The Ardath Mayhar MEGAPACK®

by John Maclay

  The woman looked into his eyes, and she spoke in his native tongue. “Flavius Decius, you will speak to the old god you have helped to wake. This is not the Mother, who nourishes the land. It is not one of your tame Roman gods who want only to drink and to wench. This is one of those old ones who had gone to sleep with time.

  “We have made sacrifice to it. The children’s blood gave it an appetite for more, and your friend should satisfy it for years to come. But you we leave to speak to it. Tell it, Flavius Decius, to sleep again. To dream again!”

  She turned away, and he croaked after her, “But why should it listen to me? I am an outlander and an alien. I believe in no gods at all!”

  She turned back, her gray eyes shining with a reddish light. Her lips curled wryly, as she said, “But you will, Flavius Decius. You will believe, before you go free from this stone.”

  Then they were gone into the shadows, leaving him to stare into the coals, which were being quenched quickly, now that there was no fresh fuel added. Tears ran down his face, mingled with the cold rain, and he felt snowflakes beginning as well.

  He would freeze soon. That was, he had heard, an easy death. He might have lain on his back, watching that monolith crush down onto his unprotected body, as Praecipius had done. He was fortunate....

  And then he heard the laughter, mocking and wicked, rising from the ashes. Something swirled there, evil and hungry, turning toward the sacrifice that had been made.

  “Oh, god of the ancients!” Flavius cried, “spare me! I am ignorant of your ways. I have done nothing but good for you, providing you with the blood of infants....”

  But that was the wrong thing to say. Eyes that were eddies of mist turned toward him, examining him, and a bulging head of fog nodded softly, once.

  Fear filled him. Belief grew in his heart, as the thing neared his helpless body. He cried aloud to the gods his dead mother had revered—but that did him no good at all.

  The hunger he had helped to create in that ancient sleeping thing found him, now, to be a satisfying offering. Neither his cries nor his prayers affected it at all, for it believed in no god but itself, and now it was freed into the world again, to feed as it would on Celt and Roman alike.

  CONCERTO

  Coming from a family of musicians, I have great interest in music and its creation. So I added in a “what if?” and this is what I got.

  When you are trussed up in braces and prosthetics, confined to a wheelchair, life is never easy. When, in addition, you need to find an apartment in which you can get around in your chair, with room for a piano and neighbors of more than human patience to endure a resident composer, it makes things even harder.

  Once I got out of the hospital, I rather expected that my friends and acquaintances would drop me pretty quickly. A concert pianist whose hands have been damaged too badly to stand up to the demands of practice and concertizing is pretty much a dead issue, even when he has had some success as a composer.

  But, aside from my fiancée and my professional friends, my Aunt Gwen took over, deciding to coddle me. She couldn’t understand, after a while, that she was smothering me. A concerto that I had begun just before the plane crash was struggling into life, and coddling didn’t help anything.

  I was, after all, twenty-eight years old and nobody’s infant. I needed my own place, though there was no way I could go out and look for it, as things stood. But I found that friends filled the gap, rallying around instead of backing away. My agent did even more than the rest. He assured me that David Eichermann the composer was worth as much or more as Eichermann the pianist. Among the bunch, they managed to find a suitable place for me, to Gwen’s dismay.

  I hated to upset her, but when a call came from Ted, I was ready.

  “Listen, Dave,” my agent said, “I think we’ve found the very place. Ground floor—it’s a sound old building being renovated. Side entrance, near your own door, with a ramp for your chair. No other tenants above you yet, but the place is so solid that you probably wouldn’t bother anyone who lived above you. The super—you are not going to believe this!—is a classical music nut. Has all your recordings. In an emergency, he’ll be there like a shot.”

  My heart thumped beneath the crosshatched metal and leather that held me together. “If there is room for the piano, I’ll sign the lease right now.”

  He laughed. “I’ll bring it, and my secretary will witness it. Callahan, the super, says the paint will be dry by Monday, and you can move right in. I’ll call the movers and get your stuff out of storage. We’ll all get together and get you moved.”

