“More or less, yes.”
With painful slowness, she turned her face toward him. “Want to know what I was thinking? While your hands were around me throat, I mean.”
“If you want to tell me.”
“I was thinking, Well, if anybody’s going to strangle me, I’m glad it’s my old friend Peter.”
She’d spoken these words without bitterness; she was merely stating a fact.
“I was wrong,” he said. “You didn’t deserve it. I don’t know what’s between you and Fanning. I doubt I’ll ever get it, frankly. But I sold you short.”
She weighed his words, then shrugged. “So, you screwed up. Short of an outright apology, I guess I’ll have to take that.”
“I guess you will.”
She gave him a look of warning. “I said I can get you in there, and I can. But you’re throwing your life away.”
“I’d say it’s the opposite.”
Alicia made a sound that began as a laugh but turned into a cough—deep, hacking. Her eyes clamped shut with pain. Peter waited for it to subside.
“Lish, are you all right?”
Her cheeks were flushed; spittle flecked her lips. “Do I look all right?”
“On the whole, you’ve seemed better.”
She shook her head indulgently, the way a mother might with a hopeless child. “You never change, Peter. Fifty years I’ve known you, and you’re still the same guy. Maybe that’s why I can’t stay mad at you.”
“And I’ll take that.” He stood. “Need anything before we leave?”
“A new body would be nice. This one seems to have run its course.”
“Short of that.”
Alicia thought for a moment, then smiled. “I don’t know—how about another rabbit?”
He found his son on deck, sitting on a wooden crate and watching Michael making his preparations on the fantail.
“You mind?” he asked.
Caleb scooted over.
“Where’s Pim?”
“Asleep.” His son turned and gave him a hard look. “Help me understand this.”
“I’m not sure I can.”
“Then why? What difference could it possibly make now?”
“People will come back someday. If Fanning’s still alive, it starts all over again.”
“You’re going because of her.”
Peter was speechless.
“Oh, don’t look so surprised,” Caleb went on. “I’ve known about it for years.”
Peter didn’t know how to respond. In the end, he could only admit the truth. “Well, you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right.”
“Let me finish. Amy does have something to do with this, but she’s not the only reason.” He brought his thoughts into focus. “Here’s the best way I have to explain it. It’s a story about your father. At the Colony, we had a tradition. We called it standing the Mercy. When a person was taken up, a relative would wait for them each night on the city wall. We’d set out a cage with a lamb inside as bait. Seven nights, waiting for them to come home, and if they did, it was that person’s job to kill them. It was usually the responsibility of the closest male relative, so when your father disappeared, I had to stand for him.”
Caleb was watching his face closely. “How old were you?”
“Twenty, twenty-one? Just a kid.”
“But he didn’t come back. He’d been taken to the Haven.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know that. Seven nights, Caleb. That’s a lot of time to think about killing a person, especially my own brother. At the start, I wondered if I actually could. Our parents had died, Theo was the only person I had left in the world. But as the nights passed, I came to understand something. There was something worse than killing him, and that would be letting somebody else do it. If the situation were reversed, if I had been the one taken up, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. I didn’t want to do it, believe me, but I owed him that much. The responsibility was mine and no one else’s.” Peter gave his words a moment to sink in. “That’s what this is like, son. I don’t know why it has to be me. That’s a question I can’t answer. But it doesn’t matter. Pim and the kids—those are your responsibilities. You were put on earth to protect them till your last breath. That’s your job. This is mine. You need to let me do it.”
Aboard the Nautilus, Michael was issuing instructions to the crewmen who would assist in launching her. The hull had been wrapped in thick rope webbing; a steel boom and a system of blocks would be used to lift her from her cradle and lower her over the side. Once she was in the water, they would cut her free, raise the mast, and set sail for New York.
“He’ll kill you,” Caleb said.
Peter said nothing.
“And if you succeed? Amy can’t leave. You said so yourself.”
“No, she can’t.
“So what then?”
“Then I live my life. Just like you’re going to live yours.”
Peter waited for his son to say more; when he didn’t, he put his hand on Caleb’s shoulder. “You have to accept this, son.”
“It’s not easy.”