Frankenstein - Prodigal Son

by Dean Koontz

  “Am I still not in your life?" he asked. "Or do you want to hear more?"

  CHAPTER 52

  SCONCES SPREAD radiant amber fans on the walls, but at this hour the lights are dim and shadows dominate.

  Randal Six has only now realized that the blocks of vinyl-tile flooring in the hallway are like the squares in a crossword puzzle. This geometry gives him comfort.

  He visualizes in his mind one letter of his name with every step that he takes, spelling himself along the tile floor, block by block, toward freedom.

  This is the dormitory floor, where the most recently awakened members of the New Race are housed until they are polished and ready to infiltrate the city.

  Half the doors stand open. Beyond some of them, naked bodies are locked in every imaginable sexual posture.

  Especially in their early weeks, the tank-born are filled with anguish that arises from their knowledge of what they are. They also suffer intense anxiety because they come to full consciousness with the immediate understanding that, as Victor's chattel, they do not control the primary issues of their lives and possess no free will; therefore, in their beginning is their end, and their lives are mapped without hope of mystery.

  They are sterile but vigorous. In them, sex has been divorced entirely from the purpose of procreation and functions solely as a vent for stress.

  They copulate in groups, tangled and writhing, and it seems to Randal Six, whose autism makes him different from them, that these thrusts provide them no pleasure, only release from tension.

  The sounds issuing from these orgiastic groups have no quality of joy, no suggestion of tenderness. These are bestial noises, low and rough, insistent almost to the point of violence, eager to the point of desperation.

  The slap of flesh on flesh, the wordless grunts, the guttural cries that seem charged with rage—all this frightens Randal Six as he passes these rooms. He feels the urge to run but dares not step on the lines between the vinyl blocks; he must place each foot entirely in a square, which requires a deliberative pace.

  The hallway increasingly seems like a tunnel, the chambers on both sides like catacombs in which the restless dead embrace in cold desire.

  Heart knocking as if to test the soundness of his ribs, Randal spells his name often enough to reach an intersection of corridors. Using the final letter, he spells a crossing word—left—which allows him to turn in that direction.

  From the letter t, he sidesteps four blocks, spelling right backward as he goes. With the letter r as his new beginning, he is able to spell his name and, thereby, proceed forward along this new hall, toward the choice of elevators or a stairwell.

  CHAPTER 53

  ERIKA TOOK DINNER alone in the master bedroom, at a nineteenth-century French marquetry table featuring a motif of autumn bounty—apples, oranges, plums, grapes, all spilling from a horn of plenty—rendered with exquisitely inlaid woods of numerous varieties.

  Like all those of the New Race, her metabolism was as fine-tuned and as powerful as a Ferrari engine. This required a formidable appetite.

  Two six-ounce steaks—filet mignon, prepared medium-rare— were accompanied by a rasher of crisp bacon, buttered carrots with thyme, and snow peas with sliced jicama. A separate chafing dish contained braised potatoes in blue cheese sauce. For dessert waited an entire peach cobbler with a side dish of vanilla ice cream coddled in a bowl of crushed ice.

  While she ate, she stared at the scalpel that had been left on her bath mat earlier in the day It lay across her bread plate as if it were a butter knife.

  She didn't know how the scalpel related to the furtive ratlike noises that she had been hearing, but she was certain that the two were connected.

  There is no world but this one. All flesh is grass, and withers, and the fields of the mind, too, are burned black by death and do not grow green again. That conviction is essential to the creed of materialism; and Erika is a soldier in the determined army that will inevitably conquer the Earth and impose that philosophy pole to pole.

  Yet, though her creator forbade belief in the supernatural and though her laboratory origins suggested that intelligent life can be manufactured without divine inspiration, Erika could not shake a sense of the uncanny in these recent events. The scalpel seemed to sparkle not solely with the sheen of surgical steel but also with... magic.

