How they goggled at him, abashed by his wisdom and knowledge, mortified by their ignorance, overawed by his godlike power.
Raising his arms and spreading them wide, Victor said, “I understand the awe in which you hold your maker, but always remember that the best way to honor him is to bend more diligently to his work, give of yourselves as never before, commit every fiber of your being to the fulfillment of his vision.”
As they came forward, Victor realized that they intended to lift him high and bear him to his office, as throughout history so many enraptured crowds had borne returning heroes through streets to halls of honor. Previously, he would have chastised them for wasting his time and their own. But perhaps this once, considering the momentous nature of the day’s events and of his ascendance to the company of the immortals, he would indulge them, because allowing them to attend him in this way, he would surely be inspiring them to greater efforts on his behalf.
CHAPTER 68
JOCKO IN DESPAIR. Rain-soaked. Feet pulled up on the passenger seat. Thin arms around his legs. Baseball cap turned backward.
Erika behind the wheel. Not driving. Staring at the night.
Victor not dead. Should be but not.
Jocko not dead. Should be but not. Total screwup.
“Jocko is never gonna eat another bug,” Jocko said.
She just stared at the night. Said nothing.
Jocko wished she would say something.
Maybe she would do the right thing. Beat Jocko to death. He deserved it. But no. She was too nice. Typical Jocko luck.
There were things he could do. Put down the power window. Stick his head out. Power the window up. Cut off his head.
Erika said, “I’m programmed for obedience. I’ve done things I knew he wouldn’t approve of—but I haven’t actively disobeyed him.”
Jocko could take off his T-shirt. Tear it in strips. Pack strips in his nose. Roll up his cap. Stuff it down his throat. Suffocate.
“Something’s happened to me tonight,” she said. “I don’t know. Maybe I could drive right by the farm, maybe just drive and drive forever.”
Jocko could go into woods. Prick a thumb. Wait for wild pigs to smell blood, come and eat him.
“But I’m afraid to pop the parking brake and drive. What if I can’t pass the place? What if I pull in there? What if I’m not even able to let you go free on your own?”
Jocko raised one hand. “May I say?”
“What is it?”
“Jocko wonders if you have an ice pick.”
“Why do you need an ice pick?”
“Do you have one?”
“No.”
“Never mind.”
She leaned forward. Forehead on steering wheel. Closed her eyes. Made a thin, sad sound.
Should be possible to commit suicide with a tire jack. Think about it. Think. Think.
“May I say?”
“Say what?”
“See Jocko’s ear?”
“Yes.”
“Is ear hole big enough, he could fit in the end of your tire jack?”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“Never mind.”
With sudden determination, she released the parking brake. Put the 550 in gear, drove out of the rest area.
“Are we going somewhere?” Jocko asked.
“Somewhere.”
“Will we go past a high cliff?”
“No. Not on this road.”
“Will we cross any train tracks?”
“I’m not sure. Why?”
“Never mind.”
CHAPTER 69
AS VICTOR CONSENTED to the attentions of the adoring crowd, he realized that in addition to the staff of the tank farm, Deucalion was also present, and Detectives O’Connor and Maddison, as well.
How brilliant he had been to foresee that very soon synchronicity would restore balance to his world, correct all errors by the mechanism of astonishing coincidence. The very presence of his first-made and the detectives confirmed his elevation to the status of an immortal, and he looked forward to seeing by what meaningful coincidence they would be killed.
He still carried a pistol in a shoulder rig, under his suit coat, but it would be beneath him to shoot the trio himself, for he was now not merely the singular genius he had always been, but also such a paragon of reason and logic that the most powerful forces in the universe operated for his benefit. Self-defense was a necessity of the common herd, of which he had never been a member and from which he was now even farther removed. Synchronicity and no doubt other recondite mechanisms would come to his assistance in dazzling and unexpected ways.
