by Dean Koontz
If Helios succeeded in the abolition of humanity, replacing it with obedient and single-minded multitudes, there would be nothing like Wondermous Eats, for True. There would be no eccentricity and no charm in the new world that he desired.
Cops saw the worst of people, and grew cynical if not bitter. Suddenly, however, flawed and foolish humanity seemed beautiful and precious to Carson, no less so than nature and the world itself.
They chose a table outside, in the oak shade, apart from most of the other diners. They ordered crawfish boulettes and fried okra salad, followed by shrimp-and-ham jambalaya.
This was a denial lunch. If they could still eat this well, surely the end of the world was not upon them, and they were not as good as dead, after all.
“How long does it take to make a Jack Rogers?” Michael wondered when the waitress had left.
“If Helios can make anyone overnight, if he’s that far advanced, then we’re screwed,” Carson said.
“More likely, he’s steadily replacing people in key positions in the city, and Jack was on his list already.”
“So when Jack did the first autopsy on one of the New Race and realized something weird was going on, Helios just brought his Jack on-line quicker than planned.”
“I’d like to believe that,” Michael said.
“So would I.”
“Because neither of us is a big cheese. On his short list, our names wouldn’t be there between the mayor and the chief of police.”
“He would have had no reason to start growing a Carson or a Michael,” she agreed. “Until maybe yesterday.”
“I don’t think he’ll bother even now.”
“Because it’s easier just to have us killed.”
“Totally easy.”
“Did he replace Luke or was Luke always one of them?”
“I don’t think there was ever a real Luke,” Michael said.
“Listen to us.”
“I know.”
“When do we start wearing aluminum-foil hats to protect ourselves from alien mind-readers?”
The thick air swagged the day like saturated bunting, hot and damp and preternaturally still. Overhead, the boughs of the oaks hung motionless. The whole world appeared to be paralyzed by a terrible expectation.
The waitress brought the crawfish boulettes and two bottles of ice-cold beer.
“Drinking on duty,” Carson said, amazed at herself.
“It’s not against department regulations during Armageddon,” Michael assured her.
“Just yesterday, you didn’t believe any of this, and I half thought I was losing my mind.”
“Now the only thing I can’t believe,” Michael said, “is that Dracula and the Wolfman haven’t shown up yet.”
They ate the boulettes and the fried-okra salads in an intense but comfortable silence.
Then before the jambalaya arrived, Carson said, “Okay, cloning or somehow he can make a perfect physical duplicate of Jack. But how does the sonofabitch make his Jack a medical examiner? I mean, how does he give him Jack’s lifetime of knowledge, or Jack’s memories?”
“Beats me. If I knew that, I’d have my own secret laboratory, and I’d be taking over the world myself.”
“Except your world would be a better one than this,” she said.
He blinked in surprise, gaped. “Wow.”
“Wow what?”
“That was sweet.”
“What was sweet?”
“What you just said.”
“It wasn’t sweet.”
“It was.”
“It was not.”
“You’ve never been sweet to me before.”
“If you use that word one more time,” she said, “I’ll bust your balls, I swear.”
“All right.”
“I mean it.”
Smiling broadly, he said, “I know.”
“Sweet,” she said scornfully, and shook her head in disgust. “Be careful or I might even shoot you.”
“That’s against regulations even during Armageddon.”
“Yeah, but you’re gonna be dead in twenty-four hours anyway.”
He consulted his wristwatch. “Less than twenty-three now.”
The waitress arrived with plates of jambalaya. “Can I get you two more beers?”
Carson said, “Why the hell not.”
“We’re celebrating,” Michael told the waitress.
“Is it your birthday?”
“No,” he said, “but you’d think it was, considering how sweet she’s being to me.”
“You’re a cute couple,” said the waitress, and she went to get the beers.
“Cute?” Carson growled.
“Don’t shoot her,” Michael pleaded. “She’s probably got three kids and an invalid mother to support.”
“Then she better watch her mouth,” Carson said.
In another silence, they ate jambalaya and drank beer for a while, until finally Michael said, “Probably every major player in city government is one of Victor’s.”
“Count on it.”
“Our own beloved chief.”
“He’s probably been a replicant for years.”
“And maybe half the cops on the force.”
“Maybe more than half.”
“The local FBI office.”
“They’re his,” she predicted.
“The newspaper, local media?”
“His.”
“Whether they’re all his or not, when’s the last time you trusted a reporter?”
“Clueless,” she agreed. “They all want to save the world, but they just end up helping to weave the handbasket.”
Carson looked at her hands. She knew they were strong and capable; they had never failed her. Yet at the moment they looked delicate, almost frail.
She had spent the better part of her life in a campaign to redeem her father’s reputation. He, too, had been a cop, gunned down by a drug dealer. They said that her dad had been corrupt, deep in the drug trade, that he’d been shot by the competition or because a deal had gone sour. Her mother had been killed in the same hit.
