Vampires Save the Night, page 22
Even this practice couldn’t still their mind now, however. They were trying not to think about what to do when the pilot made his move. Walker had lived two generous spans of human life. Perhaps that was enough. They gathered their thoughts and their impromptu harvest and hastened to the human.
The pilot was in the living area — what might be called a common space, had there been anyone to share it in common. The lights were on full brightness, making Walker squint.
“All fresh, local, and organic,” said Walker, putting the selection of produce down on the coffee table.
Krik stared at them. Walker shrugged.
“They used to make a big deal about that kind of thing when I lived on Earth.”
“I’ve never eaten this well on Earth.” Krik picked up an apricot and tore it down the middle, removing the stone with fascination.
“I’ll save that. The rest usually just goes back into compost.”
Walker was about to sit down with him when Krik looked up, one half of the apricot against his teeth, and paused.
“Could you not — watch me eat, please?”
“Of course.” Walker stood up straight again. “I’ll be in the greenhouses.”
When Walker did not see the pilot again for the rest of the day, they checked the station cameras. Krik had explored all the central areas of the station, including Walker’s own quarters — they were not in the habit of locking doors — then returned to his ship where he sent a message back to Earth, before retiring to his room — and locking the door. When Walker found the message was encrypted, their shame at having tried to read it was sullied by vindication— which swiftly turned to disappointment.
Krik did indeed have secrets.
***
The next day, Krik entered the living area just as Walker was leaving more fruit and heading toward Greenhouse One.
“Wait,” he said quickly. “Please.”
Walker stopped.
“Thank you for bringing me all this. I’m sorry I was rude yesterday. It’s just — you don’t get old, or hungry, or … need to shave. It makes me feel ….” Krik gestured vaguely with his hands before focusing instead on peeling an orange.
At least he seemed less afraid. Walker sat down across from him.
“I remember the feeling.”
“Are there any mirrors onboard? I did want to shave.”
“You can turn any wall panel into a mirror — here.” Walker showed Krik how. The panels of the wall behind the sofa shimmered from dull grey to reflective silver. Krik looked at Walker in surprise.
“You have a reflection.”
“Of course,” said Walker, slightly flustered. Was the pilot so ill-prepared for his task?
“Well, I hadn’t seen any mirrors anywhere.”
Walker shrugged. “I know what I look like.” In their mind’s eye, Walker didn’t even picture their own face, when they smiled, or laughed, or frowned — they pictured Zivko’s.
“Well — thanks.”
Krik glanced at Walker several times while he ate, but looked down before speaking again, picking at an empty grape stem.
“How long have you been a vampire?”
“One hundred and eighty-four years.”
“Oh.” Walker watched as he did the math. “Only two years before you left Earth?”
“It was my dream ever since I was a child to come to space. And by the time I grew up, humans couldn’t be astronauts anymore. So I became a vampire.” It sounded so simple when they said it like that.
“On purpose?” Krik’s thick eyebrows fled into his hair.
Nearly two centuries later, Walker had no answer to that. In truth, it wasn’t simple at all.
“I met a vampire. Zivko. He knew my dream. He … helped me.”
“Have you ever —?” Krik swallowed the rest of his words. Walker let him believe it was a rude question, so they wouldn’t have to answer.
They asked a searching question of their own. “Was it competitive, this job?”
“Not really.” Krik looked away. “Not many people care about plants, I guess. That’s why we needed Birnam in the first place, right?” A deflection.
“And you do? Is that why you became an astronaut?”
“I just … wanted to get away,” said Krik, still avoiding Walker’s eyes. Then he smiled sheepishly. “To be honest, I wanted to meet aliens. But I guess you’re the closest thing to an alien I’m likely to meet. Sorry, is that rude?”
Krik’s eyes were uncertain, wide like a child’s. Youth felt so far away from anything Walker knew, save in the seedlings. Against all reason, they wanted to protect it. They shook their head, smiling at the pilot’s unexpected honesty.
“Aliens?”
“I just want to know … if there’s something else. Because what we’ve got on Earth … it isn’t working, is it? And everything takes so long to change. Maybe it doesn’t seem that way to you.”
“I don’t follow much news,” Walker admitted. “I just hear the names change. The countries or corporations, presidents or CEOs. The latest nomenclature.” Languages changed even quicker than countries, were all the more real for their fickleness — while Walker, memorizing dead and dying words, was by nature less fickle, less alive, than any tongue. “It’s hard to tell, from out here, when anything really changes.”
“Something needs to, though, doesn’t it?”
Meeting the pilot’s eyes, Walker felt, for the first time since his arrival, vulnerable. Not because they feared for their life. Walker feared change — the way only those who desperately wish for it can.
“It’s a welcome change, having you here,” Walker said, finding it was true. Fear and hope were leaves on the same stem.
Krik glanced away again. Then he bit into a strawberry and his face froze.
“What’s wrong? Are you having an allergic reaction?” Walker wouldn’t even need to defend themself — humans were so fragile!
But Krik shook his head. He chewed slowly and swallowed.
“It’s really good,” he said.
