Very Hard Choices

by Spider Robinson

  "What if it isn't replaced? What if we never do get to the stars, and everything ends here, in the mud?"

  Zudie shrugged. "Then life is a pointless joke, suffering followed by extinction. Deal with it."

  "What am I supposed to do in the meantime?"

  Zudie's hand settled on his shoulder. "You've done enough."

  "No."

  "Yes. Remember, I know everything you've ever done in the last half century. I'm the only one but you who does. I'm telling you Thomas Jefferson didn't love America as much as you do, or give as much to it." He pulled Billy's face closer to his own, even though it obviously killed him to do it. "Go home now. You're off duty. Enjoy your retirement."

  "I don't know how!" Billy cried desperately.

  "I know. I'll help you."

  "You will?"

  "As much as I can."

  "How?"

  "You've done internet videoconferencing?"

  "Yes,"

  "I have a videoconferencing address Skype doesn't know about, off the web. I'll leave the URL for you in Vasco's cousin's dead-drop account. I will accept a call from you any time day or night. I can help. I know more about you than you realize you do. Ask Slim; I cured his depression once."

  "Lifted it," I said. "It's been back since."

  "And I haven't been taking your calls," he said sadly. "I am sorry, Russell. I was in bad shape for a long time."

  "You had a lot to process."

  "Well, I have. And I'm going to be a better friend to you, and to Nika, and to your boy. And to you too, Billy, if you want."

  Pitt/McKinnon/Billy backed five or ten meters away from him. His expression was indescribable. "I killed her," he cried out.

  Zudie shook his head. "Very bad luck killed Oksana. Even back then, you didn't kill without cause if you could possibly help it."

  "How can you know that?"

  "Because you do. You really do."

  Billy tried to look away from his eyes, and could not. "Will you at least keep thinking about this problem, Zudie?"

  "Of course I will. We all will. How could we help it? If you acquire any new relevant data, use the message-drop gimmick Nika's cousin did. We'll do the same." He named an e-mail address and a password.

  Billy blinked and opened his mouth. "I—my—"

  "I already know your own address and password," Zudie reminded him gently.

  Nothing at all showed on the former CIA man's face; it might as well have been a deathmask. But something titanic must have happened in his head or his heart. All at once Zudie lost it, turned on his heel and sprinted to his kayak. "That's it," he called over his shoulder. He ran it into the water, mounting the kyak the way Hopalong Cassidy used to mount a speeding horse, and was rowing before he settled into his cockpit. He took off like a rocket, leaving an impressive wake.

  Billy and I looked at each other across the sand.

  "He held out as long as he could," I said.

  He just nodded. We watched Zudie's progress for a while, long after he was out of sight. Then Billy turned without a word and headed back to the car, and I followed.

  17.

  As we approached the car, we saw that Nika had already walked uphill to the parking lot. To give us room, I guess.

  But Jesse was still waiting. "I need to talk to you," he said to me as we reached him.

  "Can it wait, Jess? At least until we get home and get some more coffee in us? I'm sorry, but it's been a long day. I'm just fried."

  He shook his head. "No."

  "Five minutes?"

  "No, Dad. This can't wait another minute. We could both crash and die in that five minute drive."

  I stared at him.

  "I'll be in the car," Billy said, and left us.

  "Okay. Go ahead, Jess."

  He said, "I need you to know this. That guy—Pitt, McKinnon, whatever the hell his name is? What he says he spent his life doing in the CIA? Working undercover to try and nudge it in more humane directions?"

  "Yeah. Hell of a job for man to assign himself. I think he's—"

  He cut me off. "That's what I'm doing at Burston-Marsellar."

  "What?"

  "That's why I went into public relations. The Vandals he talked about: public relations is their best weapon. That's what wags the dog. That's what changes people's most basic attitudes and beliefs over time without them noticing. That's what cons a nation. That's how they sold the War On Terror. That's how they got forty percent of Americans believing Saddam was directly involved in 9/11. It's about the only place left where a man can actually do some good, find ways to sabotage those bastards effectively—going into politics or journalism just doesn't work, anymore."

  There was a loud buzzing in my ears. I could feel my knees threatening to give way. "Why . . . why the hell didn't you tell me this, Jesse?"

  "When? You wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't come to New York no matter how much I begged you—and surely to God you must see I couldn't trust the phones to say something like that. Besides, you and I . . . " He looked down. "Well, we haven't been talking." He met my eyes again. "I was too fucking mad at you."

  I swallowed something. My pride, maybe. "Are you still, Son?"

