Dean Koontz - City of Night

Never before has he eaten anything brown. He chooses chocolate mint instead of chocolate almond because he assumes there will be bits of green in it, which will perhaps make it tolerable.

He withdraws a spoon from the flatware drawer and carries the quart of ice cream to the kitchen table. He sits, quivering with fearful anticipation.

Brown food. He may not survive.

When he pries the lid off the container, Randal discovers that the mint appears in thin ribbons of bright green, woven through the cold brown mass. This familiar color heartens him. The quart is full, and he digs out a spoonful of the treat.

Raising the spoon, he comes up short of the courage needed to put it in his mouth. He must make four halting attempts before he succeeds on the fifth.

Oh.

Not disgusting, after all. Delicious.

Galvanizingly delicious: He thrusts the second spoonful into his mouth without hesitation. And a third.

As he eats, he settles into a peace, a contentment, that he has never known previously. He is not yet happy, as he understands the concept of happiness, but he is closer to that desired condition than he has ever been in his four months out of the tank.

Having come here in search of the secret of happiness, he has found something else first: home .

He feels that he belongs here in a way that he never belonged in the Hands of Mercy. He feels so safe here that he can eat brown food. Maybe later even the pink-and-yellow strawberry-banana swirl. Anything, no matter how daring, seems to be possible within these sheltering walls.

By the time he has devoured half of the quart of chocolate mint, he knows that he will never leave. This is his home.

Throughout history, men of the Old Race have died — and killed — to protect their homes. Randal Six knows a little history, the usual two gigabytes downloaded in the tank.

To be torn from this peace and thrown into the bright and noisy world would be akin to death. Therefore, any attempt to force him from his home should be regarded as a murderous assault, justifying a swift and lethal response.

This is his home. With all his strength, he will defend his right to it.

He hears descending footsteps on the stairs.

Gunny Alecto, a garbage-galleon driver, came into the shack that served as the manager’s office, sat on the edge of Nick Frigg’s desk, and said, “Rain rail rape raid rag rascal rack.”

Nick didn’t reply. She was just having trouble getting started; and if he tried to guess the word for which she was searching, he would only further confuse her.

“Rabid race rabble rap rat. Rat!” She had found the wanted noun. “Have you noticed about the rats?”

“What about them?”

“What about who?”

“The rats, Gunny.”

“Did you notice, too?”

“Notice what?”

“The rats are gone,” she said.

“Gone where?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you.”

“Asking me what?”

“Where are the rats?”

“We’ve always got rats,” Nick said.

She shook her head. “Not here. Not now. No more.”

Gunny looked like a movie star, except dirty. Nick didn’t know why Victor had made her gorgeous and then assigned her to the dump. Maybe the contrast between her looks and her work amused him. Maybe he had modeled her after one of the Old Race who had rejected him or had otherwise earned his resentment.

“Why don’t you go out there and look for elephants,” Gunny suggested.

“What’re you talking about — elephants?”

“You’re as likely to find them as rats. Plowin’ the trash, I usually chase up packs of them all the time, but I haven’t seen one in three days.”

“Maybe they’re just making their burrows deeper in the pit as we fill it fuller.”

“So we got five?” Gunny asked.

“Five rats?”

“I heard five Old Race dead came in today.”

“Yeah. Plus three dead gone-wrongs,” Nick said.

“Some fun tonight,” she said. “Man, it’s hot today.”

“Louisiana summer, what do you expect.”

“I’m not complaining,” she said. “I like the sun. I wish there was sun at night.”

“It wouldn’t be night if there was sun.”

“That’s the problem,” Gunny agreed.

Communicating with Gunny Alecto could be a challenge. She had looks, and she was as good a garbage-galleon driver as anyone, but her thought processes, as revealed by her conversation, didn’t always track in a linear fashion.

Everyone in the New Race had a rank. At the top were the Alphas, the ruling elite. They were followed by Betas and Gammas.

As manager of the dump, Nick was a Gamma. Everyone on his crew was an Epsilon.

Epsilons had been designed and programmed for brute labor. They were a step or two above the meat machines without self-awareness that one day would replace many factory robots.

No class envy was permitted among those of the New Race. Each had been programmed to be content with the rank to which he had been born and to have no yearning for advancement.

It remained permissible, of course, to disdain and feel superior to those who ranked below you. Contempt for one’s inferiors provided a healthy substitute for dangerous ambition.

Epsilons like Gunny Alecto didn’t receive the wealth of direct-to-brain data downloading given to a Gamma like Nick, just as he received less than any Beta, and far less than any Alpha.

In addition to being less well-educated than the other ranks, Epsilons sometimes seemed to have cognitive problems that indicated their brains were not as carefully crafted as the brains of the upper classes.

“Goat goof gopher goon golf goose gone. Gone! Gone-wrongs. We got three, you said. What’re they like?”

“I haven’t seen them yet,” Nick said.

“They’ll be stupid-looking.”

“I’m sure they will.”

“Stupid-looking gone-wrongs. Some fun tonight.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Nick said, which was true.

“Where do you think they went?”

“The deliverymen put them in the cooler.”

“The rats?” she asked, puzzled.

“I thought you meant the gone-wrongs.”

“I meant the rats. I miss the little fellers. You don’t think we’ve got cats, do you?”

“I haven’t seen any cats.”

“That would explain no rats,” she said. “But if you haven’t seen any, that’s good enough for me.”

If Gunny had been required to live among members of the Old Race, she might not have passed for one of them — or might have been designated mentally disabled.

As a member of the Crosswoods crew, however, she had no life outside the dump. She lived within its gates twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with a bunk in one of the trailers that served as dormitories.

In spite of her problems, she was an excellent dozer pilot, and Nick was glad to have her.

Getting up from the edge of Nick’s desk, Gunny said, “Well, back to the pit — and then some fun tonight, huh?”

“Some fun tonight,” he agreed.

After her conversation with Christine in the kitchen, Erika Helios toured those rooms of the mansion that she had not previously seen.

The lavish home theater was Russian Belle Epoque after the palaces of St. Petersburg. Victor had specified this opulent style in honor of his late friend, Joseph Stalin, communist dictator and visionary.

Joe Stalin had come forth with vast resources to fund New Race research after the sad collapse of the Third Reich, which had been a terrible setback for Victor. So confident had Joe been in Victor’s ability eventually to fabricate an entirely controllable and obedient variety of enhanced humans that he had ordered the deaths of forty million of his citizens by various means even before the technology of the cloning tanks had been perfected.