by Rice, Anne
“But tell me something,” I said. “Before we stop, don’t you want to jolt me out of this body and go into it? I mean, just to see what it’s like?”
“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t.”
“But aren’t you curious?” I asked him. “Don’t you want to know …”
I could see that I was taxing his patience.
“Look, the real truth is, we don’t have time for that experience. And maybe I don’t want to know. I can remember my youth well enough. Too well, in fact. We aren’t playing little games here. You can make the assault now. That’s what counts.” He looked at his watch. “It’s almost three. We’ll have some supper and then we’ll sleep. We’ve a full day ahead, exploring the ship and confirming our plans. We must be rested and in full control of our faculties. Come, let’s see what we can rustle up in the way of food or drink.”
We went outside and along the walk until we reached the little kitchen—a funny, damp, and somewhat cluttered room. The kindly proprietor had left two plates for us in the rusted, groaning refrigerator, along with a bottle of white wine. We sat down at the table and commenced to devour every morsel of rice, yams, and spiced meat, not caring at all that it was very cold.
“Can you read my thoughts?” I asked, after I’d consumed two glasses of wine.
“Nothing, you’ve got the trick.”
“So how do I do it in my sleep? The Queen Elizabeth 2 can’t be more than a hundred miles out now. She’s to dock in two hours.”
“Same way you do it when you’re awake. You shut down. You close up. Because, you see, no one is ever completely asleep. Not even those in a coma are completely asleep. Will is always operative. And will is what this is about.”
I looked at him as we sat there. He was obviously tired, but he did not look haggard or in any way debilitated. His thick dark hair obviously added to the impression of vigor; and his large dark eyes had the same fierce light in them which they always had.
I finished quickly, shoved the dishes into the sink, and went out on the beach without bothering to say what I meant to do. I knew he would say we had to rest now, and I didn’t want to be deprived of this last night as a human being under the stars.
Going down to the lip of the water, I peeled off the cotton clothes, and went into the waves. They were cool but inviting, and then I stretched out my arms and began to swim. It was not easy, of course. But it wasn’t hard either, once I resigned myself to the fact that humans did it this way—stroke by stroke against the force of the water, and letting the water buoy the cumbersome body, which it was entirely willing to do.
I swam out quite far, and then rolled over on my back and looked at the sky. It was still full of fleecy white clouds. A moment of peace came over me, in spite of the chill on my exposed skin, and the dimness all around me, and the strange feeling of vulnerability I experienced as I floated on this dark treacherous sea. When I thought of being back in my old body, I could only be happy, and once again, I knew that in my human adventure, I had failed.
I had not been the hero of my own dreams. I had found human life too hard.
Finally I swam back into the shallows and then walked up onto the beach. I picked up my clothes, shook off the sand, slung them over my shoulder, and walked back to the little room.
Only one lamp burned on the dressing table. David was sitting on his bed, closest to the door, and dressed only in a long white pajama shirt and smoking one of those little cigars. I liked the scent of it, dark and sweet.
He looked his usual dignified self, arms folded, eyes full of normal curiosity as he watched me take a towel from the bath and dry off my hair and my skin.
“Just called London,” he said.
“What’s the news?” I wiped my face with the towel, then slung it over the back of the chair. The air felt so good on my naked skin, now that it was dry.
“Robbery in the hills above Caracas. Very similar to the crimes in Curaçao. A large villa full of artifacts, jewels, paintings. Much was smashed; only small portables were stolen; three people dead. We should thank the gods for the poverty of the human imagination—for the sheer meanness of this man’s ambitions—and that our opportunity to stop him has come so soon. In time, he would have wakened to his monstrous potential. As it is, he is our predictable fool.”
“Does any being use what he possesses?” I asked. “Perhaps a few brave geniuses know their true limits. What do the rest of us do but complain?”
“I don’t know,” he said, a sad little smile passing over his face. He shook his head and looked away. “Some night, when this is all over, tell me again how it was for you. How you could be in that beautiful young body and hate this world so much.”
“I’ll tell you, but you’ll never understand. You’re on the wrong side of the dark glass. Only the dead know how terrible it is to be alive.”
I pulled a loose cotton T-shirt out of my little suitcase, but I didn’t put it on. I sat down on the bed beside him. And then I bent down and kissed his face again gently, as I had in New Orleans, liking the feel of his roughly shaven beard, just as I liked that sort of thing when I was really Lestat and I would soon have that strong masculine blood inside.
I moved closer to him, when suddenly he grasped my hand, and I felt him gently push me away.
“Why, David?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer. He lifted his right hand and brushed my hair back out of my eyes.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I can’t. I simply can’t.”
He got up gracefully, and went outside into the night.
I was too furious with pure stymied passion to do anything for a moment. Then I followed him out. He had gone down on the sand a ways and he stood there alone, as I had done before.
I came up behind him.
“Tell me, please, why not?”
“I don’t know,” he said again. “I only know I can’t. I want to. Believe me, I do. But I can’t. My past is … so close to me.” He let out a long sigh, and for a while was silent again. Then he went on. “My memories of those days are so clear. It’s as if I’m in India again, or Rio. Ah, yes, Rio. It’s as if I am that young man again.”
