The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Yes, this last time, after Solly’s death. I didn’t after Tony’s, but when it happened again this year ... They’re very sympathetic. They point out that my reaction is perfectly natural, agree that it certainly is one ... ‘H-blank’ of a coincidence, and recommend a private investigator. The Campus Police are very sympathetic, too, and they recommend an excellent emotional therapist. You understand their viewpoint. There isn’t a byte of hard evidence, only coincidence.”

  “Quite an impressive chain of coincidences, though,” Cagey added, as our visitor made another long pause. “Besides both of them being New Millennium undergrads and serious boyfriends of M. Greenhill’s, M. Solomon Barghoothi Goldfein was a member of the Pi Rho fraternity and M. Anthony T. Tallpines was pledged to the same house. And another Pi Rho ... M. Greenhill, tell them about M. Czarny.”

  April Greenhill looked at us with troubled eyes. “I ... sort of hate to, Lieutenant Thursday. It probably doesn’t mean anything, and if it doesn’t, I’m doing him such an injustice I can’t stand to think about it. What I told you was in strictest confidence.”

  “No doubt about it,” said Arlie, “M. Czarny is obviously guilty as the devil.” His back was to me, but I thought I heard a wink in his tone. “You see, M. Greenhill,” he added soberly, “by keeping it from us at this point, you make it sound much worse for him than it probably is.”

  “You can take it from Arlie, M. Greenhill,” Cagey assured her. “He speaks as one of my former suspects.”

  The very young woman sighed and looked down at the carpet. “You see, Clement Czarny is a dracula ...”

  “Another one?” Arlie prompted her gently. “There was quite a plague of them back in the Twenties. And I understood that was a revival of a minor Reform Era fad, when Fantasy Perceivers’ Rights first came in. I never saw one of them who wouldn’t turn green if given a glass of real blood.”

  “That’s the difference,” M. Greenhill explained in a very soft voice. “If you give Clement a glass of real blood, he drinks it down without blinking. I’ve seen him do it. But he doesn’t drink human blood,” she added hastily. “It’s animal blood, with a few drops mixed in from somebody’s thumb, and no more than that, and he always asks for it, very politely. I don’t want you to think…that is, I think Clement is my friend, and I can’t imagine him hurting anybody. It’s just that ... Well, he is a Pi Rho, and there are some very strange stories ... If any NMU fraternity ever gets smacked for cruel and unusual hazing, it’ll be the Purple Rose. And Tony had just been pledged the evening before his accident, and ... nobody but Pi Rhos seem to have seen him between when they took him into their fraternity house and when his body was found in that wreck out in the woods between their hunting cabin and the town.”

  “But Solly ...” I asked, “... that is, M. Goldfein? had already been a Pi Rho?”

  April nodded. “Since his frosh year. And he was best friends with Clement. But…there’s one more thing. Clement’s always been completely brotherly to me, just a good, hearty friend, I think ‘platonic’ is the word…but whenever ... Clement is always there, ready to let me cry on his shoulder. Haven’t I heard or read somewhere that that’s a favorite male trick—or maybe I should say waiting game—when they want to finally get a girl? Just play it brotherly until she runs out of other boyfriends?”

  Arlie looked around as if suddenly comprehending that he was the only male in a roomful of women. “If you’re asking me ... it might be another mating dance of the human species, yes. Sounds like a pretty good one, for folks with plenty of patience. I can’t see why it should be limited to the male, though.”

  “The point is,” said Cagey, “it can give somebody with plenty of patience but not quite enough self-confidence the motive to rub out a rival who it looks like the loved one might not eventually break up with. Or should that be, “with whom”? Ouch!”

  “That was the last one,” Arlie told her.

  “Good.”

  “In that knee. Now for the other knee.”

  Cagey rolled up her eyes. “Mandy, can you give me another refill on that coffee and brandy?”

  II

  (Hodag Crossing)

  Dead leaves skittered over the sidewalk like frightened things in front of Clement’s feet. Also behind him. It wasn’t him that scared them, it was the same wind that flapped his cloak. One of those mixed-up winds that kept changing directions, sometimes at his back, sometimes in his face. A cold wind, too, but he didn’t much care.

