In actual fact, it’s all much simpler than that. The first vampires were obviously beings who assumed that form in the Twilight. It was some kind of sadomasochistic complex, very probably a perfectly banal disorder of sexual appetence, but manifested in an Other rather than in a human being. I think that initially there was nothing to it except the sexual excitement that the Other derived from biting pretty girls and being able to do this with impunity, thanks to his special abilities. What else could he do? It was the Middle Ages, social manners were simple, back then there weren’t any of our modern, specialised clubs for people who like to bite each other – in those days that led straight to the stake and the fire. One of the first vampires – perhaps this is secret knowledge that they preserve in their legends – experimented with the composition of the toxin that vampires inject into their victim. After all, a standard vampire bite doesn’t kill, it plunges the victim into a blissful and helpless condition. By injecting slightly more poison, the vampire induces retrograde amnesia in the victim. And with just a little more – the person dies. Not even from loss of blood – most vampires only need two or three hundred millilitres a month – but simply from poisoning …
But one day a vampire dragged his victim into the Twilight. Some version of the toxin developed by one of the first vampires killed the victim – but the death occurred in the Twilight, which has its own laws. And the human being ceased living, but did not completely die. He was transformed into something capable of existing for an infinitely long time, while retaining his reason, acquiring an absolutely incredible regenerative capacity and also, in part, the abilities of an Other – even if he had not possessed them initially.
The crucial point was that this version of the toxin did not kill human cells: it deprived them of the ability to renew themselves naturally by dividing, but it endowed them with a quite fantastic capacity for intra-cellular regeneration. A large dose of the toxin ‘preserved’ a human being almost instantly – young vampires remained young for ever, any injuries regenerated within minutes. A smaller dose transformed a human being into a vampire gradually – children grew up, young people aged … until the toxin triumphed completely and the vampire ‘froze’ in its final form, like a fly in amber. Without the abilities of an Other, without the Twilight, this would not have been of any great advantage to the vampires – theoretically speaking, a vampire would not have been able to regenerate a severed limb, any totally destroyed cell would have died for ever, there would have been nothing to replace it with … But the vampires were helped out here by their magical abilities. On entering the Twilight, they created something like a map of their organism, a Twilight matrix – and so they were able to control their bodies perfectly in the Twilight, by checking against this matrix: they could grow younger or older as they wished, change their appearance, regrow lost limbs … and the most experienced and powerful of them could even shift into non-human form.
So far, even in all this, there was nothing truly horrible: it was more an expression of the human dream of immortality. Although in consummate vampires the reproductive function disappeared, those who had not been completely transformed were even capable of producing offspring …
There was only one problem. The vampires were no longer alive. Growth and the multiplication of cells – these are the very essence of life. The ‘preserved’ cells were no longer alive, but they were not dead. They did not radiate energy into the Twilight, did not make any contribution to the Power on which all Others draw. And consequently they could not receive energy. In order to remain a full-fledged vampire, consume Power and not fall apart owing to the creeping, inevitable death of individual cells, vampires require living cells. Even if they are not their own.
Blood provided these cells. It was the easiest form of all to maintain alive within the vampire organism. By the way, novice vampires prefer to drink blood of their own group, it’s easier for them to work with. And the thirst for this blood, the organism’s desperate striving not to die completely, developed into the vampire Hunger that is the source of so many problems. Experienced vampires can cope with it, but not all new converts can – that’s why vampires’ victims die so often from being drunk dry, although in reality the vampire has no need to do this, and he will vomit up the excess blood a few minutes later in any case … Blood from blood banks offers a solution, but not a complete one – the vampire’s subconscious still demands fresh, hot blood, flowing into his mouth straight from the arteries …
There were plenty of other interesting things concerning vampires. Some of them, strangely enough, have filtered through into the human sphere and been incorporated into folklore. For instance, the Master of Vampires. If a human being is turning into a vampire gradually – and that, after all, is the route followed in most cases – the level of toxin in his organism dwindles and it has to be constantly topped up by further bites. And the bites have to be from the same vampire who initiated him. The alternative is death. A fully formed vampire no longer requires this, but for reasons that are obvious to any politician, old and experienced vampires try not to spawn fully formed vampires. It is far better to keep your brood on a short leash and maintain genuinely absolute power over at least a small handful of the undead …
By the way, the biology of werewolves and shape-shifters is extremely complicated. However, they don’t drink blood, they eat raw flesh. The Light shape-shifters, who prefer to call themselves simply shifters, eat animal flesh. Dark shape-shifters eat human flesh. As far as I can see, here again the problem is mental rather than physiological – Bear told me that he couldn’t sense any difference in the influx of Power …
At the time I didn’t happen to ask about the circumstances in which he had tried human flesh. There were rumours that he used to be a Dark One. And there were rumours that he had fought in a human army and had been a Russian partisan during World War Two, although it could have been another war. There were even rumours that our scientific section had spent a long time studying him, and you could expect them to carry out any kind of experiment …
I’m not convinced that knowledge makes people happier: as a general rule, those who are unaware of the truth are far more carefree.
So had Zabulon been right when he quoted that biblical truth to me: ‘With great knowledge comes great sorrow’?
No, that way of thinking wasn’t right, either. Absolutely no truths are absolute.
I smiled at my sophistical turn of thought, but then decided that it wasn’t sophistry after all, more of an aporia or, perhaps, a case of Eubulides’ ‘paradox of the liar’.
I carried on for a while pondering the binary, ternary and quaternary logic that had been encouraged so vigorously by the cognac. Then I turned the film on again. The hero was killing a vampire. The vampire was screeching malignly, mouthing vague curses and stubbornly refusing to accept the inevitable.
What am I thinking of? Who needs all this – the paradox of the liar and the ancient Greek philosopher Eubulides, whose intellectual games once reduced Greek sages to suicide? Who needs logic, anyway – apart from a handful of armchair scholars, who will reduce it to a well-chewed pap of logical schemas, which more practical scholars will take as the basis for programming languages and mathematical models, which will eventually allow even more practical programmers to write programs making it possible for entirely business-minded directors to film in convincing detail all this stupid shit that is shown in cinemas and broadcast on TV all around the world?