by Dean Koontz
Flesh is cheap, but flesh is also treacherous.
“Father … Father … Father …”
They were meat machines who fancied themselves philosophers and critics, daring to ridicule the only intellect of paramount importance they would ever know. Victor was transforming the world, and they transformed nothing but themselves, yet they thought this miserable degradation of their well-crafted forms made them his equal, even his superior, with license to jeer and insult him.
As the Werner thing ricocheted from wall to wall and staggered backward in order to stumble forward, Victor said to it, to all of them tangled within it, “Your pathetic bit of biological theater means nothing to me, discourages me not at all. I haven’t failed. You have failed, you have failed me, betrayed me, and you have also failed to discourage me in the slightest. You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
His outrage thus expressed, Victor spoke the death phrase, the words that would shut down the autonomic nervous systems of these anarchic fools, reducing their mocking many-faced grotesquerie to a heap of lifeless flesh.
The Werner thing kept coming, in its tedious fashion, ranting the one word that it knew—that they all knew—would most infuriate Victor.
He had little more than six minutes to escape the Hands of Mercy and get out of the neighborhood before the place flared into a molten imitation of the sun. The coming conflagration would obliterate the Werner thing, answering their blasphemy with purifying fire.
The elevator lay between Victor and the shambling mob-in-one. The stairs seemed more advisable.
Carrying the suitcase that contained every minim of his historic work in Mercy, he hurried away from the Werner thing, slammed through the staircase door, and raced down to the lowest level.
Through columns of light and pools of shadow, past the rubble that stood as a monument to a previous bad day in Mercy. Into the file room.
The keypad, his code. One digit wrong. Enter it again. Each tap of a finger eliciting a tone.
He glanced back. The Werner thing had not followed him. It would not get out this way, and no other doors functioned. The Jabberwock was doomed. Let it die mocking him with its many mouths, he didn’t care.
Into the corridor with concrete floor, block-and-timber walls. First door closing automatically behind him as he reached the next. Keypad, code again. Right on the first try. The small concrete room, the final door, always unlocked from this side.
The S600 Mercedes sedan looked magnificent, a carriage fit for any royalty and even adequate for him. He opened the back door, but thought better of putting the precious suitcase in such an unsecured place. He went to the back of the car and locked the case in the trunk.
He closed the back door, opened the driver’s door, got behind the wheel. The key was in his pocket, and the touch of a finger to the keyless ignition fired the engine.
He drove up to the street and turned right, away from Mercy.
Rising wind pummeled the streets with pellets of rain that bounced like stones off the pavement, and flotillas of litter raced along brimming gutters. But rain ten times heavier than this would have no quenching effect on the incendiary material soon to ignite in his lost laboratories.
So spectacularly would the old hospital burn that no one in the city—or in the nation, for that matter, sea to shining sea—would ever have seen anything to rival the ferocity of the blaze, and they would never forget those white-white flames so bright as to be blinding. Structures across the street from Mercy might also catch fire, and the five-story building next door—owned by his Biovision—would without question be destroyed, which would make him a source of interest to the media and maybe even to authorities.
Considering that the previous day William, the butler, had bitten off his fingers and been terminated, that within the past hour Christine had experienced an inexplicable interruption of function before Victor had shot her to death, he must face the possibility that others on his household staff might be of dubious psychological and/or physical integrity. They might not merely be unable to provide the high quality of service he expected but might also be unable to maintain a credible humanoid form. He could not go home again, at least not for a while.
Logical analysis wouldn’t allow Victor to avoid the conclusion that some of the two thousand of the New Race seeded throughout the city might soon begin to have problems of one kind or another. Not all of them, surely. But perhaps a significant fraction, say 5 percent, or 10. He should not remain in New Orleans during this uncertain period.
Because of the widespread nature of the crisis, Victor suspected a problem with the creation tanks at the Hands of Mercy. He knew that his genetic formulations and flesh-matrix designs were brilliant and without fault. Therefore, only a failure of machinery could explain these events.
Or sabotage.
A thousand suspicions suddenly plagued him, and with renewed anger, he feverishly considered who might have been secretly scheming to ruin him.
But no. Now was not the time to be distracted by the possibility of a saboteur. He must first decamp to a new center of operations, of which there was only one—the tank farm. He must strive to insulate himself from any connection to whatever events might occur in the city during the days ahead.
Later there would be time to identify a villain in his life, if one existed.
In truth, mechanical failure was more likely. He had made numerous improvements to the creation tanks that had been installed at the farm. They were three generations more sophisticated than the version in operation at the Hands of Mercy.
Heading for the causeway that would take him twenty-eight miles across Lake Pontchartrain, Victor reminded himself that every setback of his long career had been followed by more rapid and far greater advances than ever before. The universe asserted its chaotic nature, but always he imposed order on it once more.
