Sheffield swallowed. “So Secretary Markham came to believe,” he said.
After all, just because his own career was ruined, that didn’t mean that he had to drag innocents down with him.
“And what did Albright, your other partner in crime, think?”
“I’m not sure he voiced an opinion, your Majesty. Marshal Albright quite properly thinks in terms of means, rather than ends, as a military man should.”
“A good soldier knows when to offer suggestions, Bucky, even if he doesn’t try to force them on anyone,” the Emperor said gently. “It may be time for Marshal Albright to retire honorably.”
That wasn’t so bad, really, Sheffield thought.
“General Hart will be court-martialled,” the Emperor said. “John Bascombe’s already up on a charge of treason, and he’s guilty, but I don’t think we’ll hang him, as he’s not so much dangerous as he is stupid. The telepaths identify those two as responsible for a great deal of the bumbling prior to Mr. Brown’s ascension, and some of the mishaps afterward.” He smiled. “The rest, we’re afraid, was largely your own doing-well-intentioned, but wrong.”
“The telepaths, your Majesty?”
“Oh, yes, Bucky-there’s nothing in the world more useful in untangling a mess like this than the network of telepaths. We wish we had a million of them, not just a few hundred.”
Sheffield shifted uneasily. He wanted to say something about the untrustworthiness of the mutants for anything beyond interrogation and long-distance communication, but he couldn’t think how to phrase it properly.
“You don’t like them, do you?” the Emperor asked. “The greater fool you, then. Don’t you know they’re just people? They want to be liked and appreciated, and most people hate their guts-they must be miserable. All you have to do is like them a little, and they’ll love you in return. And we do like them.” He grinned. “They could tell if we were faking, after all.” The smile faded.
“And right now,” he said, “we can’t think of anyone better to run things until they’re straightened out than the telepaths.”
He paused, then added, “Under our own direction, of course.”
* * * *
Rachel sat up and blinked.
This time Pel had suppressed the visible portion of the matrix in advance; he sat there looking as ordinary as he could contrive to look. He’d combed out his hair and trimmed both his hair and his beard somewhat, but he hadn’t managed to shave.
He hadn’t shaved for several days before he and Rachel were separated, so that shouldn’t be too strange, and otherwise he thought he looked pretty much as Rachel would remember him.
Except for the robe, anyway; he hadn’t bothered to find any Earth-style clothing. And they were in a bare, candle-lit stone chamber that wasn’t terribly friendly looking.
“Where am I, Daddy?” Rachel said.
“You’re in a place called Faerie, honey,” Pel replied.
“You’re dressed funny,” she said. Then she looked down and squealed, “And I’m not dressed at all!”
“You’ve been sick, Rachel, very sick,” Pel said. He hesitated, then asked, “What’s the last thing you remember?”
Rachel looked up at him, thought for moment, then said solemnly, “The bad man squeezing my neck.” She added, “It hurt a lot.”
Pel swallowed. “The bad man is gone,” he said. “The soldiers in the purple uniforms came and took him away, and he’s gone forever. But he’d hurt you so bad it took magic to fix it, so I came here and learned to do magic, and here you are, all better.”
“Do I have to stay here?”
“No,” Pel said, smiling as he tried to keep his eyes from tearing, “no, you can go home if you want.”
“What about you and Mommy? Will you go home? Is Mommy all right?”
“We’re both fine, honey,” Pel said.
“She isn’t dead?”
“No, she isn’t dead,” Pel said. He managed to keep himself from adding, “Not any shy;more.” Rachel wouldn’t have understood.
“Can I see her?”
“Sure,” Pel said. “Come on.”
* * * *
“So he’s got the bodies back,” Johnston remarked as he led Amy and Prossie down the front walk of Miletti’s suburban home. “Think he can really resurrect them?”
“Shadow said she could raise the dead,” Amy replied.
“But Pel isn’t Shadow,” Prossie pointed out. “He’s got the power, but does he know how to use it?”
“You sound like someone in a bad movie, saying that,” Johnston said. He hastily added, “No offense meant.”
“Pel obviously thinks he can do it,” Amy said.
“Or at least hopes he can,” Prossie corrected her. “And for all we know, Shadow was lying in the first place.”
Johnston opened the car door for the women.
“I don’t think she was lying,” Amy said, as Prossie climbed in. “But I think she said something about the resurrected people not being quite the same.”
“Like in Pet Sematary?” Johnston asked. “They come back evil, or something?”
Amy shook her head, then seated herself. “I don’t think it was anything like that; just they’re a bit less lively, or something.”
Johnston shrugged. “Well, it still sounds like a happy ending to me, then,” he said.
He slammed the car door and circled around to the driver’s side.
* * * *
Pel watched as Nancy and Rachel embraced. He had wiped away his tears, but was still grinning so broadly that his jaws hurt.
They didn’t cry, he noticed. Neither of them did. They smiled, but that was all.
But then, he reminded himself, they didn’t know they’d been dead. Nancy had seen Rachel alive and well just minutes before the pirates hauled Nancy out of the storage locker and raped her; Rachel had been safe with her father the whole time, for all Nancy knew.
And Rachel didn’t really understand what had happened to her, or to her mother.
Still, he had somehow expected weeping.
Nancy looked up, and asked, “Pel? Are you ready to explain what’s going on?”
Pel hesitated.
“I’d rather not, just yet,” he said.
“If Rachel weren’t here?”
Reluctantly, Pel nodded.
“I’ll get Susan to keep an eye on her,” he said.
“Susan? Susan Nguyen?”
Pel nodded again.
“She’s here?”
“Yes.”
“What about the others? Ted and Raven and Amy and the rest?”
“Ted and Amy are back home on Earth,” Pel said. “Raven is dead. Most of them are dead, and the rest have gone home; it’s just Susan and I who are still here.”
“Why?” Nancy asked.
“Why what?”
“Why are the two of you still here?”
“I had to get you two fixed up,” Pel said. “And Susan stayed to help, I guess. I offered to send her home, but she didn’t want to go.”
“That’s odd,” Nancy said. “You offered to send her home? What about Elani?”
“Elani’s dead,” Pel said. “I’m a wizard now.”
Nancy stared at him. “Go get Susan,” she said. “You have a lot of explaining to do, Pel Brown.”
Pel stepped to the doorway, but that was just for appearance’s sake; he used the matrix to summon Susan with a gentle tug.
She had been waiting down the hall, as he had told her to do; she was there within seconds.
“Go with Susan, Rachel,” Pel said, giving his daughter a gentle shove. “She’ll try to find you some proper clothes.”
Rachel looked up and said nothing. She was still wrapped in the crude shroud she had been buried in.
Together, silently, Susan and Rachel left the room, and Pel turned to his wife, who sat up in bed, wrapped in a sheet.
“I was dead, wasn’t I?” Nancy said. “I remember that man pointing that raygun at me and pulling the trigger, and I remember this incredible pain. I wasn’t just unconscious, was I?”
“You were dead,” Pel admitted. “For months.”
“And Rachel?”
Pel nodded. “She was killed a few weeks later. Strangled.”