by James Kahn
She went through the papers in the briefcase, but most of it was technically above her. She put the I.D. card in her pocket. She meditated for five minutes. She knew that if she simply acted as if she belonged wherever she went, she was unlikely to be challenged too strenuously. She was encouraged by how smoothly everything had gone thus far. She breathed deeply. She got up, walked out the door, turned right: up, toward the castle.
She crossed over the bridge nearest the castle, spanning the river just before it plunged below ground, seemingly to run under the building itself. When she got to the western gate leading into the main body of the fortress, she flashed her I.D. card disinterestedly at the guard; and he let her pass.
There was a knock on the door. Renfield opened it with a decorum suitable to his place of seniority among the servants. On the doorstep stood a noble Vampire.
“Your pleasure, Sire?” said Renfield.
“Your master is Sire Bal?” asked Lon of the servant.
“Yes, Sire,” Renfield replied.
“Is he at home?” Lon went on.
“He is.” The servant was polite, but protective.
“Announce me, then. I am Sire Lon,” he said, and entered the foyer.
Renfield left the room to make the announcement, and a few moments later Bal appeared.
“Lon-Sire,” said Bal.
“It’s been a long time,” nodded Lon. They bared necks to each other.
“Come join me in my study,” Bal intoned, “and tell me how it is I am so honored.”
They walked through a bedroom into a book-lined den. Servants and concubines lounged everywhere, but cleared out of the room at a sign from Bal as he entered. Only Dicey remained, unconscious, pale as a white rose petal. Bal and Lon sat facing, the frail quiet body on the floor behind them.
“We parted in bad blood,” Bal began. “It is something I have always regretted.”
“There is an ebb and flow to these things,” Lon mused philosophically. “You seem to have prospered.”
“I abide,” Bal conceded. “I am well cared for. By my Queen.”
“Ah, the New Animal. Yes? It is word of this new creature that brings me here. I am curious. Possibly interested.”
Bal eyed his old companion with the barest hint of suspicion. When last they’d parted, some sixty years earlier, it was without malice; but without much fondness. “You are sincere?” Bal inquired.
“Quite,” said Lon “My harem has been thinned to nothing by disease, and I understand this New Animal may be able to help. I come to you first because I … trust your judgment.”
Lon knew his mark well. The incidental flattery tipped the scales.
“The ‘New Animal,’ as you call her, is Queen here,” Bal began. “But much more”
“What does she look like?” Lon wondered.
“I wouldn’t know. Few have ever seen her, except for a small circle of ANGELS—Associate Neuroman Genetic Engineers, Lords, Sages. It is said she’s rather horrible to gaze upon, though, almost deathlike in some way. And yet her voice is sweet, like a young girl’s. She is an aficionado of the musical classics, as well, I understand—another interest you share with her, if I recall your tastes correctly.”
Lon bowed his head graciously. Bal went on in a more serious tone. “It’s not what she looks like, though, of what her dispositions are—it’s what she says and does that keeps me here. She’s creating a new world order.”
“Oh?” suggested Lon.
“Yes. Humans are the mortar. She is beginning by eliminating the Human race except in its capacity to supply specially bred animals for experimentation—and of course to breed for Sire-harems and stables.”
“Of course.”
“Your own misfortune is immediately soluble here. Just join our ranks and the Queen will stock your home with as many Humans as you need—more, if you merit.”
“This begins to sound enticing. Tell me, though. What’s the nature of this new world of which your Queen speaks?”
“It is all spelled out in her statement here—” he held up the book lying open on the table—“The New World. Please, take my copy and read it.”
“Thank you, Bal-Sire, I will.” He took the tract, thumbed through it. Dicey stirred on the floor. Lon looked at her. “You won’t have that one much longer,” he said to Bal. “She has the waxen glow.”
Bal smiled fondly at the still body on the floor. “You may be right, Lon-Sire. She loves too much the tooth. One day she will goad me too far. After all …” he held out supplicant hands, “I’m only Vampire.”
