Dracula Unbound

by Brian W Aldiss

  “It’s only your and your father’s rationalism which seeks to deny the supernatural.” A verbal prod.

  Larry shook his head.

  “We live in a scientific age.”

  So the clock was stuck at cliché time. “Where there is no vision the people perish.” She had to stand by him, to try to induce vision into him—if not for Larry’s sake, then for her own. You could not live isolated; you had to do something for others. Otherwise she’d be as dead as he was. Poor Larry. Yes, it was already ‘poor Larry.’

  What did vampires think about most of the time? Maybe they didn’t think. But what did Larry think about, when you came down to it? Girlie magazines, screwing, Wild Turkey, and 12X Cheesecake (Fruits of Forest Flavor) to Be Stored at 0° F …

  “I mean,” he said, turning to her with an effort, “if you blot these bad things from your mind, they’ll go away, you see, hon? The way you can persuade yourself you’re not going to get a cold.”

  “Okay. What if the bad things won’t leave your mind? Maybe you should face them—turn and face them, not run from them. You say it’s a scientific age—the age of the gas chamber. Then be scientific and face the facts. Your mother tried to suck your blood, so you told me. And worse than that. Get you in a sexual embrace.”

  He wondered gloomily to himself if this was the way their marriage was going to go, with Kylie perpetually trying to get the edge on him. He could not find the strength to defy her this morning, when his head ached.

  He shuddered, pressing down a blob of ice cream in the glass so that the strawberry flavoring rushed up to the top.

  “Don’t remind me. To think my mother—”

  “We have to help her, Larry. If Joe was here he would approve of that.”

  “Right. It’s the curse of Clift’s grave,” he repeated, reaching out for her hand. “We’ll do something between us.”

  In a happier mood, they stared out across the street.

  A lumberyard stood next to the mortician. ENTERPRISE TIMBERS, proclaimed a large sign. WOOD CARVED TO YOUR REQUIREMENT. FENCES, STAKES.

  The bald mortician greeted them when at length they entered the funeral parlor. His hands were fluttery this morning, like doves seeking lodgment in his pale suit. When Kylie showed him a bouquet of flowers she had bought, the man merely nodded, without interest.

  “Your lamented mom is in a casket now. Unhappily, we had a little accident in here last night, overnight. Hooligans, a rough element … the Old John site attracts a number of undesirables from other states … they desecrated the establishment.”

  “What happened exactly?”

  The mortician blinked rapidly and the doves fluttered again. “A Lounge of Rest is not the proper place for necrophilia, sir.”

  “Convenient, though … May we take a final farewell of Mother?”

  He managed to smile and nod while seeming to shake his head. “We who as yet evade the Old Reaper … we gain spiritually from gazing on the countenances of those who have entered eternal peace …”

  He led the young couple into his inner sanctum where the air was dim and sacred and a plastic sign, designed to console the bereaved, said, SUNLIGHT NEVER CEASES. Kylie gripped Larry’s hand.

  The mortician untied a mauve ribbon and removed the lid of Mina’s casket with a flourish.

  Mina lay in the semidark, hands folded on chest. Her expression was severe, her mouth red. As the lid came off, her eyelids flickered. She opened her eyes and stared up at them.

  Then she spoke. Her voice was thick as if encrusted with mold.

  “Larry, I need you. I’m—not what you think … Come to me.”

  The little mortician ran for it. Larry stood fast, staring down at the distorted version of a face he had loved.

  “Mother, you’re dead. Don’t you know that? Dead.”

  “No, no—beyond death—something different. I hope for everlasting life. And for you if you come. And your daddy.” Her mouth worked, sticky and crimson. The words of promise were belied by her expression of overwhelming avidity.

  As he gazed down in revulsion, her hands grasped the side of the casket, white in her endeavor to lever herself up.

  “Not at that price, Mother.”

  Kylie had lost her head and was running after the mortician, yelling for a priest to come and administer last rites.

