Year's Best Science Fiction 01 # 1984

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  “Forty-one,” said Nina at last.

  She looked up brightly and showed the calculator as if it verified some objective fact. “I count forty-one points. What do you have, Melanie?”

  “Ja,” interrupted Willi. “That is fine. Now let us see your claims, Nina.” His voice was flat and empty. Even Willi had lost some interest in the Game.

  Before Nina could begin, Mr. Thorne entered and motioned that dinner was served. We adjourned to the dining room—Willi pouring himself another glass of bourbon and Nina fluttering her hands in mock frustration at the interruption of the Game. Once seated at the long, mahogany table, I worked at being a hostess. From decades of tradition, talk of the Game was banned from the dinner table. Over soup we discussed Willi’s new movie and the purchase of another store for Nina’s line of boutiques. It seemed that Nina’s monthly column in Vogue was to be discontinued but that a newspaper syndicate was interested in picking it up.

  Both of my guests exclaimed over the perfection of the baked ham, but I thought that Mr. Thorne had made the gravy a trifle too sweet. Darkness had filled the windows before we finished our chocolate mousse. The refracted light from the chandelier made Nina’s hair dance with highlights while I feared that mine glowed more bluely than ever.

  Suddenly there was a sound from the kitchen. The huge Negro’s face appeared at the swinging door. His shoulder was hunched against white hands and his expression was that of a querulous child.

  “ … the hell do you think we are sittin’ here like goddamned—” The white hands pulled him out of sight.

  “Excuse me, ladies,” Willi dabbed linen at his lips and stood up. He still moved gracefully for all of his years.

  Nina poked at her chocolate. There was one sharp, barked command from the kitchen and the sound of a slap. It was the slap of a man’s hand—hard and flat as a small-caliber-rifle shot. I looked up and Mr. Thorne was at my elbow, clearing away the dessert dishes.

  “Coffee, please, Mr. Thorne. For all of us.” He nodded and his smile was gentle.

  Franz Anton Mesmer had known of it even if he had not understood it. I suspect that Mesmer must have had some small touch of the Ability. Modern pseudosciences have studied it and renamed it, removed most of its power, confused its uses and origins, but it remains the shadow of what Mesmer discovered. They have no idea of what it is like to Feed.

  I despair at the rise of modern violence. I truly give in to despair at times, that deep, futureless pit of despair that poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called carrion comfort. I watch the American slaughterhouse, the casual attacks on popes, presidents, and uncounted others, and I wonder whether there are many more out there with the Ability or whether butchery has simply become the modern way of life.

  All humans feed on violence, on the small exercises of power over another. But few have tasted—as we have—the ultimate power. And without the Ability, few know the unequaled pleasure of taking a human life. Without the Ability, even those who do feed on life cannot savor the flow of emotions in stalker and victim, the total exhilaration of the attacker who has moved beyond all rules and punishments, the strange, almost sexual submission of the victim in that final second of truth when all options are canceled, all futures denied, all possibilities erased in an exercise of absolute power over another.

  I despair at modern violence. I despair at the impersonal nature of it and the casual quality that has made it accessible to so many. I had a television set until I sold it at the height of the Vietnam War. Those sanitized snippets of death—made distant by the camera’s lens—meant nothing to me. But I believe it meant something to these cattle that surround me. When the war and the nightly televised body counts ended, they demanded more, more, and the movie screens and streets of this sweet and dying nation have provided it in mediocre, mob abundance. It is an addiction I know well.

  They miss the point. Merely observed, violent death is a sad and sullied tapestry of confusion. But to those of us who have Fed, death can be a sacrament.

  “My turn! My turn!” Nina’s voice still resembled that of the visiting belle who had just filled her dance card at Cousin Celia’s June ball.

  We had returned to the parlor. Willi had finished his coffee and requested a brandy from Mr. Thorne. I was embarrassed for Willi. To have one’s closest associates show any hint of unplanned behavior was certainly a sign of weakening Ability. Nina did not appear to have noticed.

  “I have them all in order,” said Nina. She opened the scrapbook on the now-empty tea table. Willi went through them carefully, sometimes asking a question, more often grunting assent. I murmured occasional agreement although I had heard of none of them. Except for the Beatle, of course. Nina saved that for near the end.