  He was on his way to Dr. Fairchild’s. Unlike most of the profs, who had their own university community on the northwest edge of campus, the Pi Rho faculty father chose to live in the oldest part of town, the part that had been a typical central Wisconsin village of the late twentieth century, with a population of a few hundred and a business district of half a dozen taverns, before the university came in two kilometers to the southwest.

  The taverns were still there, buffed up just enough to let moderns taste the oldtime atmosphere without the oldtime dangers and discomforts. Clement wondered if alcohol had actually tasted better back in the nights when cold fronts came right through the ridiculously bad insulation, thundering decibels of raw acid rock deadened people’s ears, and there was always that nagging consciousness that the whole building could go up in a blaze at any time. If Professor Stivison was right in her theory that it wasn’t so much reaction to the 2020s and the much-praised increase in the average level of sense and sobriety that had cut down on the per capita alcohol consumption, as it was simply cutting down on the oldtime dangers and discomforts.

  There was also the element of fantasy perceivers being able to taste any beverage as alcoholic, when they were in the mood for it, and even get psychosomatically—not physiologically—drunk on the same fruit juice and soda water their reality-perceiving companions swallowed with no intoxicating effects whatever. Barkeepers didn’t have to stock so much booze anymore, especially when they could charge registered fanciers as much for fruit juice as if it really were a cocktail, and nobody lodged any complaints about it. The age factor aside, Clement Czarny could probably not have gotten a real alcoholic drink wherever he tried to order one.

  Being a reality perceiver registered as a fantasy perceiver had turned out to give Clement the worst of both worlds, not the best. One more bright hope gone rancid. Minor, beside this latest thing ... Solly. Solly! It seemed downright ... something or other ... sinful? to go back to brooding about the gnatty little details of life after what happened last Saturday. Not even a week ago.

  No, not sinful, or both his ear and his ring finger would be burning. Not sinful yet, anyway. But he’d better watch it. That was the worst thing about being a vampire. Other people could afford to commit venial sins nonstop without it crippling them for everyday living. They could think vile thoughts, make up murderous fantasies, even be hypocritical. He could get away with almost nothing. Even now his ear was starting to itch around the white gold stud.

  The front part of Dr. Fairchild’s house was dark. Clement walked around to the back, leaves crunching under his feet on the old flagstone walk. The house was more than fifty years old and built on the lake front. It must have been a rich family’s retreat in the overtaxed final decades of the old, unreformed government.

  As he had hoped, there was still light in Dr. Fairchild’s study, which had originally been the living room. Clement mounted the sundeck and looked in through the glass. Yes, Dr. Fairchild was still awake, sitting at his desk with his back to the fireplace. A professor emeritus of mathematics, Dr. Fairchild liked to “dabble” at Noncomputer Mathematical Art. He usually had one or two exhibits a year in various university buildings on campus.

  Clement tapped on the glass. Dr. Fairchild looked up, smiled, rose, and let him in.

  “Batory, lad!” The faculty father was very old-nation about using everyone’s family name. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”

  Clem
ent took a deep breath. “Dr. Fairchild, I have to leave the house.”

  “What? Desert the fraternity that—”

  “No, no, Pater, not the fraternity! Never the Purple Rose! I just have to get out of the house. At least for the rest of the semester. Patch out somewhere else. It’s too full of Solly.”

  “I ... see,” said the older man. “Yes, Barghoothi was your roommate, wasn’t he?”

  “And he’s everywhere. I can’t sleep in our room without seeing ...”

  Dr. Fairchild suggested kindly, “Have you thought that when Gordon moves in on Sunday—”

  “I’m afraid that’ll make it worse. I mean ... I know Jack Gordon Concord is a good man, Pater, but he won’t be Solly. It won’t even be fair to Jack for me to stay.”

  “Have you considered swapping rooms, then? Maybe moving in with Fletcher or Drinkwater?”

