Dean Koontz - (1989)

by Midnight(Lit)

  yourself, nothing of that sort. I mean physically, we may have the

  potential to be whatever we think we are, to override the morphic stasis

  dictated by our genetic heritage."

  "Gobbledegook," Watkins said impatiently.

  Shaddack stood. He put his hands in his pockets again.

  "Let me put it this way The theory says that consciousness is the

  greatest power in the universe, that it can bend the physical world to

  its desire."

  "Mind over matter."

  "Right.

  "Like some talk-show psychic bending a spoon or stopping a watch, "

  Watkins said.

  "Those people are usually fakes, I suspect. But, yes, maybe that power

  is really in us. We just don't know how to tap it because for millions

  of years we've allowed the physical world to dominate us. By habit, by

  stasis, and by preference for order over chaos, we remain at the mercy

  of the physical world. But what we're talking about here," he said,

  pointing to Sholnick and Peyser, "is a lot more complex and exciting

  than bending a spoon with the mind. Peyser felt the urge to regress,

  for reasons I don't understand, perhaps for the sheer thrill of it-For

  the thrill." Watkins's voice lowered, became quiet, almost hushed, and

  was filled with such intense fear and mental anguish that it deepened

  Shaddack's chill.

  "Animal power is thrilling. Animal need. You feel animal hunger,

  animal lust, bloodthirst-and you're drawn toward that because it seems

  so . so simple and powerful, so natural. it's freedom."

  "Freedom?"

  "Freedom from responsibility, from worry, from the pressure of the

  civilized world, from having to think too much. The temptation to

  regress is tremendously powerful because you feel life will be so much

  easier and exciting then," Watkins said, evidently speaking about what

  he had felt when drawn toward an altered state.

  "When you become a beast, life is all sensation, just pain and pleasure,

  with no need to intellectualize anything. That's part of it, anyway."

  Shaddack was silent, unsettled by the passion with which Watkins-not

  ordinarily an expressive man-had spoken of the urge to regress.

  Another detonation rocked the sky, more powerful than any before it. The

  first hard crack of thunder reverberated in the bedroom windows.

  Mind racing, Shaddack said, "Anyway, the important thing is that when

  Peyser felt this urge to become a beast, a hunter, he didn't regress

  along the human genetic line. Evidently, in his opinion, a wolf is the

  greatest of all hunters, the most desirable form for a predatory beast,

  so he willed himself to become wolflike.

  "Just like that," Watkins said skeptically.

  "Yes, just like that. Mind over matter. The metamorphosis is mostly a

  mental process. Oh, certainly, there are physical changes. But we might

  not be talking complete alteration of matter . . . only of biological

  structures. The basic nucleotides remain the same, but the sequence in

  which they're read changes drastically. Structural genes are

  transformed into operator genes by a force of will. . . ."

  Shaddack's voice trailed off as his excitement rose to match his fear

  and left him breathless. He'd done far more than he'd hoped to do with

  the Moonhawk Project. The stunning accomplishment was the source of

  both his sudden joy and escalating fear joy, because he had given men

  the ability to control their physical form and, eventually, perhaps all

  matter, simply by the exercise of will; fear, because he was not sure

  that the New People could learn to control and properly use their power

  . . .

  or that he could continue to control them.

  "The gift I've given to you-computer-assisted physiology and release

  from emotion-unleashes the mind's power over matter. It allows

  consciousness to dictate for7n."

  Watkins shook his head, clearly appalled by what Shaddack was

  suggesting.

  "Maybe Peyser willed himself to become what he did. Maybe Sholnick

  willed it too. But I'll be damned if I did. When I was overcome by the

  desire to change, I fought it like an ex-addict sweating out a craving

  for heroin. I didn't want - 229 it. it came over me . . . the way

  the force of the full moon comes over a werewolf. No," Shaddack said.

  "Subconsciously, you d want to change, Loman, and you no doubt

  partially wanted it even on a conscious level. You must have wanted it

  to some extent because you spoke so forcefully about how attractive

  regression was. You resisted using your power of mind over body only

  because you found metamorphosis marginally more frightening than

  appealing. If you lose some of your fear of it..... or if an altered

  state becomes just a little more appealing..... well, then your

  psychological balance will shift, and you'll remake yourself. But it

  won't be some outside force at work. It'll be your own mind."

  "Then why couldn't Peyser come back?"

  "As I said, and as you suggested, he didn't want to."

  "He was trapped."

  "Only by his own desire."

  Watkins looked down at the grotesque corpse of the regressive. "What

  have you done to us, Shaddack?"

  "Haven't you grasped what I've said?"