  Larry yelled too. “I’ll save Daddy from that fate!” He pulled out the timber stake he had been concealing under his sweatshirt.

  Bearing down with his own weight, he drove it between Mina’s ribs.

  Her cry was unearthly. She clawed at him in her last agonies as he sank toward her, forcing the stake down into her heart.

  At last she was still, and he backed away, his face bloody with lacerations.

  “You see,” he said aloud, “I can do it. I can do it.”

  He tucked his mother’s arms tenderly into the casket. Already her face was resuming the lineaments of the woman he had loved so desperately all his life.

  Sobs wracked him. “God bless you, Mom,” he said. His tears fell on her lined face.

  Walking unsteadily, he found Kylie weeping in the outer office.

  “They sell crucifixes, Larry. I’ll buy one and put it in the casket. Maybe you’d put it in for me.”

  “I did it. She’s at peace now. I dared to do it. It was the right thing, wasn’t it?”

  She put her arms round him.

  “You did just great. Now you’ll have to explain it to Joe when he returns—if he ever does.”

  11

  On arrival in this alien Tripoli, Joe Bodenland had fallen foul of his old enemy, depression. Once he was locked in the police cell, this mood fell away. His spirits always improved when faced with a new challenge.

  The cell was basic and only doubtfully clean. He could walk four paces one way and three the other. It had no window. In the passage beyond, however, a television screen burned. He could squint at it and see what was going on, although from his oblique angle the three-dimensional effect was distorted. From it he learned something of the desperate situation in which the Silent Empire found itself in this mortal year of 2599.

  He was trapped in a future blacker than he could have imagined. A large meteor, of a kind long anticipated by astronomers and others, had struck the Northern Hemisphere, destroying or throwing into anarchy the old civilizations of Europe and North America. Much dirt and dust had been ejected into the atmosphere, followed by smoke from extensive forest fires. The result had been a severe screening of sunlight, which brought about two years of inclement winter. In the prevailing darkness, the Fleet Ones had seen their chance. With the aid of the time train, they had come from past and future to the attack, and had prevailed over the disorganized nations of humanity.

  The Silent Empire was so called because it had no one to talk to. All other cultures in the Northern Hemisphere had gone under. Now it too was faced with extinction.

  All this Bodenland quickly gleaned, for the television channel broadcast nothing but political speeches—speeches made in the studio direct to the camera, or speeches made in the open, addressed to crowds of thousands of people. Speeches designed to whip up defiance for the Empire’s last stand.

  This was certainly enough to occupy Bodenland’s mind. His morale was high. He was unable to conquer the unreasonable hope that either he would be released or that the resourceful Stoker would come to his aid.

  However, the hours went by. Food and drink were passed in to him. He ate a hunk of bread, a sliver of goat cheese, and a slice of rotting pineapple.

  A warder marched along the passage and switched off the television. Joe was there for the night.

  By next morning, his mood was much more rebellious. He refused to look at or listen to the television. The cell was situated so that he had no contact with other prisoners. He paced as far as he was able until a warder came with a key, unlocked the door, and marched him down the passage to the check-in desk.

  A tall man in gray flowing robes stoo
d there, head enveloped in a dark-visored helmet. He beckoned to Bodenland.

  Bodenland looked from him to the warder.

  “Out you go,” said the warder, with a brisk gesture.

  “I’ve not been charged. What the devil was I brought in for?”

  The stranger tugged his sleeve and indicated the door.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Money buys much here, even freedom. Do you come or do you wish to remain in the prison?”

  “I see your point.” Without further ado, Joe followed the tall man out of the building. He did not look back.

  Once they were outside, he stopped.

  “Don’t think I’m not glad to be out of there, but who are you?”

  “Call me Ali, Mr. Bodenland. I represent an official body which welcomes foreigners here—as the Libyans do not. Why should they? These are the last days of the Silent Empire. But you do not have to spend them in a stinking cell. Now, I know a quiet shop nearby where we can have a drink.” The gray-clad man made him a bow.

