by E M Gale
‘Arrogant bastard,’ I thought, hoping he wouldn’t hear my opinion.
He grinned.
‘When does this bloody thing wear off?’
‘Can take a while,’ he replied. But I’d figured out to how to see some of his deeper thoughts. He was allowing me to hear his surface thoughts, but I could look beyond them.
‘Ah, we can control how long it lasts. Rocking. Now how to stop it?’
‘I see, you’re getting the hang of this. You are a quick learner.’
I frowned.
‘Wow, I can do that in my head and transmit it to him. How handy.’
‘I was just trying to get a handle on who you are. Names are a good way of doing that. I like to break the name up into meanings,’ explained Price in the top layer of his mind. The lower layers were churning over thinking about me.
‘It’s just my name. It’s not like I chose it,’ I replied, trying to copy how he was communicating so he didn’t hear all my private thoughts. I had to think loudly.
‘Ah, but you did choose it. You get everyone to call you Clarke. Why? Florentina’s such a nice name.’
‘It is. But it doesn’t suit me.’
‘Yes, it does.’
‘It’s too… flowery.’
‘And anyway, no one other than my family’s called me it for years.’
‘Too feminine, perhaps? Clarke is a much tougher, more masculine name.’
‘Huh. Well… it is true that everyone has a masculine and feminine part to their personalities.’
‘But few people go so far as to rename themselves to bury one half.’
‘What? I’m not burying anything. Get the hell out of my head!’
He grinned.
‘OK, whilst I’m stuck here in some weird mind-meld thingy, what is your problem with soldiers? There’s a story there, isn’t there?’
Suddenly he was gone. There was no link. I couldn’t talk to him in my head any more, I couldn’t feel him.
‘OK, so I touched a nerve there.’
I looked at him, stunned. He sat back looking inscrutable. Since I had started to get used to talking to him in my head and feeling what he was feeling, I suddenly felt very lonely just being by myself in there.
“You know, I didn’t go poking around in your head,” I commented. I decided to leave the whole soldier thing for now.
“Yes, I appreciated that,” he said.
I frowned at him. “So why do it to me, then?”
“Ah, I didn’t go poking around, your name was near the top.”
‘Oh, great.’
“Huh. Are you still hungry?” I asked curiously.
‘I guess vampires do need to live off blood. But I don’t. Is that because I’m one of those Founder-thingies?’
“No. It’s odd; Founders don’t seem to taste like vampires, or humans. You’re warm like a human, heartbeat like a human, but blood like a vampire.”
‘Ah. I’m a cocktail too? Weird. Does that mean that when I drink people’s blood it ends up in my veins? Urgh. That is completely gross. And isn’t it rather odd for a vampire to find that idea disgusting?’
“It seems that you can provide whatever it is I take from human blood,” he added.
‘Oh. Right.’
“And what is that?”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “As a Founder shouldn’t you know?”
I shrugged. I wondered if I should tell him that I really didn’t know anything, or had he managed to find that out from reading my mind? He nodded, reading it from my face instead.
“I don’t know what it is either. But I need something from blood.”
‘Oxygen? Nitrous oxide? Carbon dioxide. Perhaps we could get the doctor to do another experiment.’
“So, how do you travel?” I asked. “If you need it–blood that is. What if no one on the ship lets you, uh… drink them?”
“I carry some with me, obviously.”
‘Ah. OK.’
“Can you eat or drink anything else?”
“Yes. But I don’t need to eat or drink as much as I did when I was alive.”
“So why didn’t you drink your whiskey?”
He smiled. “It is a far more pleasant experience to drink blood when you’re sober. I bought the drink for propriety’s sake, but I didn’t want to dilute your lovely blood with cheap whiskey.”
‘Bleurgh.’
I got up and walked over to the kitchen part of the room and made myself some orcian coffee. I watched him watching me as I did so. I padded back to the sofa, folded my legs up under me and regarded him over the top of the cup.
