Consequently, Ariel fretted about the delay but didn’t protest much when Nancy wanted to clean the living room and put things right once more. She dusted diligently while Nancy gathered the larger fragments of the figurines, and she vacuumed while Nancy polished the glass shelves in the display case with Windex. When Nancy became disturbed about a few scratches in the shelves, realized she could not make them look perfect, and smashed them, Ariel picked up the bigger shards of glass and disposed of them. She also vacuumed again while Nancy went to the kitchen and for a while sat at the dinette table with her eyes closed and her hands limp in her lap.
Replicant Nancy’s thoughts were as jumbled as laundry tumbling in a dryer. The real Nancy had not kept the most spotless possible house, but she’d been a demon about laundry. Therefore, because the replicant had downloaded the woman’s memories, the laundry metaphor occurred to her, and it served her well. One by one, she took her tumbling thoughts from the dryer, ironed them, folded them, and put them away.
When Ariel finished bringing order to the living room, she came into the kitchen and said, “Can we go to the barn now?”
Eyes still closed, Nancy said, “I need a couple minutes more.”
After nine minutes and twenty-six seconds, Ariel said, “I really need to become what I’m meant to be. I really do.”
“Just a minute,” Nancy said.
Four minutes and nine seconds later, Ariel said, “Please.”
At last Nancy opened her eyes. She felt much better. Her mind was ordered. Efficiency was again possible.
Oblivious of the weather, Nancy and Ariel crossed the yard from the house to the barn.
Most of the building’s sixteen hundred square feet were in the main room, with a small tack room at the back. The walls were well insulated, and there was an oil furnace.
Along the south wall, horses watched the women from three stalls. Queenie and Valentine, the mares. Commander, the sorrel stallion.
The interior of the stalls in which the mares stood had earlier in the day been fortified with eighth-inch-thick steel plating. All of the windows had been filled with insulation and covered with inch-thick squares of sound board.
When the work began, the mares, in terror, were likely to try to kick out the walls and doors of their stalls when they saw what happened to the stallion.
Victor’s plan was more ambitious than merely the elimination of humanity to the last pathetic individual. He intended also that every thinking creature in nature should be chased down in every field and forest, and deconstructed by Ariel’s variety of Builder. Victor’s definition of thinking included any life form with even minimal self-awareness. Any animal that took joy in life, that exhibited even the least curiosity about the world, that had the slightest capacity for wonder, must be hunted to extinction. The substance of those creatures would be used to make more Builders that could mimic all the myriad species, to mingle with their herds and run with their packs and fly with their flocks, and ruthlessly eliminate them. In the seas, too, were beings with capacity for joy and wonder — dolphins, whales, and others — that must eventually be extinguished to the last specimen by aquatic Builders in the event that the seas proved too vast and self-cleaning to be effectively poisoned.
With a triumphant smile that Nancy understood, Ariel walked to Commander’s stall. The girl had no apple for him, but she let the stallion snuffle and work his soft lips over her hand.
When in time nothing lived upon the planet other than Builders, replicants, insects, and plants, the two kinds of Communitarians would die at Victor’s satellite-broadcast command. Only he would remain for a short while to witness a world without performers or audience, without anyone but him to remember its history, with no one to seek a future or even to want one. In the beginning had been the Word, but in the end no word would ever be spoken again, from pole to pole. Victor’s rebellion had begun more than two hundred years earlier, and it had not ended with his death in Louisiana, for it continued here under the management of his clone, Victor Immaculate. This rebellion would be the greatest in history, not only in the history of the earth but also in the history of all that is, for Victor Immaculate would in the end kill himself, the last self-aware creature on Earth, and thereby signify that his maker, the New Orleans Victor, and his maker’s maker were as meaningless as history, which had led to this nothing, these unpopulated landscapes in which no eye delighted.
The triumph that Ariel anticipated as she moved to the mares in response to their nickering, the triumph that tasted sweet to Nancy, as well, was the eventual obliteration of everything of which they could not be a part, which happened to be everything, whereafter even the Community, having fulfilled its purpose, could cease to exist.
They had been made to unmake and ultimately to be unmade. An exquisite efficiency.
In time, the insects whose existence depended on animals would perish, and the insects who fed on those insects would perish next, and the plants whose roots were aerated by those insects would die off. On it would go, until the world in every corner remained irreparably barren and silent and still.
Returning to the center of the barn, Ariel said, “Help me to become what I am meant to be.”
Surveying the scattered stalks of hay that littered the floor, Nancy grimaced and said, “Just give me a few minutes to sweep this floor. You can’t create in all this disorder. Just because it’s a barn, there’s no excuse for this mess, no excuse at all, this just makes me livid.”
Chapter 31
From the arsenal on the big conference-room table, Mason Morrell chose only a pistol, and from the cache of ammunition, he selected one spare magazine, which he loaded.
