Suzu McKee Charnas - Vampire Tapestry

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THEV AMPIRET APESTRY

ISBN: 1-930815-14-X

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This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations, and locales are either the product of

the author’s imagination or used fictitiously to convey a sense of realism.

eBook conversion by Lara Ballinger and Robert Kruger.

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The Vampire Tapestry

By Suzy McKee Charnas

ElectricStory.com, Inc.

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

My gratitude to those who read for me while this work was in progress: Stephen (first, last, and

always); Marge, Joanna, and Vonda; Janet, Sondra, Michael, Esther, Juliet, Mara, Ned, Maggie, and Jo

and her friends of the mini-reading in their mini-dining room at Evergreen; Robin, Patty, Liza, Sally, and

associates. Thanks also to some who read parts of this book in the light of particular expertise (errors

that survived their attentions are entirely my own responsibility): Marion London and Claudine Wilder,

therapists; Jon Charnas for advice on the layouts of apartments in New York, his town; Bruce Stringer,

veterinarian; Bill and Kay Weinrod, formerly on the administrative staff of the Santa Fe Opera, and Drew

Field, technical director; Eric Rose and Eva Friedlander, anthropologists; Virginia Kidd, agent, whose

enthusiasm and eye for detail were so helpful; David Hartwell, an editor who knows when work can be

made better and gives fruitful suggestions to that end; and special thanks to Harry Nadler for the use of

his Panama hat.

To the memory of Loren Eiseley. We never met, but his writing first opened to me the vast

perspectives of geologic time. From those distances eventually emerged the figure of the vampire

as envisioned in this book.

Part I:

The Ancient Mind At Work

On a Tuesday morning Katje discovered that Dr. Weyland was a vampire, like the one in the movie

she’d seen last week.

Jackson’s friend on the night cleaning crew had left his umbrella hooked over the bike rack outside the

lab building. Since Katje liked before starting to work to take a stroll in the dawn quiet, she went over to

see if the umbrella was still there. As she started back empty-handed through the heavy mist she heard

the door of the lab building boom behind her. She looked back.

A young man had come out and started across the parking lot. Clearly he was hurt or ill, for he slowed,

stopped, and sank down on one knee, reaching out a hand to steady himself on the damp and glistening

tarmac.

Behind him, someone else emerged from the building and softly shut the heavy door. This man, tall and

gray-haired, stood a moment touching to his mouth a white handkerchief folded into a small square. Then

he put the handkerchief away and walked out onto the lot. Passing behind the kneeling figure, he turned

his head to look—and continued walking without hesitation. He got into his shimmering gray Mercedes

and drove off.

Katje started back toward the lot. But the young man pushed himself upright, looked around in a

bewildered manner, and making his way unsteadily to his own car also drove away.

So there was the vampire, sated and cruel, and there was his victim, wilted, pale, and confused; although

the movie vampire had swirled about in a black cloak, not a raincoat, and had gone after bosomy young

females. Walking over the lawn to the Club, Katje smiled at her own fancy.

What she had really seen, she knew, was the eminent anthropologist and star of the Cayslin Center for

the Study of Man, Dr. Weyland, leaving the lab with one of his sleep subjects after a debilitating all-night

session. Dr. Weyland must have thought the young man was stooping to retrieve dropped car keys.

* * *

The Cayslin Club was an old mansion donated years before to the college. It served now as the faculty

club. Its grandeur had been severely challenged by the lab building and attendant parking lot constructed

on half of the once-spacious lawn, but the Club was still an imposing place within.

Jackson was in the green room plugging leaks; it had begun to rain. The green room was a glassed-in

terrace, tile-floored and furnished with chairs of lacy wrought iron.

“Did you find it, Mrs. de Groot?” Jackson said.

“No, I’m sorry.” Katje never called him by his name because she didn’t know whether he was Jackson

Somebody or Somebody Jackson, and she had learned to be careful in everything to do with blacks in

this country.

“Thanks for looking, anyway,” Jackson said.

