Prodigal Son

CHAPTER 62

Erika roamed the silent mansion, pausing frequently to study Victor's collection of European and Asian antiques.

As they did every night, the nine members of the household staff-butler, maids, chef, cleaning crew, gardeners-had retired to their quarters above the ten-car garage at the back of the property.

They lived dormitory-style, the sexes integrated. They were provided with a minimum of amenities.

Victor seldom needed servants after ten o'clock-even on those nights when he was home-but he preferred not to allow his household staff, all members of the New Race, to lead lives separate from the mansion. He wanted them to be available twenty-four hours a day He insisted that the only focus of their lives should be his comfort.

Erika was pained by their circumstances. They were essentially hung on a rack, like tools, to await the next use he had for them.

The fact that her circumstances were not dissimilar to theirs had occurred to her. But she enjoyed a greater freedom to fill her days and nights with pursuits that interested her.

As her relationship with Victor matured, she hoped to be able to gain influence with him. She might be able to use that influence to improve the lot of the household staff.

As this concern for the staff had grown, she found herself less often despairing. Following her interests-and thus refining herself-was fine, but having a purpose proved more satisfying.

In the main drawing room, she paused to admire an exquisite pair of Louis XV ormolu-mounted boulle marquetry and ebony bas d'armoires.

The Old Race could create objects of breathtaking beauty unlike anything the New Race had done. This puzzled Erika; it did not seem to square with Victor's certainty that the New Race was superior.

Victor himself had an eye for the art of the Old Race. He had paid two and a quarter million for this pair of bas d'armoires.

He said that some members of the Old Race excelled at creating things of beauty because they were inspired by anguish. By their deep sense of loss. By their search for meaning.

Beauty came at the expense, however, of certitude, efficiency. Creating a beautiful piece of art, Victor said, was not an admirable use of energy because it in no way furthered mankind's conquest of itself or of nature.

A race without pain, on the other hand, a race that was told its meaning and explicitly given its purpose by its creator, would never need beauty, because it would have an infinite series of great tasks ahead of it. Working as one, with the single-minded purpose of a hive, all members of the New Race would tame nature, conquer the challenges of Earth as ordinary humanity had failed to do, and then become the masters of the other planets, the stars.

All barriers would fall to them.

All adversaries would be crushed.

New Men and New Women would not need beauty because they would have power. Those who felt powerless created art; beauty was their substitute for the power they could not attain. The New Race would need no substitute.

Yet Victor collected the art and the antiques of the Old Race. Erika wondered why, and she wondered if Victor himself knew why.

She had read enough literature to be sure that Old Race authors would have called him a cruel man. But Victor's art collection gave Erika hope that in him existed a core of pity and tenderness that might with patience be tapped.

Still in the main drawing room, she came to a large painting by Jan van Huysum, signed and dated 1732. For this still life, Victor had paid more millions.

In the painting, white and purple grapes appeared ready to burst with juice at the slightest touch. Succulent peaches and plums spilled across a table, caressed by sunshine in such a way that they seemed to glow from within.

The artist realistically portrayed this ripe bounty yet managed, subtly and without sentimentality, to suggest the ephemeral quality of even nature's sweetest gifts.

Mesmerized by van Huysum's genius, Erika was subconsciously aware of a furtive scrabbling. The noise grew louder, until at last it distracted her from the painting.

When she turned to survey the drawing room, she at once saw the source of the sound. Like a five-legged crab on some strange blind mission, a severed hand crawled across the antique Persian carpet.