City of Night

quite still for a long moment, assessing her discovery, the passageway went dark. When she reached out into the blackness, the lights came on again.
    The narrow corridor led in only one direction and ended in a formidable steel door.
    Because Victor loved gadgets and techie stuff, Erika would have expected this door to have an electronic lock. Victor’s style would be to equip it with a scanner that read palm prints or patterns in the retina, allowing access only to him.
    Instead, the door was secured by inch-thick steel lock bolts: five of them. One was inserted in the header, one in the threshold, and three in the right-hand jamb, opposite the massive hinges.
    Contemplating this barrier, Erika considered that opening it might be unwise. The space beyond was not a box, and the door was not a lid, but inevitably, she thought of Pandora, the first woman, whose curiosity had led her to open the box in which Prometheus had locked away all the evils that could afflict humanity.
    This bit of myth gave her only brief pause, because humanity—another term for the Old Race—was doomed anyway. She herself might one day be told to kill as many as she could find.
    Besides, Samuel Johnson—whoever he was—had once said, “Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.”
    Judging by the imposing weight of this door and the size of the lock bolts that secured it, something of considerable importance to Victor must wait to be discovered behind it. If Erika were to be the best wife that she could be—and the last Erika ever to rise from the tanks—she must understand her husband, and to understand him, she must know everything that he most valued. Whatever lay behind this barrier, which resembled a vault door, clearly was of enormous value to him.
    She extracted the bolt from the header, and thereafter the bolt seated in the concrete floor. One by one, she pulled the bolts from the jamb.
    The steel slab opened away from her, into the next space, where a row of ceiling lights brightened automatically. As she crossed the threshold, she saw that the door, which swung smoothly and quietly on its massive ball-bearing hinges, measured about eight inches thick.
    She found herself in another short passageway, about twelve feet in length, which ended in a door identical to the first.
    Along the length of this second corridor, scores of metal rods bristled from the walls. On her left, the rods appeared to be copper. On the right, they were of another metal, perhaps steel but perhaps not.
    A soft, ululant hum filled the passageway. It seemed to arise from the metal rods.
    Her downloaded education had focused primarily on music, dance, literary allusions, and other subjects that would ensure that she would be a scintillating hostess when Victor entertained politically important members of the Old Race, which he would do until such a time as he could confidently eliminate them. She didn’t know much about the sciences.
    Nevertheless, she suspected that when needed for whatever reason—powerful electrical currents arced between the metal rods that were aligned on opposite sides of the passageway, perhaps frying or vaporizing altogether whoever might be caught between them.
    Not even a member of the New Race would emerge unscathed.
    As she stood two steps inside the threshold, brooding on this discovery, a blue laser beam speared forth from a ceiling fixture and scanned her body from top to bottom, and then to top again, as if assessing her form.
    The laser winked off. An instant later the rods stopped humming. A heavy silence claimed the passageway.
    She had the impression that she’d been found acceptable. She would most likely not be sizzled as crisp as burnt toast if she proceeded.
    If she was wrong, tentative steps would not spare her from destruction; therefore, she walked boldly forward, leaving the door open behind her.
    Her first day in the mansion—beginning with Victor’s bedroom fury followed by William’s finger-chewing episode, proceeding to the disturbing conversation she’d had with Christine in the kitchen—had not been as welcoming as she might have hoped. Perhaps herewith the day had taken a turn for the better. Not being electrocuted seemed to be a good sign.
     
     
     

Chapter 36
     
    “All glory to Ibo,” Cindi repeated, “may he approve the taste of my blood.”
    As hot as he had been to capture and kill the detectives only a moment ago, Benny Lovewell was suddenly