As he paused to lean toward me, I considered how “have” sounded more like “haff” as it fell from his wrinkled lips.
“And do you know what that goal is?”
I went for the most obvious choice: “Creating microburst hypnotropic flash-spam on a global scale?”
“Immortality, Mr. Cséjthe!” he exclaimed.
Oh, too bad . . .
Tell me that you’ve invented the next big marketing technology of the twenty-first century and you’ve got my attention. But “Immortality"? Why not throw “World Domination” in and cackle like a demented madman?
Demented madman—now there was a nice redundancy . . .
“Yes,” he continued, “I know it seems quite the hoary cliché. But clichés are based upon universal truths and immortality has been the dream and desire of the human race since ancient times! The idea—the Ideal—is so old that it is the basis of myths and stories from every proto-culture, every race and clime of recorded history. Science and technology may create this or invent that, but the motivation for every social, technological, and medical advance is rooted in the goal of extending life! Reducing the wear and tear on the human body so that it can last longer! And—” He paused and seemed to gather himself. “But I rattle on like an old skeleton. My time is limited and I must make my point quickly and succinctly.”
He straightened his spine, striking an almost regal pose. “How old do you suppose that I am?”
That’s the problem with advanced age. Genetics and/or quality of life—diet, exercise, stress—could tweak the physical signs either way. There were fifty-year-olds who looked seventy and seventy-year-olds who could pass for sixty. Since Cyrus the Computer Virus was making the pitch for his immortality research, I could guess that he was probably older than he looked.
“I was born on March sixteenth . . .” He paused for dramatic effect. “ . . . in the year 1911!”
The second pause for dramatic effect was far more effective. If I could believe what he was saying.
“But longevity is not the same as immortality,” he continued with a gesture that took in his blanketed lower extremities. “I have made my most significant breakthroughs too late to keep me in this vessel much longer. I shall continue . . . but my next transition is not one I would choose if I could find an alternative . . .”
“And heeeeere’s the pitch . . .” I murmured.
“You, Mr. Cséjthe, are that alternative.”
Bingo.
“You have something to offer that would cost you very little and would benefit me very much.” His deeply set brown eyes widened and seemed unusually alive in his less than lively body. “And, through me, the human race!”
Ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling: the alarm bells always go off when folk with vague and mysterious agendas invoke the human race. Call me paranoid but my experience with telemarketers was bad and my track record with paranormal power mongers even worse. Put ‘em together . . .
And, speaking of bells, somewhere off in the distance, I heard my front doorbell chime.
“In return, I believe I can offer you two very precious gifts,” Pipt continued, ignoring the sound of the chimes in my hallway. “I would like to meet with you to discuss these matters.” He shrugged. “Alas, I do not believe you would make the journey on hearsay so I propose to send an emissary to meet with you and discuss our mutual interests.”
He gestured and a dwarf dressed in lederhosen came into view, carrying a wooden box.
“I’ll get it!” Deirdre called from the other room. The front door, I supposed, not the box.
The box was nearly square and about sixteen inches to a side in all three dimensions. Brass hinges gleamed brightly against the dark, lacquered wood and Pipt took possession of it as if delicate glassware were stored inside.
“I have just a few moments left. This messaging technology is still in its infancy and is somewhat limited. Plus, I must apologize in advance for the aftereffects. I do hope you are not susceptible to migraines—the headaches usually last only a few hours.” He turned the box in his hands and braced it against his chest. “But I could not simply tell you—I had to show you.” He fumbled at a catch and swung the side of the box out and open so that its contents and interior were visible. “Here is how you shall know my emissary and that the gifts I promise will be true!”
It was a head.
A human head.
Theresa Kellerman’s long, dark tresses had been trimmed to shoulder length—a slightly miscast phrase as she no longer had any shoulders.
Her eyes blinked.
Her mouth opened as if to speak.
But she had no lungs and her voice box had been damaged if not lost when the machete had taken her head off in the voodoo hounfort last year.
“You son-of-a-bitch!” I said as Pipt, the dwarf, and the still-living head of Theresa Kellerman flickered and disappeared.
A full-blown migraine on steroids rushed in to fill the void in my own head.
Deirdre appeared in the study’s doorway. “Somebody sent you a valentine,” she said.
“What?” I blinked. Ow. Blinking hurt.
“I got to the door too late to catch the messenger. But they left something for you, special delivery.”
I tried to focus. Ow! Focusing hurt!
Deirdre was walking toward me. Closing the distance helped. But not the motion. I tried focusing again when she stopped right in front of me.
She was holding something. A jar.
A three-quart glass jar.
Filled with a clear liquid substance.
And a heart.
The heart was still beating!
And this time I wasn’t dreaming.
Chapter Two
“Valentine’s Day is still a couple of weeks away,” Deirdre was saying, “but I guess someone wanted to express their sentiments early.”
I knelt down and studied the immediate area of the front porch. No footprints, no fibers, not even a ring of moisture or disturbed dust to show where the jar had been set before the doorbell was rung. We lived too far out in the boonies for any hope of a CSI: West Monroe so I got back up and looked out into the darkness—something I could do better than anyone with a starlight scope.
