Tomorrow Sucks Part 20

Dr. Valpa looked down at his long, flowing black cape, opening his arms outward as if to present himself to an audience. "Enough-I knew you would start on that theme again." Valpa lowered himself into the easy chair, folding his cape behind him.

He picked up the novel, turning to the cover. "Varney the Vampyre! and you question my methods-really, Carl, how hypocritical." Carl's face flamed. Valpa cut short a laugh and pointed. "There, there is the reason. What true vampire can blush like that? You young mutants are all alike-dress modern, scorn the old ways, run wild. Ah, in my youth-"

"Stop, Doctor. Your youth was a couple of thousand years ago. We, the new vampires, must live in this world, in this time. We can't go around wearing capes and acting strangely. We'd be picked up by the proctors in minutes if we did."

"Sad, but true, lad." Dr. Valpa nodded his head at this point. "Even I at theuniversity must dress in the current fad in order to keep my job." He looked up sharply at Carl. "But I still hold to the old ways when I go on my rounds. At least you could do that."

Carl sat down opposite the old man and stared into his red eyes. "Dr. Valpa, you don't understand, do you? You still don't grasp what's happening. You wouldn't last a second in the city. If I followed the old ways of feeding, I'd be caught all too quickly. Here in the city, in this apartment complex, I have over five hundred people on which I feed. I take a sip here, a sip there-no one misses it, and if I overindulge a little, they chalk it up to iron-poor blood. No one guesses, or even can believe that I'm around."

Dr. Valpa sat back, his arms outstretched along the steep sides of the chair.

"Another point, dear boy. But how can you say you are a vampire?" Valpa stood up and began pacing up and down. "A vampire involves himself with his prey; he lures it to him, seducing it with hypnotic trances that wrap them both in a world of their own. He-"

"Nonsense." Carl propped his leg across his other knee.

Dr. Valpa stopped before the easy chair, stricken to the heart. He turned slowly, his face paler than death. "Nonsense," he stuttered out. "Nonsense!" he roared.

"Nonsense," Carl repeated quietly. Valpa's mouth stood open, his eyes wide and staring. "We don't need it. After all, being human, we can enjoy the, ah-" Carl coughed into his hand, "say, better things of life."

Valpa stood rooted to the floor. His mouth slowly closed, and he seemed to melt down into the chair. "Is this what we have become, b.a.s.t.a.r.ds upon the human race, losing our own ident.i.ty and becoming more alien every day?" He lowered his head, his eyes riveted to the floral pattern on the tiles.

Can stirred uneasily. "Doctor, what do you mean, alien? I know you and the other forefathers are dead come to life, but that makes you human still."

"No, Carl. You just don't really understand yourself. The true history of our race has never been written." Dr. Valpa's eyes became blank, and he seemed to sink into himself. His voice sounded as if he were speaking in an empty auditorium. Hollow, deep, and quiet. "Didn't they teach you anything when you were born?"

Carl shook his head. He stared uncomfortably at the old man. "You know, the usual-speed calculation, speed reading, computer technology-"

"No!" groaned Valpa. "Anything about being a vampire!"

"Well, no. Dr. Jamison, the psychologist attached to our coven, did try to stress the fact that although we were vampires, we had our place in society, that we were not truly deviants, misfits-'

"Curses upon him!" cried Dr. Valpa. "The old lure is lost. I told them to beware of Jamison, he would ruin us!" Valpa was raging now. Carl was afraid and tried to quiet him. Valpa struck down Carl's hands and grabbed his shoulders. "Didn't they teach you anything about history, boy? Anything?"Carl pried the clawlike hands away. "Yes, they did. The general atomic wars feared in the '50s and '60s were averted, and the world turned instead to peace. All races were declared equal, and thereby all men. Now, in the twenty-second century, all people live their own lives as long as they bother no one. Each of us has his place-"

"Unholy Powers," Dr. Valpa sighed. "Carl, tomorrow night a warden will come to pick you up." His cape folded over his eyes as he sank down into the floor. The monstrous bat cried shrilly and fluttered up from the floor, striking the wall. The window opened, and the bat flitted out.

"Valpa, wait. Tell me-" Carl cried as the bat disappeared into the night. The cool night air breathed across Carl's face, chilling the sweat that streamed from his pores.

