Dean Koontz: City of Night

She knew that he was just being kind. It had not been good. She must learn to see the art in his ugly body, just as people evidently learned to see the art in the ugly paintings of Jackson Pollock.

Because Victor expected her to be prepared for the intellectual conversations at his periodic dinner parties with the city’s elites, volumes of art criticism had been downloaded into her brain as she had finished forming in the tank.

A lot of it seemed to make no sense, which she attributed to her naïveté. Her IQ was high; therefore, with more experience, she would no doubt come to understand how the ugly, the mean, and the poorly rendered could in fact be ravishingly beautiful. She simply needed to attain the proper perspective.

She would strive to see the beauty in Victor’s tortured flesh. She would be a good wife, and they would be as happy as Romeo and Juliet.

Thousands of literary allusions had been a part of her downloaded instructions, but not the texts of the books, plays, and poems from which they came. She had never read Romeo and Juliet . She knew only that they were famous lovers in a play by Shakespeare.

She might have enjoyed reading the works to which she could allude with such facility, but Victor had forbidden her to do so. Evidently, Erika Four had become a voracious reader, a pastime that had somehow gotten her into such terrible trouble that Victor had been left with no choice but to terminate her.

Books were dangerous, a corrupting influence. A good wife must avoid books.

Showered, feeling pretty in a summery dress of yellow silk, Erika left the master suite to explore the mansion. She felt like the unnamed narrator and heroine of Rebecca , for the first time touring the lovely rooms of Manderley.

In the upstairs hall, she found William, the butter, on his knees in a corner, chewing off his fingers one by one.

In the unmarked sedan, driving fast, seeking what she always needed in times of crisis — good Cajun food — Carson said, “Even if you were Jack’s mother, even if you were his wife, even then you wouldn’t know he’d been replaced.”

“If this were like some Southern Gothic novel,” Michael said, “and I was both his mother and his wife, I’d still think that was Jack.”

“That was Jack .”

“That wasn’t Jack.”

“I know that wasn’t him,” Carson said impatiently, “but it was him .”

Her palms were slick with sweat. She blotted them one at a time on her jeans.

Michael said, “So Helios isn’t just making his New Race and seeding them into the city with fabricated biographies and forged credentials.”

“He can also duplicate real people,” she said. “How can he do that?”

“Easy. Like Dolly.”

“Dolly who?”

“Dolly the sheep. Remember several years ago, some scientists cloned a sheep in a lab, named her Dolly.”

“That was a sheep, for God’s sake. This is a medical examiner. Don’t tell me ‘ easy .’”

The fierce midday sun fired the windshields and the brightwork of the traffic in the street, and every vehicle appeared to be on the verge of bursting into flames, or melting in a silvery spill across the pavement.

“If he can duplicate Jack Rogers,” she said, “he can duplicate anyone.”

“You might not even be the real Carson.”

“I’m the real Carson.”

“How would I know?”

“And how will I know if you go to the men’s room and a Michael monster comes back?”

“He wouldn’t be as funny as the real me,” Michael said.

“The new Jack is funny. Remember what he said about the dead old guy on the table having more personality than homicide cops?”

“That wasn’t exactly hilarious.”

“But for Jack it was funny enough.”

“The real Jack wasn’t all that funny to begin with.”

“That’s my point,” she said. “They can be as funny as they need to be.”

“That would be scary if I thought it was true,” Michael said. “But I’ll bet my ass, if they ring a Michael monster in on you, he’ll be about as witty as a tree stump.”

In this neighborhood of old cottage-style houses, some remained residences, but others had been converted to commercial enterprises.

The blue-and-yellow cottage on the corner looked like someone’s home except for the blue neon sign in a large front window: WONDERMOUS EATS, FOR TRUE, which translated from Cajun patois as “good food, no lie.”

Michael preferred to read it as “good food, no bullshit,” so from time to time he could say “Let’s have a no-bullshit lunch.”

Whether the legal name of the restaurant was Wondermous Eats or whether that was just a slogan, Carson had no idea. The cheap Xeroxed menus had no name at top or bottom.

Cottages had been cleared off two adjacent lots, but the ancient live oaks had been left standing. Cars were parked in the shade among the trees.

The carpet of dead leaves looked like drifts of pecan shells and crunched under the tires of the sedan, then underfoot as Carson and Michael walked to the restaurant.

If Helios succeeded in the abolition of humanity, replacing it with obedient and single-minded multitudes, there would be nothing like Wondermous Eats, for True. There would be no eccentricity and no charm in the new world that he desired.

Cops saw the worst of people, and grew cynical if not bitter. Suddenly, however, flawed and foolish humanity seemed beautiful and precious to Carson, no less so than nature and the world itself.

They chose a table outside, in the oak shade, apart from most of the other diners. They ordered crawfish boulettes and fried okra salad, followed by shrimp-and-ham jambalaya.

This was a denial lunch. If they could still eat this well, surely the end of the world was not upon them, and they were not as good as dead, after all.

“How long does it take to make a Jack Rogers?” Michael wondered when the waitress had left.

“If Helios can make anyone overnight, if he’s that far advanced, then we’re screwed,” Carson said.

“More likely, he’s steadily replacing people in key positions in the city, and Jack was on his list already.”

“So when Jack did the first autopsy on one of the New Race and realized something weird was going on, Helios just brought his Jack on-line quicker than planned.”

“I’d like to believe that,” Michael said.

“So would I.”

“Because neither of us is a big cheese. On his short list, our names wouldn’t be there between the mayor and the chief of police.”

“He would have had no reason to start growing a Carson or a Michael,” she agreed. “Until maybe yesterday.”

“I don’t think he’ll bother even now”

“Because it’s easier just to have us killed.”

“Totally easy.”

“Did he replace Luke or was Luke always one of them?”

“I don’t think there was ever a real Luke,” Michael said.

“Listen to us.”

“I know.”

“When do we start wearing aluminum-foil hats to protect ourselves from alien mind-readers?”

The thick air swagged the day like saturated bunting, hot and damp and preternaturally still. Overhead, the boughs of the oaks hung motionless. The whole world appeared to be paralyzed by a terrible expectation.

The waitress brought the crawfish boulettes and two bottles of ice-cold beer.

“Drinking on duty,” Carson said, amazed at her self.

“It’s not against department regulations during Armageddon,” Michael assured her.

“Just yesterday, you didn’t believe any of this, and I half thought I was losing my mind.”

“Now the only thing I can’t believe,” Michael said, “is that Dracula and the Wolfman haven’t shown up yet.”