The VMR Theory (v1.1) (12 page)

“Perhaps if I write and explain to tee government t’at you are not James Bond at all, it will clear matters up,” Mjarlen reflected.

I had a slight coughing fit. While it may be true that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, in the asylum of the witless, the merely half-witted are out of place.

“That might not be a very good idea,” Catarina explained tactfully. “The government might not take your word for it. After all, you haven’t known us very long.”

“I suppose you are right. Still,
magna est veritas et praevalebit,
great is trut’ and it will prevail.”

“That’s Latin, isn’t it? Did Father Yakub teach you any other languages?” I asked.

“I know a smattering of all of tee languages of tee Bible—Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Gaelic,” Mjarlen explained.

I blinked. “Gaelic?”

“Did not Fat’er Yakub tell you? Tee Galatians were shanty Irish who took a wrong turn somewhere around Macedonia. Like Fat’er Yakub himself, our Blessed Savior was just a little bit Irish on tee Virgin Mary’s side.” Mjarlen began humming the Notre Dame fight song.

With that to stop conversation, we heard the whistle for the front door, and Mjarlen went to answer it. He returned visibly shaken. “You must hide. Tee Special Secret Police are searching for you and for boxes of wood called coffins in every house in tee city. However, no one knows what wood is. But tee Special Secret Police are rut’less males habituated to violence, former convicts and postal workers. Daily, we ask God to relieve of tee terror t’ey represent.”

He passed across a newspaper one of his parishioners had brought. Trixie read us the headline. “Terran Schooled in Mysteries Defies Special Secret Police, Kills Shadur, and Levitates out of Escape-Proof Cell.”

Underneath was Harry’s picture. I never get any respect.

Catarina smiled. “You have to admit you don’t look very dangerous. The Special Secret Police may have been the tiniest bit embarrassed to give the newspaper your mug shot.”

Using her dictionary to translate, she calmly read the article aloud. “ ‘Although the Special Secret Police have issued denials, several well-placed sources have confirmed MacKay’s shadur-slaying and subsequent escape. Delegates from the human Peace Coalition for a Just Ecology expressed outrage over the cold-blooded killing and confirmed reports that MacKay is a vampire, a deathless, supernatural being which exists by drinking blood from living creatures. A Confederation spokesman declined comment. Further outrages are expected momentarily, and the Bureau of State Security urges citizens to remain calm, but to report any suspicious activity.’ “ She looked up. “We seem to have gotten their attention.”

“ ‘Several well-placed sources,’ “ I scoffed. “Doesn’t anybody know how to keep secrets?”

Mjarlen tugged at my sleeve. “Perhaps we may discuss t’is at greater leisure, but now you must hide. I have a priest’s hole.”

“A what?” I had lost the thread of the conversation and briefly considered lifting up some of the cushions to find it.

“During the sixteenth century, English Catholics built hiding places for priests into their houses,” Catarina explained. “It’s the sort of thing that Father Yakub would think of.”

Mjarlen led us over to a comer of the cellar laid out in tiles made from some sort of hard plant fiber. Selecting one, he slid a thin, hooked tool into one of the joins and lifted up a block of flooring and subflooring. “Your hiding place.”

“Right,” I said, looking down. The cosy little pit was equipped with an alcove for books, track lighting, and a nice little chair. Unfortunately, what was a spacious hole for one Macdonald was decidedly cramped for the three of us. “I’m starting to get nervous about holes.”

“In you go,” Catarina said cheerfully, a phrase I was beginning to loathe. After we stuck Trixie in the chair and squeezed in around her, Mjarlen shut the lid.

“So what’s our plan?” I asked, removing Trixie’s elbow from my right eye, where it didn’t belong.

“Lunch first. Then we hang loose. Trixie has the meeting with Dr. Blok set up for tonight. While we’re waiting, I have a stack of mail that came in for you on the mailship.”

“Was the mailship anyone I know?” Most mailships are operated by artificial-intelligence constructs, and some of them have extremely artificial personalities.

Catarina smiled. “One of your favorites. RVN 23. Swervin’ Irvin.” Irvin had a habit of erratically changing course and speed when approaching a gravity well, which had earned him his nickname and hopefully would shorten his career.

“Oh, joy.” I skimmed through the sheaf of printouts she handed me. Half of it was from kooks, and the rest was from vamps who wanted to share their problems with another vamp and had seen my name in the papers. Vampires are not very well organized.

“Anything interesting?” Catarina asked sweetly.

