“I add pecans and coconut to the chocolate chips.”
“Can you teach my mommy?”
“Sure. And I could teach you, too.”
The last quality that Erika Five — now Swedenborg — should have discovered in herself was a talent for relating to and nurturing the young. Having been grown in a creation tank in the Hands of Mercy, in faraway New Orleans, having gained consciousness as an adult, she had neither parents from whom she might have learned tenderness nor a childhood during which she might have been the object of the gentle concern of others.
She was created to serve Victor, to submit to him without protest, and was programmed to hate humanity, especially the young. Even then, Victor envisioned a world that would one day have no children in it, a future in which sex had no purpose other than the relief of tension, a time when the very concept of the family would have been eradicated, when the members of the posthuman New Race owed allegiance not to one another, not to any country or to God, but only to Victor.
“Mommy’s in the city buying me new teddy bears,” Chrissy said.
That was what Michael told her. In fact, her mother was dead.
“That stupid pretend mommy tore up my teddy bears.”
The pretend mommy was the Communitarian that replaced the real Denise Benedetto. Michael had rescued Chrissy, and Carson had but moments later killed the replicant.
“Where did that pretend mommy come from, anyway?” Chrissy asked.
She seemed as fragile as a Lladro porcelain. The girl’s trusting nature and her vulnerable heart brought Erika close to tears, but she repressed them.
“Well, honey, maybe it’s like bad witches sometimes in fairy tales. You know, sometimes with just a spell, they make themselves look like other people.”
“Pretend mommy was a bad witch?”
“Maybe. But pretend mommy is gone now and never coming back.”
“Where did she go?”
“I hear they threw her in a cauldron of poison that she herself was brewing to use on other people.”
Chrissy’s eyes widened without benefit of hot chocolate. “That’s so cool.”
“She tried to turn herself into a flock of bats and fly out of the cauldron to freedom,” Erika said, “but all the bats were still covered in the poison, and they just—
“That’s what
“And that’s what
From the study, along the hallway and into the kitchen, came again the voice of Jocko in the throes of hacker excitement:
Putting down her cookie, Chrissy said, “Your little boy don’t sound like any little boy I ever heard.”
“No, he doesn’t. He’s very special.”
“Can I meet him?”
“In just a little while, sweetheart. He’s doing his homework right now.”
Erika said, “You remember what you told me your daddy said about the outside and inside of a person?”
“Sure.”
“Well, Jocko is very pretty inside.”
“I hope he likes me.”
“Jocko likes everybody.”
Chrissy said, “Does he like to play teatime?”
“I’m sure he’d love to play teatime.”
“Boys usually don’t.”
“Jocko always wants to please. Honey, have you ever been afraid of something, then you discovered there was no reason to be afraid?”
Chrissy frowned, considering the question, then abruptly beamed. “Like dogs.”
“Were you afraid of dogs?”
“The big ones with big teeth. Big old Doofuss next door.”
“But then you got to know Doofuss better, huh?”
“He’s really all sweet inside.”
“And I’ll bet he doesn’t look scary anymore outside, either.”
“He’s cute now.” Her right arm shot up, and she waved her hand as if she were in a schoolroom and seeking the attention of the teacher.
“What is it, sweetheart?”
“The duke. I first saw the duke, he scared me.” The duke was what she called Deucalion. “But then he picked me up and he held me like you hold a baby and said close my eyes tight, and he magicked us from there to here, and he don’t scare me anymore.”
“You’re a good girl, Chrissy. And brave. Girls can be just as brave as boys. I’m proud of you.”
Along the hallway, from the study, came Jocko’s voice as he continued hacking:
Chapter 13
Rafael Jesus Jarmillo, chief of police, lived in a two-story American Victorian on Bruin Drive. The house featured gingerbread moldings along the eaves of the main roof and the porch roof, as well as around the windows and the doors. It was the kind of modest but well-detailed house that, back in the day, Hollywood routinely portrayed as the home of any reputable middle-class family like Andy Hardy and his dad the judge, before moviemakers decided that the middle class was nothing but a dangerous conspiracy of dim-witted, grasping, bigoted know-nothings whose residences in films should reveal their stupidity, ignorance, boring conformity, greed, racism, and fundamental festering evil.
Frost really liked the place.
He and Dagget had driven past the house hours earlier, in daylight. They knew that it was painted pale yellow with robin’s-egg-blue gingerbread, but at night, with no landscape lights, it appeared as colorless as the snow-covered ground on which it stood.
As he parked at the curb, Dagget said, “Wife, mother-in-law, and two kids. That right?”
“That’s what the background sheet said. No dog. No cat. A canary named Tweetie.”
Seen through the bare limbs of a tree, the second floor lay in darkness, but lamplight brightened every downstairs room. An oval of leaded and beveled glass in the front door sparkled like an immense jewel.
Frost didn’t usually find Victorian houses charming. Following Dagget along the walkway to the porch, through the snow, he decided this residence struck him as inviting primarily because it looked
If there was such a thing as reincarnation, then in a previous life, Frost must have been a member of some loincloth-wearing tribe in a sultry equatorial jungle — or maybe a desert iguana that spent his days on sun-baked rocks. Deep in his bones and marrow, he seemed to carry a past-life memory of extreme heat that left him not merely especially vulnerable to this Montana chill but also aggrieved by it, offended, abused.
The irony of being born into the Frost family with an intense aversion to cold was not lost on him. The mysterious power who remained hidden behind the machinery of nature expressed His sense of humor in an infinite number of ways, and Frost found the world wonderfully amusing even when he was the butt of the joke.
Dagget rang the doorbell, and they could hear the chimes inside. When no one answered, he rang
