Dean Koontz - (1989)

by Midnight(Lit)

  Watkins cringed from the touch.

  Shaddack did not move his hand, and he spoke with the fervor of an

  evangelist. He was a cool evangelist, however, whose message did not

  involve the hot passion of religious conviction but the icy power of

  logic, reason.

  "You're one of the New People now, and that does not just mean that

  you're stronger and quicker than ordinary men, and it doesn't just mean

  you're virtually invulnerable to disease and have a greater power to

  mend your injuries than anything any faith healer ever dreamed of. It

  also means you're clearer of mind, more rational than the Old People-so

  if you consider Eddie's death carefully and in the context of the

  miracle we're working here, you'll see that the price he paid was not

  too great. Don't deal with this situation emotionally, Loman; that's

  definitely not the way of New People. We're making a world that'll be

  more efficient, more ordered, and infinitely more stable precisely

  because men and women will have the power to control their emotions, to

  view every problem and event with the analytical coolness of a computer.

  Look at Eddie Vaidoski's death as but another datum in the great flow of

  data that is the birth of the New People. You've got the power in you

  now to transcend human emotional limitations, and when you do transcend

  them, you'll know true peace and happiness for the first time in your

  life."

  After a while Loman Watkins raised his head. He turned to look up at

  Shaddack.

  "Will this really lead to peace?"

  "Yes.When there's no one left unconverted, will there be brotherhood at

  last?"

  "Yes.Tranquillity?

  "Eternal."

  The Talbot house on Conquistador was a three-story redwood with lots

  of big windows. The property was sloped, and steep stone steps led up

  from the sidewalk to a shallow porch. No - 177 streetlamps lit that

  block, and there were no walkway or landscape lights at Talbot's, for

  which Sam was grateful.

  Tessa Lockland stood close to him on the porch as he pressed the buzzer,

  just as she had stayed close all the way from the laundry. Above the

  noisy rustle of the wind in the trees, he could hear the doorbell ring

  inside.

  Looking back toward Conquistador, Tessa said, "Sometimes it seems more

  like a morgue than a town, peopled by the dead, but then . . . Then?"

  ". . . in spite of the silence and the stillness, you can feel the

  energy of the place, tremendous pent-up energy, as if there's a huge

  hidden machine just beneath the streets, beneath the ground . . . and

  as if the houses are filled with machinery, too, all of it powered up

  and straining at cogs and gears, just waiting for someone to engage a

  clutch and set it all in motion."

  That was exactly Moonlight Cove, but Sam had not been able to put the

  feeling of the place into words. He rang the bell again and said, "I

  thought filmmakers were required to be borderline illiterates.

  "

  "Most Hollywood filmmakers are, but I'm an outcast documentarian, so I'm

  permitted to think-as long as I don't do too much of it."

  "Who's there?" said a tinny voice, startling Sam. It came from an

  intercom speaker that he'd not noticed.

  "Who's there, please?

  " Sam leaned close to the intercom.

  "Mr. Talbot? Harold Talbot?

  "

  "Yes. Whore you?"

  "Sam Booker," he said quietly, so his voice would not carry past the

  perimeter of Talbot's porch.

  "Sorry to wake you, but I've come in response to your letter of October

  eighth.

  Talbot was silent. Then the intercom clicked, and he said, "I'm on the

  third floor. I'll need time to get down there. Meanwhile I'll send

  Moose. Please give him your ID so he can bring it to me. I have no

  Bureau ID," Sam whispered.

  "I'm undercover here. Driver's license?" Talbot asked.

  "Yes.

  "That's enough." He clicked off.

  "Moose?" Tessa asked.

  "Damned if I know," Sam said.

  They waited almost a minute, feeling vulnerable on the exposed porch,

  and they were both startled again when a dog pushed out through a pet

  door they had not seen, brushing between their legs. For an instant Sam

  didn't realize what it was, and he stumbled backward in surprise, nearly

  losing his balance.

  Stooping to pet the dog, Tessa whispered, "Moose?"

  A flicker of light had come through the small swinging door with the

  dog; but that was gone now that the door was closed. The dog was black

  and hardly visible in the night.

  Squatting beside it, letting it lick his hand, Sam said, "I'm supposed

  to give my ID to you?"

  The dog wuffed softly, as if answering in the affirmative.

  "You'll eat it," Sam said.

  Tessa said, "He won't."

  "How do you know?"

  "He's a good dog."

  "I don't trust him."