  “Good God, Nina, that was you?” Willi seemed near anger. Nina’s Feedings had always run to Park Avenue suicides and matrimonial disagreements ending in shots fired from expensive, small-caliber ladies’ guns. This type of thing was more in Willi’s crude style. Perhaps he felt that his territory was being invaded. “I mean … you were risking a lot, weren’t you? It’s so … damn it … so public.”

  Nina laughed and set down the calculator. “Willi dear, that’s what the Game is about, is it not?”

  Willi strode to the liquor cabinet and refilled his brandy snifter. The wind tossed bare branches against the leaded glass of the bay window. I do not like winter. Even in the South it takes its toll on the spirit.

  “Didn’t this guy … what’s his name … buy the gun in Hawaii or someplace?” asked Willi from across the room. “That sounds like his initiative to me. I mean, if he was already stalking the fellow—”

  “Willi dear,” Nina’s voice had gone as cold as the wind that raked the branches, “no one said he was stable. How many of yours are stable, Willi? But I made it happen, darling. I chose the place and the time. Don’t you see the irony of the place, Willi? After that little prank on the director of that witchcraft movie a few years ago? It was straight from the script—”

  “I don’t know,” said Willi. He sat heavily on the divan, spilling brandy on his expensive sport coat. He did not notice. The lamplight reflected from his balding skull. The mottles of age were more visible at night, and his neck, where it disappeared into his turtleneck, was all ropes and tendons. “I don’t know.” He looked up at me and smiled suddenly, as if we shared a conspiracy. “It could be like that writer fellow, eh, Melanie? It could be like that.”

  Nina looked down at the hands on her lap. They were clenched and the well-manicured fingers were white at the tips.

  The Mind Vampires. That’s what the writer was going to call his book.

  I sometimes wonder if he really would have written anything. What was his name? Something Russian.

  Willi and I received telegrams from Nina: COME QUICKLY YOU ARE NEEDED. That was enough. I was on the next morning’s flight to New York. The plane was a noisy, propeller-driven Constellation, and I spent much of the flight assuring the overly solicitous stewardess that I needed nothing, that, indeed, I felt fine. She obviously had decided that I was someone’s grandmother, who was flying for the first time.

  Willi managed to arrive twenty minutes before I. Nina was distraught and as close to hysteria as I had ever seen her. She had been at a party in lower Manhattan two days before—she was not so distraught that she forgot to tell us what important names had been there—when she found herself sharing a corner, a fondue pot, and confidences with a young writer. Or rather, the writer was sharing confidences. Nina described him as a scruffy sort, with a wispy little beard, thick glasses, a corduroy sport coat worn over an old plaid shirt—one of the type invariably sprinkled around successful parties of that era, according to Nina. She knew enough not to call him a beatnik, for that term had just become passé, but no one had yet heard the term hippie, and it wouldn’t have applied to him anyway. He was a writer of the sort that barely ekes out a living, these days at least, by selling blood and doing novelizations of television series. Alexander something
.

  His idea for a book—he told Nina that he had been working on it for some time—was that many of the murders then being committed were actually the result of a small group of psychic killers, he called them mind vampires, who used others to carry out their grisly deeds.

  He said that a paperback publisher had already shown interest in his outline and would offer him a contract tomorrow if he would change the title to The Zombie Factor and put in more sex.

  “So what?” Willi had said to Nina in disgust. “You have me fly across the continent for this? I might buy the idea myself.”

  That turned out to be the excuse we used to interrogate this Alexander somebody during an impromptu party given by Nina the next evening. I did not attend. The party was not overly successful, according to Nina, but it gave Willi the chance to have a long chat with the young, would-be novelist. In the writer’s almost pitiable eagerness to do business with Bill Borden, producer of Paris Memories, Three on a Swing, and at least two other completely forgettable Technicolor features touring the drive-ins that summer, he revealed that the book consisted of a well-worn outline and a dozen pages of notes.

