Dean Koontz's Frankenstein 4-Book Bundle (83 page)

“Are you sad?” Jocko asked.

Surprised, she glanced at him. Then back at the road. “The world is so beautiful.”

“Yeah. Dangerous but pretty.”

“I wish I belonged in it,” she said.

“Well, we're here.”

“Being and belonging are different things.”

“Like alive and living,” Jocko said.

She glanced at him again but didn't reply. Stared at the road, the rain, the wipers wiping.

Jocko hoped he hadn't said something stupid. But he was Jocko. Jocko and stupid went together like … like Jocko and ugly.

After a while, he said, “Are there pants that make you smarter?”

“How could pants make anyone smarter?”

“Well, these made me prettier.”

“I'm glad you like them.”

Erika took her foot off the accelerator. Eased down on the brake. As they stopped on the pavement, she said, “Jocko, look.”

He slid forward on his seat. Craned his neck.

Deer crossed the road, in no hurry. A buck, two does, a fawn. Others came out of dark woods on the left.

The trees shook in the wind, the tall grass thrashed.

But the deer were calm under the trembling trees, in the lashing grass, moving slowly but with purpose. They almost appeared to drift like weightless figures in a dream. Serene.

Their legs were so long and slender. They walked like dancers danced, each step precise. The grace.

Golden-brown coats on the does. The buck was brown. The fawn was colored like the does but with white spots. Tails black on top, white underneath.

Narrow, gentle faces. Eyes set on the sides of their faces to provide a panoramic view.

Heads held high, ears tipped slightly forward, they stared at the Mercedes, but only once each. Not afraid.

The fawn stayed near one of the does. Off the road once more, no longer directly in the headlight beams, it capered in a circle in the half-light, in the wet grass.

Jocko watched the fawn caper in the wet grass.

Another buck and doe. Rain glistening on the male's antlers.

Jocko and Erika watched in silence. There was nothing they could say.

The sky black, the rain rushing, the dark woods, the grass, the many deer.

There was nothing they could say.

When the deer were gone, Erika drove north again.

After a while, she said softly, “Being and belonging.”

Jocko knew she meant the deer.

“Maybe just being is enough, it's all so beautiful,” Jocko said.

Although she glanced at him, he didn't look at her. He couldn't bear to see her sad.

“Anyway,” he said, “if somebody doesn't belong in the world, there's no door they can throw him out. They can't take the world away from him and put him somewhere different. The worst thing they can do is kill him. That's all.”

After another silence, she said, “Little friend, you never stop surprising me.”

Jocko shrugged. “I read some magazines once.”

VICTOR WAS
in the dark night of his soul, but he was also in a Mercedes S600, arguably the finest automobile in the world. The suit he wore had cost over six thousand dollars, his wristwatch more than a hundred thousand. He had lived 240 years, most of the time in high style, and he had known more adventure, more thrills, more power, and more triumphs of a more momentous nature than any man in history. As he considered his current situation and the possibility that he might die soon, he found that making the fateful decision he needed to make was easier than he had expected when he parked in this rest area. He had no choice but to take the most extreme action available to him, because if he died, the loss to the world would be devastating.

He was too brilliant to die.

Without him, the future would be bleak. Any
chance of imposing order on a meaningless universe would die with him, and chaos would rule eternal.

He used the voice-activated car phone to call the household-staff dormitory at the estate in the Garden District.

A Beta named Ethel answered, and Victor told her to bring James to the phone at once. James had been third in the hierarchy of the staff, behind William and Christine, who were now both dead. He was next in line to be the butler. If Victor hadn't been so pressed by the events of the past twenty-four hours, he would have appointed James to his new post the previous day.

When James came to the phone, Victor honored him with the news of his promotion and gave him his first assignment as butler. “And remember, James, follow the instructions I've just given you to the letter. I expect absolute perfection in everything a butler does, but most especially in this instance.”

AFTER LEAVING HIS UMBRELLA
on the terrace and after thoroughly wiping his wet shoes with a cloth that he brought for that purpose, James entered the house on the first floor, by the back door at the end of the north hall.

He carried the mysterious object that had obsessed him for the past two hours: a crystal ball.

After proceeding directly to the library, as Mr. Helios had instructed, James carefully placed the gleaming sphere on the seat of an armchair.

“Are you happy there?” he asked.

The sphere did not reply.

Frowning, James moved it to another armchair.

“Better,” the sphere told him.

When the crystal ball initially spoke to him, two hours earlier, James had been minding his own business, sitting at the kitchen table in the dormitory, stabbing his hand with a meat fork and watching it repeatedly heal. The fact that he healed so quickly and so well gave him reason to believe he would be all right, though for most of the day, he had felt all wrong.

The first thing the sphere said to him was, “I know the way to happiness.”

Of course, James at once expressed a desire to know the way.

Since then, the crystal ball had said many things, most of them inscrutable.

