The car has been stopped for some time. Yet the PUZZLE does not get out. It sits in silence behind the wheel.
After a while, the PUZZLE makes a phone call. Chameleon listens, hears nothing incriminating.
But the PUZZLE talks about hidden doors and passageways, a hidden room. This suggests but does not prove bad behavior.
Chameleon assumes that EXEMPTS are incapable of bad behavior. But its program is not clear on this point.
It is permitted to act on assumptions, but they must be Class A assumptions, which in a rigorous application of logic, must conform to at least four of five proofs. This assumption is Class C.
Chameleon is capable of impatience. It has been a long time between kills.
It remembers clearly three kills. They occurred during its testing phase.
The pleasure is intense. The word Chameleon knows for the pleasure that comes from killing is orgasm.
Its entire body spasms. In orgasm, it is as fully in touch with its body as it will ever be—but, strangely, at the same time seems to escape its body and for a minute or two is not itself, is not anything, is only pleasure.
After the phone call, the PUZZLE sits in silence again.
Chameleon was a long time in the cold. A long time in the imprisoning polymeric-fabric sack.
Now it is warm.
Under the pleasing scent, the infuriating scent.
Chameleon wants an orgasm. Chameleon wants an orgasm. Chameleon wants an orgasm.
CHAPTER 63
UNDER THE DUMP, Carson and Michael and Deucalion followed the landfill workers and the resurrected Alphas along a passageway that branched off the main course. It would lead them out of the landfill and under the tank farm next door.
Ahead of them, torchlight ignited faux fire across the glazed curves of the tunnel. Because they were at the end of the procession, an inky gloom pooled behind them.
The Resurrector was far in front. Perhaps it had already entered the main building at the tank farm.
Carson had no concern about the darkness at her back. Here, in the warren of their monstrously strange accomplice, they were safer than they had been in a long time.
“What it does telepathically,” Deucalion said, “is project its inner nature in order to screen from us its physical appearance, because it would be impossible for most people who see it to believe it’s benign.”
Like Carson, Deucalion and Michael had been suspicious of the telepathically projected image and had been strong-willed enough to peer through the Resurrector’s radiant veil to the truth of its form. Deucalion had seen it twice, once for perhaps half a minute.
Michael achieved only the brief glimpse that Carson had seen. In spite of his tendency toward cynicism, he was convinced that the creature could be trusted, that it was allied with them. “If not, it could have killed us all back there, as big and powerful as it is.”
“None of the landfill workers saw through its disguise or even suspects there is one,” Deucalion said. “I doubt that the Alphas, Erika Four and the others, have any suspicion, either. They and the Resurrector are of the same flesh that Victor engineered for the New Race, and perhaps that renders them more susceptible than we are to its masquerade.”
“I was plenty susceptible,” Michael said. “I felt as if I was in an anteroom of Heaven, getting a pep talk from an archangel while waiting for judgment.”
“Why make a thing that looks … like that?” Carson wondered.
Deucalion shook his head. “That it should look like that was not Victor’s plan. Physiologically, it’s a gone-wrong. In its mind, in its intentions, it’s a gone-right.”
The tunnel ceased to pass through compacted trash. Abruptly, its walls were formed of earth, coated with the glossy material that had sealed over the trash in the main passageway and in the first part of this one.
The Resurrector was a digger of considerable industry.
“Will he really come here?” Carson wondered.
“He will,” Deucalion assured her.
“But Erika Four says she’s called him twice. He knows she’s up here somewhere, reanimated. He knows something unprecedented must be happening.”
As Deucalion looked down at her, the light of the centuries-old storm throbbed through his eyes. “He’ll come nevertheless. He’s got too much invested in the tank farm, a new crop birthing in less than twenty-four hours. Mercy gone, this is his best bet. He’s arrogant and insanely certain of himself. Never forget the pride that drives him. Perhaps in all of history, there has been only one other whose pride was greater than Victor’s.”
Maybe the caffeine tide pulsing through Carson was brewing up new symptoms or maybe sleep deprivation torqued her mind in spite of the NoDoz-cola cocktails. Whatever the cause, a fresh anxiety began to pluck at her. She was not a seer, not a Gypsy with one eye in the future, but a prickly intuition warned her that even if Victor died in the next few hours, the world he wanted to make was a world of which others dreamed, as well, a world in which human exceptionalism was denied, in which the masses were regimented drones who served an untouchable elite, in which flesh was cheap. Even if Victor received justice and a grave in garbage, Carson and Michael were going to be making a life together in a world ever more hostile to freedom, to human dignity, to love.
As they reached the hole that had been bored through concrete block and into the basement of the main building at the tank farm, Deucalion said, “The first time I saw the Resurrector, before you two arrived, it told me—rather, it impressed on me in that wordless way it makes you know things—that it expects to die tonight, here or at the landfill.”
Michael let his breath out in a hiss. “That doesn’t sound like our side wins.”
“Or,” said Deucalion, “the creature may know that, in winning, sacrifices will have to be made.”
CHAPTER 64
THE BLUE LASER SCANNED JAMES, approved of him, and switched off the security feature that would have fried him crisp if he had been an unwelcome intruder.