Whoever the messenger was, he had to cross the river or the cemetery to leave it here.
And depart again by either of those two routes.
I still didn’t believe in ghosts but either of those alternatives seemed even more unlikely.
“So, what do you think?” Deirdre asked.
I was thinking about my little daymare of just an hour ago but I wasn’t about to tell Deirdre that she was showing up in my dreams—even if they had a nightmarish bent. “I’m thinking,” I said, “of how, back in a more romantic era, the poets and troubadours articulated their passion with phrases like ‘I offer you my heart’ or ‘I lay my heart at your feet.’”
“You think a wandering minstrel did this?”
“No.” I thought about giving her The Look but I didn’t want her to think I was so easily baited. “And while I’ve never reconciled myself to today’s music distilling those sentiments into something along the lines of ‘Yo, bitch’ . . .” I contemplated the gory gift in the glass container, “ . . . I think I’d prefer a little gangsta’ rap over Victorian prose turned to bloody-minded literalness.”
“Still, whoever left it was at least considerate enough to put it in a glass jar with a nice, tight lid. Otherwise it would have been very messy.”
I gave her The Look after all.
She gave it right back. “I’m not being prissy, it means something! Anyone can cut out a heart and dump the mess on your porch if that’s all there is to the message. This is something more sophisticated. The fact that it’s in a jar and still pumping away is part of the message.”
Oh.
“So,” I asked as the fist-sized organ churned and turned in the clear suspension medium, “you didn’t get any kind of a look at the messenger service?”
Deirdre shook her head. “Rang the bell and ran away.”
“We shouldn’t be handling this. The glass should be dusted for fingerprints.”
She snorted. “Like whoever is capable of this would be dumb enough to leave latents. You’d do better to run DNA from the tissue through the BioWeb database.”
“BioWeb is gone.”
“The facilities here are gone,” she corrected. “Kurt said there are redundant network facilities in New York.”
“Hmmm. Inconvenient, seeing as most people leave their hearts in San Francisco.” It was the growing migraine; I was finding it increasingly difficult to think clearly. “This is assuming that it is a ‘people’ heart. Could be an animal’s.”
She shook her head and her red hair caressed my shoulder. “Human.”
“You sound very sure.”
“I am.”
“That’s rather disturbing.” I held it up to gain the advantage of the porch light. “Could be a fake—some kind of latex model with a motor and battery to make it move like that.” The heart stirred the semiclear liquid around it like the rinse cycle of a Maytag washer.
“Nope. It’s real.”
I gave her the eye. “I don’t know which bothers me more . . . that you can tell the difference between a human and an animal heart? Or that you can tell that it’s real with just a glance in the dark?”
She smiled. “I think you are more disturbed by the fact that I’m not squealing like a seven-year-old girl, doing the jitterbug, and hyperventilating to the edge of unconsciousness.”
“Maybe. Maybe I’m more disturbed by the fact that I’m not. I certainly would have a year or so ago.”
“You’ve changed.”
“Yeah. Getting killed has that effect, I’m told.” I was trying for wry but it came out sounding a little pissy.
“You’re not dead,” she said with a slight edge to her voice, “you’re alive.”
“Am I?”
“You’re not undead.”
“Yet.”
She sighed. “You know, some people are ‘the glass is half full’ kind of folk and others tend toward ‘the glass is half empty’ sort . . .” She waited.
I obliged reluctantly: “And which am I?”
“You’re more along the lines of the glass is chipped and dirty and the water is probably laced with toxic waste.”
I held up the jar. “Looks to me like the glass is half-filled with a still-beating human heart.” I turned back and stared out into the darkness beyond the porch light. “Jesus, I’m tired. It’s been a hell of a year—and I mean that in the most literal, theological context.” I raised my voice. “You know, I’m really getting tired of all this monster mafia crap! Somebody wants to send me a message? Write a letter, pick up the phone, send an email!” Well, maybe not an email. “Or be mensch enough to stay on the porch after you ring the damn bell and deliver your message in person!” I ended up bellowing into the faceless night.
The crickets were suitably cowed: they stopped their nocturnal screaming for a full twenty seconds.
Deirdre cleared her throat. “Well . . . that was nice . . .”
“Oh, shut up.”
“No, I mean it. You’ve been like a zombie, yourself, these past few weeks. It’s nice to see a little emotion for a change.”
“Little” emotion was right. It seemed like the only emotion I could muster this past year was anger. And even that was on the wane, of late. Ever since my wife and daughter died, I had felt my humanity trickling out of me like the fine spill of sand in a dusty hourglass. Each month I grew emptier and more benumbed as the virus took its toll. As it rolled through my body, reprogramming my RNA and mutating my cells, it felt as if a myriad of tiny switches were being thrown, one by one, in a shutdown sequence for my soul.
Looking at the still-beating heart in the jar I knew I was supposed to feel . . . something. Fear? Horror? Wonder? I could barely work up a serious case of annoyance.
Not the best of emotional states for what I had planned tonight.