  As if by her thoughts she had opened a door between this world and another, a force inexplicable switched on the plasma TV Erika looked up with a start as the screen came alive.

  The cordless Crestron panel, by which the TV was controlled, currently lay on Victor's nightstand, untouched.

  Some bodiless Presence seemed to be channel surfing. Images flipped rapidly across the screen, faster, faster.

  As Erika put down her fork and pushed her chair back from the table, the Presence selected a dead channel. A blizzard of electronic snow whitened the big screen.

  Sensing that something bizarre—and something of significance—was about to happen, she rose to her feet.

  The voice—deep, rough, and ominous—came to her out of the dead channel, through the Dolby SurroundSound speakers in the ceiling: "Kill him. Kill him."

  Erika moved away from the table, toward the TV, but halted after two steps when it seemed unwise to get too close to the screen.

  "Shove the scalpel in his eye. Into his brain. Kill him."

  "Who are you?" she asked.

  "Kill him. Thrust it deep, and twist. Kill him."

  "Kill whom?"

  The Presence did not answer.

  She repeated her question.

  On the plasma screen, out of the snow, a pale ascetic face began to form. For a moment, she assumed this must be the face of a spirit, but as it developed character, she recognized Victor, eyes closed and features relaxed, as though this were his death mask.

  "Kill him."

  "He made me."

  "To use."

  "I can't."

  "You're strong."

  "Impossible."

  "Kill him."

  "Who are you?"

  "Evil," said the voice, and she knew that this Presence was not speaking of itself, but of Victor.

  If she participated in this conversation, she would inevitably consider betraying Victor even if only to make an argument that it was impossible to raise a hand against him. The mere act of thinking about killing her maker could bring her own death.

  Every thought creates a unique electrical signature in the brain. Victor had identified those signatures that represented the thought of taking violent action against him.

  Implanted in Erika's brain—as in the brain of every member of the New Race—was a nanodevice programmed to recognize the thought signature of patricide, of deicide.

  If ever she picked up a weapon with the intention of using it against Victor, that spy within would instantly recognize her intent. It would plunge her into a state of paralysis from which only Victor could retrieve her.

  If thereafter he allowed her to live, hers would be a life of greater suffering. He would fill all her days with imaginative punishment.

  Consequently, she moved now to the Crestron touch panel on the nightstand and used it to switch off the TV. The plasma screen went dark.

  Waiting with the control in hand, she expected the TV to switch itself on again, but it remained off.

  She did not believe in spirits. She must not believe. Such belief was disobedience. Disobedience would lead to termination.

  The mysterious voice urging murder was best left mysterious. To pursue an understanding of it would be to chase it off a cliff, to certain death.

  When she realized that she was trembling with fear, Erika returned to her chair at the table.

  She began to eat again, but now her appetite was of the nervous variety. She ate voraciously, trying to quell a hunger that food could never satisfy: a hunger for meaning, for freedom.

  Her tremors—and the fear of death they represented—surprised her. There had been times since her
"birth" six weeks ago when she had thought death desirable.

  Not now. Something had changed. When she had not been looking, that thing with feathers, hope, had come into her heart.

  CHAPTER 54

  ROY PRIBEAUX HAD GUNS.

  He retrieved them from the closet where they were stored in custom cases. He examined them lovingly, one by one, cleaned and lubricated them as necessary, preparing them for use.

  Throughout his adolescence and twenties, he had adored guns. Revolvers, pistols, shotguns, rifles—he had a core collection of each type of weapon.

  Shortly after his twentieth birthday, when he had come into his inheritance, he bought a Ford Explorer, loaded it with his favorite firearms, and toured the South and Southwest.

  Until that time, he had only killed animals.

  He hadn't been a hunter. He'd never acquired a hunting license. Tramping around in the woods and fields didn't appeal to him. His prey were domestic and farm animals.

  On the road at twenty, he targeted people for the first time. For several years he was carefree and happy.