“Orcian coffee?” he asked.
I nodded.
“It’s a lovely aroma, but I thought it was poisonous.”
“Really?” I looked at my cup. I sniffed it. It did have a very strong smell. “Surely, if it were poisonous it wouldn’t smell good to me?”
He shrugged. “I think it’s OK in really small doses, but if you drink too much it’s lethal.”
“To who? Humans or vampires?”
He laughed. “Both.”
I nodded, filing that away for future reference.
“So…” I wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject. “You’re… dead, then.”
‘Ah, the subtle way.’
He nodded, looking amused. “As a doornail.”
“Funny that.” I grinned. “In my experience doornails don’t move around much.”
“Quite.”
I waited. He said nothing else. “And you’re OK with that? It freaks me out when people call me undead.”
He shrugged again. “That really is the least of my worries. So long as they don’t try to kill me, I don’t care what they call me.”
‘Hmm, curious.’
“Oh? And what are the most of your worries?”
He smiled. “May I ask you a question, Flow?”
“Don’t call me Flo,” I said.
“Flow like a river. I prefer that to Floren or Tina, but I can call you that instead.” He looked like he was really putting himself out to pick a nickname I liked.
I blew the air out of my mouth in an annoyed fashion. “Why do I need a bloody nickname anyway?”
He grinned. The guy was quite unruffleable.
“And is Jonathan Price even your real name?” I asked. He nodded. “It sounds more like a Exeter solicitor’s than a vampire’s.”
“Well, it is my name, so…” And here he shrugged.
I sighed.
‘He really is quite annoyingly phlegmatic. Well I guess I wouldn’t expect him to be sanguine. Heh. A vampire, sanguine.’
“Anyway, what did you want to ask?” I asked him in a weary tone of voice.
“How old are you? You know how old I am.”
‘Ah, well, about that. I’ve been pretending to be around two hundred years old, but really I’m only about a month and a half, two months.’
“You won’t believe me.”
“Go on.” He looked receptive and calm. I took a sip of the coffee. It tasted good. I was sure it had started to taste better recently. I hadn’t liked it at first.
“Two hundred years old.”
He chuckled. “I don’t believe you. You must be very young, I think.”
‘Oh, well.’
I sighed. “Two months.” I guessed the truth was as good as a lie. “But the people on this ship who know I’m a vampire think I’m two hundred years old.”
He raised his eyebrows at that. “Oh, so you’re not completely incognito then.”
I shook my head. “The doctor, the captain and the grunts know,” I commented, hoping that the mention of mercenaries wouldn’t set him off again.
“Can I ask why you’re impersonating a two-hundred-year-old vampire?”
‘Ah.’
“It’s somewhat complex actually.”
He got the hint, nodded and dropped that line of inquiry.
“So, you’re rather new at this then?” I thought he was thrilled to realise that he
was the senior vampire.
“Uh–”
‘What harm could it do?’
“Yeah. I know shit.”
“What?”
‘Ah, slang again. He doesn’t seem to be the type who swears much.’
“I know nothing.” It felt kinda nice to admit that and not have to hide it completely.
“Well.” He leaned back. I had noticed that he moved infrequently. He was one of the stillest persons I had ever met. “Ask away,” he said with a grin.
‘Cool.’
I smiled in a self-deprecating manner.
“What’s a Founder then?”
He laughed at that. “Really you ought to know.”
I smiled tightly.
‘There’s no need to laugh at me, just when I said I knew nothing and was asking for help.’
I thought he could read my sentiments on my face.
“A Founder is a founder of a new bloodline.”
‘Ah. Right.’
“Great. That means…?”
“That you can create vampires who would be in your bloodline and they can then create vampires themselves who will all be related to you.”
‘Oh.’
“But what about the guy who created me?” I asked.
He looked surprised. “You’re a Founder. No one created you. You’re a new bloodline.” He even shrugged to show how obvious what he had said was.
