"Sure," I said blankly.
"A lot of nonsense," Howard said irritably. "Uncle John was dead a year before Bill was born. As far as we know, Bill's father was a traveling salesman."
It took ten minutes for it to sink clear in. Then I started to celebrate my release from the horrible mental bondage. I did it in a quiet way. I sat in the plane that was taking us home, and I held Nessa very closely.
I was human. Our child would be human. Nothing else could matter at all.
There was a lot of work to be done even yet, of course. The Old Companions had to be ferreted out, dug from their holes, sought in cities and swamps and villages and caves. In that work we had unexpected help: there are traitors to every cause, good and bad, those who'll turn coat when the going gets rough, and even the boasting Neanderthals were no exception. Our turncoat was the captive Trutch. He had a prodigious memory and he had been high in the councils of the Cuff muster. He named names and located HQs. He was like a cur, savage in a pack but now, standing alone in a cage, fawning and eager to please.
Trutch's reward, when the last of the recrudescent cavemen had been tracked and found and annihilated, was his life. He was sterilized and given a farm all for himself—an extremely well-guarded farm, for even when they were gone the Old Companions left an aura of unease and fear on the land.
It's over now. It can't happen again; we'll be on the watch for the primal rage, the wakening dawn memory in those who may remain as carriers of the dark blood. The man-made moon rides high in space by day and night, watching the world with unfailing vigilance.
My brother Howard is up there as I write.
And Nessa is in the nursery putting our infant son to bed. I hope that one day he'll join many other men in space.
That's the future—our real future—and heritage....