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"Wait," he said quickly "I’htly "I really aht person who had always preferred to sleep during the day, Thoray sweat suit, working on an aspect of Moonhawk at a coh to tell him that Loman Watkins was at the front door
"Send him to the tower," Shaddack said
"I’ll join hi but sweat suits these days He had ray, and a couple navy blue They werehis choices, he saved ti each day’s wardrobe, a task at which he was not skilled Fashion was of no interest to his, knobby knees, long arood even in finely tailored suits Clothes either hung strangely on hiree that he appeared to be Death personified, an unfortunate ie reinforced by his flour-white skin, nearly black hair, sharp features, and yellowish eyes
He even wore sweat suits to New Wave board enius in your field, people expected you to be eccentric And if your personal fortune was in the hundreds of millions, they accepted all eccentricities without comment
His ultrae near the north point of the cove was another expression of his calculated nonconformity The three stories were like three layers of a cake, though each layer was of a different size than the others--the largest on top, the smallest in thea profile that in daylight lent the house the appearance of an enorht, its low, it looked less like sculpture than like the star-travelingalien force
The toas eccentricity piled on eccentricity, rising offcenter fro an additional forty feet into the air It was not round but oval, not anything like a tower in which a princess ht have his ene tower of a sublass-walled room at the top could be reached by elevator or by stairs that spiraled around the inside of the toall, circling the metal core in which the elevator was housed
Shaddack kept Watkins waiting for ten minutes, just for the hell of it, then chose to take the lift to meet him The interior of the cab was paneled with burnished brass, so although theinside a rifle cartridge
He had added the tower to the architect’s designs alht, but it had becoh place offered endless vistas of calht-shrouded) sea to the west To the east and south, he looked out and down on the whole town of Moonlight Cove; his sense of superiority was comfortably reinforced by that lofty perspective on the only other visible works of o, he had seen the ht that few ed to see even once--which he took to be a sign that he was destined to become the most influential man ever to walk the earth
The elevator stopped The doors opened
When Shaddack entered the dihted room that encircled the elevator, Loman Watkins rose quickly fro, sir"
"Please be seated, chief," he said graciously, even affably, but with a subtle note in his voice that reinforced theirthat it was Shaddack, not Watkins, who decided how for would be
Shaddack was the only child of Jae in Phoenix, now deceased The fah solidly upper middle-class, and that position on the econoave Jahout his childhood and adolescence, Tom had been fascinated by how his father, a political activist as well as a judge, had used that power not only to acquire material benefits but to control others The control--the exercise of power for power’s sake--hat had most appealed to James, and that hat had deeply excited his son, too, froe
Now Toht Cove by reason of his wealth, because he was the priripped the reins of the political system, and because of the Moonhawk Project, named after the thrice-received vision But his ability toold Jae and canny politico He possessed the power of life and death over them--literally If an hour from now he decided they all ht Furtherrave with nofire on his creations
The only lights in the tower room were concealed in a recess under the i to within ten inches of the floor The hidden la the plush carpet but casting no glare on the huge panes Nevertheless, if the night had been clear, Shaddack would have flicked the switch next to the elevator button, plunging the roohostly reflection and those of the starkly lass between him and his view of the world over which he held do still churned past glass walls, and little could be seen now that the horned moon had found the horizon
Barefoot, Shaddack crossed the charcoal-gray carpet He settled into a second ar Loman Watkins across a lohite-marble cocktail table
The policeman was forty-four, less than three years older than Shaddack, but he was Shaddack’s cohty pounds, large-boned, broad in the shoulders and chest, thick-necked His face was broad, too, as open and guileless as Shaddack’s was closed and cunning His blue eyes aze, held it only for ahands, which were clasped so rigidly in his lap that the sharp knuckles see the taut skin His darkly tanned scalp showed through brush-cut brown hair
Watkins’s obvious subservience pleased Shaddack, but he was even ratified by the chief’s fear, which was evident in the tre--with some success--to repress and in the haunted expression that deepened the color of his eyes Because of the Moonhawk Project, because of what had been done to him, Loman Watkins was in many ways superior to most men, but he was also now and forever in Shaddack’s thrall as surely as a laboratory mouse, clamped down and attached to electrodes, was at the mercy of the scientist who conducted experi, Shaddack was Watkins’s maker, and he possessed, in Watkins’s eyes, the position and power of a god
Leaning back in his chair, folding his pale, long-fingered hands on his chest, Shaddack felt hisHe was not aroused by Loman Watkins, because he had no tendency whatsoever toward ho in Watkins’s physical appearance but by the awareness of the tremendous authority he wielded over the man Power aroused Shaddack more fully and easily than sexual stimuli Even as an adolescent, when he saw pictures of naed woht of bared breasts, not by the curve of a feht of do their very lives in his hands If a wouised fear, he found her infinitely arded hily to terror than to lust, his arousal was not dependent upon the sex or age or physical attractiveness of the person who tre the policeot Booker?"
"No, sir"
"Why not?"
"He wasn’t at Cove Lodge when Sholnick got there"