Back in the apartment, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 automatically stopped, returned to the beginning notes, then repeated itself again and again and again.
15
The mammoth headquarters of Resurrection, Inc. rose like a tombstone in front of Danal. Still hiding his Servant identity with the beige trenchcoat, he looked at the building in brooding awe.
Other people milled about; most moved hurriedly toward the enclosed plazas as an early spring rain started to fall. The Servant stood oblivious, but conscious of every droplet of water striking his skin.
“…return to Resurrection, Incorporated… meet with Francois Nathans…”
Danal walked toward the nearest transplastic revolving door, the entrance for workers and visitors.
“He’s eagerly expecting you.”
Danal pushed his way through the door, grasping the long brass handle as if he were a pallbearer. He had been here before. This place had given him a second birth, but he remembered nothing else about it. He had been brought in at night with a shipment of other corpses, through a different door, processed and turned into what he was now. But the techs had not been thorough enough. Too many stains of his past life remained, coming back to haunt him in incomprehensible flashes and painful knives of memory.
Danal wondered if the techs could purge his brain again, start him over fresh and clean and untainted. But for some reason he found that prospect more frightening than just learning to live with his past, to live with the shadow of a person he had once been.
As he entered the carpeted lobby Danal saw the main receptionist sitting behind a glossy black landscape of her acrylic desktop, tapping her impossibly long fingernails on a keyboard. Her eyes were a cool purplish color from mood-responsive contact lenses.
He shrugged off his trenchcoat and stood exposed as a Servant in his gray uniform. The receptionist looked up, mildly surprised at the audacity of his disguise, but then she recognized that no Servant could have done such a thing by himself.
Danal’s voice sounded dry and lifeless to his own ears. “My Master Van Ryman instructed me to come here. I am to see Mr. Francois Nathans.”
This is the trigger moment we’ve all been waiting for.
The receptionist turned away, ignoring him as she spoke into an intercom port. “He’s here, Mr. Nathans. ”
Danal heard no response from Nathans, but the receptionist acknowledged anyway. She looked coolly at him again, but this time her eyes were brown. “Take the fourth lift on the right. That’s a direct line down to Mr. Nathans’s main office. Command: Go.”
Before Danal could say anything, his Servant programming took control and sent his feet moving toward the indicated lift. Vaguely, he resented her use of the Command phrase, which stripped him of any discretion whatsoever. He had obviously shown himself to be independent just by coming here alone; the shackling phrase relegated him to the status of a puppet, and she could have seen that she didn’t need to use it.
As Danal moved away, the receptionist stretched out her arm to take the dripping polymer trenchcoat from him. He had no choice but to let her have it. He didn’t know if she was keeping it for him, or just making certain that he couldn’t drip rainwater in Nathans’s office… or maybe she was stripping him of something that could hide his identity as a Servant.
The dampness on Danal’s pale scalp and face dried quickly, and his gray jumpsuit had already volatilized most of the moisture in the fabric. Danal hoped his Master Van Ryman would not notice he had lost the black stocking cap. He didn’t want to explain what he had done.
The special lift doors opened automatically for him as he approached. The doors waited like an open mouth with the fangs cleverly hidden.
The doors hissed shut, and the lift obeyed his voice command, suddenly plunging downward, deep below ground level to the main offices of Francois Nathans. The lift didn’t distinguish between the words of Servants and those of humans. After a moment Danal stepped out, dizzy but reorienting himself quickly.
The corridors were dim and cold from the heavy air conditioning; a high humidity level and a faint musty smell made the place dank. Ahead of him a wide double door of walnut-attribute clonewood stood partly open, inviting. He took one step out of the elevator and the doors closed behind him. Listening, he could hear the whirring machinery as the lift chamber reset itself back to the main lobby level.
The Servant moved to the door of the office, stepping silently on the thick maroon carpet, though he knew that Nathans must have heard the lift’s arrival. He placed one hand on the brass handle of the heavy door, pulling it open wide enough to admit himself. Some instinct warned him not to knock. He could feel shadows around him, an oppressiveness, as if he were deep below the Earth’s crust.
His nerve ends tingled with a handful of invisible needles. His mouth felt dry and tasted like metal. Warning bells sounded in his mind, but he took a quick, cold breath and steeled himself, tensing his muscles to keep the mental turmoil trapped within.
Something was going to happen.
He felt like a rubber band stretched to the breaking point.
Danal stepped into the chamber. “I’m here, Mr. Nathans.”
In an eyeblink he saw all the baroque furniture, the tapestries, the faint illumination from thick black candles on the desk, the bookshelves, the reception table. A thick plate-glass window looked out through murky water; large and small fish swam in shadowy shapes out to the limits of visibility. Danal didn’t know if Nathans had had a large aquarium installed, or if they were indeed under the water of the Bay.
His eyes locked on Nathans, who was off in a corner hastily donning an embroidered white robe. Though Nathans’s back was turned, Danal could see he was short and bald, with real rubies implanted decoratively on his naked scalp. Nathans turned to show his face and smiled thinly at Danal, but the smile seemed directed inward.
“Welcome, Sacrificial Lamb,” Nathans gloated.
