Starblood.

by Dean Koontz.

PROLOGUE.

Timothy was not human. Not wholly.

If you include arms and legs in a definition of the human body, then Timothy did not meet the necessary criteria. If you count two eyes in that definition, Timothy was also ruled out, for he had but one, and even that was placed in an unusual position: somewhat closer to his left ear than a human eye should be and definitely an inch lower in his overlarge skull than was the norm. Then there was his nose: it totally lacked cartilage; the only evidence of its presence was two holes, ragged nostrils punctuating the relative center of his bony, misshapen head. There was his skin: waxy yellow like some artificial fruit and coa.r.s.e with large, irregular pores that showed like dark pinp.r.i.c.ks bottomed with dried blood. There were his ears: very flat against his head and somewhat pointed, like the ears of a wolf. There were other things which would show up on closer examination: his hair (which was of different texture than any racial variant among the normal human strains), his nipples (which were ever so slightly concave instead of convex), and his genitals (which were male, but which were contained in a pouch just below his navel and not between his truncated limbs).

There was only one way in which Timothy was even remotely human, and that was in his brain, his intellect But even here, he was not entirely normal, for his IQ was slightly above 250, placing him well within the limits of "genius."

He was the product of the artificial wombs, a strictly military venture intended to to produce living weapons: beings with psionic abilities who just possibly might bring the Asians to their knees. To a certain type of military mind, the human body is little more than a tool to be used as the officer wishes,, and such were the men in charge of the wombs. When results like Timothy slid from the steamy chambers, gnarled and useless specimens, they shook their heads, ignored public condemnation, and went on with their mad work. produce living weapons: beings with psionic abilities who just possibly might bring the Asians to their knees. To a certain type of military mind, the human body is little more than a tool to be used as the officer wishes,, and such were the men in charge of the wombs. When results like Timothy slid from the steamy chambers, gnarled and useless specimens, they shook their heads, ignored public condemnation, and went on with their mad work.

Timothy was placed in a special home for subhuman products of the wombs, where it was expected he would die within five years. It was in his third year there that they came to realize Timothy (he was the T birth in the fifth alphabetical series, thus his name) was more than a mindless vegetable... it happened at feeding time. The nurse had been dutifully spooning pap into his mouth, cleaning his chin as he dribbled, when one of the other "children" in the ward entered its death throes. She hurried off to a.s.sist the doctor, leaving Timothy hungry.

Due to the training of a new staff nurse that afternoon, he had inadvertently been skipped during the last meal. He was ravenous now. When the nurse did not respond to his caterwauling, he tossed about on the foam mattress. Legless and armless as he was, there was nothing he could do to reach the bowl of food that rested on the table next to his crib, painfully within sight of his one, misplaced eye. He blinked that eye, squinted it, and lifted the spoon without touching it. He levitated the instrument to his mouth, licked the pablum from it, and sent it back to the bowl for more.

It was during his sixth spoonful when the nurse returned, saw what he was doing, and promptly fainted dead away. That same night, Timothy was moved from the ward. Quietly.

He did not know where they were taking him. Indeed, lacking the sensory stimulation afforded most three-year-olds, he did not even care. Without proper stimulation, he had never developed rational thought processes. He understood nothing beyond the basic desires of his own body: hunger, thirst, excretion. He could not wonder where they were taking him.

He was not permitted to remain ignorant for long. The military hungered for success (they had only had two others) and hurried his development They tested his IQ as best they could and found it slightly above average. They were jubilant, for they had feared they would have to work with a psionically gifted moron. Next, the computers devised an educational program suited to his unique history, and initiated it at once.

They expected him to be talking in seven months: he was verbalizing in five weeks. They expected him to be reading in a year and a half; he was quant.i.tatively absorbing on a college level in three months.

Not surprisingly, they found his IQ rising. Intelligence quotient is based on what an individual has learned, as well as what he inately knows. When Timothy had first been tested, he had learned absolutely nothing. His slightly above average IQ score had been garnered solely on that native ability. Excitement at the project grew until Timothy no longer reached a meaningful IQ of 250. It was now eighteen months since he had lifted the spoon without hands, and he was very nearly devouring books, switching from topic to topic, from two weeks of advanced physics texts to a month of nineteenth-century British literature. The military didn't care, for they did not expect him to be a one-field expert, merely educated and conversant At the end of eighteen months, he was both these things. The military turned to other plans...

