‘This is an excellent Chardonnay,’ Lantern declared, ‘if anyone would like to reconsider. No? You’re just leaving more for me. And now we come to the sad part of the tale. The sad and frustrating part. An almost tragic revelation. Tell them the sad part, Lincoln.’
Proctor’s unnerving dreamy smile had faded and brightened and faded. Now it vanished. ‘Just before they shut down my labs and tried to eliminate me, I’d developed a new generation of nanobots.’
‘New and improved,’ Lantern said, ‘like new Coke or like adding a new color to the M&M spectrum.’
‘Yes, much improved,’ Proctor agreed, either missing his host’s sarcasm or choosing to ignore it. ‘I’ve worked the bugs out of it. As I’ve proved with you, Dylan, with you, Ms. Jackson. And with you, as well, Shepherd? With you, as well?’
Shep stood with his head bowed, saying nothing.
‘I’m eager to hear what the effects have been with all of you,’ said Lincoln Proctor, finding his smile once more. ‘This time the quality of the subjects is what it should always have been. You are much better clay. Working with those criminal personalities, disaster was inevitable. I should’ve understood that from the start. My fault. My stupidity. But now, how have you been lifted up? I’m desperately interested to hear. What has been the effect?’
Instead of answering Proctor, Jilly said to Parish Lantern, ‘And how do you fit into this? Were you one of his investors?’
‘I’m neither a billionaire nor an idiot,’ Lantern assured her. ‘I had him on my program a few times because I thought he was an entertaining egomaniacal nutball.’
Proctor’s smile froze. If glares could have scorched, Proctor would have reduced Parish Lantern to a cinder as readily as the late Manuel had apparently done to others.
Lantern said, ‘I was never rude to him or let on what I thought of this insanity of forced evolution of the human brain. That’s not my style. If a guest is a genius, I let him win friends and influence people on his own, and if he’s a lunatic, I’m happy to let him make a fool of himself without my assistance.’
Although color flooded into Proctor’s face at this offense, he looked no healthier. He rose from the chair and pointed the pistol at Lantern instead of at Dylan. ‘I’ve always thought you were a man of vision. That’s why I came to you first, with the new generation. And this is how I’m repaid?’
Parish Lantern sipped the last of the Chardonnay in his glass, savored it, swallowed. Ignoring Proctor, he spoke to Dylan and Jilly: ‘I’d never met the good doctor face to face. I’d always interviewed him live by telephone. He showed up on my doorstep five days ago, and I was too polite to kick his ass into the street. He said he wished to discuss something of importance that would serve as a segment for my show. I was kind enough to invite him into my study for a brief meeting. He repaid this kindness with chloroform and a hideous… horse syringe.’
‘We’re familiar with it,’ Dylan said.
Putting aside his empty wineglass, Lantern rose from his chair. ‘Then he left me with the warning that his partners, half crazed with the prospect of litigation, were intent on killing him and anyone he injected, so I’d better not try to report him to the police. Within hours I was going through some terrifying changes. Precognition was the first curse.’
‘We call them curses, too,’ Jilly said.
‘By Wednesday, I began to foresee some of what would happen here today. That our Frankenstein would return to learn how I was doing, to receive my praise, my gratitude. The clueless fool expected me to feel indebted to him, to receive him as a hero and shelter him here.’
Proctor’s faded-denim eyes were as hard and icy as on the night that he had killed Dylan’s mother in 1992. ‘I’m a man of many faults, grievous faults. But I’ve never been gratuitously insulting to people who have meant well toward me. I can’t understand your attitude.’
‘When I told him I’d foreseen your visit here on this same day,’ Lantern continued, ‘he became terribly excited. He expected all of us to kneel and kiss his ring.’