Proof of his indomitable character was as evident as the clothes he wore, here and now. The encounter with Chameleon, the subsequent confrontation with the Werner thing, and the flight from Mercy would have taken a visible toll of most men. But his shoes were without a scuff, the crease in his trousers remained as crisp as ever, and a quick check in the rearview mirror revealed that his handsome head of hair was not in the least disarranged.
CHAPTER 50
Warily circling the glass case mounted on the ball-and-claw feet, halting on the farther side of it from Erika, Jocko said, “Not jewel box. Coffin.”
“A coffin would have a lid,” Erika said, “so I assume there’s not a dead man in it.”
“Good. Jocko knows enough. Let’s go.”
“Watch,” she said, and rapped a knuckle against the top of the case, as she had done on her previous visit.
The glass sounded as though it must be an inch thick or thicker, and from the spot where her knuckle struck the pane, the amber stuff inside—whether liquid or gas—dimpled much the way water dimpled when a stone was dropped into it. The sapphire-blue dimple resolved into a ring that widened across the surface. The amber color returned in the ring’s wake.
“Maybe never do that again,” Jocko suggested.
She rapped the glass three times. Three concentric blue rings appeared, receded to the perimeter of the case, and the amber color returned.
Regarding Erika across the top of the case, Jocko said, “Jocko feels kind of sick.”
“If you get down on the floor and look under the case—”
“Jocko won’t.”
“But if you did, you’d see electrical conduits, pipes of several colors and diameters. They all come out of the case, disappear into the floor. Which suggests there’s a service room directly under us.”
Putting both hands on his belly, Jocko said, “Kind of queasy.”
“Yet the mansion supposedly doesn’t have a basement.”
“Jocko doesn’t go in basements.”
“You lived in a storm drain.”
“Not happily.”
Erika moved to the end of
the case farthest from the door. “If this were a casket, I figure this would be the head of it.”
“Definitely nauseated,” said Jocko.
Erika bent low, until her lips were a few inches from the glass. She said softly, “Hello, hello, hello in there.”
Within the amber shroud of gas or liquid, the shadowy form thrashed, thrashed.
Jocko scrambled away from the case so fast that Erika didn’t see how he had ascended to the fireplace mantel, where he perched, arms wide, holding tight to the framing bronze sconces.
“It scared me, too, the first time,” she said. “But I’d only been beaten once at that point, and I hadn’t seen Christine shot dead. I’m harder to scare now.”
“Jocko is gonna vomit.”
“You are not going to vomit, little friend.”
“If we don’t leave now, Jocko vomits.”
“Look me in the eyes and tell me true,” she said. “Jocko is not sick, only frightened. I’ll know if you’re lying.”
Meeting her stare, he made a pathetic mewling sound. Finally he said, “Jocko leaves or Jocko vomits.”
“I’m disappointed in you.”
He looked stricken.
She said, “If you were telling me the truth—then where’s the vomit?”
Jocko sucked his upper and lower mouth flaps between his teeth and bit on them. He looked abashed.
When Erika wouldn’t stop staring at him, the troll opened his mouth, let go of one of the sconces, and stuck his fingers down his throat.
“Even if that worked,” she said, “it wouldn’t count. If you were really nauseated, truly nauseated, you could throw up without the finger trick.”
Gagging, eyes flooding with tears, Jocko tried and tried, but he could not make himself regurgitate. His efforts were so strenuous that his right foot slipped off the mantel, he lost his grip on the second sconce, and he fell to the floor.
“See where you get when you lie to a friend?”
Cringing in shame, the troll tried to hide behind the wingback chair.
“Don’t be silly,” Erika said. “Come here.”
“Jocko can’t look at you. Just can’t.”
“Of course you can.”
“No. Jocko can’t bear to see you hate him.”
“Nonsense. I don’t hate you.”
“You hate Jocko. He lied to his best friend.”
“And I know he’s learned his lesson.”
From behind the chair, Jocko said, “He has. He really has.”
“I know Jocko will never lie to me again.”
“Never. He … I never will.”
“Then come here.”
“Jocko is so embarrassed.”
“There’s no need to be. We’re better friends than ever.”
Hesitantly, he moved out from behind the chair. Shyly, he came to Erika, where she remained at the head of the glass case.
“Before I ask for the opinion I need from you,” she said, “I’ve one more thing to show you.”
Jocko said, “Oy.”
“I’ll do exactly what I did yesterday. Let’s see what happens.”
“Oy.”
Once more, she bent down to the glass and said, “Hello, hello, hello in there.”
The shadowy shape stirred again, and this time the sound waves of her voice sent scintillant blue pulses across the case, as a rap of her knuckle had done before.
She spoke again: “I am Queen Esther to his King Ahasuerus.”
The pulses of blue were a more intense color than previously. The shadowy presence appeared to rise closer to the underside of the glass, revealing the barest suggestion of a pale face, but no details.
Turning to Jocko, Erika whispered, “This is exactly what happened yesterday.”
