Yes, the 2020s had been a wild and lawless decade. Because, as Professor Stivison explained it very clearly in her course, Introduction to the Socio-Economic History of the Twenty-first Century, the premature attempt by the new Reformed Federal Government to do away with all pocket coins and currency had pushed the button on the explosive combination of high unemployment, rising inflation, and the visibly widening gap between Haves and Have-Nots. The Reformed Constitutional recognition of Fantasy-Perceivers’ Rights had nothing to do with it. The whole continent—fanciers and realizers alike—had gone crazy. Clement could remember some of the general craziness, even if Gary Wilson and, obviously, his grandfather could not.
And Lower California would have sunk even if the whole country had been sober and moral enough to please the Reverend Graham Flywell. The catastrophe might have struck the religious lunatic fringe as Yahweh’s judgment on the sins of the nation, but scientists had been warning people ever since the twentieth century that it was going to happen sooner or later. According to Professor Stivison, it wasn’t even the Quake that brought back normalcy as much as it was repeal of the Universal Creditline Amendment and the increase of well-paid service jobs.
Oh, yes, if Clement Batory Czarny ever sank his fangs into Gary Wilson, he’d feel it! ...
This time it was two hours after midnight when Clement came back, damp with perspiration even though the outside temperature had fallen to three degrees below zero Celsius.
Aunt Cele was waiting up for him in the kitchen, sipping coffee and playing Marchpane vs. Clouseau against herself on Trivy’s old tabletop gamescreen.
“Finish your blood,” she told him wearily, pouring it from the serving jug he had left almost full. “Raw duck’s blood is hard enough to get these days for any reason. We couldn’t warm it again, but Trivy contributed three more drops from her own thumb before she went to bed.”
He was blessed in having an aunt he could always trust to set real blood before him, not try to give him something else, tell him it was blood, and looked surprised when he, a registered fantasy perceiver, recognized the difference.
“Thanks, Aunt Cele.” He hung his cape by the door, removed his wet shoes, sat down across the table from her, and picked up his cup. “I’m sorry if I spoiled Christmas for all of you.”
“Well, I’m glad it didn’t happen earlier in the day.” Switching off the gamescreen, she pushed it to one side and took her cup in both hands. “There’s something about Gary that maybe we should have told you earlier. He’s from what my grandparents would have called a badly broken home. Not just lack of any kind of formal marriage ceremony. Something that seems to have had real hate in it.
“Apparently,” she went on, “his mother and father had a joint procreational permit, were living together off and on all through the thirties. I gather the relationship slid farther downhill every time they got together. Batting Gary back and forth between them, giving him the brunt of it when they were living together and shuttling him off to one set of grandparents or the other when they were separated.
“Finally last summer Gary’s father accused his mother of having cheated on the permit before Gary was born, back a year or so before the Quake. He even threatened, in Gary’s hearing, to start proceedings, have the boy declared illegitimate. It must have been very messy. Gary’s mother packed up and left, giving no forwarding address. His father is off somewhere, maybe looking for her and maybe not. Gary’s father’s parents have refused to have anything more to do with their grandson, leaving the maternal grandparents to take care of him.”
Clement said, “I could guess from some of the things he said what kind of people they are.”
“Try not to judge people too quickly, Clement. It isn’t the best way to get them to accept you. I’ve met the Wilsons, and the grandmother is a very good woman. Unfortunately, she had to be rushed to the hospital day before yesterday. Some kind of sudden hemorrhage. Gary’s grandfather is spending most of his time at the hospital to be near her, but they felt it’d be better for the boy to have Christmas with somebody at home. That’s why Trivy is trying so hard to make him feel like one of the family.”
“A hemorrhage,” Clement repeated. “That may mean blood transfusions. Couldn’t you have found a better home for him to spend Christmas in than one with a vampire in the family? You knew I’d be coming this afternoon.”
