Midnight

machines. Men … men … men are not machines! "
    "You're regressing. For God's sake, Loman!"
    Watkins halted and seemed disoriented. Then he shook his head, as if to cast off his confusion as he might a veil. He raised his hands, looked at them, and cried out in terror. He glanced past Shaddack, at the dresser mirror, and his cry grew louder, shriller.
    Abruptly Shaddack was acutely aware of the stench of blood, to which he had somewhat accustomed himself. Watkins must be even more affected by it, though not repulsed, no, not in the least repulsed, but excited.
    Lightning flashed and thunder shook the night again, and rain suddenly came down in torrents, beating on the windows and drumming on the roof.
    Watkins looked from the mirror to Shaddack, raised a hand as if to strike him, then turned and staggered out of the room, into the hall, away from the ripe stink of blood. Out there he dropped to his knees, then onto his side. He curled into a ball, shaking violently, gagging, whimpering, snarling, and intermittently chanting, "No, no, no, no."

57
    When he pulled back from the brink and felt in control of himself once more, Loman sat up and leaned against the wall. He was wet with perspiration again, and shaky with hunger. The partial transformation and the energy expended to keep it from going all the way had left him drained. He was relieved but also felt unfulfilled, as if some great prize had been within his reach but then had been snatched away just as he had touched it.
    A hollow, somewhat susurrant sound surrounded him. At first he thought it was an internal noise, all in his head, perhaps the soft boom and sizzle of brain cells flaring and dying from the strain of thwarting the regressive urge. Then he realized it was rain hammering on the roof of the bungalow.
    When he opened his eyes, his vision was blurred. It cleared, and he was staring at Shaddack, who stood on the other side of the hall, just beyond the open bedroom door. Gaunt, long-faced, pale enough to pass for an albino, with those yellowish eyes, in his dark topcoat, the man looked like a visitation, perhaps Death himself.
    If this had been Death, Loman might well have stood up and warmly embraced him.
    Instead, while he waited for the strength to get up, he said, "No more conversions. You've got to stop the conversions."
    Shaddack said nothing.
    "You're not going to stop, are you?"
    Shaddack merely stared at him.
    "You're mad," Loman said. "You're stark, raving mad, yet I've no choice but to do what you want … or kill myself."
    "Never talk to me like that again. Never. Remember who I am."
    "I remember who you are," Loman said. He struggled to his feet at last, dizzy, weak. "You did this to me without my consent. And if the time comes when I can no longer resist the urge to regress, when I sink down into savage, when I'm no longer scared shitless of you, I'll somehow hold on to enough of my mind to remember where you are, too, and I'll come for you."
    "You threaten me?" Shaddack said, clearly amazed.
    "No," Loman said. "Threat isn't the right word."
    "It better not be. Because if anything happens to me, Sun is programmed to broadcast a command that'll be received by the clusters of microspheres inside you and—"
    "—will instantly kill us all," Loman finished. "Yeah, I know. You've told me. If you go, we all go with you, just like people down there at Jonestown years ago, drinking their poisoned KoolAid and biting the big one right along with Reverend Jim. You're our Reverend Jim Jones, a Jim Jones for the high-tech age, Jim Jones with a silicon heart and tightly packed semiconductors between the ears. No, I'm not threatening you, Reverend Jim, because 'threat' is too dramatic a word for it. A man making a threat has to be feeling something powerful, has to be hot with anger. I'm a New Person. I'm only afraid. That's all I can be. Afraid. So it's not a threat. No such a thing. It's a promise ."
    Shaddack stepped through the bedroom doorway, into the hall. A drought of cold air seemed to come with him. Maybe it was Loman's imagination, but the hall seemed chillier with Shaddack in it.
    They stared at each other for a long moment.
    At last Shaddack said, "You'll continue to do what I say."
    "I don't have a choice," Loman noted. "That's the way you made me—without a choice. I'm right there in the palm of your hand, Lord, but it isn't love that keeps me there—it's fear."
    "Better," Shaddack said.
    He turned his back on Loman and walked down