City of Night

eliminated.

Often over the decades, he had learned more from his setbacks than from his numerous successes. Failure could be a legitimate father of progress, especially his failures, which were more likely to advance the cause of knowledge than were the greatest triumphs of lesser scientists.

Victor was fascinated by the bold manifestation of nonhuman characteristics for which no genes had been included. Although the security chief’s musculature had been enhanced with genetic material from a panther, he did not carry the code that would express feline legs, and he certainly had not been engineered to have a tail, which now began to form.

The Werner head, still familiar, moved on a thicker and more sinuous neck than any man had ever enjoyed. The eyes, when turned toward a camera, appeared to have the elliptical irises of a cat, though no genes related to feline vision had been spliced into his chromosomes.

This suggested either that Victor had made a mistake with Werner or that somehow Werner’s astonishingly amorphous flesh was able to extrapolate every detail of an animal from mere scraps of its genetic structure. Although it was an outrageous concept, flatly impossible, he leaned toward that second explanation.

In addition to the six camera coverage of Werner’s lycanthropy-quick metamorphosis, microphones in the isolation chamber fed his voice into the monitor room. Whether he was aware of the full extent of the physical changes racking his body could not be determined by what he said, for unfortunately his words were gibberish. Mostly he screamed.

Judging by the intensity and the nature of the screams, both mental anguish and unrelenting physical agony accompanied the metamorphosis. Evidently, Werner no longer possessed the ability to switch off pain.

When suddenly a clear word was discernible “Father, Father”—Victor killed the audio feed and satisfied himself with the silent images.

Scientists at Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and every major research university in the world had in recent years been experimenting with cross-species gene splicing. They had inserted genetic material of spiders into goats, which then produced milk laced with webs. They had bred mice that carried bits of human DNA, and several teams were in competition to be the first to produce a pig with a human brain.

“But only I,” Victor declared, gazing at the six screens, “have created the chimera of ancient myth, the beast of many parts that functions as one creature.”

“Is he functioning?” Ripley asked.

“You can see as well as I,” Victor replied impatiently. “He runs with great speed.”

“In tortured circles.”

“His body is supple and strong.”

“And changing again,” said Ripley.

Werner, too, had something of the spider in him, and something of the cockroach, to increase the ductility of his tendons, to invest his collagen with greater tensile-strain capacity. Now these arachnid and insectile elements appeared to be expressing themselves at the expense of the panther form.

“Biological chaos,” Ripley whispered.

“Pay attention,” Victor advised him. “In this we will find clues that will lead inevitably to the greatest advancements in the history of genetics and molecular biology.”

“Are we absolutely sure,” Ripley asked, “that the transition-module doors completed their lock cycle?”

All four of the other staff members answered as one: “Yes.”

The image on one of the six screens blurred to gray, and the face of Annunciata materialized.

Assuming that she had appeared in error, Victor almost shouted at her to disengage.

Before he could speak, however, she said, “Mr. Helios, an Alpha has made an urgent request for a meeting with you.”

“Which Alpha?”

“Patrick Duchaine, rector of Our Lady of Sorrows.”

“Patch his call through to these speakers.”

“He did not telephone, Mr. Helios. He came to the front door of Mercy.”

Because these days the Hands of Mercy presented itself to the world as a private warehouse with little daily business, those born here did not return for any purpose, lest an unusual flow of visitors might belie the masquerade. Duchaine’s visit was a breach of protocol that suggested he had news of an important nature to impart.

“Send him to me,” Victor told Annunciata.

“Yes, Mr. Helios. Yes.”

Chapter 50

Laffite opened his eyes. “I’ve revealed myself to you. Further proof that my program is breaking down. We must move secretly among you, never revealing our difference or our purpose.”

“We’re cool,” Michael told him. “We don’t have a problem with it. Just sit for a while, Pastor Kenny, just sit there and watch the little birds dropping off the wire.”

As Michael spoke those words, less than a minute after he had terminated his cell-phone conversation with Deucalion, the giant entered the parsonage kitchen from the downstairs hall.

Carson had grown so accustomed to the big man’s inexplicable arrivals and mysterious departures that the Desert Eagle in her two-hand grip didn’t twitch a fraction of an inch but remained sighted dead-still on the minister’s chest.

“What — you called me from the front porch?” Michael asked.

Immense, fearsome, tattooed, Deucalion nodded to Lulana and Evangeline, and said, “ ‘God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.’”

“Timothy,” Lulana said shakily, “chapter one, verse seven.”

“I may look like a devil,” Deucalion told the sisters, to put them at ease, “but if I ever was one, I am not anymore.”

“He’s a good guy,” Michael assured them. “I don’t know a Bible verse for the occasion, but I guarantee he’s a good guy.”

Deucalion sat at the table, in the chair that Lulana recently had occupied. “Good evening, Pastor Laffite.”

The minister’s eyes had been glazed, as if he’d been staring through the veil between this world and another. Now he focused on Deucalion.

“I didn’t recognize Timothy one, verse seven,” Laffite said. “More of my program is dropping out. I’m losing who I am. Say me another verse.”

Deucalion recited: “ ‘Behold, he is all vanity. His works are nothing. His molten images are wind and confusion.’”

“I do not know it,” said the preacher.

“Isaiah sixteen, verse twenty-nine,” said Evangeline, “but he’s tweaked it a little.”

To Deucalion, Laffite said, “You chose a verse that describes… Helios.”

“Yes.”

Carson wondered if she and Michael could lower their guns. She decided that if it was wise to do so, Deucalion would already have advised them to relax. She stayed ready.

“How can you know about Helios?” Laffite asked.

“I was his first. Crude by your standards.”

“But your program hasn’t dropped out.”

“I don’t even have a program as you think of it.”

Laffite shuddered violently and closed his eyes. “Something just went. What was it?”

His eyes again moved rapidly up and down, side to side, under his lids.

“I can give you what you want most,” Deucalion told him.

“I think… yes… I have just lost the ability to switch off pain.”