  "I guess that's your job."

  "Huh?"

  "Not to trust anyone."

  "And my nature."

  "Trust him," she insisted.

  He offered his wallet. The dog plucked it from Sam's hand, held it in

  his teeth, and went back into the house through the pet door.

  They stood on the dark porch for another few minutes, while Sam tried to

  stifle his yawns. It was after two in the morning, and he was

  considering adding a fifth item to his list of reasons for living good

  Mexican food, Guinness Stout, Goldie Haw n, fear of death, and sleep.

  Blissful sleep. Then he heard the clack and rattle of locks being

  laboriously disengaged, and the door finally opened inward on a dimly

  lighted hallway.

  Harry Talbot waited in his motorized wheelchair, dressed in blue pajamas

  and a green robe. His head was tilted slightly to the left in a

  permanently quizzical angle that was part of his Vietnam legacy. He was

  a handsome man, though his face was prematurely aged, too deeply lined

  for that of a forty-year-old.

  - 179 His thick hair was half white, and his eyes were ancient. Sam

  could see that Talbot had once been a strapping young man, though he was

  now soft from years of paralysis. One hand lay in his lap, the palm up,

  fingers half curled, useless. He was a living monument to what might

  have been, to hopes destroyed, to dreams incinerated, a grim remembrance

  of war pressed between the pages of time.

  As Tessa and Sam entered and closed the door behind them, Harry Talbot

  extended his good hand and said, "God, am I glad to see you!" His smile

  transformed him astonishingly. It was the bright, broad, warm, and

  genuine smile of a man who believed he was perched in the lap of the

  gods, with too many blessings to count.

  Moose returned Sam's wallet, uneaten.

  After leaving Shaddack's house on the north point, but before

  returning to headquarters to coordinate the assignments of the hundred

  men who were being sent to him from New Wave, Loman Watkins stopped at

  his home on Iceberry Way, on the north side of town. It was a modest,

  two-story, three-bedroom, Monterey-style house, white with pale-blue

&
nbsp; trim, nestled among conifers.

  He stood for a moment in the driveway beside his patrol car, studying

  the place. He had loved it as if it were a castle, but he could not

  find that love in himself now. He remembered much happiness related to

  the house, to his family, but he could not feel the memory of that

  happiness. A lot of laughter had graced life in that dwelling, but now

  the laughter had faded until recollection of it was too faint even to

  induce a smile in remembrance. Besides, these days, his smiles were all

  counterfeit, with no humor behind them.

  The odd thing was that laughter and joy had been a part of his life as

  late as this past August. It had all seeped away only within the past

  couple of months, after the Change. Yet it seemed an ancient memory.

  Funny.

  Actually, not so funny at all.

  When he went inside he found the first floor dark and silent. A vague,

  stale odor lingered in the deserted rooms.

  He climbed the stairs. In the unlighted, second-floor hallway he saw a

  soft glow along the bottom of the closed door to Denny's bedroom. He

  went in and found the boy sitting at his desk, in front of the computer.

  The PC had an oversize screen, and currently that was the only light in

  the room.

  Denny did not look up from the terminal.

  The boy was eighteen years old, no longer a child; therefore, he had

  been converted with his mother, shortly after Loman himself had been put

  through the Change. He was two inches taller than his dad and better

  looking. He'd always done well in school, and on IQ tests he'd scored

  so high it spooked Loman a bit to think his kid was that smart. He had

  always been proud of Denny. Now, at his son's side, staring down at

  him, Loman tried to resurrect that pride but could not find it. Denny

  had not fallen from favor; he had done nothing to earn his father's

  disapproval. But pride, like so many other emotions, seemed an

  encumbrance to the higher consciousness of the New People and interfered

  with their more efficient thought patterns.

  Even before the Change, Denny had been a computer fanatic, one of those

  kids who called themselves hackers, to whom computers were not only

  tools, not only fun and games, but a way of life. After the conversion,

  his intelligence and high-tech experience were put to use by New Wave.

  He was provided with a more powerful home terminal and a modern link to

  the supercomputer at New Wave headquarters-a behemoth that, according to

  Denny's description, incorporated four thousand miles of wiring and

  thirty-three thousand high-speed processing units which, for reasons

  Loman didn't understand, they called Sun, though perhaps that was its

  name because all research at New Wave made heavy use of the machine and

  therefore revolved around it. As Loman stood beside his son, voluminous

  data flickered - 181 across the terminal screen. Words, numbers,

  graphs, and charts appeared and disappeared at such speed that only one

  of the New People, with somewhat heightened senses and powerfully

  heightened concentration, could extract meaning from them.

  in fact Loman could not read them because he had not undergone the

  training that Denny had received from New Wave. Besides, he'd had

  neither the time nor the need to learn to fully focus his new powers of

  concentration.

