by E M Gale
I nodded.
“Well”–and here Jane fidgeted and scanned the room before continuing–“I was hoping you could get me some cheap ones.”
“We’re on a smuggling ship, Jane, why can’t you get them yourself?”
“It’s a smuggling ship in disguise, that’s the point. We’re… traders, right? No one will admit to having any.”
‘Oh? Maybe they don’t. And if so, I ought to keep Jane from finding out. If she does, the captain will learn that I know that this is a UESF ship. And I don’t want him to know that I know that before I figure out what he’s up to.’
“Well… I still can’t see why you’re asking me,” I said.
She looked annoyed. “I want you to find me some from your contacts.” Now everyone at the table was staring at me.
“What are you talking about, Jane?”
‘My contacts? I have no contacts. Maybe the vampires might be nice to me as I am one of them, but why would they have cigarettes? I’ve stopped smoking completely. I tried one, and the odour clung to me until I took two showers. Every time I moved my head a cloud of smoke smell would come off me. It’s better than the garlic, but still bad. And oddly, far worse if I smoke than if I’m around others who do.’
“Well, you’re… y’know…” She waved her hand. I narrowed my eyes.
‘Does she know I am a vampire?’
“What?” I asked, trying not to sound fearful.
‘How will my friends react if they find out?’
“A bit dodgy,” she said.
“Eh?”
“Um… I bet you know a few… less-than-law-abiding people.”
“Me? I’m not dodgy! Or a crook!”
The others were looking at me.
“Well,” said Cleckley, “you did know an orcish forger.”
“And there were the IDs,” said Mark. “I still don’t know how you got those, or the money for them, now that we mention it.”
‘Great, now Cleckley knows we have fake IDs. Nice one, Mark.’
Mark was eyeing me with a cop’s suspicion.
‘Before long he’ll be asking irrelevant questions and taking notes in a small flip-topped pad.’
“Plus,” said Jane, “you usually smoke dodgy import cigarettes.”
‘That was back in the twenty-first century.’
They were all nodding. Except Rob, who was just glancing at me then looking away and frowning to himself.
“Goddamn it, guys! Just what are you accusing me of?”
Jane rolled her eyes and tapped her fingers on the table irritably. I thought the nicotine withdrawal was getting to her. All her fingernails had been bitten to the quick.
“OK, Clarke, whatever. I’ll put it in a way you’ll understand better–”
“You know, you’re quite rude for someone asking for a favour,” I said with a grin.
She shook her head. “If, by some chance, and in some way that is in no way illegal, or even slightly dodgy, you happen to find yourself in possession of a carton or two of cheap cigarettes, I would be willing to buy them off you.”
I chuckled.
“Huh. Well, whilst I find that whole situation very unlikely, roughly how much would you be willing to pay?”
She sighed. “Say fifteen hundred pelfre a carton.”
“How interesting.” I leaned back, then I smiled. “Of course, given that I don’t know any smugglers–other than the ones on this ship who seem not to have any–I’m not sure that I’ll be able to help you out. It’s unfortunate really. Oh, well.” I shrugged, then grinned at her.
“I know you can get them,” she muttered, looking at me from under her frown. I chuckled.
“Did you ask the crew for them?” asked Mark.
“Yes. Subtly.”
‘If you asked them as nicely as you asked me, I’m not surprised you didn’t get any. Despite the fact that this isn’t a smuggling ship, but a military vessel, I still expect to find cheap cigarettes on board. What do you think the marines smoke?’
The conversation moved on. They seemed to be discussing contraband around the Outer Edge. I could have educated them, but I saw no reason to do so.
Since no one was accusing me of anything at that moment, my untethered thoughts drifted off as I stared at my wine until I was thinking about a brand-new spaceship lost on its maiden voyage.
‘Can I warn him perhaps? Or kidnap him the day before, so he isn’t on the ship? Can I change the past now I know it?’
My friends spoke to each other. I was quiet. Rob joined in when they spoke to him, but he didn’t look at me and he didn’t converse with me.
‘Argh, this is too much. I hate the silent treatment. But I’m not going to talk to him while he’s like this. Especially since all I want to tell him is not to die and that would cause all sorts of confusion.’
“OK, guys, I’ve had enough of this.” Jane tapped her fingers on the table in a rapid rhythm as she spoke. “You two sort it out, it’s annoying me.” She was glaring from me to Rob.
I raised an eyebrow at her.
‘She’s being rather aggressive today. Withdrawal must be really hurting. Still, I don’t see what this has to do with her.’
“What?” said Rob, still avoiding my attempts to catch his eye.
“Just sort it out. Talk to each other.” Then she started picking at the chapped skin around what was left of her thumbnail.
‘Bloody Jane.’
Rob looked at me. I frowned at him.
“Clarke, are you angry with me?” asked Rob.
“Of course not, why would I be?” I asked, genuinely confused.
‘Can I get him to avoid his death? To somehow avoid that bloody spaceship? The article said that he built it for the UNSF, the forerunner of the UESF, and it went missing on its maiden voyage.’
