Chandler strolled out of the TWA building, very tired.
It was dawn. His job was done. He carried the coronet, the only working
coronet in the world, in his hand. He had spent the night killing,
killing, killing, and blood had washed away his passions; he was spent.
He had killed every exec he could find, in widening circles from the
building where his body lay. He had slit his dozen throats and fired
bullets into his hundred hearts and hundred brains; he had entered
bodies only long enough to feel for a coronet, and if it was there the
body was doomed; and he stopped only when it occurred to him he wasn't
even doing that much any more. He had probably killed some dozens of
slaves, as well as all the execs in reach. And when he stopped the orgy
of killing he had made one last search of the nearer portions of the
island and found no one alive, and he had then realized that one of the
closest execs had been Rosalie Pan.
He knew that in a while he would feel very badly for having killed that
girl (which could she have been? The one with the shotgun in the mouth?
The one whose intestines he had spilled with a silver letteropener in a
whim of hara-kiri?), but just now he was too worn.
He was Chandler the giant killer, who had destroyed the creatures
who had destroyed a world, but he was all tired out. He poked at the
filigree of the coronet absently, as a man might caress the pretty rug
which once had been the skin of a tiger that almost killed him. It was
all that was left of the exec power. Who held this single coronet still
held the world.
Of course, said a sly and treasonable voice in a corner of his mind,
the job was not really done.
Not quite. Not all.
The job would not be done until it was impossible for anyone to find
enough of the installations to be able to reconstruct them.
And then, said the voice, while Chandler stared at the dawn, listening,
what about the _good_ things the exec had done? Would he not be foolish
to throw away so casually this one, unique chance to right every
imaginable wrong the world might do him?
Chandler went back into the building and brewed some strong black
coffee. While it was bubbling on the stove he slipped the coronet back
atop his head. Only for a while, he promised. A very little while. He
pledged himself solemnly that it would be just long enough to clean up
all loose ends--not a moment longer, he pledged. And knew that he was
lying.