Always she had known the official story must be a lie. Her dad had uncovered something that powerful people wanted kept secret. Now she wondered if it had been one powerful person—Victor Helios.
“So what can we do?” Michael asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that.”
“I figured,” he said.
“We kill him before he can kill us.”
“Easier said than done.”
“Not if you’re willing to die to get him.”
“I’m willing,” Michael said, “but not eager.”
“You didn’t become a cop for the retirement benefits.”
“You’re right. I just wanted to oppress the masses.”
“Violate their civil rights,” she said.
“That always gives me a thrill.”
She said, “We’re going to need guns.”
“We’ve got guns.”
“We’re going to need bigger guns.”
CHAPTER 10
ERIKA’S EDUCATION in the tank had not prepared her to deal with a man who was chewing off his fingers. Had she matriculated through a real rather than virtual university, she might have known at once what she should do.
William, the butler, was one of the New Race, so his fingers were not easy to bite off. He had to work diligently at it.
His jaws and teeth, however, were as formidably enhanced as the density of his finger bones. Otherwise, the task would have been not merely difficult but impossible.
Having amputated the little finger, ring finger, and middle finger of his left hand, William was at work on the forefinger.
The three severed digits lay on the floor. One was curled in such a way that it seemed to be beckoning to Erika.
Like others of his kind, William could by an act of will repress all awareness of pain. Clearly, he had done so. He did not cry out or even whimper.
He mumble
d wordlessly to himself as he chewed. When he succeeded in amputating the forefinger, he spat it out and said frantically, “Tick, tock, tick. Tick, tock, tick. Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tick, tick!”
Had he been a member of the Old Race, the wall and carpet would have been drenched with blood. Although his wounds began to heal even as he inflicted them on himself, he had still made a mess.
Erika could not imagine why the kneeling butler was engaged upon this self-mutilation, what he hoped to achieve, and she was dismayed by his disregard for the damage he had already done to his master’s property.
“William,” she said. “William, whatever are you thinking?”
He neither answered nor glanced at her. Instead, the butler stuck his left thumb in his mouth and continued this exercise in express dedigitation.
Because the mansion was quite large and because Erika couldn’t know if any member of the staff might be nearby, she was reluctant to cry out for help, for she might have to get quite loud to be heard. She knew that Victor wished his wife to be refined and ladylike in all public circumstances.
All members of the staff were, like William, of the New Race. Nevertheless, everything beyond the doors of the master suite was most definitely in public territory.
Consequently, she returned to the telephone in the bedroom and pressed the ALL-CALL function of those buttons on the keypad dedicated to the intercom system. Her summons would be broadcast to every room.
“This is Mrs. Helios,” she said. “William is biting off his fingers in the upstairs hall, and I need some assistance.”
By the time she returned to the hallway, the butler had finished with his left thumb and had begun on the little finger of his right hand.
“William, this is irrational,” she cautioned. “Victor designed us brilliantly, but we can’t grow things back when we lose them.”
Her admonition did not give him pause. After spitting out the little finger, he rocked back and forth on his knees: “Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tick, TICK, TICK!”
The urgency of his voice triggered connections between implanted associations in Erika’s mind. She said, “William, you sound like the White Rabbit, pocket watch in hand, racing across the meadow, late for tea with the Mad Hatter.”
She considered seizing the hand that still had four fingers and restraining him as best she could. She wasn’t afraid of him, but she didn’t want to appear forward.
Her in-the-tank education had included exhaustive input on the finest points of deportment and manners. In any social situation from a dinner party to an audience with the Queen of England, she knew the proper etiquette.
Victor insisted upon a poised wife with refined manners. Too bad William wasn’t the Queen of England. Or even the Pope.
Fortunately, Christine, the head housekeeper, must have been nearby. She appeared on the stairs, hurrying upward.
The housekeeper did not seem to be shocked. Her expression was grim but entirely controlled.
As she approached, she took a cell phone from a pocket of her uniform and speed-dialed a number with the pressing of one key.
Christine’s efficiency startled Erika. If there was a number that one called to report a man biting off his fingers, she herself should have known it.
Perhaps not all the downloaded data had found its way into her brain as it should have done. This was a troubling thought.
William stopped rocking on his knees and put his right ring finger in his mouth.
Other members of the household staff appeared on the stairs—three, four, then five of them. They ascended but not as quickly as Christine.
Every one of them had a haunted look. That is not to say they appeared to be ghosts, but that they looked as if they had seen a ghost.
This made no sense, of course. The New Race were atheists by programming and free of all superstition.
Into the cell phone, Christine said, “Mr. Helios, this is Christine. We’ve got another Margaret.”
In her vocabulary, Erika had no definition for Margaret, other than that it was a woman’s name.
“No, sir,” said Christine, “it’s not Mrs. Helios. It’s William. He’s biting off his fingers.”
