he felt the pull of cellular action, saw the slit gradually close, saw the flow of blood cease, and then, racing heart in his throat, putting his hand down to wipe away the blood and gore from the taut stomach to feel undamaged skin there and the gradual rise and fall of the diaphragm in normal breathing. «My, God,» Luke said. He looked up. The sky was a soft glow, a blanket of smog lit by the lights from below. «Whatchu doing?» the dead man asked, sitting up. «Why you got my shirt off?» Then, «Hey!» His hand in the blood. «I was cut!» «Yes,» Luke whispered, feeling weak, feeling very, very small. «I was cut from here to here,» the man said, feeling the undamaged surface of his stomach. «How—» «I don't know,» Luke said. «I don't know at all, brother.» CHAPTER THREE Colonel Ed Baxley cursed himself as a sentimental fool. He paced the deep carpet of the observation room atop his quarters, a huge, Neo-Victorian house on the south end of the campus. Through the vast span of glass he could see the parade grounds. Trim ranks of crew-cut young Brothers in gleaming white uniforms stood there, waiting. He would have to go out. After all, the review was in honor of his son. His son! The worst of it was that there wasn't even a body to mourn, not a particle of the bright-eyed boy who had been his life. Not even a body. Somewhere out in near space Ronnie might be floating. Baxley passed a hand over his eyes to wipe away a sudden vision of his son's mutilated body wheeling, wheeling, wheeling toward the cold, distant stars. Colonel Ed Baxley could not afford to become a public weeper. Therefore, since his eyes would not stay dry, he could not go to stand before his cadets. He could not stand before that group of the Second Republic's finest and let the tears run down his cheeks, not Ed Baxley. Baxley was too much man to cry in public. Baxley, who had saved the Republic, could not face his superbly disciplined student body, his hand-picked group of outstanding minds, and weep. The man who was still called The Colonel a full thirty years after the two-day revolution which threw the Socialistic bastards out would not, could not weep. Baxley waded the deep carpet. He thought about his son with wet eyes. And he thought about Skeerzy. If Skeerzy were only here, he told himself, he could handle things. Skeerzy had a natural line of patter. He always knew the problem instinctively and could think of the right things to say. Yes, he mourned Skeerzy, too. And that cute little bride of his. Old Skeerzy, full of commonsense and solid, old-fashioned morals. Skeerzy, who gave the practical young scientists of University One, The Brothers, a God-sent gift of religious logic, who taught the Golden Rule. Skeerzy, who was almost a second father to Ronnie. Skeerzy was dead. There was a low, musical gong. Baxley turned to the videophone. He pushed a button. «Baxley here,» he said, as his image was transmitted back to the image-making machine which showed him a nurse in a smart, off-white uniform. He noted the black armband on the nurse's uniform and, once again, reminded, he felt the sting of tears. He was a big man,
thick in the shoulders, narrowing only slightly at the waist, but without an ounce of surplus. His kinky hair was cut tightly to his scalp. His eyebrows were full, his nose strong, his teeth perfect. He looked the part. And he looked not much older than he had looked on the day, thirty years ago, when he'd led his small contingent of Brothers into Washington, armed with a half dozen hurriedly handmade fire guns. The nurse smiled pleasantly. «Your wife is in the delivery room, sir. The doctor says that it will be only a matter of minutes now.» He had almost forgotten. His life, which had ended at the North American Gate, could begin again in the delivery room of the University Hospital. He thanked the nurse. He pushed a code into the phone.