  He was sure, however, that he could do a treatment for Mr. Borden in five weeks, perhaps even as fast as three weeks if he were flown out to Hollywood to get the proper creative stimulation.

  Later that evening we discussed the possibility of Willi simply buying an option on the treatment, but Willi was short on cash at the time, and Nina was insistent. In the end the young writer opened his femoral artery with a Gillette blade and ran screaming into a narrow Greenwich Village side street to die. I don’t believe that anyone ever bothered to sort through the clutter and debris of his remaining notes.

  “It could be like that writer, ja, Melanie?” Willi patted my knee. I nodded. “He was mine,” continued Willi, “and Nina tried to take credit. Remember?”

  Again I nodded. Actually he had been neither Nina’s nor Willi’s. I had avoided the party so that I could make contact later without the young man noticing he was being followed. I did so easily. I remember sitting in an overheated little delicatessen across the street from the apartment building. It was over so quickly that there was almost no sense of Feeding. Then I was aware once again of the sputtering radiators and the smell of salami as people rushed to the door to see what the screaming was about. I remember finishing my tea slowly so that I did not have to leave before the ambulance was gone.

  “Nonsense,” said Nina. She busied herself with her little calculator. “How many points?” She looked at me. I looked at Willi.

  “Six,” he said with a shrug. Nina made a small show of totaling the numbers.

  “Thirty-eight,” she said and sighed theatrically. “You win again, Willi. Or rather, you beat me again. We must hear from Melanie. You’ve been so quiet. You must have some surprises for us.”

  “Yes,” said Willi, “it is your turn to win. It has been several years.”

  “None,” I said. I had expected an explosion of questions, but the silence was broken only by the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. Nina was looking away from me, at something hidden by the shadows in the corner.

  “None?” echoed Willi.

  “There was … one,” I said at last. “But it was by accident. I came across them robbing an old man behind … but it was completely by accident.”

  Willi was agitated. He stood up, walked to the window, turned an old straight-back chair around and straddled it, arms folded. “What does this mean?”

  “You’re quitting the Game?” Nina asked as she turned to look at me. I let the question serve as the answer.

  “Why?” snapped Willi. In his excitement it came out with a hard v.

  If I had been raised in an era when young ladies were allowed to shrug, I would have done so. As it was, I contented myself with running my fingers along an imaginary seam on my skirt. Willi had asked the question, but I stared straight into Nina’s eyes when I finally answered. “I’m tired. It’s been too long. I guess I’m getting old.”

  “You’ll get a lot older if you do not Hunt,” said Willi. His body, his voice, the red mask of his face, everything signaled great anger just kept in check. “My God, Melanie, you already look older! You look terrible. This is why we hunt, woman. Look at yourself in the mirror! Do you want to die an old woman just because you’re tired of using them? Willi stood and turned his back.

  “Nonsense!” Nina’s voice was strong, confident, in command once more. “Melanie’s tired, Willi. Be nice. We all have times like that. I remember how you were after the war. Like a whipped puppy. You wouldn’t even go outside your miserable little flat in Baden. Even after we helped you get to New Jersey you just sulked around feeling sorry for yourself. Melanie made up the Game to help you feel better. So quiet! Never tell a lady who feels tired and depressed that she looks terrible. Honestly, Willi, you’re such a Schwachsinniger sometimes. And a crashing boor to boot.”

  I had anticipated many reactions to my announcement, but this was the one I feared most. It meant that Nina had also tired of the Game. It meant that she was ready to move to another level of play.

  It had to mean that.

  “Thank you, Nina darling,” I said. “I knew you would understand.” She reached across and touched my knee reassuringly. Even through my wool skirt, I could feel the cold of her fingers.

  My guests would not stay the night. I implored. I remonstrated. I pointed out that their rooms were ready, that Mr. Thorne had already turned down the quilts.

  “Next time,” said Willi. “Next time, Melanie, my little love. We’ll make a weekend of it as we used to. A week!” Willi was in a much better mood since he had been paid his thousand-dollar prize by each of us. He had sulked, but I had insisted. It soothed his ego when Mr. Thorne brought in a check already made out to WILLIAM D. BORDEN.

