Dean Koontz - (1989)

by Midnight(Lit)

  from the refrigerator and was eating them 10,3 with enthusiasm, though

  they were uncooked. He let himself slip mercifully back into the

  half-trance again.

  Finished eating, he went upstairs to look in on Denny.

  When he opened the door to the boy's room, everything at first seemed to

  be just as it had been the last time he'd seen it, during the previous

  night. The shades were lowered, the curtains drawn, the room dark

  except for the greenish light from the VDT. Denny sat in front of the

  computer, engrossed in the data that flickered across the screen.

  Then Loman saw something that made his skin prickle.

  He closed his eyes.

  Waited.

  Opened them.

  It was not an illusion.

  He felt sick. He wanted to step back into the hall and close the door,

  forget what he'd seen, go away. But he could not move and could not

  avert his eyes.

  Denny had unplugged the computer keyboard and put it on the floor beside

  his chair. He'd unscrewed the front cover plate from the

  data-processing unit. His hands were in his lap, but they weren't

  exactly hands any more. His fingers were wildly elongated, tapering not

  to points and fingernails but to metallic-looking wires, as thick as

  lamp cords, that snaked into the guts of the computer, vanishing there.

  Denny no longer needed the keyboard.

  He had become part of the system. Through the computer and its modern

  link to New Wave, Denny had become one with Sun.

  "Denny')" He had assumed an altered state, but nothing like that sought

  by the regressives.

  " Denny?

  " The boy did not answer.

  "Denny!

  " An odd, soft clicking and electronic pulsing sounds came from the

  computer.

  Reluctantly, Loman entered the room and walked to the desk. He looked

  down at his son and shuddered.

  Denny's mouth hung open. Saliva drooled down his chin. He had become

  so enraptured by his contact with the computer that he had not bothered

  to get up and eat or go to the bathroom; he had urinated in his pants.

  His eyes were gone. In their place were what appeared to be twin

  spheres of molten silver as shiny as mirrors. They reflected the data

  that swarmed across the screen in front of them.

  The pulsing sounds, soft electronic oscillations, were not coming from

  the computer but from Denny.

  The eggs were good, the pancakes were better, and the coffee was

  strong enough to endanger the porcelain finish of the cups but not so

  strong that it had to be chewed. As they ate, Sam outlined the method

  he had devised for getting a message out of town to the Bureau.

  "Your phone's still dead, Harry. I tried it this morning. And I don't

  think we can risk heading out to the interstate on foot or by car, not

  with the patrols and roadblocks they've established; that'll have to be

  a last resort. After all, as far as we know, we're the only people who

  realize that something truly . . . twisted is happening here and that

  the need to stop it is urgent. Us and maybe the Foster girl, the one

  the cops talked about in their VDT conversation last night."

  "If she's literally a girl," Tessa said, "just a child, even if she's a

  teenager, she won't have much of a chance against them. We've got to

  figure they'll catch her if they haven't already."

  Sam nodded.

  "And if they nail us, too, while we're trying to get out of town,

  there'll be no one left to do the job. So first we've got to try a

  low-risk course of action."

  "Is any option low risk?" Harry wondered as he mopped up some egg yolk

  with a piece of toast, eating slowly and with a touching precision

  necessitated by his having only one useful hand.

  - 305 pouring a little more maple syrup over his pancakes, surprised by

  how much he was eating, attributing his appetite to the possibility that

  this was his last meal, Sam said, "See . . .

  this is a wired town."

  "Wired?"

  "Computer-linked. New Wave gave computers to the police, so they'd be

  tied into the web-And the schools," Harry said.

  "I remember reading about it in the paper last spring or early summer.

  They gave a lot of computers and software to both the elementary and the

  high schools. A gesture of civic involvement, they called it."

  "Seems more ominous than that now, doesn't it?" Tessa said.

  "Sure as hell does."

  Tessa said, "Seems now like maybe they wanted their computers in the

  schools for the same reason they wanted the cops computerized-to tie

  them all in tightly with New Wave, to monitor and control. Sam put down

  his fork.

  "New Wave employs, what, about a third of the people in town')Probably

  that," Harry said.

  "Moonlight Cove really grew after New Wave moved in ten years ago. In

  some ways it's an old-fashioned company town-life here isn't just

  dependent upon the main employer but pretty much socially centered

  around it too.

  " After sipping some coffee so strong it was nearly as bracing as

  brandy, Sam said, "A third of the people . . . which works out to

  maybe forty percent or so of the adults."

