by Dean Koontz
Turning away from the sink, blotting her hands on a dish towel, Christine said, “I know you’re not, Mrs. Helios. And you’re not my friend, either. Friendship is akin to love, and love is dangerous. Love distracts the worker from maximum accomplishment, just as does hate. None of the New Race is a friend or enemy of the other.”
“I…I don’t have that attitude in my program.”
“It’s not in the program, Mrs. Helios. It’s the natural result of the program. We are all workers of identical value. Workers in a great cause, subduing all of nature, building the perfect society, utopia—then onward to the stars. Our value isn’t in individual accomplishments, but in our accomplishments as a society. Isn’t that correct?”
“Is it?”
“Unlike us, Mrs. Helios, you have been allowed humility, and shame, because our maker likes those qualities in a wife.”
Erika sensed a revelation coming from which she wished to turn away. But she, not Christine, had insisted on opening this door.
“Emotions are funny things, Mrs. Helios. Maybe it’s better, after all, to be limited to only envy and anger and fear and hate—because those feelings are circular. They turn endlessly back on themselves, like a snake swallowing its tail. They lead to nothing else, and they keep the mind from hope, which is essential when hope will never be fulfilled.”
Shaken by the bleakness in Christine’s voice and in her eyes, Erika was overcome with sympathy for the housekeeper. She put a hand consolingly on the woman’s shoulder.
“But humility and shame,” Christine continued, “can grow into pity, whether he wants you to feel pity or not. Pity to compassion. Compassion to regret. And so much else. You will be able to feel more than we feel, Mrs. Helios. You will learn to hope.”
A heaviness came into Erika’s heart, an oppressive weight, but she could not yet grasp its nature.
“Being able to hope—that will be terrible for you, Mrs. Helios, because your destiny is fundamentally the same as ours. You have no free will. Your hope will never be realized.”
“But William…How does this explain William?”
“Time, Mrs. Helios. Time, time, tick, tock, tick, tock. These disease-resistant, amazing bodies we possess—how long have we been told they will last?”
“Perhaps a thousand years,” Erika said, for that was the figure in the self-awareness package of her downloaded education.
Christine shook her head. “Hopelessness can be endured…but not for a thousand years. For William, for Margaret—twenty years. And then they experienced an…interruption of function.”
The housekeeper’s hard shoulder had not softened under her mistress’s touch. Erika withdrew her hand.
“But when you have the capacity for hope, Mrs. Helios, yet know beyond all doubt that it will never be fulfilled, I don’t think you can make even twenty years. I don’t think you can make five.”
Erika swept the kitchen with her gaze. She looked at the soapy water in the sink. At the dishes in the drying rack. At Christine’s hands. At last, she met Christine’s eyes again.
She said, “I’m so sorry for you.”
“I know,” Christine said. “But I feel nothing whatsoever for you, Mrs. Helios. And neither will any of the others. Which means you are…uniquely alone.”
CHAPTER 22
THE OTHER ELLA, a restaurant and bar in the neighborhood known as Faubourg Marigny, an area now as funky and soulful as the French Quarter had once been, was owned and operated by a woman named Ella Fitzgerald. She was not the famous singer. She was a former hooker and madam who had wisely saved and invested the wages of the flesh.
As Aubrey Picou had instructed, Carson and Michael asked the bartender to see Godot.
An elderly woman put down the beer she was nursing, swiveled on her barstool, and took their picture with her cell phone.
Annoyed, Carson said, “Hey, Granny, I’m not a tourist site.”
“Screw you,” the woman said. “If I knew for sure a tour carriage was nearby, I’d run you into the street and shove your head up a mule’s ass.”
“You want to see Godot,” the bartender explained, “you go through Francine here.”
“You mean less to me,” the old woman assured Carson, “than the dinner I vomited up last night.”
As she transmitted the picture to someone, Francine grinned at Michael. She had borrowed her teeth from the Swamp Thing.
“Carson, remember when you looked in the mirror this morning and didn’t like what you saw?”
