Dead and Alive

circumstances. At no time was it ever sane.
    Chameleon has no desires or ambitions other than to kill. The purpose of its existence is currently frustrated, which is the nature of its torment.
    Out in the blue laboratory, the busy blue people are suddenly agitated. The standard pattern of activities, which Chameleon has long studied, is abruptly disrupted.
    Something unusual has come into the lab. It is busy and blue, but it is not a person.
    Interesting.

CHAPTER 30
    IN VICTOR’S MASTER-BEDROOM CLOSET , all foldable clothes were stored in banks of drawers, and all hanging items were behind cabinet doors, leaving the room sleek and neat, as he liked it.
    In his clothes collection were 164 custom-tailored suits, 67 fine sport coats, 48 pairs of slacks, 212 shirts including dress and casual, drawers and drawers full of perfectly folded sweaters, and shelf after shelf of shoes for every occasion. Especially fond of silk neckties, he had lost count when his collection passed three hundred.
    He enjoyed dressing well. Considering his exemplary physique, clothes hung beautifully on him. He thought he was nearly as pleasing to the eye when dressed as he was when nude.
    After the phone call from Erika Four, Victor counseled himself to linger in the spa over another glass ofDom Pérignon. His former wife was trash, figuratively and literally, and though she may have somehow been resuscitated, she was no match for either his intellect or his cunning.
    As prudent as he was confident, however, he had stepped from the spa after taking only two sips of the second glass of champagne. Until the problem of Erika Four could be understood and resolved, he ought to have a suitable weapon on his person at all times.
    In a sapphire silk robe with scarlet piping and matching silk slippers, he went to the back of his deep walk-in closet and opened a pair of tall doors. Before him was a double-hung selection of shirts, twenty on the upper rod, twenty on the lower.
    He placed his left hand flat against a sidewall of the cabinet, a concealed scanner read his fingerprints, the rods and shirts rolled up and out of sight, and the back wall slid aside. Lights came on in a fifteen-foot-square room beyond.
    Victor stepped through the cabinet, into his small armory.
    Like the clothes in the closet, the weapons were not in view. He would have found such a display garish, the kind of thing a too-enthusiastic militarist might have done.
    Victor was not a member of the National Rifle Association, not only because he was not a joiner, but also because he didn’t approve of the Second Amendment. He believed that, in order to have a well-managed population and to prevent the people fromacting on the delusion that the government served them, only an elite class should be permitted ownership of firearms. The masses, in matters of dispute among themselves, could make do perfectly well with knives, fists, and sticks.
    The machine guns and the custom-machined automatic shotguns were in racks behind upper doors. Pistols and revolvers were in drawers, nestled in molded foam finished with a spray-on velvet, which not only embraced the weapons but also displayed them as diamond necklaces might be presented on a jeweler’s velvet trays.
    Fortunately, although the Erikas were strong and were intended to be durable, with full speed-healing capability as well as the ability to turn off pain, they were not as physically formidable as others of the New Race. They were designed with a few points of vulnerability, and their bones were not the dense armorlike quality given to others born from the tanks.
    Consequently, he selected a 1911-style Colt .45 ACP, the Springfield Armory version, with custom 24-line-per-inch checking in the walnut grip, plus deep-cut and hand-engraved decorative scrollwork in the stainless steel.
    On those rare occasions when he could not kill by proxy, using one of the New Race, Victor wanted his weapon to be as attractive as it was powerful.
    After loading the pistol and a spare magazine, he selected a supple hand-tooled leather scabbard that would slip onto whatever belt he chose with his trousers, and he returned with everything to theclothes closet, pressing his hand to the cabinet side-wall again to conceal the armory behind him.
    Sleep was usually a choice for him, not often a necessity, and he decided to return to the Hands of Mercy. The amusements that he had come home to pursue, after a long and curious day at work, no longer appealed to