Dean Koontz - (1989)

by Midnight(Lit)

  freed you from that burden. In so doing, I've made you not only

  mentally healthier but physically healthier as well."

  "How? I know so little of how the Change is effected."

  "You're a cybernetic organism now-that is, part man and part machine-but

  you don't need to understand it, Loman. You use a telephone, yet you've

  no idea of how to build a phone system from scratch. You don't know how

  a computer works, yet you can use one. And you don't have to know how

  the computer in you works in order to use it, either."

  Watkins's eyes were clouded with fear.

  "Do I use it . . . or does it use me?"

  "Of course, it doesn't use you."

  "Of course . . .

  " Shaddack wondered what had happened here tonight to have put Watkins

  in such a state of extreme anxiety. He was more curious than ever to

  see what was in the bedroom at the threshold of which they had halted.

  But he was acutely aware that Watkins was in a dangerously excited state

  and that it was necessary, if frustrating, to take the time to calm his

  fears.

  "Loman, the clustered microspheres within you don't constitute a mind.

  The system's not in any way truly intelligent. It's a servant, your

  servant. It frees you from toxic emotions."

  - 221 Strong emotions-hatred, love, envy, jealousy, the whole long list

  of human sensibilities-regularly destabilized the biological functions

  of the body. Medical researchers had proved that different emotions

  stimulated the production of different brain chemicals, and that those

  chemicals in turn induced the various organs and tissues of the body to

  either increase or reduce or alter their function in a less than

  productive fashion. Shaddack was convinced that a man whose body was

  ruled by his emotions could not be a totally healthy man and never

  entirely clearthinking.

  The microsphere computer within each of the New People monitored every

  organ in the body. When it detected the production of various

  amino-acid compounds and other chemical substances that were produced in

  response to strong emotion, it used electrical stimuli to override the

  brain and other organs, shutting off the flow, thus eliminating the

  physical consequences of an emotion if not the emotion itself. At the

  same time the microsphere computer stimulated the copious production of

  other compounds known to repress those same emotions, thereby treating

  not only the cause but the effect.

  "I've released you from all emotions but fear," Shaddack said, "which is

  necessary for self-preservation. Now that the chemistry of your body is

  no longer undergoing wild swings, you'll think more clearly."

  "So far as I've noticed, I've not suddenly become a genius."

  "Well, you might not notice a greater mental acuity yet, but in time you

  will."

  "When?"

  "When your body is fully purged of the residue of a lifetime of

  emotional pollution. Meanwhile, your interior computer"he lightly

  tapped Watkins's chest-"is also programmed to use complex electrical

  stimuli to induce the body to create wholly new amino-acid compounds

  that keep your blood vessels scoured and free of plaque and clots, kill

  cancerous cells the moment they appear, and perform a double score of

  other chores, keeping you far healthier than ordinary men, no doubt

  dramatically lengthening your life-span."

  Shaddack had expected the healing process to be accelerated in New

  People, but he had been surprised at the almost miraculous speed with

  which their wounds closed. He still could not entirely understand how

  new tissue could be formed so quickly, and his current work on Moonhawk

  was focused on discovering an explanation for that effect. The healing

  was not accomplished without a price, for the metabolism was

  fantastically accelerated; stored body fat was burned prodigiously in

  order to close a wound in seconds or minutes, leaving the healed man

  pounds lighter, sweat-drenched, and fiercely hungry.

  Watkins frowned and wiped one shaky hand across his sweaty face. "I can

  maybe see that heating would be speeded up, but what gives us the

  ability to so completely reshape ourselves, to regress to another form?

  Surely not even buckets of these biological chemicals could tear down

  our bodies and rebuild them in just a minute or two. How can that be?"

  For a moment Shaddack met the other man's gaze, then looked away,

  coughed, and said, "Listen, I can explain all of this to you later.

  Right now I want to see Peyser. I hope you were able to restrain him

  without doing much damage."

  As Shaddack reached toward the door to push it open, Watkins seized his

  wrist, staying his hand. Shaddack was shocked. He did not allow

  himself to be touched.

  "Take your hand off me."

  "How can the body be so suddenly reshaped?"

  "I told you, we'll discuss it later."

  "Now." Watkins's determination was so strong that it carved deep lines

  in his face.

  "Now. I'm so scared I can't think straight. I can't function at this

  level of fear, Shaddack. Look at me. I'm shaking. I feel like I'm

  going to blow apart. A million pieces. You don't know what happened

  here tonight, or you'd feel the same way. I've got to know How can our

  bodies change so suddenly?

