City of Night

“You don’t understand? You don’t understand? I don’t understand. Je suis rouge, evil gods, blood sacrifices, voodoo? ”

“You’ve never heard of voodoo? It was a big deal in New Orleans in the eighteen hundreds. It’s still around, and in fact—”

“Did you learn nothing in the tank?” he asked. “There is no world but this one. That is essential to our creed. We are strictly rationalists, materialists. We are forbidden superstition.”

“I know that. You think I don’t know that? Superstition is a key flaw of the Old Race. Their minds are weak, full of foolishness and fear and nonsense.”

Benny quoted what she’d said as they had approached the sedan: “ ‘Praise Ibo, all glory to Ibo.’ Doesn’t sound like a materialist to me. Not to me, it doesn’t.”

“Will you relax?” Cindi said. “If you were one of the Old Race, you’d be popping a blood vessel.”

“Is that where you go sometimes when you go out?” he asked. “To a voodoo cathedral?”

“There aren’t such things as voodoo cathedrals. That’s ignorant. If it’s Haitian-style, they call the temple a houmfort.”

“So you go to a houmfort,” he said grimly.

“No, because there’s not much Haitian-style voodoo around here.”

Out of sight of the sedan now, she pulled off the service road and parked on the grass. She left the engine running, and the air-conditioning.

She said, “Zozo Deslisle sells gris-gris out of her little house in Treme, and does spells and conjures. She’s an Ibo-cult bocor with mucho mojo, yassuh.”

“Almost none of that made any sense,” Benny said. “Cindi, do you realize what trouble you’re in, what trouble we’re in? If any of our people find out you’ve gone religious, you’ll be terminated, probably me, too. We’ve got it pretty sweet — permission to kill, with more and more jobs all the time. We’re the envy of our kind, and you’re going to ruin everything with your crazy superstition.”

“I’m not superstitious.”

“You’re not, huh?”

“No, I’m not. Voodoo isn’t superstition.”

“It’s a religion.”

“It’s science,” she said. “It’s true. It works.”

Benny groaned.

“Because of voodoo,” she said, “I’m eventually going to have a child. It’s only a matter of time.”

“They could be unconscious in the back right now,” Benny said. “We could be on the way to that old factory.”

She zipped open her purse and produced a small white cotton bag with a red drawstring closure. “It contains Adam and Eve roots. Two of them, sewn together.”

He said nothing.

Also from her purse, Cindi extracted a small jar. “Judas’s Mixture, which is buds from the Garden of Gilead, powdered silver gilt, the blood of a rabbit, essence of Van Van, powdered—”

“And what do you do with that?”

“Blend a half teaspoon in a glass of warm milk and drink it every morning while standing in a sprinkle of salt.”

“That sounds very scientific.”

She didn’t miss his sarcasm. “As if you would know all about science. You’re not an Alpha. You’re not a Beta. You’re a Gamma just like me.”

“That’s right,” Benny said. “A Gamma. Not an ignorant Epsilon. And not a superstitious member of the Old Race, either. A Gamma.”

She put the Adam and Eve roots and the Judas’s Mixture back in her purse. She zipped it shut.

“I don’t know what to do,” Benny said.

“We have an assignment, remember? Kill O’Connor and Maddison. I don’t know why we haven’t already done it.”

Benny stared through the windshield at the park.

Never since disgorgement from the creation tank had he felt this bleak. He yearned for stability and control, but he found himself in an escalating chaos.

The more he brooded on his dilemma, the faster he sank into a gray despond.

Weighing his duty to Victor against his self-interest, he wondered why he had been designed to be the ultimate materialist and then had been required to care about anything other than himself. Why should he concern himself about more than his own needs — except that his maker would terminate him if he disobeyed? Why should it matter to him that the New Race ascended, considering that this world had no transcendent meaning? What was the purpose of liquidating humanity and achieving dominion over all of nature, what was the purpose of then venturing out to the stars, if all of nature — to every end of the universe — was just a dumb machine with no point to its design? Why strive to be the king of nothing?

Benny had been created to be a man of action, always moving and doing and killing. He hadn’t been designed to think this much about philosophical issues.

“Leave the heavy thinking to the Alphas and Betas,” he said.

“I always do,” Cindi said.

“I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to myself.”

“I’ve never heard you do that before.”

“I’m starting.”

She frowned. “How will I know when you’re talking to me or to yourself?”

“I won’t talk to myself much. Maybe never again. I don’t really interest me that much.”

“We’d both be more interesting if we had a baby.”

He sighed. “Whatever will be will be. We’ll terminate who we’re told to until our maker terminates us. It’s beyond our control.”

“Not beyond the control of Ibo,” she said.

“He who is red.”

“That’s right. Do you want to come with me to meet Zozo Deslisle and get a make-happy gris- gris?”

“No. I just want to tie down those cops and cut them open and listen to them scream while I twist their intestines.”

“You’re the one who told me to drive past,” she reminded him.

“I was mistaken. Let’s find them.”

Chapter 37

Victor was at his desk in the main laboratory, taking a cookie break, when Annunciata’s face appeared on his computer screen in all her glorious digital detail.

“Mr. Helios, I have been asked by Werner to tell you that he is in Randal Six’s room and that he is exploding.”

Although Annunciata wasn’t a real person, just a manifestation of complicated software, Victor said irritably, “You’re screwing up again.”

“Sir?”

“That can’t be what he told you. Review his message and convey it correctly.”

Werner had personally conducted a search of Randal’s room and had taken it upon himself to review everything on Randal’s computer.

Annunciata spoke again: “Mr. Helios, I have been asked by Werner to tell you that he is in Randal Six’s room