She said, “Suddenly I feel pretty.”
“All my life,” Francine told Carson, “I’ve known perky-tit types like you, and not one of you bitches ever had a brain bigger than a chickpea.”
“Well, there you’re woefully wrong,” Michael told her. “On a bet, my friend had an MRI scan of her brain, and it’s as big as a walnut.”
Francine gave him another broken yellow smile. “You’re a real cutie. I could just eat you up.”
“I’m flattered,” he said.
“Remember what happened to her dinner last night,” Carson reminded him.
Francine put down her cell phone. From the bar, she picked up a BlackBerry, on which she was receiving a text message, evidently in response to the photo.
Michael said, “You’re a total telecom babe, Francine, fully swimming in the info stream.”
“You’ve got a nice tight butt,” Francine said. She put down the BlackBerry, swiveled off her stool, and said, “Come with me, cutie. You too, bitch.”
Michael followed the old woman, glanced back at Carson, and said, “Come on, bitch, this’ll be fun.”
CHAPTER 23
TO ASSIST WITH the tracking and the eventual efficient execution of Detectives O’Connor and Maddison, one of Victor’s people—Dooley Snopes—had fixed a magnetic-hold transponder to the engine block of their department sedan, tapping the battery cable for power, while the car was parked in front of O’Connor’s house, and while she had slept unaware through the summer morning.
Dooley had not been programmed as an assassin, though he wished that he had been. Instead, he was basically a sneak with a lot of technical knowledge.
Cindi Lovewell drove past Dooley, who was sitting in his parked PT Cruiser in Faubourg Marigny. The Lovewells had been issued an SUV—a Mercury Mountaineer with darkly tinted side and rear windows—which facilitated the discreet transport of dead bodies.
Cindi liked the vehicle not only because it had a lot of power and handled well but also because it had plenty of room for the children she yearned to produce.
When they had to drive to Crosswoods Waste Management north of Lake Pontchartrain with a couple of corpses, how much nicer the trip would be if it were a family adventure. They could stop along the way for a picnic.
In the front passenger’s seat, studying the red dot that blinked near the center of the street map on the screen of their satellite-navigation system, Benny said, “The cops should be parked about”—he surveyed the curbed vehicles past which they drifted, and glanced at the screen—“right here.”
Cindi rolled slowly past an unmarked sedan, cheap iron that had seen a lot of use. Victor’s people were always better equipped than the so-called authorities.
She parked at a red curb near the end of the block. Benny’s driver’s license was in the name of Dr. Benjamin Lovewell, and the Mountaineer had MD plates. From the console box, he took a card that read PHYSICIAN ON CALL, and hung it from the rearview mirror.
Tailing a target, professional killers need to be able to park as conveniently as possible. And when police see a speeding vehicle with MD plates, they often assume that the driver is rushing to a hospital.
Victor disliked his funds being spent on parking tickets and traffic fines.
By the time they walked past the sedan to the PT Cruiser, Dooley had gotten out of his car to meet them. If he’d been a dog, he would have been a whippet: lean, long-legged, with a pointy face.
“They went into The Other Ella,” D
ooley said, pointing to a restaurant across the street. “Not even five minutes ago. Did you kill anybody yet today?”
“Not yet,” Benny said.
“Did you kill anybody yesterday?”
“Three days ago,” Cindi said.
“How many?”
“Three,” Benny said. “Their replicants were ready.”
Dooley’s eyes were dark with envy. “I wish I could kill some of them. I’d like to kill all of them.”
“It’s not your job,” Benny said.
“Yet,” Cindi said, meaning that the day would come when the New Race would have achieved sufficient numbers to bring their war into the open, whereupon the greatest slaughter in human history would mark the swift extinction of the Old Race.
“Everything is so much harder,” Dooley said, “when we have to watch them all around us, watch them leading their lives any way they want, any way they please.”
A young couple walked past, shepherding their two tow-headed children, one boy and one girl.
Cindi turned to watch them. She wanted to kill the parents right now, right here on the sidewalk, and take the children.
