is more forthcoming in his work. If not, we'l have to stage a more dramatic showing of this
painting."
"So, am I dismissed?" Markham made a move toward the door, only to have Block stand in his way.
"Not until I'm done with you," Pancrit said. "Needless to say, you'l have to summon our dear Dr. Wax on a regular basis until his research is complete. But I also require your services for the recruitment phase of our project."
" 'Recruitment phase'?" The madman sounded more annoyed than curious.
"Yes. We need volunteers. Test subjects with a psychological predisposition to accept the results of our therapy. We've tried using unwil ing subjects-prisoners and so forth--but the results were not...satisfactory." Pancrit tapped a finger on his forehead to clarify his understatement. "They weren't prepared to have their perceptions opened in that way. We need people for whom the change would be
welcome."
"You mean people who want to be Violets," Evan said. Pancrit grinned. "Exactly."
The Violet Kil er exuded icy confidence. "I know one." 8
A Prime Candidate
AN AUTUMNAL MIST SUBMERGED SEATTLE IN
GOSSAMER GLOOM, dampening the khaki military
fatigues of the hirsute man who lurched up University Boulevard, one dirt-darkened hand cradling a stainstreaked paper cup of coffee. Day after day, he rinsed out the same cup and took it back to the supermarket deli down the street, where they refil ed it for free, assuming he was a homeless veteran. A decade after the Seattle police had shot him in the leg, Clement Everett Maddox stil walked with a limp that slowed his gait and garnered him a disability check every month, which he tried to stretch as far as possible. Today, however, the misery of smarting joints and sopping clothes made him wish he'd simply paid the two bucks to get his java at the yuppie bistro across the street from his electronics shop.
A side street led Maddox to the entrance of Clem's Gadget Garage. The paper sign taped to the inside of its glass door once read TEMPORARILY CLOSED, but
years of sun exposure had faded the penned letters to near invisibility. The front window display stil offered a petrified edifice of black-and-white TVs, eight-track tape players, Beta videocassette machines, and other obsolete devices--not one of which had sold since the store's "temporary" closing. Luckily, the landlord didn't care about the state of the business as long as Clem's rent checks cleared each month.
A gifted electrician, Clem used to enjoy a lucrative career as a retailer and repairman, but that was before his wife, Amy, died of breast cancer. Before he became obsessed with tuning his radios and televisions to what he believed to be the frequency of her soul's
electromagnetic energy, attempting to bring her back as a transcendental broadcast. Before the Violet Kil er framed him for murder and the Seattle cops blew a hole in his femoral artery.
Shivering and cursing as he entered and relocked the door behind him, Clem swigged his coffee, which had already gone cold and bitter, then shrugged off his wet jacket. He tried to excite himself about the long night of work ahead, but the thril of discovery had pal ed before the desperation of defeat. The cops had confiscated al the touchstones he'd col ected from the Violet Kil er's victims, leaving him with no way to study the souls of deceased Violets--the key to his theory of electronic communication with the afterlife.
Forced to rely on the knickknacks he'd accumulated from common dead folks, he spent fruitless hours
scrutinizing the spattered blankness of snow-covered television screens, listening endlessly to the hissing interference of the radio frequencies between stations. The dreary lack of progress made him doubt his
theory...and even his sanity. Where before he saw the suggestion of faces in the flickering pixels, he now saw only the impenetrable fog of a cathode-ray tube; where he once sensed the whisper of insistent voices, he now heard only the meaningless
painting."
"So, am I dismissed?" Markham made a move toward the door, only to have Block stand in his way.
"Not until I'm done with you," Pancrit said. "Needless to say, you'l have to summon our dear Dr. Wax on a regular basis until his research is complete. But I also require your services for the recruitment phase of our project."
" 'Recruitment phase'?" The madman sounded more annoyed than curious.
"Yes. We need volunteers. Test subjects with a psychological predisposition to accept the results of our therapy. We've tried using unwil ing subjects-prisoners and so forth--but the results were not...satisfactory." Pancrit tapped a finger on his forehead to clarify his understatement. "They weren't prepared to have their perceptions opened in that way. We need people for whom the change would be
welcome."
"You mean people who want to be Violets," Evan said. Pancrit grinned. "Exactly."
The Violet Kil er exuded icy confidence. "I know one." 8
A Prime Candidate
AN AUTUMNAL MIST SUBMERGED SEATTLE IN
GOSSAMER GLOOM, dampening the khaki military
fatigues of the hirsute man who lurched up University Boulevard, one dirt-darkened hand cradling a stainstreaked paper cup of coffee. Day after day, he rinsed out the same cup and took it back to the supermarket deli down the street, where they refil ed it for free, assuming he was a homeless veteran. A decade after the Seattle police had shot him in the leg, Clement Everett Maddox stil walked with a limp that slowed his gait and garnered him a disability check every month, which he tried to stretch as far as possible. Today, however, the misery of smarting joints and sopping clothes made him wish he'd simply paid the two bucks to get his java at the yuppie bistro across the street from his electronics shop.
A side street led Maddox to the entrance of Clem's Gadget Garage. The paper sign taped to the inside of its glass door once read TEMPORARILY CLOSED, but
years of sun exposure had faded the penned letters to near invisibility. The front window display stil offered a petrified edifice of black-and-white TVs, eight-track tape players, Beta videocassette machines, and other obsolete devices--not one of which had sold since the store's "temporary" closing. Luckily, the landlord didn't care about the state of the business as long as Clem's rent checks cleared each month.
A gifted electrician, Clem used to enjoy a lucrative career as a retailer and repairman, but that was before his wife, Amy, died of breast cancer. Before he became obsessed with tuning his radios and televisions to what he believed to be the frequency of her soul's
electromagnetic energy, attempting to bring her back as a transcendental broadcast. Before the Violet Kil er framed him for murder and the Seattle cops blew a hole in his femoral artery.
Shivering and cursing as he entered and relocked the door behind him, Clem swigged his coffee, which had already gone cold and bitter, then shrugged off his wet jacket. He tried to excite himself about the long night of work ahead, but the thril of discovery had pal ed before the desperation of defeat. The cops had confiscated al the touchstones he'd col ected from the Violet Kil er's victims, leaving him with no way to study the souls of deceased Violets--the key to his theory of electronic communication with the afterlife.
Forced to rely on the knickknacks he'd accumulated from common dead folks, he spent fruitless hours
scrutinizing the spattered blankness of snow-covered television screens, listening endlessly to the hissing interference of the radio frequencies between stations. The dreary lack of progress made him doubt his
theory...and even his sanity. Where before he saw the suggestion of faces in the flickering pixels, he now saw only the impenetrable fog of a cathode-ray tube; where he once sensed the whisper of insistent voices, he now heard only the meaningless
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