  "What have you done to us?"

  "This is a great gift!"

  "To have no emotions but fear?"

  "That's what frees your mind and gives you the power to control your

  very form," Shaddack said excitedly.

  "What I don't understand is why the regressives have all chosen a

  subhuman condition. Surely you have the power within you to undergo

  evolution rather than devolution, to lift yourself up from mere humanity

  to something higher, cleaner, purer. Perhaps you even have the power to

  become a being of pure consciousness, intellect without any physical

  form. Why have all these New People chosen to regress instead?"

  Watkins raised his head, and his eyes had a half-dead look, as if they

  had absorbed death from the very sight of the corpse.

  "What good is it to have the power of a god if you can't also experience

  the simple pleasures of a man?"

  "But you can do and experience anything you want," Shaddack said

  exasperatedly.

  "Not love.

  "What? Not love or hate or joy or any emotion but fear."

  "But you don't need them. Not having them has freed you."

  "You're not thick headed," Watkins said, "so I guess you don't

  understand because you're psychologically . . . twisted, warped.

  "You must not speak to me like-I'm trying to tell you why they all

  choose a subhuman form over a superhuman form. It's because, for a

  thinking creature of high intellect, there can be no pleasure separate

  from emotion. If you deny men emotions, you deny them pleasure, so they

  seek an altered state in which complex emotions and pleasure aren't

  linked-the life of an unthinking beast."

  "Nonsense. You are-" Watkins interrupted him again, sharply. "Listen to

  me, for God's sake! If I remember, even Moreau listened to his

  creatures.

  " His face was flushed now instead of pale. His eyes no longer looked

  half dead; a certain wildn
ess had returned to them. He was only a step

  or two from Shaddack and seemed to loom over him, though he was the

  shorter of the two. He looked scared, badly scared-and dangerous.

  He said, "Consider sex-a basic human pleasure. For sex to be fully

  satisfying, it has to be accompanied by love or at least some affection.

  To a psychologically damaged man, sex can still be good if it's linked

  to hate or pride of domination; even negative emotions can make the act

  pleasurable for a twisted man. But done with no emotion at all, -it's

  pointless, stupid, just the breeding impulse of an animal, just the

  rhythmic function of a machine."

  A flash of lightning burned the night and blazed briefly on the bedroom

  windows, followed by a crash of thunder that seemed to shake the house.

  That celestial flicker was, for an instant, brighter than the soft glow

  of the single bedroom lamp.

  In that queer light Shaddack thought he saw something happen to Loman

  Watkins's face . . . a shift in the relationship of the features. But

  when the lightning passed, Watkins looked quite like himself, so it must

  have been Shaddack's imagination.

  Continuing to speak with great force, with the passion of stark fear,

  Watkins said, "It's not just sex, either. The same goes for other

  physical pleasures. Eating, for example. Yeah, I still taste a piece

  of chocolate when I eat it. But the taste gives me only a - 231 tiny

  fraction of the satisfaction that it did before I was converted. Haven't

  you noticed?

  " Shaddack did not reply, and he hoped that nothing in his demeanor

  would reveal that he had not undergone conversion himself. He was, of

  course, waiting until the process had been more highly refined through

  additional generations of the New People. But he suspected Watkins

  would not react well to the discovery that their maker had not chosen to

  submit himself to the blessing that he had bestowed on them.

  Watkins said, "And do you know why there's less satisfaction?

  Before conversion, when we ate chocolate, the taste had thousands of

  associations for us. When we ate it, we subconsciously remembered the

  first time we ate it and all the times in between, and subconsciously we

  remembered how often that taste was associated with holidays and

  celebrations of all kinds, and because of all that the taste made us

  feel good. But now when I eat chocolate, it's just a taste, a good

  taste, but it doesn't make me feel good any more - I know it should; I

  remember that such a thing as 'feeling good' was part of it once, but

  not now. The taste of chocolate doesn't generate emotional echoes any

  more. It's an empty sensation, its richness has been stolen from me.

  The richness of everything but fear has been stolen from me, and

  everything is gray now-strange, gray, drab-as if I'm half dead."

  The left side of Watkins's head bulged. His cheekbone enlarged. That

  ear began to change shape and draw toward a point.

  Stunned, Shaddack backed away from him.

  Watkins followed, raising his voice, speaking with a slight slur but

  with no less force, not with real anger but with fear and an unsettling

  touch of savagery "Why the hell would any of us want to evolve to some

  higher form with even fewer pleasures of the body and the heart?

  Intellectual pleasures aren't enough, Shaddack. Life is more than that.

  A life that's only intellectual isn't tolerable.