They coached his psionic abilities carefully. There were dreams in military minds, of Timothy destroying the entire Asian Army with one psionic burst. But dreams are only dreams. The fact was soon evident that Timothy's psi powers were severely limited. The heaviest thing he could lift was a spoon full of applesauce, and his radius of ability was only a hundred feet. As a superweapon, he was something of a washout.

The generals were disappointed: after the initial paralysis wore off, they opted to dissect Timothy to see what they could discover of his ability.

Luckily for him, the war ended.

The Bio-Chem people came up with the ultimate weapon. They released a virus on the Asian mainland at roughly the same time the army was discovering Timothy's limits. Before the generals could act on him, the virus had destroyed approximately half of the Asian male population-it was structured to affect only certain chromosome combinations that occurred only in Mongolians-and had induced the enemy to a reluctant surrender.

With peace, the wombs were put under the administration of the Bio-Chem people, and the project was dissolved.

But the scientists were still fascinated with Timothy. For three weeks, he was exhaustively tested and retested by his new masters. He overheard their discussions about "What his brain might look like..."

It was a rugged three weeks.

In the end a leak reached the press and the story of the horribly deformed mutant who could lift spoons without touching them was a three-day sensation. The Veterans' Bureau, the largest bureau of the now peace-oriented government, stepped into the uproar and took control of him. Senator Kilby announced that the government was going to "rehabilitate" the young man, provide him with servo-hands and a grav-plate system for mobility.

He was a three-day sensation again. And so was the politically wise senator who took credit for his rehabilitation...

CHAPTER 1.

Timothy stood on the patio that jutted beyond the cliff and watched a flock of birds settling into the big green pines which spread thickly down the mountainside. He was fascinated by nature because it contained two qualities he did not-an intricacy of purpose and general perfection. As most normal men are intrigued by freaks, so Timothy was intrigued by the nature of normalcy. He directed his left servo-hand to pull apart the branches obscuring his view of a particularly fine specimen. The six-fingered prostho swept away from him on the grav-plates that cored its palm, shot forty feet down the embankment to the offending branch, and gently pulled it aside so as not to disturb the birds. But the birds were too aware: they flew.

Using his limited psionic powers, Ti reached into the two hundred micro-miniature switches of the control module buried in the globe of the grav-plate system that capped his truncated legs. The switches, operated by psi power, in turn maneuvered his hands and moved him about as he wished. He recalled his left servo now that the bird had gone. It rushed back to him and floated at his side.

He looked at the watch strapped to the servo and was surprised to find that it was past time for his usual morning chat with Taguster. He flipped the microminiature switches and floated around and through the patio doors, into the somewhat plush living-room of his house.

The house was the pivotal spot of his life, giving him comfort when he was depressed, companionship when he was lonely, a sense of accomplishment when his life seemed hollow. He had built it with money earned from his two volumes of autobiography, a proud monument built over the ruins of a Revolutionary War, pro-British secret supplies' cellar. It was maintained by the revenues from Enterstat Enterstat, the first stat newspaper devoted to gossip and entertainment, a project launched successfully with the book monies.

He crossed the fur carpet and glided into the special cup-chair of his Mindlink set. Raising a "hand," he pulled down the burnished aluminum helmet and fitted it securely to his bony cranium (the helmet too had been specially crafted). He used the other servo to flip the proper toggles to shift his mind into the receiver in Taguster's living-room.

There was a moment of blurring when intense blacks and grays swarmed formlessly about him. It was said that this was the moment when death tried to rush into the vacated body-and when the Mindlink circuits dissuaded it from claiming another victim as it wished. Then his consciousness flashed onto the Mindlink Company's beam past thousands of other ent.i.ties going to other receivers. In less than a second, the blacks and grays swirled dizzily, then cleared and metamorphosed into colors. The first thing he saw through the receiver was Leonard Taguster lying dead against the wall...

