“What do you need, ma’am?”

Erika brazened through it: “Boys’ clothing. Shoes, socks, pants, shirts. Underwear, I suppose. A light jacket. A cap of some kind. The boy is about four feet tall, weighs fifty or sixty pounds. Oh, and his head is big, quite big for a boy, so the cap should probably be adjustable. Can you get me those things right away?”

“Mrs. Helios, may I ask—”

“No,” Erika interrupted, “you may not ask. This is something Victor needs me to bring to him right away. I never question Victor, no matter how peculiar a request may seem, and I never will. Do I need to tell you why I never question my husband?”

“No, ma’am.”

The staff had to know that the Erikas were beaten and were not permitted to turn off their pain.

“I thought you’d understand, Glenda. We’re all in the same quicksand, aren’t we, whether we’re the provisioner or the wife.”

Uncomfortable with this intimacy, Glenda said, “There’s no store open at this hour, selling boys’ clothing. But …”

“Yes?”

Fear rose in Glenda’s eyes, and her previously placid face tightened with worry. “There are many articles of boys’ and girls’ clothing here in the house.”

“Here? But there are no children here.”

Glenda’s voice fell to a whisper. “You must never tell.”

“Tell what? Tell whom?”

“Never tell … Mr. Helios.”

Erika pressed the battered-wife sympathy play as far as she probably dared: “Glenda, I am beaten not just for my shortcomings, but for any reason that suits my … maker. I am quite sure I would be beaten for being the bearer of bad news. All secrets are safe with me.”

Glenda nodded. “Follow me.”

Also off the south hall on the ground floor were a series of storage rooms. One of the largest of these was a twenty-by-eighteen-foot walk-in cooler where a dozen of the highest-quality fur coats were stored—mink, ermine, arctic fox…. Victor had no sympathy for the antifur movement, as he was engaged in the much more important antihuman movement.

In addition to the rack of coats, there were numerous cabinets containing clothes of all kinds that would not fit even in Erika’s enormous closet in the master suite. By having a series of wives who were identical in every detail, Victor spared himself the expense of purchasing new wardrobes. But he did want his Erika to be at all times stylishly attired, and he did not expect her to choose from a limited garment collection.

From several drawers in the farthest corner of the room, Glenda nervously produced children’s clothing, article after article, both for boys and girls, in various sizes.

“Where did all this come from?” Erika asked.

“Mrs. Helios, if he learns about it, he’ll terminate Cassandra. And this is the only thing that’s ever made her happy. It’s made us all happy—her daring, her secret life, she gives the rest of us a little hope.”

“You know my position on being the bearer of bad news.”

Glenda buried her face in a striped polo shirt.

For a moment, Erika thought that the woman must be crying, for the shirt trembled in her hands, and her shoulders shook.

Instead, Glenda inhaled deeply, as if seeking the scent of the boy who had worn the shirt, and when she looked up from it, her face was a portrait of bliss.

“For the past five weeks, Cassandra has been sneaking off the estate at night, to kill Old Race children.”

Cassandra, the laundress.

“Oh,” Erika said. “I see.”

“She couldn’t wait any longer to be told the killing could at last begin. The rest of us … we so admire her nerve, but we haven’t been able to find it in ourselves.”

“And … what of the bodies?”

“Cassandra brings them back here, so we can share in the excitement. Then the trash men who take other bodies to the dump, they take the children, too, no questions asked. Like you said—we’re all in this quicksand together.”

“But you keep the clothes.”

“You know what the dormitory is like. Not an inch of extra space. We can’t store the clothes there. But we can’t bear to get rid of them. We take these clothes out some nights, take them over to the dormitory and, you know, play with them. And, oh, it’s very wonderful, Mrs. Helios, thinking of the dead kids and listening to Cassandra tell how each one happened. It’s the best thing ever, the only good thing we’ve ever had.”

Erika knew that something profound must be happening to her when she found Glenda’s story disturbing, even creepy, and when she hesitated at the prospect of dressing the poor sweet troll in the clothes of murdered children. Indeed, that she should think murdered instead of merely dead had to be an indication of a revolution in her thinking.

