Tomorrow Sucks Part 7

Still the same. I'm still the same-but so tired-why am I so tired?

He touched his face. "Same face." But it was more deeply marked and harsh now.

His hair "like always." Is that a streak of gray?

His eyes: "They see." What do they see? What? What?

And then, for the first time, his tightly held mind barrier let down and he admitted the dreams and the long sleepless periods to himself. Remembered them for what they were. Knew he could no longer fool himself.

Insects crawling on him; a great gray rat with canine teeth at his throat, while bats eyed him evilly-and curious women who plied their trade around a bubbling pot, their thin-edged voices plotting more horrors. And always the shadows, shadows that leaped and tore at his unprotected body, shadows that had a definite form-shadows which faded disconcertingly just as he seemed to be able to make out the faces that were sickeningly familiar.

The nightmares became real to him.

Quite suddenly, the nightmares came close to him as he sat at the plastic desk and together they planned the ghastly joke, while they laughed together. He nicked, with surgical care, the arteries in his wrists and groins and smiled as he bubbled away on the metal desk.

"Goodby, Doctor," said a voice.

Goodby, Voice. And the sound echoed while the uniform became discolored, the boots greasy with death, the face too white-smiling and staring.

And the others-the many others-soon.

For three sleep periods the machines sighed as the carnage went on. The captain put out directives and took the guns away. After that they found other ways.Crewmen jumped out the escape hatches and into the atomic convertors-or smashed their heads against the steel bulkheads.

For three sleep periods.

Each time he heard the clicking of the guard's heels, the captain almost screamed.

In his imagination, he was seeing the Arcturian Regents. They were pointing accusing fingers at him, while the extermination chambers waited.

"Your s.h.i.+p," they said.

"My s.h.i.+p," he admitted.

"The doctor, half of your crew dead. How-why did they die?"

"Suicide." He trembled under the blanket.

"It's against the rules, Captain," the voices said calmly, convicting him.

"I told them."

"But you are the captain. The captain is responsible. The rule says that."

"Yes-the doctor said it was the prisoners."

The Regents laughed. "For the good of the race, we have no choice but..."

The captain pulled the covers tighter over his aching head and lay stiffly on his cot. He drowned the voices in a sea of his own making, smiling as he saw each hand disappear under the stormy waves. For a while he lay that way, while the juggernaut shadows slippered carefully about the room, hovering and watchful.

And then, once again, he could hear the whine of the great engines. He sat up.

The old man-the one listed on the rolls as Adam Manning, one of the specimen Earthmen-sat on one of the stiff chairs by the captain's desk.

"h.e.l.lo," the old man said.

"Guards!" screamed the captain.

But no one answered. Only the machines roared on, replying softly in their unhearing way.

"Guards!" the captain screamed again as he watched the old man's face.

"They can't hear you," the old man said.

The captain knew instinctively that it was true. "You did it!" He strained to leap from his cot at the old man. He could not move. His hands clenched as he fought against invisible bonds.

He began to cry. But the Regents' voices came, stopping it. "Crying's against the rules," they said stiffly, without pity.

The old man smiled at him from the chair. The shadows murmured softly, conferring in myriad groups, dirtying the aseptic bulkheads. They drew closer to the captain and he could only half-stifle a scream."What are you?" he managed.

"Something you've trained out of your people. You wouldn't understand even if we told you, because you don't believe that there ever was anything like us." The old man smiled. "We're your new Regents." The shadows smiled hideously, agreeing, and revealing their long, canine teeth.

"It was a wonderful attack, Captain," the old man said softly. The shadows nodded as they formed and faded. "Nothing human could have lived through it-nothing human did. Some of us were deep underground where they'd buried us long ago-the stakes through our hearts-they knew how to deal with us. But your fire burned the stakes away."

He waved a scaly hand at the shadows. They came down upon the Captain relentlessly.

The captain began to scream.

Then, there was only the automatic sound of the machines.

The s.h.i.+p roared on through s.p.a.ce.

Not all scientific vampires live in the distant future, or even today. History is filled with bloodthirsty rulers, as well as scientists who refused to accept the superst.i.tions of their times. British author and critic Brian Stableford mixes vampires with an intriguing alternate history in this story, which he later expanded into his acclaimed novel The Empire of Fear.

The Man Who Loved the Vampire Lady.

BRIAN STABLEFORD.