In the kitchen she stood by the sinks staring out at the dreary day. She had never grown used to these

chill, watery winters, though after so many years she couldn’t quite recall the exact quality of the African

sunlight in which she had grown up. It was no great wonder that Henrik had died here. The gray climate

had finally quenched even his ardent nature six years ago, and she had shipped him back to his family.

Katje had possessed his life; she didn’t need his bones and didn’t want a grave tying her to this dark

country. His career as a lecturer in the sociology of medicine here and at other schools had brought in a

good income, but he had funneled all he could of it into the Black Majority Movement back home. So he

had left her little, and she had expected that. To the amazement and resentment of certain faculty wives,

she had taken this job and stayed on.

Her savings from her salary as housekeeper at the Cayslin Club would eventually finance her return

home. She needed enough to buy not a farm, but a house with a garden patch somewhere high and

cool—she frowned, trying to picture the ideal site. Nothing clear came into her mind. She had been away

a long time.

While she was wiping up the sinks Miss Donelly burst in, shrugging out of her dripping raincoat and

muttering, “Of all the high-handed, goddamn— Oh, hello, Mrs. de Groot; sorry for the language. Look,

we won’t be having the women’s faculty lunch here tomorrow after all. Dr. Weyland is giving a special

money pitch to a group of fat-cat alumni and he wants a nice, quiet setting—our lunch corner here at the

Club, as it turns out. Dean Wacker’s already said yes, so that’s that.”

“Why come over in the rain to tell me that?” Katje said. “You should have phoned.”

“I also wanted to check out a couple of the upstairs bedrooms to make sure I reserve a quiet one for a

guest lecturer I’m putting up here next month.” Miss Donelly hesitated, then added, “You know, Mrs. de

Groot, I’ve been meaning to ask whether you’d be willing to be a guest lecturer yourself in my Literary

Environments course—we’re reading Isak Dinesen. Would you come talk to my students?”

“Me? About what?”

“Oh, about colonial Africa, what it was like growing up there. These kids’ experience is so narrow and

protected, I look for every chance to expand their thinking.”

Katje wrung out the sink rag. “My grandfather and Uncle Jan whipped the native boys to work like cattle

and kicked them hard enough to break bones for not showing respect; otherwise we would have been

overrun and driven out. I used to go hunting. I shot rhino, elephant, lion, and leopard, and I was proud of

doing it well. Your students don’t want to know such things. They have nothing to fear but tax collectors

and nothing to do with nature except giving money for whales and seals.”

“But that’s what I mean,” Miss Donelly said. “Different viewpoints.”

“There are plenty of books about Africa.”

“Try getting these kids to read.” Miss Donelly sighed. “Well, I guess I could get the women together over

at Corrigan tomorrow instead of here, if I spend an hour on the phone. And we’ll miss your cooking,

Mrs. de Groot.”

“Will Dr. Weyland expect me to cook for his guests?” Katje said, thinking abstractedly of the alumni

lunching with the vampire. Would he eat? The one in the movie hadn’t eaten.

“Not Weyland,” Miss Donelly said dryly. “It’s nothing but the best for him, which means the most

expensive. They’ll probably have a banquet brought in from Borchard’s.”

She left.

Katje put on coffee and phoned Buildings and Grounds. Yes, Dr. Weyland and six companions were on

at the Club for tomorrow; no, Mrs. de Groot wouldn’t have to do anything but tidy up afterward; yes, it

was short notice, and please write it on the Club calendar; and yes, Jackson had been told to check the

eaves over the east bedrooms before he left.

“Wandering raincoat,” Miss Donelly said, darting in to snatch it up from the chair where she’d left it. “Just

watch out for Weyland, Mrs. de Groot.”

“What, a fifty-year-old widow like me? I am not some slinky graduate student trying for an A and the

professor also.”

“I don’t mean romance.” Miss Donelly grinned. “Though God knows half the faculty—of both

sexes—are in love with the man.”Honestly , Katje thought,the things people talked about these days!

“To no avail, alas, since he’s a real loner. But he will try to get you into his expensive sleep lab and make

your dreams part of his world-shaking, history-changing research that he stole off poor old Ivan Milnes.”

