Prodigal Son

master suite, to speak with her and to encourage rebellion.
        Being less of a complete creation than Erika, Karloff had not been programmed with a full understanding of Victor's mission or with knowledge of the limitations placed upon the freedom of the New Race. Now he knew that she could not act against her maker, and his despair was complete.
        When she suggested that he use his power to disable the machines that supported his existence, Erika discovered that he, too, had been programmed to be incapable of self-destruction.
        She struggled against despondency, her hope reduced to the shaky condition of a three-legged table. The crawling hand and the other apparitions had not been the supernatural events that she had longed to believe they were.
        Oh, how badly she had wanted these miracles to be evidence of another world beyond this one. What seemed to be a divine Presence, however, had been only the grotesque Karloff.
        She might have blamed him for her deep disappointment, might have hated him, but she did not. Instead she pitied this pathetic creature, who was helpless in his power and condemned to a living hell.
        Perhaps what she felt wasn't pity. Strictly speaking, she should not be capable of pity. But she felt something, felt it poignantly.
        "Kill me," the pathetic thing pleaded.
        The bloodshot eyes were haunted. The half-formed face was a mask of misery.
        Erika began to tell him that her program forbade her to kill either the Old Race or the New except in self-defense or at the order of her maker. Then she realized that her program did not anticipate this situation.
        Karloff did not belong to the Old Race, but he did not qualify as one of the New Race, either. He was something other, singular.
        None of the rules of conduct under which Erika lived applied in this matter.
        Looking over the sustaining machinery, ignorant of its function, she said, "I don't want to cause you pain."
        "Pain is all I know," he murmured. "Peace is all I want."
        She threw switches, pulled plugs. The purr of motors and the throb of pumps subsided into silence.
        "I'm going," Karloff said, his voice thickening into a slur. His bloodshot eyes fell shut. "Going…"
        On the floor, in the corner, the hand spasmed, spasmed.
        The bodiless head's last words were so slurred and whispery as to be barely intelligible: "You… must be… angel."
        She stood for a while, thinking about what he'd said, for the poets of the Old Race had often written that God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.
        In time she realized that Victor must not find her here.
        She studied the switches that she'd thrown, the plugs that she'd pulled. She reinserted one of the plugs. She repositioned the hand on the floor directly under the switches. She put the remaining plug in the hand, tightened the stiff fingers around it, held them until they remained in place without her sustained pressure.
        In the pantry once more, she needed a minute to find the hidden switch. The shelves full of canned food slid into place, closing off the entrance to Victor's studio.
        She returned to the painting by van Huysum in the drawing room. So beautiful.
        To better thrill Victor sexually, she had been permitted shame. From shame had come humility. Now it seemed that from humility had perhaps come pity, and more than pity: mercy.
        As she wondered about her potential, Erika's hope was reborn. Her feathered thing, perched in her heart if not her soul, was a phoenix, rising yet again from ashes.

CHAPTER 74
        
        FROM THE SWIVELING BEACONS on the roofs of police cruisers and ambulances, unsynchronized flares of red and white and blue light painted a patriotic phantasmagoria across the face of the apartment building.
        Some in pajamas and robes, others dressed and primped for the news cameras, the neighbors gathered on the sidewalk. They gossiped, laughed, drank beer from paper cups, drank beer from cans, ate cold pizza, ate potato chips from the bag, took snapshots of the police and of one another. They seemed to regard the eruption of sudden violence and the presence of a serial killer in their midst as reason for celebration.
        At the open trunk of the department sedan, as Carson stowed the shotgun, Michael said, "How can he jump up and run away after a four-story face