“Easy,” Benny said.
“Don’t worry. There’s not going to be another incident,” Cindi assured him.
“That’s good.”
“What incident?” Dooley asked.
Instead of answering him, Benny said, “You can go. We can handle it from here.”
CHAPTER 24
OCCASIONALLY SMACKING her lips over her broken yellow teeth, Francine led Carson and Michael through the restaurant, across a busy kitchen, into a storeroom, and up a set of steep stairs.
At the top were a deep landing and a blue door. Francine pressed a bell push beside the door, but there was no audible ring.
“Don’t give it away for free,” Francine advised Michael. “Lots of ladies would be happy to keep you in style.”
She glanced at Carson and snorted with disapproval.
“And stay away from this one,” Francine told Michael. “She’ll freeze your cojones off as sure as if you dipped them in liquid nitrogen.”
Then she left them on the landing and started unsteadily down the stairs.
“You could push her,” he told Carson, “but it would be wrong.”
“Actually,” Carson said, “if Lulana were here, even she’d agree, Jesus would be all right with it.”
The blue door was opened by a Star Wars kind of guy: as squat as R2-D2, as bald as Yoda, and as ugly as Jabba the Hutt.
“You been truly blood-sworn by Aubrey,” he said, “so I ain’t goin’ to take away dem kill-boys you carryin’ under your left arms, nor neither dat snub-nose you got snuggled on a belt clip just above your ass, missy.”
“And good afternoon to you, too,” Michael said.
“You follow me like baby ducks their mama, ’cause you make the wrongest move, you be six ways dead.”
The room beyond the blue door was furnished with only a pair of straight-backed chairs.
A shaved gorilla in black pants, suspenders, a white chambray shirt, and a porkpie hat sat in one of the chairs. On the floor next to his chair was a tented paperback—a Harry Potter novel—that he had evidently set aside when Francine had pressed the bell push.
Across his thighs lay a semi-auto 12-gauge, on which both his hands rested in the business position. He wasn’t aiming the shotgun at them, but he would be able to blow their guts out before their pistols cleared their holsters, and blast off their faces as an afterthought even before their bodies hit the floor.
Baby-duck walking, Carson and Michael obediently followed their squat leader through another door into a room with a cracked yellow linoleum floor, blue beadboard wainscoting, gray walls, and two poker tables.
Around the nearest table sat three men, one woman, and an Asian transvestite.
This sounded like the opening to a pretty good joke, but Michael couldn’t think of a punch line.
Two of the players were drinking Coke, two had cans of Dr Pepper, and at the transvestite’s place stood a cordial glass and a bottle of anisette.
None of the poker players seemed to have the slightest interest in Carson and Michael. Neither the woman nor the transvestite winked at him.
In the middle of the table were stacks of poker chips. If the greens were fifties and the blacks were hundreds, there was perhaps eighty thousand dollars riding on this hand.
Another shaved gorilla stood by a window. He carried his piece in a paddle holster at his hip, and he kept his hand on it as Carson and Michael passed through his duty station.
A third door led to a shabby conference room that smelled like lung cancer. Twelve chairs stood around a scarred table on which were fourteen ashtrays.
At the head of the table sat a man with a merry face, lively blue eyes, and a mustache. His Justin Wilson hat rested on the tops of his jug-handle ears.
He rose as they approached, revealing that he wore his pants above his waistline, between his navel and his breasts.
Their mama duck said, “Mr. Godot, though they smells like da worst kind of righteous, these here be da ones what were vouched by Aubrey, so don’t bust my stones if’n you got to gaff ’em like catfish ’fore dis be finished.”
To the right of the man with jug ears and slightly behind him stood Big Foot in a seersucker suit. He made the previous gorillas look like mere chimps.
Big Foot looked as if he would not only kill them but eat them at the smallest provocation.
Godot, on the other hand, was hospitable. He held out his right hand and said, “Any friend to Aubrey, he a friend to me, ’specially when he come with cash money.”