Milnes, Katje thought when she was alone again; Professor Milnes who had gone away to some sunny

place to die of cancer. Then Dr. Weyland had come from a small Southern school and taken over

Milnes’s dream project, saving it from being junked—or stealing it, in Miss Donelly’s version. A person

who looked at a thing in too many ways was bound to get confused.

Jackson came in and poured coffee for himself. He leaned back in his chair and flipped the schedules

where they hung on the wall by the phone. He was as slender as a Kikuyu youth—she could see his ribs

arch under his shirt. He ate a lot of junk food, but he was too nervous to fatten on it. By rights he

belonged in a red blanket, skin gleaming with oil, hair plaited. Instead he wore the tan shirt, pants, and

zip-up jacket of an “engineer” from Buildings and Grounds, and his hair was a modest Afro, as they

called it, around his narrow face.

“Try and don’t put nobody in that number-six bedroom till I get to it the end of the week,” he said. “The

rain drips in behind the casement. I laid out towels to soak up the water. I see you got Weyland in here

tomorrow. My buddy Maurice on the cleaning crew says that guy got the best lab in the place.”

“What is Dr. Weyland’s research?” Katje asked.

“ ‘Dream mapping,’ they call it. Maurice says there’s nothing interesting in his lab—just equipment, you

know, recording machines and computers and like that. I’d like to see all that hardware sometime. Only

you won’t catch me laying out my dreams on tape!

“Well, I got to push along. There’s some dripping faucets over at Joffey I’m supposed to look at. Hans

Brinker, that’s me. Thanks for the coffee.”

She began pulling out the fridge racks for cleaning, listening to him whistle as he gathered up his tools in

the green room.

* * *

The people from Borchard’s left her very little to do. She was stacking the rinsed dishes in the washer

when a man said from the doorway, “I am very obliged to you, Mrs. de Groot.”

Dr. Weyland stood poised there, slightly stoop-shouldered, slightly leonine somehow. At least that was

the impression Katje got from his alert stance, his still, grave, attentive face from which the wide eyes

looked out bright with interest. She was surprised that he knew her name, for he did not frequent the

Club.

“There was just a little remaining to do, Dr. Weyland,” she said.

“Still, this is your territory,” he said, advancing. “I’m sure you were helpful to the Borchard’s people. I’ve

never been back here. Are those freezers or refrigerators?”

She showed him around the kitchen and the pantries. He seemed impressed. He handled the accessories

to the Cuisinart as if they were artifacts of a civilization he was studying. The thing was a gift to the Club

from the Home Ec staff. Many parts were missing already, but Katje didn’t mind. She couldn’t be

bothered, as she told Dr. Weyland, getting the hang of the fancier gadgets.

He nodded thoughtfully. Was he condescending to her, or really in sympathy? “There’s no time to master

the homely technology of these times, all the machines, what they mean to a modern life . . .”

He was, she realized, unexpectedly personable: lean and grizzled, but with the hint of vulnerability

common among rangy men. You couldn’t look at him long without imagining the gawky scarecrow he

must have been as a boy. His striking features—rugged brow, nose, and jaw—no doubt outsized and

homely then, were now united in somber harmony by the long creases of experience on his cheeks and

forehead.

“No more scullions cranking the spit,” he remarked over the rotisserie. “You come originally from East

Africa, Mrs. de Groot? Things must have been very different there.”

“Yes. I left a long time ago.”

“Surely not so very long,” he said, and his eyes flicked over her from head to foot. Why, the man was

flirting!

Relaxing in the warmth of his interest, she said, “Are you from elsewhere also?”

He frosted up at once. “Why do you ask?”

“Excuse me, I thought I heard just the trace of an accent.”

“My family were Europeans. We spoke German at home. May I sit down?” His big hands, capable and

strong-looking, graced the back of a chair. He smiled briefly. “Would you mind sharing your coffee with

an institutional fortune hunter? That is my job—persuading rich men and the guardians of foundations to

spend a little of their money in support of work that offers no immediate result. I don’t enjoy dealing with

these shortsighted men.”

“Everyone says you do it well.” Katje filled a cup for him.

“It takes up my time,” he said. “It wearies me.” His large and brilliant eyes, in sockets darkened with

fatigue, had a withdrawn, pensive aspect. How old was he, Katje wondered.

