“Victor Helios, as he most recently called himself. I saw him die. But he lives again. Somehow… he lives.”
“How do you know?”
Deucalion said, “How do you know the most important thing you know?”
Glancing again at the crucifix, the monk said, “By the light of revelation.”
“There is no light in my revelation. It’s a dark tide in my blood-dark, cold, thick, and insistent, telling me He’s alive.”
chapter 2
Erskine Potter, the future mayor of Rainbow Falls, Montana, walked slowly around the dark kitchen, navigating by the green glow of the digital clocks in the two ovens.
The clock in the upper oven read 2:14, and the clock in the lower oven displayed 2:11, as if time flowed more languidly nearer the floor than nearer the ceiling.
Being a perfectionist, Potter wanted to reset both clocks to 2:16, which was the correct time. Time must be treated with respect. Time was the lubricant that allowed the mechanism of the universe to function smoothly.
As soon as he finished his current task, he would synchronize every clock in the residence. He must ensure that the house remained in harmony with the universe.
Henceforth, he would monitor the clocks twice daily to determine if they were losing time. If the problem wasn’t human error, Potter would disassemble the clocks and rebuild them.
As he circled the kitchen, he slid his hand across the cool granite countertops-and frowned when he encountered a scattering of crisp crumbs. They stuck to his palm.
He brought his palm to his nose and smelled the crumbs. Wheat flour, soybean oil, palm oil, skim-milk cheese, salt, paprika, yeast, soy lecithin.
When he licked the tasty debris from his palm, he confirmed his analysis: Cheez-It crumbs.
He liked Cheez-Its. But he didn’t like crumbs being left on kitchen counters. This was unacceptable.
At the gas cooktop, he lifted one of the burner grates, set it aside, hesitated, and wiped his fingertips over the stainless-steel drip pan. Grease.
Erskine Potter believed in cleaning a cooktop after each use, not just once or twice a week. A tool or a machine, or a system, would function better and last longer if it was clean and properly maintained.
In the sink, he found dishes waiting to be washed: plates, bowls, flatware standing in drinking glasses. At least everything seemed to have been rinsed.
He hesitated to look in the refrigerator, concerned that what he found might make him angry. Anger would make him less focused and less efficient.
Focus and efficiency were important principles. Few people in the world were focused and efficient. For the good of the planet, the unfocused and inefficient needed to be killed.
As the mayor of Rainbow Falls, Montana, he would never be in a position of sufficient power to exterminate millions of people, but he would do his small part. Regardless of the scope of his authority and the size of his assignment, each member of the Community-with a capital C-was as valuable as any other.
Absolute equality was an important principle.
The embrace of cold reason and the rejection of sentimentality was another important principle.
Unfailing cooperation with others of the Community was an important principle, too, as was keeping their existence secret from ordinary men and women.
There were other important principles, as well, but none was more important than any other. When no hierarchy of values existed, making decisions became easy. Confronted with any problem, snared in any difficult situation, Erskine Potter-like any member of the Community-just did the most efficient thing, took the most direct action, and was confident that what he had done was right.
The only morality was efficiency. The only immorality was inefficiency.
Testing his self-control, risking anger, Mayor Potter opened the refrigerator. What a mess.
Jars of olives and pickles stood on the same door shelf as a squeeze-bottle of chocolate syrup. Capers, mustard, ketchup, and salsa-which logically should have been with the olives and pickles-rested instead on a shelf with a pressurized can of whipped cream and a jar of maraschino cherries, which obviously belonged with the chocolate syrup. The items on the primary shelves were stored in an unspeakably disordered fashion.
Appalled, Potter hissed between clenched teeth. Although displeased, even indignant, he would not allow himself to be angry.
Determined to proceed briskly with the task at hand, he closed the refrigerator door.
Faint footsteps crossed the room above. Potter heard someone descending the front stairs.
Beyond the kitchen, the hallway brightened. A cut-crystal fixture on the ceiling cast geometric patterns of light across the walls and floor, as if reality were fracturing.
Erskine Potter did not flee. He did not hide. He remained by the refrigerator, waiting.
A silhouette appeared in the doorway. In the kitchen, from the overhead fluorescents, cool light suddenly fell through the air.
Wearing pajamas and slippers, evidently seeking a late-night snack, the current mayor of Rainbow Falls, Montana, entered the kitchen. Five feet ten, a hundred eighty pounds, fifty-two years old, with brown hair and a sweet round face, the son of Loretta and Gavin Potter, his name was Erskine.
The current Mayor Potter halted in stunned disbelief when he saw his duplicate.
The future Mayor Potter said, “Erskine. My dear brother, I’ve been searching for you half my life.”
This was a lie. Loretta and Gavin Potter weren’t the intruder’s parents. He had no mother or father. He had never been born. Instead, he was grown to maturity in mere months, programmed, and extruded.
He pretended to be the current Mayor Potter’s twin only because the claim would confuse and briefly disarm his prey.
As he talked, he moved, opening his arms as if to embrace his long-lost sibling. He gripped the mayor, drove a knee viciously into his crotch, and pinned him in a corner beside the double ovens with the incorrect clocks.
From under his jacket, he withdrew a pistol-like device. He pressed the muzzle to the mayor’s left temple and pulled the trigger.
Instead of a bullet, the gun fired a needle that pierced the skull and penetrated the brain to a precise depth.
Instantly, the mayor stopped convulsing around his crushed testicles, stopped gasping for breath. His eyes were as wide as the eyes of a child struck by wonder.
Because the needle chemically cauterized the tissue that it pierced, the victim did not bleed.
Like a nail, the needle had a head. It was not flat but rounded, resembling the head of a decorative upholstery tack.
The round form looked like a silvery beetle clinging to the mayor’s temple. The needle was a probe, and the head contained an abundance of electronics, intricate nanocircuitry.
The intruder led the docile mayor to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and said, “Sit.”
When the mayor settled in the chair, hands palms-up in his lap, the intruder went to the back door and opened it.
The woman and the girl entered from the porch. Nancy Potter was forty-four, attractive, with shaggy blond hair. The daughter, Ariel, was fourteen. In fact, they were replicants of the real Nancy and Ariel: grown, programmed, and extruded nine days previously.
Nancy quietly closed the back door. Ariel swept the kitchen with her gaze, then stared at the ceiling. Nancy focused on the ceiling, too, and then she and Ariel exchanged a glance.
As the replicant of Erskine Potter watched, the woman and the girl proceeded quietly out of the kitchen, into the hallway, toward the front stairs. He liked the way they moved, their swift grace and supreme efficiency. They were his kind of people.
He sat across the table from the real Erskine Potter, pointed the pistol at him, and pulled the trigger. The device contained only one round. The second shot was a telemetric command that switched on the embedded
