Authors: Mick Farren
More Than Mortal (47 page)
Renquist shook his head. “I’m afraid you’re the only person I’ve seen at all since I woke.”
“Never mind. I’ll find her.”
Short black bicycling gloves covered Theda’s hands, and between her fingers she snapped a leather strap, what Renquist believed was known as a tawse, a punishment implement once used in Scottish schools as a substitute for the cane favored by the English. From this, he deduced the thrall would undoubtedly suffer once she was
located, and dragged from wherever she was hiding, but Theda and the punishment of her domestics was absolutely none of his concern, and after the courtesy of a curt half bow, he hurried on down the stairs. As Renquist strode along the landing, a part of him felt like bursting in—throwing wide the Merlin’s door—with full nosferatu dramatic effect, but, like the sword, it was both too uncontrolled and predictable. Instead, he simply rapped firmly on the door and waited for an answer. An agonized female shriek echoed down the stairwell. Theda had clearly captured her errant thrall, whose howls all but drowned out the voice from within.
located, and dragged from wherever she was hiding, but Theda and the punishment of her domestics was absolutely none of his concern, and after the courtesy of a curt half bow, he hurried on down the stairs. As Renquist strode along the landing, a part of him felt like bursting in—throwing wide the Merlin’s door—with full nosferatu dramatic effect, but, like the sword, it was both too uncontrolled and predictable. Instead, he simply rapped firmly on the door and waited for an answer. An agonized female shriek echoed down the stairwell. Theda had clearly captured her errant thrall, whose howls all but drowned out the voice from within.
“Enter.”
Yes, my Urshu friend, indeed I will enter.
As Marieko left her room, she heard a drawn-out series of slaps, leather on flesh, each strike followed by a sobbing wail. She glanced up and saw, on the landing above, the Lady Theda had a thrall bent over the banisters, buttocks bared, and was thrashing her with slow, deliberate strokes. Similar scenes and worse had been acted out in the great castles of Japan in the old days, and even the poor departed Columbine had her moments, so Marieko thought nothing of it and continued on her self-imposed mission. After much consideration, she had decided the effrontery of Taliesin to pervade her dreams, unasked and unwanted, could only be faced head-on. Her connection with the Merlin, as long ago as when he slept beneath Morton Downs, had been through Columbine’s dreamstate. Perhaps it all must also end in the dreamstate. When Columbine had first complained of her dreams, Marieko had treated the matter with a certain lack of gravity. Now that she herself had experienced the Merlin forcing his way into her sleep, she regretted not having taken Columbine more seriously. The process was both humiliating and enervating, and it had only happened to Marieko once. Columbine had suffered it day after day, week after week. She knew, if she was to
retain her honor and her self-respect, she had to go to the Urshu and demand that he cease this violation and trespassing in her unconscious.
retain her honor and her self-respect, she had to go to the Urshu and demand that he cease this violation and trespassing in her unconscious.
“Inundated with all this television, they cannot dream. This Hitler, did you know him?”
“Only his henchman.”
“Was he human?”
“I believe so. I think he may have been a product of environment. After trench warfare of the kind he experienced as a young man, many things might seem possible. Unprecedented mass slaughter being among them.”
The Merlin was watching four TV sets simultaneously and appeared to be speed-reading at the same time. His eating had diminished a little from the obscene gluttony for human food he’d exhibited during the first few hours after his waking, but as Renquist had entered, he’d been spooning breakfast cereal into his mouth, only he’d substituted Guinness for the more usual milk and sugar. Whether this was truly how the Merlin was, or simply an elaborate piece of lifestyle playacting was debatable. What couldn’t be questioned was that he was learning at an impossibly fast and furious rate. Already he was fluent in half a dozen languages, and he had a firm grasp of contemporary world politics and the events that shaped them, but his opinion of human civilization appeared to be diminished each time Renquist spoke with him. Though he devoured all the videotapes Fenrior could provide for him, plus sampling every channel that could be pulled down by the castle’s satellite dish, he seemed to blame a great deal of the world’s current ills on the invention of television, which he considered a more dangerous piece of machinery than the atom bomb. “Their collective span of attention grows so short, I swear they’ll soon be unable to feed themselves. They are sheep governed by charlatans.”
