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That was Ripley’s private name for Victor Helios Many of the others referred to him as Father, but Mr Helios became infuriated when he heard them use that word
They weren’t their maker’s children They were his property He had no responsibility to them They had every responsibility to hi himself that the Beekeeper had a brilliant plan for a neorld
The faerous because it puts itself above the coood of the race The parent-child relationship iance of members of the New Race, ere born froanized community that Helios envisioned, not to one another, but to the community, and in fact not to the community but to the idea of coerators, Ripley retrieved a fully cooked two-pound brisket of beef He returned with it to the stool at the kitchen island
Families breed individuals The creation tanks breed worker bees, each with its specific function to fulfill Knowing your place and theof your life, you can be content as no member of the Old Race ever could be Free will is the curse of the Old Progralory of the New
The sas the faed to the horde
With his fingers, he shredded the brisket The h the beef ell-cooked, he could sained not a pound His remarkably efficient , therefore, was not an indulgence Ultimately, it was also not a distraction He couldn’t stop thinking about Werner, the security chief at the Hands of Mercy
Hours earlier, Werner suffered what the Beekeeper described as "catastrophic cellularby all appearances huned to be a physically ienetic ility and speed, from a spider to increase the ductility of his tendons, froth for his collagen… When Werner suddenly becaan to express themselves in his flesh, first serially, then siularity This cala to the Beekeeper, it could never occur again
Ripley was not so sure about that Maybe nothing exactly like what happened to Werner would happen again, but there
As a chief lab assistant to the Beekeeper, Ripley was too well-educated to be able to repress his anxiety In the creation tank, by direct-to-brain data downloading, he received a deep education in the physiology of hus as Victor Helios made them
None of the Old Race could rotesque fate should have been just as impossible for one of the New Race
Werner’s transforht be fallible The Beekeeper’s surprise at the change in Werner confir finished the brisket without either satisfying his appetite or quelling his anxiety, Ripley left the kitchen to roaone hoht hours, in a maze of labs, Alphas conducted experi to their ely in the corridors, for the first tiht discover in the labs if he entered the the trio of isolation chahts on the control console, only Isolation Room Number Tas currently occupied; that would be the luckless Werner
Each roo different angles on that space A bank of six screens allowed the siave a half dozen views of a single chaends at the bottom of all the screens indicated they were now tuned to Isolation Roo of the twenty-by-fifteen-foot less containhteen-inch-thick, poured-in-place, steel-reinforced concrete They had been paneled with three overlapping layers of steel plate that, with the click of a switch, could deliver a killing charge of electricity to the occupant
The Beekeeper sometimes created exotic variants of the New Race, so death-machines that would assist in the efficient obliteration of the Old Race when at last the day of revolution arrived Occasionally, proble left these creatures undisciplined or even disobedient, in which case they needed to be sedated and transferred to isolation for study and eventual destruction
He who had been Werner did not appear on any of the screens The six ca nowhere for the thing to hide
Strewn around the room were the dismembered remains of Patrick Duchaine, one of the Beekeeper’s creations who had been sent into the isolation roo
A transitionhub to Isolation Room Number Two At each end of the module was a n, both doors could not be open at the same time
Ripley looked at the vault door on this end of the transitionon Earth, whether natural-born or h that two-foot-thick steel barrier
A camera in the isolation room revealed that the inner vault door re was loose in the building The instant someone saw it, an alarm would have been sounded
Only one possibility reht have cycled open long enough to allow the creature into the transitionbehind it In that case, it waited now behind not two steel barriers, but behind one
CHAPTER 4
BY THE TIME Bucky and Janet Guitreau reached the front porch steps of the Bennet house, they were rain-soaked
"We should have used an ue like this"
They were so excited about killing the Bennets that they had not given a thought to the inclee they won’t let us in," Bucky worried "Especially at this hour"
"They’re night owls This isn’t late for them They’ll let us in," Janet assured hi has happened, we need to talk to thehbors do, they cos happen"
Beyond the French s and the folds of silken drapes, the front rooht
As they cli has happened?"
"I killed the pizza-delivery guy"
"I don’t think they’ll let us in if we say that"
"We aren’t going to say that We’re just going to say a terrible thing has happened"
"An unspecified terrible thing," Bucky clarified
"Yes, exactly"
"If that works, they ers They’re our neighbors Besides, they love us"
"They love us?"
At the door, Janet lowered her voice "Three nights ago, ere here for barbecue Helene said, ‘We sure love you guys’ Re Helene wasn’t even half sober when she said that"
"Nevertheless, she meant it They love us, they’ll let us in"
Bucky was suddenly suspicious "How can they love us? We aren’t even the people they think we are"
"They don’t knoe aren’t the people they think we are They won’t even knohen I start killing the the doorbell
"Is the Old Race really that easy?"
"They’re pussies," Janet declared
"Pussies?"
"Total pussies" The porch light came on, and Janet said, "Do you have your camera?"
As Bucky withdrew the caht to the left of the door, blinking in surprise at the sight of thelass, Janet said, "Oh, Helene, souy," Bucky said too softly for Helene to hear him, just for his wife’s benefit, because it see fun, and this was as close to fun as they had ever known
Helene’s face puckered with concern She stepped away fro the first of two deadbolts, he said to Janet, "Do so spectacular to her"