Jasmine walked briskly down the narrow stone corridor. Window slits looked out one wall onto the courtyard below; the other wall was marked periodically by doors. She noted the numbers until she found—in the basement, after a fifteen-minute search through the most deserted halls she could find—the one she sought: B-347. Drago’s empty lab.
She tried the handle. Locked. She extracted a piece of twisted copper wire from her pocket—designed specifically for the occasion—and quickly picked the lock on the door. Catlike, she let herself in.
It was a small lab. Beakers, burners, flasks, and tubes sat patiently on the slate tables, awaiting Drago’s return from Ma’gas’. It suited Jasmine’s needs perfectly, being an empty, isolated base inside the enemy camp, in which she could pause and plot; from which she could venture forth; to which she could repair.
She began by searching the place. Fortune continued to walk with her here, and several potentially useful items were yielded in the process. First, a simple schematic map of the castle grounds turned up in a bottom drawer, labeling the main animal labs, the power plants, various administrative offices, conference rooms, cafeterias, central supply, even the Throne Room. On a desk beside the telephone was—not surprisingly—a thin phone book, listing the phone and room number of everyone in the castle. And from an instrument drawer near the sink, Jasmine helped herself to some scalpels, syringes, and other implements that she put in her pockets. Finally, she ascertained that the waste bin was, as before, a direct conduit down to the sewer system.
When she’d done all this, she sat down and studied the map for a half-hour. When she was confident she had it memorized, she put it in her tunic along with the phone book, and set out.
She walked back down the corridor by which she’d entered, found a stairway, and ascended one floor to the main level. Here she found herself jostled along one of the main thoroughfares of the castle. She moved with the flow until she saw some room numbers and signs that oriented her. Once she had her bearings she moved quickly, up one more flight and down two corridors—to the Human quarters.
Thus far, no one had challenged her: she looked, in dress and demeanor, like she belonged. Furthermore, no one had ever tried to infiltrate or otherwise sabotage the castle, she imagined; so she had aiding her her opponent’s hubris and lethargy. And so armed, she brazenly entered.
It appeared to be a prison. Barred cell after cell lined the walls, floor to high ceiling. Four Humans filled each cell. Some sat vacantly in corners, some stared through the bars in despair. They all looked near starvation. Beside the entrance two Neuromans sat playing cards. Three microcephalic Clones walked here and there, sweeping the floor, carrying food trays to the cages, emptying garbage into the large waste bin by the door.
Jasmine strode up to the front desk where the Neuromans sat. “Hello, maybe you can help me,” she said.
“I bet I can,” the first one leered slowly.
Jasmine decided to play to the oaf’s come-on. “I bet you can,” she replied, leaving much to the imagination. The Neuroman guards exchanged a look. Jasmine continued: “Listen, I’m new here, and I just started working for Drago, who’s in Ma’gas’ now, but he told me that when he got back he wanted the names of five or six Humans from up in the Monterey area. Something about testing their livers for acetylase because of certain soil conditions up there. So how do I go about finding Humans from Monterey?” She smiled hopefully at the Neuroman w
ith the leer.
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” he winked. “Follow me.” He stood and walked into an adjacent room, with Jasmine close behind him.
The room was filled with large file drawers along three walls, and a huge card catalog against the fourth.
The Neuroman opened a long card drawer and began sifting through it rapidly. “Monterey, Monterey, Monterey … here we are. Monterey. All the Humans from Monterey, followed by age, date of arrival and disposition. Have a look.”
She had a look. It amounted to eighty-five names during the past four months. Dicey and Ollie were not to be found. There were two Roses. One was sixty-two years old. The other had the right statistics, but the word DECON was stamped on the card in red.
“What’s DECON mean?” Jasmine asked.
“Final decontamination. That’s the last step before Nirvana. Only the Humans chosen for the Queen’s Experiment get shunted that way. This one here, let’s see …” he peered at Rose’s index card, “she got sent up days ago, so she won’t do you any good. Of course, no one really knows how long decontamination lasts …” Slyly, he put his hand on her bottom.