Suddenly he gazed at her and said, “Didn’t I see you over by the labs the other morning? There was mist

on my windshield; I couldn’t be sure . . .”

She told him about Jackson’s friend’s umbrella, thinking,Now he’ll explain, this is what he came to

say. But he added nothing, and she found herself hesitant to ask about the student in the parking lot. “Is

there anything else I can do for you, Dr. Weyland?”

“I don’t mean to keep you from your work. Would you come over sometime and do a session for me in

the sleep lab?”

Just as Miss Donelly had said. Katje shook her head.

“All information goes on tapes under coded ID numbers, Mrs. de Groot. Your privacy would be strictly

guarded.”

His persistence made her uncomfortable. “I’d rather not.”

“Excuse me, then. It’s been a pleasure talking with you,” he said, rising. “If you find a reason to change

your mind, my extension is one-sixty-three.”

She found herself obscurely relieved at his abrupt departure.

She picked up his coffee cup. It was full. She realized that she had not seen him take so much as a sip.

* * *

She was close to tears, but Uncle Jan made her strip down the gun again—her first gun, her own

gun—and then the lion coughed, and she saw with the wide gaze of fear his golden form crouched, tail

lashing, in the thornbrush. She threw up her gun and fired, and the dust boiled up from the thrashings of

the wounded cat.

Then Scotty’s patient voice said, “Do it again,” and she was tearing down the rifle once more by

lamplight at the worn wooden table, while her mother sewed with angry stabs of the needle and spoke

words Katje didn’t bother to listen to. She knew the gist by heart: “If only Jan had children of his own!

Sons, to take out hunting with Scotty. Because he has no sons, he takes Katje shooting instead so he can

show how tough Boer youngsters are, even the girls. For whites to kill for sport, as Jan and Scotty do, is

to go backward into the barbaric past of Africa. Now the farm is producing, there is no need to sell hides

to get cash for coffee, salt, and tobacco. And to train agirl to go stalking and killing animals like scarcely

more than an animal herself!”

“Again,” said Scotty, and the lion coughed.

Katje woke. She was sitting in front of the TV, blinking at the sharp, knowing face of the talk-show host.

The sound had gone off again, and she had dozed.

She didn’t often dream, hardly ever of her African childhood—her mother, Uncle Jan, Scotty the

neighboring farmer whom Uncle had begun by calling a damnedrooinek and ended treating like a

brother. Miss Donelly’s request for a lecture about Africa must have stirred up that long-ago girlhood

spent prowling for game in a landscape of yellow grass.

The slim youngster she had been then, brown-skinned and nearly white-haired from the sun, seemed far

distant. A large-framed woman now, Katje worked to avoid growing stout as her mother had. In the

gray New England climate her hair had dulled to the color of old brass, paling now toward gray.

Yet she could still catch sight of her child-self in the mirror—the stubborn set of her firm, round jaw and

the determined squint of her eyes. She had not, she reflected with satisfaction, allowed the world to

change her much.

* * *

Miss Donelly came in for some coffee the next afternoon. As Katje brought a tray to her in the long living

room, a student rushed past calling, “Is it too late to hand in my paper, Miss Donelly?”

“For God’s sake, Mickey!” Miss Donelly burst out. “Where did you get that?”

Across the chest of the girl’s T-shirt where her coat gapped open were emblazoned the wordsSLEEP

WITH WEYLAND HE’S A DREAM . She grinned. “Some hustler is selling them right outside the co-op.

Better hurry if you want one—Security’s already been sent for.” She put a sheaf of dog-eared pages

down on the table beside Miss Donelly’s chair, added, “Thanks, Miss Donelly,” and clattered away

again on her high-heeled clogs.

Miss Donelly laughed and said to Katje, “Well, I never, as my grandma used to say. That man certainly

does juice this place up.”

“Young people have no respect for anything,” Katje grumbled. “What will Dr. Weyland say, seeing his

name used like that? He should have her expelled.”

