organization.
“I have committed my last crime against today. I leave you an organization to do with as you will. I have set my hand on today, but I have not presumed upon tomorrow.”
There was a moment’s crackling silence, and then the New York broadcaster cut off, but the name he signed to the message was completely devoid of title or military rank, and there was no mention of Hollis or the SFAR, or of Robert Garvin. Whatever had brewed in New York was over, and this, not the blank, deadly silence, was the proper end to Theodore Berendtsen’s time.
“What the hell is that thing?” Jim said, squinting up into the sun.
“Helicopter, I guess. Looks like the picture,” Holland answered. “You notice the cabin’s got a blue-red stripe on it?”
Garvin nodded. “Yeah, I saw it.” He leaned more heavily on his crutches.
There was a crowd of villagers around them, straining against the militiamen who were uncertain enough of their present authority to let the line bulge out raggedly.
“You notice that?” Holland said, pointing.
Jim looked at the ugly pockmarks of bullet scars on the cabin and nodded. Then the aircraft stormed over them, gargling its way downward until the landing skids touched the ground and the engine died. The cabin door opened.
“So that’s what happened to Bob,” Jim said softly. He smiled crookedly and began swinging toward the craft, Holland keeping pace with him. They were almost beside it when Holland suddenly touched Jim’s arm.
Another man had gotten out with Bob, and now both of them were turning around to help the other passenger out. The breath caught in Jim’s throat as he recognized his mother. Then he stopped and braced himself. When his mother looked at him, the shock of recognition in her eyes followed instantly by pain and indecision, he was ready.
“Hello, Mom,” he said. “Nothing big—I’ll be all right in a couple of weeks.” She looked at him uncertainly, and finally put her arm through Bob’s.
“Hello, Jimmy,” she said. She had grown much older than he remembered her, and needed Bob to support her after the long trip. Jim smiled and nodded reassuringly again.
“Hello, Holland,” Bob said, licking his lips nervously. “This is Merton Hollis,” he added, indicating the other man, who looked at the crowd uneasily, the arrogant lines of his face lost in the lax indecision of his face.
Holland raised his eyebrows.
“Can you—can you find us a place to stay here?” Bob asked.
Holland grinned crookedly. “Permanently, I take it? Exile is such a nasty word, isn’t it?”
Garvin winced, but said nothing.
“Hello, Bob,” Jim said.
“Hello, Jim,” his brother answered without looking at him.
“I guess there’s lots of room around here,” Holland said. He grinned savagely. “Just one thing—I’m staying around. There’s three sisters with a big farm and no man around. I kind of like one of them. One thing, like I said. Don’t trespass.” He patted the stock of his rifle.
“What happened to Mary, Mom?” Jim asked her.
Slow tears began to seep over Margaret Garvin’s face. “She’s dead, Jimmy. She and Ted. The—the people came and…and they…” She looked at Jim with complete bewilderment. “But now the people say they’re sorry. Now they say they love them, and they keep telling me they’re sorry…I don’t understand, Jimmy.”
Jim and Holland looked at Bob’s face, and found corroboration in it. Jim laughed at his expression. Then he swung himself forward and looked into the helicopter’s cabin. “Take a passenger back to New York, buddy?” he asked the pilot.
The man shrugged. “Makes me no never-mind. You’ll have to wait a couple of minutes, though.” He pulled a jackknife out of his pocket and jumped to the ground. He began to scrape out the blue-red stripe.
“Hey, don’t be an idiot, Jim.” Garvin cried. “They ask you what kind of a Garvin you are, nowadays.”
Jim looked at him wearily. “When you find out, let me know, huh?”
He happened to glance at the crowd, and saw Edith, pressed forward by the villagers.
“Why is he taking out the stripe?” she was saying excitedly to a militiamen. “Why is he doing that? That’s the freedom flag! He can’t do that.”
“Got a tip for you, Bob,” Jim said, smiling thinly. “You’ve got one friend here, anyway.” He wondered how that would work out.
He wondered, as the helicopter jounced northward, how a lot of things would work out. He wondered just exactly what legacy Ted Berendtsen had left the human race.
Had he died just in time, or too soon?
And Jim knew that no historian, probing back, could ever know, any more than he or Jack could know. Even now, even in the end, you had to trust Berendtsen’s judgment.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cottrell Slade Garvin was twenty-six, and had been a sex criminal for three years, when his mother called him into her parlor and explained why she could not introduce him to the girl on whom he had been spying.
“Cottrell, darling,” she said, laying her delicately veined hand on his sun-darkened own, “You understand that my opinion of Barbara is that she is a fine girl; one whom any young man of your class and station would ordinarily be honored to meet, and, in due course of time, betroth. But, surely, you must consider that her family,”—there was the faintest inhalation through the fragile nose—“particularly on the male side, is not one which could be accepted into our own.” Her expression was genuinely regretful. “Quite frankly, her father’s opinion on the proper conduct of a domicile…” The sniff was more audible. “His actions in accord with that opinion are such that our entire family would be embroiled in endless Affairs of Integrity, and you yourself would be forced to bear the brunt of most of these encounters. In addition, you would have the responsibility of defending the notoriously untenable properties which Mr. Holland pleases to designate as Barbara’s dowry.
“No, Cottrell, I’m afraid that, much as such a match might appeal to you at first glance, you would find that the responsibilities more than offset the benefits.” Her hand patted his as lightly as the touch of a falling autumn leaf. “I’m sorry, Cottrell.” A tear sparkled at the corner of each eye, and it was obvious that the discussion had been a great strain to her, for she genuinely loved her son.
Cottrell sighed. “All right, mother,” he said. There was nothing more he could do, at this time. “But, should circumstances change, you will reconsider, won’t you?” he asked.
His mother smiled, and nodded as she said, “Of course, Cottrell.” But the smile faded a bit. “However, that does seem rather unlikely, doesn’t it? Are there no other young ladies?” At his expression, the smile returned, and her voice became reassuring. “But, we’ll see. We’ll see.”
“Thank you, mother.” At least, he had that much. He rose from his chair and kissed her cheek. “I have to be sure the cows have all been stalled.” With a final smile exchanged between them, he left her, hurrying across the yard to the barn. The cows had all been attended to, of course, but he stayed in the barn for a few moments, driving his work-formed fist into a grain sack again and again, sweat breaking out on his forehead and running down his temples and along the sides of his face, while the breath grunted out of his nostrils and he half-articulated curses that were all the more terrible because he did not fully understand at whom or what they were directed.
Vaguely sick to his stomach, he gently closed the barn door behind him, and saw from the color of the sunset
