The Colonel nodded. “That’s it, then? Purely local reprisal? No worldwide plagues, no major power shutoffs?”
“So far, no.”
“So far,” said the Colonel. “We can only pray.”
Ronnie approached his father’s bedside. “Well, at any rate, that’s the news. I thought you’d like to know, and now you do. Now you tell me: how are you feeling?”
“Old. Tired.”
“That’s all? Nothing in particular hurting you?”
“Old and tired, that’s all. So far. Of course, the Entities haven’t let any plagues loose yet, either, so far.”
He and Peggy went into the hallway. “Do you think he’s dying?” he asked her.
“He’s been dying for a long time, very very slowly. But I think he’s still got some distance to go. He’s tougher than you think he is, Ron.”
“Maybe so. But I hate to watch him crumbling like this. You have no idea what he was like when we were young, Peg. The way he stood, the way he walked, the way he held himself. Such an amazing man, absolutely fearless, absolutely honorable, always strong when you needed him to be strong. And always right. That was the astounding thing. I’d argue with him about something I had done, you know, trying to justify myself and feeling that I had made out a good case for myself, and he’d say three or four quiet words and I’d know that I had no case at all. Not that I would admit it, not then.—Christ, I’ll hate to lose him, Peggy!”
“He’s not going to die yet, Ron. I know that.”
“Who isn’t going to die?” said Anse, lumbering up out of one of the side corridors. He came to a halt alongside them, breathing hard, leaning on his cane. There was the faint sweet odor of whiskey about him, even now, well before noon. His bad leg had grown much more troublesome lately. “Him, you mean?” Anse asked, nodding toward the closed door of the Colonel’s bedroom.
“Who else?”
“He’ll live to be a hundred,” Anse said. “I’ll go before he does. Honestly, Ron.”
He probably would, Ron thought. Anse was fifty-six and appeared to be at least ten years older. His face was gray and bloated, his no longer intense eyes were lost in deep shadows, his shoulders now were rounded and slumped. All that was new. He didn’t seem as tall as he once had been. And he had lost some weight. Anse had always been a fine, sturdy man, not at all beefy—Ron was the beefy brother—but with plenty of muscle and flesh on him. Now he was visibly shrinking, sagging, diminishing. Some of it was the booze, Ron knew. Some of it was simply age. And some of it was, no doubt, that mysterious dark cloud of disappointment and discontent that had surrounded Anse for so long. The big brother who somehow had not gone on to become head of the family.
“Come off it, Anse,” Ron said, with as much sincerity as he could muster. “There’s nothing wrong with you that a new left leg wouldn’t fix.”
“Which I could probably have gotten,” Anse said, “but for the fucking Entities.—Hey, Paul says a story’s come in that they’ve actually succeeded in killing one, over in England. What are the chances that it’s true?”
“No reason to think it isn’t.”
“Is this the beginning, then? The counterattack?”
“I doubt that very much,” said Ron. “We don’t have a lot of details about how they managed it. But Dad’s got a theory that it would take a very special kind of assassin to bring it off—somebody with essentially no emotions at all, somebody who’s practically an android. It would be hard to put together a whole army of people like that.”
“We could train them.”
“We could, yes,” Ron said. “It would take quite a bit of time. Let me give it some thought, okay?”
“Was he happy about the killing?”
“He wondered about the reprisals, mostly. But yes, yes, he was happy about it. I suppose. He didn’t come right out and say that he was.”
“He wants them eradicated from the Earth once we’re properly ready to do the job,” said Anse. “That’s always been his goal underneath it all, even when they were saying that he had turned pacifist, even when they were hinting he had gone soft in the head. You know that. And now it’s the one thing keeping him alive—the hope that he’ll stick around long enough to see them completely wiped out.”
“Well, he isn’t going to. Nor you, nor me. But we can always hope. And you know, bro, he’s never been anything but a pacifist. He hates war. Always has. And his idea of preventing war is to constantly be prepared to fight one.—Ah, he’s some guy, isn’t he? They broke the mold when they made him, let me tell you. I hate to see him fading away like this. I hate it more than I can say.”
It was an oddly valedictory conversation, Ron thought. They were telling each other things, now, that both of them had known since they were children. But it was as though they needed to get these things said one more time before it was too late to say them at all.
Ron suspected he knew what was going to be said next—he could already see the moist gleam of emotion coming into Anse’s eyes, could already hear the heavy throbbing chords of the symphonic accompaniment—and, sure enough, out the words came, a moment later:
“What really gets to me is when you talk about how much you care for him, bro. You know, there were all those years when you and he weren’t speaking to each other, and I thought you really despised him. But I was wrong about that, wasn’t I?” Now Anse will take my hand fervently between both of his. Yes, like that. “One more thing, bro. I want to tell you, if I haven’t already done so, how glad I am that in the course of time you did shape up the way that you have, how proud I am that you could be capable of changing so much, to make your peace with our dad and come here and be so much of a comfort to him. You worked out all right, in the long run. I confess I was surprised.”
“Thank you, I guess.”
“Especially when I—didn’t—work out so well.”
“That was a surprise too,” Ron said, having quickly decided that there was no point in offering any contradiction.
“Well, it shouldn’t have been,” said Anse, in a tone that was almost without expression. “It just wasn’t in me to do any better. It really wasn’t. No matter what he expected of me. I tried, but—well, you know how it’s been with me, bro—”
“Of course I know,” said Ron vaguely, and returned the squeeze; and Anse gave him a blurrily affectionate look and went limping off toward the front of the house. “That was very touching,” Peggy said. “He loves you very much.”
“I suppose he does. He’s drunk, Peg.”
“Even so. He meant what he said.”
Ron glowered at her. “Yes. Yes. But I loathe it when people tell me how much I’ve changed, how glad they are that I’m not the mean selfish son of a bitch I used to be. I loathe it. I haven’t changed. You know what I mean? I’m simply doing things in this region of my life that I hadn’t felt like making time for before. Like moving to the ranch. Like marrying a woman like you, like settling down and raising a family. Like agreeing with my father instead of automatically opposing him all the time. Like assuming certain responsibilities that extend beyond my own skin. But I’m still living within that skin, Peg. My behavior may have changed, but I haven’t. I’ve always made the sort of choices that make sense to me—they’re just different sorts of choices now, that’s all. And it makes me mad as hell when people, especially my own brother, patronize me by telling me that it’s wonderful that I’m not as shitty as I once was. Do you follow what I’m saying?”
It was a long speech. Peggy was staring at him in what looked like dismay.
“Am I running off at the mouth?” he asked.
“Well—”
“Hey, forget it,” he said, reaching out and stroking her cheek. “I’m very worried about my father, is all. And about Anse, for that matter. How fragile they’re both getting. How much Anse drinks. Both of them getting ready to die.”
“No,” said Peggy. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. Wouldn’t surprise me if Anse goes first, either.” Ron shook his head. “Poor old Anse. Always trying to turn himself into the Colonel, and never able to. And burning himself out trying. Because nobody possibly could be the Colonel except the Colonel. Anse didn’t have the Colonel’s intelligence or dedication or discipline, but he forced himself to pretend that he did. At least I had the good sense not even to try.”
