Denied the choice of turning off the pain, she suffered. He knew precisely how to maximize that suffering. He kicked, kicked.

Although he had enhanced his body, Victor was not the physical equal of one of the New Race. In time he exhausted himself and stood sweat-soaked, gasping for breath.

Every injury she sustained, of course, would heal without scar. Already, her lacerations were healing, her broken bones knitting together.

If he wished to let her live, she would be as good as new in just a day or two. She would smile for him again. She would serve him as before. That was not his wish.

Pulling a straightbacked chair away from a reading desk, he said, “Get up. Sit here.”

She was a mess, but she managed to get to her knees and then to the chair. She sat with her head bowed for a moment. Then she raised it and straightened her back.

His people were amazing. Tough. Resilient. In their way, proud.

Leaving her in the chair, he went to the library bar and poured cognac from a decanter into a snifter.

He wanted to be calmer when he killed her. In his current state of agitation, he would not be able fully to enjoy the moment.

At a window, with his back to her, he sipped the cognac and watched the contusive sky as its bruises grew darker, darker. Rain would come with nightfall, if not before.

They said that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. They were lying. First, there was no God. Only brutal nature.

Second, Victor knew from hard experience that the creation of a new world was a frustrating, often a tedious, and a time-consuming endeavor.

Eventually, calm and prepared, he returned to Erika. She sat in the chair as he had left her.

Taking off his sport jacket and draping it over the back of an armchair, he said, “This can be a perfect city. One day … a perfect world. Ordinary flawed humanity—they resist perfection. One day they will be … replaced. All of them.”

She sat in silence, head raised, but not looking at him, gazing instead at the books on the shelves.

He removed his necktie.

‘A world stripped clean of fumbling humanity, Erika. I wish you could be here with us to see it.”

When creating a wife for himself, he modified— in just a few ways—the standard physiology that he gave to other members of the New Race.

For one thing, strangling one of them would have been extremely difficult. Even if the subject had been obedient and docile, the task might have taken a long time, might even have proved too difficult.

Every Erika, on the other hand, had a neck structure—windpipe, carotid arteries—that made her as vulnerable to a garrote as was any member of the Old Race. He could have terminated her in other ways, but he wished the moment to be intimate; strangulation satisfied that desire.

Standing behind her chair, he bent to kiss her neck.

“This is very difficult for me, Erika.”

When she did not reply, he stood straight and gripped the necktie in both hands. Silk. Quite elegant. And strong.

“I’m a creator and a destroyer, but I prefer to create.”

He looped the tie around her neck.

“My greatest weakness is my compassion,” he said, “and I must purge myself of it if I’m to make a better world based on rationality and reason.”

Savoring the moment, Victor was surprised to hear her say, “I forgive you for this.”

Her unprecedented audacity so stunned him that his breath caught in his throat.

When he spoke, the words came in a rush: “Forgive me? I am not of a station to need forgiveness, and you are not of a position to have the power to grant it. Does the man who eats the steak need the forgiveness of the steer from which it was carved? You foolish bitch. And less than a bitch because no whelp would ever have come from your loins if you had lived a thousand years.”

Quietly, calmly, almost tenderly, she said, “But I will never forgive you for having made me.”

Her audacity had grown to effrontery, to impudence so shocking that it robbed him of all the pleasure that he expected from this strangulation. To Victor, creation and destruction were equally satisfying expressions of power. Power alone motivated him: the power to defy nature and to bend it to his will, the power to control others, the power to shape the destiny of both the Old Race and the New, the power to overcome his own weaker impulses.

He strangled her now, cut off the blood supply to her brain, crushed her windpipe, strangled her, strangled her, but with such fury, in such a blind rage, that by the time he finished, he was not a man of power but merely a grunting beast fully in the thrall of nature, out of control, lost to reason and rationality.

In her dying, Erika had not only denied him but defeated him, humiliated him, as he had not been in more than two centuries.

Choking with wrath, he pulled books off the shelves, threw them to the floor, scores of books, hundreds, tore them and ground them under his heels. Tore them and ground them. Threw them and tore them.

Later, he went to the master suite. He showered. Restless and energized, he had no interest in relaxation. He dressed to go out, though he did not know for where or what purpose.