“One correspondent writes, ‘Dear Ken, I don’t know who else to ask. I am a vamp. I am hopelessly in love with my best friend’s wife. If I go for her neck when we are in bed together, do you think it will affect my relationship with my friend? Signed Lovestruck.’ “

“ ‘Dear Lovestruck,’ “ Catarina suggested, “ ‘put a stake in it.’ How are the lawsuits against us progressing?”

“Schenectady Chamber of Commerce, et al.
is moving along at breakneck speed.” I explained to Trixie, “When Prince Genghis’s Rodent ships were massing over Schuyler’s World and the police were off the streets, the citizens of Schenectady patriotically removed items from the stores that Prince Genghis’s hordes might have been tempted to steal. Unfortunately, they were rather dilatory about returning them, and as a result the shop owners are suing everyone they can think of, including me.”

Since I couldn’t reach any of my pockets, I handed my mail back to Catarina. “Well, that used up three minutes. What else can we do while we’re waiting?”

“We could tell stories,” Trixie suggested.

“I have one,” Catarina volunteered before I could object. She proceeded to tell us a story about a pair of street entertainers who only spoke to each other in limericks. When one of the two failed to come up with an appropriate couplet to warn his partner of an oncoming road grader, the next day’s headlines read, “A Hitch in Rhyme Paves Mime,” thus reinforcing my belief that puns are not humor, but instead constitute a socially acceptable form of guerrilla warfare.

Moments later we heard the door whistle. “Okay,” I whispered. “This is it.”

Trixie raised her hand. “Miss Lindquist, I have to—”

“Hold out as long as you can, Trixie. And please, no talking until it’s safe,” Catarina said quietly.

Seconds later we heard loud footsteps directly overhead, only partly muffled by the layers of flooring. For a few seconds I stopped breathing.

Suddenly, the trapdoor opened. Mjarlen peered inside. “Sorry,” he whispered, “it was tee meter reader. Tee Special Secret Police are on t’eir way.”

“Right,” I said, clutching my chest. Catarina smiled and took my hand. Trixie squirmed on her chair.

A few moments iater we heard the door whistle again. This time we could make out three or four sets of footsteps tramping through the house. After an interminable wait, Mjarlen finally rapped the ancient all-clear signal.

“Some mysteries are difficult to fat’om,” Trixie said, trying not to wriggle. “ ‘Shave and a haircut’ I understand, but what is ‘two bits’?”

Catarina winked at me. “Two small coins, which represent the price of putting up a good outward appearance.” Grimly, I prepared myself.

“Indeed,” Catarina continued, “it is said, ‘If the two bits, wear it.’ “

Fortunately, Mjarlen opened the hatch a few seconds later. I boosted Trixie and Catarina out. While Trixie headed for the little girls’ room at flank speed, got our food out of the trunk and threw lunch together, after which Mjarlen led us in a few choruses of the Notre Dame fight song and brought out a game called Bible Trivia that Father Yakub had left him. Fortunately, we weren’t playing for money.

That evening, as Trixie drove us to the tavern where Blok was supposed to meet us, I complained to Catarina, “I’m not whining about the result, but don’t you feel the tiniest bit guilty telling Mjarlen he had the abridged version of the Bible? St. Paul’s letter to the Cretan drivers— ‘Red means slow, green means go, and yellow means hit the gas’?”’

“It was ‘St. Paul’s Letter to the New Yorkers’ and the word I used was ‘cretin,’ not ‘Cretan.’ “ She pulled her sunglasses down. “I had to talk him out of coming somehow. He’s risking too much as it is.”

“True. Did you get any mail from Father Yakub?”

“Just a quick note.” She smiled. “He says that with all the Rodent immigrants, Schenectady is getting to look more like Plixxi every day. The mayor and city council are worried about the increase in literacy. It could cost them their jobs.”

I changed the subject. “Trixie, you’ve been awfully quiet up there.”

“I have been t’inking about what Mjarlen was saying. For example, what is heaven?”

I looked at Catarina, who pretended to be studying the watermarks on the roof of the car. “Heaven is a place where you are admitted into the full presence of God,” I said slowly.

“It sounds dull.”

I thought for a minute. “I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but the bonds of marriage are loosed up there.”

“Oh. And what is hell?”

“Hell, as I understand it, is a place where there’s no God, and bureaucracy works the way it’s intended.” Catarina cleared her throat. “There’s the tavern. Trixie, park the car around the comer,” she directed. “If something goes wrong, we’ll ditch it and let Mjarlen pick it up tomorrow.”