«Express my appreciation to the cadets,» he told his executive office. «Tell them I regret not being able to address them personally. Tell them,» and
he smiled for the first time since the news from space, «that my wife is, at this moment, giving birth to a son.» But the matter of minutes became hours. Baxley paced in traditional fashion. His joy faded in the face of delay. He felt a sharp edge of pain, thinking of Ronnie. It seemed as if it were only yesterday when he was pacing the halls of another hospital awaiting the birth of his first son. Ronald Edward Baxley, Jr. A fine name. He had shouted his news to the entire Republic by way of a nationwide network. The people had not forgotten the man who gave them peace, who delivered them from the red-tape corruption of the decadent First Republic. They remembered The Colonel. He had, with one technological breakthrough, presented them with security. No longer were they threatened by nuclear war. The ultimate weapon, the fire gun, had never been duplicated. Because the Second Republic was run securely by the Brothers, there had been no danger of anyone leaking the secret of the ultimate weapon to the Godless Commies. Yes, the world, especially the Republic, owed much to Colonel Ed Baxley. So when the best of modern medicine and admirable genetics allowed Baxley to start a family at an age when most men were dying, the world rejoiced. And it seemed fitting, somehow, that the colonel should look so unchanged. Seeing him on the screens, the Republic shared his youth. Little did it matter to the Tireds with their putrid lungs, to the Fares with their life expectancy of less than forty years, that Baxley upon
the birth of his first child, had already loved and lived longer than any of them could hope to do. Baxley had saved the world. Thus it was fitting for him to receive the care, the medicines, the treatments which would keep him alive to the incredible age of seventy or even eighty. Since it was impossible to give such miracles to the teeming masses, it was only fitting that Baxley, the hero, be allowed the best of medical care. Now, the Brothers—that was different. Brother President, yes. Public servants such as Senators, who took decades to learn the complexities of government, yes, they deserved the treatments. But the regular run of Brothers? That caused some minor discontent in the country at large and was always an issue when, once every eight years, the Lays had an opportunity to pick Brother President from a Brother-selected list of great men. Candidates were always promising better medicine for the masses, but all the masses got was Newasper, a combination of that ancient healing drug, aspirin,
and one of the less harmful hallucinogens and, in severe cases of overactive adrenal glands, shakeshock. But that wasn't the important thing. The important thing was that Colonel Ed Baxley had, almost singlehandedly, overturned the Godless First Republic. Colonel Ed Baxley had kicked out the rascals who had, long, long ago, brought Commie sex education into schools while outlawing Godfearing prayer. Baxley had, without having to fire a shot from his massive fire cannon, the most terrible weapon ever devised, kicked out the rascals who wanted to tax Holy Mother Church. So Baxley deserved all the best, for he had returned the Republic to the people and to God. One Nation, under God and the Brothers indivisible. As the long minutes of waiting stretched into an hour, then two, the colonel paced. His mind, trying to steer away from painful memories, relived the moment, such a short while past, when he had helped his wife from the hospital to the waiting air car with LaVerne, his niece, walking behind them holding little Ronnie in her arms. He had made a short statement to the waiting press. «This one will be reared as a man of God,» he said. The small crowd cheered. «He will be taught at home by a Brother tutor.» Some raised eyebrows from the Lays, who couldn't afford, mostly, to send their children to public school. Ah, it was pleasant and it was painful. The colonel paced. He remembered. He would not let his pain rob him of the sheer pleasure of Ronnie's memory. An amazingly developed boy, a paragon from the first. At four he had his own horse, could ride like a twentieth-century movie cowboy. At five, he shot a respectable pattern with a conventional rifle on the firing range, much to Skeerzy's chagrin. And Baxley had told Skeerzy, «You teach him about God. I'll teach him about guns.» Because hadn't it been necessary for him, Colonel Ed Baxley, to know about guns? The colonel taught his son well. The boy was all boy, detesting all females except his mother and barely tolerating her. He could perform destruction upon the anatomy of all children with whom he came into contact. He adored his hero father with a single-minded intensity. He tolerated Skeerzy. His preaching teacher was a necessary evil, thrust upon him by his father. Being with Skeerzy was slightly better than falling into the hands of women. The colonel smiled fondly as he remembered Ronnie's favorite costume, a combination of Kit Carson and Captain Flash of the Interplanetary Patrol. And a toy gun was an integral part of the costume. The colonel saw no harm in a toy gun. The manufacture of toys of war had long since been outlawed for the Lay population, but Ronnie wasn't Lay. He was Brother from the moment of his birth, one of the ruling elite by right of birth to the wife of the world saver. The gun was an exact model of a hand fire-gun. And Ronnie knew how to work it, for the Colonel took him, not once, but a half dozen times, to