From another decanter, he poured another cognac into another snifter.

On the intercom, he spoke with William, the butler, who was on duty in the staff room. “There’s a dead thing in the library William.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Contact my people in the sanitation department. I want that useless meat buried deep in the landfill, and right away”

At the window, he studied the lowering sky, which had grown so dark with thunderheads that an early dusk had come upon the city

CHAPTER 85

AT HARKER’S APARTMENT BUILDING, Carson and Michael took the elevator to the fourth floor to avoid the stink of mildew in the public stairwell.

Homicide, CSI, and curious neighbors had long ago faded away. The building almost seemed deserted.

When they reached the fourth floor, they found Deucalion waiting in the hallway, outside Harker’s apartment.

To Carson, Michael murmured, “I didn’t see the Batmobile parked out front.”

“You won’t admit it,” she said, “but you’re convinced.”

To her surprise, he said, ‘Almost.”

Evidently having heard Michael’s murmured words, Deucalion said, “I used the Batcopter. It’s on the roof.”

By way of apology, Michael said, “Listen, that crack didn’t mean anything. That’s just me. If I see a joke, I go for it.”

“Because you see so much in life that disturbs you, the cruelty, the hatred,” Deucalion said. “You armor yourself with humor.”

For the second time in an hour, Michael found himself without a comeback.

Carson had never imagined that such a day would dawn. Maybe this was one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse.

She slit the police seal on the door, used her Lockaid gun, and led them inside.

“Minimalism minimalized,” said Deucalion as he moved into the sparsely furnished living room. “No books.”

“He’s got some books in the attic,” Carson said.

“No mementoes,” Deucalion continued, “no decorative items, no photographs, no art. He hasn’t found a way to have a life. This is the cell of a monk … but one who has no faith.”

Trying to get back in the saddle, Michael said, “Carson, he’s an absolute whiz at this.”

Deucalion looked toward the kitchen but didn’t move in that direction. “He sometimes sits at the table in there, drinking. But whiskey doesn’t provide him with the escape he needs. Only occasional oblivion.”

Earlier, the standard premises search had turned up a case of bourbon in the kitchen.

Looking toward the bedroom, Deucalion said, “In there, you will most likely find pornography. Only a single item. One video.”

“Exactly,” she confirmed. “We found one.”

When it turned up in the search, Michael had referred to the p**n video by various titles — Transvestitesylvania, The Thing with Two Things—but now he said nothing, impressed to silence by Deucalion’s insights.

“He found no thrill in images of copulation,” Deucalion said. “Only an even more profound sense of being an outsider. Only greater alienation.”

CHAPTER 86

FEARFUL OF the day-bright world in all its dazzling busyness, Randal Six earlier took refuge in an alleyway Dumpster.

Fortunately, this enormous container is half filled with nothing more offensive than office trash, largely paper and cardboard. There is no restaurant or produce-market garbage, no organic stench and slime.

Throughout the day, until the storm clouds come, the sun beats down on Randal. This is the first sun of his life, bright and hot, frightening at first, but then less so.

He sits with his back to a corner, cushioned by paper refuse, his world reduced to manageable dimensions, and works one crossword puzzle after another in the book that he brought with him from his room in the Hands of Mercy.

Frequently traffic passes through the alleyway. And people on foot. Initially he pauses in his puzzle at each possibility of an encounter, but eventually he realizes that they are not likely to disturb him.

If a sanitation truck comes to empty the Dumpster, he is not sure how he will cope. This possibility didn’t occur to him until he had already taken sanctuary in the container. His hope is that trash is not collected every day Having missed breakfast and then lunch, he grows hungry as the day progresses. Considering his accomplishments to this point, he can endure a little hunger.

At Mercy, Randal’s untouched meals will alert the staff to his absence, though perhaps not for a while. Sometimes, when particularly deep in autistic detachment, he leaves a meal untouched for hours. He has been known to eat both breakfast and lunch an hour before dinner—then leave his dinner until near midnight.

Before departing Mercy, he closed his bathroom door. They may think that he is in there.

From time to time, people toss bags of trash and loose objects into the bin. The top of the big Dumpster is over their heads, so they cannot easily look in and see him.

