He smiled at me, and I remembered too late to block my thoughts. Suddenly I felt clumsy, naïve.
But near the end of that dance, something strange happened, something I couldn’t put a name to at the time. A wave of intense energy rose up in me and passed to him. The feeling was akin to what I’d felt when I’d first kissed Walker, but its magnitude was far greater. Mãe told me some time later that I’d experienced what the French call a coup de foudre—a term variously translated as “lightning flash,” “bolt from the blue,” or “love at first sight.” To this day I’m not sure which term best applied.
Cameron stopped dancing, stared at me, and I looked back into his dark blue eyes. “Like star sapphires,” I heard my voice say, but he didn’t seem to hear.
Then the music stopped, and we moved apart. Three FSP supporters came up and took Cameron away, but he looked at me over his shoulder, mouthed the word later. I took a deep breath and looked around the room.
And there he was again; Malcolm sat at the bar, head tipped back, laughing. I glanced away, pretending I hadn’t seen him.
But when Malcolm left the reception a few minutes later, I decided to follow him. Cameron stood at the bar, surrounded by admirers. Walker leaned over the punch bowl, refilling a glass. I didn’t bother to tell anyone I was leaving.
Malcolm walked with long strides, his black trench coat flapping out in the wind. I turned invisible and began to run to catch up. When I was within half a block of him, I resumed walking, all the while wondering how to make him tell me what I needed to know. Finally I hit on a plan. The last time I’d seen him in Sarasota, he’d been trying to persuade my father to join him in researching and developing a new kind of synthetic blood. I could pretend to be interested in the research, offer to be a go-between to entice my father. The plan might work, I thought—unless Malcolm knew that my father was too sick to work. Unless Malcolm was the one who’d made him sick.
The route varied, but the destination was the same as the night before: we ended up at the vine-covered house near Oglethorpe Square. The small lamps on either side of its door glimmered. Malcolm strode inside before I had time to approach him. No, to be honest, during the last few minutes I fell back, uncertain and afraid. My strategy suddenly seemed silly to me. How could I hope to fool him?
I stood under the live oak tree, beneath its curtain of Spanish moss, waiting for an idea. Two teenage girls, both with earphones plugged into music players, walked down York Street toward me. They passed so close to me that I could smell the body lotion they wore: lemon on one, vanilla on the other. When they walked up the path to the house, I was close behind, and when they opened the door, I stepped inside just after them.
The girls moved through the dimly lit entranceway and headed up a curving flight of stairs. I paused long enough to get a sense of where I was—a long corridor loomed ahead, with several doors opening off it—then followed them. At the top of the staircase, another corridor began. They were halfway down it, opening a door.
After they went inside, I moved quietly down the corridor. They’d left the door ajar, and I could see rows of cots inside, twenty of them or more, neatly made up. The girls removed their earphones and began to undress.
I retraced my steps, looking into two other rooms whose doors were open. One was too dark to see inside, but in the other, five teenage boys were lying on cots. They were awake, but no one was talking.
The building was some sort of dormitory, I thought. I walked down the stairs. The lighting was too dim to see many details of the artwork on the walls, but one appeared to be a print of the painting that had hung on a wall of our house in Saratoga Springs: a still life featuring a tulip, an hourglass, and a human skull, called Memento Mori. When we’d cleaned out the storage unit, Mãe had given it away, saying she found it depressing.
As I moved in near-darkness through the downstairs corridor, I made out a large living room, a dining room with five long tables and scores of chairs, and a room with walls of bookshelves. On impulse, I went inside.
The only light in the room came from the streetlights outside, filtered by heavy drapes. I lifted one a few inches, and in the brighter light I saw a map of the continental United States on one wall, with circles drawn on it and pins stuck in clusters. One cluster, I noticed, was around Homosassa Springs; a smaller one was in southern Georgia. Savannah was marked with a circle, as were Daytona Beach, Washington, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and dozens of other cities.