He closed the window, and his reflection stared back at him-stark, hard features.

Eyes bleak and cold. His flesh was firm upon his face. His teeth were even and white-no trace of fangs-no need, since the use of hyper-fine needles left no marks. "d.a.m.n, what did he mean?" Carl asked the still room.

The next night, around two, Carl was leaving on his evening rounds when he again heard the sounds at the windowpane. He hurried over and opened the window, through which a bat of large proportions flew. It settled in the living room and transformed into a middle-aged man, dressed in much the same attire as Dr. Valpa had worn. Only this man was a warden. Carl knew him from his days in the school where he had been instructed, along with the other young vampires, in the ways of men. The wardens were to the human vampires what the proctors were to society as a whole.

The tall vampire walked forward, his cape billowing out behind him. He touched Carl's arm. "You are to come."

Carl leaped as if he had been struck.

The warden eyed him for several moments, then quietly spoke to him. "You are summoned by the council. You must come."

Carl's ashen face convulsed into horror. "Valpa said so, but the council-the council has not been called for fifty years."

"I know." The warden turned and beckoned Carl to the window.

"I can't go that way, sir."

The warden grimaced. "I am not ignorant of your lacks. Come here and observe the dark aircar on the taxi strip. You are to walk down and board it immediately." As he spoke, he slowly vanished, and the bat flew out the window, crying shrilly into the night.

Stepping into the car, Carl saw Steven and Maria Collins. Their faces, like his own, were lined with worry. Maria cried out when she saw him, "Carl, a council-a full council has been called. We are summoned."Carl sat down beside Maria and put his hand in hers. "He just came for me. I thought I had done something, maybe something I said to Dr. Valpa-"

"Dr. Valpa-the prime leader!"

Carl looked sharply. "Prime leader-since when? He was just an adviser when I heard last."

Steve shook his head. "He was levied into prime position last May. A power play among the old ones put him in. There has been a shake-up in the organization, and it looks like we are the cause of it."

"What do you mean, Steve-we? Do you mean us in particular-unlikely, since I have done little to cause trouble-or," here Carl hesitated, afraid to say it, "or is it the human vamps as a whole?"

Maria's eves, looking into his, were red, but from crying. "All of us, Carl. We, the first group, and the last three groups they have created."

Carl sat gloomily in the car as it sped away from the city and into the hills. Steve and Maria were also quiet, each locked in his own thoughts, the idea that perhaps the experiment had failed.

The car turned into a deep valley and followed a steep, winding road up the hillside until it came to the house. One should say "castle," but none existed in North America. The house was dark and forboding, just as Carl, Steve, and Maria remembered it as young vampires playing in the surrounding hills. They always laughed at the antiquity of their elders and the place they chose to live.

Inside they were numbed by the sheer size of the gathering of vampires from all over the world. Great men and women they had only heard of in tales were present.

Each one indefinably old, but still outwardly young. Bats whirled through the shadows under the vaulted ceiling. A dim flickering light was shed by a few antique candelabra, whose flames burned blue.

Carl and his friends stood in the rear of the great hall, for they were the last to arrive. No one realty noticed them, because all eyes were fixed on Lord Ruthven, who stood before them on the raised dais.

He stretched out his arms, and the murmur of voices stopped. Silence filled the room as the earl's dead gray eyes searched over the gathering. His lips moved slowly, as if talking were an impossibility for him. In a dry voice, cracked and broken with ageless time, he whispered out over the gathering. As the words fell upon their ranks, a shock of silence hit the room. "The experiment has failed."

For a moment, an age, no one moved, talked, existed. For the true vampires, a dream of the centuries had been destroyed. The dream that had been fanned into being, nurtured, given hope and encouragement-gone. And for the human vamps, disbelief and anger. Shame filled their faces, and hatred filled the room. With the apathy and depression of their elders, their pa.s.sion increased, and a tumult broke loose in the rear. The newer human vampires were pus.h.i.+ng to the front. Shouts of, "Liar! Fabricator!" flooded the aisles. Carl stood up on a chair and shouted to beheard.

