Frankenstein

then brutally using them. His desire not only interfered with his work but muddied his thinking in all areas.
    Shortly after leaving New Orleans with a fortune in a briefcase, the night when the first Victor died,
this
Victor had traveled to a private clinic in a country where any medical procedure could be had for the right price, including even organ transplants from well-matched if often unwilling donors. There, he paid handsomely to be neutered.
    He can never be distracted from his momentous work by lust and the power fantasies that arise from it.
    Power. That was a primary goal of the first Victor. Authority, command, dominion,
iron rule
. He wanted every knee to bend to him, every heart to fear him.
    Victor Immaculate has no interest in creating a world of slaves who sway obediently to each wave of his hand.
    One thing and one thing only matters to him: the fulfillment of his mission. Absolute dominion is not an end in itself. The sole purpose of having total power is to achieve his two-part goal: First, erase all humanity and its history; second, then relinquish power forever, thereby denying the value of both power and creation.
    From the original Victor, he inherited a vision of the world without humanity. But Victor Immaculate understands this vision more completely than did his namesake.
    The original Victor had labored to create a New Race, a stronger version of humankind, apostles of reason, without either superstition or free will, obedient soldiers of materialism who would relentlessly liquidate all who were born of man and woman, unify the planet, and spread out to the stars with the ultimate goal of claiming the entire universe.
    That was the grandest mission the first Victor had been able to envision. But Victor Immaculate realized that it merely replaced one kind of human animal with another, and thus suggested that humanity was not a failure but might be a potential success needing only to be redesigned.
    Eradicating every human being from Earth is a momentous achievement only if he does not replace them with a new kind of man. When the members of the Community have hunted down the last man, the last woman, and the last child, Victor Immaculate will within one day cause all the creatures he has made to fall dead.
    He alone will remain alive on Earth for a few days, perhaps seven, to bear witness to the emptiness of the world. Then he will kill himself, and with his death reduce Genesis to a single chapter with only twenty-five verses, and the entire so-called sacred book to one page.
    He is the ultimate annihilator, who will not only put an end to history but obliterate it.
    Now, from a speaker somewhere overhead comes the synthesized voice of a computer, androgynous in character:
“Twilight.”
    Victor opens his eyes.
    The first night of the first war day will soon begin.
    He rises to the occasion.

    
chapter
52

    In the hospital lobby, near the front entrance, Chief Rafael Jarmillo discussed the situation with the four deputies who would deal with friends and relatives of patients who arrived at the hospital during evening visiting hours.
    As he finished giving instructions, he was approached by Ned Gronski, head of Memorial’s small security staff. Gronski was of course a replicant of the real man, who had earlier been given to a Builder in the basement.
    Holding out a coiled rope made from a bedsheet, Gronski said, “A nurse found this tied to the window post in a patient’s room.”
    “When?”
    “Half an hour ago. We’ve searched the grounds.”
    Nobody would climb out a window and down a rope unless he knew he would not be allowed to walk out a door.
    “What patient?” Jarmillo asked.
    “Bryce Walker, the Western writer.”
    “What does he know? How does he know it?”
    Gronski shook his head. “No idea. There’s a kid missing, too. Travis Ahern. Nurse says he and Walker visited a lot this afternoon, in the boy’s room.”
    When earlier it had been learned that Nummy O’Bannon and the vagrant, Conway Lyss, escaped the jail after having seen a Builder at work, Jarmillo had decided that the breach of secrecy didn’t warrant the immediate lockdown of the whole town. Nummy was well liked, but no one would be quick to believe such a fantastic story coming from a boy who treated a stuffed animal as if it were a real dog. Lyss, booked on a charge of burglary the previous day, was wanted for several crimes in Nevada and Idaho. He would most likely want nothing more than to