Midnight

humanity to something higher, cleaner, purer …"
    Loman was certain that Denny's drooling, silver-eyed incarnation was not a higher form than ordinary human existence, neither cleaner nor purer. In its way it was as much a degeneration as Mike Peyser's regression to a lupine shape or Coombs's descent into apelike primitiveness. Like Peyser, Denny had surrendered intellectual individuality to escape awareness of the emotionless life of a New Person; instead of becoming just one of a pack of subhuman beasts, he had become one of many dataprocessing units in a complex supercomputer network. He had relinquished the last of what was human in him—his mind—and had become something simpler than a gloriously complex human being.
    A bead of drool fell from Denny's chin, leaving a wet circle on his denim-clad thigh.
    Do you know fear now? Loman wondered. You can't love. Not any more than I can. But do you fear anything now?
    Surely not. Machines could not feel terror.
    Though Loman's conversion had left him unable to experience any emotion but fear, and though his days and nights had become one long ordeal of anxiety of varying intensity, he had in a perverse way come to love fear, to cherish it, for it was the only feeling that kept him in touch with the unconverted man he had once been. If his fear were taken from him, too, he would be only a machine of flesh. His life would have no human dimension whatsoever.
    Denny had surrendered that last precious emotion. All he had left to fill his gray days were logic, reason, endless chains of calculations, the never-ending absorption and interpolation of facts. And if Shaddack was correct about the longevity of the New People, those days would mount into centuries.
    Suddenly eerie electronic noises came from the boy again. They echoed off the walls.
    Those sounds were as strange as the cold, mournful songs and cries of some species dwelling in the deepest reaches of the sea.
    To call Shaddack and reveal Denny to him in this condition would be to encourage the madman in his insane and unholy pursuits. Once he saw what Denny had become, Shaddack might find a way to induce or force all of the New People to transform themselves into identical, thoroughgoing cybernetic entities. That prospect boosted Loman's fear to new heights.
    The boy-thing fell silent again.
    Loman drew his revolver from its holster. His hand was shaking badly.
    Data rushed ever more frantically across the screen and swam simultaneously across the surface of Denny's molten eyes.
    Staring at the creature that had once been his son, Loman dragged memories from the trunk of his pre-Change life, desperately trying to recall something of what he'd once felt for Denny—the love of father for son, the sweet ache of pride, hope for the boy's future. He remembered fishing trips they had taken together, evenings spent in front of the TV, favorite books shared and discussed, long hours during which they'd worked happily together on science projects for school, the Christmas that Denny had gotten his first bicycle, the kid's first date when he had nervously brought the Talmadge girl home to meet his folks…. Loman could summon forth images of those times, quite detailed memory -pictures, but they had no power to warm him. He knew he should feel something if he was going to kill his only child, something more than fear, but he no longer had that capacity. To hold fast to whatever remained of the human being in him, he ought to be able to squeeze out one tear, at least one, as he squeezed off the shot from the Smith & Wesson, but he remained dry-eyed.
    Without warning something erupted from Denny's forehead.
    Loman cried out and stumbled backward two steps in surprise.
    At first he thought the thing was a worm, for it was shiny-oily and segmented, as thick as a pencil. But as it continued to extrude, he saw that it was more metallic than organic, terminating in a fish-mouth plug three times the diameter of the "worm" itself. Like the feeler of a singularly repulsive insect, it weaved back and forth in front of Denny's face, growing longer and longer, until it touched the computer.
    He is willing this to happen, Loman reminded himself.
    This was mind over matter, not short-circuited genetics. Mental power made concrete, not merely biology run amok. This was what the boy wanted to become, and if this was the only life he could tolerate now, the only existence he desired, then why shouldn't he be allowed to have it?
    The