One Door From Heaven

have you ever been to Utah?"
        "These past four years, I've been everywhere but Mars."
        "You wouldn't like Mars. It's airless, cold, and boring. But in Utah, at a truck stop, did you ever meet a waitress named Donella?"
        "Not that I recall."
        "Oh, you'd recall, all right. Donella doesn't look anything like my mother, since they're not the same species, although Mother could have looked exactly like her if she were being Donella."
        "Of course," says Leilani.
        "As far as that goes, I could look like Donella, too, except that I don't have enough mass."
        "Mass." Leilani nods sympathetically. "It's always a problem, isn't it?"
        "Not always. But what I'm trying to say is that in her way, Donella reminds me of my mother. The fine hulking shoulders, a neck made to burst restraining collars, the proud chins of a fattened bull. Majestic. Magnificent."
        "Already I like your mom better than mine," says Leilani.
        "I'd be honored to meet your mother."
        "Trust me," the radiant girl advises, "you wouldn't. That's why we're all but whispering. She's a terror."
        "I realized we were having a clandestine conversation," Curtis replies, "but how sad to think your mother is the reason. You know, I don't believe I've told you I'm an extraterrestrial."
        "That is news," Leilani agrees. "Tell me something else…"
        "Anything," he promises, because she shines.
        "Are you related to a woman named Geneva Davis?"
        "Not if she's of this planet."
        "Well, she is more than not, I guess. But I'd swear you were at least a nephew."
        "Should I be honored to meet her?" Curtis asks.
        "Yes, you should. And if you ever do, I sure would like to be a fly on the wall."
        They are socializing so well, and suddenly this last statement of hers confuses him. "Fly on the wall? Are you a shapechanger, too?"

Chapter 68
        
        CIRCLING FROM the Teelroy place to the Slut Queen's car in the woods, Preston had time to think and to modify his initial plan.
        For one thing, when he first headed east through the field of weeds and scattered corn plants behind the farmhouse, he'd begun to think of her as the Drunk. But that didn't resonate satisfactorily. Lady Liver Rot and Miss Shitfaced were both more fun, but still not right. He couldn't call her the Tits, even though it was applicable, because he'd already used that one for Aunt Janice, the mother of his first kill, Cousin Dirtbag. Over the years, he had employed all the most interesting parts of female anatomy as his private names for other women. While he was willing to reuse a name if he could couple it with a fresh and pleasing adjective, he had also exhausted most of those in conjunction with anatomical terms. Finally he had settled on the Slut Queen, based on what little but telling details he knew about her weakness for men who used her and about the likelihood: that she had been used against her will at a young age: Queens, after all, are born to their station in life.
        The importance of selecting the right name couldn't be exaggerated. It must be amusing, of course, but yet it must also be an accurately descriptive sobriquet and must diminish the person sufficiently to dehumanize him or, in this case, her. These last two requirements were a matter of good ethics. To fulfill his obligation to thin the human herd and thereby preserve the world, a utilitarian bioethicist must cease to think about most of the herd as being
        people like he himself. In Preston’s inner world, only useful people, people with something of substance to offer humanity and with a high quality of life, had the same names as they did in the outer world.
        So, kill the Slut Queen. That was his mission when he left the farmhouse, and that remained his mission when he crept up behind her through the trees. Along the way from there to here, however, he had changed his mind about how the killing should be done.
        Finished with the serpent-head cane, Preston tossed it on the backseat of the Camaro.
        The Slut Queen's keys were in the ignition. He used them to open the trunk of the Camaro.
        He dragged her across the woodland carpet of pine needles and dead vegetation, to the back of the car.
        Overlooking these deeds, the sky darkened further. A dam's breast of stacked thunderheads seemed about to crack and