“Uh… look, I know I shouldn’t raise it again–” He looked around at the others. Anna frowned at him, Mark looked ready to throw the table down and dive behind it, Cleckley was studiously ignoring him and Jane raised an eyebrow then impatiently tapped the table. He looked back at me. “But I, well, I was just worried. I knew pirates were attacking, and I thought you might be on duty–”
I wasn’t really listening to him.
‘Why did it go missing, was it a mistake? Or did Rob decide to try some crazy new experiment with the brand-new spaceship? That’s exactly the sort of thing he’d do. It is, after all, how we got here in the first place.’
“–I went to look for you and I couldn’t find you, I was worried you might be dead…” He trailed off and just looked at me pleadingly.
I nodded as if I had been listening to him instead of my own internal monologue.
“Rob, you know, I think you should be more careful with your experiments. You should check things before you do them. Be a little less happy-go-lucky and do a little more practical prototyping.”
‘Of course that’s unlikely.’
He nodded, but I don’t think he was listening to me.
“And I know, I know, it’s your life and you can choose to do whatever job you want, but…”
“Or maybe you should just stay away from spaceships,” I mused. “They are dangerous places to be. You should just stay on Earth.”
“Er, are you guys even listening to each other?” asked Mark, looking from Rob to me in confusion.
‘But will that work? How will I get him to stay away from the ship he builds on its maiden voyage? I can only manage it by getting him to drop science, so that he won’t build the ship. But I can never ask him to do that. Science is in his blood. I can’t just ask him to change job away from his calling to avoid a death in thirty years.’
“Don’t you see? I just don’t want you to get killed! I still think you should change jobs,” said Rob.
I realised that everyone was looking at me and I had no idea what he had just said.
‘How on Earth can I get him to stop doing science?’
He looked consternated.
‘If
I could somehow persuade him to drop science, then he wouldn’t die like that.’
I shook my head. “But I couldn’t ask you to change jobs,” I mumbled to myself.
‘So… thirty years then. It is too short.’
Rob nodded sadly. “I suppose.” His brow was furrowed and he was staring off into space.
I finished off my glass of wine. I stood up abruptly. “I’m off.” Rob was brooding and not looking at me. “See you guys tomorrow.”
“What? Where to?” said Anna, as I walked out of the bar.
“That was weird,” remarked Jane.
“What was she talking about?” asked Mark.
“Rob, were you actually listening to what Clarke was saying?” asked Anna.
‘OK, I guess that was abrupt, but hey, I only went there for a quick drink so Rob could get over himself and talk to me. That done, I need to talk to Price. Antigua Nuevo isn’t far away.’
Price was in his quarters. I knocked.
“Come in,” he said, so I slipped under the door.
“Hi,” he said, as I reformed.
He looked amused.
“So tell me.” I seated myself on the couch without waiting for him to offer. “What did you do to them?”
“To whom?” Wearing his trademark sardonic grin, he sat down beside me. The guy was very reserved; even though I was sitting an inch away from him, he didn’t reach out to touch me.
“Anna and Cleckley. You did something dodgy to get them to leave the bar.”
“Ah, I thought it might make it easier for you to leave if I did that.”
I nodded. It had been rather handy at the time. Nothing would give me away more as a vampire than people asking if I was one, and if I was very obviously spending the night with one, people might do just that. Or worse, they might ask if I was being turned into one.
“It did. But Cleckley came up and told me that you had agreed to his crazy experiments.”
He curled his lip up in a half-smile. “Yes, why did you agree to that? Most vampires are allergic to scientific curiosity.”
‘’Allergic to scientific curiosity’. I like that.’
“Well, obviously because I had no choice. I needed to find out what I was and what I could do. But I wanted someone there to… rescue me if it all went wrong.”
He laughed. “You wanted to find out what being staked would do to you, so you got someone to stake you! Direct and to the point, I suppose.”
‘Heh, literally!’
“There really wasn’t another way.” I frowned.
He shook his head, grinning again. I thought he was amused.
“You could have avoided wood.”
“Unsurprisingly, that would be ideal, but surely I don’t want to avoid something that can’t hurt me?”
He shrugged. “It’s generally a good idea to avoid any sort of weapon, but given your job, I presume that isn’t an option.” He still looked sardonic, but was no longer smiling. His eyes flashed with anger–it was like a hot spark in his black eyes–then he quenched it.
“So…” I thought about asking him about his antipathy towards soldiers, and then decided to change the subject instead. “Cleckley told me you had agreed, then he rushed off from the bar to set up something in his office. The next day he told me that you had never agreed.”
“I do hope that you didn’t draw his attention to that inconsistency.”
I made an exasperated noise.
“I was subtle. I dropped the subject as soon as I realised something was fishy. But what did you do to them?”
He looked at me with laughter in his eyes. “I hypnotised them, of course.”
“You what?”
“Hypnotised them.”
‘You can do that? Can I do that too?’
He shook his head. “My goodness, Clarke, you’ve been a Founder for two months now, why haven’t you explored your vampiric skills?”
I frowned at him.
‘I have! OK, I spent most my time learning how to stay alive, but I know all about blood-drinking–and vanishing, although I only learnt that by instinct–and experimental staking.’
