The pattern had been designed and applied by a Tibetan monk skillful with needles. One half of his face appeared normal, even handsome, but an intricate tattoo decorated the other half. Two Hispanic men in white pants and T-shirts stepped outside, one offering an open pack of cigarettes to the other.ĭeucalion was revealed by the security lamp above the door and by another directly across the alley from the first.īoth men froze at the sight of him. Instead, he turned away, and did not look back even when the panhandler cursed him.Īs he was passing the kitchen entrance to a restaurant, that door opened. “Bless you if you’re generous, but a dollar’s all I ask.”ĭeucalion resisted the urge to seize the extended hand and snap it off at the wrist as though it were a dry stick. “You can’t get anything for a dollar,” Deucalion said. The panhandler brandished nothing more dangerous than a dirty upturned palm and searing halitosis. Even in his rage, he needed justification for violence. “Peace in Jesus, brother.”Īlthough that greeting didn’t suggest a mugger on the prowl, Deucalion turned toward the voice with the hope that the stranger would have a knife, a gun. As did his face.įrom the darkness beside a Dumpster, a wrinkled rum-soaked raisin of a man stepped forth. In public, he stayed in shadows and used back streets, because his formidable size made him an object of interest. The air was warm, humid, and alive with muffled jazz that the walls of the famous clubs could not entirely contain. Shades of gray, of blue, of black were enlivened only by the crimson of his thoughts. This night in New Orleans, Deucalion walked an alleyway on the perimeter of the French Quarter, in a mood to murder. For no rational reason, the anger swells into a tidal rage that threatens to sweep him beyond prudence, beyond discretion.
Yet still, on certain nights, without immediate cause, anger overcomes him. His pain and loneliness had taught him pity, whereafter he learned compassion. These many decades later, he had learned self-control. In his rages, he had killed, and savagely. That night, over two hundred years in the past, had set a theme of madness and violence that characterized Deucalion’s life for years thereafter. Like all utopians, he preferred obedience to independent thought.
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Unlike God, Victor Frankenstein saw no value in giving his creations free will. This was the first indication that he had been created as a slave. When he woke to the world, Deucalion had been shackled to a table.
Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.Having come to life in a thunderstorm, touched by some strange lightning that animated rather than incinerated, Deucalion had been born on a night of violence.Ī Bedlam symphony of his anguished cries, his maker’s shrieks of triumph, the burr and buzz and crackle of arcane machinery echoed off the cold stone walls of the laboratory in the old windmill.Britannica Beyond We’ve created a new place where questions are at the center of learning.100 Women Britannica celebrates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, highlighting suffragists and history-making politicians.
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