“Hasn’t it always been like that?”
“Yes, yes, but in this new world it all moves so fast.
The Roman Empire lasted five hundred years. The British Empire less than two hundred, the Soviet Empire didn’t make it through a century. How long do you think the American Empire will last? And then what will come? It moves so fast, it scarcely bears thinking about.”
The Roman Empire lasted five hundred years. The British Empire less than two hundred, the Soviet Empire didn’t make it through a century. How long do you think the American Empire will last? And then what will come? It moves so fast, it scarcely bears thinking about.”
Renquist allowed himself a smile, even though he knew Taliesin’s generalized tirade was only designed to defuse his anger. “I confront that by mostly not thinking about it.”
“How is it that you nosferatu couldn’t intervene and. halt some of the humans’ worst excesses?”
Renquist shrugged. “We are few in number.”
“The Urshu were even fewer in number, but it never stopped us.”
“We also can’t walk in the sun.”
“That I will concede is a definite disadvantage.”
“Primarily, though, we didn’t give a damn. Sometimes we manipulate human illusions in our own interests, but we seem to court disaster when we play at God. We learned that the hard way in the upper valleys of the Indus ten thousand years ago.”
The Merlin chuckled and drank the last of the cornflakes and Guinness straight from the cereal bowl. “I heard about that. A nasty business. So what exactly do the nosferatu care about?”
“Mainly our food supply and our privacy.”
Renquist wasn’t sure if the Merlin’s expression was a sneer or not. “Is that an oblique way of telling me you didn’t appreciate the little glimpse of the fall of Baalbeck. I thought it might be educational for you. Obviously your own DNA memories cannot encompass that epic moment that left your kind and mine stranded on this miserable and backward planet.”
Renquist’s spine stiffened. He was not going to permit the Merlin to laugh the whole thing off. “The nosferatu care that their minds should remain inviolate. We respond badly to psychic intrusion, whoever or whatever the intruder.”
“Is this what you came to tell me?”
“It is. Putting it succinctly, the message is ‘Stay out of my mind, Urshu.’”
“That’s a warning?”
“You could take it as such.”
“A warning backed by what, may I ask?”
Before Renquist could answer, he was interrupted by a soft tapping on the door, and, since he had no answer with any conviction to it, it could not have happened at a more opportune time. The Merlin smiled as though he already knew this. “It seems everyone wants to spend time with me.”
“Have you been invading all their dreams? I wouldn’t recommend trying it with some of the Highlanders. I’ve only seen them when they’re having fun. I shudder to think what they’re like when they’re angry.”
Taliesin ignored him. “Enter.”
The door opened. The caller was Marieko. Her attitude was formal, and she wore a kimono of Yarabachi, but Renquist noted her mouth was exceedingly small, a sure sign she was exceedingly angry. The Merlin put aside his cereal bowl and used a remote to lower the sound on the TV sets. “
Konnickiha,
Marieko-san.”
Konnickiha,
Marieko-san.”
As if she’d been steeling herself for the ordeal for some time, Marieko delivered a lengthy complaint in Japanese. Renquist’s Japanese was good, but not that good. He couldn’t match Marieko and the Merlin in nuance and subtlety. The gist was that Marieko’s dreamstate had also been violated by Taliesin, and she had come to complain about it. Perhaps not as forcefully as Renquist, but complain all the same—but for Renquist to be excluded by language was clearly another of Merlin’s ploys. “Could we please continue in English. This kind of thing makes me nervous.”
“Nervous, Victor? To be excluded from the conversation makes you nervous? Surely I should be the one who is nervous.”
Marieko switched to English. “And why should you be nervous, Taliesin-san?”
“Am I not alone in a remote castle full of vampires?”
This was nonsense, and Renquist didn’t hesitate to say so. “You have no fear of us. You walk in the sun, and as far as I can observe, you don’t sleep.”
“I am watched constantly.”
“Could you expect otherwise?”
“And Fenrior plans to kill me.”
At this, Renquist said nothing. Marieko looked stunned. “Is this true?”