“Him? He wouldn’t bother. Wacker will throw fits, though. Not that Weyland won’t notice—he notices

everything—but he doesn’t waste his super-valuable time on nonsense.” Miss Donelly ran a finger over

the blistered paint on the windowsill by her chair. “Pity we can’t use some of the loot Weyland brings in

to fix up this old place. But I guess we can’t complain; without Weyland, Cayslin would be just another

expensive backwater school for the not-so-bright children of the upper middle class. And it isn’t all roses

even for him. This T-shirt thing will start a whole new round of backbiting among his colleagues, you

watch. This kind of stuff brings out the jungle beast in even the mildest academics.”

Katje snorted. She didn’t think much of academic infighting.

“I know we must seem pretty tame to you,” Miss Donelly said wryly, “but there are some real ambushes

and even killings here, in terms of careers. It’s not the cushy life it sometimes seems, and not so secure

either. Even for you, Mrs. de Groot. There are people who don’t like your politics—”

“I never talk politics.” That was the first thing Henrik had demanded of her here. She had acquiesced like

a good wife; not that she was ashamed of her political beliefs. She had loved and married Henrik not

because of but in spite of his radical politics.

“From your silence they assume you’re some kind of reactionary racist,” Miss Donelly said. “Also

because you’re a Boer and you don’t carry on your husband’s crusade. Then there are the ones who’re

embarrassed to see the wife of a former instructor working at the Club—”

“It’s work I can do,” Katje said stiffly. “I asked for the job.”

Miss Donelly frowned. “Sure—but everybody knows the college should have done better by you, and

besides you were supposed to have a staff of people here to help out. And some of the faculty are a little

scared of you; they’d rather have a giggly cocktail waitress or a downtrodden mouse of a working

student. You need to be aware of these things, Mrs. de Groot.

“And also of the fact that you have plenty of partisans too. Even Wacker knows you give this place tone

and dignity, and you lived a real life in the world, whatever your values, which is more than most of our

faculty have ever done.” Blushing, she lifted her cup and drank.

She was as soft as everyone around here, Katje thought,but she had a good heart .

* * *

Many of the staff had already left for vacation during intersession, now that new scheduling had freed

everyone from doing mini-courses between semesters. The last cocktail hour at the Club was thinly

attended. Katje moved among the drinkers unobtrusively gathering up loaded ashtrays, used glasses,

crumpled paper napkins. A few people who had known Henrik greeted her as she passed.

There were two major topics of conversation: the bio student who had been raped last night leaving the

library, and the Weyland T-shirt, or, rather, Weyland himself.

They said he was a disgrace, encouraging commercial exploitation of his name; he was probably getting a

cut of the profits. No he wasn’t, didn’t need to, he had a hefty income, no dependents, and no appetites

except for study and work. And driving his beautiful Mercedes-Benz, don’t forget that. No doubt that

was where he was this evening—not off on a holiday or drinking cheap Club booze, but roaring around

the countryside in his beloved car.

Better a ride in the country than burying himself in the library as usual. It was unhealthy for him to push so

hard; just look at him, so haggard and preoccupied, so lean and lonely-looking. The man deserved a

prize for his solitary-bachelor-hopelessly-hooked-on-the-pursuit-of-knowledge act.

It was no act—what other behavior did people expect of a great scholar? There’d be another fine book

out of him someday, a credit to Cayslin. Look at that latest paper of his, “Dreams and Drama: The

Mini-Theatre of the Mind.” Brilliant!

Brilliant speculation, maybe, like all his work, plus an intriguing historical viewpoint, but where was his

hard research? He was no scientist; he was a mountebank running on drive, imagination, a commanding

presence, and a lucky success with his first book. Why, even his background was foggy. (But don’t ever

suggest to Dean Wacker that there was anything odd about Weyland’s credentials. Wacker would eat

you alive to protect the goose that laid the golden eggs.)

How many students were in the sleep project now? More than were in his classes. They called his course

in ethnography “The Ancient Mind at Work.” The girls found his formality charming. No, he wasn’t

formal, he was too stiff-necked and old-fashioned, and he’d never make a first-rate contribution to

anthropology. He’d simply appropriated poor Milnes’s beautiful adaptation of the Richman-Steinmolle

Recording System to the documentation of dreams, adding some fancy terminology about cultural

symbols to bring the project into his own field of cultural anthropology. And Weyland thought he knew all

about computers too—no wonder he ran his assistants ragged.