Papers and small cards were stacked on a library table next to a filing cabinet. I folded back the drape and tucked it behind a hook attached to the window frame, then went to the table. The cards were blank. Next to them were sheets of paper—the loyalty oaths we’d signed the night before.
I was pulling open a drawer of the filing cabinet when I sensed movement behind me. I turned, and froze.
Malcolm shut the door behind him and locked it with a key he slid into a pocket. “Come out, come out, whoever you are.” He half sang the words.
He moved toward me. The light from the streetlamp glinted on his blond hair. He walked slowly, but with assurance, as if he could see me. I took a few steps to my right.
Malcolm altered his course a few steps to his left. “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?”
I veered right, nearly falling over a set of library steps. With each move I made, he moved directly in front of me. I stepped backward, toward the bookshelf.
“You know the old saying.” He was less than two feet away now. Then he lunged forward. “Curiosity killed”—his right hand grabbed my amulet and pulled hard—”the cat.”
I strained to pull away, but he was much stronger than me. The silk cord bit into my neck, making me lose concentration. I felt myself turning visible again.
Malcolm looked down at the replica of Bastet, then at me. There was no surprise in his face. “How nice of you to drop by,” he said. He let go of my amulet.
I rubbed the back of my neck.
“Shall we have our little talk?” he said.
Two sofas faced each other in the room’s center. He sat on one. I didn’t move. I thought how stupid I’d been not to realize the amulet would be visible. It had become part of me, so familiar I rarely noticed it.
“Don’t berate yourself unnecessarily.” Malcolm leaned back, utterly relaxed. “The house has an extensive security system. Even if you’d been entirely invisible, the infrared sensors would have detected your presence.”
Immediately I blocked my thoughts.
“That’s more like it.” He folded his arms across his chest. “We seem to do better as enemies than as friends, don’t we? A pity, really.” His voice had a slight English accent that he’d probably acquired when he and my father were postdoctoral students at Cambridge University. “But I am your friend, Ariella, more than you know.”
I said, “Right. And you’re my father’s friend, too. That’s why you tried to kill us.”
“Kill you?” He sighed. “Quite the opposite. I’ve saved both your lives, more than once.”
When we’d met in Sarasota, he’d told me about rescuing me when I was a child. He said he’d carried me out of range when the house in Saratoga Springs caught fire. My first memory was of that fire, but not of my rescuer.
Now he was thinking of a different fire, and he let me listen to his thoughts: that night in Sarasota, as the hurricane spiraled toward us, he came to the condominium my father rented (in a building called, preposterously, Xanadu). He intended to try to talk business with my father one last time before giving up on their research collaboration. In the parking lot he saw Dennis, my father’s former assistant, unloading a canister—some chemical necessary for research, he initially thought. But Dennis’s thoughts were full of guilt and confusion.
Dennis carried the canister into the elevator and Malcolm followed, making himself invisible. When Dennis entered the condo unit, Malcolm also entered, stepping around the canister and taking a seat in the kitchen.
�
��Raphael was asleep, and so were you,” he said. “I checked. But when I came back to the kitchen, I smelled smoke. Dennis had opened the canister and ignited the vapors. I asked him what in hell he was trying to do, and he kept saying he had no choice. From his gabbling, I think he thought I was God; since he couldn’t see me, he imagined that some immortal being had come to reckon with him. I hit him, mostly to make him shut up. Meanwhile the flames shot up and the smoke grew thick. It smelled of carbon monoxide.
“I turned my attention to putting out the fire. There was no extinguisher. I filled a pot at the kitchen sink and poured it on the canister, to keep it from exploding. That’s when your father came into the kitchen, coughing. I don’t think he even saw me.”
By this time, I was sitting on the sofa, opposite him. He paused to take a breath. Every word he spoke sounded sincere, unrehearsed.
“And then?” I asked.
