As Harper sat in quiet analytical assessment of what she had just witnessed, her senses suddenly sharpened into alertness. Warily, she got up from the sofa. Later she would not be certain if she had heard a sound over the rising hum of the stardrive, or if a depth of extrasensory awareness had compelled her to the observation deck ramp.
Drake, her back to Harper, was in the corridor below. Sagging against the wall, she lurched toward her quarters, her black-clad figure doubled over by the agony of her effort, a straining hand sliding along the wall as if groping there for support.
Harper had taken several automatic steps down the ramp before the rigidity of Drake’s posture, the desperate, granite determination of her struggle, told Harper that any attempt at assistance would be rebuffed with greater fury than any of her earlier offers of help. Drake had ordered her away unless signaled, and Drake had only to touch the chronometer on her wrist to summon her. But still, from the look of her ... Uncertain, Harper waited at the top of the ramp, anxiously watching, poised to run.
Just before Drake reached the open portal of Harper’s quarters, she paused, straightened with shuddering effort, craned to look within.
She thinks I might be in there. She doesn’t want me to see her.
Then Harper saw Drake’s black-clad figure crouch. Saw her body seem to contract, to dissolve into a nebulous dark bulk that shrank precipitously. Saw a small creature with sharply pointed, membranous wings gather itself and flutter weakly, erratically down the corridor.
At the portal to Drake’s quarters the creature extended its wings fully, flapped once, twice, and became the crouching, collapsing Drake. The portal to Drake’s quarters opened to reveal a blackness deep as liquid ink. Drake was absorbed into the blackness, the portal sealing behind her.
Her legs unable to hold her, Harper sank down onto the ramp.
If she needed clear evidence that she had lost even a tenuous grip on reality, here was the proof. Her body might survive this voyage, but her sanity had disintegrated.
Climbing shakily to her feet, Harper managed to reach the sofa where she again collapsed. She stared out into the blue-white crystals, their volatile swirling like the maelstrom within her. She focused on controlling her breathing, on reducing the rapid thudding of her heart. Then she concentrated on seeking some coherency of thought.
Whence had come such bizarre hallucinations? Perhaps she had never really recovered from a childhood filled with tales of the hell-spawned demons the Trads blamed for every evil in the universe. Or perhaps this was a manifestation of her preferred childhood reading—scary goblins and dragons and assorted ghouls.
She gazed at the library fax, still lighted from her earlier reading, a solace to her emotional tumult. There was rationality of one kind on this ship: the rigorous, unchanging printed word.
A superlatively controlled and rational woman like Drake surely would not welcome among her half million volumes any texts relating to Earth folklore. But perhaps there were general references, perhaps she could trigger some memory that would help trace the threads of this psychosis ...
Harper entered:
Earth folklore
Werewolves, ghouls.
Unable to make her fingers transcribe the one word that was emblazoned in her mind, she added:
And all related entries.
The library responded:
All subject entries cross-referenced to major heading:
Vampires.
The hair rose on the back of Harper’s neck. With a tremor she entered:
Display major heading.
The library responded:
Major heading: Vampires
14729 entries
Designate desired sequence.
Again Harper collapsed on the sofa. After a lengthy period of slow breathing to reduce a measure of her panic, she entered:
Vampires, classic characteristics.
Afterward she used a longer period of slow breathing, lying back on the sofa, and closing her eyes to marshal all her resources. Then she sat up and considered what she had learned, and her observations of Drake and her ship.
Vampire legend held that the creatures could transform themselves into certain animal forms, most classically into bats. Aside from today’s inconceivable events, she had seen a fluttering shape her first night on board, and after lovemaking with Drake had again heard fluttering and even felt the sensation of a breeze—impossibilities on a spacecraft.
Drake had been able to see her with the ship plunged into darkness. Darkness was the natural habitat of the vampire, and Drake spent better than half of each twenty-four hour period enclosed in her quarters. Drake’s quarters were pitch black.
The unnatural brightness of Scorpio IV resulted in no shadows anywhere from any object, any individual. Masterful concealment for a vampire—because vampires did not cast a shadow.
Vampires could not be about in the daytime without severe diminishing of their powers, and they would die in direct exposure to the sun. Drake’s demand for solitude as her strength and powers waned, her desperate struggle to reach the safety of her quarters—all had occurred in what would be late afternoon, Earth-time, and in proximity of a major star, Antares.
Vampires did not reflect an image in a mirrored surface. Except in Harper’s own quarters, there were no reflective surfaces of any kind on the ship. Anywhere.
Vampires could be the most hypnotically erotic of creatures, but they did not require conventional sex. They did not eat conventional food; the bloodlust of feeding completely satisfied all bodily and erotic urges ...
Harper sat perfectly still. What do you enjoy, she had asked Drake. And Drake had answered: I enjoy ... taking nourishment.
Harper fled to her quarters, frenziedly ripping off her clothing as she ran. Again and again she scrutinized every inch of her skin in the reflective wall. There were no marks anywhere, none at all.
