kill himself to avoid falling into the hands of the authorities, he would become a nearly mythical figure of dark inspiration, whose malign legend would encourage legions of the mad and power-mad, a Hitler for the silicon age.
Loman braked at the end of the row of cars.
He wiped at his greasy face. His hand was shaking.
He was filled with a longing to abandon this responsibility and seek the Pressure-free existence of the regressive.
But he resisted.
If Loman killed Shaddack first, before Shaddack had a chance to kill himself, the legend would be finished. Loman would die a few seconds after Shaddack died, as would all the New People, but at least the legend would have to incorporate the fact that this high-tech Jim Jones had perished at the hands of one of the creatures he'd created. His power would be shown to be finite; he would be seen as clever but not clever enough, a flawed god, sharing both the hubris and the fate of Wells's Moreau, and his work more universally would be viewed as folly.
Loman turned right, drove to the row of executive parking spaces, and was disappointed to see that neither Shaddack's Mercedes nor his charcoal-gray van was in his reserved slot. He might still be there. He could have been driven to the office by someone else or could have parked elsewhere.
Loman swung his cruiser into Shaddack's reserved space. He cut the engine.
He was carrying his revolver in a hip holster. He had checked twice before to be sure it was fully loaded. He checked again.
Between Shaddack's house and New Wave, Loman had parked along the road to write a note, which he would leave on Shaddack's body, clearly explaining that he had killed his maker. When authorities entered Moonlight Cove from the unconverted world beyond, they would find the note and know.
He would execute Shaddack not because he was motivated by noble purpose. Such high-minded self-sacrifice required a depth of feeling he could no longer achieve. He would murder Shaddack strictly because he was terrified that Shaddack would learn about Denny, or would discover that others had become what Denny had become, and would find a way to make all of them enter into an unholy union with machines.
Those blood-freezing images, and others, played through, Loman's mind on an endless loop of memory.
He'd kill Shaddack to save himself from being forced to become what Denny had become, and the destruction of Shaddack's legend would just be a beneficial side-effect.
He holstered his gun and got out of the car. He hurried through the rain to the main entrance, pushed through the etched-glass doors into the marble-floored lobby, turned right, away from the elavators, and approached the main reception desk. In corporate luxury, the place rivaled the most elaborate headquarters of high-tech companies in the more famous Silicon Valley, farther south. Detailed marble moldings, polished brass trim, fine crystal sconces, and modernistic crystal chandeliers were testament to New Wave's success.
The woman on duty was Dora Hankins. He had known her all of his life. She was a year older than he. In high school he had dated her sister a couple of times.
She looked up as he approached, said nothing.
'Shaddack?' he said.
'Not in.'
'You sure?'
'Yes.'
'When's he due?'
'His secretary will know.'
'I'll go up.'
'Fine.'
As he boarded an elevator and pushed the 3 on the control board, Loman reflected on the small talk in which he and Dora Hankins would have engaged in the days before they had been put through the Change. They would have bantered with each other, exchanged news about their families, and commented on the weather. Not now. Small talk was a pleasure of their former world. Converted, they had no use for it. In fact, though he recalled that small talk had once been a part of civilized life, Loman could no longer quite remember why he ever had found it worthwhile or what kind of pleasure it had given him.
Shaddack's office suite was on the northwest corner of the third floor. The first room off the hall was the reception lounge, Plushly carpeted in beige Edward Fields originals, impressively furnished in plump Roche-Bobois leather couches and brass tables with inch-thick glass tops. The single piece of art was a Painting by Jasper Johns — an original, not a print.
What happens to artists in the new word coming? Loman wondered.
But he knew the answer. There would be none. Art was emotion embodied in paint on a canvas, words on a page, music in a symphony hall. There would be no art in the new world. And if there was, it would be the art of fear. The writer's most frequently used words would all be synonyms of darkness. The musician would write dirges of one form or another. The painter's most used pigment would be black.
Vicky Lanardo, Shaddack's executive secretary, was at her desk. She said, 'He's not in.'
Behind her the door to Shaddack's enormous private office stood open. No lights were on in there. It was illuminated only by the light of the storm-torn day, which came through the blinds in ash-gray bands.
'When will he be in?' Loman asked.
'I don't know.'
'No appointments?'
'None.'
'Do you know where he is?'
'No.'
Loman walked out. For a while he prowled the half-deserted corridors, offices, labs, and tech rooms, hoping to spot Shaddack.
Before long, however, he decided that Shaddack was not lurking about the premises. Evidently the great man was staying mobile on this last day of Moonlight Cove's conversion.
Because of me, Loman thought. Because of what I said to him last. night at Peyser's. He's afraid of me, and he's either staying mobile or gone to ground somewhere, making himself difficult to find.
Loman left the building, returned to his patrol car, and set out in search of his maker.
26
In the downstairs half-bath off the kitchen, naked from the waist up, Sam sat on the closed lid of the commode, and Tessa performed the same kind of nursing duties she'd performed earlier for Chrissie. But Sam's wounds were more serious than the girl's.
In a dime-size circle on his forehead, above his right eye, the skin had been tensed off, and in the center of the circle the flesh had been entirely eaten away, revealing a speck of bared bone about an eighth of an inch in diameter. Stanching the flow of blood from those tiny, severed capillaries required a few minutes of continuous pressure, followed by the application of iodine, a liberal coating of NuSkin, and a tightly taped gauze bandage. But even after all these efforts, the gauze slowly darkened with red stain.
As Tessa worked on him, Sam told them what had happened:
'… so if I hadn't shot her in the head, just then … if I'd been a second or two slower, I think that damn thing, that probe, whatever it was, it would have bored right through my skull and sunk into my brain, and she'd have connected with me the way she was connected with that computer.'
Her toga forsaken in favor of dry jeans and blouse, Chrissie stood just inside the bathroom, white-faced but