Here was Peterson leaving him because of some brouhaha over a computer run. Charming, yes, but

Weyland could also be a sarcastic bastard. Sure, he was temperamental—the great are often

quarrelsome, nothing new in that. Remember how he treated young Denton over that scratch Denton put

on the Mercedes’ fender? Gave him a tongue-lashing that could warp steel, and when Denton threw a

punch Weyland grabbed him by the shoulder and just about flung him across the street. Denton was

bruised for a month, looked as if he’d been on the bottom of a football pile-up. Weyland’s a tiger when

he’s roused up, and he’s unbelievably strong for a man his age.

He’s a damned bully, and Denton should have gotten a medal for trying to get him off the roads. Have

you seen Weyland drive? Roars along just barely in control of that great big machine. . . .

Weyland himself wasn’t present. Of course not, Weyland was a supercilious son-of-a-bitch; Weyland

was an introverted scholar absorbed in great work; Weyland had a secret sorrow too painful to share;

Weyland was a charlatan; Weyland was a genius working himself to death to keep alive the Cayslin

Center for the Study of Man.

Dean Wacker brooded by the huge empty fireplace. Several times he said in a carrying voice that he had

talked with Weyland and that the students involved in the T-shirt scandal would face disciplinary action.

Miss Donelly came in late with a woman from Economics. They talked heatedly in the window bay, and

the other two women in the room drifted over to join them. Katje followed.

“. . . from off campus, but that’s what they always say,” one of them snapped. Miss Donelly caught

Katje’s eye, smiled a strained smile, and plunged back into the discussion. They were talking about the

rape. Katje wasn’t interested. A woman who used her sense and carried herself with self-respect didn’t

get raped, but saying so to these intellectual women wasted breath.

They didn’t understand real life. Katje went back toward the kitchen.

Buildings and Grounds had sent Nettie Ledyard over from the student cafeteria to help out. She was

rinsing glasses and squinting at them through the smoke of her cigarette. She wore a T-shirt bearing a

bulbous fish shape across the front and the wordsSAVE OUR WHALES . These “environmental” messages

vexed Katje; only naïve, citified people could think of wild animals as pets. The shirt undoubtedly

belonged to one of Nettie’s long-haired, bleeding-heart boyfriends. Nettie herself smoked too much to

pretend to an environmental conscience. She was no hypocrite, at least. But she should come properly

dressed to do a job at the Club, just in case a professor came wandering back here for more ice or

whatever.

“I’ll be helping you with the Club inventory during intersession,” Nettie said. “Good thing, too. You’ll be

spending a lot of time over here until school starts again, and the campus is really emptying out. Now

there’s this sex maniac cruising the place—though what I could do but run like hell and scream my head

off, I can’t tell you.

“Listen, what’s this about Jackson sending you on errands for him?” she added irritably. She flicked ash

off her bosom, which was pushed high like a shelf by her too-tight brassiere. “His pal Maurice can pick

up his own umbrella, he’s no cripple. Having you wandering around out there alone at some godforsaken

hour—”

“Neither of us knew about the rapist,” Katje said, wiping out the last of the ashtrays.

“Just don’t let Jackson take advantage of you, that’s all.”

Katje grunted. She had been raised not to let herself be taken advantage of by blacks.

Later, helping to dig out a fur hat from under the coat pile in the foyer, she heard someone saying, “. . .

walk off with the credit; cold-bloodedly living off other people’s academic substance, so to speak.”

Into her mind came the image of Dr. Weyland’s tall figure moving without a break in stride past the

stricken student.

* * *

Jackson came down from the roof with watering eyes. A damp wind was rising.

“That leak is fixed for a while,” he said, hunching to blow on his chapped hands. “But the big shots at

Buildings and Grounds got to do something better before next winter. The snow will just pile up and soak

through again.”

Katje polished the silver plate with a gray flannel. “What do you know about vampires?” she said.

“How bad you want to know?”