For a moment, he attempted to break away from the artificial brain blank and the camera eyes eyes of the receiver, tried to plunge back into the chiaroscuro world of the beam. Taguster simply could not be dead. And if he were, then Ti simply could not admit it There was, after all, no one else in his world, no one with whom he might talk with ease, as equal; no one else who would easily understand him. After Taguster, there was only the house, and the house could not converse. Then the core of him, which had survived so much in the past, gripped him and forced him to cease his childish flight from reality. He settled firmly into the receiver again and looked out through the gla.s.s eyes of the cameras attached to the brain blank. of the receiver, tried to plunge back into the chiaroscuro world of the beam. Taguster simply could not be dead. And if he were, then Ti simply could not admit it There was, after all, no one else in his world, no one with whom he might talk with ease, as equal; no one else who would easily understand him. After Taguster, there was only the house, and the house could not converse. Then the core of him, which had survived so much in the past, gripped him and forced him to cease his childish flight from reality. He settled firmly into the receiver again and looked out through the gla.s.s eyes of the cameras attached to the brain blank.

No, Taguster was not dead. There was blood, surely, pooling about the concert guitarist's head, but the same head was also moving, nodding in near unconsciousness, but nodding nonetheless. Ti operated the voicebox of the machine, spoke in a mechanical harshness. "Lenny!"

Taguster raised his head a little, enough for Ti to see the thin dart buried half in his throat. Taguster tried to say something, but he could only manage a thick gurgle, like syrup splattering against the bottom of a galvanized bucket.

Timothy felt a silent scream welling up inside him, heard it booming deep within him. A moment later, he realized it was not silent, but given voice by the receiver. That frightened him, and he looked away from the wounded body of his friend, trying to regain his wits. Darts? Who would want to kill Leonard Taguster? And why hadn't they finished the job?

The musician made frantic noises, as if he desperately needed to communicate something. His head bobbed, jerked, as convulsions. .h.i.t him. Ti wished he had not looked back.

Taguster's eyes were wide open and br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears. He knew he was dying.

Ti's mind swam inside the receiver, receding into the swirl of black and gray, then surging into color and life again as his fear of retreating overcame his fear of remaining. He was fighting off inglorious panic, and he knew it. But Taguster wanted to say something and that was the important thing to remember. But how could that be accomplished, with the man's pale throat so horribly violated?

Taguster scrabbled a limp hand against the wall as if writing without implement, and Ti got the idea. He turned the head of his receiver around so that the cameras showed him most of the room. There was a desk with various writing tools lying on it, a mere twenty feet away against the far wall. But a receiver was not mobile-and Taguster could not move. Ti thought of retreating from the receiver and returning to his own body, calling the police from his house. But Taguster's desire to communicate was too intense to ignore.

Ti squinted eyes that he didn't have (the cameras could not rightly be called eyes, and his own single orb was at home, lying lopsided in his irregular skull) and forced his psi energies to coalesce in the vicinity of the desk. He reached out and toyed with the pencil. It flipped over and almost rolled onto the floor. He doubled his effort, lifted it, and floated it across the room to where Taguster lay dying. He imagined he was sweating.

Taguster picked the instrument up and held it as if he were not certain what it was. He coughed bright blood, stared at that a moment. When Timothy urged him to write, he looked up blearily at the receiver cameras, seemed to make an expression of a.s.sent... or pain. He wrote on the wall: MARGLE. The letters were shaky and uneven, but readable. Then Taguster sighed, dropped the pencil. It made an eerily loud sound as it clattered on the slate floor.

"Lenny!"

Timothy seemed to remember having heard the name before, though he could not place the source. However, he felt justified in slipping out of the set now to call the police. But as he was loosening himself from the brain blank, someone screamed.

It was a woman; it came high and piercing, bursting out full strength and turning into a gurgle, trailing away in seconds. It had come from the bedroom, and Ti tensed his mind and shifted into the bedroom receiver extension.