  I leaned back in my wheelchair amid a creaking of braces. “Ted, that’s above and beyond the call of duty. How will I ever thank you?” I looked down at the tangle of metallic exoskeleton that held my shattered body in order. “You know I’m not in any shape to do much.”

  “I’m going to work your ass off,” he chuckled. “I knew before the crash that you had more in you than simply playing. Sinfonia, with Roses made a real splash when Bernstein used it as his season opener. I knew then you had found your real strength. You’re going to make us both rich.”

  I laughed. “Okay. I’ll tote dat bar, lif’ dat bale. Go hire your van and get me out of jail!”

  Which was neither kind nor fair. Gwen had been glad to take me anyplace I was able to go, had done everything she could to make me comfortable. But I still felt like a prisoner whose parole was coming up.

  * * * *

  When Millie, Ted’s secretary-cum-strong arm-cum surrogate Mom, together with my aunt, finished unpacking, arranging, and getting rid of cartons, the apartment was already licked into shape. They had even vacuumed the nice Aubusson-reproduction rug. We looked around at the white painted wainscoting, the satin-stripe paper, the high ceilings. My antique piano, which had been my mother’s, looked right at home.

  Once my helpers had worn themselves out and gone, I was alone for the first time in almost a year. Independent at last, thanks to the elaborate equipment Ted kept finding that would help me with things like taking baths and getting into and out of bed. It felt wonderful.

  I turned out the lights with some regret, for I would have loved to pitch into the concerto then and there. When I woke, it was with a surge of energy that I thought had been lost forever. It was a joy to hoist myself into my chair, scoot on my own to bath and kitchen. Gwen had equipped the kitchen for my convenience, and I cooked and ate a huge breakfast. That done, I didn’t even take time to dress.

  I wheeled to the piano, where Ted had left a table at hand, holding music paper, pens, and the harmonica I sometimes used to work out my frustrations. I let down the movable arms of the chair and touched the keys.

  Music flowed into my mind, the joyful early theme composed before the accident rising to a crescendo, then dying away into a simpler, sadder melody. Shifting to a minor key, it became a blend of melancholy and nostalgia. The months of pain and depression had touched it, but all of it fitted together.

  The morning passed in a mist of music, though to a casual visitor it would not have sounded like music at all. The process of composition is not pleasant to hear. Yet the thing was coming into focus, getting onto paper at long last.

  * * * *

  I settled into a schedule. Every morning either Ted or Ev, who would have been my wife by now, if not for the accident, came by to check on me. Sometimes Ted brought papers from the insurance company for the airline. I would be taken care of for the rest of my life financially, but that didn’t stop me from working steadily every afternoon.

  I stopped by five, when I began listening for Ev’s steps in the corridor. It hurt to think about her—she still wanted to marry me. I couldn’t let her do that, for it would be a travesty of a marriage, and we both knew that. Still, that didn’t stop us from loving each other. Nothing could keep her away, and if she managed to do that I would probably have withered up like a dried bu
g.

  She was tall and cool and quiet, and she soon made a habit of bringing supper with her, from one of the ethnic places near her office. Then we’d pretend we were old married folks with years of happiness behind us and a comfortable old age ahead of us. Silly, n’est-ce pas?

  After a few weeks, I felt as if I’d lived there for years. Callahan was my good right hand. Anything I couldn’t manage, he was willing to tackle. Built like an economy-sized King Kong, he had the face of an amiable bulldog, and behind that battered mug lived a mind that reveled in the precise mathematics of Mozart and Gabrieli and Bach.

  When tenants moved upstairs at last, I wondered if they might object to the sound of the piano. I tried to compose only by day, but sometimes the concerto possessed me by night as well. But no protest came. At last I asked Callahan about the newcomers.

  He squinted as he talked. “Oddballs. Never see ’em in the halls or the elevator. Pay in cash the first of the month. Not a word of complaint from them in three months they’ve been there. They don’t go out to work, but they seem rich enough.”

