Immortal at the Edge of the World (2 page)

The only real drawback was that I was pretty sure Mr. Heintz thought I was a vampire.

“Please do sit,” he insisted, gesturing me toward a stuffed leather chair opposite a nearly empty desk, which he then sat behind. The laptop on the desk lit his face and washed out his coloring even more, especially since the only other illumination in the room was a cool yellow floor lamp near the window. And although it was midday the curtains in the room were drawn. They were some impressive curtains—I wouldn’t have been able to guess it was a sunny day out, or that it was even day at all.

“I hope your arrival was to your satisfaction?” he asked.

“The limo was great, thank you,” I said.

“I’m glad. We employ them only occasionally, but have never gotten any complaints.”

“They were very efficient.” The limo ride actually made me feel like something between a visiting head of state and a hostage, but I didn’t think this was a good time to bring that up.

Back when I had suggested to Heintz that he and I have this meeting all I’d said was, “the next time you’re in New York.” It was an offhand thing, coming not long after he’d mentioned that his very private banking organization had offices in the city, and that he sometimes visited those offices when he needed to conduct whatever it is very private bankers do. Somehow he took this to mean he needed to hop aboard a jet immediately. And that was all fine. I had just gotten back from a trip overseas but I was growing to dislike the solitude my home offered me, so any excuse to get away again was a good excuse. And while New York City is not one of my favorite places—this is an understatement—I had a little business to conduct locally. Plus Midtown can be okay when nobody is actively trying to kill me.

Then he insisted on sending me a private car, which turned out to be one of those sedans with completely blacked-out rear windows, operated by the least talkative driver in the history of the profession. The driver took me to a private underground entrance and a private elevator that required a key card and possibly a blood sample to operate.

All of this made perfect sense provided I was a vampire, or doing something illegal, or both. In fairness, I
am
a private man, as it’s almost never in my best interest to let people know either that I am extremely wealthy or that I’m older than anyone you’re ever likely to meet. I’m just not a vampire. I also don’t know a whole lot about what my money is doing, so I could very well be doing illegal things with it.

“I am so glad, given our many conversations, that we have a chance to meet in this manner,” Heintz said gently. He said most everything gently, but with a firm undercurrent that gave his words a kind of certitude that made him hard to disagree with.

“Me too. It’s good to put a face to the voice,” I said. And it was, even if it was also a little disconcerting and weird. I sincerely don’t know how most people cope with this, but I will never get used to the idea of knowing someone by voice alone. Up until the telephonic age I had never met someone whose face and voice didn’t come as a package, and now that happens all the time. I still need for there to be a face, though, so I assign one to the voice. Not once have I been even slightly close to being right.

Heintz tapped out some things on the laptop that caused the screen to change subtly, and then he pulled open a desk drawer and extracted a small stack of papers. “Now then,” he began, “I’m afraid we have a large number of things that require signing in order to fully realize your latest corporate ventures. You will be using the customary surname, I trust?”

“Yes, of course,” I nodded.

The surname in question was Justinian, which was not the name I opened the account under. About a year after conducting business for me on a regular basis, Heintz recommended I create an inheritor for my accounts so that it was less self-evident that I was approximately two hundred years old. We created Francis Justinian, which is who I get to be now when I’m playing around in the world of high finance. Heintz even got me the necessary forged documentation to prove my existence; I now have an ID my usual forger is unfamiliar with. Heintz’s man might even be better than mine.

While incredibly convenient, this kind of thing did leave me with some open questions, such as: What sort of client is Juergen Heintz accustomed to dealing with, and will this end up being a problem for me? Possibly, these questions were in the back of my mind when I suggested this rendezvous, although that’s hard to say, as I was not sober when I made the suggestion.

He placed the pile of papers at the edge of the desk and put out a pen. “They are marked as usual,” he said. This meant they had these little sticky arrows all over them indicating where I had to sign. I’d been getting packages full of pages like this in the mail off and on for a while, which was much easier after I got around to establishing a legal address. (On an island. I own an island. Because when you have a chance to own an island, you just do.) Every time I see the removable sticky arrows on the pages I think how incredibly convenient such a thing would have been at just about any point in history.

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, Mr. Heintz,” I said, “could you make it a little brighter in here? I can’t really see what I’m signing.”

My banker friend stared at me without expression for long enough to make me uncomfortable before saying, “Yes, yes of course.” He opened a drawer on the desk and extracted a remote control, tapped a button on it, and coaxed to life the lights embedded in the ceiling.

“Is that better?” he asked.

“Much better, thank you.”

Vampires can see very well in the dark and are bothered by bright lights. This is not why they avoid the sun—sunlight actually will cause them to burst into flames; I’ve seen it and it’s gross—but it is why when you meet one it’s generally in a poorly lit location. In his assumption that I am a vampire, Heintz was only being courteous, just like he was when he gave me the no-sunlight limo-to-elevator ride. Now that I had proven myself to be possessed of somewhat normal eyesight, he was getting nervous.

Being mistaken as a vampire is one of those things that annoys me. In fairness, from Heintz’s perspective it should have been the correct conclusion because I was entirely too old to be anything else. And since the other option is “the only immortal man in existence,” I can see how he didn’t consider that seriously. But at the same time, nearly all vampires over the age of two hundred are depressed, poorly assimilated, and cranky, and nobody likes being mistaken for one of those.

I probably shouldn’t have done the next thing I did, which was to get up and open the curtain.

The good news was that Juergen Heintz was also not a vampire. I didn’t consider this until after the sunlight splashed across his face and lit up his eyes. However, there are other things out there that are neither vampire nor human, and he happened to be one of those.

