“Stop!”
Both Jones and the monster froze. Nathans emerged from the shadows, laughing. He flicked on the fluorescent lights and opened air ducts to draw away the brimstone smoke.
“Relax Jones—meet Prototype.” The man smiled with childish delight. “He’s a completely autonomous, fully functional android.”
Astonished, the Enforcer stuttered to himself, but could not find his voice. Nathans continued, talking like a proud father, “Maybe you thought androids were impossible? That’s what Resurrection, Inc. always implied, and gave us Servants instead.” He dismissed that thought with a wave. “Never impossible, though—simply not cost-effective. It’s a hell of a tedious process to duplicate every single nerve and muscle fiber in a biological body. ‘Servants for Mankind—Freeing Us from Tedium to Pursue Our True Destiny’ and all that rot. Prototype here is just to show it can be done, although I’ve taken the liberty of embellishing his body.”
Nathans tapped one of the curving horns. “Okay, Prototype, you can go back to the chamber and continue your inventory.” Obediently the android turned and shuffled with a strange grace out of the room and into the large neo-Satanist storage vaults. “He is, after all, still like a Servant, so I’ve put him to work back there.” Nathans adjusted his orange-red hairpiece, long and kinky this time. “Please take off that helmet, Jones—no need to keep up a charade for me.”
Jones slipped off the lightweight helmet and blinked in the open air. Nathans watched him closely, and the Enforcer realized that his facial expressions were now exposed as he talked.
The room around them was sparsely furnished, intended to give High Priest Vincent Van Ryman space to pace and ponder. Neo-Satanist symbols decorated the walls, with the inverted star-in-pentagram logo prominent. Musty-looking books lined the shelves.
Jones noticed Nathans moving with a carefully hidden sense of anxiety. The Enforcer worried for a moment, but other man maintained a good mask. “Now then, did I want to see you for something? Oh, yes!” Before Jones could spill out his discovery, Nathans continued, “You know that all the Elite Guard have their own specialties, their own turf, you might say. You, on the other hand, are not yet attached, and I have decided that you’re perfect to assist me in my less-than-official Guild duties.”
“You mean helping with the neo-Satanists?” Jones swallowed, and tried to keep a whine out of his voice. He didn’t want Nathans to be angry or disappointed with him. “But, I really—”
Nathans looked squarely at him. “Now, don’t complain. I see you standing there sweating, just waiting for me to turn my head so you can fidget! Stop this knee-jerk nonsense of revulsion toward neo-Satanism. It’s all a fairy tale. Anyone with a brain can see that. I know you understand my reasoning, Jones. You’re certainly intelligent enough, and I’ve explained it to you carefully.” He glanced at his fingernails.
“We have to polish the human race. It’s time to scrape off the scum floating on the human gene pool.” Nathans let his control slip, and his eyes grew too bright; his hands shook. “But this social evolution business takes so damned long! We don’t live forever, you know. And since I’m doing all the work to set the wheels in motion, I want to be alive to reap some of the benefits.”
He sighed, though, and some of the frenzy drained away. “Now that we have no way of knowing the results of the Danal experiment”—Nathans shot a sad and bitter glance at Jones; ashamed, the Enforcer hid motionless behind his armor—“I’ve had to find some other way to hurry us along.
“Tonight is Walpurgis Night, you realize, one of the most important ceremonies of the year. In fact, this could be one of the most important events in the history of mankind. The High Sabbat should be a catalyst of something much more.
“Now, Jones, I trust you completely. I’ll need your assistance with the preparations. This is very important. I’ve got cannisters of a chemical labelled Rhodamine 590 over against the wall. Take that and make sure it gets mixed into the vat of cheap red wine set up in the Sabbat grotto—but be careful not to get any on your hands. I also want you to check the pump systems and make sure all the new Sacred Fonts work properly. I just had them installed.” Nathans’s eyes twinkled beneath the carrot-colored wig.
Be careful not to get any on your hands? “What is this Rhodamine? What does it do?”
Nathans smiled, but it made Jones uneasy. “Ah, I looked long and hard for something like it. It’s a dye used with lasers, a brilliant orange red. But it’s also a mitochondrial poison, extremely toxic and wonderfully fast-acting. Ranks right up there with cyanide. Cyanide’s been done to death, of course, and I wanted something a little more exotic.”
Jones stood motionless, wearing a puzzled and horrified grimace on his face. He wished he could put his helmet back on and hide behind it. “But… poison, sir? What for?”
“For tonight’s communion, of course.” Nathans flicked his eyes at Jones. His gaze had an intensity that made the Enforcer want to cringe, afraid, then the man’s expression changed to one of indirect scorn. He motioned placatingly. “Look, I’m not going to ask them to do anything against their wishes—it’ll be their own choice completely, as it has to be. That’s why I had to find a fast-acting poison. I do feel sorry for the first victim or two, the ones who really don’t know.” He sighed. “But after that, after they all see how deadly it is, surely no rational, intelligent person would partake from a drink laced with poison? Would you? Of course not. But I’m betting that some of them will, and good riddance to them! Surely you don’t feel sorry for people like that?”
Jones didn’t answer. He could hardly even move—Nathans couldn’t be serious! He suddenly looked at the man in a different light. No, not Nathans—it had to be some trick, a joke. A joke, right?
Nathans continued, unaware of Jones’s thoughts. He spoke distractedly, as if preoccupied to the point of helplessness, “My problem for the moment is to make sure our High Priest is up to the task. He’s been cringing for weeks, hiding behind his Intruder Defense Systems. A bit emotionally disturbed, as he always has been.” Nathans mumbled to himself, and this alarmed Jones as well. Nathans had never talked to himself before.
The Enforcer interrupted. Maybe by announcing his discovery, he could focus Nathans’s attention again. “I found out something very strange about the KEEP OFF THE GRASS patches last night, sir. I bumped into it by accident.”
Nathans regarded him, caught up with his own workings for the evening’s High Sabbat. But his eyes widened in fascination and amazement as Jones described the maintenance openings, the raised city over the water.
“The funny thing is, I know the team of hackers has been trying for weeks to uncover any scrap of information, but they always came up empty-handed. I certainly didn’t expect to find anything myself, but I thought I should at least try. So last night I sat down at the terminal and just punched in a routine query—and I got a direct answer. I read it—I know what I saw. But I tried again this morning, and The Net said it had no information.”
Jones dropped his voice, as if sharing a deep secret. “It’s like someone was tampering with The Net. Diverting my queries and covering themselves so well that no one ever suspected. But I caught them off guard and got the information!”
Fascinated, Nathans stared off into space. “We alter The Net all the time for neo-Satanism: it’s not that complicated if you have the right access and you know what you’re doing. But someone else is doing it, too! And without my knowing it! That’s remarkable—I never even thought… what a blind spot!” He tapped his fingertips together, and his eyes glowed as connections started to form.