Danal found the problem to be delightfully normal.
Gregor waited for them in a semi-private area. Low to the uneasy water, where several pilings clumped together and blocked him off from sight, the leader of the Wakers reclined on a wide hammock. A sturdy plank platform had been attached to the pilings and supported by ropes from above, forming a firm floor. Several sunlamps beat down with a harsh yellow glow. Stripped to the waist, Gregor lay back, sunning himself and reading a thin hardcover book, Frankenstein.
The nurse/tech led Danal along the narrow, creaking walkways and climbed down into the leader’s area. Gregor placed a bookmark on his page and snapped the volume shut as he sat up. The hammock swayed as Gregor gripped its edges.
“You’d better tell me what happened, Laina,” Gregor said before she could speak. The leader of the Wakers was a large man with high cheekbones, a heavy jaw, and distant brown eyes. Dark circles around his eyes made him look deeply concerned—not angry, but heavily burdened.
Laina kept her control and beamed at the leader, though her voice had a petulant tone. “It’s your orders to assist other awakened Servants at all costs. But wait until you hear who this is.”
She introduced Danal. He responded uneasily, still not at peace with all he had learned, too much too fast. But he and the nurse/tech managed to tell his story. He had hoped the pain would die away with another retelling—the wounds still ran as deep, but they did seem a little more bearable now.
When they had finished, Gregor appeared impressed. He pursed his lips. “Vincent Van Ryman? And an imposter. Knowledge is a powerful thing, Danal, and you’ve just greatly increased our power.” He stroked his chin and regarded the three support pilings with a distant gaze.
Danal was baffled, and honored in a strange way, but before he could ask Gregor to explain himself, he heard someone else approaching, running recklessly down the narrow boards.
With a thump, another Waker landed on Gregor’s platform, panting. Danal saw him to be a young boy with grayish freckled skin that looked splotched and diseased with his Servant pallor. Agitated, the boy gave Laina and Danal only a cursory glance, and then spoke to Gregor. He wore part of a disguise, some flesh-colored makeup that had been smeared, and a reddish wig tucked under his arm.
“We’ve lost Monica!” he burst out. With time-slowed clarity Danal saw Gregor stiffen and sit like a statue, afraid. The boy continued. “At Resurrection, Inc.! After we managed to get Rodney Quick’s body free, some Enforcers came around and interrogated the Servants.” The boy swallowed, then continued. “She—she terminated herself so she couldn’t answer them.”
Gregor hung his head. “Not Monica…” he mumbled. The boy Waker stood waiting, looking at the leader, then at Danal and the nurse/tech. But Danal had focused on a different comment. “Rodney Quick?” He could hardly believe what he had heard. “That—that’s the technician, the one I killed! What were you doing with his body?”
“We had business with him.” Gregor scowled, but used the question as a crutch to lift himself up from his grief. The leader looked at him with a hard, cold stare.
“We are the Cremators.”
26
After curfew, at high tide, all of the Wakers gathered down by the water level. Danal sat in awe, counting forty-five Wakers—forty-five other Servants who had regained their memories. Just like him.
Smoky torches hung in metal racks on the sides of the pilings; a black feathering of old soot streamed up the concrete. Danal could smell smoke from creosote and burning wood, mingling with the sour odor of the sluggish sea. The reflected torchlight looked like fireworks cast upon the water.
“Come on, this is something you must see,” Gregor had told him. “It’s our most sacred gathering.”
Danal hesitated, uneasy. “Are you sure I should?”
Gregor’s fixed gaze seemed filled with understanding. “You’re one of us now. Everything we do is open to you.”
Danal squatted on the platform nearest the water, withdrawn from the other Wakers, still confused, numb. Laina sat near him, wearing a bulky Servant jumpsuit instead of her nurse/tech outfit. The other Wakers respected Danal’s wish for privacy.
Three Wakers swam in the water, naked, exuberant in the cold sea. The water would clutch at them when the tide turned and began to march back out to the unseen ocean, but for now they enjoyed the freedom. Danal saw their carefree attitude, but he recalled too clearly—like pounding heartbeats in his head—the death of Julia, the betrayal by Nathans, his own murder during the High Sabbat….
“Cremators?” he had asked Gregor, astonished. “But… why? Why do you do it?” He sat for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“To keep others from coming back. To stop them returning from death, as we did. We can’t destroy Resurrection, Inc., and I would not, in good conscience, try to. But someone has to offer the living this crucial choice, whether to risk becoming Servants, whether to risk remembering.”
Danal was unable to choose among the many things he did not understand. “But how? How did I awaken? How did you get your memories back?”
Gregor shrugged. “It’s in the resurrection process. The bacteria in the final purging stage have a habit of mutating. We’re doing some of our own analyses, but we’re restricted by our limited manpower, you know, and because we have to be so damned careful when using other facilities. Apparently, a more potent strain of the purging bacteria can loosen some of the roadblocks to your old memories, the ones that are mercifully sealed away by death. Through one mechanism or another, all of us Wakers have regained our pasts, and our own thoughts and personalities.
“From your story, Danal, I suspect that Francois Nathans intentionally set you up, created the conditions for you to get your memory back. You should be able to figure out his reasons better than I can. But you claim Nathans is dead anyway, so the why of it all doesn’t really matter.”
“Are you saying that Nathans knew how to awaken Servants all along? Does he know about your people?”
“No, you’re jumping to conclusions. Other batches of the purging solution have mutated, and other Servants have indeed awakened, but anyone—including Nathans—would think these were just isolated instances. Any Servant would be disoriented and confused after getting the memories back—you remember it yourself. The first thing a newly awakened Servant does is to seek help in the obvious way, from humans. Most of these spontaneous Wakers are spotted, and summarily deactivated at Resurrection, Inc.
“But does anyone suspect our presence? Not at all. We wouldn’t survive an hour if anyone did, especially Nathans. You know how he hated the Cremators.”
Danal pondered this, and Gregor continued, “Have you ever heard of a story called R.U.R.? Rossum’s Universal Robots?” Danal shook his head. “It’s a rather obscure play today, but important when it first appeared in the year 1921. It was written by a Czechoslovakian named Karel Capek, and he first introduced the world to the term ‘robot.’ Derived from a Czech word meaning ‘involuntary service.’ Now, Rossum’s robots weren’t ratcheting mechanical monstrosities with blinking lights and buzzing voices—they were organic, humanlike servants to do all forms of tedious and unpleasant manual labor. Sound familiar? Rossum’s robots eventually awakened to their condition and took over the world, destroying all mankind.”
Gregor let out a long sigh. “I certainly have no intention to parallel that, although I do use the false name of Rossum Capek when I put on my disguise and go out to meet prospective clients for the Cremators.”