O’Connor and Maddison claimed that a trollish creature had come out of Harker, as if shedding a cocoon. They had seen it drop out of sight through a manhole, into a storm drain.
By the time that he finished with Harker and took tissue samples for later study, Victor had fallen into a bad mood.
As they bagged Harker’s remains and set them aside for shipment to Crosswoods, Ripley asked, “Where is Harker’s second self now, Mr. Helios?”
“It fled into a storm drain. It’s dead.”
“How do you know it’s dead?”
“I
They turned next to William, the butler, who waited on a second autopsy table.
Although he believed that William’s finger chewing episode had been triggered solely by psychological collapse, Victor nevertheless opened the butler’s torso and inventoried his organs, just to make certain that no second self had begun to form. He found no evidence of mutation.
With a bone saw of Victor’s design, one with a diamond blade sharp enough to grind through the dense bone of any New Man, they trepanned William’s skull. They removed his brain and put it in preservative solution in a Tupperware container for later sectioning and study.
William’s fate clearly did not alarm Ripley as did Harker’s. He had seen this sort of thing before.
Victor brought to life a perfect being with a perfect mind, but contact with the Old Race, immersion in their sick society, sometimes corrupted the tank born.
This would continue to be an occasional problem until the Old Race was eradicated and with it the social order and pre-Darwinian morality that it had created. Thereafter, following the Last War, without the paradigm of the Old Race to confuse and seduce them, Victor’s people would always and forever exist in perfect mental health, every last one of them.
When they were finished with William, Ripley said, “Mr. Helios, sir, I’m sorry, but I can’t stop wondering, can’t stop thinking — is it possible that what happened to Harker could happen to me?”
“No. I told you, he was a singularity.”
“But, sir, I beg your pardon if this sounds impertinent… however, if you didn’t expect it to happen the first time, how can you be sure it won’t happen again?”
Stripping off his latex surgical gloves, Victor said, “Damn it, Ripley, stop that with your eyebrows.”
“My eyebrows, sir?”
“You know what I mean. Clean up here.”
“Sir, is it possible that Harker’s consciousness, the essence of his mind, somehow transferred to his second self?”
Taking off the surgical gown that he wore over his clothes, moving toward the door of the dissection room, Victor said, “No. It was a parasitical mutation, most likely with nothing but a crude animal awareness.”
“But, sir, if the trollish thing isn’t a thing, after all, sir, if it’s actually Harker himself, and now he’s living in the storm drains, then he’s free.”
The word
When Ripley realized his error, fear brought his eyebrows down from their absurdly lofty heights and beetled them on the cliff of his brow. “I don’t mean to suggest that what happened to Harker could be in any way desirable.”
“Don’t you, Ripley?”
“No, sir. I don’t. It’s a horror, what happened to him.”
Victor stared at him. Ripley dared not say another word.
After a long mutual silence, Victor said, “In addition to your eyebrows, Ripley, you’re far too excitable. Annoyingly so.”
Chapter 28
Moving hesitantly through the kitchen in a state of awe, Randal Six imagines that this must be what a devout monk feels when in a temple, at a consecrated altar.
For the first time in his life, Randal is in a home. Mercy had been where he was billeted, but it had never been a home. It had been only a place. He’d had no emotion vested in it.
To the Old Race, home is the center of existence. Home is the first refuge from — and last defense against — the disappointments and the terrors of life.
The heart of the home is the kitchen. He knows this to be true because he has read it in a magazine about home decor and in another magazine about cooking light.
In addition, Martha Stewart has said this is true, and Martha Stewart is, by acclamation of the Old Race, the ultimate authority on such matters.
During social evenings, close friends and neighbors frequently gravitate to the kitchen. Some of a family’s happiest memories are of moments together in the kitchen. According to Old Race philosophers, nothin’ says lovin’ like somethin’ from the oven, and the oven is in the kitchen.
The blinds are half drawn. The late-afternoon sunshine that reaches the windows has first been filtered by oak trees. Yet Randal can see well enough to explore the room.
Quietly he opens cabinets, discovering dishes, cups, saucers, drinking glasses. In drawers he finds folded dish towels, flatware, knives, and a bewildering collection of utensils and culinary gadgets.
Usually, too many new sights, too many unfamiliar objects, will throw Randal into a panic attack. He is often forced to withdraw to a corner and turn his back to the world in order to survive the shock of too much sensory input.
For some reason, the staggering richness of new experience in this kitchen does not affect him in that way. Instead of panic, he experiences… enchantment.
Perhaps this is because he is in a home at last. A person’s home is inviolate. A sanctuary. An extension of one’s personality, Martha says. Home is the safest of all places.
He is in the
Randal Six has never laughed. He smiled once. When he first made his way to the O’Connor house, when he got out of the storm and into the crawl space, in the dark among the spiders, knowing that he would eventually reach Arnie, he had smiled.
When he opens the pantry door, he is stunned at the variety and quantity of canned and packaged food on the shelves. Never has he dared imagine such abundance.
At the Hands of Mercy, his meals and snacks were brought to his billet. The menu had been planned by others. He was given no choice of food — except for the color of it, on which he was insistent.
Here, the options before him are dazzling. In canned soups alone, he sees six varieties.
When he turns from the pantry and opens the upper door of the refrigerator, his legs shake and his knees go weak. Among other things, the freezer contains three quarts of ice cream.
Randal Six loves ice cream. He never gets enough ice cream.
His initial excitement abruptly turns to crushing disappointment when he sees that none of the choices before him is vanilla. There is chocolate almond. There is chocolate mint. There is strawberry-banana swirl.
For the most part, Randal has only eaten white and green foods. Mostly white. This restriction of colors in his food is a defense against chaos, an expression of his autism. Milk, chicken breast, turkey, potatoes, popcorn (without butter because butter makes it too yellow), peeled apples, peeled pears… He tolerates green vegetables like lettuce and celery and green beans, and also green fruit, like grapes.
The nutritional deficiencies of a strict white-and-green diet are addressed with white capsules of vitamins and minerals.
He has never eaten any flavor of ice cream other than vanilla. He has always known that other flavors exist, but he has found them too repulsive for consideration.
The O’Connors, however, have no vanilla.
