City of Night

tone,” Victor said.
    “He would’ve had to learn beforehand what number each tone represented.”
    On the surveillance tape, Randal entered the empty storeroom in the building next door. After some hesitation, he went from there into the parking garage.
    The final camera captured Randal as he haltingly ascended the garage ramp. His face was carved by anxiety, but somehow he overcame his agoraphobia and ventured into a world he found threatening and overwhelming in scale.
    “Mr. Helios, sir, I suggest that our security protocols be revised and our electronic systems modified to prevent unauthorized exit as well as unauthorized entrance.”
    “Do it,” Victor said.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “We’ve got to find him,” Victor said more to himself than to Werner. “He left with some specific intention. A destination. He’s so developmentally disabled, so narrowly focused, he could only have accomplished this if some desperate need drove him.”
    “May I suggest, sir, that we search his billet as thoroughly as if we were police searching a crime scene. We might find a clue to his purpose, his destination.”
    “We better,” Victor warned.
    “Yes, sir.”
    Victor went to the door, hesitated, glanced back at Werner. “How is your mucus?”
    The security chief came as close to smiling as he ever would. “Much better, sir. The last few days, I haven’t had no snot at all.”
    “Any snot,” Victor corrected.
    “No, sir. Like I just said, I don’t have no snot at all.”
     
     
     

Chapter 13
     
    Carson O’Connor lives in a simple white house given some grace by a veranda that wraps three sides.
    Oaks draped with Spanish moss shade the property. Cicadas sing in the heat.
    In respect of the substantial annual rainfall and the long sultry summers, the veranda and the house itself are raised almost three feet off the ground on concrete piers, creating a crawl space under the entire structure.
    The crawl space is concealed by a skirt of crisscrossed lattice. Usually nothing lives here but spiders.
    These are unusual days. Now the spiders share their redoubt with Randal Six.
    Crossing the city from the Hands of Mercy, especially when a thunderstorm brought the sky crashing to the earth in bright bolts, Randal had been afflicted by too much noise, by too many new sights, smells, sounds, sensations. Never had he known such blind terror.
    He had almost clawed out his eyes, had almost poked a sharp stick in his ears to destroy his hearing, thus sparing himself from sensory overload. Fortunately, he had restrained those impulses.
    Although he appears to be eighteen, he has been alive and out of the tank for only four months. All of that time, he has lived in one room, mostly in one corner of that room.
    He doesn’t like commotion. He doesn’t like being touched or having to speak to anyone. He despises change.
    Yet here he is. He has thrown over all he knew and has embraced an unknowable future. This accomplishment makes him proud.
    The crawl space is a peaceful environment. His monastery, his hermitage.
    For the most part, the only smells are the bare earth under him, the raw wood above, the concrete piers. Occasionally a whiff of star jasmine fords its way to him, though it is a richer scent at night than in the day.
    Little sunlight penetrates the interstices of the lattice. The shadows are deep, but because he is of the New Race, with enhanced vision, he can see well enough.
    Only an occasional traffic noise reaches him from the street. From overhead, inside the house, come periodic footsteps, the creak of floorboards, muffled music on a radio.
    His companions, the spiders, have no smell that he can detect, make no noise, and keep to themselves.
    He might be content here for a long time if not for the fact that the secret of happiness abides in the house above him, and he must have it.
    In a newspaper, he once saw a photograph of Detective Carson O’Connor with her brother, Arnie. Arnie is an autistic like Randal Six.
    Nature made Arnie autistic. Randal was given his affliction by Victor. Nevertheless, he and Arnie are brothers in their suffering.
    In the newspaper photo, twelve-year-old Arnie had been with his sister at a charily event benefiting autism research. Arnie had been smiling. He looked happy.
    During his four months of life in the Hands of Mercy, Randal has never been happy. Anxiety gnaws at him every minute, every day, more insistently some times than at others, but always chewing, nibbling. He