Carrying the crystal ball, he went to the second steel door. He put the sphere on the floor while he pulled the five lock bolts from their slots.
“Try prosciutto,” said the crystal sphere.
“That’s ham.”
“It works with.”
“With what?”
“I know the path to happiness,” said the sphere.
Voice tight with frustration, James said, “Then tell me.”
“Paper-thin.”
“What does that mean?”
“Serve it paper-thin.”
The thick door swung open. James had been forbidden to enter the windowless Victorian drawing room. On his way out, he must leave the steel doors open, the exit route unobstructed.
He remained obedient, even in his current state of distraction.
Anyway, he had no interest in that room. Not when happiness might be within his grasp.
The crystal sphere said nothing on the way back to the library.
From the library desk, James phoned Mr. Helios and reported that the task had been completed precisely according to instructions.
The moment James hung up the phone, the sphere said, “You were not made for happiness.”
“But if you know the path …”
“I know the path to happiness.”
“But you won’t tell me?”
“Also works with cheese,” said the sphere.
“So I’m not worthy of happiness. Is that it?”
“You’re just a meat machine.”
“I’m a person,” James insisted.
“Meat machine. Meat machine.”
Furious, James threw the crystal ball to the floor, where it shattered, spilling a mass of slimy yellow seeds and revealing its orange inner flesh.
He stared at it for a while, uncomprehending.
When he looked up, he saw that someone had left a book on the desk: A History of the Troll in Literature. He picked it up with the intention of returning it to its proper pl
ace on the shelves.
The book said, “I know the path to happiness.”
With renewed hope and excitement, James said, “Please tell me.”
“Do you deserve happiness?”
“I believe I do. Why shouldn’t I deserve it?”
“There may be reasons.”
“Everyone deserves happiness.”
“Not everyone,” said the book, “but let’s talk about it.”
CHAPTER 65
AS THE GL550 RACED NORTH in the rain, Jocko hoped for more deer. While he hoped, he thought about some things.
Sometimes Jocko thought about big issues. Usually in two-minute segments. Between activities.
Big issues like why some things were ugly, some weren’t. Maybe if everything was beautiful, nothing would be.
People saw one thing, they swooned over it. They saw this other thing, they pounded it with sticks.
Maybe there had to be variety for life to work. Swoon over everything, you got bored. Beat everything with a stick—boring.
Personally, Jocko would be happy to swoon over everything.
Jocko sometimes thought why he had no genitals. All Jocko had was that funny thing he peed with. It wasn’t genitals. He called it his swoozle.
Fortunately, it rolled up. Folded away. When not in use.
If it didn’t fold out of sight, crazy drunk hobos would vomit about that, too.
One thing Jocko tried not to think about. About how he was the only one. Only one of his kind. Too sad to think about.
Jocko thought about it anyway. Jocko couldn’t turn his mind off. It spun and somersaulted like Jocko.
Maybe that was why no genitals. No need for them. Not when you were one of a kind.
Through all this thinking, Jocko secretly watched Erika.
“Do you think about big issues?” Jocko asked.
“Like what?”
“Like … things you don’t have.”
She was quiet so long. Jocko thought he screwed up again.
Then she said, “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a mother.”
Jocko slumped in his seat. “Jocko’s sorry. Sorry he asked. That’s too hard. Don’t think about it.”
“And what’s it like to be a mother? I’ll never know.”
“Why never?”
“Because of how I’m made. Made to be used. Not to be loved.”
“You’d be a great mother,” Jocko said.
She said nothing. Eyes on the road. Rain on the road, rain in her eyes.
“You would,” he insisted. “You take care of Jocko real good.”
She kind of laughed. It was kind of a sob, too.
Way to go. Jocko speaks. People weep.
“You’re very sweet,” she said.
So maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed.
Letting their speed drop, she said, “Isn’t that Victor’s car?”
Or maybe things were worse than they seemed.
Rising in his seat, he said, “Where?”
“That rest area on the right. Yes, it’s him.”
“Keep going.”
“I don’t want him behind us. We have to get there separately from him, or I can’t sneak you in.”
Erika pulled into the rest area. Stopped behind Victor’s sedan. “Stay here, stay down.”
“You’re getting out? It’s raining.”
“We don’t want him coming to us, do we?” She opened the door.
AFTER RECEIVING CONFIRMATION that James had done as instructed, Victor took a few minutes to consider how he would approach the tank farm.
Some of the New Race who lived and worked at the farm might be breaking down in one way or another. He would need to be cautious, but he refused to be scared off. These were his creations, products of his genius, inferior to him in every way imaginable, and they could no more frighten him than one of Mozart’s concertos could have terrified the composer, than a painting by Rembrandt could have sent the artist screaming into the night. They would submit to him or hear the death phrase.
He foresaw no chance that anything like the Werner abomination would greet him at the farm. Werner had been a singularity. And where was it now? Vaporized with everything else in the Hands of Mercy.
No rebellion against Victor could hope to succeed, not only because his power was that of the mythic gods, but also because the smartest of the Alphas was an idiot by comparison with its maker, he on whom the centuries took no toll.