It was was a woman. She had been trying to get out of the window, but her flimsy nightdress had caught on the latch, delaying her one moment too long. There were three darts in her back. Blood dripped off the frilly lace and onto the floor. a woman. She had been trying to get out of the window, but her flimsy nightdress had caught on the latch, delaying her one moment too long. There were three darts in her back. Blood dripped off the frilly lace and onto the floor.

Ti had been working under the a.s.sumption that the killer had left Now he shifted the camera to the left and saw the murderer.

A Hound floated toward the doorway, twin servo-hands flying ahead of it, fingers seemingly tensed as if to strangle someone. The dart tube on the burnished belly of the spherical machine protruded, ready. Here was the killer: thirty-odd pounds of ball-shaped computer that could track with seven sensory systems.

And only the police should have one.

But why should the police want Taguster dead... and why should they choose such an easily traced means of obtaining his destruction?

The Hound disappeared through the doorway, suddenly reminding Ti that Taguster was back there in the living-room, half dead. The Hound was returning to check on its work. Ti shifted his consciousness into the main receiver again.

Taguster was in the same position, still gurgling. When the mechanical killer entered the room, the dying man saw it.

Ti found a curio, a small bra.s.s peasant leading a bra.s.s mule, a handcrafted trinket Taguster had brought back from a trip to Mexico. Lifting with his psionic power, he threw it at the Hound with all the force he could muster. The toy bounced off the dully gleaming hide and fell harmlessly to the floor.

The Hound drifted toward Taguster, firing tube open.

Timothy found an ashtray, tried to lift it but could not manage. He cursed the limitations of his power. Then he remembered the gun on the desktop, lying opposite the pencils, heavy and ugly. He touched the pistol psionically, but could not budge it. He pressed harder, eventually moved it slightly until the barrel pointed directly at the Hound. Pulling the light wire of the trigger was easy enough. The gun spat a narcodart that bounced off the beast with no effect other than to elicit a scanning by its sight receptors.

Then the Hound shot Taguster. Four times in the chest.

Timothy felt as if all his energy had been sucked out of him by an electronic vampire. He wanted only to fold up, shrivel in upon himself, and slide home into his temporal sh.e.l.l where, at least, he could gain succor from his books, his films, his house. But he could not let the Hound escape. He sent the cameras swiveling in search of articles small enough for his talent to handle. He found a number of trinkets and figurines and rained these uselessly upon the machine.

The Hound surveyed the chamber, perplexed, firing darts in the direction of the hurled souvenirs, unable to discover its a.s.sailant Then it turned a spatter of darts on the receiver head and floated out of the room, out of the house and away...

CHAPTER 2.

For a time, Ti remained in the living-room staring at Taguster's corpse. He felt too emotionally weakened to move elsewhere. Memories flipped past his mind like a parade of lizards, tail flicking after tail, cold claws sunk into his brain. With each came more realization that there would be no more experiences with Taguster, no more conversations to be stored for later retrieval and reflection. What he remembered now was all that he would ever have. When a friend dies, it is much like a candle flame being snuffed-the warmth and brightness gone, leaving a vague recollection of what it had once been like.

He broke from Taguster's receiver and allowed his mind to flow into the Mindlink beam, through the penumbra landscape, back into his own body. He sat for a moment, regaining lost energies, and slowly became aware of the tears welling out of his eye and running down his pallid, clammy skin. He was not crying so much for Taguster as for himself-for the one thing he feared more than all else was loneliness. Those days and nights when he had been hopelessly immobile in the government hospital preyed on him now. The forgotten terror of being unable to communicate was renewed and metamorphosed into anguish. There were few men with minds as alert and as deeply structured as his own, few who could possibly be close friends. Indeed, Taguster was the only one he had ever called friend... and now he had no one at all.

The flow of his own tears finally forced him to lift the helmet from his head and shut off the machine, forced him to come to grips with the situation. If his greatest weakness was his almost irrational fear of loneliness, then his greatest strength was his ability to stand alone. His weakness and his strength were two sides of one coin. He sat there, letting the tears dry on his face, and thought through the events of the last half hour.

