Devoted(113)

When Shacket seized him by the arms with both hands, Dorian at last threw off the paralysis. He struggled, only to discover that this creature, even if terminal, was not weak, as he had thought, but inhumanly strong instead. The serum oozing from the sores in Lee Shacket’s hands was disgusting, potentially infectious, and so gluey that it penetrated Dorian’s shirt and seemed to bond with his skin. He felt something leeching into his biceps, so that the harder he strained to wrench free, the firmer became Shacket’s grip on him, until he made his most desperate effort and felt his muscle fibers tearing apart. Dorian’s scream of pain and fright and horror earned another grin from Shacket, who once more crowned himself: “I have become.” The former CEO of Refine tasted the arcade air with his white tongue and then he bit into the scream, bit and bit the tender lips.





125



Rodchenko had been taken upstairs and locked in a closet for the time being.

The humble study in the white clapboard house on the outskirts of Pinehaven did not look like the epicenter of a quake that would change the future. The storm that seared the night with lightning and shook it with thunder and hammered the house with rain might be taken, however, as a metaphor for the fury that great change often inspired.

Ben Hawkins knew this: The amazing bond between the Mysterium and humanity would change the world forever, but the world could not be radically changed overnight without widespread fear of the new and without dreadful consequences arising from that fear.

There would be profound dislocations, cultural and economic. There would be an impact on all religions and no less on science, for the majority of scientists in all disciplines were and always had been committed to theories as fiercely as political types were bound by ideology. Although science was never settled and was a perpetual process of discovery that undid past ideas, there were many who adamantly resisted all evidence that didn’t support the theories on which they had built their careers. Human beings could hate to the point of killing whom they hated, based on class and race and politics and religion and mere envy. When the dogs of the Mysterium brought the Wire to other people, through Woodrow Bookman, each person who received the telepathic ability would be henceforth unable to be deceived or deceive others on the Wire. People would be forced to confront the daunting fact that the truth they claimed to pursue and cherish was in fact a burden that they most often chose not to carry, that the lies they insisted they despised were instead often preferred to hard facts and cold reality. Even such wondrous and miraculous creatures as these beautiful dogs would soon become targets, as would the boy, as would all who wished to embrace the profound change ensuing from this ultimate refinement of the human-canine bond. A potential for violence on the scale of a holocaust could not be ruled out.



Ben argued—Megan, Rosa, Carson, and Kipp agreed—that the dogs of the Mysterium must be introduced to the world slowly, over years if not decades. The people who loved these dogs, who accepted the gift and burden of the Wire, must keep the secret of the Mysterium until communities of them and their human companions were everywhere in such numbers that the world had quietly changed from one steeped in deceit to one in which truth was more prevalent in human affairs than ever before. When the balance changed, when violence and theft and betrayal had diminished, they would know the moment had come to say to humanity: Here are the agents of the world as it has been evolving, our canine brothers and sisters on four legs, who have been our companions since time immemorial, who have always wanted nothing more from us than love and mutual defense against a cruel nature. They are not selfish or envious or arrogant. Join us for a tomorrow where the world is not deformed by the power mad, where every life matters, and where so much will be within our reach that once seemed forever beyond our grasp—even the stars.



The immediate problem was the four men from Atropos & Company.

For one thing, there was no trustworthy authority to which they might be transferred. Sheriff Eckman had withdrawn protection from Megan and Woody even knowing that they were targeted. According to Carson, the attorney general of California, Tio Barbizon, had been bought by someone, most likely by Dorian Purcell, who had paid for Jason Bookman’s “accident” and sent Atropos to Pinehaven. In recent years, the once sterling reputation of the FBI had been tarnished. These days, no one could say with certainty who could be trusted.

For another and more important reason, Ben didn’t want to turn these four men over to the law. Verbotski, Knacker, Rodchenko, and Speer didn’t know much about the dogs that had defeated them today, but they were aware that these creatures were extraordinary, that they were more than mere dogs, and that their human companions knew the truth of them. This was the last thing that Ben wanted anyone to be reporting to any authorities.

Sitting in an armchair with Kipp in her lap, Rosa Leon said, “But what do we do with them?”

“We’re not going to kill them,” Megan said.

“Of course not,” Ben agreed. “We’re going to do the only thing we can do—let them go.”



Carson Conroy turned from a window, where he’d been watching the rain and lightning with perhaps a sense that they would be a long time passing through the different storm that would soon come upon them. “Let them go? Four professional killers? What have I missed?”

Ben explained what he had in mind. “So we turn them loose and trust that they continue to be who they have always been.”