‘Eh? So…’
I held my hands up. “OK, back up. How did you become a vampire?”
He chuckled. “Well, I was young and stupid–”
“Aren’t we all,” I said ruefully. He nodded.
“Anyway, I had a lover who was a vampire. We exchanged blood like you and I did, and then years later when I died, I came back as a vampire.”
‘Oh?’
“So you didn’t feel yourself becoming a vampire before then?”
“No, no, you have to die before you become a vampire.”
‘But I didn’t die. Did I? That’s the sort of thing I would have remembered, right? Am I a Founder-thingy because I changed into a vampire before dying? Is that why I have a heartbeat?’
“Uh… how did you die?” I asked him. He looked troubled for a moment, but then hid it well.
“I asked the wrong guy the wrong question in the wrong way,” he said as if he was laughing at a private joke, one that I doubted was funny. “So he threw me off the top of a building.”
I leant back. “Oh, my God! Why?”
“As I said, it was an unlucky act on my part.”
I stared at him wide-eyed. “Did it hurt?”
“What, dying?”
I nodded.
“It was all over rather quickly. I remember the fall. I realised I was going to die; everything seemed to slow down and I felt like I was flying, then…”
I was staring at him in utter horror, desperately trying not to imagine the sound of someone hitting a pavement.
“The next thing I knew, I was staring at a mortuary ceiling. It’s standard practice to leave dead bodies for a day or two, just to check they won’t wake up. I did. The mortician wished me luck, shook my hand and I filled in the forms.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “And it was really easy to solve the case of my murder.”
I was stunned.
“Not everyone gets so dramatic a death to wake up from.”
“And… you’re OK with this? You say it all so calmly.”
He shrugged.
‘What the hell is wrong with this guy? Doesn’t he have emotions? Or is that what dying does to you? No glands, no emotion.’
“That’s awful,” I said, bemused.
“I don’t mind being a vampire, so I’m not really concerned with mulling over how I became one.”
I nodded slowly. “Riiight.”
He got up from the couch. “Look, I’ll see you later.” He smiled. “I will continue educating you about vampires then.”
I was still stunned, so I just nodded as he dissolved into mist and made his way out of my room and up the corridor.
Did I Say Rude?
I woke up at my normal time, which was exactly in the middle of the graveyard shift. I got washed and dressed then stopped to stare at myself in the mirror. I hadn’t really looked at myself since becoming a vampire. I appeared, well, a bit younger and a bit prettier than I had done on Earth.
‘Is that what vampirism does to you?’
I stared for a while.
I felt that I could see much more in my eyes. They did say that the eyes were the window to the soul, right? Mine were a light blue and they looked like cold, icy water. My skin was smooth, blemish-free, and I looked more… perfect than I had ever done. It was a little disorientating.
I left my room. Really, I should have wandered around the ship, borrowed some tools, looked for hidden store cupboards, but I couldn’t be bothered. My future self had said that I should follow the major, so it didn’t matter whether the ship was home to mercenaries, smugglers or soldiers. I could worry about it later. At that point in time, I was far more interested in Price, vampires and Founders.
I headed down to the simulation room and ran through some sword-fighting sims. As I moved through the same movements over and over I let my mind wander. It was relaxing; I didn’t think anything at all. I really liked sword… dancing. It was more like dancing than fighting, a series of steps, executed precisely. Suddenly, I remembered the guy in the jungle. I fluffed the move I was doing and stopped, lowering my sword.
‘I love sword fighting, but I don’t enjoy actually using it for its purpose.’
“Beautiful, Florentina.” It was Price. I turned to stare at him.
‘What the hell is he doing here?’
He was seated on the floor, his back against the white wall.
“How the hell…? How did you sneak up on me?” I asked, aghast.
“You weren’t paying attention.”
‘Oh. Well. I kinda wasn’t.’
