Ah, nice. An edible little man.
There came tapping. The sudden arrival of other humans didn’t concern her, no matter that the moment was inopportune. She laid her hand on Ibrahim’s wrist, detected no pulse. Very well, his struggles would raise no alarm. She got up, threw on her great cloak, and opened the door a bit.
The boys had arrived with dinner, lamb in rice. “My master is not disposed,” she murmured through the crack in the door. “God is great.”
“God is great,” the leader of the boys replied. But they lingered. No matter that he was unwell, they still must be paid for the food they had made. To reward each other for services and such, the humans nowadays passed around bits of paper and nondescript metal.
She had no clear idea of the way this all worked. How much should she give them? She went to his leather packet, an ugly little thing made of some sort of extruded material that had been subjected to heat. There were Egyptian pounds in it, numbered in Arabic numerals. Inventive creatures, the Arabs. She took a few out and handed them through the door.
“May God grant you many blessings,” the head boy expostulated.
She pulled the door shut and went to tend to the remnant. Ibrahim was dark brown, his skin stretched so tightly on the bones that it shone. He had a lovely clean back. Never one to waste, she took her flaying knife from the pouch where she kept it in her cloak and skinned off the good part, detaching it from the fascia with expert strokes. She rolled it and put it into the inside pocket of the cloak. This would make something nice, perhaps slippers.
She saw some damp in the abdomen, flipped the remnant over, and sucked into it, penetrating the cavity with her tongue, running it about and draining the last.
Now the remnant was crisp. It smelled of rawhide, a dense, musky odor. She began at the feet, crushing the remains and reducing them to powder between her fingers, letting the material flow onto a cloth. In a few minutes, all that remained of Ibrahim was a pile of material not dissimilar to the granules of his everlasting damnable coffee. Wrapping herself against the cold of the desert night, she went out into the oasis, looking for a disused fire.
There were quite a number of the poor in this place. Many of the people here were without even a tent, and she knew that eyes were watching her from beneath the piles of cloth that lay here and there near the guttering fires. Ibrahim said that they thought her a djin. Well, they were not so far wrong, were they?
She went to one of the fires, where there was a coffeepot steaming near some coals, and dusted them with the powder. Ibrahim sparked merrily into the sky, his red-hot crumbs twirling up in the smoke. So there he went, with his pink organ and golden brown skin, and his poetry. His hair gave the smoke a displeasing pungency. She moved quickly back to their hut.
Inside, she prepared for her journey, drawing her heart closed to the misfortunes she might observe along the road, or what she might find at the end of her quest. It was disturbing that her people had abandoned her. The reason had to be discovered and understood. She very definitely sensed a threat.
She’d come to understand that, just across the mountains from here, lay Cairo, which, she now knew, had displaced Thebes.
Moving about under the eyes of the human creatures was eerie. She walked out into the desert a short distance. She felt quite good now, with Ibrahim’s life spreading through her body. She’d been as dry as sand inside.
A glance at the stars told her exactly where she was on the planet—just forty royal miles south and east of Giza. In that direction, the sky glowed as if with perpetual sunset. She could not imagine that the glow could be a human nest, but apparently it was Cairo. If this was true, then it had grown to be the greatest city of the earth, and meant that Egypt had retained the ancient importance she had given it in the world of men. Giza was on the far side of the Nile. In the past, only little Tanis had been on this side of the river, in the desert below Heliopolis.
She considered how to get into Cairo. Forty miles would be a long, but not an impossible, walk. However, Ibrahim’s chemical wagon could get her there in a matter of minutes. He had said so himself, by traveling the black wax road eastward.
She approached the thing, drew her cloak around her linen gown, and peered at it. If a human being could control this wagon, she could do it too, and far better. She had observed the various movements Ibrahim had made while directing it about. If she made the same movements, she would succeed. She returned to their caravan and removed the key from his trousers, which lay upon the floor.
As she crossed the dusty clearing, she heard a child’s voice whisper, “The djin is getting in his car.”
