The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

We do not recognize Count Dracula as a vampire in any other sense than the fictional: but we would never dream of denying the importance and influence of Stoker’s work and its dramatizations in shaping the modern vampire image. Although it should perhaps be remembered that Stoker had models: the first gentlemanly vampire seems to have been Polidori’s Lord Ruthven, who became the villain-hero of an opera by Marschner which had quite a vogue in the decades before Dracula; and there was also Prest’s (or Rymer’s) Varney the Vampire.

  VIII. HOW TO RECOGNIZE A VAMPIRE.

  Don’t worry about it. There probably hasn’t been any reliable way for millennia.

  In skeptical and “scientific” eras, people tend not to notice such things as fangs and lack of reflection or shadow, and maybe even to lock up the few individuals who do notice them, or confess to noticing them. In credulous and “superstitious” eras, people tend to see these signs a lot—more often than not, when they aren’t really there, or when there’s some other explanation for them.

  Living in an era of “scientific realism,” Clement Czarny wears traditional dracula uniform in order to stay “out of the closet”; but he is the first to admit that not everyone who wears the habit is necessarily a real vampire, that wearing it is entirely voluntary (some have accused him of quirkiness), and that the ability to recognize fellow vampires does not necessarily come along with being a vampire oneself.

  Vampires who can get access to the harmlessly tiny amount of human and moderate quantity of raw animal blood they need, and who live decently enough to be able to cope with holy things, can reside next door indefinitely without neighbors ever suspecting their vampirism. Why worry about it? Vampires who can keep out of trouble with holy symbols can be good friends. Czarny would recommend caution when dealing with anyone who wants to make a big private production out of taking a little blood from you—this could be some kind of perversion rather than a simple dietary need. But people on the whole have far less to worry about from vampires than from non-vampiric fellow humans of bad will.

  * * * *

  The last realizers/fanciers novel was begun very likely on May 19, 1987, only months before I met my husband-to-be. I continued work on it during the early years of our marriage, and was still at odd moments thinking of picking it up again almost until his vCJD showed up in 2004. His death late in 2005 stopped all my literary activity for several years; at last I resumed with a few short stories and then the Thomas Love Peacock-inspired novel Loon Lake Lodge. Shortly thereafter, my mother in her turn falling terminally ill, I re-imagined the R.S.A. world without fantasy-perceivers in an effort to find a niche in the commercial romance-novel world. It seems unlikely, at this septuagenarian stage of my life, that I should ever pen new stories in the old fanciers/realizers version of the world, and some of the ideas I had started developing in The Purgatory Club (also called, at various stages of its drafting, Hummingbird Hill and Company of Murderers) went into the first of my new-version R.S.A. romances, All But a Pleasure.

  Here is what I had managed to draft of my last realizers/fanciers novel. The name of the P.I. character went through as many changes as the title of the novel itself. He began as “Magnus Screwdriver,” which I meant as a simple play on “Mike Hammer.” When Mom pointed out the suggestive connotations of “Screwdriver,” I made him “Powersaw,” but never really much liked that. So now let it be “Hammersmith.” Otherwise, this retyping is as “uncorrected” as my auctorial compulsions allow it to remain.

  THE PURGATORY CLUB

  It started with an oldfashioned envelope letter waiting in Senior Sergeant Rosemary Lestrade’s deskbox one afternoon. The envelope was typed. The enclosure was handwritten in the kind of flowing, elegant script that meant either a calligraphy hobbyist or a fancier with plenty of time.

  * * * *

  Room 19 (“Willowview”)

  Hummingbird Hill Security Hotel

  /May 19,/ 2087

  {slash marks meant the date was subject to change}

  My very dear M. Lestrade,

  You will, I trust, remember me, though fifty-some months of other caseloads have flown over your head since our brief acquaintance. I feel sure that you will also remember M. Adrian Withycombe, whose case fell into your hands a mere nineteen months ago. Dear Senior Sergeant, M. Withycomb’s life is under threat by some unknown amongst us. Two attempts have been made already. Need I remind you, who offer up your sacrifices upon the altar of the Great Divinity Justice, that our sentences read ‘life,’ not ‘death’?

