Empire of Fear

by Brian Stableford

  He was aware as he pushed himself onward that he had been overtaken by the tide. Had he still been on the sand the waves would have been breaking around his knees, and he would have been in constant danger of being bowled over; but in his elevated position he was still relatively safe. The waves which broke to either side were full of sound and fury, but only a little of their froth and foam reached out to splash him.

  He looked ahead, measuring the distance to the tide-line, and judged that only eighty yards stood between himself and safety. He was sure now that he could make it. He knew that he had the strength to reach the steeper rocks which would carry him beyond the reach of the clutching waves, if only he did not fall.

  He stopped, the breath caught in his throat by a sudden, all-consuming dart of panic, as he saw before him the gap which interrupted the ribbon of rock, which the sea had already invaded,

  It was not a big gap; even as a twelve-year old he might have jumped it, and he was not sure now that he could not. If he pushed off with his good leg, even without a run, he might project himself with sufficient force to reach the other side. But how would he land? How could he stretch out his weakened leg to cushion his landing, knowing what destruction the impact would wreak?

  He had no option but to lower himself down again, and wade waist deep across the narrow channel. It would not be so hard, shadowed as he was from the breakers. He would not be in the water for more than a few seconds – just two lunging strides. That would not be so hard, but could he climb the opposite face, to regain the ridge of the reef?

  Five seconds passed while he stood still on the edge, looking down at the gap. He was not trying to make up his mind, because there was no decision to be taken. There was no choice; it was all or nothing. He was simply gathering his strength and resolve.

  It seemed monstrously unfair to him that he had already used up so much strength in almost winning through, only to come to this final hurdle. It was as though the world had belatedly thrown this last, most vicious trap before him, in a gesture of pure gamesmanship.

  Bastard! he thought, with all the exclamatory force he could muster. Bastard sea! Bastard rocks! Bastard leg!

  Then he threw his stick across the gap, took what grip he could with his hands, and slid forward down the miniature cliff into the water. The coldness shocked him, but as it closed over his wounded leg it seemed to have both an anaesthetic effect and a merciful buoyancy. He twisted around as he came to rest, taking one hand off the ridge behind him. He moved as far forward as he could while still keeping that contact, and then reached out towards the other side of the chasm. He needed only one lurching step to bring him close enough to grab a hold, and then it seemed easier to draw himself in closer. The water’s depth was altering with every surge of the breakers – now rising around his midriff, now falling to the level of his thighs. He gripped the rock above shoulder height, struggling to find the best handhold, and then he waited for the water to recede, wanting to draw himself up while he had the surge of the wave to help him.

  When the moment came, he heaved with all his might. His good foot scraped the rock face desperately, trying to find a foothold. He found one – enough of one, anyhow, to complete his forward lunge. He flailed his arm forward, trying to find a new handhold, and gripped the edge of a hollow, clinging with all his might for a moment while his legs dangled, still scrabbling for purchase. Then he was able to pull himself forward again, clear of the water and over the edge.

  He lay still, on his side, for a moment, sobbing with gratitude. Then he hauled himself up, and began his ungainly walk again, leaning on his stick as much as he dared.

  When he came to the steeper, lichen-covered rocks above the tide-line he did not pause, for the waves could still reach him here. The sense of urgency had gone from his flight. The breakers were behind him again, and the water on his face which he tasted with his tongue was salt no longer – neither brine nor tears, but good clean rain.

  He remembered how far it was to the house which he had seen among the trees, but it did not seem to matter. If necessary, he could take all afternoon to get there, and all night too. The chase was finished, and the sea had lost. Racked with pain though he was, and soaked to the skin, he was in his own element again, as far from final defeat as ever he had been in all his life.

  FOUR

  When Leilah first saw the boy lying on the rocks above the beach she thought for a moment or two that he was dead, and that his body had been washed ashore in the storm, thrown up by a mighty wave.

