Voyage

by E M Gale

  I didn’t want to complete that thought.

  ‘Perhaps it’s related to not having the enhanced sensing state? That sounds plausible. Maybe I need to sleep and recover from the travel, and then I might be able to sense things properly. I mean, properly for a vampire. Shit, am I getting that used to the vampiric senses that I only feel awake if I have them?’

  I supposed I didn’t really need to ask questions I knew the answer to.

  I packed up to go. I had looked through the archives and had gotten everything I felt was useful. In addition to the current astropolitical situation, I had wanted to find out about vampires. They seemed to be known and considered part of the human race, which was nice. There was some reference to a U.N. ruling on the subject. It meant when, or if, I turned, my friends would be shocked, but the rest of the galaxy wouldn’t be.

  Wandering around both the human and xenobiology sections, I had found nothing else particularly useful about vampires. There was very little that was codified, mostly the same mish-mash I’d seen in the lurid vampire books I had bought two centuries earlier, along with tersely written sections about how uncooperative vampires were towards researchers. That make me chuckle; secrecy and subtlety both seemed to be expected traits for vampires.

  ‘When will I turn into a vampire? I seem to be at least partway to it. Will it hurt?’

  I gnawed on my right knuckle.

  It was all very good keeping things secret, but I wondered how people like me were supposed to know what to expect. And that got me thinking about titles of the sort of book I was looking for: ‘You and Your Undeath’, or ‘The Idiot’s Guide to Blood-Drinking’. It was all I could do to stifle a laugh.

  ‘I should be more concerned about this. I’m sure that most people would be. But then most people take life too seriously. At least something like turning into a vampire might make life more interesting. Nasty, brutish and short possibly, but more interesting.’

  I did find out one thing that was possibly useful: it was rumoured that the vampires had their own planet or deep-space base.

  Most of the time I’d spent looking at official forms; part of our problem would be that we had no identity here. There was no record of our existence on any computer, or if there was, it would be two hundred years out of date. I didn’t want to be experimented on for being a time traveller just as much as I didn’t want to be experimented on for being a vampire.

  For some reason that had something to do with Earth competing with her colonies, there seemed to be no major universities outside of Earth. There were private labs and a few travelling academics. They gave lectures to those who were interested and would pay for the pleasure, much like the first universities formed during the medieval period. Unfortunately, getting to Earth without money or ID would be tough. I had an idea about that though.

  I stretched my arms over my head and sighed.

  ‘Anyway, Clarke, it’s time to get moving if you’re not going to be late to meet the others.’

  I left the library with my new prized possession, the flatscreen eBook reader/PC notebook, rolled up in my bag: it was kinda cool the way the screen could be folded like that. It was filled with as much information as I could gather in an afternoon. As I walked back, the sun was still up, sending shafts of orange light straight down the streets. My lovely conical hat did nothing to keep the low sun out of my eyes, and my headache worsened the longer I spent out in the sun.

  ‘How long does a day take to end on this planet?’

  My guess so far was that it was about four Earth days to one Ragnarok IV day.

  I found my way to the ryokan easily, and the others were all there.

  “Hi, guys,” I said. “How’d it go?”

  The next thing I knew there was a blinding flash of light so bright it caused my ears to ring in addition to the pain in my eyes, then everything went black.

  “Ha ha! Clarke, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!” said Anna.

  “What the hell was that?” I demanded.

  “I just took your picture,” she said innocently.

  It was just as well she told me that, since I was literally blinded. My eyes burned, my headache had worsened to pain that crowded out my mind, and my vision had gone completely. It was excruciating, but I had to hide that or explain why my eyes were so sensitive. If I had been able to use my vampiric senses it would have been fine. I did try, mostly by instinct.

  ‘Nothing.’

  I gritted my teeth.

  “It’s like a Polaroid camera. See?” said Anna. I still couldn’t. But I could think through the pain now, and I realised that I had to hide my injury. I smiled at Anna–who knows how I managed it.