“I don’t remember.” He rubbed his eyes. “I woke up alone in the EMT ambulance. I knew I didn’t want to be there. When they stopped, I let myself out.”
“But weren’t you hurt?” I could see only his silhouette now, and the gleam of his hair.
“Yes, I’d inhaled a lot of smoke. But I’m strong. I bounce back quickly. Your father, with his diet of tonics and cow’s blood and artificial supplements…” He shook his head. “He was more vulnerable. There’s no substitute for the real thing.”
I didn’t want to think about Malcolm’s dietary habits. “What happened to Dennis?”
“Apparently he left while I was trying to put out the fire. He must have, because when I tried the door, it was locked from the outside.”
I had complete access to his thoughts now. Unless he was a remarkable liar, capable of lying to himself as well as me, he was telling me the truth. Yet part of me held back. He still was the one who’d killed my best friend.
“I killed her to protect you and your father.” His voice was almost a whisper. “She knew that you’re vampires, and she planned to expose you. Why can’t you believe that?”
I put up my hand. Once a story has a villain, it’s very hard to recast him as a friend, almost as hard as it would be to make him into a hero. “Tell me some other time,” I said. “I don’t think I can take any more tonight.”
He leaned forward, and the light from the window lit one side of his face: narrowed eye, long nose, one corner of his thin mouth. “But you said you wanted answers. Don’t you want to know what’s going on here?” He waved in the direction of the wall map. “Don’t you want to know what that’s all about?”
“Could we turn on a light?” The sight of his half-face made me nervous.
He switched on a table lamp, and the room sprang into being: bookshelves, fireplace, furniture. Now he had three dimensions, too. He was just a man, I realized—just a vampire, I corrected myself. He wasn’t a demon, or a monster.
“Okay.” I looked across at him. “What’s this all about?”
He stood up, went to a corner cabinet, came back with a bottle and tumblers. He poured two glasses of Picardo and handed me one. I hesitated, then I took it. We drank.
He said, “Welcome to the Society of N.”
The house near Oglethorpe Square was a regional outpost of the Nebulists, Malcolm said. “I assume that you know who we are?”
I remembered Mãe’s hand-drawn chart. “I know a few things,” I said. “My mother explained the differences among the vampire sects.”
“She probably got them wrong.”
I began to protest.
“Sara never did understand the differences.” Malcolm pushed his hair from his forehead. “Neither did Raphael. No doubt they put the Sanguinist spin on whatever they told you. They typecast us. They say they’re the ones who care about preserving resources, about sustaining the earth, but they don’t do much to make it happen.”
“They try—”
“They aren’t prepared to make it happen.” Malcolm had none of my father’s inhibitions about interruptions. “But we are.”
“I didn’t know that Nebulists cared.” From what my father and mother had said, I’d gathered the Nebulists were self-centered, ruthless, amoral. And I let Malcolm hear that thought.
He smiled, and for the first time I thought him handsome. “Our caring takes the form of action,” he said. “Ari, can you imagine a world without humans? Think for a moment. Everywhere humans go, they leave waste. They pollute the soil and the atmosphere, the ocean and the rain. They cut down trees and murder whole species of animals. I’m speaking in the simplest terms possible, but there are other, more sophisticated analyses.
“The truth is, if humans were wiped out tomorrow, the world would be a better place. Within perhaps twenty thousand years, everything made by man would be gone. The hideous houses, the factories and nuclear reactors, the skyscrapers and schools—all would crumble into dust. The air, water, and land would cleanse themselves. Species would rebound. All of that would happen on its own—and happen even sooner, if we vampires helped the recovery process.”
His speech seemed as compelling as Cameron’s, at first. “So what are you proposing?” I asked. “Exterminating the human race?”
“Of course not.” His tone was mildly amused, not shocked. I thought, But you wouldn’t rule extermination out.