  When she came closer, though, she saw that he was bleeding. He was not quite unconscious, either, for he moved slightly as she approached, and must have heard her. When she knelt down beside him he tried to rouse himself and sit up, but the effort was too much for him. His eyes flickered as they blinked away the rain, but he obviously found it hard to keep them open, and though his jaw moved it was clearly difficult for him to pronounce words. She knew that he could not get to his feet unaided, but might be able to make his way to the house with her support. First, though, she checked his injuries, to make sure that she would do no damage by helping him to come to his feet.

  ‘Bad foot,’ he murmured, when at last he was able to make his vocal cords obey him.

  She nodded, to show him that she understood.

  He was taller than she, and heavy, but she managed to lift him, at first clasping her arms about his chest, until he was upright and able to put his right arm around her shoulder. He had picked up his walking stick, but he leaned on her instead as they began to hobble up the slope, back across the rocks to the path, and then to the woods. She stopped to rest once, and suppressed the pain of the pressure which the boy’s dead weight put upon her back, but she had always been strong for a woman of her size, and the boy was lean and spare of frame, carrying hardly an ounce of fat. She got him into the house, then let him down on the couch, and sat down herself to catch her breath.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, in a low tone. ‘I wasn’t much help. I’m sorry.’

  She waved away his awkward apology.

  She pulled the couch a little closer to the fireplace, where a fire had been laid but not lit. Then she set a light to the kindling, and watched the little flames run up the sides of the dried logs. She fetched a blanket and put it over the boy, though his clothes were wet through.

  He had slumped back now, and his eyes were closed. She fetched some brandy, and tried to force a little into his mouth, in the hope of reviving him. He opened his eyes briefly, took a sip, and coughed, then shook his head to refuse a second draught. She brought a bowl of hot water and a cloth instead, and began wiping his face and hands, cleaning the cuts and helping to restore the circulation. Eventually, he was able to open his eyes again and to speak more clearly.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, again, this time with more resolution in his voice.

  ‘Can you get out of those wet clothes?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Bad leg,’ he murmured. ‘Do you have my stick?’

  She had put the walking stick in the hall, and told him so. ‘No harm will come to it,’ she assured him. ‘I don’t think you need it now. What’s your name?’

  ‘Michael,’ he answered, then added: ‘Michael Southerne.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, noting now a resemblance which she had not earlier picked out. ‘I used to know your father, some years ago.’

  Perhaps it was the words themselves, or perhaps something in the way she spoke them, but his reaction was immediate, despite his enfeebled condition. She watched the expression which crossed his face, then reached out to restrain him as he tried to sit up. How many common men had heard such words from a vampire lady – I knew your father, when he was young – and had taken them as a kind of treason against their all-too-human mothers? But she had not meant it that way. Thomas Southerne had been a mere acquaintance.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ said Michael, his voice a little less faint, a little more hostile.

  ‘No,’ said Leilah. ‘I�
�m not very … sociable … any more. My name is Leilah.’

  He frowned. Obviously, the name meant nothing to him. His blue eyes fixed their gaze upon her face, and when she stood up, the eyes followed her, almost as if he were reaching out to hold and restrain her. She allowed herself to be held, and stayed still, looking back at him.

  She understood well enough what kinds of puzzlement were in that stare. She was dark of skin by comparison with other emortals in this part of the world, golden brown instead of alabaster white, but that would be a small matter to him. The cardinal question which must be going through his mind could only be: How old is she? From what dark era of the foreign past has she survived? Whenever a common man looked at a vampire lady, he wanted to know what gulf of time was there to be crossed in touch and imagination.

  ‘I should telephone your father,’ she said.

  ‘No point,’ he replied. ‘He’s gone to Halifax. My mother went with him, shopping. There’s nobody home now.’

  She looked at her wristwatch. Did he know how long he had lain on the shore? she wondered. But it was not yet five, and it seemed fairly likely that she would get no reply.

  ‘I’ll try anyway,’ she said.