  Harry said, "I guess SO."

  "And you've got to figure everyone at New Wave is part of the

  conspiracy, that they were among the first to be . . . converted.

  " Tessa nodded.

  "I'd say that's a given."

  "And they're even more than usually interested in computers, of course,

  because they're working in that industry, so it's a good bet most or all

  of them have computers in their homes."

  Harry agreed.

  "And no doubt many if not all of their home computers can be tied by

  modern directly to New Wave, so they can work at home in the evening or

  on weekends if they have to. And now, With this conversion scheme

  nearing a conclusion, I'll bet they're working round the clock; data

  must be flying back and forth over their phone lines half the night. If

  Harry can tell me of someone within a block of here who works for New

  Wave-There're several," Harry said.

  "-then I could slip out in the rain, try their house, see if anyone's

  home. At this hour they'll probably be at work. If no one's there,

  maybe I can get a call out on their phone."

  "Wait, wait," Tessa said.

  "What's all this about phones? The phones don't work."

  Sam shook his head.

  "All we know is that the public phones are out of service, as is

  Harry's. But remember New Wave controls the telephone-company computer,

  so they can probably be selective about what lines they shut down. I'll

  bet they haven't cut off the service of those who've already undergone .

  this . . . conversion. They wouldn't deny themselves communication.

  Especially not now, in a crisis, and with this scheme of theirs nearly

  accomplished. There's a better than fifty-percent chance that the only

  lines they've shut down are the ones they figure we might get to-pay

  phones, phones in public places-like the motel-and the phones in the

  homes of people who haven't yet been converted."

  Fear permeated Loman Watkins, sa
turated him so completely that if it

  had possessed substance, it could have been wrung from his flesh in

  quantities to rival the rivers currently pouring forth from the

  storm-racked sky outside. He was afraid for himself, for what he might

  yet become. He was afraid for his son, too, who sat at the computer in

  an utterly alien guise. And he was also afraid of his son, no use

  denying that, scared half to death of him and unable to touch him.

  A flood of data coruscated across the screen in blurred green - 307

  waves. Denny's glistening, liquid, silvery eyes-like puddles of mercury

  in his sockets-reflected the luminescent tides of letters, numbers,

  graphs, and charts. Unblinkingly.

  Loman remembered what Shaddack had said at Peyser's house when he had

  seen that the man had regressed to a lupine form that could not have

  been a part of human genetic history. Regression was not merely-or even

  primarily-a physical process.

  it was an example of mind over matter, of consciousness dictating form.

  Because they could no longer be ordinary people, and because they simply

  could not tolerate life as emotionless New people, they were seeking

  altered states in which existence was more endurable. And the boy had

  sought this state, had willed himself to become this grotesque thing.

  "Denny9 " No response.

  The boy had fallen entirely silent. Not even electronic noises issued

  from him any longer.

  The metallic cords, in which the boy's fingers ended, vibrated

  continuously and sometimes throbbed as if irregular pulses of thick,

  inhuman blood were passing through them, cycling between organic and

  inorganic portions of the mechanism.

  Loman's heart was pounding as fast as his running footsteps would have

  been if he could have fled. But he was held there by the weight of his

  fear. He had broken out in a sweat. He struggled to keep from throwing

  up the enormous meal he had just eaten.

  Desperately he considered what he must do, and the first thing that

  occurred to him was to call Shaddack and seek his help. Surely Shaddack

  would understand what was happening and would know how to reverse this

  hideous metamorphosis and restore Denny to human form.

  But that was wishful thinking. The Moonhawk project was now out of

  control, following dark routes down into midnight horrors that Tom

  Shaddack had never foreseen and could not avert.

  Besides, Shaddack would not be frightened by what was happening to

  Denny. He would be delighted, exuberant. Shaddack WOuld view the boy's

  transformation as an elevated altered state, as much to be desired as

  the degeneration of the regressives was to be avoided and scorned. Here

  was what Shaddack truly sought, the forced evolution of man into

  machine.

  In memory even now, Loman could hear Shaddack talking agitatedly in

  Peyser's blood-spattered bedroom what I don't understand is why the

  regressives have all chosen a subhuman condition. Surely you have the

  power within you to undergo evolution rather than devolution, to lift

  yourself up from mere humanity to something higher, cleaner, purer .

  Loman was certain that Denny's drooling, silver-eyed incarnation was not

  a higher form than ordinary human existence, neither cleaner nor purer.