  As are many people in their twenties, Roy had been idealistic. He believed that he could make this a better society, a better world.

  Even then, he'd realized that life was made tolerable only by the existence of beauty. Beauty in nature. Beauty in architecture and art and in objects of human manufacture. Beauty among human beings.

  From childhood, he himself had been strikingly attractive, and he had been aware how the sight of him lifted people's spirits and how his company improved their moods.

  He intended to make the world a happier place by eliminating ugly people wherever he found them. And he found them everywhere.

  In eighteen states as far east as Alabama, as far north as Colorado, as far west as Arizona, and as far south as Texas, Roy traveled to kill. He destroyed ugly humanity where circumstances assured that he could strike without risk of apprehension.

  He employed such a variety of fine weapons over such an enormous geographical area that his many scores were never linked as the work of one perpetrator. He killed at a distance with rifles, at forty yards or less with 12-gauge shotguns loaded with buckshot, and close-up with revolvers or pistols as the mood took him.

  Generally he preferred the intimacy of handguns. They virtually always allowed him to get close enough to explain that he held no personal animosity toward the target.

  "It's an aesthetic issue," he might say Or "I'm sure you'll agree, dead is better than ugly" Or "I'm just doing Darwin's work to advance the beauty of the species."

  Shotguns were thrilling when he had the leisure to reload and to use with increasing proximity a total of four or six Federal three-inch, 000 shells, which had tremendous penetration. He could not only remove the ugly person from the gene pool but also, with the Federal rounds, obliterate their ugliness and leave a corpse so ravaged that there would have to be a closed-casket funeral.

  During those years of travel and accomplishment, Roy had known the satisfaction of noble purpose and worthwhile labor. He assumed that this would be his life's work, with no need ever to learn new job skills or to retire.

  Over time, however, he reluctantly came to the conclusion that so many ugly people inhabited the world that his efforts alone could not ensure prettier future generations. In fact, the more people he killed, the uglier the world seemed to become.

  Ugliness has the momentum of a tsunami. It is the handmaiden to entropy. One man's resistance, while admirable, cannot turn back the most titanic forces of nature.

  Eventually he returned to New Orleans, to rest and to reconsider his mission. He purchased this building and rebuilt the loft into an apartment.

  He began to suspect that he had too long associated with too many ugly people. Although he had killed them all, sparing humanity the further sight of them, perhaps their ugliness had somehow tainted Roy himself.

  For the first time, his reflection in a mirror disquieted him. Being brutally honest, he had to admit that he was still beautiful, certainly in the top one tenth of one percent of the most beautiful people in the world, but perhaps not as beautiful as he had been before he had set out in his Explorer to save humanity from ugliness.

  Being a forward-looking and determined person, he had not fallen into despair. He developed a program of diet, exercise, nutritional supplementation, and meditation to regain fully his former splendor. As any mirror now revealed, he succeeded. He was breathtaking.

  Nevertheless, he often thought of those years of rehabilitation as the Wasted Years, because while he restored himself, he had no time to kill anyone. And no reason to kill them.

  Roy was a goal-driven person with a deep desire to contribute to society He didn't kill just to kill. He needed a purpose.

  When he had struck upon the idea of harvesting and preserving the ideal parts of a perfect woman, he rejoiced that his life had meaning once more.

  Eventually he might anonymously donate the collection to a great museum. The academics and critics who championed modern art would at once recognize the value and brilliance of his assembled woman.

  First he must find that elusive living female who was perfect in every detail and who was destined to be his mate. Until then he would need the collection in order to lay it out and, item by item, compare his beloved to all those pieces of perfection, to be certain that in every way she measured up to his highest standard.

  No doubt his longed-for Venus would soon cross his path—another reason why he couldn't tolerate the intrusion of the copycat killer into his life. That poor fool's use of tacky, low-quality Tupperware imitations provided proof enough that his appreciation for beauty in all things was so inadequate that no friendship could ever flower between him and Roy.