  I was intrigued. “What sort of family?”

  “Andrei Haslip is the father of the family. Pretty old, too, but big and strong. White hair. Palest eyes you ever saw and a big deep voice like a bass viol. Wife’s name is Hazel, but it doesn’t fit her. Skinny dame. Good legs, great big teeth in a little dried-up face. Dresses in caftans that’d knock your eye out at a hundred paces. The girl’s about fifteen, boy’s seventeen or so. Nothin’ special about ’em, except they never go out. And that’s weird.”

  “They never make a sound,” I put in. “I’d almost welcome a loud party, just to know they’re alive.”

  He grinned. “That’s the house. When this baby went up, they build solid. You’d have to hammer hard on the floor up there, to make it heard down here. A scream wouldn’t make it.”

  Oddball neighbors were fine, as long as they didn’t object to music at all hours. I forgot about them, for the climax of the concerto was building. Something eerie was stealing into the themes, too—some of the harmonies made my skin goose-pimple, but it all felt right. I was making something unique.

  Then came the Braseltons. They were on the other side of the house, fourth story, but they complained to Callahan about everything they could think of. And when someone told them there was a musician downstairs, they started complaining about music they couldn’t possibly hear.

  That made me wonder again about the Haslips. Surely they heard me when the windows were open! I asked Ev, one day when she stopped by at lunchtime, to go up and ask them, for I couldn’t bear to think of people suffering through the hellacious sounds of composition, because they were sorry for a poor cripple.

  She came back and shrugged. “They’re not there. I knocked and rang, both, but there was no answer.”

  I had to be satisfied that I had done what I could. I forgot about them in the throes of the concerto. I was in a fever—a physical one, as well as a creative one. I was allergic, it turned out, to the metal of the braces, to the stuff they used as an alternative, and only when I invested in solid silver did the itching and sweating stop so I could complete my work.

  At noon on July tenth, I finished the last note, wrote in da capo al fine, and leaned back. A mixture of triumph and regret filled me. I felt at once exultant and antsy.

  Callahan photocopied the sheets and mailed a set off to Ted. I settled down to wait the hours until Ev would come, but I couldn’t relax. I hadn’t yet played the thing in full.

  Without the orchestra, it would sound a bit thin, but I flexed my painful hands and tore into it.

  I listened as I played. It was good. Damn good. It was neither classical nor atonal. It went its own way, creating new sounds, new harmonies, new rhythmic patterns. I would probably get as much flak as Beethoven had from the critics, but I knew that this thing broke new ground and would last and set new trends.

  My hands felt like murder before I was done, but I didn’t pause to ease them. I went through the tolling depths of the last movement, the final motif. Eerie and strange, it sang itself to silence.

  There came a tap above my head. Someone was rapping hard on the floor, trying to get my attention!

  I looked at the clock. Ev was going to be a bit late tonight. Callahan had some errands. Nobody could see what the Haslips might need, unless I could manage.

  I snapped on the light, for twilight had crept into the room as I played. I maneuvered the chair to the door and saw the elevator waiting, doors open. It was wide enough for the chair, and I realized that I could make the trip upstairs for myself. Filled with daring, I wheeled into the cubicle and pushed the second floor button.

  That floor was just like the first. I found the door above my own and pushed the bell. A voice, forbiddingly deep, asked, “Who?”

  “David Eichermann, from downstairs. I heard a thump on the floor, and I wondered if someone needs help.”

  The door opened. Haslip was just as Callahan had described him, and his eyes shone as he saw me. “Ah, but come in! We have so enjoyed your music over the past months. We do not say, for we are recluses, even the young ones. But we listen with wonder to your composition. Now it is done, we must thank you. Come and meet my family....”—he wheeled me into the room.

  Suddenly, I didn’t want to go. The chamber was filled with the odor of incense, through which Mrs. Haslip’s tight little face appeared, split into a toothy grin. Two more faces swam into view in the subaqueous light.