  " Shaddack hesitated.

  "I'm working on that."

  Surprised, Watkins let go of his wrist and said, "You . . .

  you mean you don't know?"

  "It's an unexpected effect. I'm beginning to understand it"which was a

  lie-"but I've got a lot more work to do." First he had to understand

  the New People's phenomenal healing powers, which were no doubt an

  aspect of the same process that allowed them to completely metamorphose

  into subhuman forms.

  "You subjected us to this without knowing what all it might do to us?"

  "I knew it would be a benefit, a great gift," Shaddack said - 223

  impatiently, "No scientist can ever predict all the side effects. He

  has to proceed with the confidence that whatever side effects arise will

  not outweigh the benefits."

  "But they do outweigh the benefits," Watkins said, as close to anger as

  a New Man could get.

  "My God, how could you have done this to us?

  " I did this for you.

  " Watkins stared at him, then pushed open the bedroom door and said,

  "Have a look.

  " Shaddack stepped into the room, where the carpet was damp and some of

  the walls festooned-with blood. He grimaced at the stink. He found all

  biological odors unusually repellent, perhaps because they were a

  reminder that human beings were far less efficient and clean than

  machines. After stopping at the first corpse which lay facedown near

  the door-and studying it, he looked across the room at the second body.

  "TWo of them? Two regressives, and you killed both? Two chances to

  study the psychology of these degenerates, and you threw away both

  opportunities?"

  Watkins was unbowed by the criticism.

  "It was a life-or-death situation here. It couldn't have been handled

  differently.

  " He seemed angr
y to a degree inconsistent with the personality of a New

  Man, though perhaps the emotion sustaining his icy demeanor was less

  rage than fear. Fear was acceptable.

  "Peyser was regressed when we got here," Watkins continued.

  "We searched the house, confronted him in this room."

  As Watkins described that confrontation in detail, Shaddack was gripped

  by an apprehension that he tried not to reveal an( to which he did not

  even want to admit. When he spoke he let only anger touch his voice,

  not fear "You're telling me that your men, both Sholnick and Penniworth,

  are regressives, that even you are a regressive?"

  "Sholnick was a regressive, yes. In my book Penniworth isn't-not yet

  anyway-because he successfully resisted the urge. Just as I resisted

  it." Watkins boldly maintained eye contact, not once glancing away,

  which further disturbed Shaddack.

  "What I'm telling you is the same thing I told you in so many words a

  few hours ago at your place Each of us, every damned one of us, is

  potentially a regressive. It's not a rare sickness among the New

  People. It's in all of us. You've not created new and better men any

  more than Hitler's policies of genetic breeding could've created a

  master race. You're not God; you're Dr.

  Moreau. You will not speak to me like this," Shaddack said, wondering

  who this Moreau was. The name was vaguely familiar, but he could not

  place it.

  "When you talk to me, I'd suggest you remember who I am."

  Watkins lowered his voice, perhaps realizing anew that Shaddack could

  extinguish the New People almost as easily as snuffing out a candle. But

  he continued to speak forcefully and with too little respect.

  "You still haven't responded to the worst of this news."

  "And what's that?"

  "Didn't you hear me? I said that Peyser was stuck. He couldn't remake

  himself. I doubt very much that he was trapped in an altered state. New

  Men have complete control of their bodies, more control than I ever

  anticipated. If he could not return to human form, that was strictly a

  psychological block. He didn't really want to return. " For a moment

  Watkins stared at him, then shook his head and said, "You aren't really

  that dense, are you? It's the same thing. Hell, it doesn't matter

  whether something went wrong with the microsphere network inside him or

  whether it was strictly psychological. Either way, the effect was the

  same, the result was the same He was stuck, trapped, locked into that

  degenerate form. You will not speak to me like this," Shaddack repeated

  firmly, as if repetition of the command would work the same way it did

  when training a dog.

  For all their physiological superiority and potential for mental

  superiority, New People were still dismayingly people, and to the degree

  they were people, they were that much less effective machines. With a

  computer, you only had to program a command once. The computer retained

  it and acted upon it always. Shaddack wondered if he would ever be able

  to perfect the New People to the point at which future generations

  functioned as smoothly and reliably as the average IBM PC.

  Damp with sweat, pale, his eyes strange and haunted, Watkins was an

  intimidating figure. When the cop took two steps to reduce the gap

  between them, Shaddack was afraid and wanted to retreat, but he held his

  ground and continued to meet Watkins's - 225 eyes the way he would have

  defiantly met those of a dangerous German shepherd if he had been

  cornered by one.