  Your most respectful servant,

  Talasia Smith Magadance

  * * * *

  “Did you get one of these, too?” Lestrade asked her junior sergeant.

  “You’re the favored child, Les. All I’ve gotten so far today was a couple of junkmail ads on the old homescreen this morning.”

  She shoved Magadance’s letter through the air to his hand and examined the envelope. It bore only her name and police station number. The typeface was old, probably done on a machine from the ’50s. There was no return address, nothing else on the outside except the tag “PRIVATE” and a first-class stamp with the city postmark rolled across the heroic image of Founding Reformer Sol Vondermeer. The envelope didn’t match the stationery, though it came close enough that the difference wasn’t obvious at first glance. Two different tradenames of utilitarian off-white. The envelope was a cheap brand. The letter, by its feel, was on fine quality. Talasia Magadance had probably perceived it as vellum.

  Like other high security prisons, Hummingbird Hill was closed-circuit, its computers on strict internal powerpac designed for incompatibility with any outside network. All ingoing telecommunications were monitored through both Police Central and the Hilton-Maracott Corporation’s city office. Personal and wireless phones were forbidden, replaced by oldfashioned room phones and a prison switchboard with a reach that stopped at the main guardhouse two hundred meters outside the wall. All regular mail in both directions was routinely censored. Visitors, when they came at all, met a maximum of one inmate at a time, in an ultra-max-security underground lounge, under restrictions and precautions tough enough to discourage visiting.

  Where it broke down was with the day employees. Any one of them could have carried Magadance’s letter out tucked like a bookmark between the pages of a codex reader, then stuck it in a more or less matching envelope, stamped and addressed it, and dropped it in any mailbox. For a bribe, or just as a kind-hearted favor. Hilton-Maracott didn’t want to lose its franchise, and the wall guards wouldn’t want to lose their jobs (private prisons paying so much better than state institutions for comparable but in a way lighter work), so weapons and true illegal substances almost never got in; but Hilton-Maracott also liked to keep its captive clientele as contented as possible, so personal letters, luxury items, supposed hallucinogens, and so on got “smuggled” in and out with the corporation’s secret wink. The day staff served as a well-tipped if officially unauthorized carrier service. So long as it carried nothing but harmless amenities, nobody much cared except Brother von Hofer and other hellfire stokers who still complained that prisons were supposed to punish evildoers, not just keep them out of society’s underwear.

  Or, today being Monday, one of the Sunday chaplains could have brought this letter out ...

  “Altar of Justice?” her partner said whimsically. “Yeah, I guess that might describe your religion all right, Les, but what do you call it for short? Justicity? Nemesity?”

  “Watch it, Dave. Privileged privacy.”

  “Be glad to show you my ‘In case of death or accident’ dogtag sometimes.” He waved the letter. “Well, shall I file this with the Magadance documents and tab a cross-ref into Withycombe’s computer file, or vice versa?”

  “Neither one. Not yet.” She held out her hand. “I want to keep it on my active mountain for a couple of days.”

  “You aren’t serious?”

&nb
sp; “Magadance could be serious. She signed her family name, and as I recall, she doesn’t much like it.”

  “Sh-hell, they’re all murderers in there!”

  “I’ve never been sure about Withycombe.” As Dave Click was one of the very few people who ought to be aware. “As for Magadance, she got what she deserved, but so did her victim.”

  “The point,” Click explained as if his senior had forgotten it, “is that nobody cares what they do to one another inside there.”

  The senior sergeant looked at him.

  “Except each other,” he qualified, handing her back the letter. “And Hilton-Maracott. So pass on a copy to the hotel floaters and let them worry about it.”

  Lestrade tapped the refolded letter on her forefinger a couple of times. “I wonder how willing Hilton-Maracott would be to finance an investigation. They don’t have that big a pool of potential security-hotel customers, but the ones they do draw aren’t likely to opt for any low-budget state pen instead, no matter what. On the other hand, if the fancy-class cons start trying to avoid one facility, or even request transfers out west or east where other corporations have the franchise ...”

  “Why isn’t Withycombe himself requesting a transfer?”

  “Maybe he is.” Lestrade put the letter back into its envelope. “Maybe it’s been turned down for some reason. Or hit a glitch in the channels. Maybe that’s something else that should be investigated.”