She slammed the card drawer closed, turned to face him. “You’ve been very helpful,” she said sweetly, “but there are just too many names here. I’ll have to ask Drago when he gets back …”
The guard fondled her without subtlety. She let herself be kissed. Then, as if reluctantly, she pushed him away. “Meet me tonight at 2200 hours. In Drago’s lab.” She ran out the door, a smirk briefly lighting her face as she thought of the mismatched rendezvous at 2200 hours.
She recalled the location of the Decontamination Lab from the map: third floor, center. Up she went, but at the door to the third floor corridors a sign was posted, stating NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION. She tried the door anyway. It was locked. People were constantly going up and down the stairwell, so neither could she stoop to pick the lock. She walked back downstairs.
She wandered around for an hour, looking for nothing in particular, learning nothing of use; until she came upon a small door in the west wing labeled DEPARTMENT OF SANITATION. She paused, thought a moment, and entered.
It was a small office, with what seemed to be another small office adjoining it, an open door between them. An officious clerk looked up immediately from behind his desk. “May I help you?” he offered without interest.
She caught his tone and returned it neatly. “I’d like to speak with your supervisor,” she replied. She was imperious.
It clearly took him off guard. “I—that is, he is out to lunch at the moment. On a job—that is, won’t be back until tomorrow. Perhaps I can …”
She shook her head. “I need to see the blueprints for the sewer system. For the whole city. There has been an accident in Drago’s lab.” She allowed a note of fear to shade her voice.
“An accident?” His ears pricked up.
“A spill,” Jasmine admitted. “Down the waste tube. Nothing … serious. But we need to know what structures are distal to the flow from Drago’s lab. Quickly.”
The clerk stood up. “But shouldn’t we notify—”
“We don’t want any panic, do you understand? If we can be rapid and discreet…”
He hesitated. Then: “Yes, yes, of course, I can show you the plans, they’re right here …” he said in some confusion, walking into the next room. Jasmine followed him. He pulled several pages of rolled-up documents from an open safe and spread them out on the table.
She scanned the prints briefly over his shoulder. It was even better than she’d hoped.
“Now,” the clerk went on, “your room number, work number, and city number …”
He was looking down at the desk. In one long, intricate second, Jasmine broke open the valve at the back of his head, pulled a big syringe out of her pocket, and rapidly pushed fifty cc’s of air into the dripping hole. He Instantly slumped forward. He was dead.
She picked him up and threw him down the waste bin. There were several seconds of silence, followed by a distant splash. Next, she rolled up the blueprints and stuffed them into her tunic. She closed the safe, wrote a note claiming illness and left it on the chief’s desk. That’s when the chief walked in.
He knew immediately something was wrong. “Who are you? Where’s Trout?”
Jasmine was cool. “He took ill, sir. He just asked me to—”
“Here, what are you doing in my office? What’ve you got there?”
“Just a note from Trout, sir …”
“Let me see that. The Devil. This isn’t Trout’s writing.” He picked up the phone. “Give me Security …”
Jasmine tore the cord from the wall and jumped him. They rolled on the floor, neither able to get an advantage, knocking over bric-a-brac as they struggled. She pulled up on his head from behind, but he broke the grip easily, since two of the fingers on that hand were still inoperative from her duel wound in Ma’gas’. Suddenly, somehow, he rolled over and got behind her, pinning her to the floor. He had the leverage: she couldn’t break free. With a wave of chill terror, she felt the Neuroman bureaucrat bring his mouth to the back of her head; felt his teeth crack open her valve; felt the warm, thick fluid run down the back of her neck.
She twisted and jerked and managed to wriggle one arm free, but he held tight. Minute by minute, her strength flowed out of the open spigot in her scalp. Reflexively, her nuclear heart pumped faster.
The supervisor began to yell for assistance. “Guard! Somebody!”
