Frankenstein: Dead and Alive (25 page)

She returned to the library and sat on the footstool in front of Jocko’s armchair. “Little friend, you have followed the secret passageway to the hidden room and seen all those lock bolts on the two steel doors.”

“Jocko isn’t going there again. Jocko’s been in enough scary places. He wants just nice places from now on.”

“You have seen the hidden room and the glass casket, and the shapeless shadow alive within.”

Jocko shuddered and drank some Scotch.

“You have heard it speak from the casket.”

Unsuccessfully trying to make his voice deeper and rougher and menacing, the troll quoted, “‘You are Erika Five, and you are mine.’”

In his natural voice, he said, “There’s something in the glass box that’s at least fourteen hundred times too scary for Jocko. If Jocko had genitals, they would’ve shriveled up and fallen off. But Jocko could only faint.”

“Remember, I took you there so I could ask your opinion about something. Before I ask, I must emphasize that I want to know what you
truly
feel. Truly, truly.”

Clearly somewhat embarrassed but nevertheless meeting Erika’s stare forthrightly, the troll said, “Truly, truly. No more Jocko-needs-to-pee-Jocko-is-gonna-vomit. That’s the old me. Good-bye to that Jocko.”

“All right, then. I want your honest opinion about two things. We don’t know what that shapeless shadow is. But based on what you’ve heard and seen, is the thing in that glass casket just another thing—or is it malevolent?”

“Malevolent!” the troll said at once. “Malevolent, malignant, venomous, and potentially very troublesome.”

“Thank you for your honesty.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Now my second question.” She leaned toward Jocko, riveting his gaze with hers. “If the thing in the glass case was made by some man, conceived and designed and brought to life by some man, do you think that man is good … or evil?”

“Evil,” Jocko said. “Evil, depraved, wicked, corrupt, vile, vicious, rotten, hateful, totally unpleasant.”

Erika held his gaze for half a minute. Then she rose from the footstool. “We’ve got to leave New Orleans and go to the tank farm farther upstate. You’ll need clothes.”

Plucking at the picnic tablecloth that he had fashioned into a sarong, Jocko said, “This is the only clothes Jocko ever had. It works okay.”

“You’ll be out in public, at least in the Mercedes.”

“Put Jocko in the trunk.”

“It’s an SUV. It doesn’t have a trunk. I’ve got to find you clothes that make you look more like a normal little boy.”

Amazement made yet another fright mask of the troll’s face. “What genius would make such clothes?”

“I don’t know,” Erika admitted. “But I’ve got an idea who might. Glenda. The estate provisioner. She shops for everything needed here. Food, paper goods, linens, staff uniforms, holiday decorations….”

“Does she shop for soap?” Jocko asked.

“Yes, everything, she shops for everything.”

He put aside his empty Scotch glass and clapped his hands. “Jocko would like to meet the lady who shops for soap.”

“That’s not a good idea,” Erika said. “You stay here, out of sight. I’ll talk to Glenda and see what she can do.”

Getting up from the armchair, the troll said, “Jocko is feeling like he better twirl or cartwheel, or walk on his hands. Whatever.”

“You know what you could do?” Erika asked. “You could browse the shelves in here, choose some books to take along.”

“I’m going to read to you,” he remembered.

“That’s right. Choose some good stories. Maybe twenty.”

As the troll moved toward the nearest shelves, Erika hurried to find Glenda.

At the door to the hall, she paused and looked back at Jocko. “You know what …? Also choose four or five books that seem a little dangerous. And maybe … one that seems really, really dangerous.”

CHAPTER 53

The powerful engine transmits vibrations through the frame of the car.

The tires on the blacktop raise vibrations that are likewise transmitted through the vehicle.

Even in the plush upholstery of the backseat, these vibrations can be felt faintly, especially by one made sensitive to vibrations by the tedium of semisuspended animation, in which there was, for so long, little other sensory input.

Like the freezer-motor vibrations in the liquid-filled sack, these are neither pleasant nor unpleasant to Chameleon.

It is no longer tormented by extreme cold.

Nor is it any longer tormented by its powerless condition, for it is no longer powerless. It is free, free at last, and it is free to kill.