A man who loves a vampire lady may not die young, but cannot live forever.

(Walachian proverb).

It was the thirteenth of June in the Year of Our Lord 1623. Grand Normandy was in the grip of an early spell of warm weather, and the streets of London bathed in sunlight. There were crowds everywhere, and the port was busy with s.h.i.+ps, three having docked that very day. One of the s.h.i.+ps, the Freemartin, was from the Moorish enclave and had produce from the heart of Africa, including ivory and the skins of exotic animals. There were rumors, too, of secret and more precious goods: jewels and magical charms; but such rumors always attended the docking of any vessel from remote parts of the world. Beggars and street urchins had flocked to the dockland, responsive as ever to such whisperings, and were plaguing every sailor inthe streets, as anxious for gossip as for copper coins. It seemed that the only faces not animated by excitement were those worn by the severed heads that dressed the spikes atop the Southwark Gate. The Tower of London, though, stood quite aloof from the hubbub, its tall and forbidding turrets so remote from the streets that they belonged to a different world.

Edmund Cordery, mechanician to the court of the Archduke Girard, tilted the small concave mirror on the bra.s.s device that rested on his workbench, catching the rays of the afternoon sun and deflecting the light through the system of lenses.

He turned away and directed his son, Noell, to take his place. "Tell me if all is well," he said tiredly. "I can hardly focus my eyes, let alone the instrument."

Noell closed his left eye and put his other to the microscope. He turned the wheel that adjusted the height of the stage. "It's perfect," he said. "What is it?"

"The wing of a moth." Edmund scanned the polished tabletop, checking that the other slides were in readiness for the demonstration. The prospect of Lady Carmilla's visit filled him with a complex anxiety that he resented in himself. Even in the old days, she had not come to his laboratory often. But to see her here-on his own territory, as it were-would be bound to awaken memories that were untouched by the glimpses that he caught of her in the public parts of the Tower and on ceremonial occasions.

"The water slide isn't ready," Noell pointed out.

Edmund shook his head. "I'll make a fresh one when the time comes," he said.

"Living things are fragile, and the world that is in a water drop is all too easily destroyed."

He looked farther along the bench-top, and moved a crucible, placing it out of sight behind a row of jars. It was impossible-and unnecessary-to make the place tidy, but he felt it important to conserve some sense of order and control. To discourage himself from fidgeting, he went to the window and looked out at the sparkling Thames and the strange gray sheen on the slate roofs of the houses beyond.

From this high vantage point, the people were tiny; he was higher even than the cross on the steeple of the church beside the Leathermarket. Edmund was not a devout man, but such was the agitation within him, yearning for expression in action, that the sight of the cross on the church made him cross himself, murmuring the ritual devotion. As soon as he had done it, he cursed himself for childishness.

I am forty-four years old, he thought, and a mechanician. I am no longer the boy who was favored with the love of the lady, and there is no need for this stupid trepidation.

He was being deliberately unfair to himself in this private scolding. It was not simply the fact that he had once been Carmilla's lover that made him anxious. There was the microscope, and the s.h.i.+p from the Moorish country. He hoped that he would be able to judge by the lady's reaction now much cause there really was for fear.The door opened then, and the lady entered. She half turned to indicate by a flutter of her hand that her attendant need not come in with her, and he withdrew, closing the door behind him. She was alone, with no friend or favorite in tow. She came across the room carefully, lifting the hem of her skirt a little, though the floor was not dusty. Her gaze flicked from side to side, to take note of the shelves, the beakers, the furnace, and the numerous tools of the mechanician's craft. To a commoner, it would have seemed a threatening environment, redolent with unholiness, but her att.i.tude was cool and controlled. She arrived to stand before the bra.s.s instrument that Edmund had recently completed, but did not look long at it before raising her eyes to look fully into Edmund's face.

"You look well, Master Cordery," she said calmly. "But you are pale. You should not shut yourself in your rooms now that summer is come to Normandy."

Edmund bowed slightly, but met her gaze. She had not changed in the slightest degree, of course, since the days when he had been intimate with her. She was six hundred years old-hardly younger than the archduke*and the years were impotent as far as her appearance was concerned. Her complexion was much darker than his, her eyes a deep liquid brown, and her hair jet black. He had not stood so close to her for several years, and he could not help the tide of memories rising in his mind.

