“Married? Me? No, I don’t think that I’ll ever do that again. The first time was too painful.”
“Then you must either send them back to Barbara’s family, where I’m sure her parents would be happy to raise them, as good little Smoothies, or you should follow Leftenant Fitzsimmon’s recomendations and take them to the early second half of the twentieth century, in the American Midwest. That is to say, put them up for adoption, with good families.”
“Smoothies? My boys? Never! Adoption? I wouldn’t have any idea how to go about doing such a thing.”
“I could take care of that for you, if that’s what you really want.”
“Let me think on that for a few days.”
“That is very good thinking.”
“Another thing, Jim. You’ve been telling me about all these things that you shouldn’t be able to know. Things like what Ian said to me when we were all alone. What gives? You’ve been spying on us the whole time?”
“Of course! If you are going to manage a culture, and tweak it to perfection, you have to give up on things like a concern for privacy. Oh, we never intrude on anyone’s life. They probably know that we are watching them the way a Christian believes that God is always looking over him, but it rarely affects them personally, unless they are desperately in need of help, or are in the act of committing some crime, so no one ever minds it.”
“I mind it.”
“Do you really? Would you like us to stop it?”
“Damn straight!”
“It might be dangerous for you. We help a lot of people in trouble, you know. When that shark bit Ian’s foot off, it wasn’t the flare that got the Air Force there in seconds, you know. It was one of our bugs.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Come back to me when you’re sober, tell me the same thing, and and I’ll act on it.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Very well. In the meantime, think about that fine, creative world that you are going to build. The world of the Killers.”
THE END