“What we couldn’t know was that Gary would turn out to be able to see you as a vampire. He’s so intent on being a reality perceiver. So determined not to disappoint the part of his own family that still accepts him. I gather the old man is bitterly disappointed in his daughter, Gary’s mother ... That whole situation seems to have aggravated the way he blames ‘fancy-class immorality’ for—”
“I know. I heard that message very clearly.”
“I think they may even have had some idea that you’d be a kind of litmus test for Gary’s reality perception.”
“If so, he seems to have flunked it,” Clement remarked rather bitterly.
“Trivy’s been trying to coach him for the Test. Not that anyone can really coach anyone else, but they’re still at an age where they think anything’s possible. That’s why she had him in the igloo tonight, Clemmie—Clement.”
“Lord, you don’t think that bothers me, do you? You don’t think I stamped away that second time out of some kind of sibling jealousy? The igloo is Trivy’s. She can share it any time with any chum or surrogate brother she wants. It was the things he said about me! ‘Evil,’ ‘Satanic’ ...”
“Well, everyone and everything is evil and ‘Satanic’ to somebody else, somewhere in the world,” Aunt Cele replied. “That’s the way it’s always been and probably always will be. Trivy stuck up for you, I hope?”
“Oh, yes. In her own inimitable way. Aunt Cele, what on earth is so disgraceful about being a registered fantasy perceiver? In some of the best circles, it’s considered prestigious!”
“Why ... You’re proud of the fact that you could have registered as a realizer, aren’t you? Of your ninety-plus reality perception?”
“Yes, but I chose to register as a fantasy perceiver nevertheless.”
She asked delicately, as if she were blowing the insides out of a raw egg to have the shell for Eastercraft, “I thought you did that to make it easier for people to accept you.”
“Yes, and it doesn’t seem to have worked with people like Gary and Grandfather Wilson, does it?”
“I’d hoped,” said Aunt Cele, “that you’d be able to understand his feelings. How desperately he wants his reality perception score.”
About to make another sharp retort, Clement looked again at his favorite aunt, saw the weariness in her plump face, the “laugh lines” looking sorrowful at the corners of her eyes and mouth, the gray hairs striping through the chestnut brown.
“Well,” he said, “for your sake, Aunt Cele, and the family’s, and the spirit of the season, I will try.”
He got up, kissed her lightly on the forehead, and left the kitchen, taking the rest of the blood with him.
They had put Gary up on the living-room couch. As Clement passed on the way to his own room, the same guest bedroom he always used, he heard the boy stir.
He froze. But Gary Wilson had only turned in his sleep. In the cool glow of the tree lights, Clement gazed a moment at the youth, who looked as innocent as any other slumbering person ... Was that why Clement so relished being a night person? Because so much of the hemisphere’s population was sleeping and innocent then?
He began to turn away, stopped, and turned back. What was that, peeping out from beneath young Wilson’s pillow? The end of…a sharpened stake?
No! Surely not! Not here, not beneath the roof of his hosts, the vampire’s own family ... Surely the tip of a thin flashlight ... or perhaps a crucifix for self-defense ... or—Clement smiled, remembering the season—a hidden candy cane? He started bendin
g closer in an effort to make sure, but Wilson stirred again and, thinking how such a person would react on awakening to find a vampire looming overhead, Clement retreated.
In his own room, he sat in bed finishing his blood and reading textbooks until 04:30 when, yawning after all the hard walking he had done earlier, he tabbed off the reading light in the clock-radio and soon fell asleep.
* * * *
Toward morning he found himself in a long dream where Trivy’s igloo was a large, melting gingerbread palace. As he wandered from chamber to chamber, a spire or stalactite broke from the ceiling and fell, smacking him in the chest. There was a crunching sound, a dull pressure to his sternum, and a noise—grunt or cry or soft exclamation—from somewhere above. And sobbing somewhere in the distance.
He opened his eyes. He was lying on his back, looking up into Gary Wilson’s face. In one hand Wilson held Aunt Cele’s meat-tenderizing mallet, in the other what was left of a breadstick. The upper end of the breadstick lay in crumbs over his hand and Clement’s pajama shirt. The end of the lower half rested on Clement’s sternum. Harmlessly, but ...