"Vamps, hear me. These old fools want the experiment to fail. They want us to believe that we cannot be human and still be vampires. They are filled with the ages of mankind and are beginning to believe their own legends."

Steve yelled affirmation, and the air vibrated with the noise of the human vamps crying in the night. Then the screech of a great bat split the air, and the vampires cowered to the floor. The earl stood tall on the platform, his great wings overshadowing the stage. His mouth, sharp-fanged and evil, gaped in anger.

"Fools-listen to me again. What is decided here will rule your lives from now to eternity." Ruthven gestured to a figure standing in the crowd near the stage. Meek it stood, beside Ruthven, a mere shadow of the image of him, but Carl recognized the prime leader.

"Thank you, my good Earl, but I think after I explain to these young hotheads why the experiment has failed, then they will cease this needless disorder." An atmosphere of a cla.s.sroom seemed to pervade over all as the professor stood behind the podium and straightened his notes. He spoke.

"It seems a certain amount of history was deleted from our younger friends'

education, and lacking this, a grave misunderstanding has arisen. I have found in many cases, such as Carl Rhyner's-" heads turned and looked at Carl's flushed face-"a seeking of understanding and self-explanation. The human vamps have been raised in our society, and they truly do not know who they are."

Dr. Valpa shuffled his notes and allowed the murmuring to die down. He glanced over his gla.s.ses at the rear of the room and noticed the look of acknowledgment in Carl's eyes.

"Yes, they read the old human cla.s.sics and find only the legends they accuse us of portraying-though in reality the legends are true, and what they read is really us.

But they cannot identify with these legends, because they are human and do not believe in what are called 'fantasies' in the world. They are, however, truly vampires, in that they exist by feeding on blood; but human, in that they can't fly, have no problem with mirrors, eat garlic, etc., etc." Dr. Valpa waved his hands as if dismissing the traditional symptoms of vampirism. "Instead of questioning why vampires are affected this way, they took their human 'souls' into hand and began to live their lives in society as an integral part of it. They blended into the background, became respected commoners, upheld the UN and hated the perverts, all the time carrying on a heritage which they accepted as being a norm for their particular subculture. Human vampires. Now this we wanted, expected, ahem, prayed for.

But-" His hand shot up, and the index finger quivered over the crowd. Carl knew he would ball up his hand and slam it down on the podium. Cras.h.!.+ "But, we did not expect them to become so human as to not realize their true heritage*that they are, and we are, all of us are aliens to this world."

"Never!" shouted Carl. "I'm as human as anyone on this planet. I'm, I'm-" Oh, my G.o.d, he's right. If the legends are true, he must be."Carl, all of you, we are aliens. We came over ten thousand years ago. We were forced from our last home by the same thing which is facing us now. We are parasites, Carl, pure and simple. We draw our existence from human life. If we are discovered, openly and under the full light of human understanding, we will be wiped out as cancer and heart disease were in the twenty-first century. No human being can abide the thought of a creature feeding on him. We would be hunted down and destroyed."

Valpa paced the stage, his eyes now not seeing the crowd. His hands fluttered in the direction of Gilles de Rais and his group-the true vampires. "We would be the first to go. They have doc.u.mented us pretty well. They know all about our peculiarities, and once mankind really believed in vampires, then we would quickly go. You," pointing to Carl, Valpa's red eyes glimmered, "would be safe-for a while. But not long enough. Medical checks would be made, impure blood diagnosed as vampire feeding, guards posted in sleeping areas, traps set. Oh, vampires of old, can we ever forget the persecutions of our forefathers on the twilight world of Antares Four!"

"That still doesn't explain, Doctor, why the experiment has failed." All eyes turned to Carl.

Dr. Valpa watched Carl for a moment, then turned to the crowd. The great hall waited for his reply. "They know we are here now. The experiment failed because one of the human vamps was a.n.a.lyzed by a psych-proctor. The vamp talked freely about his entire life. He complained of his feelings of non-belonging, his desire for acceptance. And he told the proctor every detail, not knowing what reaction he would get from the human. The vamp had been so humanized that he thought being a vampire was like being a h.o.m.os.e.xual, deviant but accepted and permitted. We didn't expect the proctor to believe him, but he did, and he forced the young man to reveal his adviser, Sir Romuald." Valpa's face turned paler than ever. "Sir Romuald was terminated, while sleeping, with a stake through his heart, and a real-time record of the execution stored in permanent cybernetic memory."