  I felt like screaming, but instead I said, “That’s nice,” as pleasantly as possible.

  “It’s not a great picture of you, see?”

  ‘If she thinks that’s funny…’

  “Just don’t take another one,” I growled, some of my emotions coming out in my tone.

  “Oh! Yeah, sure, Clarke,” said Anna, sounding put out.

  “Let’s go, guys,” said Rob. “There’s a nice-looking restaurant just over there.” Thank goodness that the restaurant was close.

  They started walking. I needed to stay with them, but not let them know I couldn’t see them. Luckily, Anna guided me by her voice.

  “Are you mad at me, Clarke?”

  ‘Too quiet, make it easy for me, Anna!’

  I didn’t answer: too much pain. I chewed on my lip to keep from yelling.

  “You’re mad, aren’t you, because I spent money on something silly like a camera, and, well, I tried to pawn my watch, but I couldn’t find a pawn shop, and Rob said that a camera was a good idea”–her panicked denial had guided me to the restaurant; I could smell food–“since we could prove where we’ve been with it and, well…” She trailed off.

  ‘Keep talking, Anna, help me out here.’

  “I’m not mad,” I said quickly, doing my best to ungrit my teeth as I did so. “Find me a seat and I’ll sit next to you.” An odd request perhaps, but she was happy enough to do so.

  “Sit here,” she said with a relieved smile in her voice. She scraped the chair on the floor and tapped the top which meant that I could find it and sit on it.

  I breathed out a breath I wasn’t aware I had been holding.

  Deciding to be magnanimous, I said, “I think the camera was a great idea. I’m just grouchy ’cos I’m hungry.”

  She brightened at this. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Sorry for snapping at you,” I added for good measure, accompanying it with a pain-filled grimace that I hoped would serve as a smile. She seemed less perturbed, and just then Rob distracted her with a question.

  I tried to reach the enhanced sensing state. I just barely managed. Stronger was the feeling of being connected to something deep within myself. It was like my body fell into that state naturally, and somehow I could concentrate that feeling on the pain in my eyes. I felt it lessen and I was able to see a dim shape of a menu on the table in front of me. The lessening of the pain emptied my mind enough to allow some panic in.

  ‘Have I permanently damaged my sight?’

  Breathing very slowly to keep the panic in check, I got up to go to the toilet.

  “Oh… I was about to order? What do you want?” asked Anna.

  “Uh…”

  ‘Meat, red meat,’ said my body.

  “Get me some of that raw beef stuff. Two portions.”

  “Uh… Sure. And sake?”

  ‘Why the hell not, it’s not like it can make anything worse.’ I nodded.

  I had enough sight to find my way to the toilets. Once there I tried to connect to whatever it was and concentrate on my eyes. The pain in my eyes lessened some more, but my vision was only about half as good as normal. It was like everything was really dark, but it hurt to look at areas with more light. It seemed that my eyes would heal. In fact, it seemed like I might be healing myself.

  ‘Can vampires do
that?’

  The panic subdued, I looked in the mirror. I looked OK.

  ‘Well, I look exhausted actually, not surprising since I feel it. It is like a tiredness that reaches down to my very bones, a strange weariness of spirit. I can’t heal myself any more, if that is what I was doing, and I think it’s the exhaustion that’s stopping me.’

  I stared at the mirror again, this time to check I still looked human. My eyes looked red and raw, but the effect was more consistent with tiredness than bloody with injury. Satisfied, and in much less pain, I washed my face and hands and re-joined my friends, all my attention focused on whether or not the camera was pointed at me.

  Since no one was playing with it, I confiscated it. It looked like a Polaroid camera: squareish with a flash unit on the top and a slot for the picture to come out. Just looking at the flash made me suppress a shudder.