  But Denny absorbed the rushing waves of data, staring blankly at the

  screen, no frown lines in his brow, his face completely relaxed. Since

  being converted, the boy was as much a solidstate electronic entity as

  he was flesh and blood, and that new part of him related to the computer

  with an intimacy that exceeded any man-machine relationship any of the

  Old People had ever known.

  Loman knew that his son was learning about the Moonhawk Project.

  Ultimately he would join the task group at New Wave that was endlessly

  refining the software and hardware related to the project, working to

  make each generation of New People superior to-and more efficient

  than-the one before it.

  An endless river of data washed across the screen.

  Denny stared unblinkingly for so long that tears would have formed in

  his eyes if he had been one of the Old People.

  The light of the ever-moving data danced on the walls and sent a

  continuous blur of shadows chasing around the room.

  Loman put one hand on the boy's shoulder.

  Denny did not look up or in any way respond. His lips began to move, as

  if he were talking, but he made no sound. He was speaking to himself,

  oblivious of his father.

  In a garrulous, evangelistic moment, Thomas Shaddack had spoken of one

  day developing a link that would connect a computer directly to a

  surgically implanted socket in the base of the human spine, thereby

  merging real and artificial intelligence. Loman had not understood why

  such a thing was either wise or desirable, and Shaddack had said, "The

  New People are a bridge between man and machine, Loman. But one day our

  species will entirely cross that bridge, become one with the machines,

  because only then will mankind be completely efficient, completely in

  control."

  "Denny," Loman said softly.

  The boy did not respond.

  At last Loman left the room.

  Across the hall and at the end of it was the master bedroom. Grace was

  lying on the bed, in the dark.

  Of course, since the Change, she could never be entirely blinded by a

  mere insufficiency of light, for her eyesight had improved. Even in

  this lightless room, she could see-as Loman could-the shapes of the

  furniture and some textures, though few details. For them, the night

  world was no longer black but darkish gray.

  He sat on the edge of the mattress.

  "Hello."

  She said nothing.

  He put one hand on her head and stroked her long auburn hair. He

  touched her face and found her cheeks wet with tears, a detail that even

  his improved eyes could not discern.

  Crying. She was crying, and that jolted him because he had never seen

  one of the New People cry.

  His heartbeat accelerated, and a brief but wonderful thrill of hope

  throbbed through him. Perhaps the deadening of emotions was a transient

  condition.

  "What is it?" he asked.

  "What're you crying about?"

  "I'm afraid."

  The pulse of hope swiftly faded. Fear had brought her to tears, fear

  and the desolation associated with it, and he already knew those

  feelings were a part of this brave new world, those and no other.

  "Afraid of what?"

  "I can't sleep," Grace said.

  "But you don't need to sleep."

  "Don't I?

  "None of us needs to sleep any more."

  Prior to the Change, men and women had needed to sleep because the human

  body, being strictly a biological mechanism, was terribly inefficient.

  Downtime was required to rest and repair the damage of the day, to deal

  with the toxic substances absorbed from the external world and the

  toxics created internally. But in the New People, every bodily process

  and function was su
perbly regulated. Nature's work had been highly

  refined. Every organ, every system, every cell operated at a far higher

  efficiency, producing less waste, casting off waste faster than - 183

  before, cleansing and rejuvenating itself every hour of the day. Cirace

  knew that as well as he did.

  "I long for sleep," she said.

  "All you're feeling is the pull of habit."

  'Too many hours in the day now."

  "We'll fill up the time. The new world will be a busy one."

  "What're we going to do in this new world when it comes?"

  "Shaddack will tell us."

  "Meanwhile . . ."

  "Patience," he said.

  "I'm afraid."

  "Patience. I yearn for sleep, hunger for it."

  "We don't need to sleep," he said, exhibiting the patience that he had

  encouraged in her.

  "We don't need sleep," she said cryptically, "but we need to sleep."

  They were both silent a while.

  Then she took his hand in hers, and moved it to her breasts. She was

  nude.

  He tried to pull away from her, for he was afraid of what might happen,