A cry of agony poured from the true vampires. "It is come, then."

The stars.h.i.+p, though ultramodern and wondrous to the humans, was tired and old. It had been old long before its last trip, and it was even older now. But its gleaming hull stood beckoning to the vampires as they filed up from the valley and into the airlock. At the entry ramp Dr. Valpa stood, checking the boarding list against the men and women and whirling bats that thronged inside. Although busy, his eyes noted Carl's hesitant approach up the ramp. He felt a twinge of expectancy of what the young man was going to say. As the last of the humans were coming aboard, Valpa saw how Steven and Maria were gazing back at Carl, and he knew for certain now.

Carl stood beside him, and together they watched Steve and Maria walk into the vast cargo hold of the s.h.i.+p. Maria turned and waved, her small face bright with tears, then disappeared. Dr. Valpa pulled his cape around him, trying to ward off the chillwind blowing up from the valley. His blood-red eyes gazed back down the winding road, out across the valley, to the plasti-domed metropolis on the horizon.

"It was a good world, Carl. Good for our people. We watched it grow from distant Greece to powerful UN. Our people have aided the Terrans in many ways, most of which they will never know. Someday they may feel indebtedness to us.

Perhaps, Carl, you may have a hand in that."

"Doctor, I-" Carl stopped. Valpa's arm was around his shoulder, and he felt, for the first time, a humanness, a warmth, coming from the old vampire.

"I know, Carl. You can't go. You can't leave this world for another-however near we can come to it in the universe. I know, because I too wanted to stay on our last journey. I could almost do so now." The old man shook his head sadly, the white curls floating in the chill night air. "Funny as it seems, Carl, I liked being a professor. Always have. However, I suppose I'll be a general or a medicine man or some other type on the next world." Carl couldn't help smiling at the picture of Valpa striding across the fields leading great hulking barbarians into battle.

"Then you will speak comfort to Maria for me, sir?"

Valpa nodded his head and turned to walk up the ramp. He still held Carl close around the shoulders, hugging him to his side. Carl could smell dank earth, a musty odor heavy in his nostrils, and he breathed deeply. Valpa let him go with a shake of the head, as if he were flinging tears from his eyes.

The door slid silently down before Carl, and he turned and raced down the ramp.

The s.h.i.+p lifted on its anti-gravs, turning ever so slightly, searching with its starnavs for the correct hole in s.p.a.ce. As it winked out of existence, Carl heard again the last words that Valpa had spoken to him: "We will all think of you, Carl, for you will be something special. For us, for Earth, you will be all that remains of a legend."

Turnabout is fair play in this post-sixties, pre-AIDS walk on the wild side by bestselling SF & technothriller author Dean Ing.

Fleas.

DEAN ING.

The quarry swam more for show than for efficiency because he knew that Maels was quietly watching. Down the "Y" pool, then back, seeming to ignore the bearded older man as Maels, in turn, seemed to ignore the young swimmer.

Maels reviewed each datum: brachycephalic; under thirty years old; body ma.s.s well over the forty kilo minimum; skin tone excellent; plenty of hair. And unlessMaels was deceived-he rarely was-the quarry offered subtle h.o.m.os.e.xual nuances which might simplify his isolation.

Maels smiled to himself and delivered an enormous body-stretching yawn that advertised his formidable biceps, triceps, laterals. The quarry approached swimming; symbolically, thought Maels, a breast stroke. Great.

Maels made a pedal gesture. A joke, really, since the gay world had developed the language of the foot for venues more crowded than this. The quarry bared small even teeth in his innocent approval. Better.

"I could watch you all evening," Maels rumbled, and added the necessary lie: "You swim exquisitely."

"But I can't go on forever," the youth replied in tones that were, as Maels had expected, distinctly unbutchy. "I feel like relaxing." Treading water, he smiled a plea for precise communication. Perfect.

"You can with me," Maels said, and swept himself up with an ageless grace. He towered, masculine and commanding, above the suppliant swimmer. A strong grin split his beard as Maels turned toward the dressing room. He left the building quickly, then waited.