Currently, Chameleon is tormented only by its
inability to locate a TARGET. It has detected the scents of numerous EXEMPTS, and even most of them were dead.

The sole TARGET located in the laboratory suddenly became an EXEMPT just seconds before Chameleon would have killed it.

Frustrated, Chameleon cannot account for this transformation. Its program does not allow for such a possibility.

Chameleon is adaptable. When its program and real experience do not comport, it will reason its way toward an understanding of why the program is inadequate.

Chameleon is capable of suspicion. In the lab, it continued to maintain surveillance on the one who transformed. It knew the man’s face from the past and from the film, but because of the transformation, it thought of him as the PUZZLE.

The PUZZLE had gotten busy, busy in the lab, rushing this way and that. Something about the PUZZLE’s frantic activity made Chameleon more suspicious.

In the hallway, the PUZZLE encountered a thing unlike any creature in the extensive species-ID file in Chameleon’s program. This thing, large and moving erratically, looked not at all like an EXEMPT, but it smelled like one.

The PUZZLE had run from the building, and because Chameleon had no whiff of any TARGET, no reason to remain there, it followed.

On the way out of the building, Chameleon detected
faint traces of a TARGET’s scent under the EXEMPT scent of the PUZZLE.

Interesting.

Once they were in the car and in motion for a while, the PUZZLE seemed less agitated, and as he became calmer, the TARGET scent slowly faded.

Now there is only the scent of an EXEMPT.

What does it all mean?

Chameleon broods on these events.

On the backseat, looking exactly like the backseat, Chameleon waits for a development. It confidently anticipates that there will be a development. There always is.

CHAPTER 54

Erika phoned Glenda, the estate provisioner, at the dormitory and asked for a meeting immediately in the staff lunchroom. This was in the south wing on the first floor, and it could be entered either from the south hall or from an exterior door.

In a few minutes, Glenda arrived at the exterior door. She left her umbrella outside and came into the lunchroom, saying, “Yes, Mrs. Helios, what is needed?”

A sturdy New Race woman with short chestnut-brown hair and a scattering of freckles, wearing an off-duty jumpsuit, she appeared accustomed to lifting and toting. As the sole shopper for the estate, her job included not just browsing the aisles of stores but also the physical labor of transporting goods and stocking shelves.

“I’ve been out of the tank little more than a day,” Erika said, “so my downloaded data hasn’t yet been
complemented by enough real-world experience. I need to buy something right away, tonight, and I hope your knowledge of the marketplace will be helpful.”

“What do you need, ma’am?”

Erika brazened through it: “Boys’ clothing. Shoes, socks, pants, shirts. Underwear, I suppose. A light jacket. A cap of some kind. The boy is about four feet tall, weighs fifty or sixty pounds. Oh, and his head is big, quite big for a boy, so the cap should probably be adjustable. Can you get me those things right away?”

“Mrs. Helios, may I ask—”

“No,” Erika interrupted, “you may not ask. This is something Victor needs me to bring to him right away. I never question Victor, no matter how peculiar a request may seem, and I never will. Do I need to tell you why I never question my husband?”

“No, ma’am.”

The staff had to know that the Erikas were beaten and were not permitted to turn off their pain.

“I thought you’d understand, Glenda. We’re all in the same quicksand, aren’t we, whether we’re the provisioner or the wife.”

Uncomfortable with this intimacy, Glenda said, “There’s no store open at this hour, selling boys’ clothing. But …”

“Yes?”

Fear rose in Glenda’s eyes, and her previously placid face tightened with worry. “There are many articles of boys’ and girls’ clothing here in the house.”

“Here? But there are no children here.”

Glenda’s voice fell to a whisper. “You must never tell.”

“Tell what? Tell whom?”

“Never tell … Mr. Helios.”

Erika pressed the battered-wife sympathy play as far as she probably dared: “Glenda, I am beaten not just for my shortcomings, but for any reason that suits my … maker. I am quite sure I would be beaten for being the bearer of bad news. All secrets are safe with me.”

Glenda nodded. “Follow me.”