It still made her uneasy, this cunning machine. Nevertheless, she worried the lock, inexpertly rattling it. Shadows began moving about in the oasis, and she heard somebody calling for Ibrahim. A shuddering, uneasy thrill passed through her.
Then the door came open. She entered the thing in the driving position, found the keyhole, and inserted the key. Out in the darkness, a voice shouted, “Ibrahim, Ibrahim.” She waited a moment for the key to work, but no sound issued from the wagon. There had been a hand motion involved, which she emulated, turning the key. At once, the mechanism began to chatter. Bobbing lanterns appeared in the darkness. “Stop,” shouted a male.
Now what? Use the feet, pressing the pedals in sequence. Move the hand on the lever. However, when she duplicated these actions, the machine went backward, and at significant speed. She sat in the proper position, but the backward motion did not cease. Wondering at it, she watched the lights of the oasis disappear into the dust cloud spread by the rushing wheels.
The gradient changed. She was backing into the mountains. Soon, the oasis would be many miles away. It occurred to her that the device would not stop if it came to a cliff. It had no mind, and she could not see to direct it. She turned the key again, and in a moment, was rewarded with the stopping of all motion and sound.
Now, where had she come to? A mile, perhaps, due south of the oasis. She had not known that the thing would go backward. What had happened was in some way related to the pressure she had put on the pedals, and the manipulation of the lever. She should have realized that the movements of the lever were not arbitrary. It was hard to remember that machines only did as they were commanded. They were not unruly, like horses and mules.
She sat for a moment. How was it that the humans had created such an object as this? It might be the only one, of course, the work of some peculiar genius. Certainly not Ibrahim. He would have bought it from the genius with some of his paper bits. However, what genius would sell such a wonderful thing to an idiot? Surely Great Cairo would offer more desirable buyers than her little rodent of the desert.
Again, she set the fire within the thing. It consisted, this fire, of a series of explosions, she could hear that. The odor of its burning was not pleasant. Ibrahim had given over Egyptian pounds for the liquid to run the wagon, to a man who had carried it in tin jars slung upon the backs of camels.
This time, the thing went forward, clanking and jerking first, then sounding and moving more smoothly as it gathered speed. She learned to make it go a certain speed by keeping the pedal pressure steady. He’d had lights that lit it at night, but they impeded her vision ahead, so she left them off.
The others at the oasis must already be aware that something was amiss with Ibrahim. She would not return to the oasis. Instead, she would go north and west, toward Cairo.
He had used that waxen road before, and now she sought it again. For quite some time, she did not see it. But then the wagon shot up a berm and out into the air. With a great, rattling crash and a growl from within, it landed on the black material. It would have gone all the way across, except Lilith brought it to a halt using the pedals, which was quite easy to do. Actually, the thing was easier than a horse. Horses had always been something of a curse for her kind. They were apt to become uneasy, to bolt unexpectedly, and otherwise draw attention to the fact that they were frightened.
She d
escended from the wagon, bent down, and ran her hand along the black wax. It was quite warm to the touch, and filled with pebbles. An interesting substance. She bent closer, sniffed it. Pungent, smelling faintly of the same liquid that burned in the lamps and the wagon. This was all alchemized from petroleum, she thought. They had sprayed a thick petroleum on stones, and made from this a path that would not be much affected by rain. A thinner petroleum, perhaps a boil-off of some sort, had been condensed into fuel. There were pools of this ichor south of Thebes, a day’s journey into the desert. That was where they must have gone.
At that moment, and without warning, a great noise arose. Huge lights bored into her face. She realized that something was going to strike her in seconds. Reflex caused her to leap into the air. As she went flailing down into the dust of the berm, an immense machine went past her. She glimpsed curtains in windows, and sleeping humans within, in rows of seats. Then the thing was gone, bleating off down the path like a ram in heat.
