Danal’s throat was as dry as paper. He stumbled back, gaping at Nathans as he fell. Shadows across the aquarium window seemed to grow larger, pounding to get in; then Danal realized the pounding was in his temples.
He had broken the most fundamental Servant programming.
His chest throbbed with fire, as if from a cold sacrificial knife. He could feel the long scar on his breastbone writhing like a dangerous worm.
Nathans lay on his face in a puddle of blood that was already disappearing as the dirt- and lint-destroying enzymes in the carpet fought to clean up the mess. Danal saw the intricate stars, pentagrams, and astrological symbols embroidered on the white robe.
“Sacrificial Lamb.”
Just who was the victim after all?
Lulled by a false sense of privacy as the lift doors enclosed him, Rodney Quick caught himself whistling an aimless tune. He stopped, then smiled, then grinned, as he realized that he had been almost happy for the last couple of days. He warned himself not to get his hopes up, yet another part kept reminding him that this was the first hope he’d had in a long time.
Supervisor had not shown herself for three days. She was gone… vanished.
By the end of the second day, Rodney had been jumpy, edgy, fearing some trick, some trap. But now, after several shifts all alone, at peace, unharassed, able to do his job in Lower Level Six, he began to fantasize that perhaps Supervisor had been reassigned.
The tech began to remember, and unconsciously embellish, everything that Francois Nathans had told him: the commendations, the praise for work well done. Rodney hoped that, since he had confessed his fear of Supervisor, perhaps Nathans had done something about her.
On Lower Level Six the pre-Servants floated in their vats, the operations continued, and Rodney started to open his eyes again. He looked for details in things instead of only shadows. He began to smile and even whistle. He took delight and amazement in everyday objects he had not noticed for years.
Rodney wondered if this was sort of a reverse love, feeling so incredibly happy when someone else was not around.
Now he had decided to take Francois Nathans up on his standing invitation to “drop in whenever you like,” to find out for himself exactly what had happened to Supervisor, to learn if his happiness should be genuine or if it was only a fluke, a brief pause before the nightmare began again.
After the lift doors closed, and before the inane music could begin, Rodney spoke into the input speaker, “Lower main administrative offices. Francois Nathans, please.”
The lift requested his identity, and he spoke his name and entered his Net password. The terminal made no response until the elevator chamber obediently plunged downward.
If Supervisor was indeed gone, by some miracle, and if his life continued with the giddy lightheartedness that he was experiencing now, Rodney began to think seriously of perhaps rescinding his contract with the Cremators.
Within two days they had already made him purchase some ropewire, spotlight bulbs, and a piece for an antique generator that burned hydrocarbon fuel. He’d had to ransack the lists of technocollectors to find someone willing to sell him, even at an exorbitant price, the old flywheel.
Overall, the cost of the items had not amounted to much, not really, and certainly not as much as he had expected to pay the Cremators. But he didn’t know how much longer it would last, how often they would request that he make these “little” purchases.
The worst assignment so far had been smuggling out a liter jar of the lukewarm, pinkish amniotic solution from a mutated batch. In a carefully rinsed soft-drink container he had caught some of the draining solution, then sealed it in a vacuum-flask… nervous all the time, convinced that Supervisor was watching, that she would catch him at his theft. What if Supervisor was in some way connected with the Cremators, and she knew what he was doing all along? How did he even know that Rossum Capek represented the real Cremators?
But if he let himself believe that, he had no hope left in the world.
Rodney received his electronic messages, which deleted themselves as soon as he read them. He had to pay attention, or else he might not be able to remember what he was supposed to do. And if he screwed up, he didn’t know how many chances the Cremators would give him.
He had never again seen Rossum Capek, or Monica, or even the same representative twice. He always delivered his purchases to a different place, but everything always went smoothly.
“If I need to get in touch with you,” he had once demanded, “how will I be able to find you?”
“We’ll know if you need us,” answered the Cremator, a freckle-faced twelve-year-old boy. “And if we don’t know, you don’t really need us.”
Somehow it all seemed a little spooky.
As the lift doors split open and he stumbled toward the private offices of Francois Nathans, Rodney Quick swallowed, looking for some saliva in his dry throat. He puffed up his determination again, vowing to find out what was going on, one way or another. Who the hell did Supervisor think she was?
And then he had no time for anything else as a Servant exploded toward him. He saw a splash of blood on the uniform; he saw a crumpled white-robed body—Nathans!—lying on the floor in a liquid pool of deeper maroon on the carpet.
As his jaw dropped in awe, Rodney saw the door burst open. In one infinite moment he saw finger wide indentations of crushed and splintered wood from the Servant’s grasp as the gray-clad figure pushed the door open and lunged toward the lift.
Rodney was in the way.
A Servant? A Servant!
Rodney realized too late that he should move, that he should run. The Servant was out of control.
Distractedly, the Servant tossed him aside with unheeded strength, heaving him back against the far wall. Everything was so incredibly fast—no one could move that fast!
Rodney slammed into the wall with the force of an avalanche. His nerves surrendered before he could feel the explosions of pain, but he heard a multitude of bones crack and shatter like popcorn in a furnace.
Rodney saw that he had fallen on the floor like torn rags in the corner of the lift. His eyes seemed to be filling with blood from the inside. He was able to catch a frozen snapshot of the Servant’s face looking down at him with an expression of total disbelief and horror at what he had done.
Rodney realized, without a doubt, that he was a dead man. He had been prepared for death for a long enough time… but then a limitless despair opened up below him: of all places, he was going to die in the tightest administration levels of Resurrection, Inc. Before he lost complete nerve control of his facial muscles, they formed themselves into a last mask of sorrow.
There was no way in the universe that the Cremators would ever get hold of his body now. He was doomed to return as a Servant after all.
As the technician fell, sliding to the ground with his neck and the back of his head crushed against the wall, Danal finally wrenched the wild horses of his old self to a halt, quelling further rampage. Tears seeped into his eyes even before the tech had come to a rest on the floor.
He hadn’t meant to do it. It was an accident! He wasn’t able to stop himself. He had lost control, and the demons had escaped.
Francois Nathans was slaughtered… but Nathans had intentionally unleashed something buried within Danal, recklessly playing with a deadly weapon. But this tech had simply stood in the way at the wrong moment, an innocent bystander, before Danal could get a grip on his accelerated reflexes, on the juggernaut within him. Danal had only meant to brush him aside, just to knock him out of the way.