Deirdre swore at my back and clamped her hand on my arm. “What the hell am I thinking?!” She yanked me back inside the house so fast I nearly dropped the jar.
Spinning me around, she kicked the door shut and shook a finger in my face. “That was stupid! People are trying to kill you!”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call them ‘people.’”
“Well, as your Chief of Security, I’m declaring a state of Orange Alert! From this point on you let me answer the door!”
I touched her shoulder. “And do what? Take a bullet that was meant for me?” She wore shorts and a white tank tee, damp with sweat from the weight room in the basement. My fingers tingled where they touched the faint scars over her trapezius muscle where I had bitten her nine months and a lifetime ago. “You are no longer a vampire.”
“Better me than you,” she argued. “I may no longer be wampyr but I’m still less human than you!”
That was contestable but I let it slide. “I have a call to make,” I said, turning and walking away.
* * *
“Hello?”
Even though he was more than half a continent away and filtered by countless telephone relays and switchers, there was a palpable presence in the room even before he spoke—Master vampires were like that.
“Stefan?” My asking was a polite formality. There was no question that Stefan Pagelovitch, the Doman for the Seattle enclave of the undead was on the other end of the line. “It’s Chris.”
“What can I do for you, my friend?”
How about modulating the subharmonics in your voice so that my head doesn’t explode? Pipt hadn’t been kidding about the headache. I cleared my throat. “Are you missing something?”
“Missing something?” I could feel his frown through the receiver.
“Yeah. A head.”
“A . . . ‘head’?”
Mine was throbbing painfully and, rather than play Twenty Questions, I cut to the chase. “Theresa Kellerman’s head. Remember? I gave it to you for safekeeping. I’ve been expecting a report from Doctors Mooncloud and Burton.”
“If you wanted a report, you should have given them a little more time.”
“A little more time?”
“Look, Christopher; I am no doctor, no scientist. But even I can see that a severed head—one that continues to live without a heart, without lungs, without mechanical life support—that takes time to study.”
“Were they working on keeping any other organs alive and functional independent of the body?”
I felt his frown deepen. “What do you mean?”
I looked over at the telltale heart, now atop the fireplace mantel and just below the hanging, curved sheath of the ancient great sword. Like something from a grotesque Timex commercial—Gahan Wilson meets John Cameron Swayze—it continued to beat: Takes a licking and keeps on ticking . . .
“Christopher?”
As I struggled to rephrase my question, some part of my hind brain was observing that the sword should be rehung slightly to the left and the jar moved another eight inches to the right to achieve a more decorous balance of the—er—décor.
“Christopher, are you there?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, I was just channeling Martha Stewart.”
“What?”
“Or maybe Attila the Hun doing Fang shui.”
“What are you talking about?” The edge to his voice brought me back to the subject at hand.
“I’m talking about related experimentation,” I said. “Were they attempting to grow or clone organs—say a heart, for example—to extend the—”
“Clone or grow organs? In what? A Petri dish?” He snorted derisively. “Cséjthe, have you ever read Dracula by Bram Stoker?”
“Uh, yes.”
“And have you read Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley?”
“As a matter of fact I have.”
“And are you aware of why Frankenstein is the better of the two novels?�
�
“I wasn’t aware of any such compar—”
“It is because one amounts to little more than tabloid journalism, playing fast and loose with certain details of history while the other is an ingenious work of fiction, springing from a fertile imagination, unfettered by such constraints as the laws of chemistry or physics.”
“Um . . .”
“Do I need to explain which is which?”
“Not real—”
“Petri dish, indeed! The good doctors had just finished constructing an artificial breathing device when you took it away from them. That’s artificial in the mechanical sense. As in pump and bellows. The next step was to graft a donor voice box onto the trachea. If you had waited, we might have found out if it was capable of speech.”
“She’s a her, not an it,” I corrected. “And what do you mean ‘I’ took it away? Took her away.”
“Your emissaries came and fetched Ms. Kellerman’s head back to the East Coast. Said that you had more confidence in the facilities in New York. Nice touch, by the way, sending twins.”
“Dammit, Stefan, I think I can trust Taj. And Gerald seems the decent sort. But I don’t know or trust anyone besides Kurt back east. I don’t care how impressive the equipment is, I didn’t want Theresa treated like some kind of specimen!”
The shrug of his shoulders traveled down the wire. “Then you should have left her here.”
“I didn’t take her away! The people who came for her weren’t my people!” Whisper, I told myself; yelling only makes the headache worse.
“So she’s been . . . what? Head-napped?”
“Ha,” I said, “ha.”
“Who would want to get . . . a head?”
“Calls himself Dr. Pipt,” I said, ignoring the bait. Why was yanking my chain such a popular sport these days? I proceeded to recount my evening’s email experience, omitting the epilogue concerning my funny valentine.
“Perhaps you should add a human filter to your online interface,” he suggested after digesting my story. “Anything so sophisticated as to encode an audio-visual experience and play it back in your brain could have other side effects.”
Habeas Corpses - The Halflife Trilogy Book III Page 3