  Clement shook his head. “It wouldn’t work. I’ve already tried sleeping in other fellows’ rooms, even down in the basement.” He smiled wryly. “I’ve even thought about trying to get a coffin full of earth. But the whole house is too full of Solly.”

  “Yes. Yes, it would be. Well, Batory, have you asked yourself why you’re trying so desperately to forget him?”

  “I’m not—”

  “Why should you want to forget your friend? Why not cherish his memory? Have you considered that someday you may find it a very good thing, a comfort, even an inspiration still to see him all around you?”

  “Yes, Pater Fairchild, I know that. Only ... not yet. It’s still too fresh. I’m not ready for it yet. I can’t—”

  “I see. You want to remember, but not yet. You don’t want to look at the memories until they’re comfortable to look at. You want to remember, but not until you can feel safely detached from the memory.”

  Clement sat on the edge of the old sleeper chair and stared at the holographic fire. Dr. Fairchild had stopped speaking. It was a way he had of demanding a response, some kind of response that showed his words were sinking in. “You make it sound as if ... But I don’t think it’s as simple as all that, sir.” The young man answered slowly, looking for words and trying at the same time to string them together so that they sounded like a stronger argument. “I want to remember Solly the way he was, the good things. Right now, with it still so fresh, seeing him everywhere just brings back the way he died.”

  “And you want to forget that. Yes.” The old faculty father crossed the room to sit on the couch facing his fraternity son. “Well, Batory, it appears that you aren’t much different from other people when it comes to things like this.”

  “I’ve never wanted to be much different from other people in things that matter,” Clement began. Right away his earring started burning. All right, he told it silently, closing his eyes, what was wrong with that statement? You let me get away with white lies when it’s to spare other people’s feelings. Before the ring on his finger started pinching, too, he added aloud, “That is, I guess everybody likes to feel unique in some ways, a little…better than the crowd. But I don’t think I’ve ever really, seriously—”

  “That’s my point, Batory.” The professor leaned forward. “I thought you were a little better stuff than the general run of humankind.”

  “A little different, sir. I don’t think very many people would call it better.” There. At least that seemed to satisfy the personal lie detectors he made himself wear all the time.

  “I expected great things of you, Batory. I’ll be very sorry to be disappointed.”

  “I’m sorry too, sir. But whatever my personal…gifts might be, I don’t see what it has to do with—”

  “Wanting to turn your back on the way your friend died? Suppose he had been murdered? Would you still want to turn your back on that? Just walk away from it, remembering only the things you might choose to remember about his life—the nice, neat, tidy, pleasant things—and leave his murderer to go scot free?”

  “Murdered? Murdered, sir? What made you say—”

  “I didn’t say he was. I said, suppose he was. Death is the punctuation mark of life, Batory, and if a soul departs this world with the dash of an interrupted life, isn’t it up to anyone who thirsts for justice—especially to that soul’s friends—to make cosmic sense out of the interruption by balancing the scales?”

  Oh, no. Dr. Fairchild was going to use this whole incident to ... Clement had been afraid this might happen. So much so that he had considered just leaving the house and letting somebody else report it to the faculty father. But that kind of rulebreaking could really have gotten him kicked out of the Purple Rose. “I don’t know, Pater,” he said. “I don’t know where justice ends and vengeance begins. All I know is that I’ve been taught that trying to get even is a sin, and whenever I try to get even, I pay for it. No matter how bad whatever it was the other party did to me.”

  “The line, Batory, is very simple. Vengeance is what you do to right wrongs done to yourself, justice is what you do to right wrongs done to someone else.”

  The vampire sighed. It wasn’t the first time he had been over this same ground. With Dr. Fairchild, with his philosophy professors and catechism teachers, with padres and madres in and out of Reconciliation ... “I know the theory, Pater. I just don’t know how to draw the line in my own actions. If ... If Solly had been ... murdered, and I tried to get vengeance, would I be doing it purely out of a sense of justice for his sake, or partly because losing him hurt me and made me want to get my own personal revenge? I ... If it were somebody I’d never known, or somebody I didn’t like, I might be able to go out for justice. But somebody like Solly, or even Tony Tallpines ... I…guess I would just have to walk away and leave the killer to be picked up by somebody else.”