Still Renquist said nothing. The Merlin laughed. “So tell the lady, Victor. Is it true or isn’t it? You don’t mind if I call you Victor, do you?”
Marieko had never seen Renquist so uncompromising. “So when we really descend through the levels, you’re actually seeking my support.”
The Merlin was more than his equal, however, in a lack of compromise. “Of course, why else should I have gone to so much trouble?”
“You believe Fenrior plans your death?”
“Indeed I do.”
“Why tell me this?”
“Because you have yet to make up your mind. You don’t know if you want me alive or dead.”
Renquist’s eyes were even harder than before, and Marieko was glad such a gaze wasn’t directed at her. Victor knew the Merlin was reading his mind, and he both loathed and resented it. “I’ve discussed this with no one.”
“But it shows. Even you cannot conceal everything, my excellent Victor.”
“So it would seem.”
As the Merlin slowly smiled, Marieko realized the Urshu were truly a very different species both from nosferatu and man. “And your answer?”
“Do you really believe I’ll assist you to survive when
you as good as tell me my mind is an open book anytime you care to read it?”
you as good as tell me my mind is an open book anytime you care to read it?”
“What makes you think I need your assistance to survive?”
“What else could you want from me? I have little else to offer. You either want me to dissuade Fenrior and his Highlanders from chopping you to cutlets, or at least buy you some time until you have fully prepared yourself for whatever you intend to do.”
The Merlin stroked his chin. He didn’t shave, but apparently he needed to. Stubble was graduating to the start of a full beard. “You’re not stupid, Victor.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Could I command your loyalty if I were, for the sake of argument, to show you the future?”
Marieko made her skepticism as obvious as possible. “You have gained the gift of prophecy?”
“Of course not. We both know that the future isn’t stacked, immutable, just waiting to unreel like one of your motion pictures. I can show you the future because the Merlin has returned, and from here on in, I will be shaping by far the greater part of that future, all in fact that is not purely random. I would show you the way to exploit coming events to both your benefit and to the benefit of your kind in general. Indeed, if the nosferatu as a species might compromise a little, I could bring them to their very own paradise.”
Marieko expected Renquist to have a response, possibly a violent one, to the idea of nosferatu compromise, but instead, he remained silent. Taliesin looked at him questioningly. “You have nothing to say, Victor.”
Renquist shook his head. “I would hear more first.”
The Merlin looked at him hard and then picked up a bottle of peppermint schnapps from his litter of supplies, and drank from it. “As I tried to tell you when I first woke, we Urshu have a genetic imperative to interfere in the business of humans. We are also immensely powerful, as you may be beginning to learn.”
“You also told us you had yet to formulate your plans, but you were looking forward to working on a more global canvas.”
“And now I’m working on it.”
Marieko frowned. “Are you saying you’ve already formulated your plans?”
“In a broad sense. I have at least drawn my conclusions.”
Renquist’s voice was careful and measured. “And these conclusions are?”
“Without exception, all contemporary problems stem from there being far too many humans—by quantum proportions, there are too many humans. Their breeding puts rabbits to shame. They are ecologically unsound and their reliance on technology is precipitating them into devolution.”
Marieko looked at Renquist. “I can have no argument so far.”
Renquist smiled at her. “Nor I. That’s why I have nothing to say.”
Merlin continued. “The only answer, as I see it, has to be a major cull of the herd.”
“A cull?”
“An extremely large reduction in the human population. I have considered various means that could be employed, and I tend to favor political manipulation toward what would at first be a limited nuclear conflagration. Let’s say between India and Pakistan, escalating to more of the smaller and less stable nuclear powers, Iran, Iraq, Ukraine, Argentina, Chile, and stopping just short of Russia, China, and the USA from going into total overkill. That would give us a modest nuclear winter for some six or seven years, during which the other well known Horsemen of the Apocalypse—Famine, Pestilence, and Death—would naturally follow where War was to lead, but not to actual extinction. It would be a new dark age in which the nosferatu, if forewarned and forearmed, could stake out their own territory, fully defensible
against all humanity, humans having mainly reverted to the primitive. You could have your own world, or, at least, your own continent.”
against all humanity, humans having mainly reverted to the primitive. You could have your own world, or, at least, your own continent.”
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