The image of his open mouth beside her suggested an idea. With her free arm, she reached into her tunic and withdrew one of the long-handled scalpels she’d found in Drago’s lab.
There was one significantly vulnerable part of a Neuroman’s anatomy: the soft palate. Its plastic malleability, so essential to ingestion and phonation, was necessarily less impervious to trauma than the rest of the Neuroman polymer covering. Furthermore, it was separated from the point at which the brain joined the spinal cord by a thin centimeter.
The next time the supervisor opened his mouth wide to yell, Jasmine plunged her blade back through his posterior pharynx as far as she could, severing his spine.
He fell back with a gurgle, the handle of the knife sticking straight out of his still open mouth. His eyes were wide, his nostrils flared. He lay on his back, unable to move anything below the neck.
Jasmine got up slowly, examined herself for damage. Nothing serious, except for a profound weakness. She locked the front door. She rolled the quadriplegic Neuroman onto his side, opened the valve at the back of his head, applied her syringe to it, and withdrew fifty cc’s of his Hemolube, Then she uncoupled the syringe, fitted it onto her own valve, and injected the oily liquid into herself. She repeated the process until she felt strong and full, then recapped her valve and put the syringe away.
“Sorry, Chief,” she said to the pale, oozing Neuroman on the floor, pulling the scalpel from his mouth and putting it back in her pocket. She carried his motionless body to the waste bin, and avoiding his staring eyes, threw it down the tube. Splash.
She righted the furniture, the signs of the struggle; cleaned herself up. Finally, she hoisted herself into the waste bin, closed the lid over her head, and began climbing down the rungs of the shaft.
Two hundred feet later, she reached bottom. The water was only about a foot deep, but the flow here was very fast, making it hard to stand without holding onto a wall. Slowly, Jasmine walked in the direction of the flow.
It was dark, but not entirely lightless. Approximately every fifty yards, a weak electric bulb hung from the ceiling to illuminate a few yards of tunnel in all directions. Jasmine waded to the nearest light and stopped to take her bearings.
It was like a maze. Tunnels crossed in and out from every direction, some straight, others curved; some running with water, others dry as stone; some fed by vertical shafts; some fifteen feet wide; some barely big enough to crawl through; some shadowy as bad dreams. Some black as death.
Near
the light bulb she stood under, a shaft angled up. Beside its bottom rung, a number was etched in the rock: P-116. She checked her map briefly, but under these conditions at least, was unable to find any corresponding designations. She refolded the prints and started to walk in the direction of the flow.
There were dozens of forks, side channels, offshoots, bends; and the flow of the rapid water followed them all. In general, Jasmine followed what she sensed to be the larger divisions, the deeper water. She stumbled once, and fell—over the dead body of one of the Neuromans she’d killed. Its time-frozen face bobbed above and below the surface, peering at her through the rushing water, its dense shadows thick with life’s other side. Jasmine returned the stare, momentarily arrested. She looked up beside the rung the body was snagged on: P-116. After an hour of walking, she’d only come full circle.
She refused to let herself panic. Once again, she walked with the flow.
She made different choices this time; in any case, she thought she did. A left turn where, before, a right. An ascending fork instead of a descending.
She came, after what time she could not say, to a rising turn in the maze that left the water to flow down an alternate path. She went up this dry stone walk a short distance, until it dead-ended at a vertical tube. The cul-de-sac glowed in the orange rays of a carbon filament bulb. And painted on the rock, just beside the entry to the shaft, were the words HEART STREET. Jasmine rolled down her pant legs, which she’d had up to keep dry, and began climbing the rung-ladder.
She reached the top in fifty steps, gingerly pushed up the lid, and looked around. It was a deserted street corner. She jumped out.
It seemed to be late afternoon. The container she’d just left was a public trash bin, located at the corner of HEART STREET and 5TH AVENUE. A Vampire turned the corner, leading several Humans on a leash, walked past Jasmine, and went into a nearby house. Two Neuromans came out of a bar across the street, laughing.