Her relief was only momentary. If Drake fit other classic criteria, why would she seek prolonged sexual encounters without fulfillment of her need for blood? It made no sense. Maybe, Harper thought dismally, maybe she had conjured everything—including her physical experiences, all those hours in Drake’s arms. No. That was impossible. Hallucinating was one thing, but she could not possibly have imagined the ecstasies of Drake’s passionate mouth on her, those very specific memories.
Wait a minute. She had seen Drake in the act of consuming food ...
Still naked, she raced from her quarters to the galley. She drew a container of tomato juice, and with a shaking hand smelled the contents. With a relieved sigh she dipped in a finger, then stopped as the dripping finger neared her lips. Autoserv could form specific ingredients to taste and smell like any number of foods. This tomato juice might yet be ...
Harper hurled the container into the decomp and fled back to her quarters.
Maybe Drake drank that so-called tomato juice, then indulged her erotic wants with Harper, thus satisfying both hungers separately but fully. Or perhaps she had simply used her sexual magnetism with cold calculation—to dull Harper’s perceptions and suspicions. That would be why Drake had been the tireless aggressor in their lovemaking, and Harper its pleasure-blind recipient. Or perhaps Drake was waiting for this time when they were in the asteroid belt and cut off from all communication, perhaps this was when she would make love for the final time and in its aftermath dine lavishly on the freshly flowing blood of one supine, blissfully comatose Lieutenant T. M. Harper ...
Harper leaped to her feet and resealed her door, setting in a new privacy code. Then she sat down heavily on her bed.
There was no escape. Drake would simply run computer sequences until the correct portal-opening code came up. And even if the ship’s communications system was at this moment operative, what could be more ludicrous than to transmit to Headquarters a message that she was trapped in outer space with a vampire? And after they had finished laughing, after Drake had finished laughing as well, Drake would take her final satisfactions, then dum
p Harper’s drained corpse out a hatch and report her lost in space, a victim of suicide. And heaven knew Headquarters would believe it—insanity and suicide had never been uncommon in the Service despite the psych probes ...
Harper glanced at her chronometer. It was almost nineteen hundred hours, Drake’s usual time to appear. In so depleted a state she surely would not be leaving her quarters tonight—not until she had recovered sufficiently to guide Scorpio IV from the asteroid belt.
From her bedside console Harper again called up the ship’s library. Again she consulted Vampires, characteristics, and studied the text for some time. With a sigh she turned off the fax and lay back, hands behind her head.
Certainly there were ways to defend herself. She merely needed to plunge a wooden stake into Drake’s heart, or cut off her head. Unfortunately, spacecraft were not equipped with wooden stakes or implements with which to dispatch someone’s head. Drake would also have a very serious problem if Harper could figure out a way to find and destroy her coffin. Or there was the Trad religious rite—stalking a quailing Drake with a cross clutched in her hand until Drake leaped out a hatch, grateful to escape so horrifying an object. Or she could perhaps keep Drake at bay by wearing a necklace of garlic cloves—except that compatibility rules had placed garlic on the restricted list of allowable spacecraft edibles.
Harper had long since given vent to laughter which turned into wild hysteria.
She had to be crazy. Or was she crazy? She had to know. Because she had to do something.
Knowing she could not sleep, unable to bear the confinement of her quarters, Harper went up to the observation deck. She again called up the ship’s library and the subject haunting her thoughts. After a time she began to pace.
“Good evening, Harper.”
Whirling, she stared incredulously. She had to be hallucinating. The gaunt, desperately weak Drake of only four hours ago had vanished, to be replaced by the Drake of before, clad in her usual black pants and an emerald shirt—a beautiful, vital, regal Drake with all of her strength and magnetism restored.
Drake carried a container of tomato juice. She sipped from it, and then said quietly, “Once my work is finished I need only a few hours of rest. My recuperative powers are quite strong.”
Her eyes fixing on the drink in Drake’s hand, Harper thought: Or is the real truth that it’s nighttime now, and the night is your time ...
“Minimal work needs to be accomplished,” Drake continued, “and we will be ready for departure.”
That slightly accented voice ... Drake is European, she’s from a village near Bucharest ...
“Are you well?” inquired Drake, her dark eyes narrowing.
“Am I well,” Harper repeated. She watched Drake walk to her chaise, the strides easy and graceful.
Either I’m crazy or I’m not. And either way, at this point I have nothing to lose ...
She took a deep breath. “Are you familiar with the name Bram Stoker?”
Drake did not change expression. “A nineteenth century historian.”
“A nineteenth century novelist,” Harper corrected her. “Author of a novel popular well into the twenty-first century.”
“A historian,” Drake countered with cool emphasis. “And a most limited one at that. He recorded in fictional form what glimmerings he knew of an entire species.” She added, “I possess extensive knowledge in this area.”
“Yes.” Harper gestured to the lighted fax and then clasped her hands tightly together to prevent them from shaking. “I found thousands of references in the ship’s library.”
Drake studied Harper, her eyes an opaque darkness.
Harper thought of an enduring nineteenth century short story in which a man chose one of two fateful doors. In this situation it was not a matter of the lady or the tiger; it could only be both ...