She was torn by something like pity for Cassandra, Glenda, and the others on the staff, by a quiet horror at the idea of Cassandra stalking the most defenseless of the Old Race, and by compassion for the murdered, toward whom she had been programmed to feel nothing but envy, anger, and hatred.

Her actions on behalf of Jocko crossed the line that Victor had drawn for her, for all of them, in the afore-mentioned quicksand. The curious sense of companionship that had developed so quickly between her and the little guy should have been beyond her emotional range. Even as the friendship grew, she recognized that it might signify a pending interruption of function like the one that William, the butler, had experienced.

She was allowed compassion, humility, and shame, as the others were not—but only so that Victor might be more thrilled by her pain and anguish. Victor didn’t intend that the finer feelings of his Erikas should benefit anyone but himself, or that anyone else should have the opportunity to respond to his wife’s tender attentions with anything other than the contempt and brutality with which he answered them.

To Glenda, she said, “Go back to the dormitory. I’ll select what I need from these and put the rest away.”

“And never tell him.”

“Never tell him,” Erika confirmed.

Glenda started to turn away, but then she said, “Do you think maybe …”

“Maybe what, Glenda?”

“Do you think maybe … the end is coming soon?”

“Do you mean the end of the Old Race, once and forever, the killing of them all?”

The provisioner searched Erika’s gaze and then turned her face up to the ceiling as tears welled in her eyes. In a voice thick with fear, she said, “There’s got to be an end, you know, there’s really got to be.”

“Look at me,” Erika said.

Obedient as her program required, Glenda met her mistress’s eyes again.

With her fingers, Erika wiped the tears from the provisioner’s face. “Don’t be afraid.”

“It’s that or rage. I’m worn out by rage.”

Erika said, “An end is coming soon.”

“You know?”

“Yes. Very soon.”

“How? What end?”

“In most cases, not all ends are desirable, but in this case … any end will do. Don’t you think?”

The provisioner nodded almost imperceptibly. “May I tell the others?”

“Will knowing help them?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am. Life’s always been hard, you know, but lately harder.”

“Then by all means, tell them.”

The provisioner seemed to regard Erika with the nearest thing to gratitude that she could feel. After a silence, she said, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Neither of us does,” said Erika. “That’s how we are.”

“Good-bye, Mrs. Helios.”

“Good-bye, Glenda.”

The provisioner left the storage room, and Erika closed her eyes for a moment, unable to look at the many items of apparel strewn on the floor around her.

Then she opened her eyes and knelt among the clothes.

She selected those that might fit her friend.

The garments of the executed were still garments. And if the universe was not, as Victor said, a meaningless chaos, if it were possible for anything to be sacred, surely these humble items, worn by martyred innocents, were hallowed and might provide her friend not only with a disguise but also with protection of a higher kind.

CHAPTER 55

DUKE LED THEM across a wide earthen rampart, between vast pits of trash, through the dump, as if he knew the way.

With the moon and the stars sequestered behind ominous clouds, Crosswoods for the most part lay in darkness, although a few small fires burned out there in the black remoteness.

Carson and Michael followed the dog, in the company of Nick Frigg and Gunny Alecto, who with flashlights picked out potholes and places where the crumbling brink might be treacherous, as if every detail of this terrain was engraved in the memory of each.

“I’m a Gamma,” Nick said, “or I was, and Gunny here—she’s an Epsilon.”

“Or was,” she said. “Now I’m reborn freeborn, and I don’t hate anymore. I’m not afraid anymore.”

“It’s like we’ve been living with bands of iron around our heads, and now they’re cut away, the pressure gone,” said Nick.

Carson didn’t know what to make of their strange born-again declarations. She still expected one of them suddenly to come at her with no more goodwill than a buzz saw.

“Sign, sink, spoon, spade, soup, stone, spinach, sparkler, soda, sand, seed, sex. Sex!” Gunny laughed with delight that she had found the word she wanted. “Man, oh, man, I wonder what it’ll be like the next time the whole dump gang gets sexed up together, going at each other every which way, but none of us angry, nobody punching or biting, just doing all the better kind of stuff to each other. It should be interesting.”