I knew I was to blame for this. I knew it, and that it was useless to say apologetic words. I also sensed something else. I was an evil being, and even when I was in this body, David could sense that evil. He could sense the powerful vampiric greed. It was an old evil, brooding and terrible. Gretchen hadn’t sensed it. I had deceived her with this warm and smiling body. But when David looked at me, he saw that blond blue-eyed demon whom he knew very well.
I said nothing. I merely looked out over the sea. Give me back my body. Let me be that devil, I thought. Take me away from this paltry brand of desire and this weakness. Take me back into the dark heavens where I belong. And it seemed suddenly that my loneliness and my misery were as terrible as they had ever been before this experiment, before this little sojourn into more vulnerable flesh. Yes, let me be outside it again, please. Let me be a watcher. How could I have been such a fool?
I heard David say something to me, but I didn’t really catch the words. I looked up slowly, pulling myself out of my thoughts, and I saw that he had turned to face me, and I realized that his hand was resting gently on my neck. I wanted to say something angry—Take your hand away, don’t torment me—but I didn’t speak.
“No, you’re not evil, that’s not it,” he whispered. “It’s me, don’t you understand. It’s my fear! You don’t know what this adventure has meant to me! To be here again in this part of the great world—and with you! I love you. I love you desperately and insanely, I love the soul inside you, and don’t you see, it’s not evil. It’s not greedy. But it’s immense. It overpowers even this youthful body because it is your soul, fierce and indomitable and outside time—the soul of the true Lestat. I can’t give in to it. I can’t … do it. I’ll lose myself forever if I do it, as surely as if … as if …”
He broke off, too shaken obviously to go on.
I’d hated the pain in his voice, the faint tremour undermining its deep firmness. How could I ever forgive myself? I stood still, staring past him into the darkness. The lovely pounding of the surf and the faint clacking of the coconut palms were the only sounds. How vast were the heavens; how lovely and deep and calm these hours just before dawn.
I saw Gretchen’s face. I heard her voice.
There was a moment this morning when I thought I could throw up everything—just to be with you … I could feel it sweeping me away, the way the music once did. And if you were to say “Come with me,” even now, I might go … The meaning of chastity is not to fall in love … I could fall in love with you. I know I could.
And then beyond this burning image, faint yet undeniable, I saw the face of Louis, and I heard words spoken in his voice that I wanted to forget.
Where was David? Let me wake from these memories. I don’t want them. I looked up and I saw him again, and in him the old familiar dignity, the restraint, the imperturbable strength. But I saw the pain too.
“Forgive me,” he whispered. His voice was still unsteady, as he struggled to preserve the beautiful and elegant facade. “You drank from the fountain of youth when you drank the blood of Magnus. Really you did. You’ll never know what it means to be the old man that I am now. God help me, I loathe the word, but it’s true. I’m old.”
“I understand,” I said. “Don’t worry.” I leant forward and kissed him again. “I’ll leave you alone. Come on, we should sleep. I promise. I’ll leave you alone.”
TWENTY-ONE
“Good Lord, look at it, David.” I had just stepped out of the taxi onto the crowded quai. The great blue and white Queen Elizabeth 2 was far too big to come into the little harbour. She rested at anchor a mile or two out—I could not gauge—so monstrously large that she seemed the ship out of a nightmare, frozen upon the motionless bay. Only her row upon row of myriad tiny windows prevented her from seeming the ship of a giant.
The quaint little island with its green hills and curved shore reached out towards her, as if trying to shrink her and draw her nearer, all in vain.
I felt a spasm of excitement as I looked at her. I had never been aboard a modern vessel. This part was going to be fun.
A small wooden launch, bearing her name in bold painted letters, and obviously laden with but one load of her many passengers, made its way to the concrete dock as we watched.
“There’s Jake in the prow of the launch,” said David. “Come on, let’s go into the café.”
We walked slowly under the hot sun, comfortable in our short-sleeve shirts and dungarees—a couple of tourists—past the dark-skinned vendors with their seashells for sale, and rag dolls, and tiny steel drums, and other souvenirs. How pretty the island appeared. Its forested hills were dotted with tiny dwellings, and the more solid buildings of the town of St. George’s were massed together on the steep cliff to the far left beyond the turn of the quai. The whole prospect had almost an Italian hue to it, what with so many dark and stained reddish walls and the rusted roofs of corrugated tin which in the burning sun looked deceptively like roofs of baked tile. It seemed a lovely place to go exploring—at some other time.
The dark café was cool inside with only a few brightly painted tables and straight-back chairs. David ordered bottles of cold beer, and within minutes Jake came sauntering in—wearing the very same khaki shorts and white polo shirt—and carefully chose a chair from which he might watch the open door. The world out there seemed made of glittering water. The beer tasted malty and rather good.
“Well, the deed is done,” Jake said in a low voice, his face rather rigid and abstracted as though he were not with us at all, but deep in thought. He took a gulp from the brown beer bottle, and then slipped a couple of keys across the table to David. “She’s carrying over one thousand passengers. Nobody will notice that Mr. Eric Sampson doesn’t reboard. The cabin’s tiny, inside as you requested, right off the corridor, midship, Five Deck, as you know.”