  There has to be a trade-off, thought Bodenland. Someone’s setting me up.

  The quiet shop was at least shady. Entering from the hazy sunlight, Bodenland could see little, and removed his helmet and visor. Under a deep awning, the glassless coffee shop windows looked out on a grand square. The square was full of activity. Bodenland saw little of it, for his host led the way to a table in the darkest part of the rear room.

  As Ali seated himself, he clicked his fingers, and immediately two long-handled brass mugs of coffee were brought on a brass tray, together with two tots of water.

  “You care for something to eat?”

  “Thanks, no.”

  They both sat without words. Bodenland waited for the mysterious Ali to speak, alert for danger.

  “Libya is now being attacked. That is why the people are restless. Their time has come. It must have been like this in Byzantium before it finally collapsed after the long erosion. Some defiance, more resignation.”

  He was not touching his coffee and continued to wear his visor.

  “The human race will have had a short run for its money. The much-vaunted brain, the neocortex, proved not to be a winning number.”

  “You sound cheerful about it, Ali. Isn’t there a super-bomb the Libyans can use on their enemies?”

  “Ah, the F-bomb. Well … It’s well known that the Fleet Ones cannot invent. Their talents are not with technology.”

  “What are their talents? I’ve yet to learn.”

  “You will learn, I’m sure of that.” Said with a smile, though it was hardly visible in their dark corner. “As I was saying, their talents are not with technology. But when they seize on mankind’s destructive weapons, the Fleet Ones can copy them in their own factories and turn the weapons back on their own inventors. Their factories are invulnerable, situated as they are in the far future, where the sun grows dark.”

  Bodenland played idly with the strap of his helmet, which he had placed on the table.

  “And how can I help you in all this—this tale of defeat or triumph, depending on which side you look at it from?”

  “Let’s talk about the time train, Mr. Bodenland.”

  “Ah yes.” He brought the helmet up and over in a swing of the arm, crashing it down on the other’s head. At the same moment he was up and running. He had caught a flash of canines when Ali smiled.

  In the vicinity of the agricultural station, nothing moved. Nothing, that is, except young Spinks.

  Spinks was a muscular fellow in his early twenties. His healthy features denoted the outdoor life he led. He walked smartly up and down between the stationary time train and the wall of the enormous building. Bram Stoker sat in the shade of the building with his back to the wall, watching idly.

  “You carry yourself well, Spinks. Ever thought of joining the British Army?”

  “Me, sir? No, sir.”

  “A great pity that, a great pity. Now my father-in-law, James Balcombe, joined the army as a young man and made a good career of it. Would have made a full colonel but for a general who … Well, never mind that. He fought in the Crimean War and got a medal.”

  “My grandpa fought in the Crimean War, sir. He got a wooden leg.”

  Stoker was silent a moment.

  “Well, it’s the luck of the draw. I must say, Joe doesn’t seem to be having much luck. We’ve been hanging about here for a month of Sundays. Maybe I’d better go and see what he thinks he’s doing. On the other hand … Have we finished off that roast duck Mrs. Stoker packed?”

  “There’s a wing left, sir, and a slice of cucumber.”

  “Better save it, I suppose. Frugal it has to be.” He rose and stretched. “Could be the devils have us in a trap. Always fear the Un-Dead, who envy the living—as well they might. Ireland’s a pretty place, but not if you’re looking up at it from under the sod.”

  Continuing with his guard duty, Spinks said, “I don’t understand one thing. If the vampires can travel through time on this here train, how come they aren’t aware of what’s going on now? How come they don’t know we’re here?”

  Mopping his face, Stoker said, “It’s a little hot for such problems, Spinks. But you might consider this. There’s a devil of an amount of time—millions and millions of years of it, according to Mr. Bodenland, wrapping the Earth around—more time than even great intellects like yours and mine can grasp, never mind the dessicated soup that vampires have for brains. They’d have an impossible job to survey any particular minute, or year even.”

