City of Night

superstitious member of the Old Race, either. A Gamma .”
    She put the Adam and Eve roots and the Judas’s Mixture back in her purse. She zipped it shut.
    “I don’t know what to do,” Benny said.
    “We have an assignment, remember? Kill O’Connor and Maddison. I don’t know why we haven’t already done it.”
    Benny stared through the windshield at the park.
    Never since disgorgement from the creation tank had he felt this bleak. He yearned for stability and control, but he found himself in an escalating chaos.
    The more he brooded on his dilemma, the faster he sank into a gray despond.
    Weighing his duty to Victor against his self-interest, he wondered why he had been designed to be the ultimate materialist and then had been required to care about anything other than himself. Why should he concern himself about more than his own needs—except that his maker would terminate him if he disobeyed? Why should it matter to him that the New Race ascended, considering that this world had no transcendent meaning? What was the purpose of liquidating humanity and achieving dominion over all of nature, what was the purpose of then venturing out to the stars, if all of nature—to every end of the universe—was just a dumb machine with no point to its design? Why strive to be the king of nothing?
    Benny had been created to be a man of action, always moving and doing and killing. He hadn’t been designed to think this much about philosophical issues.
    “Leave the heavy thinking to the Alphas and Betas,” he said.
    “I always do,” Cindi said.
    “I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to myself.”
    “I’ve never heard you do that before.”
    “I’m starting.”
    She frowned. “How will I know when you’re talking to me or to yourself?”
    “I won’t talk to myself much. Maybe never again. I don’t really interest me that much.”
    “We’d both be more interesting if we had a baby.”
    He sighed. “Whatever will be will be. We’ll terminate who we’re told to until our maker terminates us. It’s beyond our control.”
    “Not beyond the control of Ibo,” she said.
    “He who is red.”
    “That’s right. Do you want to come with me to meet Zozo Deslisle and get a make-happy gris-gris? ”
    “No. I just want to tie down those cops and cut them open and listen to them scream while I twist their intestines.”
    “ You’re the one who told me to drive past,” she reminded him.
    “I was mistaken. Let’s find them.”
     
     
     

Chapter 37
     
    Victor was at his desk in the main laboratory, taking a cookie break, when Annunciata’s face appeared on his computer screen in all her glorious digital detail.
    “Mr. Helios, I have been asked by Werner to tell you that he is in Randal Six’s room and that he is exploding.”
    Although Annunciata wasn’t a real person, just a manifestation of complicated software, Victor said irritably, “You’re screwing up again.”
    “Sir?”
    “That can’t be what he told you. Review his message and convey it correctly.”
    Werner had personally conducted a search of Randal’s room and had taken it upon himself to review everything on Randal’s computer.
    Annunciata spoke again: “Mr. Helios, I have been asked by Werner to tell you that he is in Randal Six’s room and that he is exploding.”
    “Contact Werner and ask him to repeat his message, then get back to me when you’ve got it right.”
    “Yes, Mr. Helios.”
    With the last of a peanut butter cookie raised to his lips, he hesitated, waiting for her to repeat Helios , but she didn’t.
    As Annunciata’s face dematerialized from the screen, Victor ate the final bite, and then washed it down with coffee.
    Annunciata returned. “Mr. Helios, Werner repeats that he is in fact exploding and wishes to stress the urgency of the situation.”
    Getting to his feet, Victor threw his mug at the wall, against which it shattered with a satisfying noise.
    Tightly, he said, “Annunciata, let’s see if you can get anything right. Call janitorial. Coffee has been spilled in the main lab.”
    “Yes, Mr. Helios.”
    Randal Six’s room was on the second floor, which served as a dormitory for all those of the New Race who had graduated from the tanks but who were not yet ready to be sent into the world beyond the walls of Mercy.
    As the elevator ascended, Victor strove to calm himself. After 240 years, he should have learned not to let these things grind at his nerves.
    His curse was to be a perfectionist in