City of Night

Chapter 57

Staring at Pastor Laffite’s eyelids as his eyes moved nervously beneath them, Deucalion said, “Many theologians believe that dogs and some other animals have simple souls, yes, though whether immortal or not, no one can say.”

“If dogs have souls,” Laffite suggested, “then perhaps we, too, might be more than machines of meat.”

After some consideration, Deucalion said, “I won’t give you false hope… but I can offer you a third chocolate.”

“Have one with me, will you? This is such a lonely communion.”

“All right.”

The pastor had developed a mild palsy of the head and hands, different from his previous nervous tremors.

Deucalion selected two pieces of candy from the box. He put the first to Laffite’s lips, and the minister took it.

His own piece proved to have a coconut center. In two hundred years, nothing he had eaten had tasted as sweet as this, perhaps because the circumstances were, by contrast, so bitter.

“Eyes closed or open,” Pastor Laffite said, “I’m having terrible hallucinations, vivid images, such horrors that I have no words to describe them.”

“Then no more delay,” Deucalion said, pushing his chair back from the table and getting to his feet.

“And pain,” the pastor said. “Severe pain that I can’t repress.”

“I won’t add to that,” Deucalion promised. “My strength is much greater than yours. It will be quick.”

As Deucalion moved behind Laffite’s chair, the pastor groped blindly, caught his hand. Then he did something that would never have been expected of any of the New Race, something that Deucalion knew no number of centuries could erase from his memory.

Although his program was dropping out of him, though his mind was going — or perhaps because of that — Pastor Laffite drew the back of Deucalion’s hand to his lips, tenderly kissed it, and whispered, “Brother.”

A moment later, Deucalion broke the preacher’s neck, shattered his spine with such force that instant brain death followed, assuring that the quasi-immortal body could not repair the injury.

Nevertheless, for a while he remained in the kitchen. To be certain. To sit a sort of shiva.

Night pressed at the windows. Outside lay a city, teeming. Yet Deucalion could see nothing beyond the glass, only darkness deep, a blackness unrelenting.