  "I came to you. What do you think?" He reached out and took my hand in his. "I needed time, okay?"

  I opened my mouth to answer, and instead burst into tears. It was probably the first time I had cried since the night Susan died, and I hope it's the last because it hurt more than anything else that had happened to me all that day, but I simply did not give a shit. My son embraced me and held me, squeezing my chest with his strong arms while I cried, and that helped some. He cried with me, and that helped even more. I knew we were crying for his mother, together, and I had wanted that more than anything else for years, now.

  Billy started my car as as we reached it. As soon as I was belted in, he backed uphill at startling speed without looking over his shoulder, using mirrors alone. He turned at just the right instant, skidded to a stop on parking lot gravel, and waited while Jesse walked up the hill and got into the other vehicle, idling ahead of us out on the road. Then Billy put her in drive, and cornered hard on the way out of the lot. Nika drives like a lunatic, but he had no trouble keeping her taillights in sight.

  After a few miles of silence, I asked him, "Are you okay? You're welcome to crash with me and Jesse. There's a foldout couch that's actually comfortable."

  He didn't answer.

  * * *

  In fact, I never heard him speak another word. When we got back to my place, he ignored anything any of us said to him. He accepted his gun back from Jesse, and shook his hand. He went to the back of Nika's car, recovered the GPS snitch from the bumper, and shook her hand. He shook my hand with both of his, and nodded once. It felt as if I'd been saluted. Then he got in his Camry and drove away, blinking his taillights once in farewell. I presume he returned to his B&B for his things, and perhaps a nap and a shower, and took one of the early ferries back to the mainland. I never saw him again, never heard from or of him. If he's still alive in the world I have no idea where or what he's doing. I hope he is alive, and enjoying his retirement in whatever way pleases him, but I don't know. Zudie probably knows, but he's never said, and somehow I don't feel I have the right to inquire.

  The three of us all stayed at my house that night and most of the following day. We talked together in the kitchen until dawn, and then I folded, left Nika sheets and blankets for the foldout, and tottered off to my bedroom. It felt inexpressibly good to finally rest my chest. I was asleep at once, and slept like a stone.

  For three hours, and then I had to get up to pee. One more of the many joys of aging. My bathroom is just a thin wall away from the guestroom bathroom. As I entered it I clearly heard a giggle from next door. A female giggle. The lewd kind. A kind I had never expected to hear from Detective Constable Nika Mandiç. After a moment of thought I tiptoed back to my bedroom, closing the door silently behind me, and peed out my open window, narrowly missing Fraidy
the Cat.

  I took half a Zopoclone before I laid back down, and this time I was out for a solid seven hours. I woke feeling terrific, except for a really full bladder, to find that my house was empty, and only the guestroom bed showed signs of having been slept in. A note on the stove said only, "Back later, Pop," and when Jesse did return just after dark, alone, he did not mention Nika and I didn't raise the subject.

  Where, if anywhere, they've taken it from there, I couldn't say. Jesse has been back in New York for a couple of months, now . . . trying to make some very hard choices, I think. We did—finally—get stoned together on Kootenay Thunderfuck before he left, and it was as nice as I'd hoped. Nika is still on the force, serving and protecting Vancouver; how well she's doing at it, I don't really know for sure. I called her a couple of times . . . but we don't really have a lot in common to talk about, and hardly any of what we do is safe to talk about on the phone. She doesn't seem eager to come back out to Heron Island any time soon, and I can't say that I blame her.

  Zudie and I did two of those videoconferences, for over an hour apiece, but then he e-mailed me that he had to make a trip to an unspecified destination, and would be gone for a few months, so I can't tell you with any assurance where he is, or what he's doing there or how it's going. And like I said, Agent Pitt/Tom/Billy could be anywhere, or nowhere.

  When you come down to it, I don't really know a hell of a lot about much at all, I guess.

  But some things I do know. My emotionally damaged friend Zandor Zudenigo is finally on the mend, starting to forgive himself for what he did to Allen Campbell four years ago in my living room. Thanks in large part I think to the sincere praise of a fellow professional she respected, my seriously-uptight friend Nika Mandiç has begun to lighten up a little and forgive herself for condoning and abetting what Zudie did. My son Jesse never really did stop loving me, and, for whatever miraculous reasons I care not, has finally started to forgive me for not making his mother stay longer than she wanted.

  And after all these years, my Susan has finally started coming to me in my dreams, happy and proud of both of us, and it helps. It really helps.

  That's enough to know for now. I've got a column to write.

  —30—

  THE END

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