Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

Watkins looked away from him.

Rising from his armchair again, Shaddack rounded the low cocktail table to stand beside the policeman. Looking down at Watkins’s bowed head, he put one hand on the man’s shoulder.

Watkins cringed from the touch.

Shaddack did not move his hand, and he spoke with the fervor of an evangelist. He was a cool evangelist, however, whose message did not involve the hot passion of religious conviction but the icy power of logic, reason. “You’re one of the New People now, and that does not just mean that you’re stronger and quicker than ordinary men, and it doesn’t just mean you’re virtually invulnerable to disease and have a greater power to mend your injuries than anything any faith healer ever dreamed of. It also means you’re clearer of mind, more rational than the Old People—so if you consider Eddie’s death carefully and in the context of the miracle we’re working here, you’ll see that the price he paid was not too great. Don’t deal with this situation emotionally, Loman; that’s definitely not the way of New People. We’re making a world that’ll be more efficient, more ordered, and infinitely more stable precisely because men and women will have the power to control their emotions, to view every problem and event with the analytical coolness of a computer. Look at Eddie Valdoski’s death as but another datum in the great flow of data that is the birth of the New People. You’ve got the power in you now to transcend human emotional limitations, and when you do transcend them, you’ll know true peace and happiness for the first time in your life.”

After a while Loman Watkins raised his head. He turned to look up at Shaddack. “Will this really lead to peace?”

“Yes.”

“When there’s no one left unconverted, will there be brotherhood at last?”

“Yes.”

“Tranquillity?”

“Eternal.”

47

The Talbot house on Conquistador was a three-story redwood with lots of big windows. The property was sloped, and steep stone steps led up from the sidewalk to a shallow porch. No streetlamps lit that block, and there were no walkway or landscape lights at Talbot’s, for which Sam was grateful.

Tessa Lockland stood close to him on the porch as he pressed the buzzer, just as she had stayed close all the way from the laundry. Above the noisy rustle of the wind in the trees, he could hear the doorbell ring inside.

Looking back toward Conquistador, Tessa said, “Sometimes it seems more like a morgue than a town, peopled by the dead, but then …”

“Then?”

“… in spite of the silence and the stillness, you can feel the energy of the place, tremendous pent-up energy, as if there’s a huge hidden machine just beneath the streets, beneath the ground … and as if the houses are filled with machinery, too, all of it powered up and straining at cogs and gears, just waiting for someone to engage a clutch and set it all in motion.”

That was exactly Moonlight Cove, but Sam had not been able to put the feeling of the place into words. He rang the bell again and said, “I thought filmmakers were required to be borderline illiterates.”

“Most Hollywood filmmakers are, but I’m an outcast documentarian, so I’m permitted to think—as long as I don’t do too much of it.”

“Who’s there?” said a tinny voice, startling Sam. It came from an intercom speaker that he’d not noticed. “Who’s there, please?”

Sam leaned close to the intercom. “Mr. Talbot? Harold Talbot?”

“Yes. Who’re you?”

“Sam Booker,” he said quietly, so his voice would not carry past the perimeter of Talbot’s porch. “Sorry to wake you, but I’ve come in response to your letter of October eighth.”

Talbot was silent. Then the intercom clicked, and he said, “I’m on the third floor. I’ll need time to get down there. Meanwhile I’ll send Moose. Please give him your ID so he can bring it to me.”

“I have no Bureau ID,” Sam whispered. “I’m undercover here.”

“Driver’s license?” Talbot asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s enough.” He clicked off.

“Moose?” Tessa asked.

“Damned if I know,” Sam said.

They waited almost a minute, feeling vulnerable on the exposed porch, and they were both startled again when a dog pushed out through a pet door they had not seen, brushing between their legs. For an instant Sam didn’t realize what it was, and he stumbled backward in surprise, nearly losing his balance.