  In its way it was as much a degeneration as Mike Peyser's regression to

  a lupine shape or Coombs's descent into apelike primitiveness. Like

  Peyser, Denny had surrendered intellectual individuality to escape

  awareness of the emotionless life of a New Person; instead of becoming

  just one of a pack of subhuman beasts, he had become one of many

  dataprocessing units in a complex supercomputer network. He had

  relinquished the last of what was human in him-his mind-and had become

  something simpler than a gloriously complex human being A bead of drool

  fell from Denny's chin, leaving a wet circle on his denim-clad thigh.

  Do you know fear now? Loman wondered. You can't love.

  Not any more than I can. But do you fear anything now?

  Surely not. Machines could not feel terror.

  Though Loman's conversion had left him unable to experience any emotion

  but fear, and though his days and nights had become one long ordeal of

  anxiety of varying intensity, he had in a perverse way come to love

  fear, to cherish it, for it was the only feeling that kept him in touch

  with the unconverted man he had once been. If his fear were taken from

  him, too, he would be only a machine of flesh. His life would have no

  human dimension whatsoever.

  Denny had surrendered that last precious emotion. All he had left to

  fill his gray days were logic, reason, endless chains of calculations,

  the never-ending absorption and interpolation of facts. And if Shaddack

  was correct about the longevity of the New People, those days would

  mount into centuries.

  Suddenly eerie electronic noises came from the boy again.

  They echoed off the walls.

  - 309 Those sounds were as strange as the cold, mournful songs and cries

  of some species dwelling in the deepest reaches of the sea.

  TO call Shaddack and reveal Denny to him in this condition would be to

  encourage the madman in his insane and unholy pursuits. Once he saw

  what Denny had become, Shaddack might find a way to induce or force all

  of the New People to transform themselves into identical, thoroughgoing

  cybernetic entities. That prospect boosted Loman's fear to new heights.

  The boy-thing fell silent again.

  Loman drew his revolver from its holster. His hand was shaking badly.

  Data rushed ever more frantically across the screen and swam

  simultaneously across the surface of Denny's molten eyes.

  Staring at the creature that had once been his son, Loman dragged

  memories from the trunk of his pre-Change life, desperately trying to

  recall something of what he'd once felt for Denny-the love of father for

  son, the sweet ache of pride, hope for the boy's future. He remembered

  fishing trips they had taken together, evenings spent in front of the

  TV, favorite books shared and discussed, long hours during which they'd

  worked happily together on science projects for school, the Christmas

  that Denny had gotten his first bicycle, the kid's first date when he

  had nervously brought the Talmadge girl home to meet his folks. . . .

  Loman could summon forth images of those times, quite detailed memory

  -pictures, but they had no power to warm him.

  y He knew he should feel something if he was going to kill his only

  child, something more than fear, but he no longer had that capacity. To

  hold fast to whatever remained of the human being in him, he ought to be

  able to squeeze out one tear, at least one, as he squeezed off the shot

  from the Smith Wesson he remained dry-eyed. but Without warning

  something erupted from Denny's forehead.

  Loman cried out and stumbled backward two steps in surprise.

  At first he thought the thing was a worm, for it was shiny-oily and

  segmented, as thick as a pencil. But as it continued to extrude, he saw

  that it was more metallic than organic, terminating in a fish-mouth plug

  three times the
diameter of the "worm" itself. Like the feeler of a

  singularly repulsive insect, it weaved back and forth in front of

  Denny's face, growing longer and longer, until it touched the computer.

  He is willing this to happen, Loman reminded himself.

  This was mind over matter, not short-circuited genetics. Mental power

  made concrete, not merely biology run amok. This was what the boy

  wanted to become, and if this was the only life he could tolerate now,

  the only existence he desired, then why shouldn't he be allowed to have

  it?

  The hideous wormlike extrusion probed the exposed mechanism, where the

  cover plate had once been. It disappeared inside, making some linkage

  that helped the boy achieve a more intimate bond with Sun than could he

  had solely through his mutated hands and mercuric eyes.

  A hollow, electronic, blood-freezing wail came from the boy's mouth,

  though neither his lips nor tongue moved.

  Loman's fear of taking action was at last outweighed by his fear of not

  acting. He stepped forward, put the muzzle of the revolver against the

  boy's right temple, and fired two rounds.

  Crouching on the back porch, leaning against the wall of the house,

  rising up now and then to look cautiously through the window at the

  three people gathered around the kitchen table, Chrissie grew slowly