“I have come to believe,” Harper said, her voice soft with the desperate truth of her words, “that either you are a ... a member of that species Bram Stoker wrote about, or I am insane.”
“I see.” Drake’s voice was mild. “On what do you base your ... belief?”
“A lot of small things,” Harper whispered. “Things about your behavior, and this ship. But mostly ...” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I saw you—or I think I saw you—turn into a ... bat.”
Under Drake’s narrowed, piercing gaze, Harper sank onto the sofa, her legs unwilling to support her.
Then Drake said, “Basic self-protection would dictate that I agree with your suggestion of insanity. But I cannot allow you to believe you have gone mad.”
Able only slowly to absorb the stunning implication of Drake’s words, Harper looked away from the pale face and the intense eyes. She tried to speak and failed, tried again: “How can you possibly be a ... a ...”
“Vampire,” Drake supplied.
Harper focused on the emerald color of Drake’s shirt, a jewel-like vividness against the surreal blue-white crystalline swirl in the view windows. She said, almost pleadingly, “I must be crazy. How can you be a starship captain and a ... vampire?”
“I was born with considerable innate intelligence which I have sometimes been able to make use of during the eight hundred and twenty-two years of my existence.”
She felt as if her mind had been set adrift, away from any mooring to coherent thought. “Uh, you mean you were born in the year ... in ...” Her mathematic acuity had deserted her.
“Seventeen sixty-seven,” Drake said. “More than a century before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula.”
“How ... how could ...”
“How did I become as I am?”
Stricken mute, Harper nodded.
Drake shifted her gaze to the fax. Her face hardened. “Stoker painted his dark brush over all of my species, but no writer of either truth or fiction could possibly portray the vileness of the creature ...”
She looked again at Harper. “In my village I lived with my husband and his niece. I was twenty-seven then. My husband was an old man, and infirm. His niece and I were lovers. It was an arrangement quite common in those times.
“Late one night Nadja and I were in the garden. Had we not been so deeply in embrace we would have heard and escaped our intruder. He bludgeoned me unconscious.” The voice was expressionless. “He took the blood from Nadja right there in our garden. I later learned that she perished under his blows beforehand, and thus escaped the vampire contagion—she rests peacefully and forevermore in her grave.
“Me he carried away with him. He had bound me, and the next night, when he rose from his earthen place, he satisfied his wants in a loathsome fashion quite beyond all your imagining.”
Harper, her eyes riveted on Drake, was unable to speak had she wanted to.
“He left me bound still, and barely living. The following night he came to me again and this time his appetites rendered me lifeless. But of course I later rose from the earthen mound beside him—a creature like him. He expected that I would welcome his bestowal of another existence after death. And like most men, particularly of that time, he had presumed that regardless of my screams or my struggle, in actuality I had welcomed his ravages.”
Drake drew a leg up, clasped a hand over a knee. “It was only a matter of careful planning before I was able, early one morning, to drive a stake through him. I did so quite slowly—he was bound securely enough to nullify his great strength, and was as helpless to me as I had been for him. Then I dragged his disgusting remains outside to await the cleansing rays of the sun.”
For some time there was silence; Drake appeared immersed in this particular memory. Then she said, “During those times existence of my species was at its most difficult. Vampire hordes lay nighttime siege to entire villages. And those villagers foolish enough to venture from their locked homes, or to give unwitting admittance to my kind, met a grisly fate that added yet more undead to our ranks. The church denied our existence as the heretical superstition of ignorant peasants, and government officials, obedient to the church,
refused to send soldiers. In daytime the desperate villagers marauded the entire countryside seeking us, destroying us where we slept. At night they came out in mobs, with torches and axes and stakes, to encounter us directly—in defiance of our nighttime powers. They took terrible casualties in those battles, but they further thinned our ranks. I maintained my own existence by taking my needs from among the villagers newly dead.”
She paused to study Harper. “You do not shudder at such details.”
Harper, who had been shuddering internally, said with difficulty, “It seems an agonizing ... It seems you ... lived as you could.”
Drake’s faint smile instantly faded. “Always I have existed as I could. After the battles were over and the vampire hordes destroyed, I left the cave where I had concealed myself during the daylight hours. I possessed sufficient androgyny to conceal my true sex, and in those days it was essential that I do so in order to travel safely. And I soon learned to endure the excruciating pain of transforming my human body to mammalian form when necessary. It had become quite clear to me how I must live if I wished to maintain my existence.”
She gazed at a point somewhere over Harper’s shoulder. “I became a presence on virtually every field where men clashed in battle. There was no war whose inhuman suffering I did not witness.”
In dawning understanding Harper whispered, “You mean from the eighteenth century you—”
“I witnessed carnage beyond your worst nightmares, on the soils of every land. I was present in America during the grossly inhuman slaughter of your Civil War, I was with American soldiers in all your foreign wars. I was at Verdun, Dunkirk, Hiroshima, Kuwait, Moscow ... There was not a moment during those centuries when I could not find sustenance from the newly dead on some nation’s battlefields.”
Harper asked numbly, “You were never discovered? Suspected?”
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