  “Or even to get away scot free?”

  Clement nodded heavily. “Or even that, I guess.”

  Dr. Fairchild snorted. “It strikes me as a very cheap and lazy religion, Batory, that puts personal comfort above social justice and calls it ‘conscience.’ In order to go on being able to wear your silver crosses and genuflect to your altars, you’d simply turn your back on the murderers of your best friend.”

  The analytical part of Clement’s brain noticed dully that “murderer,” singular, had turned into “murderers,” plural, immediately saw that since Dr. Fairchild was speaking hypothetically it hardly mattered, and shelved it. He thought about pointing out that they lived in a society where catching murderers was work for police, not vigilantes. By now he was getting angry, because Solly was dead and the faculty father of Solly’s own fraternity was sitting here making hypothetical arguments out of it. The earring wasn’t hurting yet, but it would be if the vampire didn’t swallow his anger and go on giving his superior all due respect. So all he said was, “Please, Dr. Fairchild, I’m in too much emotional strain to talk about this right now. Can you give me a while to think about it?”

  “How long a while?”

  Clement shrugged helplessly.

  “But you still want to move out of the Pi Rho house while you’re taking this ‘while’ to ponder?”

  Clement nodded.

  “You understand that if you quit residence, you’ll have to be tacked on at the end of the waiting list and wait your turn to move back in.”

  “Yes, sir. There are seven names on the list right now, not counting Jack Gordon. I figure that by the time my name comes to the top, I should be ready for it.”

  “Ready for it. Ready for what? Ready to see Barghoothi’s ghost again? Aren’t you afraid to see him scorning you, even accusing you, for forgetting his death?” Dr. Fairchild was probably talking literally. He showed obvious pride in how well he understood how fantasy perceivers’ brains worked. Too bad he didn’t understand very much. For example, he seemed to think that fantasy perception automatically included seeing ghosts. He even seemed to have forgotten that the Pi Rho vampire was only legally a fantasy perce
iver.

  “I’ll take that chance,” Clement replied. Actually, if he had been seeing Solly’s ghost, not just Solly’s things and his own memories, he might have wanted to stick inside that house like Ramon Mendoza y Mendoza, still there as a grad working on a post-doctorate.

  “You’re a junior now. There’s a chance your name won’t float to the top before graduation. You may never have bedroom space in the house again.”

  “I’ll take that chance, too, Pater.”

  The faculty father sighed. “Tell me, Batory, have you seriously considered the alternative plan I gave you for coping with pain and death?”

  “The ‘Lest We Forget’ program, sir? I’ve looked at it.”

  “How deeply?”

  Clement would have liked to say, Very deeply. To imply he had studied everything that there was to study in the computer chip. But his jewelry would never have let him get away with that kind of lying. “The first couple of levels, sir. They looked to me a little—I’m sorry, sir—shallow.”

  Dr. Fairchild heaved a heavy sigh. “Yes, I suppose Levels One and Two are a little shallow. A little too much geared to the common denominator. I should have told you to start with Level Four or Five, maybe even Six.”

  “Yes, Pater.” Ha! The earring let him get away with that one, anyway. If Dr. Fairchild wanted to interpret it as “Yes, I’ll do it” instead of “Yes, maybe you should have told me,” that was Dr. Fairchild’s problem.

  “But you still want to leave the Pi Rho house for a while, maybe forever, even before you have another look at ‘Lest We Forget’?”

  “Yes, sir. Tonight. But not forever. Just not to bed there.”

  “Tonight? And go where?”

  “I’ve ... uh…been scouting around town a little already,” Clement confessed.

  “I see. Well!” Shaking his silver head, Dr. Fairchild stood up and went over to the framed Warhol print that didn’t so much hide his wall safe as decorate it. Swinging the picture back, he gave the lock his thumbprint. When it gave him back the green light, he opened the safe, took out a long, thin jewelry case, flipped the lid back, and selected one piece, which he brought over and dangled for Clement to look at.