She looked after it. How could something so large move with such speed? It had shocked her so much that she was trembling like an innocent child—which was absurd. She forced herself to stop. Very well. Now she returned to the wagon of Ibrahim, got in it, and began proceeding again toward Cairo. She did not care to move at such high speed, because it felt as if the breath would be pulled from her lungs. She kept it at what felt like the speed of a fast camel or a good team of horses. She did not use the lights, because she could see easily with all this moonlight.
Nevertheless, light filled the compartment. Then a horrible bleating broke out behind her. She glanced around to see a massive silver jaw not three feet from the rear of her wagon. This thing sailed back and forth in the road, bleating and snarling. Shocked by its size and its aggression, she turned the wheel on hers and it went away to the far side of the road. A truly gigantic machine passed her, making her wagon rock and shudder. The driver cried out, “Son of a diseased whore!” and made a gesture with his fingers. She felt anger tighten the skin of her cheeks, felt her skin grow colder than the desert night. Had the arrogant little creature that was riding the giant come within her grasp, she would have sucked it as dry as sand and thrown the husk into the face of the night.
The wind left by the giant slowly died away. The thing could have crushed her. It would have brought terrible wounding, followed by lingering years of agony. They would have buried her in the ground, where she would have remained conscious, waiting.
Perhaps it was that Ibrahim had the smallest wagon. The enormous ones were normal. This was why their drivers were so aggressive. They were not used to seeing such a small one. She would cause it to go more quickly, and would use the lights to give the night-blind human beings warning of her presence. She wondered if the wagons grew like plants.
She traveled on for a time, and for this time the road remained absolutely dark. It was eighth month, and the seven stars of the Pleiades lay low on the horizon.
Then the wagon mounted a long rise, and there appeared before her one of the most magnificent sights she had ever beheld. No matter how dark the cave of memory, such a vision as this would never be forgotten. Stretching from the southern to the northern horizons was an ocean of lights, as if the stars had grown so fat that they had come down to rest themselves upon the earth. She stopped the wagon. For some little time, she stared through the glass screen. Then she stepped out and stood with the wind in her face, her hood down her back, absorbing the wonder.
Re-Atun had never told her of this formation. When she had come to Cairo before, she had seen nothing like this. But what was it? Who would make such a thing? Who could? It was this strange decorative creation, or artwork, that had been making the sky glow, not the human place that was invisible beneath its brilliance. The wax path led straight down and across a plain, into the dancing forest of the lights.
When she began to draw closer, things seemed to be not as they had at first appeared. The glimmering mass—it wasn’t an artwork at all, but something much stranger. When she began to see specific buildings, houses on the roadside, she realized that the jewel-like points of light were coming from sparks that had been captured in glass. Had man learned to take crumbs from the sun, then, in preference to the torch, the candle, and the lantern?
The closer she got to Cairo, the more her wagon was surrounded by others. She soon discovered that they came in all shapes and sizes. Quite a few were as small as Ibrahim’s. Some were even larger than the ones she’d seen in the hills. In addition, buildings were springing up on both sides of the path, and people were moving about in numbers.
Seeing the wealth of food around, she thought perhaps she would eat again, a small one or maybe two, to fill her completely after her long hunger. She wished that Re-Atun was here to help her, and began to feel a distinct anger that he was not. It was his duty, to serve the mother of them all. Why was he ignoring his duty?
The wagon had come into a densely populated area. The place was richly scented with human smells, the odor of skin laced with whiffs of sweat and urine, and the deeper odor of offal that rose from grates along the edges of the path.
The place was rushing, complicated, and, above all, bright. Colorful strips of light flashed, globes glowed—it was all very different from the lamplit world of man. The Keepers preferred shadows, so they would certainly not be seen in this glaring, onrushing maelstrom of light-flooded activity.
The place positively teemed with people. In fact, the scent of all this flesh was putting an edge on her appetite, a strong edge. Ibrahim now seemed like not nearly enough.
Ibrahim…
How strange she felt right now. But she did remember his smiles, and the gratitude in his eyes when she had given him pleasure.
