The second bag contained—
“Mr. Czanek!” Jervis exclaimed. “I never forget a face, not even a split one! How’s business, buddy?”
Czanek lay in two clean pieces, bifurcated. Tom had done an impressive job with the hewer—right down the middle, perfect.
He buried Czanek in the second grave. Four mounds now stood in the silent clearing. He wondered how many more there would be when they left.
Jervis, who was more self aware than the average reanimated corpse, paused for reflection. My Existenz has found me, he pondered. I’m the right hand of destiny. Pure selfhood for a higher meaning. I am the ultimate existential man.
He wiped off his hands and got back in the Dodge. Now that the dirty work was done, the real fun could begin.
««—»»
The Supremate smiled over them all, his children.
He watched from dozens of different places at once, heard, saw and felt all that his children did. The one called Besser was drawing up the departure assignments, which were vital to the Supremate. The stasisfield grew low; soon the labyrinth would become vulnerable. According to the dataprobe that had been sent long ago, the ruling classes here might now have the technological capabilities to break the labyrinth during a weakened charge. Such calamities were rare, but they’d happened. One labyrinth, several thousand years ago, had never made it off its targetobjective. The natives had not been friendly: The duty supremate had been executed, its daughters slaughtered. Fissionizationvessels had been raped en masse, and holotypes had been burned as fuel or dissected for research.
—DISGRACE, the Supremate thought.
The one called Winnifred was with Besser, too. She sat masturbating in a chair. Sometimes a nativeemissarial would not remain serviceable after the exordipathicsignaltrances, exposure to the psilight, and the Supremate’s overall influence. But she had helped in minor ways and had shown great faith. Too bad she would have to die. And Besser, the rotund one, too.
The Supremate continued its overseeing. Two sisters were inspecting the Erbling subjects in the activeport. The Hartley subject had already birthed her first metisunit, which now squalled healthily in the biomaintenancecarbonsourcehypersaturationvault. Many more sisters worked throughout the labyrinth, happy and close to mindless in the discharge of their duties. The sisters were all integrated into the Supremate—prime, living examples of the master plan’s capabilities.
—SO WHAT IF I CAN’T BE GOD, the Supremate mused. —COULD GOD DO ALL OF THIS?
««—»»
Shauna Applegate stared into her ENG 291 text, bored shitless. Her roommate, Inez Packer, sat in the next room, doing much the same. They were both in academic hot water. They were reading about how F. Scott Fitzgerald had died in disgrace, wholly despised by the literary community of the times, even though he was a better writer than any of his contemporaries. But of course, Shauna and Inez couldn’t’ve shit cared less. They’d rather be partying.
Just as Shauna thought she’d die of boredom, someone knocked on the door. “Who is it?” she asked.
“Sushi Express.”
Sushi? Yuck! “Inez! Did you order any carry out sushi?”
“Yuck!” Inez responded. “No way!”
“You must have the wrong—” But when Shauna looked in the peephole, she gasped. A dead man’s face grinned back at her.
“Go away!” she shouted, checking the lock. “I’ll call the cops!”
“All right,” said the voice. “I’m going away.”
The hewer cut the door down in one strike. Shauna screamed as Jervis let himself in. A sister drifted in behind him.
“Are you Inez Packer?” he politely inquired.
“N no, she’s in the—”
Jervis brought the hewer down spectacularly—wooosh!—and sheared Shauna Applegate in half, from head to crotch. Shauna’s two halves twitched on the carpet. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about that goddamn English class anymore.
Inez had seen it all from her room (your roommate being cut in half by a dead man with a beam hewer was a hard thing to miss). She screamed steadily and threw books. The Great Gatsby hit Jervis in the head. The Beautiful and the Damned popped him in the groin. When she slammed her door closed, Jervis hewed it down. “Miss Packer?” he announced. “Your limo is waiting.” He lifted Inez up by the hair. The sister’s spicule darted out in a pink blur.
Inez turned limp, bewildered and paralyzed. Jervis carried her out to the Dodge as the sister knelt at Shauna’s halves, to eat.
“Hey! What the hell are you doing there?” a skinny security guard demanded on the exit stairs.
“I’m abducting a healthy female college student for bifertilization with alien holotypes,” Jervis answered, and palmed the guard hard enough in the face to drive bone shards into his brain. With his free hand then, Jervis dragged the guard out by the eye sockets, kind of like carrying a bowling ball, and loaded them both into the Dodge Colt. Thank heaven for hatchbacks!
Back upstairs, the kneeling sister seemed disappointed. This was the same sister who had eaten David “Do Horse” Willet’s penis the night before.
—Jervis? How come there’s no…
Didn’t these crossmultibredintegratedhybrid airheads know anything? “She’s a girl, pinhead,” Jervis apprised. “Girls don’t have dicks.”
—Oh, the sister said. —Poo!
««—»»
They sat opposed, staring into each other’s face. Wade had told Lydia what he’d seen at the grove. Lydia had told Wade what she’d seen at the second mound. Neither doubted the other.
“Can two people go nuts at the same time?” Wade asked. “Maybe campus utilities is pumping LSD into the water fountains.”
“We have to face it,” Lydia said. “What we saw was real.”
“We can’t just sit around. We’ve got to do something.”
“Sure, but what?”
Wade sneered. “You’re the one doing the thinking, remember?”
They both jumped when the phone rang.
Who could it be this late? “Uh, hello?” Wade answered.
“Wade! It’s me, Jervis! How’s it going?”
Wade instantly relaxed. “Fine, Jerv. Where’re you at?”
“I’m at the student car shop. Couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d get started on a little body work.”
Body work? At night? “Listen, Jerv, a whole bunch of unbelievable shit has happened. You’ve got to get over here and help.”
“Sit tight. I’ll be right there.”
“Oh, and Jerv…” Wade’s voice thickened. “Tom’s dead.”
“Yeah, I know. I…” Jervis paused. “I mean I—”
But Wade was pausing too. The obvious conclusion beat into his head. There was only one way Jervis could know about Tom…
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” Wade grimly asked.
“Hang up!” Lydia yelled.
Jervis dispensed with the act. “The Supremate wants you, Wade. It’s for something miraculous. Let me bring you in.”
Tom had said the same thing. Whatever they’d done to Tom, they’d now done to Jervis. Holy Jesus, Wade thought.
“There’s someone here who wants to talk to you. He can explain better than me.” Jervis’ voice was replaced by another, darker voice. Besser’s. “Wade, my boy! How are you?”
“You diabolical fat psychopath!” Wade returned the greeting. “You’re the one who’s responsible for all this, aren’t you?”