  “Supposing they happened to be passing in another train?”

  The ginger man shook his head. “That can’t happen. Our friend who’s traveling with us in his box—once no less than the driver of the train—told Joe that there was only one train, which is in our possession.” He considered. “Though I can’t understand why there should be only one.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you there, sir.”

  The conversation made them nervous. They agreed, however, that they could not be in a trap, since the vampires would not strike in broad daylight, being photophobic.

  The day, however, was becoming uncomfortably hot. They decided to retire into the agricultural station. It was cooler inside.

  “That’s better. How’re the stocks of lemonade and whiskey?”

  “Frugal it has to be, sir. Tell you what, take your mind off things, we could play a game of French cricket between us.”

  “Light’s a bit poor in here for cricket, Spinks … Oh, yes, come on, why not? Capital idea. I bags be Hampshire. Go and get the bat and ball out of the train, there’s a good feller.”

  The pollution was particularly thick outside the prime minister’s palace in Tripoli’s main square. All men in the crowd wore elaborate helmets to guard against the poisons, many of them draping their keffiyeh over the helmets. With the cunning of a pickpocket, Bodenland stole one of the scarves from a stall, and tied it round his own helmet, making himself less conspicuous.

  He seemed to have shaken Ali, though beyond doubt there would be other Un-Dead agents in the crowd, awaiting the final collapse of the Silent Empire.

  That time could be only days away at most.

  Many of the shops were shuttered. Some carried poignant messages of farewell. Families were leaving, with a few worldly possessions piled on handcarts or donkeys, seeking to escape an inevitable doom. Bodenland searched for a lawyer, or someone of standing who might answer questions, but it seemed as if the professional classes had already left Tripoli under cover of darkness. Over the many thousands of citizens who remained an intense excitement quivered, almost as if the end were invited and—now it was so near—desired. What is most feared is secretly loved.

  During the midday prayer, many prostrated themselves in the streets, facing toward a Mecca that had already been extinguished. Afterward the prime minister came out of the palace, to appear on behalf of the emperor.

  The prime minister was a tall, solemn man. The crowds call
ed his name and rushed forward, waving, to crush themselves at the barriers which prevented common people from approaching too close to the great building.

  He spoke from the steps of the palace, his amplified voice carrying round the square. Thousands listened, not all of them patiently.

  From a gate in the palace wall, a great black cube was emerging, draped in a Libyan flag. The cube was carried on a metal litter, wheeled, and supported by as many hands as could get near. It was brought out ceremoniously and placed in the square, where a flatbed truck waited.

  A loud cry went up at the sight of the black cube, a cry at once cheer and wail. For the prime minister was making it clear that the cube contained Libya’s superweapon, the F-bomb, the only one they had been able to manufacture.

  Now that the hour of judgment was upon them, the prime minister said, they knew not how to strike against the Silent Ones. The bomb was useless as a defensive weapon. However, he, on behalf of the emperor and his people, was not going to allow the F-bomb to fall into the hands of their enemies. Was this not correct?

  A great roar from the crowd gave him an affirmative answer.

  Very well, the weapon was about to be taken to the desert, and detonated a safe distance away. No one would be harmed.

  While the prime minister was speaking, a modest-sized metal suitcase painted red and green was brought out from the cube. Two men, moving it with care, strapped it on the waiting truck.

  And the prime minister said, “My people, let us pray for wisdom and the protection of Allah in this hour of grief.”

  Whereupon the whole assembly in the square fell upon their knees and touched heads to the ground. And a cry of supplication rose from them.

  Of all the thousands of people there, not one was looking. Bodenland jumped into the nearside of the cab of the truck and rammed a revolver at the head of the driver.

  “Drive on!” Bodenland ordered, looking as desperate as he felt.

  Eyes bulging, the man drove.

  “Faster,” said Bodenland.

  In a moment they were out of the square and heading out of town.