The Smell of Telescopes (18 page)

Lilith frowned. Why did Oldona know more about the rules of British vampire institutes than about the characteristics of her own town? There was something funny going on, not only in her lower regions. As if aware of her mistake, the student shrugged.

“That’s what I’ve heard, anyhow,” she said.

Lilith nodded. “Well, it happens to be true. But Artery and myself came up with a novel way round the problem.”

“Novel? I read one once: it was about a cannibal horse.”

Lilith tugged at a fang. Oldona had made the sort of slightly silly remark she was used to hearing from Artery. They were similar in so many ways. Was it the fact they were the same age and had absorbed identical cultural influences? Or was there a mystic element, an astral connection between the pair? Lilith distrusted the idea of elective affinities, but she had to admit there was an uncanny overlap of behaviour patterns. Was this why she felt attracted to the student?

Mrs Robinson returned to her confession: “To swindle the examiners, we collected the blood drop by drop, from unsuspecting donors, over many months! We were very patient.”

“But how did you do it?” Oldona shifted uncomfortably. “How did you manage to steal blood painlessly?”

“I didn’t say we did. But the pain was too minor to excite alarm. I am a counsellor, as you know. My clients are confused students. I invite them to sit on the chair opposite mine. It is fixed to the floor, with a solid base. A hollow needle protrudes above the level of the cushion and this pierces the flesh of a victim’s buttock. A drop of blood runs into a reservoir located under the floorboards. After the counselling session the victim departs my office none the wiser, attributing any discomfort in the posterior to psychosomatic causes.”

Oldona tapped her gigantic nose. “I thought I felt a puncture wound when I first came to see you!” She kneaded Mrs Robinson’s legs under the table and batted her eyelashes. “But wouldn’t the reservoir be mixed up with different blood-groups?”

Lilith smirked. “We discovered a process of refining blood-types. I borrowed from the petroleum industry and set up an ichor-cracker, gently heating the mixture so that the group we needed evaporated and condensed in a separate chamber. Artery was type z.”

“I’m type z as well!” giggled Oldona.

“The only worrying thing,” continued Lilith, “is that there’s still a chamber full of unwanted blood beneath me. Disposing of it might prove to be difficult. A pipe connects the reservoir with the river. Turning a faucet under my desk will make the whole lot cascade out. Then the water will turn red and the Chancellor will notice. It’ll be traced back to me and Artery’s degree will be stripped.”

Oldona moved her hands higher. Now four sets of fingers brushed Mrs Robinson’s thighs. “Better not turn that faucet then! Perhaps you should leak a little at a time? One drop a day?”

Lilith sighed. “No, the freshers on the gondolas have nostrils like sharks, capable of sniffing out a few molecules. They’ll do anything to escape a life on the galleys and would report the blood in the desperate hope of gaining parole.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“My plan is to pressurise the reservoir with helium and invite back my clients for a reappraisal. When they sit down, the needle will inject the blood they originally lost.”

“I knew it! I knew it!” Oldona threw two of her arms around Lilith, the others moving closer to her moist secret.

Lilith pulled away, flattered and unnerved by the unrestrained show of affection. Were American monsters always as exuberant? Why did Oldona keep winking at her, as if they were confederates in a plot? She worried over this for no more than a moment; Oldona pulled her to her feet, took her round the waist and dragged her onto the dance floor. This time, the mood and tempo were slow and intimate.

The student leant over to press her lips to Lilith’s yawning cleavage. At first, these kisses were given partly in a spirit of playfulness, but they quickly became more serious. Lilith abandoned the fight against her conscience and allowed herself to be swept away by the sheer audacity of the episode. Oldona’s tongue found a way under her brassière and flicked like a flame over her pierced nipples, swelling the nodules to grotesque dimensions and dislodging a pearl.

A little later, the student clattered outside with her new lover. A meteor shower was spanking the backside of the constellation Polidori, a zodiac sign recognised only by bats. Lilith and Oldona groped in the wet shadows, elastic snapping in the penumbra where fireflies singed a night ready to fold in on itself. But though they rotated in the vortex of the wildest passion, the exchange student was careful to keep Lilith’s hands away from her own breasts and yielding sex.