Now it said, “Salted or unsalted, sliced or cubed, the choice is yours.”

“Can we get back to happiness?” James asked.

“Use a knife and,” the sphere said.

“And what?” James asked.

“And fork.”

“What do you want me to do with a knife and fork?”

“If peeled.”

“You're making no sense,” James said accusingly.

“A spoon,” said the sphere.

“Now it's a spoon?”

“If halved and unpeeled.”

“What is the path to happiness?” James pleaded
because he was afraid to demand an answer and offend the sphere.

“Long, narrow, twisting, dark,” said the sphere. “For the likes of you, the path to happiness is one mean sonofabitch of a path.”

“But I can get there, can't I? Even one like me?”

“Do you really want happiness?” asked the sphere.

“Desperately. Doesn't have to be forever. Just for a while.”

“Your other choice is insanity.”

“Happiness. I'll take happiness.”

“Yogurt works with. Ice cream works with.”

“With what?”

The sphere didn't reply.

“I'm in a very bad way,” James pleaded.

Silence.

Frustrated, James said, “Wait here. I'll be right back. I've got something to do for Mr. Helios.”

He found the hidden switch, a section of the bookcase pivoted, and the secret passageway was revealed.

James glanced back at the sphere on the seat of the armchair. Sometimes it didn't look like a crystal ball. Sometimes it looked like a cantaloupe. This was one of those times.

The sphere was a crystal ball only when the magic was in it. James feared that the magic might go out of it and never come back.

In the secret passage, he came to the first door and removed all five steel bolts, as he had been instructed.

When he opened the door, he saw the corridor
that Mr. Helios had described: copper rods to the left, steel rods to the right. A low, ominous hum.

Instead of going farther, James ran back to the start of the passageway, pushed the button to open the bookcase door from this side, and hurried to the sphere.

“What is the path to happiness?” he asked.

“Some people put a little lemon on it,” said the crystal ball.

“Put lemon on what?”

“You know what your problem is?”

“What is my problem?”

“You hate yourself.”

James had nothing to say to that.

He returned to the secret passageway, but this time he took the crystal ball with him.

VICTOR HAD ASKED JAMES
to phone him when the task was completed. Alternately consulting his world-class wristwatch and the dashboard clock of his magnificent sedan, he thought the new butler was taking too long. No doubt, awed by his promotion and by the realization that he would be speaking more often with his maker, James approached his mission with excessive care.

As he waited for the butler's call, the conviction again rose in him that he was not alone in the Mercedes. This time, he turned to look in the backseat, knowing full well no one was there.

He knew the cause of his edginess. Until James
completed the task he had been sent to do, Victor remained mortal, and the world could be denied the shining future that only he could create. As soon as the butler reported completion of the job, Victor could proceed to the farm, face whatever threat might wait there, and be confident that the future would still be his.

CHAMELEON SUSPECTS DECEPTION
.

Once again, the
PUZZLE
smells like both an
EXEMPT
and a
TARGET.
The scent of an
EXEMPT
is far and away stronger than that of a
TARGET
, but the second scent is definitely present.

The car has been stopped for some time. Yet the
PUZZLE
does not get out. It sits in silence behind the wheel.

After a while, the
PUZZLE
makes a phone call. Chameleon listens, hears nothing incriminating.

But the
PUZZLE
talks about hidden doors and passageways, a hidden room. This suggests but does not prove bad behavior.

Chameleon assumes that
EXEMPTS
are incapable of bad behavior. But its program is not clear on this point.

It is permitted to act on assumptions, but they
must be Class A assumptions, which in a rigorous application of logic, must conform to at least four of five proofs. This assumption is Class C.

Chameleon is capable of impatience. It has been a long time between kills.

It remembers clearly three kills. They occurred during its testing phase.

The pleasure is intense. The word Chameleon knows for the pleasure that comes from killing is
orgasm
.

Its entire body spasms. In orgasm, it is as fully in touch with its body as it will ever be—but, strangely, at the same time seems to escape its body and for a minute or two is not itself, is not anything, is only pleasure.

After the phone call, the
PUZZLE
sits in silence again.

Chameleon was a long time in the cold. A long time in the imprisoning polymeric-fabric sack.

Now it is warm.

Under the pleasing scent, the infuriating scent.

Chameleon wants an orgasm. Chameleon wants an orgasm. Chameleon wants an orgasm.

UNDER THE DUMP
, Carson and Michael and Deucalion followed the landfill workers and the resurrected Alphas along a passageway that branched off the main course. It would lead them out of the landfill and under the tank farm next door.

Ahead of them, torchlight ignited faux fire across the glazed curves of the tunnel. Because they were at the end of the procession, an inky gloom pooled behind them.

The Resurrector was far in front. Perhaps it had already entered the main building at the tank farm.

Carson had no concern about the darkness at her back. Here, in the warren of their monstrously strange accomplice, they were safer than they had been in a long time.