Many hands lifted him off the floor, and he thought his people might carry him seated upright on their shoulders, like a Chinese emperor of old was transported aloft in an ornate chair, might carry him to his office where the great work would continue, greater even than everything he had heretofore accomplished. But in their zeal, in their earnest enthusiasm to celebrate their maker, they pulled him supine, and two phalanxes of bearers supported him between them, on their shoulders, so he faced the ceiling unless he turned his head to one side or the other. Their grips on his ankles, legs, wrists, and arms were firm and their strength was more than adequate to the task, because he made his people strong and engineered them with endurance, the endurance of good machines.
Suddenly his bearers were on the move, and the many others crowded close, perhaps hoping they might be able to touch him or hoping that he might turn his head toward them and look upon them, so they could say years hence that they had been here on this historic day and that he had met their eyes and knew them and smiled. The atmosphere was festive, and many seemed jubilant, which was not a mood easily achieved by the New Race, considering their programming. Then Victor realized that they were future-focused on the triumphs their master would achieve in this new facility, looking forward to the day—now so much closer—when the relentless killing of the hated Old Race would begin. This must be the source of their jubilation: the prospect of genocide, the scourging from the world of every last human being to ever have spoken of God.
Evidently they had more in mind than just transporting him to his desk, because although his office was on the main floor, they carried him down two flights of stairs as effortlessly as across flat terrain. They must have some special honor in mind. And though Victor had no need for the approval of their kind, had no desire in fact for the approval of anyone, he was now committed to the tedium that such a ceremony would no doubt involve.
But then something occurred that made the moment interesting again: the celebratory atmosphere faded, and a hush fell upon the crowd. It seemed to him that reverence was the mood of the moment, which of course was more suited to an occasion when such as they would honor one of Victor’s exalted position. Reverence indeed, for torches were lit, apparently saturated with a spiced oil that produced a fragrance as pleasant as that of incense. Warming to his role as the object of devotion, he turned his head left and right, allowing them to see his face more than just in profile—and during one of these dispensations of his grace, he saw Erika in the crowd, smiling, and he was disposed to smile at her, as well, for she had brought with her the creature born of Harker, which had saved him from Chameleon, although at the moment, that dwarfish mutant was not to be seen.
Now they entered a passageway of raw earth glistening as if with lacquer, and he was reminded of the raw earth of yawning graves in a prison cemetery so long ago, dickering with the hangman at the brink of the hole. He was reminded of the raw earth of mass graves across the world over the years, where the executioners allowed him to cull from the doomed herd those for whom he might have a use in his experiments. How grateful the rescued always were to him, until that moment in the lab when they realized why they had been saved, and then they cursed him, unable to appreciate, in their cow-stupid way, what an opportunity he had given them, this chance to be part of history. He used them hard and used them well, whether as laborers or subjects of experiment. No other scientist ever born could have used them half as well. And therefore their contribution to posterity was immensely more than they could have made by their own wits.
From the passage with earthen walls, they proceeded into a most unusual corridor. Overhead, not a foot in front of his face, spread an inventive decoupage of crushed cracker boxes, myriad cereal boxes, flattened soup cans, packages that had once contained antihistamines and suppositories and laxatives, tangles of frayed rope, a worn-out slipper, red-white-and-blue political posters proclaiming the right, the need, the duty to vote, a soiled platinum-blond wig, crushed skeletons of long-dead rats, a garland of red Christmas tinsel as sinuous as a boa, a doll with a smashed face and one staring eye, the other socket empty.
After the doll’s face, he lost sight of the lacquered montage past which he was carried, and saw instead a thousand faces exhumed from his memory, broken faces and startled faces and bloody faces and faces half peeled back from the bone, the faces of men and women and children, those whom he had used and used so well, and not merely a thousand but two thousand, multitudes. They didn’t frighten him, but filled him with contempt, for he despised the weak who would let him use them. They thrilled him because he had always been thrilled by his power to bring others to the realization that they were nothing but meat, to strip from them their fragile defenses, their trust in justice, their childish illusions that they mattered, their delusions of meaning, their idiot faith, their hope, and even their sense of self, until in the end they wanted to be nothing but meat, unthinking meat and sick of life.