“Here’s to you, Mrs Robinson!” whispered Oldona, as her thumb found the bud of her batty clitoris.

Lilith sighed. “That’s what my lover used to say!”

“I’m your lover now, gorgeous! Do you know what I’m going to do for you? I’m redesigning my bridge without telling the authorities! When you cast eyes on it, you’ll be delighted!”

Moaning, Lilith dissolved in a puddle of lust.

The construction of the bridge proceeded at high speed. Mrs Robinson was able to watch developments from her office window. The structure was now taking on the appearance of something archetypal and familiar, something both welcome and strangely repellent. A knot of nostalgia tightened down in her gut, but she was unable to say exactly what the bridge resembled. Its form was still too vague to comprehend. 

There was one piece of bad news: her husband was coming back from a lucrative teaching post in Yemen. The desert ghouls were bright students but they kept eating the necromancy exhibits. He’d had his fill: if they kept on like this, he’d have to teach them from textbooks. A necromancer worth his electrodes never relies on books, so he’d decided to return to the festering bosom of scholarship. He told her this in a letter written on the skin of a colleague who had been sacked for drunkenness. The last thing Lilith wanted was to see Woody again.

The only thing to make him change his mind would be the acquisition of inedible exhibits. If he could get hold of viscera for his work which his students couldn’t digest, he’d stay in Yemen. But corpses were tasty over there, soft and juicy, not like leathery British cadavers. He asked the Chancellor of Stakehampton College to send some over, but it was the end of term and there were none to spare.

Lilith shouldered this extra worry with stoic grace and whiled away the days walking by the river, watching cables being stretched over girders like guitar-strings. Just as the bridge seemed ready to crystallise into something she could comprehend, Oldona issued instructions that a canopy was to be placed over it, to shield the final preparations from prying eyes. Under the billowing fabric, the workmen’s shouts and oaths were muffled, like Bluebeardian brides asphyxiating in the nuptial pillow. Oldona kept stalking the banks with her whip and megaphone, calling out instructions or lashing at a disobedient silhouette.

They met at the Palais de Decadence every midnight. The staff were discreet and showed them into an inner suite of rooms, done up in gaudy purple satins, where narghiles bubbled and clockwork zoetropes showed a panoply of moving erotic images. Lilith puffed the hashish, quaffed the petal-infused wine and listened to the cellos and violins of a hung and drawn quartet. She talked about Artery a lot, casting aspersions on his imagined talent, but this seemed to cause Oldona some pain. When they’d tired of each other’s thumbs, the monkeys and eunuchs, they returned to the dance floor, gyrating in a corybantic frenzy, as if releasing inner tensions as taut as cables on the bridge.

Eventually, the project was completed. It was the day before Artery was due to fly back over. He hadn’t sent her a letter since storming out all those months before. She assumed he’d hitched himself to a harpy his own age and this thought kept the hatred flowing through her veins. Once she started to spin the grinding wheels of her dramatic scheme, the hate would pour out, engulfing the campus.

Oldona still knew nothing about it. The opening of the bridge would make a perfect backdrop to Lilith’s plans for revenge. There was going to be a parade with fireworks and bunting; the Chancellor and his minions were supposed to be the first to stride over. Halfway across, they would pause to make a speech about unity and fraternity. That would be Lilith’s signal; with a twist of the faucet, she would release the reservoir of blood directly under them, turning the river the colour of slaughtered tomatoes. Artery would return to immediate disgrace, his degree stripped and orders given to exile him from Stakehampton’s limits.

Naturally, this would ruin Lilith as well. But she planned to throw herself on Oldona’s mercy, pleading with the student to take her back to Arkham. Once in America, she would propose living together as squid-and-bat, which would give her rights under the constitution. From this base, she could set about sabotaging any reputation Artery had managed to make in the music business. If he went Stateside to resume a music career, he would find himself greeted by jeers.

The night before the big day, Oldona took Lilith for a drink at the Palais. Lilith wanted to keep a clear head, but the student insisted she consume bottle after bottle of strong beer.

“It’s a celebration,” Oldona insisted.

Lilith leaned closer and belched. “I’ve enjoyed your caresses for a whole semester. But why don’t you let me give you pleasure in return? Is it American shyness? My tongue is very fast!”