  I rifled through the photos Anna had taken. There was a whole stack of them. I sighed. It would have been better to have saved the money for food. The others seemed to think that we would be heading back soon, in fact they were treating this whole thing like a holiday. I wondered if it had occurred to them that we might not ever get back. A belligerent part of me felt like interrupting their conversation to tell them, but I let it go.

  The material the photographs were made of was interesting. It was not film but the same thin computer-screen material that my electronic notepad was made of. Flicking through the photos, I noticed that there were lots of photos of aliens, which was not unsurprising really, but there was at least one portrait of each of us.

  ‘Nice one, Anna, just what I need.’

  I slipped them into my bag and returned the rest to where they had been on the table.

  The meal was spent with each of us describing what we had found out. I thought that I had spent the day the most fruitfully, but the others didn’t seem perturbed by their use of time.

  “Look, guys,” I said, once they were on their last round of tea, “I’m exhausted, I’ve really got to sleep.”

  “Yeah, you look like death warmed up,” said Jane with a smirk.

  ‘Thanks.’

  “You’re not ill, are you?” asked Anna, suddenly concerned, just when I didn’t want her to be.

  “No, no. Just really tired. Today’s taken it out of me.” As soon as I said that, I wished I had thought of something else. Letting her think I was ill was a bad idea–she’d start worrying about alien diseases and the like–but letting her think I was tired just reminded her of that morning.

  “Oh! Clarke, what if we can’t wake you up this time?”

  ‘Don’t stake me.’

  “Just wait, I’ll wake up when I’m ready.”

  ‘I hope. I can’t guarantee anything.’

  I said goodbye and turned to leave.

  “She’s so self-sufficient, isn’t she?” commented Mark.

  “Do you think she’ll be all right?” asked Anna, but I was out of the door. The sun still hung above the horizon and the golden-hour light hit me; the glare on my injured eyes was not pleasant nor conducive to me finding my way back.

  ‘Damn! I forgot about the sun.! I will hardly make a good vampire doing things like that!’

  The door to the restaurant banged open behind me.

  “Clarke!” yelled Anna. “Oh, there you are,” she continued more quietly when she realised I was only half a metre away from her.

  I smiled at her, truly grateful. “Hi.”

  “I’m going to walk you back. Now don’t protest or anything silly like that.” She looked determined. She even stuck her jaw out slightly. “You need help and I’ll help you. And don’t tell me off about walking you back and walking back on my own after dark, as I’ll be fine.”

  At that moment, I was more pleased to see her than I had been to see anyone.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I suspected that she was a bit surprised and then worried about my lack of argument, but she said nothing, even when I linked my arm through hers. I tipped my head down, so that the hat hid the fact that I had my eyes shut as I let her guide me back to the ryokan.

  It seemed that a traditional Japanese inn was a good place for shadows and dark corners, and it lacked lots of furniture to knock over. To save money, we had booked two rooms, one for the girls and one for the boys. Our room was decorated in the Japanese style, the floor covered in some sort of pale mats that creaked comfortingly as you walked across them in besocked feet, and the beds were rolled-out futons on the floor. Anna had been less than impressed with the lack of western-style beds, but it worked for me.

  “Clarke,” said Anna, once we’d arrived at our room. “You’re… you’re not going to die, are you?”

  ‘What is all this all of a sudden? Can she tell how awful I feel?’

  I waved at her to shut the door.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be the second to know,” I said with a smirk. Then I collapsed on the futon, fully dressed. “Just don’t stake me,” I mumbled.

  “What was that?” asked Anna. But the darkness had already risen up and it pulled me down into a deep, death-like sleep.

  * * *

  The Boundary Between Life and Death

  I had no awareness, then suddenly, like a laptop resuming, I was aware. I was lying on the mat-covered floor. I somehow knew that the sun was below the horizon at last. I opened my eyes. The room should have been dark, but I could see well–very well, actually–well enough for me to realise that my eyes were healed. I could see everything in the room as if it were a dull day outside instead of a moonless night. Twilight had come and gone. We were still within astronomical twilight, but the soft glow of the sun below the horizon was no problem for my eyes.