Jumping to his feet, a dagger appeared in his hand more quickly than I could follow. In all likelihood it originated in his sleeve, but someone gifted enough with a blade could have conjured one from a number of other places. It was a narrow bit of steel—we used to call them stilettos before ladies’ shoes took over the term—of the sort that was perfect for either stabbing or throwing.

Heintz did neither. Instead, in that calm tone of his, he spoke. “Who are you, sir?”

This is what I get for cutting corners. “You know who I am,” I said. “We’ve spoken on the phone so you know my voice, and you’ve seen photos of me before, so you know my face.” It may go without saying, but the last thing I had expected was having a knife pulled on me by my finance guy. Maybe a very sharp pen.

“My client is of the sort to actively despise sunlight,” he said.

“A vampire, you mean.”

“I do.”

“That would be an erroneous assumption on your part. Did I ever tell you I was?”

He looked confused. “No . . .”

“I didn’t because I’m not a vampire. Never have been. Don’t plan to be.”

“But—”

“I think we’ve both made a few hasty assumptions about one another, Mr. Heintz. You took me for a vampire, and I took you to be human.”

The tip of the blade quivered ever-so-slightly. “I’m sorry?”

I laughed. “I know a goblin when I see one.”

He inhaled sharply through teeth that were slightly pointed, just enough to catch one’s attention if one were checking. The word I should have used was
elf
, not goblin, so I’d sort of insulted him.

There are northern goblins and southern goblins, and not only do they not much care for one another, most of the time they will insist they aren’t even the same species. (The north-south thing is a geographic distinction originally made in a region of the Eurasian continent that has been lost to history. I’m not even sure of where it is myself.) I mostly prefer the southern goblins—an earthy, no-nonsense sort of people overall. The northern versions—and Heintz was clearly a northern goblin—are very pale, they tend to be taller than the southern type, and most of them are kind of stuck up.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of two thousand years ago, the northern goblins started calling themselves elves, and everyone of goblin descent has been pretty happy with that arrangement. It’s just not true, which is why I find it annoying. Another time I might blame a slip of the tongue like that on drink, but I was actually sober. Maybe I just wanted to see what he would do.

What he did was put away the stiletto, which I appreciated. Where he put it I couldn’t say for sure. Goblins of all kinds are extremely proficient with sharp things. They make excellent assassins, and teppanyaki chefs.

Heintz composed himself and spoke. “When your account was opened with this institution, paper currency in the country presently beneath us did not even exist. Your first line of credit had an archduke, two duchesses, and the crown prince of Denmark as guarantors. Your signatures—from the first name you gave us to the ones you have since used—are undeniably of the same hand. You appear to be no older than thirty-two, but everything I have indicates you are at least two hundred and seventeen. And you are standing in sunlight right now. At the risk of offending you further than I have already, sir, what
are
you?”

“I don’t know,” I said, leaving the window to return to the chair. Heintz remained standing in the event I did something weird, like sprouted another limb or whatever he thought I was capable of at this point. “A person.”

“A human person?” he asked.

“More or less. I stopped aging some time ago, and I don’t get sick. But that knife of yours would do me some damage. Where did you put it, incidentally?”

He ignored the question. “How old are you? Truly?”

“I can’t answer that,” I admitted. “In the neighborhood of sixty millennia.”

I get asked this regularly, and it’s really not possible to answer. I know nowadays we all understand basic things about the planet, like that it spins around the sun and that one spin equals one year, but this is a modern understanding and there are other metrics available to measure time, like seasonal changes and phases of the moon. But the moon’s phases are shorter than a year, and there are some parts of the world where seasonal variation is just not that extreme. On top of that, one needs a civilization that lasts longer than a single human lifespan for there to be a continuous enumeration of years carried down from generation to generation. And there needs to be math, and record-keeping, and symbols for integers.

So really, when I say I don’t know how old I am, I’m not being coy. It’s not a knowable thing.

Heintz sat down in his chair as if he’d just gained about fifty pounds. “The vampires, they have a name for a person, a legendary figure who can walk by day . . .”

“Apollo,” I said. “I’ve been called that. They think I’m a vampire too, for some reason.”

“But you do not drink blood?” he asked.

“I prefer beer. Your kind had its own name for me.”

“Leewan Sean,” he muttered.

“That’s it.” I smiled. That particular name had passed through about five cultural histories and ten or twenty spellings, but it still sounded roughly the same in all tongues, even in Heintz’s Scandinavian-colored English pronunciation.

“Keeper of the path,” he muttered.

“Yeah, that too.” He was referring to one of the culturally specific legends about me that goblins had been repeating for some time. It’s a long story.

“I had no idea.” If possible, Juergen Heintz had gotten paler since we’d begun this portion of the conversation.

“We should . . . maybe get back to business,” I suggested. “I have all these papers to sign, a—”

“What should I call you?” he asked. “You have so many names, some I invented for you. None feel right.”

“Just call me Adam.” I had tried several times to switch my name over to something else, but in this new age of information I’d found that impossible, so I’ve basically given up.

“
The
Adam?”

“The . . . oh! Biblically? No, no. It’s just a name that’s stuck with me recently.”

“Yes.” He rubbed the side of his head like someone trying to forget a bad dream. “Yes, silly of me. My apologies . . . Adam. My apologies. Please, sign. And we can discuss new business, if you have any.”

I nodded, hoping that putting real world tasks in front of him would get his mind running again. He looked like he was either going to genuflect or faint.