“Mr. Moray, I was … am … a medical doctor, but in my more than seven centuries of life and training and practice, I never before had seen a natural endowment like that bastard has. Penises that size should, in the natural course of things, be hung on horses’ bellies, not the crotches of humans.”
“Portos buggered your then-body, eh?” said Milo, laughter clear in his voice.
“Gefühlloser idiot!” the woman had raged at him. “You think it amusing, do you, du Zotig?”
“Well,” Milo had chuckled then, “within that body, you had been playing the part of a pooeesos, a Schwuler, for two years, by that time, had you not?” He had chuckled again and, with laughter clear in his voice, had added, “You knew that Portos was an Ehleen, you vampire bitch, yet you chose to turn your back on him. Now you know precisely why it is bad policy to turn your back on an Ehleen.
“You did at least remember to relax and enjoy it, I hope?”
And then, her scream of pure rage had nearly deafened him.
Chapter X
Rikos Laskos was ushered into the mam room of the suite by one of Milo’s personal guardsmen. When the door had closed firmly behind him, he said aloud, “Guten Tag, Milo Moray. I parted from you last in Nebraska … or was it Kansas? Ach, das ist schon lang her! Were my notebooks of any value to you and our people, then?”
Milo arose, then, to just stand for a long moment, wide-eyed. “Is it really you, then, Dr. Clarence Bookerman?” he asked in English of seven centuries before. “Where have you been all these hundreds of years?”
Laskos walked across to the sideboard and, after sniffing of the contents of several decanters, chose and poured for himself a small goblet of a powerful brandy. Warming the goblet between his two palms and sniffing appreciatively at the bouquet of the liquor thus freed, he answered, “Why, where our kind are for too much of the time: on the move, of course, putting as much distance as possible between the spot wherein we dwelt happily for a few, short years and the spot wherein we next will try to carve ourselves out a new, hopefully happy, niche for a few more years … until people begin to take too much notice of the bald fact that we do not age as do normal folk.”
“Where did you go when you left us there in central Kansas?” Milo demanded. “Most of the people who had been yours finally decided that you had felt death approaching and either had ridden off to die alone or to die near to the grave of your wife.”
“It surprises me that you remember so much and so clearly from so very long ago, my friend,” said Laskos-Bookerman, taking a seat, still cradling his brandy goblet. “My own recall is no longer so good; too many, many newer memories superimposed over the older ones must tend to cloud them, block them, make them of difficulty to drag up from the depths into which they have been pushed and immured.
“I cannot remember just where I went after I left you and those would-be nomads. I do remember that at some time during that period I dwelt for a long time alone in a well-preserved, well-stocked and still eminently livable complex I found carved into a mountain, out there in the Rockies. So long did I there remain that all of my beasts either died of old age or wandered off, and when to move on and find the humans for whose living companionship I hungered I did, it had to be on foot until at last I was able to acquire a scrubby little mount.
“Across the continent, slowly I wandered for years, seeing the natural increase of the survivors of near extirpation, Milo, and also observing the genesis of new societies, civilizations, cultures arising, phoenix-like, out of the dust and ashes of the old. Then, at last, I arrived upon the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. Through great good fortune, the rare kindness of fickle fate, I found a beautiful and incredibly well-preserved miniature version of a sleek ocean-racing boat. She was so beautifully designed and fitted that but a single man, if knowledgeable and active and strong, could easily sail her. In addition to her sails, she was equipped with an auxiliary diesel engine, one of sufficient power to give her decent headway in almost any circumstance.
“I now disrecall what her previous owner had called her, but I rechristened her Woge Stute after I had completely refurbished her for a long voyage. I cherished a desire to once more, after so very many long years, see again my Heimat, the land of my long-ago birth, and I had faith that this fine, friendly vessel would safely bear me to my longed-for destination.
“Of course, in those times, it took me actual years to hunt out or make all that was needful, but then the one thing for which our rare kind never lacks is time. Nicht wahr? Let it suffice to say that at last I felt everything to be in readiness and I put my treasure of a boat back into the water. But of course, contemplating a voyage of such length, the mere fact that she floated and seemed sound could not be enough, so I undertook several trial voyages of lesser and greater distances, each of them teaching and reteaching me things which I had forgotten over the years and centuries I had been almost landbound.
“Finally, on a late-April day, I left the coast of what had once been called the State of Maine behind me and pointed my darling’s prow northeast, toward the continent of Europe. At last I was bound for heiligen Deutschland, mein Heimatland.”
“My God, Clarence,” exclaimed Milo, “weren’t you at least daunted to consider such a risk? You can drown, you know. My original coruler of Kehnooryos Ehlahs, Demetrios, died in just that way some years back; was pushed off a bridge in the middle of a battle, in full armor, and with a death-wounded war-horse on top of him, to boot. We found his helm on the bed of the river and nearby a cracked skull that might or might not’ve been his, too. But no man has ever seen or heard of him, since.”
“Naturally, I was afraid, Milo,” replied the guest, “just as I was always afraid when the air raids took place during the Second World War, in Berlin. There is at least that much of true, normal humanity in my makeup. But just as beasts and birds and eels and salmon must return to their natal grounds or waters, regardless of obstacles or distances or swarming predators, I was consumed with an irresistible urge to once more see as many of the sights of my ancient youth as still remained in the hills and deep, silent valleys and dark forests that nurtured me of old. Cannot you understand that, my old friend, Milo?”
The High Lord of the Confederation of Eastern Peoples sighed. “Of course I do, Clarence. I know the feeling, believe me. Although I’ve never been able to remember any of my life prior to about 1937 A.D., still do I often desire to return to places where once I was happy for some years. For instance, although I have been only something like a century removed from the plains and prairies, I often must suppress an itching urge to just saddle a horse and ride west until I once more am where I lived for so very long. So, yes, I do understand, fully, just what drove you to take such hellish risks on the open sea, alone.”
“It was a terrible voyage, Milo,” said Bookerman-Laskos. “I had, I discovered, chosen a bad time of year for that northerly route, for it was spawning-time for icebergs. After not a few very near-disasters, I reset my course farther south, only to suffer through storm after storm, raising waves that often overtopped my masthead and cost me much of my precious diesel fuel to maintain headway and to keep the bilge pumps going that I not be swamped.
“Those storms it was drove me so far south that my first landfall was not Ireland or England as I had expected but, rather, France, in the Bay of Biscay I was standing in to some tiny, nameless Gascon port, when three craft about the size of whaleboats came rowing out toward me, fast as the crews could row.