Nonetheless, she wasn’t some piss-your-pants pessimist. The fear that now and then shook a shudder from her was tempered by this electrifying current of delight in the prospect of seeing sudden justice done to these hateful thugs.
She hoped this didn’t mean that she was going to grow up to be one of those thrill seekers who couldn’t be happy unless they were skydiving or walking a tightrope between skyscrapers or wrestling alligators. Laurie wanted to ride horses and become a veterinarian and marry Ethan Stackpool and have maybe four children. Children and alligators were not a good combination.
When two sets of headlights, one close behind the other, turned off the state route and onto the entrance lane to Longrin Stables, the first of a freakin’ parade of righteous firemen and firewomen, the thrill of delight swelled strong in Laurie and nearly washed away her fear. She licked her split lip, which had earlier been bleeding after the Dern beast slapped her, and she thought, Kiss your own ass, Janis.
One thing Laurie didn’t need to be told about life was that from time to time everyone was met with disappointments, setbacks that tested your character and made you stronger if you kept your spine stiff and soldiered onward. She knew that, of course, but in her excitement she had forgotten about disappointments and had mistaken this one for triumph.
Neither of the SUVs that raced along the lane was driven by Mr. Linwood Haney or by any of his friends. They were black Suburbans, and the woman standing guard down there—the one named Sally Jones—recognized these newcomers and waved them past the Cadillac Escalade that partially blocked entrance. These were the six additional bad hats who, as Chris Pervert had told Janis in the hallway, were going to do sharp-elbow one-on-one interviews with the employees, scare the spunk out of them before sending them home.
Then no one would be here but Laurie, her sisters, her mom and dad—and twelve of them with their guns and their needles and their brain implants.
She stared hard into the darkness, where she knew the state route ran north and south, but there were no other headlights, no rescuers imminent.
Suddenly she realized that she didn’t have the scissors with which she’d cut the zip-ties and freed herself. She couldn’t remember where she might have put them down on the way from her bedroom to the fire watch. The scissors had been her only weapon.
8
WHEN RADLEY DUBOSE RETURNS to the kitchen, Minette Butterworth, wrung hard by emotion, is a swollen-faced red-eyed faucet of grief with an apparently inexhaustible reservoir of tears. Behind the duct tape, when she’s not making baaa-baaa noises like a bleating sheep, she sounds as if she’s choking on her grief, swallowing her tongue.
Carter Jergen finds the woman repellent. Excessive displays of emotion are not only undignified but are always, in his opinion, as phony as a politician’s promise, a display to draw attention to the wailer and elicit from others either sympathy for her suffering or admiration for the depth of her feeling.
The husband, Robert, is beyond tears and, he would have them believe, beyond fear, as well. His eyes shine with the pure primal hatred of a maddened ape. He shouts his rage to no effect behind the swath of duct tape. He strains against his bonds and rocks the chair in which he sits.
Dubose regards this pair not with disdain, as does Jergen, but as if he is in some zoo, standing before an exhibit of two exotic animals whose droll appearance and antics he would like to have explained to him by a docent.
His interest is short-lived, and he turns to address Ahmed, Malcolm, and the lovely Zita.
“That should have been an easy call, people. In the utopia that technology is making possible for those of us who control it, do you think we ought to encourage continued production of software that’s four generations old? Why? For sentimental reasons? Should we maybe keep useless workers on a warehouse payroll just so they can watch the robots do the job more efficiently after the place has been automated?”
Ahmed and Malcolm look abashed, though it’s difficult to tell whether they are embarrassed by their own failure to act according to Arcadian principles or are disturbed by Dubose’s comparisons of outdated software and displaced workers to Glynis.
Dubose continues. “For those who don’t belong with us inside this scientific revolution, utilitarian bioethics must always apply. Society can’t waste resources on those millions among the masses who receive far more than they’ll ever produce. Such profligate spending has collapsed other civilizations.”
The lovely Zita wishes to contribute. “Besides,” she says, “it’s a matter of compassion. Quality of life. It’s cruel to force people who can never be whole to live in diminished circumstances.”
“Exactly,” Dubose agrees. “We can stop those with diminished capacities from ever being born. But we also have to show the same compassion to those who, born whole, are later broken in one way or another.”
Dismayingly, Zita Hernandez is now looking at the hillbilly philosopher with undeniable erotic interest, in fact with greater intensity than that with which earlier she had seemed to regard Carter Jergen.
“For the record,” says Dubose, “Jane Hawk attempted to take refuge in this house and, for whatever psychotic reason, she shot Glynis to death.”
Ahmed, Malcolm, and Zita all seem to be good with that.
When their control mechanisms are in place, Minette and Robert will forget what they are told to forget and will remember whatever scenario is described to them.
Dubose lifts his chin, striking a noble pose, and says, “Carry on, people,” as if he is some great general bucking up the troops or a wise and inspiring statesman equal to Churchill.
He leads Jergen out of the dismal house, into a night of flying beetles and beetle-eating bats, into the astringent smell of coyote urine rising from the surrounding stonescape. In the near distance, the pack of urinators, now on the hunt, issue shrill and eerie cries as if so maddened by the scent of prey that they must spill its blood at once or else, in a frenzy, tear themselves apart.
Dubose drives.
Although Jergen often finds his partner lacking in manners, crude, and a social embarrassment, he admires Dubose’s ruthlessness and implacable intent.
“You shot her three times,” he says as Dubose wheels the VelociRaptor away from the house.
“Yeah.”
“One point-blank hollow-point didn’t kill her?”
“Put it in her chest, she was stone dead.”
“Then why two more?”
“Didn’t like her expression.”
“What about it?”
“She didn’t look dead enough. Just … sort of sneering, smug.”
“Well, she worked at the State Department,” Jergen reminds him.
“Yeah, we know the type.”
“So the other two shots … ?”
“In the face.”
“Do the trick?”
“She looks more dead now.”
9
JANIS DERN IS KEEPING HER RAGE IN CHECK. No need for an anger management class. No need to take a time-out in the corner without speaking privileges. No need to be sent off to bed without dessert while Francine and her two sibling cohorts get extra-large portions of cake—thanks to Daddy’s blindness to the meanness with which his precious favorite, Francine, and her two sibling toadies treat their youngest sibling. No need for anything now except a little tough love directed at one freckle-faced smart-mouthed tomboy, a little necessary discipline …
The six additional agents have arrived from Austin. They’re at Stable 2, giving the detained Longrin employees a few lessons in respect for authority before sending them home.
They have brought a Medexpress carrier containing four control mechanisms. One for Chase Longrin, one for Alexis, and two more just in case. Once the Longrins have been injected, once nanowebs have spun securely across the surfaces and into the crevices of their brains, they’ll give up Ancel and Clare’s whereabouts.