Prodigal Son

motivated him. He didn't actually try to understand, however, because he had for a long time taken this different road, and there was no going back.
        Young Victor had also believed in the power of the human will to bend nature to its desires; and it was that aspect of his early self with which Victor could still identify. All that mattered was the triumph of the will.
        What was wrong here in the bedroom was that for once his will failed to bend reality to its desire. He wanted sexual satisfaction, but it eluded him.
        His mind kept straying back to the dinner party, to the sight and sound of Erika noisily sucking soup from spoon.
        At last he rolled off her, onto his back, defeated.
        They stared at the ceiling in silence until she whispered, "I'm sorry."
        "Maybe the fault is mine," he said, meaning that perhaps he had made some mistake in the creation of her.
        "I don't excite you."
        "Usually, yes. Not tonight."
        "I'll learn," she promised. "I'll improve."
        "Yes," he said, for that was what she must do if she hoped to keep her role, but he had begun to doubt that Erika Four would be the final Erika.
        "I'm going to the hospital," he said. "I'm in a creative mood."
        "The Hands of Mercy." She shuddered. "I think I dream of it."
        "You don't. I spare all of you from dreams of your origins."
        "I dream of someplace," she persisted. "Dark and strange and full of death."
        "There's your proof that it's not the Hands of Mercy. My labs are full of life."
        Both bored with Erika and troubled by the direction of her musings, Victor rose from the bed and went naked into the bathroom.
        A jewel in this mounting of gold-plated fixtures and marble-clad walls, he looked at himself in the beveled mirrors and saw something much more than human.
        "Perfection," he said, though he knew that he was just shy of that ideal.
        Looping through his torso, embedded in his flesh, entwining his ribs, spiraling around his spine, a flexible metallic cord and its associated implants converted simple electrical current-to which he submitted himself twice a day-into a different energy, a stimulating charge that sustained a youthful rate of cellular division and held biological time at bay.
        His body was a mass of scars and strange excrescences, but he found them beautiful. They were the consequences of the procedures by which he'd gained immortality; they were the badges of his divinity.
        One day he would clone a body from his DNA, enhance it with the many improvements he had developed, expedite its growth, and with the assistance of surgeons of his making, he'd have his brain transferred to that new home.
        When that work was finished, he would be the model of physical perfection, but he would miss his scars. They were proof of his persistence, his genius, and the triumph of his will.
        Now he got dressed, looking forward to a long night in his main laboratory at the Hands of Mercy.

CHAPTER 29
        
        WHILE CARSON CHECKED on her castle-building brother, Michael stood at a kitchen counter with a mug of Vicky's coffee.
        Having just finished cleaning the oven, Vicky Chou said, "How's the Java?"
        “As bitter as bile," he said.
        "But not acidic."
        "No," he admitted. "I don't know how you manage to make it bitter without it being acidic, but you do."
        She winked. "My secret."
        "Stuff's as black as tar. This isn't a mistake. You actually try to get it like this, don't you?"
        "If it's so terrible," she said, "why do you always drink it?"
        "It's a test of my manhood." He took a long swallow that made his face pucker. "I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, but you'll tell me to shut up, you don't want to know."
        Washing her hands at the sink, she said, "I have to listen to you, Michael. It's part of my job description."
        He hesitated but then said, "I've been thinking how things might be if Carson and I weren't partners."
        "What things?"
        "Between her and me."
        "Is there something between you and her?"
        "The badge," he said mournfully "She's too solid a cop, too professional to date a partner."
        "The bitch," Vicky said drily.
        Michael smiled, sampled the coffee, grimaced. "Problem is, if I changed partners so we could date, I'd miss kicking ass and