Ordinarily, he would have wasted no time in summoning the police. But it had been a Hound that had murdered Taguster, and that was a distinct complication. If some-or any-legal authorities had conspired to take the musician's life then it was madness to let them know there was a witness to their murder. He had to know more of the story behind the killing, though he had nothing but a name: Margle.

He rose from the cup-chair and crossed the room, moved through a painting-lined corridor and into the library he prized so much. He threw a toggle along the wall, next to the comscreen; a panel slid back, revealing a computer keyboard, a direct line to the Enterstat Enterstat computer. He punched out the letters of the name and depressed the bar marked FULL DATA REPORT. computer. He punched out the letters of the name and depressed the bar marked FULL DATA REPORT.

Thirty seconds later, a printed stat sheet popped out of the information receival slot and into the plastic tray, glistening wetly. He waited a moment for it to dry, then reached with a servo and picked it up, shaking it to release any static that might make it curl. He held it up and read it, blinking now and then as a stray breath of the copying fluid drifted upward and stung his eye.

Klaus Margle. He was connected with the Brethren, the underworld organization that had encroached on the territory once held sacrosanct by the older Mafia-and had finally deposed and destroyed the elder organization because it controlled the supply of PBT. PBT had replaced nearly all other drugs and quasi-drugs in man's eternal quest to avoid the unpleasantries of modern life. Since gambling and prost.i.tution had been dignified by liberalized laws, drugs had become the chief commodities of the underworld. It was rumored that Margle was the chief Don of the intricate counterculture of illegality, though this information could not be checked for authenticity.

Physically, he was six feet tall and weighed two hundred and eighteen pounds. His hair was dark, but his eyes were a surprising baby blue. He had a three-inch scar along his right jawline: source unknown. He was missing a thumb on his right hand: reason for amputation unknown. He believed in taking part in the common dangerous ch.o.r.es of his organization; he would not send one of his men to do something he had not once done himself-or would flinch from doing now. He was a man of action, not a desk-chained executive. He currently dated Polly London, the rising young senso-starlet who had appeared in Enterstat's Enterstat's glamour section more often than any other woman. Klaus Margle. End of information. glamour section more often than any other woman. Klaus Margle. End of information.

This explained the Hound and brought a touch of sanity to the surreal atmosphere of the crime. The underworld could obtain anything it wanted; it was rumored that half the city's officials were on the gift sheet of the Brethren. Through one or more of those men, Margle's people had secured the Hound. Which made it quite possible that Timothy would be putting his nonexistent foot into a nasty patch of briars if he should contact the police.

Punching the number for the Enterstat Enterstat editor's private desk phone, he waited while the comscreen rang the number. The two-dimensional medium was almost entirely a business service now that the three-dimensional, full sensory Mindlink had taken over communications for more intimate purposes. It also served as a very private means of contact for people like Timothy. In a moment, the blank screen popped with color, and the face of George Creel, editor's private desk phone, he waited while the comscreen rang the number. The two-dimensional medium was almost entirely a business service now that the three-dimensional, full sensory Mindlink had taken over communications for more intimate purposes. It also served as a very private means of contact for people like Timothy. In a moment, the blank screen popped with color, and the face of George Creel, Enterstat's Enterstat's editor, swam into view like a fish speeding toward the side of his gla.s.s aquarium. It settled into proper proportions, held still. The big man's melancholy eyes stared out at Timothy. "Morning," he said. "What's going on?" editor, swam into view like a fish speeding toward the side of his gla.s.s aquarium. It settled into proper proportions, held still. The big man's melancholy eyes stared out at Timothy. "Morning," he said. "What's going on?"

There was no subservience in his tone of voice, though he had a great deal of respect for his boss. It was the sort of respect that did not need to be vocalized, for both of them knew it existed. Ti also regarded Creel highly. The man was efficient, intelligent, and had gone through enough years of hardship and terror to be tempered into a fine precision instrument. Creel was black, and had been eleven years old during the Black Wars. He lived in Chicago when that city attempted to break away from the rest of the nation. The boy survived the final battles when many children had not, and the years of distrust and hatred which followed molded this present man.

"I want some information on a story prospect, George."

"Writing again?" Creel asked.

