on the crucifixion, though this was not a portrait of self-sacrifice and redemption bathed in the light of love. This grotesque, demonic figure brought to mind the poet Yeats, who had written of some “rough beast, its hour come round at last,” slouching toward Bethlehem to be born.
As Carson approached the foot of the bed, he saw what seemed to be animal eyeshine in Shacket’s hateful glare, fluxing continuously between yellow and red. He suspected that, in the morning, when the staff calmed the prisoner with another injection and attempted to remove the contact lenses, they would discover only eyes that in some hideous fashion and with terrifying rapidity had become other than human eyes.
“I’m Dr. Carson, the county medical examiner. I performed autopsies on the man who was shot yesterday and on a woman who was bitten to death.”
If there had not been wicked cunning in this creature’s stare, Carson would have imagined it; so he knew that he couldn’t trust himself to discern with full confidence what Shacket might be thinking or the true condition of his mind.
“I don’t have any intention of testifying against you in a court, only as to the condition of the bodies of Justine Klineman and her companion.”
Shacket made no attempt at a reply.
The air carried a subtle but peculiar smell. The scent was neither foul nor pleasant. Just different. Carson had never smelled anything quite like it, and he couldn’t give it a name.
“No one here is operating on a worst-case scenario. They think you’re just psychotic, had a total mental breakdown. I’m afraid it’s not that, not in the way they mean. I think something extraordinary is happening to you.”
Shacket’s arms lay above the blanket, under the straps. The pale light was just bright enough to reveal the muscles tighten and the hands claw into fists.
“Do you know the word transhumanism, Mr. Shacket?”
The prisoner’s nostrils flared, possibly a sign of excitement.
Carson said, “It’s too puerile to be a philosophy, too barren of foundational facts to be called a theory. It’s just a high-tech religion.”
“What would you know?” the prisoner said. “You’re not a doctor in any meaningful sense. You’re a butcher of the dead.”
“An article of the transhumanism faith,” Carson continued, “is that human beings will soon have the ability to transform themselves physically and intellectually, acquire much stronger bodies, vastly increase our intelligence, gain powers once dreamed of only by the folks at Marvel Comics. This is expected to happen through a melding of man and machine or by breakthroughs in genetic engineering.”
“You have eyes to see, and you see not,” Shacket said.
“Was it truly cancer research that was being conducted in Springville?”
“Nothing so inconsequential as that. Why are you here? To thank me for bringing business your way? Without murder, you would have no work. Have you ever given thought to how complicit you are in crime, Doctor?”
Whatever Carson had been expecting, this was not it. Where was the out-of-control subhuman beast who had grossly assaulted Justine Klineman and bitten off Walter Colt’s finger?
Declining to take the bait, Carson continued. “Dorian Purcell has said that, considering the medical advances being made, there are people alive today who’ll live two hundred years, three hundred, maybe longer. Did the research in Springville involve the issue of longevity?”
“It involved the human genome, horizontal genetic transfer, the destiny of humanity, the fate of the earth—much more elevated work than carving up corpses to see what made them stop ticking.”
Carson persisted. “Something went wrong?”
The skirling wind protested loudly. Shacket turned his head to the left, regarding the window with what might have been longing for the tumult of the night.
“Something went wrong?” Carson repeated.
Smug satisfaction pulled Shacket’s features into a sardonic grin. “Something went wrong and something went right.”
“You were contaminated?”
In Shacket’s eyes of light, blue irises floated like gentian petals in moonlit pools.
Carson Conroy believed he was in the presence of something profoundly alien. He could not prove it, but he knew it.
In a voice astringent with contempt, Shacket said, “You say contaminated, I say coronated.”
“Coronated? Crowned? Made king of what?”
“Of all that will come to be.”
Those seven words were spoken with quiet confidence that either confirmed Shacket’s insanity or belied it. Carson was disturbed to find that he could not be sure which.
“Whatever happened to you,” Carson said, “whatever you’ve been coronated with—are you communicable?”
“So this is why you’re here. Ready to inflame the population with fear of a plague.” Shacket shook his head and looked again at the