He had no right to joke with her like that, he whose ancestors had been heathen savages. “What do you

know about vampires?” she repeated firmly.

“Not a thing.” He grinned. “But you just keep on going to the movies with Nettie and you’ll find out all

about that kind of crap. She got to have the dumbest taste in movies there ever was.”

* * *

Katje looked down from the landing at Nettie, who had just let herself into the Club.

Nettie’s hair was all in tight little rings like pigs’ tails. She called, “Guess what I went and did?”

“Your hair,” Katje said. “You got it done curly.”

Nettie hung her coat crookedly on the rack and peered into the foyer mirror. “I’ve been wanting to try a

permanent for months, but I couldn’t find the spare money. So the other night I went over to the sleep

lab.” She came upstairs.

“What was it like?” Katje said, looking more closely at Nettie’s face; was she paler than usual?Yes ,

Katje thought with sudden apprehension.

“It’s nothing much. You just lie down on this couch, and they plug you into these machines, and you

sleep. They keep waking you up in the middle of your dreams so you can describe what’s going on, and

you do some kind of tests—I don’t remember, it’s all pretty hazy afterwards. Next morning there’s a sort

of debriefing interview, and you collect your pay and go home. That’s all there is to it.”

“How do you feel?”

“Okay. I was pretty dragged out yesterday. Dr. Weyland gave me a list of stuff I’m supposed to eat to

fix that. He got me the day off, too. Wait a minute, I need a smoke before we go into the linens.”

She lit a cigarette. “Really, there was nothing to it. I’d go back for another session in a minute if they’d

have me. Good money for no work; not like this.” She blew a stream of smoke contemptuously at the

linen-closet door.

Katje said, “Someone has to do what we do.”

“Yeah, but why us?” Nettie lowered her voice. “We ought to get a couple of professors in there with the

bedding and the inventory lists, and us two go sit in their big leather chairs and drink coffee like ladies.”

Katje had already done that as Henrik’s wife. What she wanted now was to sit on thestoep after a day’s

hunting, sipping drinks and trading stories of the kill in the pungent dusk, away from the smoky, noisy

hole of a kitchen: a life that Henrik had rebelled against as parasitical, narrow, and dull. His grandfather,

like Katje’s, had trekked right out of the Transvaal when it became too staid for him and had started

over. Katje thought sometimes that challenging his own people about the future of the land, the

government, and the natives had been Henrik’s way of striking out afresh. For herself, she wished only to

return to her old country and its old ways.

Nettie, still hanging back from the linen closet, ground out her cigarette on the sole of her shoe. “Coming

to the meeting Friday?”

Dr. Weyland was giving a lecture that same evening, something about nightmares. Katje had been

thinking about attending. Now she must decide. Going to his lecture was not like going to his laboratory;

it seemed safe enough. “No union meeting,” she said. “I’ve told you, they’re all Reds in those unions. I

do all right for myself. I’ll be going to Dr. Weyland’s open lecture that night.”

“Okay, if you think it’s fine to make what we make doing this stuff.” Nettie shrugged. “Me, I’ll skip his

lecture and take the bucks for sleeping in his lab. You ought to go over there, you know? There’s hardly

anything doing during intersession with almost everybody gone—they could take you right away. You get

extra pay and time off, and besides Dr. Weyland’s kind of cute, in a gloomy way. He leaned over me to

plug something into the wall, and I said, ‘Go ahead, you can bite my neck any time.’ You know, he was

sort of hanging over me, and his lab coat was sort of spread, like a cape, all menacing and

batlike—except white instead of black, of course—and anyway I couldn’t resist a wisecrack.”

Katje gave her a startled glance. Nettie, missing it, moved past her into the closet and pulled out the step

stool. Katje said cautiously, “What did he say to that?”

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THEVAMPIRETAPESTRYCopyright©1980bySuzyMcKeeCharnas.Allrightsreserved.ISBN:1-930815-14-XElectricStory.comandtheESdesignaretrademarksofElectricStory.com,Inc.Thisnovelisaworkoffiction.Allcharacters,events,organizations,andlocalesareeithertheproductoftheauthor’simaginationorusedfictitiouslytoconveyasens...

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