Invisible in a shop alcove, Maels enjoyed the quarry's anxious glances from the elevated platform of the "Y" steps. Maels strolled out then into the pale light of the streetlamp and the quarry, seeing him, danced down the steps toward his small destiny.

Later, kneeling beneath tree shadows as his fingers probed the dying throat-pulse, Maels thought: All according to formula, to the old books. Really no problem when you have the physical strength of a mature anaconda. h.e.l.l, it wasn't even much fun for an adult predator. At this introspection Maels chuckled. Adult for several normal lifespans, once he had discovered he was a feeder. With such long practice, self-a.s.surance in the hunt took spice from the Kill. Still probing the carotid artery, Maels thought: Uncertainty is the oregano of pursuit. He might work that into a scholarly paper one day.

Then Maels fed.

It was a simple matter for Maels to feed in a context that police could cla.s.sify as psychos.e.xual. Inaccurate, but-perhaps not wholly. Survival and s.e.xuality: his gloved hands guiding scalpel and bone saw almost by rote, Maels composed the sort of trivia his soph.o.m.ores would love.

Research confirms the grimoires'

Ancient sanity; Predation brings unending l.u.s.t*

An old causality.

The hypothalamus, behind armoring bone, was crucial. Maels took it all. Adrenal medulla, a strip of mucous membrane, smear of marrow. Chewing reflectively,Maels thought: Eye of newt, toe of frog. A long way from the real guts of immortality.

He had known a feeder, an academic like himself, who read so much Huxley he tried to subst.i.tute carp viscera for the only true prescription. Silly b.a.s.t.a.r.d had nearly died before Maels, soft-hearted Karl Maels, brought him the b.l.o.o.d.y requisites in a baggie. At some personal sacrifice, too: the girl had been Mael's best graduate student in a century.

Sacrifice, he reflected, was one criterion largely ignored by the Darwinists. They prattled so easily of a species as though the single individual mattered little. But if you are one of a rare subspecies, feeders whose members were few and camouflaged? A back-burner question, he decided. He could let it simmer. With admirable economy of motion Maels further vandalized the kill to disguise his motive. Minutes later he was in his rented sedan, en route back to his small college town. Maels felt virile, coruscating, efficient. The seasonal special feeding, in its way, had been a thing of beauty.

Ninety-three days later, Maels drove his own coupe to another city and left it, before dusk, in a parking lot. He was overdue to feed but thought it prudent to avoid patterns. The city, the time of day, even the moon phase should be different. If the feeding itself no longer gave joy, at least he might savor its planning.

He adjusted his turtleneck and inspected the result in a storefront reflection.

Maybe he would shave the beard soon. It was a d.a.m.ned nuisance anyhow when he fed.

Maels recalled a student's sly criticism the day before: when was a beard a symbiote, and when parasitic? Maels had turned the question to good cla.s.sroom use, sparking a livery debate on the definitions of parasite and predator. Maels cited the German Brown trout, predator on its own land yet not a parasite. The flea was judged parasitic; for the hundredth time Maels was forced to smile through his irritation at misquotation of elegant Dean Swift: So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey. And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed, ad infinitum.

Which only prompted the cla.s.s to define parasites in terms of size. Maels accepted their judgment; trout and feeder preyed on smaller fry, predators by spurious definition.

Comfortably chewing on the trout a.n.a.logs, Maels cruised the singles bars through their happy hour. He nurtured his image carefully, a ma.s.sive gentle bear of a man with graceful hands and self-deprecating wit. At the third spa he maneuvered, on his right, a pliable file clerk with adenoids and lovely skin. She p.r.o.nounced herself simply thrilled to meet a real, self-admitted traveling salesman. Maels found her rather too plump for ideal quarry, but no matter: she would do. He felt pale stirrings of excitement and honed them, t.i.tillated them. Perhaps he would grant her a s.e.xual encounter before he fed. Perhaps.Then Karl Maels glanced into the mirror behind the bar, and the pliant clerk was instantly and brutally forgotten. He sipped bourbon and his mouth was drier than before as he focused on the girl who had captured the seat to his left.

It was not merely that she was lovely. By all criteria she was also flawless quarry.