He heard that thought. “You’re putting the Sanguinist spin on it again. Once, I admit, the Nebulists were proponents of such a plan. But we’ve evolved, as all intelligent beings do. Now we advocate a form of enlightened coexistence.” Malcolm swirled his glass, and the Picardo gleamed ruby red as the lamplight caught it. “You will agree that things can’t go on as they are?”
I nodded, slowly. All I’d seen and heard and read about environmental damage made clear the need for dramatic change.
“Then it’s apparent to you that even enlightened humans aren’t doing enough to reverse the damage to the ecosystem. Buying a hybrid car or low-energy lightbulbs is all very well, but hardly a means of eliminating the problem.”
“So what are you proposing?”
He clasped his hands over one knee. “We’re proposing more meaningful modifications of human behavior that will actually make a difference. Imagine humans who act sensibly, mindful of the long-range consequences of their behavior. Imagine humans who care beyond their immediate needs and desires or gratification, who live frugally and respectfully.”
I shook my head. “You can’t make that happen.”
“We’re already making it happen.” He gestured toward the map on the wall. “Each circle you see there is a seedling community. The program began five years ago. Eventually there will be more circles, and they will overlap and cover the entire continental U.S. If you went to our outposts in Europe, Asia, and Africa, you’d see similar maps.”
I looked at the map and at the pins stuck in it, and I didn’t understand.
Malcolm explained it for me. The pins represented potential “recruits,” people identified by scouts as likely candidates for behavior modification. They were brought to regional sorting centers where they underwent a series of tests. Those who succeeded became candidates, and they were given “makeovers.”
“In essence, the Nebulists offer our candidates a fresh start, a new life,” he said. “Some eventually return to their home communities, but most move on. Some go to big cities—we have a number in DC, working as lobbyists and interns and aides. Others attend universities or enter the military. But first they go through supervised training at centers like this one.”
I thought of Mysty. “Is that what happened—”
“—to your friend from Homosassa? Yes, she was recruited last year. Her appearance was altered to enable her fresh start. She’s coming along very nicely, from what I hear. I don’t take part in the actual modification process, you know. I’m just a consultant. When my visit here is over, I’ll be heading back to England.”
I didn’t much care about his travel plans. “When you say ‘modification,’ do you mean brainwashing?”
“Such an outdated term.” He looked disappointed. “Particularly when you consider the research that proves that free will is an illusion. The human brain essentially is programmed by DNA, and human action is causally determined. The brain is already washed, to use your quaint terminology.
“What we do is a form of reeducation. We wipe the slate clean. Our candidates are chosen because they’re ripe for reform—they’ve proven, to varying extents, dysfunctional in their communities. Most of them are unhappy with themselves and their lives. What makes them wayward is what identifies them as likely future leaders, oddly enough. They simply need to be rescued from their old identities and old habits.”
From what I’d seen of Mysty and the residents of the dormitory upstairs, they’d been turned into zombies. And not philosophical zombies—more like the duppies Dashay had described.
Again, he heard my thought, and he seemed pleased. “Ah yes, duppies, the Jamaican undead. Another quaint term. Although I confess it would produce a nice name for our project: the Duppification of America?” He smiled. “No, our ambassadors—that’s our name for the successful candidates—are very much alive.”
“Are they on drugs?”
“Most Americans are on drugs. Alcohol, mood enhancers, sedatives—all designed to promote illogical thinking and impulsive action. If a drug promotes logic and rational behavior, can that be a bad thing?”
“Is there such a drug?”
“Of course.” Malcolm stood up and went to the door. He unlocked it and left the room.
I considered running away. But I stayed. I wanted to hear the rest.
Malcolm came back, carrying a leather bag shaped like a doctor’s satchel. He set it on the library table, opened it, and pulled out a vial.
“This is Amrita,” he said. “We named it for a Hindu term meaning ‘water of life.’ Short of becoming a vampire, it’s the best chance humans have for long-term survival. It strengthens the immune system, promotes strong bones, enhances digestion, and improves psychological health by stabilizing moods.”
The Year of Disappearances Page 21