If we have to, we could open a small crib until I can set up an information racket again. Is that okay with you ladies?"
I didn't like the idea of getting back in the skin trade, but I didn't want to spend the rest of my life at Hashbeam's either@specially with Big Bobby Gurk on the prowl.
So we all had a final drink before we set out. I had a bottle of champagne in the fridge, left over from my cocktail party, and that's what we had.
"Here's to a glorious future," Willie said, hoisting his glass in a toast.
We all drank to that, and then we got in our cars and headed out. I remember that as we drove along that night Jessica and I sang that old song that goes, "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream..
" Like she said, survival is the name of the game.
On the drive back home I said to Chet, "I want you to promise me something, Son." And whatever had happened, whatever Mabel had done or hadn't done, he was my son.
"Sure, Dad," he said. "Whatever you say."
"When you tell Mother and your friends about your kidnapping, please don't mention anything about the pills. It's a confidential research project I've been working on, and I wouldn't like people to know about it."
"I won't say a word, I promise."
"It'll be our secret," I told him. "Just the two of us."
"Yeah," he said happily. "I can keep a secret."
Mabel was delighted to see us, of course. She wept, embraced both of us, and wanted to hear the story of Chet's rescue over and over as if she could hardly believe our good fortune.
"And you didn't have to pay any ransom!" she marveled. k care of "Not a cent," Chet assured her. "Dad too those crooks. He just mopped up the floor with them. You should have seen him. He was Rambo!"
After dinner-macaroni and cheese-I went into my study and closed the door. I had some heavy thinking to do.
There were ten ZAP pills remaining, and I hid the container in the bottom drawer of my desk. Their potential frightened me because I realized I had been in a murderous frenzy when I attacked those two men.
It was only by the grace of God that I refrained from killing them.
Drugs with that effect, I knew, should not be made available, even on a limited basis for what might be considered patriotic reasons.
The question was how to end the ZAP Project. If I told Colonel Henry Knacker I had failed, he'd be sure to take the assignment to other research laboratories, and what I had created, I was certain would eventually be duplicated by other chemists. t There was also the problem of what might happen when the two criminals I had assaulted were released from the hospital.
Surely they would come, looking for me again, and I feared they might devise more vicious and successful methods of obtaining the pills.
I finally decided that my best course of action was to make the ZAP Project a matter of public knowledge and depend on public outrage to put an end to the development of testosterone additives.
To accomplish this, I determined to write anonymous letters to The Miami Herald, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, detailing the interest of the U.S. military in producing a "diet enrichment" that would turn our combat soldiers, even temporarily, into conscienceless killers. I was confident that investigative reporters would be assigned to look into my allegations, and I had faith that the resulting outcry by the American people would end the ZAP Project forever. And the publicity would certainly deter the criminals from attempting further mischief.
I realized, of course, that by writing even anonymous letters to the newspapers, I was breaking the vow of secrecy I had signed, and I could be prosecuted. But I didn't care. Marleen Todd had been correct, A psychoactive drug that flouts the norms of society is simply wrong. It is unethical and immoral to develop it and prescribe it. Humanity comes first.
There was a soft knock on my study door, and it was opened.
"I'm going up to bed now, Greg," my wife said.
"Chet is already asleep. I guess he was worn out, the poor kid."
"Mabel, we should have spoken to him about why he wanted to run away.
He's obviously unhappy."
"Was, maybe, but he isn't now. He said that after what happened today he knows we both love him. I told him we certainly did, but we haven't paid as much attention to him as we should have. I said all that is going to change. From now on we're going to do more things together, as a family. Am I right, Greg?"
"You're exactly right. And I'll tell him so myself tomorrow.
"Are you coming up soon?"
"In a few minutes, after I lock up."
"Hurry, honey," she said.
I went through my nightly routine, locking doors and windows, turning off lights. Then I went upstairs. Mabel was waiting for me, naked in bed.
Later she said, "Darling, I've never had so much fun in my life!"
I said, "I haven't finished yet. We've got all night."
"oh lordy, lordy, lordy!" she said joyfully.
"You know, Cherry," Chas said to me, "if I didn't know better, I'd say my brother was stoned. He wasn't drunk, but he was talking like a goof.
After he told me the kids had decided not to run away, he started blathering about parenting, sharing his innermost feelings, and nurturing his wife and daughter. You think the idiot has finally flipped his wig?"
"I doubt that," I said, laughing. "I think he's suddenly discovered some basic truths and is trying to, express them in the gobbledygook that passes for the language of sociology these days. I don't know where he picked up the jargon, but if he really means what he says, it doesn't make much difference how he expresses it. The important thing is that he seems to have become a paterfamilias again."
"Yeah," Chas said. "Let's hope it lasts."
The problem of the runaways having-been solved, we relaxed for the first time that afternoon. There was beer in the fridge, and we each had one, drinking from the can because it seemed the lazy, carefree way of doing things now that the crisis had passed.
"Now about us," Chas said, and stopped.
"Yes?" I prompted him. "What about us?"
He took a deep breath. "How about this? Let's get married.
" I stared at him. "You're serious, aren't you?"
He nodded.
"When did you decide?"
"It's been growing," he said. "Germinating. I finally knew I'd have to go off the high board, or it would be the end of me.
A purely selfish decision. Half a decision. The other half is yours."
"You know the answer to that," I said. "Yes, yes, and yes."
"Wait a minute," he said. "There's something that has to come first.
You game?"
"Yes," I said, "I'm game."
"Don't help me. I can do this myself."
He wheeled himself over to the bed and set the chair's brake.
He braced his massive arms, lifted himself up and swung onto the coverlet.
"Over the top, lads," he said. "Follow me, men. Do you bastards want to live forever?"
He began to undress with nervous fingers. I took off my clothes and lay down beside him. He looked at me with a tender smile. He stroked my naked body.
"It all looks so good," he said. "I'll have a few slices of white meat, please. And the drumsticks, of course," he added.
"Do you think we'll live happily ever after?" I asked him.
"Like Tommy the Termite?"
"Hell, no!" he said. "We'll fight, we'll claw, we'll scream, we'll send each other right up the wall. Occasionally. We're human, aren't we? But I think we'll make it. Don't you?"
"Oh, yes," I said, reaching for him. "We'll make it."