Walker stared at the pilot, wanting to smile. Then Krik looked up and laughed, and Walker, permitted, laughed, too.
“Would you show me where they grow?”
***
There were twelve greenhouses, twelve orbs forming a circle around the command center like an enormous clock. Walker always visited the greenhouses in numerical order, clockwise. It didn’t really matter, of course. Walker knew they could go backwards today, or do even numbers before odd, but there were simply too many days at their disposal to make variety meaningful. So they did the same thing every day. Whether it was routine, superstition, or habit was another mere difference in nomenclature.
Krik sneezed as they entered Greenhouse One. He wanted to smell everything, touch everything. He followed Walker as they went about the daily routine, asking questions — about the plants, and about Walker.
“Do you sweat?” he asked, his own dark curls sticking to his forehead as they walked through humid Greenhouse Five, home to the tropical samples. The greenhouses maximized space by their spherical shape: plants grew from every inch of the inner surface, smooth and continuous with no distinction between floor, ceiling, and walls, all reaching toward a pseudo-sun — convincing enough for plants, innocuous enough for vampires — in the center of the room, like a planet turned outside in. Regulated gravity kept the plants and their caretakers rooted to the curved surface.
“No. Saves on laundry.” Walker hoped to make Krik laugh again, but the pilot was stubbornly earnest. Focused on his mission, Walker supposed.
“Do you sleep?”
“Not in coffins. But yes. It’s how we revitalize. The dark to us is like light is to plants.”
“So, you’re not tempted?”
“Tempted?”
“By fresh blood?” A flush crept up Krik’s neck, illustrating his point.
“Oh. No, don’t worry. I am not … tempted.” Walker took a deep breath.
“I thought you didn’t need to breathe.”
“A habit.” The sudden need to explain themself was jarring. “Shall we move on to Greenhouse Six? That’s the fungi house. I wouldn’t advise going in there, or any of the greenhouses, alone. It might be risky for those who do need to breathe.”
***
Krik’s understanding of vampirism was as vague as a pre-Accords horror flick, the old myths having turned, apparently, from protection to propaganda. He knew just as little about horticulture. Walker knew this ignorance was buying them time, each lesson sand through an hourglass. But they enjoyed having someone to talk to, and while the amount of upkeep the human body required seemed laborious at first — they had to adapt their usual routine to include harvesting food to supplement Krik’s freeze-dried supplies, cooking with the minimal equipment on board the station, and pausing for two or three meals a day — there was something uniquely pleasant about helping to care for someone who wasn’t a plant.
Krik’s curiosity seemed so guileless, and Walker did want him to learn. They were so distracted by teaching him, and by the novelty of conversation, that it wasn’t until the seventh day that Walker remembered the pilot’s purported mission.
“Where are the seeds you brought? We’d better unpack them,” Walker said, when Krik finished his oatmeal. They had harvested the grains from Greenhouse Eight together the day before. Walker knew the delivery was likely a ruse, but so long as the seeds were real, they were worth looking after.
Krik retrieved the package from his ship and brought it to Greenhouse One. Walker pushed off from where they had been watering the lemon trees and reattached to the floor near Krik, who placed the capsule on the nearest clean surface. They released the pressurized cap and began to unwrap the preserved specimens: real, but few. Half a dozen bulbs, and seven separate packets of seeds, labeled carefully with genus, species, and copyright. These companies had the most morbid optimism, to think they and their first-dibs rights would survive the next disaster. Walker kept this thought to themself — along with the observation that these samples could easily have been sent in an automated delivery capsule, like all the others.
Walker handed Krik a container fetched from the cupboard below.
“It’s important to keep bulbs like this dry, so we’re using a clay soil — it drains well. Here, mix this packet in some water, just a few drops. Use the pipette.”
Krik rolled up his sleeves and followed the instructions carefully. Walker handed him a brush and he used it to whisk the fabricated clay grounds with the water until it held together into a cool, dry soil. Walker took off their gloves and pinched the clay, smoothing it between their fingers.
“Good. Feel that? That’s the right consistency. Maybe even a drop less water next time. Now, take about a third of that out of the container.” Krik obliged. Walker placed a bulb inside, gently nestled it into the soft clay. “And now we cover it.” Krik smoothed the rest of the clay around the bulb.
“Doesn’t all this get repetitive?” Krik asked, as they completed the process a second time.
Walker shrugged. “The plants grow a little every day. They change, they have needs. There’s always work to do.”
“Is that enough?”
“Would you ask that of the clouds? The rain? The soil?”
“Well, no.”
“Perhaps it’s fanciful, but I think of myself like that sometimes.” Walker handed the next bulb to Krik.
“And that helps?”
Walker thought about it.
“It’s not that I need help. But — I have purpose.” What had begun with the bright bite of a dream had blistered to penance, then scabbed over into this — purpose, neither good nor bad. “Borrowed from the rain, and the bees.”
“What are bees?”
“Insects that fertilize plants. They lived in hives, and made a sweet syrup called honey. People used to be afraid of them, because they stung.”
“Were you ever stung?”
“Once, as a child. I cried and cried.”
“It hurt that bad?”