“It should,” Nick said. “Interesting. Okay, folks, right up here, we’re gonna go down a ramp into the west pit. See the torches and oil lamps out there a ways? That’s where Deucalion’s waiting.”

“He’s waiting out there by the big hole,” Gunny said.

Nick said, “We’re all going down the big hole again.”

“This is some night,” Gunny declared.

“Some crazy night,” Nick agreed.

“What a night, huh, Nick?”

“What a night,” Nick agreed.

“Down the big hole again!”

“It’s sure a big hole.”

“And we’re going down it again!”

“We are, for sure. The big hole.”

“Mother of all gone-wrongs!”

“Something to see.”

“I’m just all up!” said Gunny.

“I’m all up, too,” Nick said.

Grabbing at Nick’s crotch, Gunny said, “I bet you are!”

“You know I am.”

“You know I know you are.”

“Don’t I know?”

Carson figured she was no more than two conversational exchanges from either bolting back to the car or emptying the Urban Sniper into both of them.

Michael saved her sanity by breaking the rhythm and asking Nick, “How do you live with this stench?”

“How do you live without it?” Nick asked.

From the top of the rampart, they descended a slope of earth, into the west pit. Trash crunched and crackled and rustled underfoot, but it was well-compacted and didn’t shift much.

More than a dozen people stood with Deucalion, but he was a head taller than the tallest of them. He wore his long black coat, the hood thrown back. His half-broken and tattooed face, uplit by torchlight, was not as disturbing as it ought to have been in this setting, under these circumstances. In fact, he had an air of calm certainty and unflinching resolve that reminded Carson of her father, who had been a military man before becoming a detective. Deucalion projected that competence and integrity that motivated men to follow a leader into battle—which apparently was what they were soon to do.

Michael said to him, “Hey, big guy, you’re standing there like we’re in a rose garden. How do you tolerate this stench?”

“Controlled synesthesia,” Deucalion explained. “I convince myself to perceive the malodors as colors, not smells. I see us standing in a weave of rainbows.”

“I’m going to hope you’re pulling my chain.”

“Carson,” Deucalion said, “there’s someone here who wants to meet you.”

From behind Deucalion stepped a beautiful woman in a dress stained and crusted with filth.

“Good evening, Detective O’Connor.”

Recognizing the voice from the phone, Carson said, “Mrs. Helios.”

“Yes. Erika Four. I apologize for the condition of my dress. I was murdered little more than a day ago and buried in garbage. My darling Victor didn’t think to send me here with a supply of moist towelettes and a change of clothes.”

CHAPTER 56

AFTER LEAVING THE CHILDREN’S CLOTHES with Jocko in the library, Erika went to the master suite, where she quickly packed a single suitcase for herself.

She didn’t clean up the blood in the vestibule. She should have wrapped Christine’s body in a blanket and called the New Race trash collectors who conveyed corpses to Crosswoods, but she did not.

After all, if she went to a window and looked northwest, the sky would be on fire. And worse was coming. Maybe it would still matter if authorities found a murdered housekeeper in the mansion, or maybe not.

Anyway, even if the discovery of Christine’s body turned out to be a problem for Victor, it wasn’t an issue for Erika. She suspected that she would never again see this house or New Orleans, and that she would not much longer be Victor’s wife.

Only hours ago, she handled with aplomb—if not indifference—such macabre episodes as a butler chewing off his fingers. But now the mere presence of a dead Beta in the bedroom disturbed her both for reasons she understood and for reasons she was not yet able to define.

She put her suitcase at the foot of the bed, and she chose a smaller piece of luggage in which to pack everything that Victor wanted from the safe.

The existence of the walk-in vault had not been disclosed to Erika during her in-tank education. She learned about it only minutes earlier, when Victor told her how to find it.

In one corner of his immense closet, which was as large as the formal dining room downstairs, an alcove featured three floor-to-ceiling mirrors. After Victor dressed, he stepped into this space to consider the clothes he wore and to assess the degree to which his outfit achieved the effect he desired.