When faces from the past stopped cascading through his mind, he found that he had been carried out of the passageway into a gallery with a floor curved like a bowl. This seemed to be their destination, for here they stopped. When they brought him off their shoulders and put him on his feet, he stood bewildered because every face in the crowd was now that of a stranger. “So many faces,” he said, “tumbling through my mind like blown leaves moments ago…. Now I can’t recall one of them or who they were. Or who you are.” A terrible confusion overcame him. “Or my face. How do I appear? What name do I go by?”
Then out of the crowd stepped a giant, the right half of this face badly broken and the damage only half disguised by an intricate tattoo. Looking at the wholesome side of the face, he sensed that he had known this man before, and then he heard himself say, “Why … you are one of my children … come home at last.”
The tattooed man said, “You were never a madman during any moment of your diabolical work. You were wicked from the moment of your first intention, rotten with pride, your every desire venomous and unwholesome, your every act corrupt, your arrogance unbridled, your cruelty inexhaustible, your soul bargained away for power over others, your heart empty of feeling. You were evil, not mad, and you thrived on evil, it was your sustenance. Now I will not permit you to escape awareness of the justice you receive. I will not let you escape into insanity, because I have the power to hold you to the reality of your vicious life.”
The giant put a hand upon the head of the insane, and at the touch, the madness blinked away, and Victor knew again who he was, where he was, and why he had been brought here. He reached for the pistol under his jacket, but the giant caught his hand and broke his fingers in a crushing grip.
CHAPTER 70
ERIKA FIVE WHEELED the SUV to the curb and stopped a few yards short of the entrance to the tank farm, Gegenangriff, Inc.
What little character the building possessed was faded by the darkness and the rain.
“How nondescript the place looks,” she said. “Why, it might be anything or nothing much at all.”
The troll was sitting up straight in his seat. Usually busy with elaborating gestures or making meaningless rhythms, his hands were still, folded on his chest.
“Jocko understands.”
“What do you understand, Jocko?”
“If you have to take him in there. Jocko understands.”
“You don’t want to go in there.”
“It’s okay. Whatever. Jocko doesn’t want you in trouble.”
“Why do you owe me anything?” she asked.
“You were kind to Jocko.”
“We’ve known each other only one night.”
“You squeezed a lot of kindness into one night.”
“Not that much.”
“The only kindness Jocko ever knew.”
After a mutual silence, she said, “You ran. You were faster than me. I lost you.”
“He wouldn’t believe that.”
“Go. Just go, Jocko. I can’t take you in there with me.”
His yellow eyes were no less eerie and no less beautiful than when she had first seen them.
“Where would Jocko go?”
“There’s a whole beautiful world.”
“And none of it wants Jocko.”
“Don’t go in there and let him carve you up,” she said. “You’re more than meat.”
“So are you. So much more than meat.”
She couldn’t look at him. It wasn’t the ugliness that was hard to take. His vulnerability broke both her hearts, and his humility, and his brave little soul.
“The pull of the program is strong,” she said. “The command to obey. Like a riptide.”
“If you go in, Jocko goes in.”
“No.”
Jocko shrugged. “You can’t choose for Jocko.”
“Please, Jocko. Don’t put this on me.”
“May I say?” When she nodded, he said, “Jocko could know what it’s like to have a mother. And you could know what it’s like to be one. It would be a little family, but still a family.”
CHAPTER 71
IN THE SUBTERRANEAN GALLERY, Victor stood at the center of the crowd, determined that this ignorant rabble would never hear him ask for mercy or concede the truth of their accusations.
He realized that the employees of the landfill were here. And several Alphas he had terminated, somehow revived.
Erika Four came to him out of the mob, stood face-to-face and met his eyes, and was not cowed. She raised a fist as if to hit him, but lowered it without striking. “I am not as low as you,” she said, and turned away.
And here was Carson O’Connor, Maddison standing behind her with a hand on her shoulder, a German shepherd at her side. She said, “Don’t bother lying to me. I know my father saw something that got him on your case. You ordered your zombies to kill him and my mother.”
“I killed them both myself,” Victor said. “And he begged like a little boy for his life.”
She smiled and shook her head. “He begged for my mother’s life, I’m sure. He would humble himself for her. But he never begged for his own. Rot in hell.”