  She crossed the room to the telephone, and picked up the directory. She imagined the half-smile which might be flickering upon his face as he noticed that she did not know the number. It had been more than twenty years since she last saw Thomas Southerne, and she had never known his telephone number. She found the number, dialled, and waited, listening to the repeated burr of the unanswered phone.

  When she gave up, and turned back to her guest, she saw that he was looking carefully about the room – at the books on the shelves in the alcove beside the fireplace, at the painting above the mantel-shelf, at the brass microscope which stood above the centre of the fire, a mere ornament now.

  ‘That looks very old,’ said Michael Southerne, fishing indelicately for information.

  ‘Yes it is,’ she said. ‘And rather famous, in its way. It once belonged to Noell Cordery. It was given to me by the pope – not Alexander, of course, but one of the common Pauls who succeeded him in the Vatican.’ She watched him, to savour his reaction.

  Oddly, he laughed in a rather sour fashion. That was unexpected. ‘A coincidence,’ he said, to explain his indelicacy. ‘I have a disease named after Noell Cordery.’

  She raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘You’re very young to have attempted transformation,’ she observed.

  ‘My bad leg,’ he reminded her. ‘It gives me a lot of pain. I can’t walk properly. That’s why I was nearly trapped by the incoming tide. I had a bit of a struggle, getting to the rocks.’ He frowned at the memory, and with an effort he did manage to drag himself nearer to a sitting position. She went back to him, afraid that he might hurt himself. His face was very white, and she was in no doubt that his leg must be hurting him.

  ‘You’re a long way from home,’ she said. ‘Did you walk all the way?’

  ‘I limped,’ he answered, curtly. Then, apparently repenting of his slight discourtesy, he said: ‘Why did the pope – whichever one it was – give you a microscope that once belonged to Noell Cordery?’

  ‘He knew how much I wanted it,’ she said, quietly. ‘I was rude enough to ask him for it, and he was polite enough not to refuse.’ She watched for his reaction, knowing how much her statement might have given away, if he was clever enough to follow through the chain of argument. She was slightly amused, happy to tempt him into showing an interest.

  He stared at her again, his blue eyes seeming a little softer now, his gaze more speculative. ‘Did you know Noell Cordery, then, when he was young?’ he asked. He had picked up her hint of amusement, and she found that rather engaging. There was no doubting the seriousness of the question, but the implied levity made it all the easier to answer.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I knew him when he was very young.’

  He paused for a moment, then said: ‘In that case, I’ve never met anyone as old as you. You must remember the entire history of the continent. The entire history of the science of emortality, too – from Noell Cordery to Thomas Southerne; the bloody elixir to the genetic code. Are you mentioned in the history books?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘The more detailed ones, anyhow. I went with Noell Cordery to Adamawara, and lived in Malta before the Armada came. I was even in Cardigan, before Noell first left Britain. But historians aren’t really interested in me, except as an eye-witness to help them piece together the story. I did nothing; I was only a bystander. Perhaps that’s why I’m still alive, when all the others were slain and martyred long ago.’

  He smiled, but his attention was wandering. It was not that he wasn’t interested, just that he was wet. ‘Can you get me some dry clothing?’ he asked, having become embarrassingly aware of the wretchedness of his condition.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and in response to another flicker of curiosity which crossed his face, added: ‘Not left here, I fear, by anyone you might have heard of.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I expect Noell Cordery’s things would be threadbare by now.’

  She went upstairs, to search drawers which she rarely opened, looking for attire which he might consider sufficiently masculine to wear. He was too tall for a close fit, but at least he was thin enough to find almost anything capacious. She found a shirt, a pair of jeans, and a thick pullover, and took them down to him. He had already discarded most of his wet garments, and she carefully refrained from watching him while he got rid of the rest, hiding his body beneath the blanket, and trying to hide his discomfort too. She did not offer to help him, because she felt certain that he would not welcome it. Instead, she told him that she would find some food for him, and went into the kitchen. When she came back, with buttered bread, cold meat and cheese, he had dressed himself and put aside the blanket. He was holding his hands out towards the fire, which was blazing merrily now.