  Now, in preparation for the copycat's next visit, Roy loaded various pistols and revolvers. He secreted a weapon in each area of his expansive apartment.

  In the bathroom, a Browning Hi-Power 9mm in the drawer where he kept his colognes.

  Under a pillow on his bed, a Smith & Wesson Chief's Special, one of the best small-frame .38 Special revolvers ever made.

  Under a living-room sofa cushion, a Glock Model 23 loaded with .40 Smith & Wesson ammo. Concealed at two points among the array of exercise machines were a pair of SIG P245s.

  In the kitchen, Roy placed a Springfield Trophy Match 1911-A1 in the bread box, next to a loaf of low-fat seven-grain with raisins.

  When Roy closed the drop door on the bread box and turned, a sizable stranger stood in the kitchen with him, a red-faced, boiled-looking guy with mean blue eyes.

  How the intruder had gotten in and moved so quietly, Roy didn't know, but this must be the copycat. The guy wasn't aggressively ugly, but he wasn't half pretty, either, just homely, so there could be no chance whatsoever of a friendship between him and Roy.

  The fierce expression on the copycat's face suggested he had no interest in friendship, either. Maybe Roy had been mistaken to assume the copycat had come here, in the first place, out of admiration.

  He noticed the intruder wore latex surgical gloves. Not a good sign.

  Realizing that he wouldn't be able to turn to the bread box and retrieve the pistol quickly enough to use it, Roy struck out at his adversary with confidence, employing what he had learned during four years of instruction in Tae Kwon Do.

  Although he didn't appear to be as fit as Roy, the copycat proved to be fast and strong. He not only blocked the blows but seized Roy's right hand, bent it backward, and snapped his wrist as if it were a dry branch.

  The pain rocked Roy Pribeaux. He didn't handle pain well. His life had been mercifully free of it. The shock of the broken wrist robbed him of breath so completely that an attempt at a scream produced only a wheeze.

  Incredibly, the copycat grabbed him by his shirt and by the crotch of his slacks, lifted him overhead as if he weighed no more than a child, and slammed him down on the edge of a kitchen counter.

  Louder than the wheeze of his scream came the s
ound of his spine snapping.

  The copycat released him. Roy slid off the counter, onto the floor.

  The pain had stopped. This seemed like a good thing, until he realized that he had no feeling whatsoever below his neck.

  He tried to move his left hand. He could not. Paralyzed.

  Glaring down at him, the copycat said, "I don't need to cut you open and see inside. You don't have what I'm looking for. You're all dark inside, and I need the other thing."

  Darkness wanted Roy, and he gave himself to it.

  CHAPTER 55

  JONATHAN HARKER, Mercy-born and Mercy-raised, had joined the New Orleans Police Department sixteen years ago.

  All papers substantiating his identity and previous employment history had been impeccably forged. According to these records, he'd been a cop in Atlanta, Georgia.

  Other members of the New Race, already seeded in the department at that time, had falsified follow-up with officials in Atlanta, facilitating his employment. Later they greased his path into the NOPD Homicide Division.

  He had been a good son to Father, dutiful and dedicated... until the past year. He had lost his sense of purpose. The preparations for war against humanity, still at least a decade distant, did not excite or even interest him any longer.

  For several years he had felt... incomplete. Over the preceding twelve months, this feeling had matured into a terrible emptiness, a cold and yawning void at the center of him.

  He recognized in humanity a lust for life, a joy, that he did not possess. He wanted to know how this quality arose in them.

  Every detail of his own physical and mental design had been direct-to-brain downloaded when Jonathan had been in the creation tank, so that he would have a proper awe of Victor, his maker. Thus it occurred to him that by studying human physiology and comparing theirs to his own, he should be able to identify what the Old Race had that he lacked, perhaps a gland that secreted a hormone or an enzyme that was required for happiness.

  He began by studying human biology. He pored through medical texts.