  " As Watkins's brow gradually sloped backward, slowly melting away like

  a wall of snow in the sun, heavier accretions of bone began to build up

  around his eyes.

  Shaddack backed into the dresser.

  Still approaching, Watkins said, "Jesus! Don't you see yet?

  Even a man confined to a hospital bed, paralyzed from the neck down, has

  more in his life than intellectual interests; no one's stolen his

  emotions from him; no one's reduced him to fear and pure intellect. We

  need pleasure, Shaddack, pleasure, pleasure. Life without it is

  terrifying. Pleasure makes life worth living."

  "Stop. You've made it impossible for us to experience the pleasurable

  release of emotion, so we can't fully experience pleasures of the flesh,

  either, because we're creatures of a high order and need the emotional

  aspect to truly enjoy physical pleasure. It's both or neither in human

  beings."

  Watkins's hands, fisted at his sides, were becoming larger, with swollen

  knuckles and tobacco-brown, pointed nails.

  "You're transforming," Shaddack said.

  Ignoring him, speaking more thickly as the shape of his mouth began to

  change subtly, Watkins said, "So we revert to a savage, altered state.

  We retreat from our intellect. In the cloak of the beast, our only

  pleasure is the pleasure of the flesh, the flesh, flesh . . .

  but at least we're no longer aware of what we've lost, so the pleasure

  remains intense, so intense, deep and sweet, sweet, so sweet. You've

  made..... made our lives intolerable, gray and dead, dead, all dead,

  dead..... so we have to devolve in mind and in body . . . to find a

  worthwhile existence. We . . . we have to flee . . . from the

  horrible restrictions of this narrowed life . . .

  this very narrowed life you've given us. Men aren't machines. Men . .

  . men . . . men are not machines! You're regressing. For God's

  sake, Loman!"

  Watkins halted and seemed disoriented. Then he shook his head, as if to

  cast off his confusion as he might a veil. He raised his hands, looked

  at them, and cried out in terror. He glanced past Shaddack, at the

  dresser mirror, and his cry grew louder, shriller.

  Abruptly Shaddack was acutely aware of the stench of blood, to which he

  had somewhat accustomed himself. Watkins must be even more affected by

  it, though not repulsed, no, not in the least repulsed, but excited.

  Lightning flashed and thunder shook the night again, and rain suddenly

  came down in torrents, beating on the windows and drumming on the roof.

  Watkins looked from the mirror to Shaddack, raised a hand as if to

  strike him, then turned and staggered out of the room, into the hall,

  away from the ripe stink of blood. Out there he dropped to his knees,

  then onto his side. He curled into a ball, - 233 shaking violently,

  gagging, whimpering, snarling, and intermittently chanting, "No, no, no,

  no."

  When he pulled back from the brink and felt in control of himself

  once more, Loman sat up and leaned against the wall. He was wet with

  perspiration again, and shaky with hunger. The partial transformation

  and the energy expended to keep it from going all the way had left him

  drained. He was relieved but also felt unfulfilled, as if some great

  prize had been within his reach but then had been snatched away just as

  he had touched it.

  A hollow, somewhat susurrant sound surrounded him. At first he thought

  it was an internal noise, all in his head, perhaps the soft boom and

  sizzle of brain cells flaring and dying from the strain of thwarting the

  regressive urge. Then he realized it was rain hammering on the roof of

  the bungalow.

  When he opened his eyes, his vision was
blurred. It cleared, and he was

  staring at Shaddack, who stood on the other side of the hall, just

  beyond the open bedroom door. Gaunt, long-faced, pale enough to pass

  for an albino, with those yellowish eyes, in his dark topcoat, the man

  looked like a visitation, perhaps Death himself.

  If this had been Death, Loman might well have stood up and warmly

  embraced him.

  Instead, while he waited for the strength to get up, he said, "No more

  conversions. You've got to stop the conversions."

  Shaddack said nothing.

  "You're not going to stop, are you?"

  Shaddack merely stared at him.

  "You're mad," Loman said.

  "You're stark, raving mad, yet I've no choice but to do what you want .

  . . or kill myself."

  "Never talk to me like that again. Never. Remember who I am.

  "I remember who you are," Loman said. He struggled to his feet at last,

  dizzy, weak.

  "You did this to me without my consent. And if the time comes when I

  can no longer resist the urge to regress, when I sink down into savage,

  when I'm no longer scared shitless of you, I'll somehow hold on to

  enough of my mind to remember where you are, too, and I'll come for you.

  "You threaten me?" Shaddack said, clearly amazed.

  "No," Loman said.

  "Threat isn't the right word."