Midnight

Shaddack sighed. 'There won't be any trouble about the boy if they've been brought into the fold.'

The police chief raised his head and found the courage to look directly at Shaddack again. 'But the boy's still dead.' His voice was rough.

Shaddack said, 'That's a tragedy, of course. This regressive element among the New People could not have been foreseen. But no great advancement in human history has been without its victims.'

'He was a fine boy,' the policeman said.

'You knew him?'

Watkins blinked. 'I went to high school with his father, George Valdoski. I was Eddie's godfather.'

Considering his words carefully, Shaddack said, 'It's a terrible thing. And we'll find the regressive who did it. We'll find all of them and eliminate them. Meanwhile, we can take some comfort in the fact that Eddie died in a great cause.'

Watkins regarded Shaddack with unconcealed astonishment. 'Great cause? What did Eddie know of a great cause? He was eight years old.'

'Nevertheless,' Shaddack said, hardening his voice, 'Eddie was caught up in an unexpected side effect of the conversion of Moonlight Cove, which makes him part of this wonderful, historical event.' He knew that Watkins had been a patriot, absurdly proud of his flag and country, and he supposed that some of that sentiment still reposed in the man, even subsequent to conversion, so he said 'Listen to me, Loman. During the Revolutionary War, when the colonists were fighting for independence, some innocent bystanders died, women and children, not just combatants, and those people did not die in vain. They were martyrs every bit as much as the soldiers who perished in the field. It's the same in any revolution. The important thing is that justice prevail and that those who die can be said to have given their lives for a noble purpose.'

Watkins looked away from him.

Rising from his armchair again, Shaddack rounded the low cocktail table to stand beside the policeman. Looking down at Watkins's bowed head, he put one hand on the man's shoulder.

Watkins cringed from the touch.

Shaddack did not move his hand, and he spoke with the fervor of an evangelist. He was a cool evangelist, however, whose message did not involve the hot passion of religious conviction but the icy power of logic, reason. 'You're one of the New People now, and that does not just mean that you're stronger and quicker than ordinary men, and it doesn't just mean you're virtually invulnerable to disease and have a greater power to mend your injuries than anything any faith healer ever dreamed of. It also means you're clearer of mind, more rational than the Old People — so if you consider Eddie's death carefully and in the context of the miracle we're working here, you'll see that the price he paid was not too great. Don't deal with this situation emotionally, Loman; that's definitely not the way of New People. We're making a world that'll be more efficient, more ordered, and infinitely more stable precisely because men and women will have the power to control their emotions, to view every problem and event with the analytical coolness of a computer. Look at Eddie Valdoski's death as but another datum in the great flow of data that is the birth of the New People. You've got the power in you now to transcend human emotional limitations, and when you do transcend them, you'll know true peace and happiness for the first time in your life.'

After a while Loman Watkins raised his head. He turned to look up at Shaddack. 'Will this really lead to peace?'

'Yes.'

'When there's no one left unconverted, will there be brotherhood at last?'

'Yes.'

'Tranquillity?'

'Eternal.'

47

The Talbot house on Conquistador was a three-story redwood with lots of big windows. The property was sloped, and steep stone steps led up from the sidewalk to a shallow porch. No streetlamps lit that block, and there were no walkway or landscape lights at Talbot's, for which Sam was grateful.

Tessa Lockland stood close to him on the porch as he pressed the buzzer, just as she had stayed close all the way from the laundry. Above the noisy rustle of the wind in the trees, he could hear the doorbell ring inside.

Looking back toward Conquistador, Tessa said, 'Sometimes it seems more like a morgue than a town, peopled by the dead, but then …'

'Then?'

'… in spite of the silence and the stillness, you can feel the energy of the place, tremendous pent-up energy, as if there's a huge hidden machine just beneath the streets, beneath the ground … and as if the houses are filled with machinery, too, all of it powered up and straining at cogs and gears, just waiting for someone to engage a clutch and set it all in motion.'

That was exactly Moonlight Cove, but Sam had not been able to put the feeling of the place into words. He rang the bell again and said, 'I thought filmmakers were required to be borderline illiterates.'

'Most Hollywood filmmakers are, but I'm an outcast documentarian, so I'm permitted to think — as long as I don't do too much of it.'

'Who's there?' said a tinny voice, startling Sam. It came from an intercom speaker that he'd not noticed. 'Who's there, please?'

Sam leaned close to the intercom. 'Mr. Talbot? Harold Talbot?'

'Yes. Who're you?'

'Sam Booker,' he said quietly, so his voice would not carry past the perimeter of Talbot's porch. 'Sorry to wake you, but I've come in response to your letter of October eighth.'

Talbot was silent. Then the intercom clicked, and he said, 'I'm on the third floor. I'll need time to get down there. Meanwhile I'll send Moose. Please give him your ID so he can bring it to me.'

'I have no Bureau ID,' Sam whispered. 'I'm undercover here.'

'Driver's license?' Talbot asked.

'Yes.'

'That's enough.' He clicked off.

'Moose?' Tessa asked.

'Damned if I know,' Sam said.

They waited almost a minute, feeling vulnerable on the exposed porch, and they were both startled again when a dog pushed out through a pet door they had not seen, brushing between their legs. For an instant Sam didn't realize what it was, and he stumbled backward in surprise, nearly losing his balance.

Stooping to pet the dog, Tessa whispered, 'Moose?'

A flicker of light had come through the small swinging door with the dog; but that was gone now that the door was closed. The dog was black and hardly visible in the night.

Squatting beside it, letting it lick his hand, Sam said, 'I'm supposed to give my ID to you?'

The dog wuffed softly, as if answering in the affirmative.

'You'll eat it,' Sam said.

Tessa said, 'He won't.'

'How do you know?'

'He's a good dog.'

'I don't trust him.'

'I guess that's your job.'

'Huh?'

'Not to trust anyone.'

'And my nature.'