Also off the south hall on the ground floor were a series of storage rooms. One of the largest of these was a twenty-by-eighteen-foot walk-in cooler where a dozen of the highest-quality fur coats were stored—mink, ermine, arctic fox…. Victor had no sympathy for the antifur movement, as he was engaged in the much more important antihuman movement.

In addition to the rack of coats, there were numerous cabinets containing clothes of all kinds that would not fit even in Erika’s enormous closet in the master suite. By having a series of wives who were identical in every detail, Victor spared himself the expense of purchasing new wardrobes. But he did want his Erika to be at all times stylishly attired, and he did not expect her to choose from a limited garment collection.

From several drawers in the farthest corner of the room, Glenda nervously produced children’s clothing, article after article, both for boys and girls, in various sizes.

“Where did all this come from?” Erika asked.

“Mrs. Helios, if he learns about it, he’ll terminate Cassandra. And this is the only thing that’s ever made her happy. It’s made us all happy—her daring, her secret life, she gives the rest of us a little hope.”

“You know my position on being the bearer of bad news.”

Glenda buried her face in a striped polo shirt.

For a moment, Erika thought that the woman must be crying, for the shirt trembled in her hands, and her shoulders shook.

Instead, Glenda inhaled deeply, as if seeking the scent of the boy who had worn the shirt, and when she looked up from it, her face was a portrait of bliss.

“For the past five weeks, Cassandra has been sneaking off the estate at night, to kill Old Race children.”

Cassandra, the laundress.

“Oh,” Erika said. “I see.”

“She couldn’t wait any longer to be told the killing could at last begin. The rest of us … we so admire her nerve, but we haven’t been able to find it in ourselves.”

“And … what of the bodies?”

“Cassandra brings them back here, so we can share in the excitement. Then the trash men who take other bodies to the dump, they take the children, too, no questions asked. Like you said—we’re all in this quicksand together.”

“But you keep the clothes.”

“You know what the dormitory is like. Not an inch of extra space. We can’t store the clothes there. But we can’t bear to get rid of them. We take these clothes out some nights, take them over to the dormitory and, you
know, play with them. And, oh, it’s very wonderful, Mrs. Helios, thinking of the dead kids and listening to Cassandra tell how each one happened. It’s the best thing ever, the only good thing we’ve ever had.”

Erika knew that something profound must be happening to her when she found Glenda’s story disturbing, even creepy, and when she hesitated at the prospect of dressing the poor sweet troll in the clothes of murdered children. Indeed, that she should think
murdered instead of merely dead
had to be an indication of a revolution in her thinking.

She was torn by something like pity for Cassandra, Glenda, and the others on the staff, by a quiet horror at the idea of Cassandra stalking the most defenseless of the Old Race, and by compassion for the murdered, toward whom she had been programmed to feel nothing but envy, anger, and hatred.

Her actions on behalf of Jocko crossed the line that Victor had drawn for her, for all of them, in the afore-mentioned quicksand. The curious sense of companionship that had developed so quickly between her and the little guy should have been beyond her emotional range. Even as the friendship grew, she recognized that it might signify a pending interruption of function like the one that William, the butler, had experienced.

She was allowed compassion, humility, and shame, as the others were not—but only so that Victor might be more thrilled by her pain and anguish. Victor didn’t intend that the finer feelings of his Erikas should benefit anyone but himself, or that anyone else should
have the opportunity to respond to his wife’s tender attentions with anything other than the contempt and brutality with which he answered them.

To Glenda, she said, “Go back to the dormitory. I’ll select what I need from these and put the rest away.”

“And never tell him.”

“Never tell him,” Erika confirmed.

Glenda started to turn away, but then she said, “Do you think maybe …”

“Maybe what, Glenda?”

“Do you think maybe … the end is coming soon?”

“Do you mean the end of the Old Race, once and forever, the killing of them all?”

The provisioner searched Erika’s gaze and then turned her face up to the ceiling as tears welled in her eyes. In a voice thick with fear, she said, “There’s got to be an end, you know, there’s really got to be.”

“Look at me,” Erika said.

Obedient as her program required, Glenda met her mistress’s eyes again.

With her fingers, Erika wiped the tears from the provisioner’s face. “Don’t be afraid.”

“It’s that or rage. I’m worn out by rage.”

Erika said, “An end is coming soon.”