He made the neo-Satanist sign of the broken cross.
The juggernaut of memories buried beneath Danal’s thin Servant facade exploded, suddenly becoming a raging black monster that lunged to the end of its chain… and the chain snapped. Using the blurred reflexes from his microprocessor-enhanced brain, Danal leaped forward, unable to control his reflexive fury.
Nathans!
Satanist!
Schemer, murderer!
He hated this man, loathed him with a passion strong enough to transcend death. Danal’s Servant identity scrabbled to regain control, but his former self was too strong, too murderous. The Servant’s arms shot out with his hands rigid and his fingers extended like wooden stakes.
His resurrected mind, the other Danal, meant to strangle Francois Nathans, but his hands moved in such a blur of speed that they plunged through the skin of the bald man’s neck as if it were cheese and snapped his spinal column, wrenching the exposed vertebrae out of place.
He withdrew even before the blood began to gush out. Viewed through the microprocessor’s slow-time, the universe stopped for an instant, poised on the tip of the blade before plunging down into disaster. Immediately Danal realized what he had done.
Nathans did not seem to comprehend that his life was ended, and continued to smile for an instant before an expression of shock dropped onto his face.
Danal stared in horror, and finally blood spurted onto his uniform. Then the bald man lurched forward, trying to grapple with Danal. He caught the Servant’s shoulder but could not hold on, and slid down Danal’s chest to the floor. A long scarlet smear emblazoned the gray jumpsuit.
Danal’s throat was as dry as paper. He stumbled back, gaping at Nathans as he fell. Shadows across the aquarium window seemed to grow larger, pounding to get in; then Danal realized the pounding was in his temples.
He had broken the most fundamental Servant programming.
His chest throbbed with fire, as if from a cold sacrificial knife. He could feel the long scar on his breastbone writhing like a dangerous worm.
>
Nathans lay on his face in a puddle of blood that was already disappearing as the dirt- and lint-destroying enzymes in the carpet fought to clean up the mess. Danal saw the intricate stars, pentagrams, and astrological symbols embroidered on the white robe.
“Sacrificial Lamb.”
Just who was the victim after all?
Lulled by a false sense of privacy as the lift doors enclosed him, Rodney Quick caught himself whistling an aimless tune. He stopped, then smiled, then grinned, as he realized that he had been almost happy for the last couple of days. He warned himself not to get his hopes up, yet another part kept reminding him that this was the first hope he’d had in a long time.
Supervisor had not shown herself for three days. She was gone… vanished.
By the end of the second day, Rodney had been jumpy, edgy, fearing some trick, some trap. But now, after several shifts all alone, at peace, unharassed, able to do his job in Lower Level Six, he began to fantasize that perhaps Supervisor had been reassigned.
The tech began to remember, and unconsciously embellish, everything that Francois Nathans had told him: the commendations, the praise for work well done. Rodney hoped that, since he had confessed his fear of Supervisor, perhaps Nathans had done something about her.
On Lower Level Six the pre-Servants floated in their vats, the operations continued, and Rodney started to open his eyes again. He looked for details in things instead of only shadows. He began to smile and even whistle. He took delight and amazement in everyday objects he had not noticed for years.
Rodney wondered if this was sort of a reverse love, feeling so incredibly happy when someone else was not around.
Now he had decided to take Francois Nathans up on his standing invitation to “drop in whenever you like,” to find out for himself exactly what had happened to Supervisor, to learn if his happiness should be genuine or if it was only a fluke, a brief pause before the nightmare began again.
After the lift doors closed, and before the inane music could begin, Rodney spoke into the input speaker, “Lower main administrative offices. Francois Nathans, please.”
The lift requested his identity, and he spoke his name and entered his Net password. The terminal made no response until the elevator chamber obediently plunged downward.
If Supervisor was indeed gone, by some miracle, and if his life continued with the giddy lightheartedness that he was experiencing now, Rodney began to think seriously of perhaps rescinding his contract with the Cremators.
Within two days they had already made him purchase some ropewire, spotlight bulbs, and a piece for an antique generator that burned hydrocarbon fuel. He’d had to ransack the lists of technocollectors to find someone willing to sell him, even at an exorbitant price, the old flywheel.
Overall, the cost of the items had not amounted to much, not really, and certainly not as much as he had expected to pay the Cremators. But he didn’t know how much longer it would last, how often they would request that he make these “little” purchases.
The worst assignment so far had been smuggling out a liter jar of the lukewarm, pinkish amniotic solution from a mutated batch. In a carefully rinsed soft-drink container he had caught some of the draining solution, then sealed it in a vacuum-flask… nervous all the time, convinced that Supervisor was watching, that she would catch him at his theft. What if Supervisor was in some way connected with the Cremators, and she knew what he was doing all along? How did he even know that Rossum Capek represented the real Cremators?
But if he let himself believe that, he had no hope left in the world.
Rodney received his electronic messages, which deleted themselves as soon as he read them. He had to pay attention, or else he might not be able to remember what he was supposed to do. And if he screwed up, he didn’t know how many chances the Cremators would give him.