Sometimes the trash strikes him, but it’s never a problem. When the people leave, Randal pushes the new stuff away and reestablishes his cozy nest. Midafternoon, a man singing “King of the Road” approaches along the alley He can’t carry a tune.

Judging by the sound, he’s pushing some kind of cart. The wheels clatter on the cracked pavement.

Between lines of the song, the cart-pusher grumbles incoherent chains of four-letter words, then resumes singing.

When this man stops at the Dumpster, Randal Six puts aside his puzzle book and pen. Instinct tells him that there may be trouble.

Two grimy hands appear at the rim of the bin. The singer takes a grip, grunts and curses as he clambers up the side of the Dumpster.

Balanced on the edge of the big container, half in and half out, the man spots Randal. His eyes widen. The guy is perhaps in his thirties, bearded, in need of a bath. His teeth are crooked and yellow when he reveals them to say “This here’s my territory, as**ole.”

Randal reaches up, grabs the man by his shirtsleeves, pulls him into the Dumpster, and breaks his neck. He rolls the dead body to the farther end of the container and covers it with bags of trash.

In his corner once more, he picks up the puzzle book. He turns to his page and finishes spelling derangement.

The dead man’s cart stands near the Dumpster.

Eventually someone might notice it and wonder about its owner.

Randal will have to deal with the problem if and when it arises. Meanwhile, crosswords.

Time passes. Clouds darken the sky. Although still warm, the day grows cooler.

Randal Six is not happy, but he is content, at ease. Later, he will be happy for the first time.

In his mind’s eye is the city map, his route to happiness, the O’Connor house at the end of the journey, his guiding star.

CHAPTER 87

BECAUSE OF their fine-tuned metabolism, members of the New Race did not easily become drunk. Their capacity for drink was great, and when they did become inebriated, they sobered more quickly than did those of the Old Race.

Throughout the day, Father Duchaine and Har-ker opened bottle after bottle of communion wine. This use of the church’s inventory troubled the priest both because it was in effect a misappropriation of funds and because the wine, once blessed, would have become the sacred blood of Christ.

Being a soulless creature made by man but charged with religious duty, Father Duchaine had over the months and years grown ever more torn between what he was and what he wished to be.

Regardless of the moral issue of using this particular wine for purposes other than worship, the alcoholic content of the brew was less than they might have wished. Late in the afternoon, they began to spike it with Father Duchaine’s supply of vodka.

Sitting in armchairs in the rectory study, the priest and the detective tried for the tenth—or perhaps the twentieth—time to pull the most troubling thorns from each other’s psyches.

“Father will find me soon,” Harker predicted. “He’ll stop me.”

“And me,” the priest said morosely.

“But I don’t feel guilty about what I’ve done.”

“Thou shall not kill.”

“Even if there is a God, His commandments can’t apply to us,” said Harker. “We’re not His children.”

“Our maker has also forbidden us to murder . . . except on his instructions.”

“But our maker isn’t God. He’s more like . . . the plantation owner. Murder isn’t a sin . . . just disobedience.”

“It’s still a crime,” said Father Duchaine, troubled by Harker’s self-justifications, even though the plantation-owner analogy had a measure of truth in it.

Sitting on the edge of his armchair, leaning forward, tumbler of vodka-spiked wine clasped in both hands, Harker said, “Do you believe in evil?”

“People do terrible things,” the priest said. “I mean, real people, the Old Race. For children of God, they do terrible, terrible things.”

“But evil,” Harker pressed. “Evil pure and purposeful? Is evil a real presence in the world?”

The priest drank from his glass, then said, “The church allows exorcisms. I’ve never performed one.”

With the solemnity of both profound dread and too much booze, Harker said, “Is he evil?”

“Victor?” Father Duchaine felt that he was on dangerous ground. “He’s a hard man, not easy to like. His jokes aren’t funny”

Harker rose from his chair, went to a window, and studied the low, threatening sky that impressed an early dusk upon the day After a while, he said, “If he’s evil. . . then what are we? I’ve been so … confused lately But I don’t feel evil. Not like Hitler or Lex Luthor. Just . . . incomplete.”