"Just something that interested me," Timothy said, hoping he could hide his roiling emotions.

"Who is it?"

"Klaus Margle. He dates Polly London. Missing a thumb on his right hand. Scarred on his face. And he may be the Don of the most influential family in the Brethren."

"Ill put some researchers on it. Tomorrow okay?"

"I want it inside an hour."

"It'll take four or five good men."

"'Deadlines too tight?"

"No," Creel said. "I can spare them. Call you in an hour." He signed off on his own authority, his face dwindling until it had disappeared altogether.

Timothy mixed himself a strong whiskey sour and waited. The quiet of the house seemed unnatural. But even after he slipped a cartridge into the stereo tape deck, the place seemed hollow, like a pavilion after a political congregation: cold. He was glad for the strident buzz of the comscreen an hour later.

"He's some fellow, isn't he," Creel said.

"Stat it," Timothy said, anxious to see what the staff had found.

Creel placed the doc.u.ments under his recorder scope, one sheet at a time, then punched the transmit b.u.t.ton. Moments later, wet copies dropped into the tray in Ti's wall. He restrained himself from rushing forward to look at them. Creel, he could tell, was already too interested. Timothy did not want to blow any of this until he knew exactly what was going on. It was not that he did not trust Creel. It was only that he trusted himself more. Creel would have acted the same way.

When all the papers had been received, he thanked the observant black man and rang off. Nestled in a comfortable cup-chair, power off in his grav-plates, servos holding the data sheets, he thought he could see Leonard Taguster's face in the print, formed by the letters. He quickly blinked the illusion away and studied the reports.

When he had finished reading everything the researchers had found on Klaus Margle, he knew beyond doubt that the man was the chief of the Brethren. The list of other underworld figures a.s.sumed liquidated under his auspices became awesome. By studying the list, Timothy could see the story of an industrious and ruthless criminal genius a.s.sa.s.sinating his way up the ranks and into the top roost.

The information also showed that it had been a wise move not to contact the police. Klaus Margle had been arrested nine different times-and had been released each time for "lack of evidence." If the police investigated this, without strong supportive evidence, Margle would go free. Then he would come hunting a societal reject named Timothy...

He was thankful, now, for his self-sufficiency. This business could not be turned over to police until he had possession of conclusive evidence that Margle could not buy his way out of. He was going to have to handle it himself, using all the connections in his power and every point of his high IQ.

Activating his grav-plates, he went to the Mindlink set, slid in, and coupled up. He was not going to enjoy returning to that house where the musician and the girl lay in their own blood. It was bad enough losing a friend, but to have to handle that friend's corpse in the manner he planned made him distinctly ill.

A moment later he was settling into the brain blank in Leonard Taguster's living-room receiver. The body was still there, twisted grotesquely in death agonies. He looked quickly away, but found his eyes drawn back like metal filings to a magnet. He focused the cameras on the closet door he wanted. He hoped Taguster still kept the thing where he used to. Ti palmed open the closet door with his psionic power. Warning lights flashed amber and red, and a loud clanging alarm sounded. He shut those off and looked inside-at a perfect likeness of the musician, except that, unlike its model, it was not full of pins and slicked with blood.

Taguster had commissioned the production of the simulacrum to help him avoid the adulation of his fans. It always forced its way through crowds, bullied past young girls waiting at his hotel-while he walked quietly in the back door or followed an hour later when the people had gone. Its complex brain was cored with Taguster's memory tapes and his psychological reaction patterns, making it possible for the fake to pa.s.s as the real even in the company of casual friends-although someone as close to him as Timothy could not be fooled for more than a moment.

Ti reached psionically under the flowered sports coat the machine wore and brought it to active status; its eyes opened, unclouded, and attained the same penetrating gaze that Taguster was famous for. "You," Ti said. "Come here." But despite the fact that he was trying to be businesslike, his voice was hoa.r.s.e.

It walked out of the closet and stopped before the receiver. For a moment, Timothy could not bear to order it to do anything; it seemed as if such an act would demean the memory of the real Taguster. But such orders were necessary to the success of the plan. "You recognize my voice?" he asked it.