City of Night

singularity.”
    “But, sir, I beg your pardon if this sounds impertinent… however, if you didn’t expect it to happen the first time, how can you be sure it won’t happen again?”
    Stripping off his latex surgical gloves, Victor said, “Damn it, Ripley, stop that with your eyebrows.”
    “My eyebrows, sir?”
    “You know what I mean. Clean up here.”
    “Sir, is it possible that Harker’s consciousness, the essence of his mind, somehow transferred to his second self?”
    Taking off the surgical gown that he wore over his clothes, moving toward the door of the dissection room, Victor said, “No. It was a parasitical mutation, most likely with nothing but a crude animal awareness.”
    “But, sir, if the trollish thing isn’t a thing, after all, sir, if it’s actually Harker himself, and now he’s living in the storm drains, then he’s free.”
    The word free halted Victor. He turned to stare at Ripley.
    When Ripley realized his error, fear brought his eyebrows down from their absurdly lofty heights and beetled them on the cliff of his brow. “I don’t mean to suggest that what happened to Harker could be in any way desirable.”
    “Don’t you, Ripley?”
    “No, sir. I don’t. It’s a horror, what happened to him.”
    Victor stared at him. Ripley dared not say another word.
    After a long mutual silence, Victor said, “In addition to your eyebrows, Ripley, you’re far too excitable. Annoyingly so.”
     
     
     

Chapter 28
     
    Moving hesitantly through the kitchen in a state of awe, Randal Six imagines that this must be what a devout monk feels when in a temple, at a consecrated altar.
    For the first time in his life, Randal is in a home. Mercy had been where he was billeted, but it had never been a home. It had been only a place. He’d had no emotion vested in it.
    To the Old Race, home is the center of existence. Home is the first refuge from—and last defense against—the disappointments and the terrors of life.
    The heart of the home is the kitchen. He knows this to be true because he has read it in a magazine about home decor and in another magazine about cooking light.
    In addition, Martha Stewart has said this is true, and Martha Stewart is, by acclamation of the Old Race, the ultimate authority on such matters.
    During social evenings, close friends and neighbors frequently gravitate to the kitchen. Some of a family’s happiest memories are of moments together in the kitchen. According to Old Race philosophers, nothin’ says lovin’ like somethin’ from the oven, and the oven is in the kitchen.
    The blinds are half drawn. The late-afternoon sunshine that reaches the windows has first been filtered by oak trees. Yet Randal can see well enough to explore the room.
    Quietly he opens cabinets, discovering dishes, cups, saucers, drinking glasses. In drawers he finds folded dish towels, flatware, knives, and a bewildering collection of utensils and culinary gadgets.
    Usually, too many new sights, too many unfamiliar objects, will throw Randal into a panic attack. He is often forced to withdraw to a corner and turn his back to the world in order to survive the shock of too much sensory input.
    For some reason, the staggering richness of new experience in this kitchen does not affect him in that way. Instead of panic, he experiences… enchantment.
    Perhaps this is because he is in a home at last. A person’s home is inviolate. A sanctuary. An extension of one’s personality, Martha says. Home is the safest of all places.
    He is in the heart of this home, in the safest room of the safest place, where many happy memories will be made, where sharing and giving and laughing occur on a daily basis.
    Randal Six has never laughed. He smiled once. When he first made his way to the O’Connor house, when he got out of the storm and into the crawl space, in the dark among the spiders, knowing that he would eventually reach Arnie, he had smiled.
    When he opens the pantry door, he is stunned at the variety and quantity of canned and packaged food on the shelves. Never has he dared imagine such abundance.
    At the Hands of Mercy, his meals and snacks were brought to his billet. The menu had been planned by others. He was given no choice of food—except for the color of it, on which he was insistent.
    Here, the options before him are dazzling. In canned soups alone, he sees six varieties.
    When he turns from the pantry and opens the upper door of the refrigerator, his legs shake and his knees go