The sobbing was actually Trivy giggling as she peeked through the partly open door.
“The joke’s on you, Gary Wilson Wilson!” she chirped out, coming into the room. “It’s a breadstick!”
“It’s a wooden stake! I brought it from home! Why did it—”
“Because it’s a breadstick!” She jumped to the bedside, picked up one of the larger crumbs, put it into her mouth, and crunched. “I pulled the switch on you last night and you never even knew the difference! Fancier, fan—”
“I hate you! You idiot! I hate you!” Dropping the mallet and what remained of the breadstick, young Wilson fled from the room.
“If there’s any hating to be done here ...” Clement began, sitting up and rubbing his chest where the mallet had landed in its fall. “God! That brat tried to kill me!”
* * * *
Someday it might become a family joke—”Remember the Christmas Tivoli’s friend tried to stake Clement with a breadstick?” For now, after the initial round of laughter, Aunt Cele at least took it seriously.
“He’ll get a good talking-to,” she promised Clement. “We’ll make sure he understands.”
“If it hadn’t been for Trivy, he might have succeeded!”
“He was doing what he thought was right. You knew you might be running risks when you make up your mind to live openly as a dracula, Clement.”
“But I’ve got him now! Attempted murder! Does he still want to be a realizer?” Under the circumstances, a fantasy perceiver might conceivably get off with a much lighter sentence, if it ever came to trial ...
“Yes, he does,” said Aunt Cele. “You see what he risked in order to do what he thought was right. Clement! You say he called you evil and Satanic. Prove to him you aren’t. Don’t report this.”
“I…can’t promise that. Not yet. He tried to murder me, after all! I’ll have to think about it, Aunt Cele. For now, that’s all I can promise you.”
* * * *
He thought about it for a month, and decided to make his final decision after they saw how Gary Wilson Tested out.
The last Tuesday of January was a bright, clear day. Clement made a phone call to Aunt Cele and learned that Grandmother Wilson was home from the hospital but still weak, and Grandfather Wilson was staying with her while Uncle Jan and Trivy took Gary to the Testing Station. His Test was scheduled for 14:00.
Clement hopped a fast needletrain and arrived about 14:30. He spent almost an hour on a park bench across the street from the Testing Station. Young Wilson emerged at 15:20, Trivy on one side of him and Uncle Jan on the other. From the lively way they were talking, Clement guessed that Gary Wilson had made it where he’d wanted—into the reality-perceiving majority.
Clement stood up and waved. Wilson stopped dead until Trivy nudged him forward. Very reluctantly, seeing that Trivy was holding Uncle Jan back at the same time, the boy finally crossed the street alone. He stopped at a safe distance from the vampire.
“Congratulations,” Clement began. “I saw by your face that you passed.”
“Ninety-one percent. How can you stand it out here in the sunlight?”
“Sunlight doesn’t bother me except a little at noon on the solstices and equinoxes. I’m nocturnal in the sense that most people are diurnal—my natural rhythms put me at my sharpest and strongest during the night hours—but that doesn’t mean I can’t get around as well by day as other people do at night.”
“Oh,” said Gary.
“Garlic doesn’t bother me, either. Not as a seasoning. In fact, I enjoy it. The blossoms give me a touch of hay fever. You can also forget about crosses, if that’s what you’re looking for in your pockets. The ancient Egyptian loop-headed cross makes me a little queasy. Otherwise, no problem. In fact, I’m a churchgoer.”
“Oh,” Gary repeated, taking his hands out of his pockets.
“You’d be surprised how much is just old gossips’ tales. At least, as it applies or doesn’t apply to us in general. It may vary from individual to individual.”
“Oh. Look, thank you for not saying anything about ... you know ...”
“I could still say something, you know. In fact, if I’d been in the Testing room with you, chances are you wouldn’t have passed.”
“Yeah. I know. I’m ... Look, thanks again. I’m real sorry.”
