Milo’s laugh was harsh and humorless. “Oh, yes, I’ll just bet you types would very much like to get your claws into me. And I can imagine why, too! So you can dig out of my flesh whatever it is that makes us more or less immortal. No, thank you, Dr. Sternheimer. I don’t care to be the subject in a vivisection!”
“Please, wait, you don’t understand, Mr. Morai …” Sternheimer began.
But Milo cut him off. “No, I don’t understand, Doctor; I don’t understand why you creeps continue to embroil yourselves in the affairs of the Ehleens. What can you hope to gain? Are you running low on bodies?”
He was answered with a question. “Mr. Morai, are you an American citizen?”
“I was,” replied Milo. “But what has that to do with my previous question, Doctor?”
Sternheimer’s tones became fervid. “We, Mr. Morai, are attempting to re-establish The United States of America.”
This time Milo’s laughter was real. “Doctor, if you’re not pulling my leg, I advise you to have a long chat with one of your shrinks. Have you lost track of time? Doctor, this is, I believe, the twenty-seventh century A.D. The United States, as you and I knew it, has been dead a long time. Why not let it rest in peace?”
“Because, Mr. Morai, I am a patriot!” announced Sternheimer.
Milo laughed again. “So patriotic are you—or were you—that you disregarded the orders of the Congress and your superiors in H.E.W. to discontinue your vampiric experiments and destroy all notes and records of them.”
“But I knew that our work was terribly important, Mr. Morai, and events bear out my belief!” Sternheimer exclaimed. “Besides, who were those damned, ignorant politicians to dictate to me?”
“They were the elected congressmen of the citizens whose taxes paid for your experiments, Doctor,” said Milo coolly.
This time, it was Sternheimer who expelled a snort of hard laughter. “The Great Unwashed Masses? Oh, come now, Mr. Morai, you know as well as I do that those congressional fools simply overreacted to a few letters from religious fanatics and the tripe churned out by a handful of newsmongering simpletons calling themselves ‘journalists’! When we re-establish our nation, there will be no such aggregation of august fools. The people will be governed sensibly, scientifically.”
“Forget it, Sternheimer.” Milo’s voice was become glacial. “I remind you again; this is not the world we knew, long ago. Today’s people need you and your plans of a scientific dictatorship as much as they need a hole in the head. And I serve you fair warnirfg: keep your damned vampires out of my lands—which now include the Southern Kingdom as well as Karaleenos and Kehnooryos Ehlahs, incidentally. I’ll scotch every one of your people I can lay my hands on, Sternheimer, and don’t you forget it!”
Sternheimer abruptly turned on the charm once more. “My dear Mr. Morai, you do misunderstand. How I wish we could speak face to face, man to man, so that I might convince you of …”
“Sternheimer, you couldn’t convince me that dung stinks! So don’t waste your breath trying psychology on me. Just remember what I said, what I promised to do to any of your parasites I catch, and keep them out of my Confederation. I expect I’ll have my work cut out for me during the next couple of centuries, and I’ll have no mercy on any of your ghouls who traipse about stirring things up.” Milo hurled the mike to the floor.
“Wait a minute, Mr. Morai.” Sternheimer’s next words remained unheard, for Milo spun the frequency knob, losing the nasal voice in a welter of static.
The High-Lord disconnected the power source, then ordered his guards that the two chests be carried to the center of the bridge and dumped into the river.
Nothing that was done to Zastros’ body could evoke even the fluttering of an eyelid—shaking him did no good, nor did slaps or blows or dagger points pushed into the most sensitive spots on his body, not even torch flames applied to his fingertips and toes.
“And he has been just so, Lord Milo, since the night we came to depose him,” asserted Mahvros. “He swallows liquids if we open his jaws and dribble them into his mouth, but he cannot eat.”
Milo gazed down on the inert body, now bruised and burned and bleeding. He attempted to enter the mind, but he found it shielded. He then surmised the actual fact, though he never knew it for such.
“Gentlemen, I imagine that Zastros’ wife, who was the agent of a very evil man far south of here, drugged her husband. She probably wished him unconscious while she used that radio to contact her lord. We’ll never know the antidote that might restore him to consciousness until we know what drugs she used, and she took that knowledge with her to her grave. His body would starve to death ere we might chance upon that antidote. The kindest thing to do now is to grant him a clean, quick death.”
So saying, he drew his dirk.
Lillian heard it all, heard both sides of the mutant’s conversation with the Senior Director, heard the order to destroy her transceiver—her only possible link with the Center—heard all their attempts to arouse Zastros’ body; though she felt each and every excruciating agony and screamed almost incessantly, no single sound emerged from the body’s lips. Then she heard Milo’s last words, heard his weapon snick from its case.
She felt fingertips move on the chest, locate the spot and lift away, to be replaced by the knife point. Then she was silently screaming out the unbearable anguish of the cold, sharp blade entering the body’s heart; unmoving, she writhed in pain as he jerked the double-edged weapon, slicing the organ to speed death.
Frantically, Lillian cast about, seeking a sleeping or unconscious body—any body, human or otherwise—fruitlessly. Faintly, she heard voices and the clumping of heavy boots. Then there was silence.
Thus, did Dr. Lillian Landor (holder of four degrees), who had hated all male humans for most of the seven hundred years of her life, at last meet death … in a man’s body.
14
Early in that month called Thekembrios, Milo and Mara lay reclined upon a mound of cushions, sipping cordials and gazing into the heart of a crackling, popping wood fire. The evening had been one of those rare occasions on which they had been able to dine alone, in their suite, and the remains of the meal littered a table nearby.
He tried to enter her mind, failed, and said aloud, “What are you thinking of that you must shield your thoughts?”
She smiled ruefully. “Sorry, Milo. We must shield our thoughts so much of our days, you know. But I didn’t mean to shut you out.
“No, I was thinking of you … in a way. I was thinking of the first winter I spent with you in that damned drafty tent at Ehlai. God, it was horrible: that arctic wind knifing in off the ocean, fleas hopping on every living creature in the camp, and the smells, ugh—the atmosphere inside those tents was enough to sicken a hog or a goat, smoke and sour milk and wet wool and filthy, unwashed human bodies. You should have warned me beforehand what a winter camp was going to be like. Nothing even resembling a real bath for months; Milo, I thought I’d never be able to get the stink off and be clean again!”
Milo took a sip of his cordial. “I don’t recall any complaints from you then, Mara.”
She laughed throatily. “Of course not, silly. I was in love with you—violently, passionately in love with you. Then, the cold and the stink and the fleas and the filth still added up to paradise … just so long as you were there. We women are like that in the first flush of love.”
“And now, Mara?” He rolled onto his side to face her.
“That was forty years ago. How much do you love me now?”
“Not that much, Milo. That kind of love can never last very long; it’s too intense, too demanding, too abrasive on the emotions of both parties. But I do love you still, Milo. Ours has become a … a comfortable relationship for me. And what of you, my lord?”