After what seemed a long time our radio came on. The Army had
landed, the Old Companions in the boats were overwhelmed, and their
hand-jammers put out of commission. Thankfully we prepared to leave the
bloody metal moon.
As we walked toward the door, Howard snapped his fingers. "Good Lord, I
remember what it was!" he said to me. "I know what I had to tell you.
You seemed pretty worried about our being related to Bill Cuff."
"Well, aren't you?"
"Hell," he said, "I thought you knew about that business years ago.
Everyone else in the family did. Bill's father was supposed to be our
mother's brother, right?"
"Sure," I said blankly.
"A lot of nonsense," Howard said irritably. "Uncle John was dead a year
before Bill was born. As far as we know, Bill's father was a traveling
salesman."
It took ten minutes for it to sink clear in. Then I started to
celebrate my release from the horrible mental bondage. I did it in a
quiet way. I sat in the plane that was taking us home, and I held Nessa
very closely.
I was human. Our child would be human. Nothing else could matter at all.
There was a lot of work to be done even yet, of course. The Old
Companions had to be ferreted out, dug from their holes, sought
in cities and swamps and villages and caves. In that work we had
unexpected help: there are traitors to every cause, good and bad, those
who'll turn coat when the going gets rough, and even the boasting
Neanderthals were no exception. Our turncoat was the captive Trutch.
He had a prodigious memory and he had been high in the councils of the
Cuff muster. He named names and located HQs. He was like a cur, savage
in a pack but now, standing alone in a cage, fawning and eager to
please.
Trutch's reward, when the last of the recrudescent cavemen had been
tracked and found and annihilated, was his life. He was sterilized and
given a farm all for himself--an extremely well-guarded farm, for even
when they were gone the Old Companions left an aura of unease and fear
on the land.
It's over now. It can't happen again; we'll be on the watch for the
primal rage, the wakening dawn memory in those who may remain as
carriers of the dark blood. The man-made moon rides high in space by
day and night, watching the world with unfailing vigilance.
My brother Howard is up there as I write.
And Nessa is in the nursery putting our infant son to bed. I hope that
one day he'll join many other men in space.
That's the future--our _real_ future--and heritage....