But she wouldn't write it.
Slade was a killer, condemned to die. But Slade, dead out there with his bacteria, Slade evil to man and human society but not necessarily evil in the implacable ways of nature or perhaps grimly, terribly evil—Slade out there, dead on the bosom of the primordial waters, Slade back in time a billion years before life had been born on Earth....
She laughed hysterically as they led her away from the water. They slapped her face, gently at first, then harder. "I'll be all right," she managed to say.
She would be all right. She could live to forget it.
But Slade out there.
Slade.
Slade fathering all life on earth there in the sea with his dead body. Slade who had sinned and was taken back here to die for his sins so that life could be born.
Slade, whose first name was Adam.