Erika was surprised that Victor should think that she herself might be inclined to bite off her fingers. She was certain that she had given him no reason to expect such a thing of her.
After spitting out his right ring finger, the butler began to rock back and forth again, chanting: “Tick, tock, tick, tock…”
Christine held the phone close to William, to allow Victor to hear the chant.
The other five staff members had reached the top of the stairs. They stood in the hallway, silent, solemn, as if bearing witness.
Into the phone once more, Christine said, “He’s about to start on the eighth, Mr. Helios.” She listened. “Yes, sir.”
As William stopped chanting and put the middle finger of his right hand in his mouth, Christine grabbed a fistful of his hair, not to stop his self-mutilation, but to steady his head in order to hold the cell phone to his ear.
After a moment, William stiffened and seemed to listen intently to Victor. He stopped chewing. When Christine let go of his hair, he took his finger out of his mouth and stared at it, bewildered.
A tremor went through his body, then another. He toppled off his knees, collapsed onto his side.
He lay with his eyes open, fixed. His mouth hung open, too, as red as a wound.
Into the phone, Christine said, “He’s dead, Mr. Helios.” Then: “Yes, sir.” Then: “I will do that, sir.”
She terminated the call and solemnly regarded Erika.
All of the staff members were staring at Erika. They looked haunted, all right. A shiver of fear went through her.
A porter named Edward said, “Welcome to our world, Mrs. Helios.”
CHAPTER 11
MEDITATION IS MOST OFTEN done in stillness, although men of a certain cast of mind, who have great problems to solve, frequently think best on long walks.
Deucalion preferred not to walk in daylight. Even in easy New Orleans, where eccentricity flourished, he would surely draw too much attention in public, in bright sun.
With his gifts, at any time of day, he could have taken a single step and been any place west of where the sun yet reached, to walk in the anonymous darkness of other lands.
Victor was in New Orleans, however, and here the atmosphere of looming cataclysm sharpened Deucalion’s wits.
So he walked in the sun-drenched cemeteries of the city. For the most part, the long grassy avenues allowed him to see tourist groups and other visitors long before they drew near.
The ten-foot-tall tombs were like buildings in the crowded blocks of a miniature city. With ease, he could slip between them and away from an impending encounter.
Here the dead were buried in aboveground crypts because the water table was so near the surface that coffins in graves would not remain buried but would surge to the surface in soggy weather. Some were as simple as shotgun houses, but others were as ornamented as Garden District mansions.
Considering that he had been constructed from cadavers and had been brought to life by arcane science—perhaps also by supernatural forces—it was not ironic but logical that he should feel more comfortable in these avenues of the dead than he did on public streets.
In St. Louis Cemetery Number 3, where Deucalion first walked, the mostly white crypts dazzled in the searing sun, as if inhabited by generations of radiant spirits who lingered after their bodies had turned to dust and bones.
These dead were fortunate compared to the living dead who were the New Race. Those soulless slaves might welcome death—but they were created with a proscription against suicide.
Inevitably, they would envy real men, who possessed free will, and their resentment would grow into an irrepressible wrath. Denied self-destruction, sooner or later they would turn outward and destroy all whom they envied.
If Victor’s empire was trembling toward
the point of collapse, as instinct warned Deucalion that it was, then finding his base of operations became imperative.
Every member of the New Race would know its whereabouts, for in all probability, they had been born there. Whether they would be willing or even capable of divulging it was another issue.
As a first step, he needed to identify some in the city who were likely to be of the New Race. He must approach them cautiously and gauge the depth of their despair, to determine whether it might have ripened into that desperation which is vigorous of action and reckless of consequences.
Among even the most controlled of slaves there simmers a desire—even if not a capacity—to rebel. Therefore, some of these slaves of Victor’s, all enemies of humanity, might in their hopelessness find the will and the fortitude to betray him in small ways.
Every member of the household staff and landscaping crew at Victor’s estate would be of the New Race. But an attempt to get to any of them would be too risky.
His made men would be seeded throughout Biovision, though the greater number of its employees would be real people. Victor would not want to risk mixing his secret work with his public researches. But seining New Men from the sea of Biovision employees would take too long and involve too much exposure on Deucalion’s part.
Perhaps the members of the New Race could recognize one another upon encounter. Deucalion, however, could not tell them from real people at a glance. He would need to observe them, to interact with them, in order to identify them.
Many politicians and appointed officials in the city would no doubt be of Victor’s making, either originals or replicants who had taken the place of real people. Their prominence and the attention to security that came with it would make them more difficult to approach.
Half or more of the officers in the city’s law-enforcement agencies were most likely members of the New Race. Deucalion didn’t care to search those ranks, either, because drawing himself to the attention of the police would not be wise.
As Deucalion left behind St. Louis Number 3 and moved now through the Metairie Cemetery, which boasted the gaudiest tombs in greater New Orleans, the hardest sun of the day hammered all shadows into narrow profiles and honed their edges into blades.