People saw one thing, they swooned over it. They saw this other thing, they pounded it with sticks.
Maybe there had to be variety for life to work. Swoon over everything, you got bored. Beat everything with a stick — boring.
Personally, Jocko would be happy to swoon over everything.
Jocko sometimes thought why he had no genitals. All Jocko had was that funny thing he peed with. It wasn’t genitals. He called it his swoozle.
Fortunately, it rolled up. Folded away. When not in use.
If it didn’t fold out of sight, crazy drunk hobos would vomit about that, too.
One thing Jocko tried
Jocko thought about it anyway. Jocko couldn’t turn his mind off. It spun and somersaulted like Jocko.
Maybe that was why no genitals. No need for them. Not when you were one of a kind.
Through all this thinking, Jocko secretly watched Erika.
“Do you think about big issues?” Jocko asked.
“Like what?”
“Like … things you don’t have.”
She was quiet so long. Jocko thought he screwed up again.
Then she said, “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a mother.”
Jocko slumped in his seat. “Jocko’s sorry. Sorry he asked. That’s too hard. Don’t think about it.”
“And what’s it like to
“Why never?”
“Because of how I’m made. Made to be used. Not to be loved.”
“You’d be a great mother,” Jocko said.
She said nothing. Eyes on the road. Rain on the road, rain in her eyes.
“You would,” he insisted. “You take care of Jocko real good.”
She kind of laughed. It was kind of a sob, too.
Way to go. Jocko speaks. People weep.
“You’re very sweet,” she said.
So maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed.
Letting their speed drop, she said, “Isn’t that Victor’s car?”
Or maybe things were worse than they seemed.
Rising in his seat, he said, “Where?”
“That rest area on the right. Yes, it’s him.”
“Keep going.”
“I don’t want him behind us. We have to get there separately from him, or I can’t sneak you in.”
Erika pulled into the rest area. Stopped behind Victor’s sedan. “Stay here, stay down.”
“You’re getting out? It’s raining.”
“We don’t want him coming to us, do we?” She opened the door.
After receiving confirmation that James had done as instructed, Victor took a few minutes to consider how he would approach the tank farm.
Some of the New Race who lived and worked at the farm might be breaking down in one way or another. He would need to be cautious, but he refused to be scared off. These were his creations, products of his genius, inferior to him in every way imaginable, and they could no more frighten him than one of Mozart’s concertos could have terrified the composer, than a painting by Rembrandt could have sent the artist screaming into the night. They would submit to him or hear the death phrase.
He foresaw no chance that anything like the Werner abomination would greet him at the farm. Werner had been a singularity. And where was it now? Vaporized with everything else in the Hands of Mercy.
No rebellion against Victor could hope to succeed, not only because his power was that of the mythic gods, but also because the smartest of the Alphas was an idiot by comparison with its maker, he on whom the centuries took no toll.
Erika Four, an Alpha, would be no match for him. He had killed her once with only a silk necktie and the power of his hands, and he could kill her again if the bitch had in fact been revived. An Alpha, a woman, and a wife — she was three times inferior to him. He would delight in the opportunity to punish her for the impudence of those two phone calls. If she thought she had been cruelly treated in her first life, in her second he would teach her what cruelty really was.
He had no fear of going to the tank farm. He
As he reached to release the parking brake, a vehicle appeared on the highway, approaching from the south. Instead of passing, it parked behind him, flooding the interior of the sedan with light.
His mirrors presented too few details, so he turned in his seat to look through the back window. Erika Five was behind the wheel of the GL550, which he had ordered her to drive to the farm.
Staring back at her, furious with her because she looked like the impudent and insulting Erika Four, Victor saw nothing in the backseat, but he heard something move there. In the instant, he knew why he had felt that he was not alone:
The New Race pheromones with which he had doused himself would provide hours of protection. Except that … in moments of exertion when a light sweat might be broken, in moments of rage or fear, his true scent would grow riper and might be detected under the New Race disguise.
Victor flung open the driver’s door and plunged out of the car, into the night. Into the
He should have slammed the door, locked it remotely, abandoned the sedan, and gone to the farm with Erika. But he no longer dared approach the open driver’s door, because Chameleon might already have scrambled into the front seat.
Worse, it already might be out of the sedan, on rest-area pavement immediately around him. The ceaseless dance of raindrops on the blacktop would entirely conceal the telltale ripple of Chameleon in motion.
Inexplicably, Erika seemed to have gotten out of the GL even an instant before he had vacated the S600. At his side, sensing trouble, she said, “Victor? What’s wrong?”
Erika told Jocko,
She said it like a scolding mother. She would be a good mother. But wasn’t Jocko’s mother. Nobody was.
Jocko raised his head. Saw Erika and Victor together. Instantly soaked by rain.
More interesting was the bug. The biggest bug Jocko ever saw. Half as big as Jocko.
This one didn’t look tasty. Looked bitter.
In the storm drain, bugs came close to Jocko. Easy to catch. Bugs didn’t know his big yellow eyes could see them in the dark.
Something wrong with this bug. Besides being so big.
Suddenly Jocko knew. The way it sneaked. The way it started to rear up. This bug would kill.
Pillowcase. On the floor. In front of his seat. Slip the knot in the shoelace. Inside — soap, soap, soap. The knife.
Quick, quick, quick, Jocko in the rain. Capering toward Erika and Victor.
CHAPTER 66
The bug didn’t want to die.
