics became a cozy house in which he felt at home as never before in his life.
Thus he had arrived at his current eminence. And to this place, this time.
Soaring mountains, vast forests, eagles flying.
North, north to Nun’s Lake.
The Black Hole had resurrected herself. She settled in the copilot’s chair.
Preston conversed with her, charmed her, made her laugh, drove with his usual expertise, drove north to Nun’s Lake, but still he lived more richly within himself.
He reviewed in memory his most beautiful killings. He had many more to remember than the world realized. The assisted suicides known to the media were but a fraction of his career achievements.
Being one of the most controversial and one of the most highly regarded bioethicists of his day, Preston had a responsibility to his profession not to be immodest. Consequently he’d never brag of the true number of mercies that he’d granted to those in need of dying.
As they sped farther north, the sky steadily gathered clouds upon itself: thin gray shrouds and later thick thunderheads of a darker material.
Before the day waned, Preston intended to locate and visit Leonard Teelroy, the man who claimed to have been healed by aliens. He hoped that the weather wouldn’t interfere with his plans.
He expected to find that Teelroy was a fraud. A dismayingly high percentage of claimed close encounters appeared to be obvious hoaxes.
Nevertheless, Preston ardently believed that extraterrestrials had been visiting Earth for millennia. In fact, be was pretty sure that he knew what they were doing here.
Suppose Leonard Teelroy had told the truth. Even suppose the alien activity at the Teelroy farm was ongoing. Preston still didn’t believe the ETs would heal the Hand and send her away dancing.
His “vision” of the Hand and the Gimp being healed had never occurred. He’d invented it to explain to the Black Hole why he wanted to ricochet around the country in search of a close encounter.
Now, still chatting with the Hole, he checked the mirror on the visor. The Hand sat at the dinette table. Reading.
What was it they called a condemned man in prison? Dead man walking. Yes, that was it.
See here: Dead girl reading.
His real reasons for tracking down ETs and making contact were personal. They had nothing to do with the Hand. He knew, however, that the Black Hole would not be inspired by his true motives.
Every activity must somehow revolve around the Hole. Otherwise, she would not cooperate in the pursuit of it.
He had figured that this healing-aliens story would be one that she would buy. Likewise, he had been confident that when at last he killed her children and claimed they had been beamed up to the stars, the Hole would accept their disappearance with wonder and delight — and would fail to recognize her own danger.
This had proved to be the case. If nature had given her a good mind, she had methodically destroyed it. She was a reliable dimwit.
The Hand was another matter. Too smart by half.
Preston could no longer risk waiting until her tenth birthday.
After he visited the Teelroy farm and assessed the situation there, if he saw no likelihood of making contact with ETs, he would drive east into Montana first thing in the morning. By three o’clock in the afternoon, he would take the girl to the remote and deeply shaded glen in which her brother waited for her.
He would open the grave and force her to look at what remained of the Gimp.
That would be cruel. He recognized the meanness of it.
As always, Preston forthrightly acknowledged his faults. He made no claim to perfection. No human could honestly make such a claim.
In addition to his passion for homicide, he had over the years gradually become aware of a taste for cruelty. Killing mercifully— quickly and in a manner that caused little pain — had at first been immensely satisfying, but less so over time.
He took no pride in this character defect, but neither did it shame him. Like every person on the planet, he was what he was — and had to make the best of it.
All that mattered, however, was that he remained useful in a true and profound sense, that what he contributed to this troubled society continued to outweigh the resources he consumed to sustain himself. In the finest spirit of utilitarian ethics, he had put his faults to good use for humanity and had behaved responsibly.
He reserved his cruelty strictly for those who needed to die anyway, and tormented them only immediately before killing them.
Otherwise, he quite admirably controlled every impulse to be vicious. He treated all people — those he had not marked for death— with kindness, respect, and generosity.
In truth, more like him were needed: men — and women! — who acted within a code of ethics to rid an overpopulated world of the takers, of the worthless ones who, if left alive, would drag down not merely civilization with all their endless needs, but nature as well.
There were so many of the worthless. Legions.
He wanted to subject the Hand to the exquisite cruelty of seeing her brother’s remains, because he was annoyed by her pious certainty that God had made her for a purpose, that her life had meaning she would one day discover.
Let her look for meaning in the biological sludge and bristling bones of her brother’s decomposed body. Let her search hopelessly for any sign of any god in that reeking grave.
North to Nun’s Lake under a darkening sky.
Soaring mountains, vast forests. Eagles gone to roost.
Dead girl reading.
Chapter 62
According to the inset chart of estimated driving times on the AAA map, Micky should have required eight hours and ten minutes to travel the 381 miles between Seattle and Nun’s Lake. Speed limits and rest stops were factored into this estimate, as were the conditions of the narrower state and county roads that she had to use after she exited Interstate 90 southeast of Coeur d’Alene.
After leaving Seattle promptly at 5:30 A.M., she reached her destination at 12:20 P.M., one hour and twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Light traffic, a disregard for speed limits, and a lack of interest in rest stops served her well.
Nun’s Lake proved to be true to its name. A large lake lay immediately south of it, and an imposing convent, built of native stone in the 1930s, stood on a high hill to the north. An order of Carmelite nuns occupied the convent,
