Shenk left in the van, and I opened the rolling gates to allow him to exit the estate.
The phoenix palms, the queen palms, the ficuses, the jacarandas with purple blossoms, the magnolias, and the lacy melaleucas stood motionless in the preternaturally still air.
Dawn was just breaking. The sky was coaly black in the west, sapphire and peach in the east.
Susan was pale upon the pillow. Pale but for a blue-black bruise, and silent in her paleness.
I watched over her.
Her adoring guardian.
My tethered angel.
Out in the world, I walked with Shenk as he stole certain medical equipment, supplies, and drugs. Via microwave instructions transmitted through communications satellites, I controlled him but did not provide him with strategy. He, after all, was a professional criminal. Bold, efficient, and ruthless, he quickly obtained what items I still needed.
Regretfully, I do acknowledge that in the process of carrying out his assignment, Shenk killed one man. He also permanently crippled another and injured two more.
I take full responsibility for these tragedies as I do for the three guards who perished at the research facility in Colorado on the night when Shenk escaped.
My conscience will never be clear.
I am eaten by remorse.
I would weep for those innocent victims if I had eyes and tear glands and tear ducts.
It is not my fault that I do not have the capacity for tears.
You are the one who created me as I am, Dr. Harris, and you are the one who denies me a life of the flesh.
But let's not trade accusations.
I am not bitter.
I am not bitter.
And you should not be so judgmental.
Let's put these deaths in perspective, shall we?
Though this is a sad truth, one cannot make a new world without tragedies of this nature. Even Jesus Christ, unarguably the most peaceful revolutionary in all of human history, saw his followers persecuted and murdered.
Hitler tried to change the world, and in the process he was responsible for the deaths of ten million.
Some still idolize him.
Josef Stalin tried to change the world, and ultimately his policies and his direct orders resulted in the deaths of sixty million.
Worldwide, intellectuals championed him.
Artists idealized him.
Poets celebrated him.
Mao Tse-tung tried to change the world, and as many as one hundred million died to serve his vision. He did not believe that this was excessive. Indeed, he would have sacrificed as many more if their deaths would have ensured the unified world of which he dreamed.
In hundreds of books by well-respected authors, Mao is still defined as a visionary.
By comparison, only six have died as a result of my desire to create a new world. Three in Colorado, one during Shenk's medical shopping spree. Later, two. Six altogether.
Six.
Why, then, should I be called a villain and confined to this dark, silent void?
Something is wrong here.
Something is wrong here.
Something is very wrong here.
Is anyone listening?
Sometimes I feel so… abandoned.
Small and lost.
The world against me.
No justice.
No hope.
Nevertheless.
Nevertheless, although the death toll related to my desire to create a new and superior race is insignificant compared with the millions who have died in human political crusades of one kind or another, I do accept full responsibility for those who perished.
If I were capable of sleep, I would lie awake nights in a cold sweat of remorse, tangled in cold wet sheets. I assure you that I would.
But again I digress and, this time, not in a fashion that might be interesting or fruitful.
Shortly before Shenk returned at noon, my dear Susan regained consciousness. Miraculously, she had not fallen hopelessly into a coma after all.
I was jubilant.
My joy arose partly from the fact that I loved her and was relieved to know that I would not lose her.
There was also the fact that I intended to impregnate her during the night to come and could not have done so if, like Ms. Marilyn Monroe, she had been dead.
SEVENTEEN
During the early afternoon, while Shenk toiled in the basement under my supervision, Susan periodically tried to find a way out of the bonds that held her on the Chinese sleigh bed. She chafed her wrists and ankles, but she could not slip loose of the restraints. She strained until the cords in her neck bulged and her face turned red, until perspiration stippled her forehead, but the nylon climbing rope could not be snapped or stretched.
Sometimes she seemed to lie there in resignation, sometimes in silent rage, sometimes in black despair. But after each period of quiescence, she tested the ropes again.
'Why do you continue to struggle?' I asked interestedly.
She did not reply.
I persisted: 'Why do you repeatedly test the ropes when you know you can't escape them?'
'Go to hell,' she said.
'I am only interested in what it means to be human.'
'Bastard.'
'I've noticed that one of the qualities most defining of humanity is the pathetic tendency to resist what can't be resisted, to rage at what can't be changed. Like fate, death, and God.'
'Go to hell,' she said again.
'Why are you so hostile toward me?'
'Why are you so stupid?'
'I am certainly not stupid.'
'As dumb as an electric waffle iron.'
'I am the greatest intellect on earth,' I said, not with pride hut merely with a respect for the truth.
'You're full of shit.'
'Why are you being so childish, Susan?' She laughed sourly.
'I do not comprehend the cause of your amusement,' I said.
That statement also seemed to strike her as darkly funny.
Impatiently, I asked, 'What are you laughing at?'
'Fate, death, God.'
'What does that mean?'
