It gave him an odd, warm sensation to realize that he was actually more afraid for Julia’s sake than for his own.
With his father’s share of the neo-Satanist profits, Vincent Van Ryman compiled the most effective, most sophisticated Intruder Defense System ever designed. He supervised its installation himself and spent hours studying its complexity, poring over blueprints as he sat on the hard floor of the study, legs crossed, soaking up the warm purple glow of the crystal fireplace.
A deadly force-field shell surrounded his property in a protective dome over the mansion; intricate computer-monitored surveillance systems detected external motion, activating additional alarms when objects moved too close to the perimeter; a pack of repair-rats labored in the conduits beneath the ground, mechanically inspecting and maintaining the network of power cabling.
Three times within the first week Vincent found blackened corpses slumped against the invisible force field, people who had tried to creep up to the mansion from the back.
Isolated in their island of protection, Vincent and Julia remained absorbed in each other, content with each other’s company and needing no one else. Together they decided to get a pair of Servants for the cooking and cleaning and housework, leaving them more time with each other. They ordered one male and one female Servant, Joey and Zia.
The Servants filled their roles, did their jobs, remained unobtrusive and patient in the mansion. Waiting. Vincent did not see any significance in the fact that Joey’s physical build was oddly familiar, identical to his own. Vincent had been too naive, too trusting.
He of all people should never have underestimated Francois Nathans.
On their last evening together, the night of Julia’s murder and the beginning of Vincent Van Ryman’s long nightmare that transcended even death, Julia had sat across from him in the formal dining room, resting both elbows on the tablecloth. It had started out as an argument, when both of them slowly let down their careful barriers of close confinement. Their mutually obsessive companionship began to wear on the nerves after a while. But for the time being they steered the conversation to more lighthearted things.
They talked with their mouths full, savoring the meal the two new Servants had cooked for them. “I’m glad we decided to give them both gourmet programming,” Julia said as she slurped a mouthful of fettuccine. Joey and Zia stood just outside the door of the formal dining room, watching with oddly alert eyes.
Vincent picked up the bottle of cheap pink champagne to refill both of their glasses. The bottle seemed slippery and unwieldy; he knocked it over, spilling half the contents on the tablecloth. Vincent couldn’t reach forward fast enough to catch it. The champagne foamed as it spread across the table. It all began to look blurry to him….
Julia giggled at his clumsiness, but then stopped laughing abruptly—
He awoke in the artificially dank chamber underneath the mansion, manacled to the walls. He recognized it as the cellar room where they had once held secret Inner Circle meetings with some of the highest-ranked neo-Satanist fanatics. But he and Julia had sealed that door, plastered over the opening. Who had torn it open again?
As his eyes came into focus, he noticed Francois Nathans waiting there. He couldn’t see Julia.
“Good. You’re finally awake,” Nathans said, taking a step toward him. Vincent gaped at the other man, confused, not quite ready to believe that Nathans would actually do anything to harm him. He looked at his wrists and ankles chained to the wall.
“Manacles, Francois? You’ve got to be kidding.”
Nathans smiled to himself. “It appealed to me.”
Vincent became dizzy again, and a rush of confusion swirled around his head. Nathans? What was he doing in the mansion? Why hadn’t the man answered any of his messages before?
“Julia. What happened to Julia?”
Nathans made a wry scowl. “Oh how noble of you to think of the poor lady first, Vincent. She’s already dead—dumped on the street and deleted from The Net.” Nathans seemed to take a wry pleasure in watching Vincent’s response.
“I don’t believe it.”
“When have I ever lied to you, Vincent?” The man’s cool expression gave only faint hints of the anger that boiled inside.
Vincent wanted to imagine that he had hurled himself against the chains, wanted to think that he had vengefully tried to strangle Nathans where he stood. But instead he responded as if someone had struck him in the stomach with a sledgehammer, knocking the wind from his lungs and destroying the will to live. He slumped against the stone wall like a beaten pet.
Nathans drew a deep breath, as if not pleased with his own decision. “You, on the other hand, are a much bigger PR item. Our first ‘Traitor to the Faith.’ I couldn’t have dreamed up a better unifying force if I tried.” Nathans laughed, “Oh boy, we’re going to milk this for all it’s worth.”
Vincent’s mind spun in circles, trying to find something to hold onto. Julia couldn’t be dead. They had just been talking and laughing together…. Nathans would never turn against him—he had taught Vincent so much, discussed so many things with him, hung so many dreams on his head. Nathans was too great a man, too sharp a thinker to stoop to childish and petty revenge games.
Vincent saw movement out of the corner of his eye as a doctor stepped forward. Vincent noticed a star-in-pentagram logo embroidered on his white jacket.
The doctor spoke to Nathans, ignoring the captive. “Now that he’s awake, the drug must be out of his bloodstream. We’re ready to begin.”
“We need to take some blood samples, Vincent,” Nathans said flippantly. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Vincent found the strength to struggle, but the manacles held him, and both men managed to grip his arm, holding it motionless. Vincent rolled his eyes downward to watch as his dark and syrupy blood bubbled up from the vein into a small sterilized vial. He breathed heavily as the doctor smeared his arm with coagulant. The medical man packed the vial of Vincent Van Ryman’s blood in a padded case, which he then snapped shut.
But Nathans wasn’t a murderer—he wouldn’t have just killed Julia in cold blood.
“He’ll have to hold absolutely still for the next part,” the doctor mumbled to Nathans as he fitted another hypodermic syringe with a capsule of yellowish liquid. He turned toward Vincent, and as Vincent cringed backward, the medical man injected him in the neck.
“Sorry,” Nathans said.
Vincent gasped, and his muscles turned cold, swallowed up in a blanket of frozen jelly. The rest of his body felt like a deadweight dangling from his brain stem.
“A nerve paralyzer, Vincent. It’ll wear off, sooner or later. For now, we have to see about giving you a new image.”
Vincent’s tongue thickened in his throat, but with the greatest effort of will, as if he were commanding every nerve one at a time, he managed to croak out a single word before his mouth froze half open.
“Why?”
Nathans’s eyebrows shot up, and his left fist clenched convulsively. He seemed to have been waiting for Vincent to ask his question. “Why? Because you told—that’s why! Don’t you realize how much damage you caused? You may have snatched away mankind’s last best hope for the future! You idiot, I trusted you! I saw promise in you, but you turned into a romantic sap instead!”
Nathans hung his head. His eyes glistened, and his face flushed red. “By introducing Servants, I offered common people the greatest gift—an opportunity to become part of the intelligentsia, the elite, free of charge. No strings attached. All they had to do was take the trouble to learn, to better themselves, use their free time to benefit us all. But they snubbed the offer and held tight to their ignorance instead. So with neo-Satanism I shoved their own stupidity right back in their faces—and they ate it up!”