  I tried to sense beyond myself, to use my vampire senses, so to speak: it worked. I grinned. I was aware where Jane and Anna were in the room. I could smell their scents intermingling with the scent of the tea that had been brewed all day, every day: its making had added a bitter astringent smell to everything in the ryokan. I tried to concentrate on sensing what was beyond the room. I was aware of breathing bodies in the adjacent rooms, a cat outside in the courtyard, someone’s snores echoing down the wooden-beamed corridors.

  ‘Excellent.’

  I tried to go beyond the sensing state and into the connected state. I almost did; for a moment I felt as if I were face to face with the door that I had seen before–it was open–but the feeling vanished before I was able to comprehend what that might mean. No matter, I was feeling better. I figured another day’s sleep and I’d be OK.

  My friends were fast asleep and I wondered how much longer they would be out for.

  ‘Oh, well, I had better get to work.’

  The room had a small, low table pushed up against a wall with a cushion next to it. I realised that you sat on the cushion on the floor to use the table. Quietly, I fished the maps out of my bag, and spread them out on the table. By the starlight, the astronomical twilight, and the low-light lamps in the hallway I could easily read the maps.

  ‘I seem to have gained damn good night vision.’

  I sighed and checked my teeth. They were still blunt and I could hear my heartbeat.

  ‘What the hell am I? Am I turning? He said that wouldn’t happen until I died!’

  I threw my worries away from me and concentrated on the maps.

  ‘So… it’s been two hundred years since my experience with cities. What are the chances that the dodgy areas of the city are in the same place? Where would they be in the 1800’s? By the docks. The 2000’s? Where the docks used to be and round the back of train stations. I think I’m getting my answer.’

  I looked at the map; around the spaceport there was empty land, in a city a sure sign of dodginess, and industrial land use, another indicator. Plus, that was where all the people passing through the spaceport would be and who knew what dodgy deals they might be doing. For a final check I flicked through Anna’s tour guides. Neither mentioned anything worth seeing there. One said nothing
about the area, the other gave a warning for unwary tourists to keep away.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.’

  I rose silently to my feet and crept across the floor, not making a sound on the mats, and snuck out of the ryokan.

  ‘This is more like it.’

  I felt the excitement of being out after dark. The night was still humid, but cooler and it was pleasant to be out without a jacket. I’d left mine back at the inn. Since I had a strange sense of humour I’d left it on top of my bed, just about where I had been lying, as if I’d dissolved out of it.

  The city was not quiet. Given that the days were so long and humans had evolved to be diurnal to Earth’s rhythm people would naturally be up during part of the night on this world. I idly wondered if the people here lived on a twenty-six-hour cycle, the excuse for missing lectures so beloved by first-year students. The inn’s rooms were charged on a fourteen-hour basis so maybe it was something like that.

  The city was greatly improved by the addition of darkness. There was less to burn my eyes here, just the searingly bright neon signs that were scattered everywhere: unfortunately two hundred years of cultural progress had not eliminated the need for advertising. Towards the docks, the number of adverts decreased, and instead the neon signs attracted people into bars.

  ‘Now this is going to be difficult. How will I know which sort of bar to try? Or will there be a shop? Perhaps a market stall selling things of a slightly dubious legality?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I know how to find places like that in London, how hard can it be?’

  On the way I wanted to look at the spaceport, so I decided there was as good a place as any to start.

  ‘I’m after the dives that the people passing through hang out in. In the 2000’s, at least, the Japanese were big on law and order, respect, and obeying the rules. From what I’ve read in the library, the Solan Empire is big on that too, very big on rules and regulations, bureaucracy, jobsworths. And I have a knack for rubbing those sorts of people up the wrong way.’

  The spaceport looked how I’d imagined it: big and made of concrete.