  "Look at Sholnick," Watkins said, indicating the corpse at their feet.

  He used the toe of his shoe to turn the dead man over.

  Even riddled with shotgun pellets and soaked in blood, Sholnick's

  bizarre mutation was unmistakable. His sightlessly staring eyes were

  perhaps the most frightful thing about him yellow with black irises,

  not the round irises of the human eye but elongated ovals as in the eyes

  of a snake.

  outside, thunder rolled across the night, a louder peal than the one

  Shaddack had heard when he'd been crossing Peyser's front lawn.

  Watkins said, "The way you explained it to me-these degenerates undergo

  willful devolution.

  "That's right. You said the whole history of human evolution is carried

  in our genes, that we still have in us traces of what the species once

  was, and that the regressives somehow tap that genetic material and

  devolve into creatures somewhere farther back on the evolutionary

  ladder. What's your point?"

  "That explanation made some sort of crazy sense when we trapped Coombs

  in the theater and got a good look at him back in September. He was

  more ape than man, something in between. it doesn't make crazy sense;

  it makes perfect sense."

  "But, Jesus, look at Sholnick. Look at him! When I gunned him down,

  he'd halfway transformed himself into some goddamned creature that's

  part man, part . . . hell, I don't know, part lizard or snake. You

  telling me that we evolved from reptiles, we're carrying lizard genes

  from ten million years ago?"

  Shaddack thrust both hands in his coat pockets, lest they betray his

  apprehension with a nervous gesture or tremble.

  "The first life on earth was in the sea, then something crawled onto the

  land-a fish with rudimentary legs-and the fish evolved into the early

  reptiles, and along the way mammals split off. If we don't contain

  actual fragments of the genetic material of those very early

  reptiles-and I believe we do-then at least we have racial memory of that

  stage of evolution encoded in us in some other way we don't really

  understand."

  "You're jiving me, Shaddack.

  "And you're irritating me."

  "I don't give a damn. Come here, come with me, take a closer look at

  Peyser. He was a friend of yours from way back, wasn't he?

  Take a good, long look at what he was when he died."

  Peyser was flat on his back, naked, right leg straight in front of him,

  left leg bent under him at an angle, one arm flung out at his side, the

  other across his chest, which had been shattered by a couple of shotgun

  blasts. The body and the face-with its inhuman muzzle and teeth, yet

  vaguely recognizable as Mike Peyser-were those of a shockingly horrific

  freak, a dog-man, a werewolf, something that belonged in either a

  carnival sideshow or an old horror movie. The skin was coarse. The

  patchy coat of hair was wiry. The hands looked powerful, the claws

  sharp.

  Because his fascination exceeded his disgust and fear, Shaddack pulled

  up his topcoat to keep the hem of it from brushing the bloody corpse,

  and stooped beside Peyser's body for a closer look.

  Watkins hunkered down on the other side of the cadaver.

  While another avalanche of thunder rumbled down the night sky, the dead

  man stared at the bedroom ceiling with eyes that were too human for the

  rest of his twisted countenance.

  "You going to tell me that somewhere along the way we evolved from dogs,

  wolves?" Watkins asked.

  Shaddack did not reply.

  Watkins pressed the issue.

  "You going t
o tell me that we've got dog genes in us that we can tap

  when we want to transform ourselves? Am I supposed to believe God took a

  rib from some prehistoric Lassie and made man from it before he took

  man's rib to make a woman?"

  Curiously Shaddack touched one of Mike Peyser's hands, which was

  designed for killing as surely as was a soldier's bayonet. It felt like

  flesh, just cooler than that of a living man.

  "This can't be explained biologically," Watkins said, glaring at

  Shaddack across the corpse.

  "This wolf form isn't something Peyser could dredge up from racial

  memory stored in his genes. So how could he change like this? It's not

  just your biochips at work here. It's something else . . . something

  stranger."

  Shaddack nodded.

  "Yes." An explanation had occurred to him, and he was excited by it.

  "Something a great deal stranger . . . but perhaps I understand it."

  - 227 "So tell me. I'd like to understand it. Damned if I wouldn't.

  I'd like to understand it real well. Before it happens to me."

  ,There's a theory that form is a function of consciousness."

  "Huh?"

  it holds that we are what we think we are. I'm not talking palp,

  psychology here, that you can be what you want to be if you'll only like