Clement swept one edge of his cape up across his chest. “Thank Trivy. ‘Sorry’ wouldn’t mean much to any of us if I’d been killed. As far as Standard Reality is concerned, we vampires are just fancy-class people. Murdering one of us would land you in as much trouble as murdering anybody else.”
“I know, I know ...” Gary’s tone hinted at the lectures he must already have endured. “Look, what do you want? A million tridollars in blackmail?”
At least he hadn’t mentioned blood. Relenting a little, Clement shook his head. “Just a promise. Never to attack anyone for no other reason than being a vampire. And if you ever do meet one of us who happens to be wicked—there are probably some wicked vampires, just as there are wicked human beings—don’t try to handle the problem yourself. Report it to the authorities.”
“Lotta good that’d do. They don’t see vampires. They’re reality perceivers.”
“M. Wilson, ‘wickedness’ means committing crimes any realizer can see. And a few of the authorities might even be secret one-hundred-and-one-percent realizer. No matter what the Standard Test says.” Dropping his cape, Clement took off his glove and extended his hand. “Here. Promise and shake on it.”
“That’s it? That’s really all you want?”
“That’s it. That’s really all I want.”
Young Wilson grinned, stepped forward, and shook hands. “Right! One hundred and one percent.”
* * * *
“A Cold Stake” being the one Clement Czarny story that would require more than cosmetic retouching to translate into the fanciers-free R.S.A., I incorporated a somewhat more grown-up and deadly version of Gary Wilson’s story in The Deathguards.
This next story, however, though written well before I ever conceived re-imagining the R.S.A., fits so well into either world, that for a time I seriously considered using it as one chapter in The Deathguards.
THE TITLE ROLE
Readers may need a bit of greasepaint in their own blood to appreciate this one.
The stage must be in my blood, he thought wryly, stomping in by the back door. I’ve got the temperament, anyway.
Carol and Jebby were already at the backstage lightboard. They caught sight of him and called out a greeting. He called back, “Hi,” waved, and hurried on, pretending not to hear the pep talk Carol was adding.
Too bad I don’t have the talent to go with the temperament.
He slunk into the men’s dressing ro
om, snapped back hellos to the guys already there—Gerry, Ted, and Winsor—and threw himself into his chair. He got up again to put his cape on a hanger very carefully, take his cross and shirt off and gentle them away in his locker, and put on his make-up wraparound.
What kind of pretentiousness was it to have three-night runs here, anyway? So what if they could fill the house up three nights in a row? That was just because they had an “intimate” little theater. A single performance—even if they gave it in the gym—and that should be it, finis.
Falling back into his chair, he looked up at the poster he had gumtacked over his section of mirror. One of the posters for this production. Drawn by Holly Sendak, who had also done the sets. Holly was really going to earn her final name in this workline. The poster had just one fault. Even if it didn’t give any of the players by name, it very obviously featured his own face as the title character. He had had enough sidewalk portraits made to know what he looked like.
He reached out and tore the poster off the mirror, slowly at first, then accelerando-ing until the action drew him up onto his feet again.
“Hey!” said Gerry. “What’s wrong, Count?”
“Nothing.” Clement tried to keep his voice light. “Not a bloody thing.” To his surprise, the lie didn’t seem to make his earring pinch any tighter.
“The reviews, eh?” said Winsor.
The vampire stifled his impulse to say, Yeah, it’s the reviews. That might have sounded like jealousy, seeing that Winsor’s Dr. Van Helsing had gotten near-rave reviews. So had Gerry’s John Harker. So had Ted Appledore’s Renfield.
It might have been jealousy, not just sounded like it. Maybe even something worse. They were so good that Clement had caught himself wondering if Gerry might really mean Harker’s venomous dialogue about sending the “Thing” to burning Hell, or if he and Winsor might have gotten carried away far enough in method acting to drive the stake through for real in the last scene ... which was why he was just as glad that, the way they were staging it, he never actually got into that coffin until right after the final curtain came down and they got ready for their curtain calls.
The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK Page 119