“I’ll be locked in the broadcast booth,” he told Sammy. “If they get as far as breaking down that door, the rest of you are dead and I won’t have any hope of holding out against them. I’ll want to kill a couple, just for the principle of it, but then I won’t need anything but one round for myself.”
He went away with Deucalion, who needed to coach him a few more minutes about what he should say when he pulled the current recorded program and went live.
More familiar with all of these weapons than the average radio ad salesman might have been in, say, Connecticut, Burt Cogborn took some time deciding what he might need. He chose a pistol, an assault rifle, and a pistol-grip shotgun, plus spare magazines for the first two and a box of shells for the 12-gauge.
“I know there isn’t time,” Burt said, “but I sure wish I could go home and get Bobby, bring him back here.”
Bobby was his Labrador retriever. He always took Bobby with him on sales calls and usually brought the pooch to the station, as well. Mason Morrell called them the Cogborn twins, Burt and Bobby. For some reason, Burt had left the dog at home this time.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if anything happens to Bobby.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to Bobby,” Sammy assured him. “He’s smart and tough.”
“If something happens to me,” Burt said, “will you take in Bobby and treat him like your own, like you’d had him since a puppy? I’d trust you to be good to him.”
Sammy was touched, though he figured that if Burt died defending KBOW, they would all be overwhelmed and killed. “I will, sure. I’ll take him in.”
“He really likes those Royal Canin treats.” Burt spelled the brand name. “They’re made with fruit and vegetables, so they’re good for him. Little brown cookies with ridges in them.”
“Royal Canin treats,” Sammy said.
“His favorite toy is the bunny. Not the fully stuffed one, the floppy one. Not just the one with floppy ears but the one that the whole thing is floppy. And not the white floppy one, but the light-green one.”
“Light-green fully floppy bunny,” Sammy said. “I’ve got it.”
Burt was not by nature an emotionally demonstrative person, but with tears standing in his eyes, he hugged Sammy. “You’re a good friend, Sammy. You’re the best.”
Burt took
his guns to the reception lounge to set up a defense position near the front door.
Ralph Nettles had already armed himself, which left only Sammy to choose from the dazzling variety of weapons that remained.
Because his roots went back to the land of Mahatma Gandhi, some people assumed that Sammy must be an ardent advocate of nonviolence, but that was an erroneous assumption. His family had long included Hindu apostates who had numerous reasons to be unmoved by Gandhi, and many who were Americophiles. Sammy’s grandfather had been a fan of the hard-boiled novels of Mickey Spillane, and his father thrived on Spillane and the thrillers of John D. MacDonald. Sammy had read everything by both those authors, adored the work of Stephen Hunter and Vince Flynn, and couldn’t resist learning to use the guns in the stories that he had been reading since he was ten. Besides, this was not gun-fearing San Francisco or Malibu, this was Montana, and Sammy wanted to fit in with the locals, unlike most Californians who fled their state and moved here and then wanted to make Montana into a version of what they left behind.
As the program director, promotion director, and community-affairs director of KBOW, Sammy was the most senior company officer on the scene. With Warren Snyder dead — dead twice if you counted his replicant — Sammy was certain to remain the big bear as long as this crisis continued. By his standards, this required that he take for himself the most difficult role in the station’s defense: rooftop sniper and guardian of the broadcast tower.
At 130 pounds, he would find many shotguns difficult to control, but he could handle the low-recoil Beretta Xtrema2 12-gauge, which some well-trained shotgunners could even fire with a one-hand grip. He also — and primarily — wanted the Bushmaster Adaptive Combat Rifle, which was a gas-operated semiauto with a thirty-round magazine with Trijicon optics.
He didn’t think he would need a pistol, but he took one anyway.
Ralph Nettles had brought three spare loaded magazines for the Bushmaster. Sammy filled a waterproof ammo bag for the other guns, collected additional gear that he needed, and piled everything in the break room, off the kitchenette, where a set of spiral stairs in one corner led up to the roof door.
The areas of the studio directly associated with the broadcast were kept cooler than other rooms, and Sammy tended to chill easily. He had come to work wearing insulated longjohns, blue jeans, and a wool sweater, so he wasn’t underdressed for rooftop work.
When he went into his office to snatch his ski jacket from the hook on the back of the door, Sammy realized that the station feed coming through the wall speaker was no longer the recorded material that had been running. Mason had gone live again, although not with advice to the lovelorn and dysfunctional families. Sammy turned up the volume.
“… this town that I love, the wonderful people of both this town and the county beyond, and perhaps the people of Montana and of the entire United States are in grave peril tonight. Many who are listening might have turned on their radios to find out why they have no telephone or Internet service. Others may have tuned in to KBOW because they’ve seen something strange or inexplicable, and they’re seeking information that might make sense of it to them.”
It’s begun, Sammy thought, and for the first time he began to feel the true momentous nature of these events. So much had happened so fast, so much of such a fantastical nature, that his ability to absorb it, believe it, and react properly to it had required all of his energy and had prevented him from grasping the more profound implications of events. The danger had initially seemed primarily personal, to himself and his coworkers, to his plans for KBOW. Now he had a chilling sense of the full existential nature of the threat: to the town, the county, the state, and to all of humanity.