  “Whatever, we’ll just have to let it go to the privates. You know the guidelines about saving stresshour time for official business.”

  She sighed. “It might be a good wedge to reopen the Withycombe case.”

  “Look. Les.” There were rare moments when Dave Click let sincere concern for her creep into his voice. “The jury came back with ‘Guilty’ in twenty minutes, and Withycombe let his lawyers drop it after the mandatory one appeal, which was slapped together and quipped through the court faster than a Little Mac burger. He didn’t even write to you himself, and there isn’t anything to suggest that he put Magadance up to it. Let it rest. If he isn’t worrying about it, why should you? You want it on your record that closed cases and moonlighting forced you into another stress-leave from official homicide work?”

  With another sigh, she gave him the letter again “All right. File it with the Magadance records and put a cross-ref in Withycombe’s file. But make very sure that Hilton-Maracott gets a copy first. Make that three copies, one to the president, one to the manager, and one to the chairperson of the board.”

  * * * *

  Two days later, on their way out to answer a missing-child call, they were accosted on the station plaza by M. Magnum Hammersmith, P.I.

  It wasn’t the first time. Hammersmith—he didn’t have quite the blusterplum to register his final name as plain “Hammer”—had been hitting her off and on for the past year and a half or two years to go out with him. With, she guessed, the worst motive: to pump her for privileged information about some case or other.

  This morning he began, “Have you ever sampled the Wednesday evening menu at—”

  “I probably couldn’t afford it, Hammersmith—as if you could—and I’m too old for you anyway.”

  “Ah-so?” He grinned, patting his left temple with its silver hairs, a few of which might even have been natural. “Seeing that you brought it up, lovely lady, care to compare birth certificates sometime?”

  “I was too old for you by the time I graduated from third grade, M. Fancier.”

  “I’m not a—”

  “You are if you think I’m a ‘lovely lady.’ Or else you’re a sycophony. Speaking for myself, I’d rather be a fancier. Goodbye, M. Hammersmith.”

  At that point Click shoved in. “Hey, Sergeant, why not? You know the guidelines on midweek stress-breaking, and all we’ve got tomorrow morning is court at ten hundred hours. The menu, where were you going to say?” he went on to Hammersmith.

  “Aster’s.”

  Click whistled. “Well, I’ve been saving up. We could make it a foursome—”

  “We’ll make it a pair of twosomes,” Lestrade said firmly, “on opposite sides of town. All right, Hammersmith, once. Nineteen-thirty, meet at the restaurant, separate bills. I’ll let you make the reservation, but make it in both our names. Now run along and clock your own private stress-hours.”

  She wasn’t sure how the P.I. took it because she strode on to the polcar without so much as a glance at his face. Once settled beside her in the driver’s seat, Click said in mock admiration, “Way to go, Old Woman! You’re really starting to limber down.”

  “Just drive, Young Man. We’ve got a missing child to find.”

  “Probably another premature panic.” The voicekey having lit up at his first sentence, he tabbed the ignition and glided the vehicle down the access ramp.

  “You’re a male, Dave. Should give you some insight into Hammersmith’s psychomystique. How likely is he to no-show on me?”

  “I’d say a whopping lot less likely than you are to no-show on him. Sound and flasher?”

  “No. And keep to the general speed limit.”

  “Thought you were in a hurry,” said the junior sergeant, who took every excuse she allowed him to drive at the privileged polcar speed, ten to twenty klicks faster, depending on driving conditions, than the general limit.

  “You shouldn’t have convinced me that it’s ‘probably another premature panic.’”

  He eased into a comfortable traffic slot between a green and gold Caddy and a reproduction Stanley Steamer.

  “If I decide to show up at Aster’s tonight,” Lestrade went on, “I suppose he’ll be after me twice as hard from now on.”

  “Even if you don’t show. You’ve hooked that poor floater for good and all, Les, leading him on with your come-hither charm. If you don’t show now, he’ll just think you’re playing it coy to sweeten the reeling in.”