Oldona smiled. “Just wait for tomorrow, Mrs Robinson. All will then be revealed; it’s a surprise for you!”

In the morning, Lilith woke with a hangover. Groping her way to the bed’s edge, she looked at the sundial in horror. She had overslept: in a few minutes, the parade would begin. Dressing hurriedly in a velvet cape she jumped to the window and looked out. The canopy had been lifted from the bridge and the river banks were thronged with students. Mrs Robinson rubbed her disbelieving eyes: the bridge was an exact replica of a banjo and Oldona stood in the centre of the structure like a plectrum. Aghast, Lilith fell back from the curtains. Noticing the movement at the window, Oldona blew a kiss. Was this some sort of sick joke? A banjo! Shivering, Lilith chewed her talons, her hearts thumping.

Slowly, like puppets stalking a lathe, the Chancellor and his staff of diseased minions made their way to the front of the bridge. There was no better time: all eyes were focused on the river and the crossing. Mrs Robinson rushed to her desk, felt under it for the faucet and opened the valve. There was an immense crash far below, the pipes were rumbling and screaming; the office shook. She returned to the window and looked down. Any moment now, the tide of blood...

At this point, something truly unexpected happened. The Chancellor took his first faltering step on the bridge, followed by his colleagues. The vibration sounded a chord from the taut cables. Each step produced a different chord, a sequence of notes which formed a melody. Even worse, the melody was recognisable as one of Artery’s most syrupy compositions. As the Chancellor proceeded, Oldona raised her megaphone, pointed it at Lilith’s window and started to sing.

Lilith dove headfirst through the glass, speeding towards Oldona. A student burst into applause, convinced that this was part of the parade. Then others joined in, distracting Lilith, who lost control and collided with Oldona. The exchange student tumbled and bits of her fell off. Suddenly, it appeared she had snapped in two.

Lilith rolled upright and gazed at the disconnected segments of her Sapphic sweetheart.

“Artery Garfunkle and Appalling Simon!”

The two figures brushed splinters of smashed costume from wings and limbs. Artery was rueful. “This isn’t what I wanted! It was supposed to be a surprise. Now you’ve spoiled it!”

The Chancellor approached, his inverted face full of occult fury. A deafening rumble beneath them drowned out his words of chastisement. Now the torrent of blood was gushing at full force down the river, but nobody seemed to notice. They were too concerned with watching the Chancellor’s bodily contortions, unsure of whether this was really part of the act. With a pang of despair, Lilith realised the whole flood of ichor was going to pass without exciting any comment whatsoever.

“Why did you do it, Artery? What was it for?”

“You mean you didn’t know it was us, Mrs Robinson? But I thought we blew our disguise in the Palais de Decadence!”

The Chancellor bellowed. Lilith wiped a tear.

“Oldona was just a costume!” she cried. “I fell in love with a mere disguise! No wonder her mannerisms seemed familiar! You’ve hurt me badly this time, Artery. My heart is cankerous!”

Garfunkle laughed uneasily. “This is a joke, right? You are trying some sort of double-bluff? Appalling and I came up with the plan during my graduation. We wanted to hear you praise our music. You pretended not to like it, but we knew that was an affectation. We’re talented lads and our songs are special! So we invented the exchange student as a test. It failed and you saw behind Oldona’s disguise. You must have done, because you kept insisting you hated our music!”

Appalling added: “If you hadn’t known it was us, you’d have given a more honest appraisal and said we were great!”

Artery nodded. “We figured if you were going to keep up with such a ridiculous pretence, we were as well! I thought the banjo-bridge was the really clever touch. A stroke of genius!”

Lilith was still sobbing. “I loved a figment!” She grabbed Artery’s wings. “Don’t you understand? I loved her!”

Artery cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. “Very funny but we ought to kneel in front of the Chancellor before he has us locked in the college dungeons! He’s as livid as a maggot!”

Lilith peered over the side of the bridge. The river was clear as a mouse’s lust. Not a spot of blood remained in the water. “Let’s just get away, Artery. Come with me back to my room.”

“I’m all yours!” Artery let himself be led from the bridge and into the air. They flapped over the crumbling outbuildings to the residential block. They entered the window together.