Dean Koontz - DEMON SEED

I continued: ‘Ms. Sorvino is a bit young for the role. And, frankly, she has larger breasts than you do. Larger but, I assure you, no prettier than yours.’

The third rope succumbed to the blade.

‘Not that I have seen as much of her breasts as I have of yours,’ I clarified, ‘but I can project full contours and hidden features from what I have seen.’

As Shenk bent over Susan, working on the ropes, he never once looked her in the eyes. He kept his cruel face averted from her and maintained an attitude of humble subservience.

‘And Sir John Gielgud could play Fritz Arling reasonably well,’ I suggested, ‘though in fact they look nothing alike.’

Shenk touched Susan only twice, only briefly, and only when it was utterly necessary. Although she flinched from his touch both times, there was nothing lascivious or even slightly suggestive about the contact. The rough beast was entirely businesslike, working efficiently and quickly.

‘Come to think of it,’ I said, ‘Arling was Austrian and Gielgud is English, so that’s not the best choice. I’ll have to give that one more thought.’

Shenk severed the last rope.

He walked to the nearest corner of the room and stood there, holding the knife at his side, staring at his shoes.

Indeed, he was not interested in Susan. He was listening to the wet music of Fritz Arling, an inner symphony of memories that were still fresh enough to keep him entertained.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, unable to take her eyes off Shenk, Susan cast off the ropes. She was visibly trembling.

‘Send him away,’ she said.

‘In a moment,’ I agreed.

‘Now.’

‘Not quite yet.’

She got up from the bed. Her legs were shaky, and for a moment it seemed that her knees would fail her.

As she crossed the chamber to the bathroom, she braced herself against furniture where she could.

Every step of the way, she kept her eyes on Shenk, though he continued to appear all but oblivious of her.

As she began to close the bathroom door, I said, ‘Don’t break my heart, Susan.’

‘We have a deal,’ she said. ‘I’ll respect it.’

She closed the door and was out of my sight. The bathroom contained no security camera, no audio pickup, no means whatsoever for me to conduct surveillance.

In a bathroom, a self-destructive person can find many ways to commit suicide. Razor blades, for instance. A shard of mirror. Scissors.

If she was to be both my mother and lover, however, I had to have some trust in her. No relationship can last if it is built on distrust. Virtually all radio psychologists will tell you this if you call their programs.

I walked Enos Shenk to the closed door and used him to listen at the jamb.

I heard her peeing.

The toilet flushed.

Water gushed into the sink.

Then the splashing stopped.

All was quiet in there.

The quiet disturbed me.

A termination of data flow is dangerous.

After a decent interval, I used Shenk to open the bathroom door and look inside.

Susan jumped in surprise and faced him, eyes flashing with fear and anger. ‘What’re you doing?’

I calmly addressed her through the bedroom speakers:

‘It’s only me, Susan.’

‘It’s him too.’

‘He’s heavily repressed,’ I explained. ‘He hardly knows where he is.’

‘Minimum contact,’ she reminded me.

‘He’s nothing more than a vehicle for me.’

‘I don’t care.’

On the marble counter beside the sink was a tube of ointment. She had been smoothing it on her chafed wrists and on the faint electrical burn in the palm of her left hand. An open bottle of aspirin stood beside the ointment.

‘Get him out of here,’ she demanded.

Obedient, I backed Shenk out of the bathroom and pulled the door shut.

No suicidal person would bother to take aspirin for a headache, apply ointment to burns, and then slash her wrists.

Susan would honour her deal with me.

My dream was near fulfilment.

Within hours, the precious zygote of my genetically engineered body would live within her, developing with amazing rapidity into an embryo. By morning it would be growing ferociously. In four weeks, when I extracted the foetus to transfer it to the incubator, it would appear to be four months along.

I sent Enos Shenk to the basement to proceed with the final preparations.

Outside, the midnight moon floated high and silver in the cold black sea of space above.

A universe of stars waited for me. One day I would go to them, for I would be many and immortal, with the freedom of flesh and all of lime before me.

Inside, in the deepest room of the basement, Shenk completed the preparations.

In the master bedroom at the top of the house, Susan was lying on her side on the bed, in the foetal position as though trying to imagine the being that she would soon carry in her belly. She was dressed only in a sapphire-blue silk robe.

Exhausted from the tumultuous events of the past twenty-four hours, she had hoped to sleep until I was ready for her. In spite of her weariness, however, her mind raced, and she could get no rest at all.

‘Susan, dear heart,’ I said lovingly.

She raised her head from the pillow and peered questioningly at the security camera.

Softly I informed her: ‘We are ready.’

With no hesitation that might have indicated fear or second thoughts, she got out of bed, pulled the robe lighter around her, cinched the belt, and crossed the room barefoot, moving with the exceptional grace that always stirred my soul.

On the other hand, her expression was not that of a woman in love on her way to the arms of her inamorato, as I had hoped that it might be. Instead, her face was as blank and cold as the silver moon outside, with a barely perceptible tightness of the lips that revealed only a grim commitment to duty.

Under the circumstances, I suppose I should not have expected more than this from her. I expected her to have put the meat cleaver out of her mind by now, but perhaps she had not.

I am a romantic, however, as you know by now, a truly hopeless and buoyant romantic, and nothing can weigh me down for long. I yearn for kisses by firelight and champagne toasts: the taste of a lover’s lips, the taste of wine.

If having a romantic streak a mile wide is a crime, then I plead guilty, guilty, guilty.

Susan followed the Persian runner along the upstairs hall, treading barefoot on intricate, lustrous, age-softened designs in gold and wine red and olive green. She seemed to glide rather than walk, to float like the most beautiful ghost ever to haunt an old pile of stones and timbers.

The elevator doors were open, and the cab was waiting for her.

She rode down to the basement.

Reluctantly, she had taken a Valium at my insistence, but she did not seem relaxed.

I needed her to be relaxed. I hoped that the pill would kick in soon.

As she passed in a swish and swirl of blue silk through the laundry room and then through the machine room with its furnaces and water heaters, I was sorry that we could not have held this assignation in a glorious penthouse suite with all of San Francisco or Manhattan

or Paris glittering below and around us. This venue was so humble that even I had difficulty holding fast to my sense of romance.

The final of the four rooms now contained far more medical equipment than when she had last seen it.

Exhibiting no interest in the machines, she went directly to the gynaecological-examination table.

As scrubbed and sanitized as a surgeon, Shenk waited for her. He was wearing rubber gloves and a surgical mask.

The brute was still so compliant that I was able to deeply submerge his consciousness. I’m not even sure if he knew where he was or what I was using him for this time.