  ‘I’m sorry there’s nothing warm,’ she told him. ‘But I’ve put the water on to boil. Would you prefer coffee or tea?’

  ‘Coffee’s fine,’ he told her. Then, apologetically, he said: ‘I’m not really hurt. I was just tired. I overdid it a bit, getting away from the tide.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I checked to see if there were any broken bones. No need for a doctor, but your leg must hurt a good deal.’

  He showed her a plastic bottle, which must have come from his trouser pocket. ‘Pills,’ he said. ‘Painkillers. I don’t often need them, but I always carry them.’

  She nodded, and went to fetch the coffee. When she brought the cups in, she sat down beside him on the couch, pushing the discarded blanket away with her foot.

  ‘I’ll try to ring your home again in a little while, unless you’d prefer a taxi,’ she said. ‘I don’t have a car, so someone else will have to come to fetch you.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘You’re not very sociable, you say. I guess you have supplies delivered?’

  She nodded, and for a minute or more they sat looking into the flickering flames, sipping coffee. Eventually, he turned to stare at her again – that same, speculative stare: curiosity commingled with fascination, and perhaps a little fear. It wasn’t fear of her, but fear of that great emptiness which separated his experience from hers. He stood at the point in time which history had reached, a common boy, the product of his age. She, by contrast, was part of the thread of that history, a relic of the undead past. The understanding was growing in his mind that as a thread, she lay a little closer to the heart of the weave than most.

  ‘You knew Noell Cordery,’ he said, turning the notion over in his mind. ‘You went with him to Adamawara, three hundred years before Darwin and my father. You must have been one of the very first beneficiaries of the elixir.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Langoisse and Quintus used the elixir. It was a man who made me a vampire, in a different way. Langoisse, my erstwhile lover, sent me out whoring, for the good of all mankind. I carried the vital ingr
edient back to Langoisse. He took it to Noell, without telling him exactly how it was obtained.’

  ‘Noell,’ repeated Michael, as though he found it wonderfully strange to find himself suddenly on first name terms with a man who had played a celebrated part in the making of the modern world: the man who made eternal life much cheaper to obtain, then balanced what he had given by making death a little cheaper too, even for emortals.

  ‘I am not so very old,’ she told him, gently. ‘I have met men and women a thousand years older than I. Your father has been in Adamawara, has he not?’

  ‘He has. He met some people there, I think, who claimed to have known Noell Cordery. An important Ogbone leader, who styles himself Ntikima Oni-Shango. And a chief named Ngadze. He mentioned a lady, feeble in mind, who might be one of the oldest women in the world, named …’

  ‘Berenike.’ Leilah cut him off, feeling a kind of eerie shiver, such as vampires were not supposed to feel. ‘Poor Berenike. Lost in time and lost in mind. We are not yet ready to live forever, though we may yet learn. Ntikima saved our lives, once. I think he learned a good deal more from Quintus and Noell than he understood at the time. He is perhaps the one man who can bring Ogbone into the twentieth century, and might thereby save Africa from its present torment.’

  ‘My father said the same,’ said Michael, as if surprised to hear the judgement confirmed. ‘He said that Ntikima gave him protection, too, and that he alone among the so-called elders understood what the excavations revealed about the nature of the miracle which brought the breath of life to Earth.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Leilah. ‘Ntikima always understood. Sometimes, I envied him his understanding. Without any real knowledge, he had an admirable sense of certainty, and when he was offered real knowledge, he could take it, and build it into his way of seeing. For him, there will be no difficulty in the discovery that it was a meteor which brought eternal life to earth in alien DNA, because it cannot contradict his notion that it was a thunderbolt hurled by a god, containing the gift of another god’s heart. It will be one thing and the other.’