Walker avoided Krik’s eyes and tried to smile. “My mother gave me an ice pack and a candy bar.”
“Can you still cry?”
“I’m not sure.” They had never thought about it. Not even when …. “Anyway, there are no bees anymore.”
Krik looked close to tears himself.
“Krik,” Walker said, very quietly. Krik looked up as though startled by Walker’s presence, even though they had just been conversing. “Why are you crying?”
He looked like a rabbit in a trap. He looked like Walker should have felt. They waited.
“Because,” Krik whispered finally, in a strained, pleading tone, “there are no vampires anymore.”
“What happened to them?” Walker knew the answer. But they wanted to hear it from a human’s mouth.
“There was — a war. They all died.”
Anger gnawed at Walker’s guts for the first time in years, hungry, patient. They put down the bulb they were holding and placed their hands flat on the cool metal surface of the counter.
“A ‘war’.” They knew it was a generous word.
Krik swallowed. “It was before I was born.”
“And you were sent here to finish the job. Assassinate the last of the vampires.” As they said it — the thing they had suspected all this time — Walker suddenly realized how much they had hoped they were wrong. That they might have had a companion — a friend. They couldn’t even feel betrayed, because they had known, and they felt cheated of this, too.
“You — knew?” asked Krik, aghast, as though this were the horror.
“How are you going to do it?”
“I — It was supposed to be poison.”
Walker knew they could snap the human’s neck easily, but they also knew they wouldn’t. For the same reason they were careful of the tomato stems as they plucked a wooden post from behind the leaves. They thrust it into Krik’s fingers, holding his hand roughly to their chest.
“Not a stake through the heart?”
What would Zivko think, if he could see them now? Would it disgust him to see Walker throwing away his gift? Would he be disappointed? Unsurprised? Or stoic, as usual? Walker blinked furiously. Their anger, unexpectedly seeping back into the past, stung at the backs of their eyes.
Krik pulled his hand away and stepped back, dropping the stake. It clattered weakly onto the smooth metal floor and began to roll along the endless curve.
“I changed my mind, okay? I already decided I can’t — I won’t do it.”
“Oh?” Walker turned away from the human. So many decisions, made and broken, and none of them were theirs. They needed to get out of the greenhouse so they could throw something. Somewhere behind the hornet-buzz in their mind they still knew they didn’t want to damage the plants. The plants were innocent. But Krik followed them out onto the bridge.
“They told me you were a monster. I didn’t expect you to be nice! And — lonely.”
“I’m not —” Walker stopped. The anger fled their body as abruptly as it had arrived. It dizzied them, left them hollow and weak, almost nauseous. They fell into a crouch, bent over their knees, and clutched their hair, taking a deep, deep, deep breath. They held that needless oxygen for a full minute before exhaling just as slowly.
“I did not think of myself as lonely,” they said at last, “until ….”
“Until?”
Walker looked back at him. “It isn’t something you think about when you are as alone as I have been. I’ve been … content.” Walker gestured aimlessly, sitting on the floor of the bridge, leaning against the railing and stretching their legs out. They weren’t sure that was the right word. What they meant was that it was what they deserved.
“I think … that’s another word for lonely,” said the pilot. “Nomenclature, right?”
Walker considered him. They shrugged.
“See, how could I kill you?” said Krik. “You’re so sad!”
Walker laughed. Krik looked startled, as he so often did, and his enormous eyes just made Walker laugh harder, loud with buried grief and guilt and loneliness suddenly unearthed — and the absurdity that they were not, in this moment, alone. They laughed as they had not laughed since Earth — since Zivko. They cried as they had not cried since the bee.
They wiped a tear from their eye and looked at it in surprise. Krik did, too.
“So you can cry,” he said. And that set Walker off again, until Krik’s eyes were streaming, too, and they both laughed, and cried, and couldn’t tell the difference, for a long time.
“Then, you forgive me?” asked Krik around a hiccup when their hysterics, their anguish, had exhausted them.
“You haven’t done anything, Krik.” Walker scrubbed a hand across their damp face.
“Yeah, but ….”
“What will you do now? Were you expected to return, after?”
Krik shook his head. “I was supposed to take over, for a while anyway.”
Walker nodded. “So you had to learn from me. First.”
Krik looked down at his feet.
“I still want to,” he said, meeting their eyes once more.
“Think you can do the rest of those bulbs by yourself?”
Krik nodded.
“Good. I need some time alone.”
Walker left Krik to handle the bulbs and went to Greenhouse Two. They let their tears flow silently now as they strode among the tallest trees on Birnam, enveloping themself in foliage. They took a deep breath, then another, and another, trying to taste the trees’ gift that was wasted on them. The oxygen transformed to nothing in their lungs. It gave them nothing, took nothing away.
Yet this was what Walker spent their life protecting, for the sake of those who had destroyed their kind. Their people, whom they’d never really known, never been a part of — and never would. They had known this for thirty years, found the news despite Headquarters’ attempts to censor their feed, but the reality, the devastation, had felt so far away. As unreal as anything else on Earth. Just words. Now it was here — with a young, scared face.