“Excellent. And you obtained two sets of keys. Very good.”
“The trunk’s open, with half the contents scattered on the bed. Your guns are inside the two books inside the trunk. Hollowed them out myself. The locks are there. You ought to be able to fit the big one to the door easily enough but I don’t know if the staff will care much for it when they see it. Again, I wish you the best of luck. Oh, and you heard the news about the robbery this morning on the hill? Seems we have a vampire in Grenada. Maybe you should plan to stay here, David. Sounds like just your sort of thing.”
“This morning?”
“Three o’clock. Right up there on the cliff. Big house of a rich Austrian woman. Everyone murdered. Quite a mess. The whole island’s talking about it. Well, I’m off.”
It was only after Jake had left us that David spoke again.
“This is bad, Lestat. We were standing out on the beach at three this morning. If he sensed even a glimmer of our presence, he may not be on the ship. Or he may be ready for us when the sun sets.”
“He was far too busy this morning, David. Besides, if he’d sensed our presence, he would have made a bonfire of our little room. Unless he doesn’t know how to do it, but that we simply cannot know. Let’s board the bloody ship now. I’m tired of waiting. Look, it’s starting to rain.”
We gathered up our luggage, including the monstrous leather suitcase David had brought from New Orleans, and hurried to the launch. A crowd of frail elderly mortals seemed to appear from everywhere—out of taxis and nearby sheds and little shops—now that the rain was really coming down, and it took us some minutes to get inside the unsteady little wooden boat, and take a seat on the wet plastic bench.
As soon as she turned her prow towards the Queen Elizabeth 2, I felt a giddy excitement—fun to be riding this warm sea in such a small craft. I loved the movement as we gained speed.
David was quite tense. He opened his passport, read the information for the twenty-seventh time, and then put it away. We had gone over our identities this morning after breakfast, but hoped that we would never need to use the various details.
For what it was worth, Dr. Stoker was retired and on vacation in the Caribbean but very concerned about his dear friend Jason Hamilton, who was traveling in the Queen Victoria Suite. He was eager to see Mr. Hamilton, and so he would tell the cabin stewards of the Signal Deck, though cautioning them not to let Mr. Hamilton know of this concern.
I was merely a friend he’d met at the guesthouse the night before, and with whom he’d struck up an acquaintance on account of our sailing together on the Queen Elizabeth 2. There was to be no other connection between us, for James would be in this body once the switch was done, and David might have to vilify him in some fashion if he could not be controlled.
There was more to it, in the event we were questioned about any sort of row that might occur. But in general, we did not think our plan could possibly lead to such a thing.
Finally the launch reached the ship, docking at a broad opening in the very middle of the immense blue hull. How utterly preposterously enormous the vessel appeared from this angle! She really did take my breath away.
I scarce noticed as we gave over our tickets to the waiting crew members. Luggage would be handled for us. We received some vague directions as to how we were to reach the Signal Deck, and then we were wandering down an endless corridor with a very low ceiling and door after door on either side of us. Within minutes, we realized we were quite lost.
On we walked until suddenly we reached a great open place with a sunken floor and, of all things, a white grand piano, poised on its three legs as if ready for a concert, and this within the windowless womb of this ship!
“It’s the Midships Lobby,” said David, pointing to a great colored diagram of the vessel in a frame upon the wall. “I know where we are now. Follow me.”
“How absurd all this is,” I said, staring at the brightly colored carpet, and the chrome and plastic everywhere I looked. “How utterly synthe
tic and hideous.”
“Shhh, the British are very proud of this ship, you’re going to offend someone. They can’t use wood anymore—it has to do with fire regulations.” He stopped at an elevator and pushed the button. “This will take us up to the Boat Deck. Didn’t the man say we must find the Queens Grill Lounge there?”
“I have no idea,” I said. I was like a zombie wandering into the elevator. “This is unimaginable!”
“Lestat, there have been giant liners like this one since the turn of the century. You’ve been living in the past.”
The Boat Deck revealed an entire series of wonders. The ship housed a great theatre, and also an entire mezzanine of tiny elegant shops. Below the mezzanine was a dance floor, with a small bandstand, and a sprawling lounge area of small cocktail tables and squat comfortable leather chairs. The shops were shut up since the vessel was in port, but it was quite easy to see their various contents through the airy grilles which closed them off. Expensive clothing, fine jewelry, china, black dinner jackets and boiled shirts, sundries, and random gifts were all on display in the shallow little bays.
There were passengers wandering everywhere—mostly quite old men and women dressed in scant beach clothing, many of whom were gathered in the quiet daylighted lounge below.
“Come on, the rooms,” said David, pulling me along.
It seems the penthouse suites, to which we were headed, were somewhat cut off from the great body of the ship. We had to slip into the Queens Grill Lounge, a long narrow pleasantly appointed bar reserved entirely for the top-deck passengers, and then find a more or less secret elevator to take us to these rooms. This bar had very large windows, revealing the marvelous blue water and the clear sky above.