I squeezed her hands. ‘You’ve had plenty of tests. Nothing’s wrong with the boy. Or with you.’
‘How do you know?’ she demanded, pulling her hands away. ‘Rivers is still dredging triggers out of you and I’ve had much less treatment. What if some function of the conditioning is activated when I give birth? What if they designed the process to keep female subjects childless? That isn’t so unlikely. They wouldn’t want their robot soldiers to be distracted by kids-’
‘Karen, Karen,’ I said, wiping her brow. ‘Calm down. Take some deep breaths.’ I did that and she eventually followed suit. ‘That’s better. You know you mustn’t get overwrought. It’s bad for junior.’
‘Don’t call him that. He’s Magnus Oliver-Magnus Oliver Wells.’
‘That’s right, darling.’ I repeated the names. ‘He’s desperate to see us, so you have to look your best.’ I handed her a box of tissues.
‘I’m sorry, Matt. Sometimes it gets too much for me.’
‘I don’t believe that for a second. You’re just trying to make me sorry for you so that I’ll make your lunch.’
She laughed. ‘I don’t want anything to eat.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to keep your strength up?’
‘Look at me. I’ve got enough blubber reserves to sink a whaling ship.’
‘Rubbish. You’re the most attractive woman in the camp.’
She raised an eyebrow at that admittedly less than ringing endorsement. The average female soldier’s looks were forbidding and Julie Simms was no Venus de Milo, though she did have a full set of limbs.
‘Matt, don’t go out today.’
‘Okay,’ I said, alert to her tone again. ‘I think Rivers is expecting me in the evening, though.’
‘Let’s see if we get that far,’ she said, closing her eyes.
I took the phone into the bedroom and called the medical center. The midwife said everything was ready and there was nothing else to do, so I cut the connection. I felt useless, a spare part. I went back into the living room and turned the music down. Monteverdi was surprisingly pleasant, but the lack of guitars was a problem for me. I was going to make sure Magnus Oliver Wells had a working knowledge of classic rock music before he went to school.
There were certain things a father had to do for his son.
The boy was between two and three years old. His legs were short and bowed, in a pair of clean and well-pressed corduroy trousers. The black leather boots had been polished, but were now spattered with Central Park mud-the Filipina nanny wasn’t quick enough to stop him dashing onto the grass and under the trees. He screamed with delight every time she came after him, his cheeks red and his blue eyes sparkling. The last time the woman approached, he pulled off his woolen hat and threw it in her face. That earned him a stern talking-to and he started to sniffle as he was led back to the path.
Sara Robbins watched from behind a wider tree trunk than most. The day was milder than its predecessors, but there was still a bite in the wind. The water in the reservoir looked chill, low waves sweeping across its surface. As she walked out of the cover, she felt the plastic switchblade in the pocket of her Levi’s. She always had it with her, not least because it wasn’t picked up by metal detectors.
As the little boy walked past, trying to tug his hand away from the Filipina’s, Sara threw the ball she’d bought in his direction. The nanny looked round and stared at her suspiciously. Scott smiled at Sara and then ran to retrieve the ball.
‘Tana,’ said the boy, pointing at the picture of the steam engine on the ball.
‘Thomas?’ Sara said. ‘That’s right, it’s Thomas.’
‘Come, Scott,’ the nanny said firmly. ‘We do not talk to strangers.’
Sara ignored her, kneeling down beside the boy. ‘Your name’s Scott? My brother’s called Scott.’ She viewed that as a white lie.
The Filipina pulled on her charge’s arm. ‘Come on. Mummy will be angry.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Sara said. ‘I’ve got kids myself.’
The nanny looked around the area of grass. ‘So where are they, Mrs.?’
Sara laughed hollowly. ‘Where are they? Visiting Granny.’ She pointed to the ball. ‘Would you like to have Thomas?’
The little boy nodded avidly. ‘Tana. Scott love Tana.’
‘Come on now,’ the Filipina said, glaring at Sara. ‘Or I call police.’
‘Because I gave him a ball? Are you insane?’
‘No. You are insane person.’ The nanny tugged hard at the boy’s arm.
‘You’re hurting him,’ Sara said, standing up and grabbing the woman’s wrist. ‘Let go.’
The Filipina’s face clenched in pain and she quickly released Scott’s hand.
‘That’s better,’ Sara said. ‘Are you all right, darling?’
The boy smiled. ‘Tana.’
Sara ran her fingertips down his cheek. ‘Have fun. I have to go now. Bye-bye.’ She looked at the nanny. ‘Don’t you dare hurt him again.’
The trembling Filipina dropped her gaze.
Sara Robbins walked into the trees, and then started to jog away. That was stupid, she said to herself. What were you doing? Your brother wasn’t called Scott and you don’t have children. What’s the matter with you?
When she got to Museum Mile, she hailed a cab and sat back in the seat, her breathing ragged. She knew herself too well to be under any illusions. She had never had the slightest desire to have children, but now Matt Wells was about to become a father again. That was getting to her. She had no idea whether the child was a boy or a girl, but for some reason that she couldn’t fathom, she was interested.
This was changing her, and that wasn’t good. Something that she couldn’t control was happening to her, something that was making her see the world differently.
The Soul Collector had to find her former lover urgently.
It was as if he had unknowingly infected himself with a disease that would change him irrevocably. Whenever he descended to the underground chamber hosting the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant in exile-what those who believed in the false faith would have called a cathedral crypt-the Master almost forgot his name.
Given how many identities he possessed, he shouldn’t have been surprised. Of them, only his birth name of Heinz Rothmann was important to him, but even it was less desirable than the title he had assumed. The Master of the Antichurch was not only the guarantor of eternal death to his followers. He also still had control of the fortune that he had obtained as the businessman Jack Thomson, distributed over the years in numerous offshore banks. He was also still the sole owner of the conditioning drugs and techniques developed by his unjustly killed sister and lover, and there was no shortage of government agencies around the world that would pay with the lifeblood of their citizens for those. Not only that, he still had a large number of subjects who had been through coffining and could be activated as ruthless killers with a single phone call.
But for the Master, all of that had become a secondary reality, one seen through a glass lightly. Now he preferred the darkness that the Antichurch brought, the darkness and the knowledge that life was an illusion and that only death had any substance. The great poets had always known the power of death and its inescapable triumph. That was why the Mesopotamian tradition had the hero Gilgamesh descend to the underworld, the house of dust, to see firsthand how ineluctable the death gods were. The great poets, Homer, Virgil, even the deluded Christians Dante and Milton, had sent their protagonists to the underworld-assuming, as was obvious, that Satan was the hero of Paradise Lost. And even the false messiah Christ was said to have harrowed hell before his supposed resurrection. Lucifer and his realm were triumphant for eternity. To think that when the Master had revived the Antichurch in Maine, his motivation was that Americans would respond more readily to a religious cult than the antireligious ideology of Nazism. Now he knew that the Antichurch had more potential for destruction than any political system. After all, the established religions in the West had been sucking innocents into their maws for centuries.