  I touched the reverse to back the chair. “I don’t want to intrude,” I began, but the chair didn’t move. Something was braced behind a wheel.

  “Nonsense! We want to tell you about our admiration for your work. Our family were musicians long ago. Erica! Dohrn!”

  The young ones sat on a huge sofa, beside their parents. They looked like a row of—not crows—vultures. I shivered inside my barricade of braces. “I was worried that the music might bother you,” I croaked.

  Mrs. Haslip reached to take my hand into fingers as clammy as dead fish. “Indeed, no. Our joy in your work fills us with gratitude. What have you titled it?”

  Before I could reply, Erica smiled, her teeth bright in the dimness. “We have the recording of Sinfonia, with Roses. This new one—a concerto, I think?—needs an equally intriguing title.”

  “It is untitled, as yet.” I wondered how many kids her age could recognize a concerto when played without orchestra. Or even with one.

  Mrs. Haslip’s cold hands tightened. “It should make a pair with the first. Possibly...Concerto, with Vampires?”

  They laughed, and what blood I had left chilled. That was no joke!

  I jerked my hand free and backed the chair, but they were standing now, moving to either side of me. Their smiles were impossibly wide. I strained my arms, pushing the wheels to augment the chair’s capacities.

  Haslip bent over me. “You will not suffer. You will compose forever—at night, of course.” He leaned toward my throat, and I jerked convulsively.

  He screamed with agony.

  His wife tore away my shirt, revealing my withered chest, meshed in a webwork of silver crosses from throat to waist. His fangs had scored my skin only lightly, but his lips seemed seared, as if burned. Eight bright eyes focused on my blood. Those accidental crosses could not possibly hold off these creatures!

  There was a firm rap at the door. The Haslips froze, trying to put their faces into order, but Ev had touched the panel; it swung open, revealing the strange tableau.

  She took one swift look, darted in, pivoted my chair and tore away down the hall in a heartbeat of time. The elevator was waiting, but the doors were beginning to close. I jammed an elbow between their padded lips, and she wrestled the doors open again. As the rubber gaskets lipped together, something bumped outside. But we were on our way down.

  She stared down at me. “Were those re
ally...?”

  I nodded. She was examining my shirt and bleeding neck when the doors opened. Callahan was turning into the corridor, and he stopped, staring at us. Ev grabbed him and hustled him into my apartment. They patched me up while I told them my tale.

  They glanced at each other, from time to time, and I wondered what they were thinking. But Ev pushed me to the piano. “Play!” she commanded. “Something quiet, classical, religious. NOT the concerto. And don’t worry.”

  Callahan turned toward the door. “I’ll go talk to the priest. He has what we need, and he trusts me.”

  When the two left the apartment, twenty minutes late, their arms were filled with paraphernalia. I couldn’t stop them, no matter how I argued.

  “You are supposed to disable them by day!” I shouted after them, but they didn’t pause. The elevator whined upward.

  I could hear hurried sounds from above, thick though the floor might be. Furniture scraped and things thudded on the hardwood floors. Someone was packing up in a rush, I thought.

  Ev and Callahan should be getting there just about now. There’s the knock—it would have been inaudible to ears less anxious than my own. I am beginning to play ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ as I try to recall the prayers I was taught as a child.

  Why knock at a vampire’s door, when you are going to destroy him? Ridiculous. I play a bit louder.

  There is a crash—Callahan must have kicked in the door. Why didn’t he use his key? Not as dramatic, I suppose. I play louder, still.

  God!

  Who said you couldn’t hear screams through those solid floors?

  THE DIG

  In an archeology book, I found the photograph of this mummy, and it literally haunted me until I told its story (or at least my take on its story).

  The bones came to light almost too easily. Even in the dimness of the cavern they shone with that unmistakable calcareous gleam. Tennant’s heart jumped with the old excitement, and Peridot’s eyes were sparking behind his thick glasses. Tennant pushed the Indian gently aside and went to his knees, brush in hand, to remove the loose powdering of dust from the ancient skeleton.