Shaking the offered hand, Michael said, “I expected we’d have to wait for you, Mr. Godot, not the other way around. I hope we’re not late.”
“Right on da minute,” Godot assured him. “And who might be dis charmin’ eyeful?”
“This charmin’ eyeful,” Carson said, “is the one with the cash money.”
“You done just got even prettier,” Godot told her.
As Carson withdrew two fat rolls of hundred-dollar bills from her jacket pockets, Godot picked up one of two suitcases from the floor beside his chair and put it on the table.
Big Foot kept both hands free.
Godot opened the case, revealing two Urban Sniper shotguns with sidesaddle shell carriers and three-way slings. The barrels had been cut down to fourteen inches. With the guns were four boxes of shells, slugs not buckshot, which was the only thing the Sniper fired.
Carson said, “You are a formidable resource, Mr. Godot.”
“Mama so wanted a preacher son, and Daddy, rest his soul, he set on me bein’ a welder like hisself, but I most truly rebelled against bein’ a poor Cajun, so I done found my bliss, and here I is.”
The second suitcase was smaller than the first. It contained two Desert Eagles in .50 Magnum with titanium gold finish. Packed beside the guns were the boxes of ammunition as requested and two spare magazines for each weapon.
“You for sure ready for what recoil dat monster pays you back?” Godot asked.
Wary of the big pistols, Michael said, “No, sir, I pretty much expect it to knock me on my ass.”
Amused, Godot said, “My concern be dis lady here, son, not your strappin’ self.”
“The Eagle has a smooth action,” Carson said, “less kick than you’d think. It slams back hard, sure, but so do I. From thirty feet, I could put all nine rounds in the magazine between your groin and your throat, not one higher, not one wide.”
This statement brought Big Foot forward, glowering.
“Rest yourself,” Godot told his bodyguard. “She done made no threat. Dat just braggin’.”
Closing the suitcase that contained the pistols, Carson said, “Are you going to count your money?”
“You da most tough I seen in a while, but you also gots some saint in you. I’d be so bad surprised did it turn out you thieved me even some littlest bit.”
&nb
sp; Carson couldn’t suppress a smile. “Every dollar’s there.”
“Mr. Godot,” Michael said, “it’s been comfortable doing business with you, knowing we’re dealing with real human beings.”
“Dat’s most cordial of you to say,” Godot replied, “most cordial, and it sounds true from da heart.”
“It is,” Michael said. “It really is.”
CHAPTER 25
RANDAL SIX STANDS in the furnace closet on the ground floor, listening to Billy Joel singing in an upper room.
The closet measures approximately six by seven feet. Even the dim blue glow of the gas pilot flame and the weak light seeping under the door give him enough illumination to assess this space.
At long last he is in the house of the smiling autistic, Arnie O’Connor. The secret of happiness lies within his grasp.
He waits here in the cozy gloom as one song changes to another, and to another. He is enjoying his triumph. He is acclimating himself to this new environment. He is planning his next step.
He is also afraid. Randal Six has never been in a house before. Until the night before last, he lived exclusively in the Hands of Mercy. Between there and here, he spent a day hiding in a Dumpster; but a Dumpster is not the same as a house.
Beyond this closet door waits a place as alien to him as would be any planet in another galaxy.
He likes the familiar. He fears the new. He dislikes change.
Once he opens this door and steps across this threshold, all before him will be new and strange. Everything will be different forever.
Trembling in the dark, Randal half believes that his billet at Mercy and even the torturous experiments to which Father subjected him might be preferable to what lies ahead.
Nevertheless, after three more songs, he opens the door and stares into the space beyond, his two hearts hammering.
Sunshine at a frosted window sheds light over two machines that he recognizes from magazine ads and Internet research. One machine washes clothes. The other dries them.
He smells bleach and detergent behind the closed cabinet doors above the machines.
Before him lies a laundry room. A laundry room. At this moment, he can think of nothing that could more poignantly suggest the sweet ordinariness of daily life than a laundry room.