Prodigal Son

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 porn 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.