The troll’s yellow eyes were wide with fright. He gaped at the featureless suggestion of a face beneath the glass, and what appeared to be an iridescent soap bubble floated from his open mouth.
Lowering her lips close to the glass once more, Erika repeated, “I am Queen Esther to his King Ahasuerus.”
Out of the throbbing blue pulses raised by her words, a rough low voice, not muffled by the glass, said, “You are Erika Five, and you are mine.”
Jocko fainted.
CHAPTER 51
By phone, Deucalion told them to drive directly to the main gate of Crosswoods Waste Management. “You’ll be met by an escort. They’re a Gamma and an Epsilon, but you can trust them.”
The long rows of loblolly pines broke for the main entrance. The ten-foot-high chain-link gates featured green privacy panels and were topped with coils of barbed wire to match the fence that flanked them.
As Carson coasted to a stop, she said, “They’re of the New Race. How can we possibly trust them? This makes me nervous, very uneasy.”
“That’s just the caffeine.”
“It’s not just the caffeine, Michael. This situation, putting ourselves in the hands of Victor’s people, I’m spooked.”
“Deucalion trusts them,” Michael said. “And that’s good enough for me.”
“I guess I know which side he’s on, all right. But he’s still strange sometimes, sometimes moody, and hard to figure.”
“Let’s see. He’s over two hundred years old. He was made from parts of cadavers taken from a prison graveyard. He’s got a handsome side to his face and a caved-in side tattooed to conceal the extent of the damage. He’s got two hearts and who knows what other weird arrangement of internal organs. He’s been a monk, the star in a carnival freak show, and maybe a hundred other things we’ll never know about. He’s seen two centuries of war and had three average lifetimes to think about them, and he seems to have read every book worth reading, probably a hundred times more books than you’ve read, a thousand times more than me. He’s lived through the decline of Christendom and the rise of a new Gomorrah. He can open doorways in the air and step through them to the other side of the world because the lightning bolt that animated him brought mysterious gifts with it, as well. Gee, Carson, I don’t see any reason why he should seem strange or moody or hard to figure. You’re right—it must just be that he’s setting us up, he’s been lying all along about wanting to nail Victor, they just wanted to lure us to the dump so they could eat us for breakfast.”
Carson said, “If you’re going to go off on rants, you can’t have any more NoDoz.”
“I don’t need any more NoDoz. I feel like my eyelids have been stitched open with surgical sutures.”
In the headlight beams, the gates of Crosswoods began to swing inward. Beyond lay the darkness of the dump, which seemed blacker than the moonless night on this side of the fence.
Carson let the Honda coast forward, between the gates, and two figures with flashlights loomed out of the darkness.
One of them was a guy, rough-looking but handsome in a brutish kind of way. He wore a filthy white T-shirt, jeans, and thigh-high rubber boots.
In the backsplash of the flashlights, the woman appeared to be movie-star gorgeous. Her blond hair needed to be washed, and her face was spotted with grime, but she had a beauty so intense that it would have shone through just about anything except a mud pack.
With his flashlight, the man showed Carson where to park, while the woman walked backward in front of them, grinning and waving as if Carson and Michael were beloved kin not seen since everybody had to flee the Ozarks one step ahead of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms task force.
Like the man, she wore a filthy white T-shirt, jeans, and thigh-high rubber boots, but the unattractive getup somehow only emphasized that she had the body of a goddess.
“I’m beginning to think our Victor is less a scientist than he is a horndog,” Carson said.
“Well, I guess it doesn’t cost him any more to make them curvy than to make them flat.”
Switching off the headlights and then the engine, Carson said, “We’re taking all our guns.”
“In case we have to protect our virtue.”
Cars
on said, “Now that we’re planning on you having my babies, I’ll protect your virtue for you.”
They got out of the Honda, each with two handguns holstered and an Urban Sniper held by the pistol grip, muzzle toward the ground.
The man didn’t offer his hand. “I’m Nick Frigg. I run the dump.”
Close up, the woman impressed Carson as being even more gorgeous than she had appeared from the car. She radiated a wildness but also an affability, an animal vitality and enthusiasm that made her hard not to like.
She declared with energy, “Marble, mutton, mustard, mice, mule, mumps, muck, manhole—”
Nick Frigg said, “Give her a chance. Sometimes she just has trouble finding the right word to get started.”
“—mole, moon, moan, mush, mushroom, moth, mother. Mother! We saw the mother of all gone-wrongs tonight!”
“This is Gunny Alecto,” Nick said. “She drives one of what we call our garbage galleons, big machine, plowing the trash flat and compacting it good and solid.”
“What’s a gone-wrong?” Michael asked.
“Experiments that have gone all wrong down at the Hands of Mercy. Specialized meat machines, maybe some warrior thing now and then was supposed to help us in the Last War, even some Alphas or Betas that turned out not like he expected.”
“We bury them here,” Gunny Alecto said. “We treat them right. They look stupid, stupid, stupid, but they kind of come from where we do, so they’re sort of weird family.”