For her, it would be different: his hair was gray now, his skin creased; he must seem an altogether different person. As he met her gaze, though, it seemed to him that she, too, was remembering, and not without fondness.

"My lady," he said, his voice quite steady, "may I present my son and apprentice, Noell."

Noell bowed more deeply than his father, blus.h.i.+ng with embarra.s.sment.

The Lady Carmilla favored the youth with a smile. "He has the look of you, Master Cordery," she said-a casual compliment. She returned her attention then to the instrument.

"The designer was correct?" she asked.

"Yes, indeed," he replied. "The device is most ingenious. I would dearly like to meet the man who thought of it. A fine discovery-though it taxed the talents of my lens grinder severely. I think we might make a better one, with much care and skill; this is but a poor example, as one must expect from a first attempt."

The Lady Carmilla seated herself at the bench, and Edmund showed her how to apply her eye to the instrument, and how to adjust the focusing wheel and the mirror.

She expressed surprise at the appearance of the magnified moth's wing, and Edmund took her through the series of prepared slides, which included other parts of insects'

bodies, and sections through the stems and seeds of plants.

"I need a sharper knife and a steadier hand, my lady," he told her. "The device exposes the clumsiness of my cutting."

"Oh no, Master Cordery," she a.s.sured him politely.

"These are quite pretty enough. But we were told that more interesting thingsmight be seen. Living things too small for ordinary sight."

Edmund bowed in apology and explained about the preparation of water slides.

He made a new one, using a pipette to take a drop from a jar full of dirty river water.

Patiently, he helped the lady search the slide for the tiny creatures that human eyes were not equipped to perceive. He showed her one that flowed as if it were semiliquid itself, and tinier ones that moved by means of cilia. She was quite captivated, and watched for some time, moving the slide very gently with her painted fingernails.

Eventually she asked: "Have you looked at other fluids?"

"What kind of fluids?" he asked, though the question was quite clear to him and disturbed him.

She was not prepared to mince words with him. "Blood, Master Cordery," she said very softly. Her past acquaintance with him had taught her respect for his intelligence, and he half regretted it.

"Blood clots very quickly," he told her. "I could not produce a satisfactory slide.

It would take unusual skill."

"I'm sure that it would," she replied.

"Noell has made drawings of many of the things we have looked at," said Edmund. "Would you like to see them?"

She accepted the change of subject, and indicated that she would. She moved to Noell's station and began sorting through the drawings, occasionally looking up at the boy to compliment him on his work. Edmund stood by, remembering how sensitive he once had been to her moods and desires, trying hard to work out now exactly what she was thinking. Something in one of her contemplative glances at Noell sent an icy pang of dread into Edmund's gut, and he found his more important fears momentarily displaced by what might have been anxiety for his son, or simply jealousy. He cursed himself again for his weakness.

"May I take these to show the archduke?" asked the Lady Carmilla, addressing the question to Noell rather than to his father. The boy nodded, still too embarra.s.sed to construct a proper reply. She took a selection of the drawings and rolled them into a scroll. She stood and faced Edmund again.

"We are most interested in this apparatus," she informed him. "We must consider carefully whether to provide you with new a.s.sistants, to encourage development of the appropriate skills. In the meantime, you may return to your ordinary work. I will send someone for the instrument, so that the archduke can inspect it at his leisure.

Your son draws very well, and must be encouraged. You and he may visit me in my chambers on Monday next; we will dine at seven o'clock, and you may tell me about all your recent work."

Edmund bowed to signal his acquiescence-it was, of course, a command rather than an invitation. He moved before her to the door in order to hold it open for her.

The two exchanged another brief glance as she went past him.

When she had gone, it was as though something taut unwound inside him, leaving him relaxed and emptied. He felt strangely cool and distant as he considered the possibility-stronger now-that his life was in peril.

When the twilight had faded, Edmund lit a single candle on the bench and sat staring into the flame while he drank dark wine from a flask. He did not look up when Noell came into the room, but when the boy brought another stool close to his and sat down upon it, he offered the flask. Noell took it, but sipped rather gingerly.

"I'm old enough to drink now?" he commented dryly.

"You're old enough," Edmund a.s.sured him. "But beware of excess, and never drink alone. Conventional fatherly advice, I believe."

Noell reached across the bench so that he could stroke the barrel of the microscope with slender fingers.

"What are you afraid of?" he asked.