He had never again seen Rossum Capek, or Monica, or even the same representative twice. He always delivered his purchases to a different place, but everything always went smoothly.
“If I need to get in touch with you,” he had once demanded, “how will I be able to find you?”
“We’ll know if you need us,” answered the Cremator, a freckle-faced twelve-year-old boy. “And if we don’t know, you don’t really need us.”
Somehow it all seemed a little spooky.
As the lift doors split open and he stumbled toward the private offices of Francois Nathans, Rodney Quick swallowed, looking for some saliva in his dry throat. He puffed up his determination again, vowing to find out what was going on, one way or another. Who the hell did Supervisor think she was?
And then he had no time for anything else as a Servant exploded toward him. He saw a splash of blood on the uniform; he saw a crumpled white-robed body—Nathans!—lying on the floor in a liquid pool of deeper maroon on the carpet.
As his jaw dropped in awe, Rodney saw the door burst open. In one infinite moment he saw finger wide indentations of crushed and splintered wood from the Servant’s grasp as the gray-clad figure pushed the door open and lunged toward the lift.
Rodney was in the way.
A Servant? A Servant!
Rodney realized too late that he should move, that he should run. The Servant was out of control.
Distractedly, the Servant tossed him aside with unheeded strength, heaving him back against the far wall. Everything was so incredibly fast—no one could move that fast!
Rodney slammed into the wall with the force of an avalanche. His nerves surrendered before he could feel the explosions of pain, but he heard a multitude of bones crack and shatter like popcorn in a furnace.
Rodney saw that he had fallen on the floor like torn rags in the corner of the lift. His eyes seemed to be filling with blood from the inside. He was able to catch a frozen snapshot of the Servant’s face looking down at him with an expression of total disbelief and horror at what he had done.
Rodney realized, without a doubt, that he was a dead man. He had been prepared for death for a long enough time… but then a limitless despair opened up below him: of all places, he was going to die in the tightest administration levels of Resurrection, Inc. Before he lost complete nerve control of his facial muscles, they formed themselves into a last mask of sorrow.
There was no way in the universe that the Cremators would ever get hold of his body now. He was doomed to return as a Servant after all.
As the technician fell, sliding to the ground with his neck and the back of his head crushed against the wall, Danal finally wrenched the wild horses of his old self to a halt, quelling further rampage. Tears seeped into his eyes even before the tech had come to a rest on the floor.
He hadn’t meant to do it. It was an accident! He wasn’t able to stop himself. He had lost control, and the demons had escaped.
Francois Nathans was slaughtered… but Nathans had intentionally unleashed something buried within Danal, recklessly playing with a deadly weapon. But this tech had simply stood in the way at the wrong moment, an innocent bystander, before Danal could get a grip on his accelerated reflexes, on the juggernaut within him. Danal had only meant to brush him aside, just to knock him out of the way.
What good were apologies now?
Before the tears could blur his vision, Danal picked up Rodney Quick’s broken body and carried it like a doll into Nathans’s office. Gently he lay the tech on the sofa and straightened his arms. Blood seeped from the back of his head into the red crushed velvet of the arm rest.
Danal recognized him as the technician who had been present at his awakening down on Lower Level Six, and felt a deeper sadness. Rodney Quick.
“I’m sorry I can’t do anything else for you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
The Servant lurched blindly into the lift without looking back and mumbled for the elevator to take him back to the lobby. He stared at his sticky hands, and his face went slack. Even with stepped-up thinking, he couldn’t resolve his questions, his contradictions, his suspicions.
Who was
he, really?
His ingrained Servant conditioning fought with itself in an utter failure to comprehend. The dark personality submerged beneath Danal’s outer skin had broken through his Servant identity, leaving him helpless, overriding his real wishes. The most terrifying part was that it had been so easy—Danal had been helpless to stop it from happening.
Was this what he had wanted to know? Did he want to remember who the original Danal had been? What type of person could be capable of such abominable, unprovoked actions?
As the lift pulled him upward, he felt the scar on his chest from the sacrificial knife, and once again he allowed the flashback of the neo-Satanist ritual to flood into his mind, making his temples pound.
What had he done to deserve a death as violent and as terrible as that, with the heart cut from his chest by a dull blade?
Danal no longer wanted to discover the origin of his flashbacks. He wanted to start all over again. He wanted to be a simple Servant, following orders, without the slightest inkling of his past. He wanted forgiveness for his awful crime.
But he would get none—they would terminate him. He would die again.
The lobby spread out in front of him as the lift doors parted, but now the microprocessor drove his brain at a snail’s pace. Events whirled around him like a maelstrom of razor blades. He stepped out of the elevator, holding his blood-covered hands dumbly before him.
Several people noticed him at once. The receptionist looked up, cocked her head, and calmly screamed in the exact pitch that activated the droning alarms.
One of the Enforcer escorts had just entered the lobby and stood contemplating the large Metroplex map on the wall, searching for the location of his next delivery. Danal noted instantly that the Enforcer was tall and thin, and his hands and wrists showed black skin that would normally have been covered by armored gloves. The same Enforcer who had escorted him to the Van Ryman mansion, seemingly a lifetime before.
Resurrection, Inc. Page 12