Deucalion, penetrating the Hands of Mercy without setting off an alarm.

In just a few days: Harker giving birth to some monstrosity, William chewing off his fingers, Christine confused about her identity, Werner’s catastrophic cellular metamorphosis, the apparent incorporation of the entire Mercy staff into the Werner thing, the freeing of Chameleon, Erika Four destroying the Karloff experiment in psychic control, now Erika Four supposedly back from the dead, those two detectives somehow escaping Benny and Cindi Lovewell, two superb assassins … The list of unlikely incidents went on and on.

It all meant something.

So many things could not go wrong spontaneously.

A pattern waited to be discovered. A pattern that might well reveal a conspiracy A cabal.

Occasionally Victor thought that he might have a mild tendency toward paranoia, but in this instance he knew his suspicion must be correct.

This time, the setback felt different from all before it. What brought him to the brink of ruin this time was not just a bar of soap on a stair or an amorous clone. A symphony of troubles required an orchestra of enemies and a determined conductor.

This time he might have to prepare for the worst.

Again he became aware that if the Mercedes lost more speed, it would be coasting.

Ahead on the right loomed a rest area. He drove off the highway, braked to a stop, and put the car in park.

Before he rushed heedlessly to the tank farm, he needed to brood about these recent events. He suspected that he was going to have to make the biggest decision of his life.

He’d driven out of the storm, but as he stared at the dwindling cones of his headlight beams, the rain caught up to him again, and a groaning wind.

Although Victor’s powers of concentration were legendary among all who had worked with him, he found himself repeatedly distracted by the nonsensical apprehension that he might not be alone in the car. He was alone, of course, not just in the car but alone in the world to a degree that he did not need to contemplate right now, when his mood was already dark.

CHAPTER 59

FOLLOWING THE DUMPSTERS and the landfill workers to the big hole in the west pit, Carson thought the procession appeared medieval. The vast reaches of the dump lay in a black pall, as though civilization remained centuries away from the electric era. The torchlight, the oil lamps, the atmosphere of a religious pilgrimage that arose from the sudden reverential silence of the group as they approached the entrance to the subterranean chapel of the Resurrector …

Although armed with two handguns and an Urban Sniper, Carson felt defenseless in the face of this unknown.

They arrived at a tunnel, approximately eight feet in diameter, angling down into the depths of the pit, which apparently the Being, the mother of all gone-wrongs, had opened to present itself to them earlier this same night.

Before they had set out, Carson asked Nick Frigg how deep the trash was piled. She was surprised to hear they were standing on almost ten stories of garbage. Considering the substantial acreage dedicated to the dump, the Resurrector could have excavated many miles of corridors, and Frigg confirmed that they had explored an elaborate network of passageways that were but part of the entity’s construction.

The tightly compacted trash forming the walls of the passageway appeared to have been sealed with a transparent bonding material of sufficient strength to prevent collapse. Rippling currents and whorls of torchlight glistered across the shiny surface.

She imagined that the Resurrector had exuded this glue, which seemed to imply that its nature was in part insectile. She couldn’t easily accept that the busy burrowing architect of this labyrinth and the compassionate transcendental Being that lacked a thread of malevolence in its weave were one and the same.

As they entered the tunnel, Carson expected the stink of the trash field to intensify and the air to become thick and bitter. But the glimmering sealant on the walls apparently held back the methane that otherwise would have suffocated them, and a draft flowed up from below. She had no more difficulty breathing here than on the surface, and the malodor was if anything less offensive.

When she glanced back at dog-nose Nick, his nostrils quivered and flared ceaselessly, and he smiled with pleasure. To his enhanced olfactory sense, the path of this pilgrimage was perfumed with a singular incense. Likewise for the Duke of Orleans.

The gradual slope of the tunnel took them perhaps ten feet below the surface by the point that they had walked a hundred feet from the entrance. Here, the passageway turned sharply left and widened into a spacious gallery before seeming to curve down at a steeper angle.

In this gallery, the Resurrector waited, initially at the limits of their lights, half-seen and mysterious.

The width of the chamber allowed the procession to spread out, with a clear view for each. Carson glanced left, right, and saw that everyone but she and Michael appeared deeply affected by the presence before them, not enraptured but certainly content, at peace, many with smiles on their faces, eyes shining.

As they came side by side in a line, the Being before them approached, shadows sliding away from it as the light seemed to enrobe it in spun gold.

To her surprise, a sense of well-being came over Carson, and the foreboding to which she had clung swiftly dissipated. She knew as surely as she had known anything in her life that she would be safe here, that the Resurrector was benevolent and a champion of their cause.

