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When the troll returned a fewa sack made from a pillowcase, tied shut with the shoelace

"What’s that?" Erika asked

"Stuff"

"What stuff?"

"Jocko’s stuff"

"All right All right Let’s go"

In the garage, at the GL550, Jocko said, "You want me to drive?"

CHAPTER 57

JUDGING BY THE QUALITY of their excite themselves, Carson decided that most if not all of the people with torches and oil lamps were Epsilons, like Gunny Alecto, and orkers at the landfill

In addition to Erika Four, however, five others of the New Race, left for dead at Crosswoods but later resurrected, were Alphas--four men and a woman--who had been terroup that called themselves the Dumpsters

Carson and Michael had been unnerved when one of the Dumpsters proved to be Bucky Guitreau, the district attorney He wasn’t the one they had killed in Audubon Park, and he wasn’t the original and fully human Bucky He was instead the first replicant intended to replace Bucky He’d been replaced himself by a second replicant, the one she and Michael had killed, when Victor decided that nuifted mimic to pull off the impersonation of the district attorney

Apparently, all of these Alphas had been returned to life longer than Mrs Helios They had found water to wash themselves, and they wore reasonably clean if threadbare clothes, which perhaps they had salvaged froh she was the most recent to have been pulled back from the brink of oblivion, Erika Four had been appointed to speak not only for herself but also for the other five Alphas, perhaps because she had been their tormentor’s wife She knew Victor well, his corrupted character and teht be able to identify the weakness most likely to render him vulnerable

Deucalion towered behind Erika, and as she brought Carson and Michael up-to-date, the landfill workers edged closer None of what she said was news to the the intellectual lower caste of the New Race, they see in the laathered for story hour around a cae was happening under the trash fields," Erika said "They’ve seen the surface rise and resettle, as if so this way and that in the lower real up froht they saw it for the first tis"

A h the Epsilons, whispered exclamations Their faces revealed emotions that they of the New Race should not have been able to feel: happiness, awe, and perhaps hope

"It started as a failed experiment, left here for dead, but in fact not fully dead," Erika continued "A lightning strike in the dump enlivened it Since then, it has evolved to beco, an entity of indescribable beauty and profound moral purpose Sometimes an Alpha, presumed dead even by Victor, may yet contain an incandescent filament of life for a few days after an apparent death If attended properly, that filaed to grow brighter As it brightens, this life force spreads through the Alpha, returning him to consciousness and full function What these Epsilons call the s, we call the Resurrector, for as it was revived by lightning, it now revives us by sharing its own intensely bright life force"

So closely gathered were the Epsilons that their torches and oil laht, and in this one sht as a dawn sky painted with the sun’s celebratory brush

"Not only does the Resurrector restore the body, but it also heals the raeer, and deletes as well the prohibitions against coht, it revealed itself to the landfill workers--and released theave to thee of e on the back of her neck, Carson recalled Gunny Alecto’s words: The s talked inside our heads

Michael shared her reservations "No offense But no ht be, I’et inside ht, on the broken half of Deucalion’s face, reflections of flames infused false life into the tattooed patterns, which seemed to flex and crawl across the awful concavities and the broken planes, across the knotted scars

He said, "It waits for us now in the tunnel I went down a short while ago--and felt I was in the presence of a being that has no thinnest thread of hts to you … but it won’t enter your ainst your wishes"

"As far as you know," Michael qualified

"For two centuries I’ve had to bear witness to all forether, as I was, from the bodies of sociopathic criminals, burdened with the brain of the vilest kind of murderer, I have a certain … sensitivity to the presence of evil There is none in this Being"

Carson heard the capital B that he put on the final word And though his confidence soh her disquiet didn’t swell into apprehension, she hadinto the tunnel to which he referred

Erika Four said, "The Resurrector will help us bring Victor to the justice he deserves Indeed, I don’t think we can bring him doithout the assistance of this entity"

"If he flees here tonight or in the early ," Deucalion said, "as we expect he hen he learns of the fire at Mercy, ill have an opportunity that we ht in his eyes, the ht of his embodied storm throbbed as it sometimes did Carson wondered if, in hiscrack of the thunderbolt or recalled the terror of his firsttoward us," Deucalion said "You need tofor Victor when he arrives"

Carson looked at Michael, and he said, "So … it’s down the big hole, this is soht, I’m just all up"

CHAPTER 58

SOMBER THOUGHTS DISTRACTED Victor froh lonely darkness, contributed to his bleak e of venue on hientina, to the old Soviet, to China and elsewhere--he had been furious at the associates who had failed hi of the secrets of y and her stubborn resistance to the incisive blade of his singular intelligence, but he had not lost hope

The short-lived project in Cuba, so pro, came to ruin because of one stupid peasant, a rabid cat, a treacherous set of stairs, and a wet bar of soap left on one of the treads for no reason that made sense Yet he and Fidel remained friends, and Victor persevered in another country, certain of ulti facility in North Korea, with the generous funding by a consortiuovernments, should have been the place where the ultihs at last occurred At his disposal was a virtually infinite supply of body parts fro carved up alive to enduring further prison meals But how could he have foreseen that the dictator, a strutting rooster with a harerown clone of himself that Victor created at his request, when said clone developed a passion for his dangerous look-alike and extravagantly tongue-kissed him? Victor had escaped the country with his testicles only because he and the dictator had a mutual friend, one of the most admired movie stars in the world, who had brokered peace between them Yet still he had persevered and had suffered neither one day of doubt nor one hour of depression

The total destruction of the Hands of Mercy affected hiatively than any previous setback in part because he had been much closer than ever before to triumph, within easy reach of the absolute mastery of flesh, its creation and control

In truth, the fire itself and all the losses were not what shook his confidence The identity of the arsonist: That’s what brought him this low The return of his first creation, the crude and lu beast who should have spent the past two centuries frozen in polar ice, seey clone could have undone hilorious success

He realized that his speed had fallen under twenty miles per hour This had happened twice before Each tiain

Deucalion What a pretentious na away froone Merely a trick, of course But quite a trick