“Others of you may be missing family members,” Mason continued, “some for a short enough time that you attribute it to bad weather, delays because of road conditions. Others may know people who have been missing for the larger part of the day and are puzzled as to why the police seem to dismiss your concern. Folks, you’ve been listening to me for two years, you know I tell people truths that they need to hear, no matter how difficult it is for me to say it or for them to hear it. And what I tell you now is truth of a very hard kind, hard both to say and believe: You cannot trust the Rainbow Falls police. They aren’t who they appear to be. Your missing friends and family members may be dead. An unknown number of people in this town have been killed. The killing continues as I speak.”
Sammy ran to the spiral stairs in the break room. He needed to get to the roof. Mason had blown the lid off the conspiracy, and the blowback would be coming.
Chapter 32
On the stairs, leaning against the railing, making not a sound, Frost warily watched the thing in the foyer, seething swarm or Blob like in the movies, machine or animal, terrestrial or alien from a far world, he didn’t know which, didn’t care which, at least not now, not until he got out of this house and away and was somewhere safe, where he could think.
After the table and the three vases were dissolved, the thing became less active. The arches, loops, and whorls formed by apparent currents in its substance were fewer and churning slower than before.
Frost’s initial impression was that the beast must be resting, but after a couple of minutes, he decided that it might be thinking. Something about its attitude — if the Blob was capable of having an attitude — suggested deliberation, a pondering of the situation and a consideration of its options.
Options? Based on what he had seen of the thing’s capabilities, its options were virtually unlimited. It was a shape-changer, it could fly, bullets had no effect on it, it was fearless and aggressive to an extent that suggested it was invulnerable, and instantaneously it could incorporate into itself people and objects of all kinds. Why would such a creature have any need to brood about its options? It could do anything it wanted, with no mortal consequence to itself but with plenty of mortal consequences for everyone who got in its way.
The idea of this thing meditating, musing, reflecting somberly upon its destiny almost teased a laugh from Frost, but he didn’t give in to the impulse because the laugh would have been a dark, despairing giggle.
Besides, he remained convinced that if he made a sound, the creature would be reminded of its pursuit of him and in an instant would be upon him in one hideous form or another. The wisest thing he could do for the time being was remain still, silent, and wait for some development that he might be able to use to his advantage.
He didn’t have to wait long before something happened. The thing began to act once more like a pool of thick liquid, washing back and forth in the foyer, its whorling currents returning to their previous level of activity.
Frost tensed. He put a hand under his open jacket, on the grip of the pistol in his shoulder rig, but then withdrew his hand without the weapon. Going for a gun was a reflex action. An agent’s reflexes were usually reliable, the result of experience, but in this case reflexive responses would get him killed.
The living pool, whether its life was that of an animal or an intelligent machine, or both, or neither, slopped against the bottom step, lapped at the front door and the walls. The patterns of the currents within it were for the most part as liquid and sinuous as before — but here and there the currents twitched, stuttered briefly, before spiraling smoothly once more.
Suddenly a woman’s hand rose out of the pool, a hand in various shades of gray with veins of black, as if carved from stone and yet animated, clutching at the air in search of something to which it could secure itself. After a moment, other hands reached through the surface of the pool, or rather formed from the substance of it. A second female hand, slender and beautifully shaped, had skin like brass, like the shiny brass of the fallen chandelier that had been incorporated into the swarm. A man’s hand, then a second, one with skin the color of the glazed vases that had stood upon the foyer table, the other with normal flesh.
All the hands receded, melted into the pool, but then the gray surface glistened like water,
and an immense face appeared in it, as if just below the surface, perhaps five feet from the point of the chin to the top of the brow. This countenance was at first as blank as that of a stone-temple god, with pale limestone eyes. But then it swelled from the surface, taking dimension and acquiring the color of skin, and Frost saw that it was becoming Dagget’s face. The eyes opened, but they weren’t eyes, were instead ovals of what seemed to be amber glass like the cups that contained the flame-shaped bulbs on the chandelier.
Frost waited for the glass eyes to shift toward him, but they did not. The Dagget face dissolved to be at once replaced by another immense countenance, that of the beautiful woman who had emerged from the cocoon in the bathroom. Her eyes looked real but had a fixed gaze like that of a blind person. The enormous face formed more completely than Dagget’s had done, and the woman seemed to be struggling against invisible bonds, trying to free herself from the pool. Her mouth went wide, as if in a scream, but no sound escaped her.
Frost remembered what she had said upstairs, after the teeth had fallen out of her mouth and she had grown new ones, as she gazed at herself in the mirror above the bathroom sinks: I think my builder built this builder wrong. As he watched the huge face strain to scream and form further out of the pool, he began to suspect that everything this creature had done since taking down the chandelier had been evidence of malfunction.
The Dead Town f-5 Page 13