She understood that this entity was broadcasting calming psychic waves of reassurance. It would never violate her sanctity by coming inside her mind, but was speaking to her in this manner as she might speak to it in words.

Telepathically, without seeming to use language and seemingly without images—for none flashed through her mind—the Resurrector somehow inculcated in her an understanding of how they would enter the tank farm, how the New Race working there would be disabled, and how Victor might be captured, his reign of madness and his kingdom of terror brought finally to an end.

During all of this, Carson slowly grew aware that she could not describe the Resurrector in any specific detail. Her sense was that before her stood a thing of such unearthly beauty that angels could not outshine it, a beauty humble in its every part yet so majestic in its complete effect that she was not merely enchanted but also uplifted. Here was a beauty both of form and of spirit, a spirit of such immaculate intention and righteous confidence that Carson’s own not inconsiderable courage, hope, and resolution were inspired to new heights. This was her sense, yes, but if asked to describe the form that aroused such soaring emotions in her, she could not have said whether it had two legs or ten, one head or a hundred, or none at all.

She squinted, straining to make out even general contours, a basic biological architecture, but the Resurrector proved to be so gloriously radiant that it shimmered just beyond the ability of her senses to define it. The torchlight in which the entity now stood seemed to cloak it in mystery more than had the shadows from which it first approached them.

Carson’s initial foreboding welled in her again and quickened into fright. Her heart began to race, and she heard her ragged breath catching, catching, catching in her throat. Then in a blink, and only for a blink, she saw the Resurrector as it really was, a blasphemy, a hideous offense against nature, an abomination from which the mind recoiled in desperate defense of its sanity.

One blink of paralyzing truth, and then again the radiance, the perception of beauty beyond the mind’s capacity to fully understand, exquisite form without definition, virtue and righteousness in the flesh, kindness embodied, love materialized … Her fright washed away in a tide of benevolence. Her heart settled to an easy beat, and she found her breath again, and her blood did not run cold, neither did the nape of her neck prickle, and she knew that regardless of the form of the Resurrector, she was safe, she was safe, and it was a champion of their cause.

CHAPTER 60

JOCKO IN THE BIG CAR. Not driving. The day would come. All he needed was the keys. And a booster pillow. And long sticks to work the floor pedals. And a reliable map. And somewhere to go.

Until then, riding was good. Being driven was nice.

“Jocko’s first car ride,” he told Erika.

“How do you like it?”

“Smooth. Comfy. Better than creeping through the night, scared of brooms and buckets.”

Rain rattled on the roof. Wipers flung big splashes off the windshield.

Jocko sat dry. Racing through the rain but dry.

In the night, wind shook trees. Shook them hard. Almost as hard as the crazy drunk hobo shook Jocko while shouting, Get out of my dream, you creepazoid, get out of my dream!

Wind slammed the car. Hissed and grumbled at the window.

Jocko smiled at the wind.

Smiling felt good. It didn’t look good. He smiled at a mirror once, so he knew how not-good it looked. But it sure felt good.

“You know what?” he said.

“What?”

“How long has Jocko not twirled or backflipped, or nothing?”

“Not since you’ve been sitting there.”

“How long is that?”

“Over half an hour.”

“Amazing.”

“Is that your record?”

“Got to be. By like twenty-seven minutes.”

Maybe having clothes relaxed Jocko. He liked pants. The way they covered up your flat butt and the knees that made people laugh.

After the crazy drunk hobo stopped shaking Jocko, he shouted, spraying spit, What the hell kind of knees are those? Those knees make me SICK! Never saw knees make me SICK before. You freak-kneed creepazoid!

Then the hobo vomited. Just to prove Jocko’s knees really were sick-making.

Erika was a good driver. Focused on the road. Staring hard.

She was thinking about driving. But something else, too. Jocko could tell. He could read her heart a little.

His first night alive, he found some magazines. In a trash can. Read them in an alleyway. Under a lamppost smelled like cat pee.

One article was called “You Can Learn to Read Her Heart.”

You don’t cut her open to read it, either. That was a relief. Jocko didn’t like blood.

Well, he liked it inside where you needed it. Not outside where you could see it.

Anyway, the magazine told Jocko how to read her heart. So now he knew something troubled Erika.

Secretly he watched her. Sneaking looks.

Those delicate nostrils. Jocko wished he had those nostrils. Not those particular nostrils. He didn’t want to take her nostrils. Jocko just wanted nostrils like them.

“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.”

CHAPTER 61

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.