Frankenstein

a spoon!”
    Jocko scurried to Deucalion.
    “Jocko has only the thing he pees with. Jocko calls it his swoozle. But it has no other purpose.
No other purpose!”
    Jocko sprang to Michael again. Put his right foot on Michael’s left foot. To hold him there, keep his attention.
    “Jocko’s swoozle folds up and rolls away. After use.
It is disgusting!
Jocko’s knees are ugly, too. And his butt.”
    Jocko grabbed the sleeve of Carson’s jacket.
    “Jocko always washes his hands. After folding and rolling. For you, Jocko could wash his hands in alcohol. And sterilize them with fire. If you want.”
    “Washing is fine,” Carson said.
    “Jocko has made a fool of himself. Yes? No?
Yes!
Jocko is still making a fool of himself. Jocko will always make a fool of himself. Excuse Jocko. He will go now and kill himself.”
    Jocko cartwheeled out of the kitchen. Along the hallway. Into the foyer.
    Jocko looked in the foyer mirror. Hooked two fingers in his nostrils. Pulled his nose back toward his forehead. Back as far as it would go. This hurt so much, it brought tears to Jocko’s eyes.
    Jocko spat on his left foot. Spat on his right. Spat on them some more.
    It was the end. Death by immolation. Jocko threw himself into the fireplace. No fire. Screwup.
    Jocko could never face them again. He would wear a bag over his head. Forever.
    After a while, Jocko returned to the kitchen.
    Erika had drawn another chair to the table. Beside hers. She had put a pillow on the chair. To boost Jocko. She smiled and patted the pillow.
    Jocko sat beside Erika. His three new acquaintances smiled at him. So nice. Jocko was nice, too. He
didn’t
smile.
    “May Jocko have a cookie?” he asked Erika.
    “Yes, you may.”
    “May Jocko have nine cookies?”
    “One cookie at a time.”
    “Okay,” Jocko said, and took a cookie from the tray.
    Erika said, “I was about to tell everyone how Victor can have died at the landfill—yet be alive here in Montana.”
    Cookie unbitten, Jocko stared at his brilliant mother, amazed. “You know how?”
    “Yes,” Erika said. “And you do, too.” To the others, she said, “In Victor’s mansion in the Garden District, in the library, there was a hidden switch that caused a section of bookshelves to swivel and reveal a passageway.”
    “Passageway,” Jocko confirmed.
    “At the end of the passageway, past various defenses and a vault door, there was a room.”
    “Room,” Jocko agreed.
    “In this room, among other things, was a large glass case about nine feet long, five feet wide, more than three feet deep. It stood on bronze ball-and-claw feet.”
    “Feet,” Jocko attested.
    “The beveled-glass panes were very cold, held together by an ornate ormolu frame. It was like a giant jewel box. The box was filled with a semiopaque red-gold substance that sometimes seemed to be a liquid, sometimes a gas.”
    “Gas,” Jocko said, and shuddered.
    “And shrouded in that substance was a shadowy something that seemed to be alive but in suspended animation. On a whim, I don’t know why, I spoke to the thing in the box. It answered me. Its voice was low, menacing. It said, ‘You are Erika Five, and you are mine.’”
    “Menacing.” Jocko had not yet taken a bite of the cookie. He no longer wanted it. Jocko felt nauseous.
    “I never saw what was inside that box,” she said, “but now I think it must have been another Victor, his clone.”
    Return the cookie to the tray? No. Impolite. Jocko had touched it. With his nasty hand. One of his nasty hands. Both were nasty.
    “And perhaps when Victor died,” Erika continued, “the satellite-relayed signal from his body that terminated all of the New Race also released his clone from that glass case.”
    Jocko took off his hat. Set the cookie on his head. Put the hat on again.

    
chapter
45

    Travis Ahern had been rushed to the hospital wearing jeans, a pullover sweater, and a jacket with several pockets stuffed full of all those tools and totems and curiosities that nine-year-old boys find essential when at play in the world. These items included a penknife with a mother-of-pearl handle, which Bryce Walker borrowed before he returned to his room.
    Alone, Travis stripped the pillowcase off one of his pillows. At the small closet, he transferred his street clothes from hangers to the pillowcase, working rapidly because he feared that someone would enter the room and catch him packing. He left the makeshift suitcase in the closet and returned to his