Erika Four, an Alpha, would be no match for him. He had killed her once with only a silk necktie and the power of his hands, and he could kill her again if the bitch had in fact been revived. An Alpha, a woman, and a wife—she was three times inferior to him. He would delight in the opportunity to punish her for the impudence of those two phone calls. If she thought she had been cruelly treated in her first life, in her second he would teach her what cruelty really was.
He had no fear of going to the tank farm. He seethed with desire to be there and to rule this new kingdom with a ferocious discipline that would allow no repeat of the Hands of Mercy.
As he reached to release the parking brake, a vehicle appeared on the highway, approaching from the south. Instead of passing, it parked behind him, flooding the interior of the sedan with light.
His mirrors presented too few details, so he turned in his seat to look through the back window. Erika Five was behind the wheel of the GL550, which he had ordered her to drive to the farm.
Staring back at her, furious with her because she looked like the impudent and insulting Erika Four, Victor saw nothing in the backseat, but he heard something move there. In the instant, he knew why he had felt that he was not alone: Chameleon!
The New Race pheromones with which he had doused himself would provide hours of protection. Except that … in moments of exertion when a light sweat might be broken, in moments of rage or fear, his true scent would grow riper and might be detected under the New Race disguise.
Victor flung open the driver’s door and plunged out of the car, into the night. Into the rain. The down-pour would fade the scent of his own pheromones, but it would more effectively wash away the odor of the New Race, which was only sprinkled on his suit.
He should have slammed the door, locked it remotely, abandoned the sedan, and gone to the farm with Erika. But he no longer dared approach the open driver’s door, because Chameleon might already have scrambled into the front seat.
Worse, it already might be out of the sedan, on rest-area pavement immediately around him. The ceaseless dance of raindrops on the blacktop would entirely conceal the telltale ripple of Chameleon in motion.
Inexplicably, Erika seemed to have gotten out of the GL even an instant before he had vacated the S600. At his side, sensing trouble, she said, “Victor? What’s wrong?”
ERIKA TOLD JOCKO, Stay down.
She said it like a scolding mother. She would be a good mother. But wasn’t Jocko’s mother. Nobody was.
Jocko raised his head. Saw Erika and Victor together. Instantly soaked by rain.
More interesting was the bug. The biggest bug Jocko ever saw. Half as big as Jocko.
This one didn’t look tasty. Looked bitter.
In the storm drain, bugs came close to Jocko. Easy to catch. Bugs didn’t know his big yellow eyes could see them in the dark.
Something wrong with this bug. Besides being so big.
Suddenly Jocko knew. The way it sneaked. The way it started to rear up. This bug would kill.
Pillowcase. On the floor. In front of his seat. Slip the knot in the shoelace. Inside—soap, soap, soap. The knife.
Quick, quick, quick, Jocko in the rain. Capering toward Erika and Victor. Don’t pirouette.
CHAPTER 66
THE BUG DIDN’T WANT TO DIE.
Neither did Jocko. Everything going so well. Soap. His first ride in a car. Someone to talk to. His first pants. Nobody hit him for hours. Soon a funny hat. So of course a giant killer bug shows up. Jocko luck.
 
; Two ripping claws. One crushing claw. Six pincers. Stinger. Reciprocating saw for a tongue. Teeth. Teeth behind the first teeth. Everything but a flame-spitting hole. Oh, there it was. A bug born to be bad.
Jocko dropped on it with both knees. Stabbed, slashed, ripped, tore. Picked the bug up, slammed it down. Slammed it again. Slammed it. More stabbing. Fierce. Unrelenting. Jocko scared himself.
The bug squirmed. Tried to wriggle away. But it didn’t fight back, and it died.
Puzzled by the bug’s pacifism, Jocko got to his feet. Maybe the sight of Jocko paralyzed it with terror. Jocko stood in the driving rain. Breathless. Dizzy.
Rain snapping on his bald head.
Lost the baseball cap. Ah. Standing on it.
Erika and Victor seemed speechless.
Gasping, Jocko said, “Bug.”
Erika said, “I couldn’t see it. Until it was dead.”
Jocko triumphant. Heroic. His time had come. His time at last. To shine.
Victor skewered Jocko with his stare. “You could see it?”
The cap’s expansion strap was hooked around Jocko’s toes.
Wheezing, Jocko said to Erika, “It was … gonna … kill you.”
Victor disagreed: “It’s programmed to spare anyone with the scent of New Race flesh. Of we three, it would have killed only me.”
Jocko had saved Victor from certain death.
Victor said, “You’re of my flesh, but I don’t know you.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Jocko wanted to lie down in front of one of the cars and drive over himself.
“What are you?” Victor demanded.
Jocko wanted to beat himself with a bucket.
“Who are you?” Victor pressed.
Trying to shake the cap off his foot, panting, Jocko said without the desired force: “I am … the child of … Jonathan Harker.”
He raised the knife. The blade had broken off in the bug.
“He died … to birth me….”
“You’re the parasitical second self that developed spontaneously from Harker’s flesh.”