Trixie eased us into a spot and then went inside to case the premises. She returned a few minutes later. “Dr. Blok has taken a room. T’ere is a back stairway we can use.” Muffled in our cloaks, Catarina and I followed her up to the tavern’s second floor.

“Hide in here while I find him,” Trixie said, pointing to the rest room.

We wedged the door shut. Catarina inspected the walls while I discovered the hard way that Macdonalds don’t believe in toilet paper. “The boys here need to improve their aim,” she commented.

“It’s interesting to see how these double-headed things work in practice. How do you want to handle Blok?”

“Good cop, bad cop?”

“Can I be bad cop?”

“He knows you.”

“Dam.” I rinsed my hands again. A few seconds later we heard the familiar “shave and a haircut” knock on the door.

Catarina kicked away the wedge and opened it a crack. Trixie gestured for us to follow.

We entered Blok’s room and bolted the door behind us. Blok was waiting for us, dressed in a shabby kilt and a porkpie hat, with his back to us. When he turned, Trixie bowed her head. He ignored her. “Well, Mr. MacKay, we meet again.”

“Happy to see you, too.”

He gestured at Catarina and said sharply, “Bade t’is female to depart. We must discuss matters male-to-male!”

“Trixie and I will just go into the bathroom and powder our noses while you men chat,” Catarina said in a sweet voice that meant the powder she had in mind was gunpowder.

“No!” Blok pointed to Trixie. “Xuexue must stay! I must know if he is veracious!”

“I’m keeping my clothes on,” I said, remembering the last time.

Trixie gave me a frightened look. She pointed at the four-legged stool in the room. “Please sit here.”

Catarina gave me the thumbs-up and disappeared into the water closet. Perching myself on the stool with my knees flexed, I let Trixie slip behind me and rest her elbows on my shoulders. “The fate of the universe may depend on this,” I whispered, “so don’t tickle.”

She nodded, baring her teeth slightly. Taking a cue from Blok, she said, “Please say somet’ing, Ken.”

“Something. Hello, I’m Ken MacKay.”

“He is being trut’ful. Please say somet’ing untrue.”

“I’m sure Dr. Blok and I can work out our differences like reasonable beings.”

She rested her chin on top of my head. “Now he is lying. You may begin speaking to him, honorable one.” Blok walked toward me with his hands folded behind his back. “Many disquieting portents have been observed since your arrival, Mr. MacKay. Tee stock market is unsettled, and my informants speak of mysterious activity by revolutionary movements.” He stopped a few centimeters away. “I sense great peril in you. You have a fair seeming, yet t’at which seems fair can be most foul.”

“Uh, care for a breath mint?” I said, pulling the package out of my pocket.

“Tee Special Secret Police have identified you as a deat’less and notorious vampire named James Bond!”

“A base canard.”

“I do not understand. What does t’is have to do wit’ ducks?”

“Never mind. Let’s just say that I am not and never have been James Bond.”

Blok studied Trixie’s face intently, then resumed pacing. “Tee Special Secret Police have also identified a member of your crew named Harry as a notorious vampire named Tarzan.”

“Wrong again, although speech analysis does indicate that he was raised by monkeys.”

Blok stopped in front of me. “I sense a great troubling in you. Supreme Agent Wipo, t’at foolish, foolish being, little knew tee forces he was dabbling in. By t’reatening your destruction in tee Vor’dur, he forced you to call upon unseen powers.”

“I can explain!”

Blok held up his hand. “Tee first law of power is t’at explanations must not be asked for. I will not do so. Yet, I have listened to tapes of your incantations. Before I dare aid you I must know if your fair seeming is but an illusion masking evil, and if tee ancient, awful, blighting forces you evoke to do your bidding are wholesome, or shadows darker t’an any night.”

Blok was on a roll, and at a guess, I was about three somersaults behind. “Can we go over that part again?”

“You t’ink I do not understand t’ese matters.” He gazed at me scornfully. “Into some beings is born tee desire to rule, and it eats into t’em as a fire. Such beings, besotted with control of energies beyond mortal comprehension, have long sought knowledge beyond the bounds set by prudence for such seeking. If you vampires have gone along such paths, t’ey may prove to be your undoing. Be not deceived—when such begins to stir which promises no safety in sky, land, or water, t’ose of us who would resist domination must seek allies where allies can be found!”