Wiping her cheeks of the moisture there, she decided to stop the wagon and get one of the creatures and eat again. She’d take a small one, just a tidbit. When she’d gone abroad in Thebes, taking a babe had caused some wailing from the woman, nothing more than that. Human children died so often, they made little of their deaths.
When she stopped her wagon, all the others behind her began bleating and flashing. She opened the door, rose to her feet, and drew her cloak tight. Then she lifted her hood, putting her face in shadow. Best to take some precautions. Sometimes the woman would complain more than others. She’d need to blend into the crowd, then.
She swept through the tangled mass of wagons, into a side path upon which many men and a few women walked. It was not seemly for one of her station to look behind her, but she began to get the sense that the people she was passing were turning to watch her. A snapping glance revealed people with narrowed eyes. Beggars stopped their pleas in midsentence, merchants stepped back into their doorways, slipping away among their sheaves of scarves and hanging masses of rugs.
She turned down a crooked path between enormous buildings, great boxes that smelled as if they were literally packed with humans. The commotion of the big path died away behind her, and she decided that she would not return to Ibrahim’s wagon, not face that tangled, glaring chaos of humanity.
Then, suddenly, she was in a tiny square filled with peace. The sight of a fountain in the center of the square for an instant split her heart with a shaft of memory so sweet and so ancient that she actually cried out. She stopped, momentarily stunned. What was this recollection? And this agony—an agony of love, where was it from?
There was singing, soft, echoing in the silence. Two little girls were sitting beside the dry fountain, girls in patched gowns, with little scarves covering their hair. Her heart in turmoil, her mind full of the confusions of this new city and the powerful and unexpected emotion she had just experienced, she went almost automatically forward. One of the girls looked up at her, and she saw the child’s eyes and was horrified—mankind had changed! Look, the child was awake, full of spirit. Still, by instinct, she did what her body demanded, and lifted it to her mouth and locked onto its warm, sweet neck. She took it with a powerful gulp. The remnant crackled to bone
and disappeared into its clothes. A child’s thin gristle was not strong enough to hold the skeleton together, and the bones, tight-sheathed by the skin, came tumbling out of the bit of cloth the thing had worn, and scattered about Lilith’s feet.
The other one spoke, a quick question that Lilith did not quite understand. It had wonderful, smooth skin. It was so beautiful, she thought she had never seen such an exquisite face. She took it and held it to her lips, and the perfume of its skin filled her nostrils. She hunted for the tiny artery with her tongue. But then—then—
She drew her head back. The child turned to her, and laid upon her lips a kiss as soft as the wing of a dove. The fountain—she saw it alive, pure water bubbling, in it the blue fish of home and childhood.
Childhood! O, she had played by such a fountain. And somebody had said—had said—“I will wait for you….”
She put the exquisite child down. It looked up at her with sparkling, vastly intelligent eyes. Secretly in the eons, the human soul had rowed far upriver from its animal origins, much farther than she had thought. This was no blank creature of the past, this was a conscious being.
Her gut wrenched, the taste of the blood she’d just eaten threatened to sicken her. She mourned within herself for dear Ibrahim and for the girl whose life she had just consumed.
An extremely bright light flashed, and a woman’s voice was raised in frantic babble. As the words changed to shrieks, Lilith began to move off. She went down a crack of an alley, looking for Keeper sign. A city like Cairo would be honeycombed with secret Keeper passages.
She found one, just an irregular two bricks in a wall. Pressing them with the heel of her hand, she opened a narrow door to an equally narrow passage and went in.
The silence here was tremendous, the darkness absolute. She reached out and rubbed the wall, bringing up the soft glow of the paint they used to make the little light that they needed in places like this. Ahead, a passage went curving off. She hurried along it, soon finding the exit. She’d hoped that this led to greater tunnels, but apparently she’d hit on nothing but a short escape route. Very well, she exited.
Lilith’s Dream: A Tale of the Vampire Life Page 8