“I can hypnotise?” I asked, stunned.
‘Was that what Mr. Does It Matter did to make me ring Anna and cancel on her?’
“Yes. It’s a good way to feed without causing a panic. You can hypnotise the victim to forget about it.”
‘’Feed’? ‘Victim’? I’m not sure that I like that sort of terminology. Of course, it doesn’t matter whether I like the words if it’s the correct usage.’
“Can you persuade someone to do something? Get them to tell someone something?”
He nodded.
“And can you wipe someone’s memories then, after the fact?”
‘Is that why I can’t remember everything about that night?’
He nodded again.
“And does it hurt them?”
Price shrugged. “Who knows.”
“You don’t care?” I asked incredulously.
‘Those are my friends you’ve been playing around with!’
“Well… not really.”
I leant back, feeling disgusted.
‘But then again, why would he care about my friends? Of course, I’m not sure I would even want to risk hurting complete strangers. He obviously has no such compunctions.’
I glared at him.
He laughed. “Really, you are so young, Flow! And you’re so very human about it.”
‘Eh?’
“Is that an insult?”
He nodded. “Founders are supposed to be more vampiric than normal vampires. They don’t tend to care about individual humans.”
‘Well, I don’t like the sound of that.’
“Some don’t even care about their individual vampires, or so I have heard.”
“How would you know? Stop playing the wise old teacher. You’d never met one ’til you met me, and I care. OK, it’s not a statistical sample, but going by all the Founders you and I have met, they do care!” I said hotly. He laughed even more at that. I stared at him open-mouthed.
‘He really is quite horrible.’
“Don’t worry though, I’m pretty sure hypnosis doesn’t do any harm. I think it’s similar to the mind-meld.”
‘Huh.’
“So you drank their blood as well?” I asked.
“Oh, no.”
‘Well… that’s good.’
But since I was curious I had to ask: “Why not?”
“I don’t need to. I’ve got you.”
‘Oh. Great.’
I glared. “Maybe I won’t let you drink my blood!”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.” He smiled in his superior manner.
“How often do you need to… drink blood?”
‘There’s no way I’m using the word ‘feed’. Yuk.’
“Ideally, once every two days.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“But I can enjoy it more often if I have the opportunity.”
‘Wow, I’m an opportunity. That makes me feel valued.’
“You hungry?” I asked.
He smiled, letting his teeth grow.
“That wasn’t an offer, you know.”
“Yes, it was,” he said, coming towards me.
‘On the one hand I did threaten to not let him. I don’t like the idea of anyone living off me. On the other hand… I do want him to, despite what I said. It annoys me that he knows that, but not enough to stop him.’
He grabbed me, aiming for my neck.
‘Why does he never kiss me?’
I dodged and bit him several times in the neck and shoulders, not to drink, just to bite. I ripped his shirt a bit in the process.
“Not nice,” he said.
I grinned.
He twisted me round and sank his teeth into my neck, drinking deeply. I could have stopped him if I had wanted, but I didn’t.
I noticed our reflections in the window in front of the stars, me, my head to the sid
e, being held up by him, drinking. It was weird. We looked like goth album cover art. I stared for a while, and tried to concentrate on hiding my knowledge of who my future self was from Price; I didn’t think he would be impressed.
“My turn.” I grinned at him wolfishly, threw him to the floor and bit at him, drinking deeply, for what felt like a hundred years. I wasn’t very nice. I finished and left him to heal himself.
He lay on the floor, I lay on top of him, raising myself up with my elbows. He was smiling an ironical smile, his shirt rumpled and torn.
‘Why does he drink my blood, but not sleep with me? Doesn’t he want to sleep with me?’
I put my hand out to touch his cheek, then paused.
‘Do I want to sleep with him?’
‘Feel better now, Flow?’ he asked.
‘Huh. Well… maybe.’
‘Got some of your aggression out?’
‘Sex isn’t the place for aggression.’
He laughed.
‘Did I hurt you?’
‘Only as much as you hurt yourself.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
We were both quiet for a moment, not really thinking anything, just existing.
Price put his hand up and stroked it down my cheek tenderly. I looked at him in fear.
‘What is he doing? Didn’t he just go from violent to gentle?’
‘Beautiful Florentina,’ he thought.
‘I don’t think so.’
He smiled. ‘You wouldn’t, I suppose.’
I looked deeply into his eyes. Even with a mind-meld there were still mysteries swimming in the depths.
‘You’re quite poetic, you know.’
‘Really?’
‘When you’re not swearing, of course.’
‘Huh. What motivates this guy? Leaving aside the question of whether I like him or not, does he like me?’
He laughed. I looked at him in confusion. “You only thought to ask that now?” he said out loud.
‘He wasn’t supposed to hear my last thought.’
“It didn’t occur to me before, but you really are… bizarre,” I said. We were talking, which was a little less intense than communicating telepathically–I guessed that was the correct term–but I could still feel him. I could feel the emotions flowing around our mixed blood within his body.
‘It’s comforting to stay in this state,’ he thought.
“I notice you’ve figured out how to block off some of your thoughts now,” he remarked.