  Again I asked him to stay, but he protested that he had a midnight flight to Chicago. He had to see a prizewinning author about a screenplay. Then he was hugging me good-bye, his companions were in the hall behind me, and I had a brief moment of terror.

  But they left. The blond young man showed his white smile, and the Negro bobbed his head in what I took as a farewell. Then we were alone.

  Nina and I were alone.

  Not quite alone. Miss Kramer was standing next to Nina at the end of the hall. Mr. Thorne was out of sight behind the swinging door to the kitchen. I left him there.

  Miss Kramer took three steps forward. I felt my breath stop for an instant. Mr. Thorne put his hand on the swinging door. Then the husky little brunette opened the door to the hall closet, removed Nina’s coat, and stepped back to help her into it.

  “Are you sure you won’t stay?”

  “No, thank you, darling. I’ve promised Barrett that we would drive to Hilton Head tonight.”

  “But it’s late—”

  “We have reservations. Thank you anyway, Melanie. I will be in touch.”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean it, dear. We must talk. I understand exactly how you feel, but you have to remember that the Game is still important to Willi. We’ll have to find a way to end it without hurting his feelings. Perhaps we could visit him next spring in Karinhall or whatever he calls that gloomy old Bavarian place of his. A trip to the Continent would do wonders for you, dear.”

  “Yes.”

  “I will be in touch. After this deal with the new store is settled. We need to spend some time together, Melanie … just the two of us … like old times.” Her lips kissed the air next to my cheek. She held my forearms tightly. “Good-bye, darling.”

  “Good-bye, Nina.”

  I carried the brandy glass to the kitchen. Mr. Thorne took it in silence.

  “Make sure the house is secure,” I said. He nodded and went to check the locks and alarm system. It was only nine forty-five, but I was very tired. Age, I thought. I went up the wide staircase, perhaps the finest feature of the house, and dressed for bed. It had begun to storm, and the sound of the cold
raindrops on the window carried a sad rhythm to it.

  Mr. Thorne looked in as I was brushing my hair and wishing it were longer. I turned to him. He reached into the pocket of his dark vest. When his hand emerged a slim blade flicked out. I nodded. He palmed the blade shut and closed the door behind him. I listened to his footsteps recede down the stairs to the chair in the front hall, where he would spend the night.

  I believe I dreamed of vampires that night. Or perhaps I was thinking about them just prior to falling asleep, and a fragment had stayed with me until morning. Of all mankind’s self-inflicted terrors, of all its pathetic little monsters, only the myth of the vampire had any vestige of dignity. Like the humans it feeds on, the vampire must respond to its own dark compulsions. But unlike its petty human prey, the vampire carries out its sordid means to the only possible ends that could justify such actions—the goal of literal immortality. There is a nobility there. And a sadness.

  Before sleeping I thought of that summer long ago in Vienna. I saw Willi young again—blond, flushed with youth, and filled with pride at escorting two such independent American ladies.

  I remembered Willi’s high, stiff collars and the short dresses that Nina helped to bring into style that summer. I remembered the friendly sounds of crowded Biergartens and the shadowy dance of leaves in front of gas lamps.

  I remembered the footsteps on wet cobblestones, the shouts, the distant whistles, and the silences.

  Willi was right; I had aged. The past year had taken a greater toll than the preceding decade. But I had not Fed. Despite the hunger, despite the aging reflection in the mirror, I had not Fed.

  I fell asleep trying to think of that writer’s last name. I fell asleep hungry.

  Morning. Bright sunlight through bare branches. It was one of those crystalline, warming winter days that make living in the South so much less depressing than merely surviving a Yankee winter. I had Mr. Thorne open the window a crack when he brought in my breakfast tray. As I sipped my coffee I could hear children playing in the courtyard. Once Mr. Thorne would have brought the morning paper with the tray, but I had long since learned that to read about the follies and scandals of the world was to desecrate the morning. I was growing less and less interested in the affairs of men. I had done without a newspaper, telephone, or television for twelve years and had suffered no ill effects unless one were to count a growing self-contentment as an ill thing. I smiled as I remembered Willi’s disappointment at not being able to play his videocassettes. He was such a child.