“Don’t you sleep?” I asked, heading over to sit next to him. He smiled at me as if we were meeting at some fancy cafe in Italy rather than on a gym floor. I thought that he needed a filigree metal chair to pull out for me to sit on.
“Not so much when it’s night.”
I nodded and flopped down beside him.
“It’s always night in space,” I said, mostly to myself.
He grinned. “That’s why I like it here.” He looked so calm and still, I wondered if he’d moved at all since coming into the room and sitting down.
“Hey, here’s a question,” I started.
“Ah, time for vampire biology 101 again, is it?”
“When you sleep… are you, like, dead?”
He nodded. “Yes. I don’t sleep like I did when I was alive. I pass out and wake up later.”
“But can you be woken up?”
He shrugged. “No one’s ever tried.” He grinned. “As far as I know anyway.”
I nodded at that.
“But just in case I can’t I’ve got a vacuum-proof, fireproof, waterproof, hard-to-open place to sleep.”
I gave him a sidelong look. “That would be a coffin, right?”
He grinned. “Yes. It’s for burying people in space, hence it’s vacuum-proof.”
“And that doesn’t freak you out?”
He looked amused. “No, not at all. Why should it?”
I shook my head. “I really don’t get you.”
He laughed. “You’re trying to understand me then? I thought you didn’t like me.”
‘Huh, well… I don’t. So there.’
“Doesn’t matter whether I like you or not. I don’t get you,” I said lightly.
“Does that bother you?”
I shrugged.
‘Oh, forget it. Sod this whole ’I don’t care’ thing.’
“Yes. Yes, it does,” I said hotly.
He smiled at me. He was so goddamn phlegmatic.
“Come here,” he said, opening his arms to me. I scooted over and
he wrapped his arms around me and kissed my neck. I smiled at him, so he bit, but this time he was more gentle, less a bodice-ripper, more laconic.
* * *
I ran down to the mercenary quarter of the ship.
‘Yup, they’re all already there, and doing the lining-up thing again. Aren’t mercs supposed to be more casual than this? Shouldn’t we all sit around smoking cigarettes and breaking chairs or something tough like that? Why line up? We all know who we are, who’s in our s , why do we need go through this stuff?’
“Clarke,” said the major. Oddly he looked almost relieved to see me. I wondered why. “Is it impossible for you to turn up on time?”
‘Ah… well… Heh, trust me, you don’t want to hear my excuse.’
“I’m so sorry, sir,” I said. He waved at me to go and line up.
‘Gargh. I hate lining up. It’s too bloody school-like. What’s next? Skipping across the playground?’
I thought of the mercenaries skipping. Big built guys, skipping across the playground with pink ribbons in their hair. I had to cough to smother a laugh.
We started the exercise for that day. It was something that involved running around in pressure suits and shooting at each other. I hated pressure suits. They were for use on the surface of the ship or in dangerous atmospheres. They were much lighter than twentieth-century space suits and had some sort of plastic bubble-style helmet made from electrically-deformed plastic stored in the neck of the space suit. The major made us put the helmets up for added realism, and then I couldn’t smell anything at all; it was like fighting in the dark. I guessed if I were really in hard vacuum it would be even worse, since I wouldn’t be able to hear either.
We finished the exercise and milled around for a bit whilst the s leaders compared statistics with the major. “Nice coffee, Clarke,” said Grom, a glint in his blue eyes.
I grinned at him. “Yeah, I noticed you found my stash.”
He chuckled. “You have no idea how hard it is to get hold of decent coffee.”
I laughed. “Yeah, bizarrely so, given that this is a smuggling ship.”
“Clarke, do you have a problem with our goods manifest?” asked the major.
‘OK, I did say that last sentence loud enough for him to hear, but I didn’t expect him to take the bait.’
“No, Major, I don’t care what we transport so long as I get paid.”
‘Ah, that sounded mercenary. Heh.’