  She sighed and regretted her moment of weakness. If she hadn’t been in more of a hurry than she’d admit to answer the missing-child call, and if her partner ... And as Sock Evans of Oshkosh used to say back in the 2050s, “If the word ‘if’ had a valid past tense, reality would change faster than a fancier could keep up with it.” Not quite fair to the fantasy-perceiving population, old Sock Evans, but who was, back in the ’50s?

  The missing child, a four-year-old girl whose family lived in an old gridwork suburb of regular blocks and straight though buckled and crumbling sidewalks flanked by century-old maples, had hiked sixty meters to the neighborhood park and crawled into a playcave. A length of two-meter high, steel-reinforced conduit pipe partially sunk in the ground, then mounded over with turf and left open at both ends. Here she had apparently fallen asleep and missed her father’s shouts to come in for her midmorning fruit bar and milk. Father and neighbors had “scoured” the park, but without thinking to push back the already tall growth of wildflora and check the playcave.

  The incipient young fancier came out chattering happily about Brightflame the Cavewoman, some new kids’ screenshow heroine, a junvenile enthusiasm that ought to have alerted her father. All the other neighborhood kids were already spending their weekdays in school or kindergarten, and the area seemed to have an adult population almost entirely composed of reality perceivers. Another kid, or an intelligent fancier, would have checked the playcave before tabbing a premature panic and leaving the discovery to an aging police spinster not entirely out of touch with her own recollections of childhood.

  But while a grown-up still had to be missing at least 24 hours before the police could step in, a child under twelve had to be missing only half an hour. A carryover from eras when childsnatching was epidemic, but still not a bad guideline. In winter, for instance, the kid might have frozen in her playcave.

  Of course, if she really had fallen asleep like she said, she had probably awakened at the searchers’ shouts, and decide
d in her four-year-old brain that it was good fun to stay hidden. Investigating and maybe disciplining this angle was up to the parents, but Lestrade invested five minutes in the role of Kindly Aunt Polly trying to impress on Angelic Toddler that there were times when playing hide-and-seek was stupid and mean. For example, when you hadn’t told anybody else it was a game of hide-and-seek. The child nodded solemnly, and the senior sergeant left feeling, for once, that policework wasn’t quite so bad.

  That was why Police Central, learning a few shreds of wisdom after decades of experiments with overspecialization, had finally laid it down that as many officers as possible should have as varied a workload as available. It was an effort to keep morale up by hopefully getting every polly a share of light, happy-ending cases. Click called it a waste of police intelligence to send sergeants on an errand that a patroller and a secretarial volunteer could have handled just as well. But not even the station’s new volunteer psychic, who was a fairly good guesser as espersensitives went, could predict which calls would have quick and happy endings. It was still a policy of percentages and chance.

  Lestrade felt cheerful enough at finding the toddler alive and well that she decided, What the heckle-and-jeckle, why not keep her date with Hammersmith? If he tried to pump her like a sucker for privileged police information, they’d test whether she couldn’t pump him back about his private caseload.

  Once off duty for the day, she went home, washed her hair, and dug out the costume that a dozen years ago Angel Fleming had let her keep as part of talking her into playing one of the supernumeraries in a local semipro revival of Star Trek: The Opera. A simple ankle-length sheath, pearly gray, with metallic mesh sleeves to the wrist. Out of 25 percent realsilk—Fleming didn’t believe in squeezing dollars. Without the Romulan make-up, it ought to work well enough for tonight. Current fashions were for realizers. Fanciers rarely got interested in any fashion until it was old enough for nostalgia, and even then their perceptional mode was usually sufficient to overhaul their wardrobes. Basic fancy-class clothing fashions hadn’t changed within Lestrade’s memory, at least to the perception of realizers; and Aster’s catered mainly to the Fancy Class. The old Romulan costume was close enough to the typical fancy-class evening gown, and better fabric than anything Lestrade would have been willing to afford new for a single date. Which was as well, because by the time she had found it and steamed out the wrinkles that even quality realsilk-shanmere blends acquired after more than a decade in a tight packing case, buying something would probably have been quicker. Lacking formal slippers, she put on a reasonably new pair of Italian braided real-leather beach sandals and hoped that anyone with the perceptional ability to notice would think them accessories for an Ancient Times personal world. She had to take them off and go stocking-foot while driving.