T. K. F. Weisskopf & Greg Cox Ed. - Tomorrow Sucks

TOMORROW SUCKS

Edited By

T. K. F. Weisskopf & Greg Cox

CONTENTS

Greg Cox - A Scientific History of Vampirism

Ray Bradbury - Pillar of Fire

Joe L. Hensley - And Not Quite Human

Brian Stableford - The Man Who Loved the Vampire Lady

S. N. Dyer - Born Again

Keith Roberts - Kaeti's Nights

Spider Robinson - Pyotr's Story

Leslie Roy Carter - Vanishing Breed

Dean Ing - Fleas

Susan Petrey - Leechcraft

C. L. Moore - Shambleu

Roger Zelazny - The Stainless Steel Leech

T. K. F. Weisskopf - An Anthropological Approach to Vampirism

A Scientific History of Vampirism

GREG COX

Dracula nearly killed the vampire story.

Creatively, that is. Coming at the end of a wave of Victorian vampire tales that

began in 1819 with John Polidori's "The Vampyre," Bram Stoker's classic horror

novel, first published in 1897, quickly established itself as the definitive vampire

story, encompassing and supplanting all that had been written before—and most of

the vampire fiction to come. Dracula movies and plays popularized Stoker's vampire

even more, and the Count cast an oppressive black shadow over more than fifty

years of copycats and parodies. No vampire novels worth remembering were

published for at least five decades after Dracula, and only a handful of short

stories—such as Ray Bradbury's lyrical "Homecoming" (1946)—turned over fresh

soil in an increasingly overcrowded literary graveyard.

Life—and unlife—was simpler then. Vampires were heartless creatures of hell, or,

at best, tormented lost souls condemned forever by some unholy curse. Their

motives and abilities were clearly defined, as were their weaknesses: sunlight, holy

water, wooden stakes, and so on. They were the (mostly illegitimate) children of

Dracula, and numbingly predictable for that reason.

Science proved the vampire's salvation. A few early stories pointed the way, like

Mary Braddon's "Good Lady Ducayne" (1896), an otherwise forgettable story about

a vicious old woman who preserves her life via frequent blood transfusions. C. L.

Moore's "Shambleau" (1933) was possibly the first vampire of extraterrestrial origin,

unless one counts the blood-sucking Martians in H. G. Wells' The War of the

Worlds (1898)—and that's a bit of a stretch. Wells also supplied "The Flowering of

the Strange Orchid" (1894), a ground-breaking tale of botanical vampirism whose

blood-sucking plant anticipated The Little Shop of Horrors and other bizarre

horrors.

It wasn't until the 1950s, though, that scientific vampires really came into their

own. In the wake of Hiroshima and Sputnik, science fiction spread like fall-out over

the haunted castles and crypts of the Gothic tradition. On the silver screen,

radioactive mutants and Things from Outer Space suddenly outnumbered ghosts,

werewolves, and undead. But what might have seemed like a bad time for

bloodsuckers proved instead a rebirth.

Forget curses, spells, and pacts with the Devil. Suddenly vampirism could be the

result of bacteria, genetics, mental illness, parallel evolution, atomic mutation,

robotics, or even an invasion from another planet. Anything was possible, and all the

old rules were suddenly subject to change. Even traditional, supernatural vampires

suddenly found themselves confronted with such unusual situations as time travel,

space travel, and planets with two or more suns. Somehow, Dorothy, they weren't in

Transylvania anymore…

After years of stodgy cliches, vampire fiction received a rejuvenating jolt of fresh

blood. The new wave of scientific nosferatu included such instant classics as

Richard Matheson's I am Legend (1954), Theodore Sturgeon's Some of Your Blood

(1961), and, in a lighter vein, "Blood" (1955) by Fredric Brown, about an

old-fashioned vamp's ill-fated attempt to drain blood from a sentient turnip.

Perhaps most significantly, vampires didn't have to be evil anymore. No longer a

creature of hell by definition, vampires could be villains, victims, or even heroes.

Science draws no moral distinctions, and what used to be an unnatural plague of

darkness could now be treated as merely a handicap, an alternative lifestyle, or

possibly the next stage in human evolution. Vampire stories became a lot more

complicated… and interesting.

Which doesn't mean, of course, that a scientific vampire couldn't be twice as

scary as its supernatural brethren. If the old rules no longer applied, neither did the

traditional defenses. And an entire species of non-human bloodsuckers, be they

earthly or alien, might have less sympathy for mere homo sapiens than even the

resurrected corpse of Vlad the Impaler.

In time, after the scientific vampire boom of the '50s, the children of Dracula

eventually staged a comeback of sorts. Hammer Films beget a new generation of

Gothic thrillers, while writers like Anne Rice and Stephen King found new ways to

open the old graves. But vampirism would never be the same; the virus had escaped

from the test tube, and a new, vital and sometimes virulent strain has entered the

collective bloodstream of the genre, spawning memorable works like Suzy McKee

Charnas's The Vampire Tapestry (1980), Whitley Strieber's The Hunger (1981),

George R. R. Martin's Fevre Dream (1982), and continuing to mutate with each new

novel, movie, short story, and comic book.

So throw away that crucifix. Pour your holy water down the drain. There's a new

breed of vampire stalking your future, starting only a few pages away, and neither

science nor sorcery can protect you from their unquenchable thirst.

Ray Bradbury is, of course, one of the best known sf authors in the world.

"Pillar of Fire," originally published in 1948, is a chilling elegy for yesterday's

monsters—and a case study in what can happen when science confronts the

undead. Bradbury has written at least two other stories, "Usher II" and "The

Exiles," set in the same (or similar) future.

Pillar of Fire

RAY BRADBURY

He came out of the earth, hating. Hate was his father; hate was his mother.

It was good to walk again. It was good to leap up out of the earth, off of your

back, and stretch your cramped arms violently and try to take a deep breath!

He tried. He cried out.

He couldn't breathe. He flung his arms over his face and tried to breathe. It was

impossible. He walked on the earth, he came out of the earth. But he was dead. He

couldn't breathe. He could take air into his mouth and force it half down his throat,

with withered moves of long-dormant muscles, wildly, wildly! And with this little air

he could shout and cry! He wanted to have tears, but he couldn't make them come,

either. All he knew was that he was standing upright, he was dead, he shouldn't be

walking! He couldn't breathe and yet he stood.

The smells of the world were all about him. Frustratedly, he tried to smell the

smells of autumn. Autumn was burning the land down into ruin. All across the

country the ruins of summer lay; vast forests bloomed with flame, tumbled down

timber on empty, unleafed timber. The smoke of the burning was rich, blue, and

invisible.

He stood in the graveyard, hating. He walked through the world and yet could not

taste nor smell of it. He heard, yes. The wind roared on his newly opened ears. But

he was dead. Even though he walked he knew he was dead and should expect not

too much of himself or this hateful living world.

He touched the tombstone over his own empty grave. He knew his own name

again. It was a good job of carving.

WILLIAM LANTRY

That's what the gravestone said.

His fingers trembled on the cool stone surface.

BORN 1898—DIED 1933

Born again … ?

What year? He glared at the sky and the midnight autumnal stars moving in slow

illuminations across the windy black. He read the tiltings of centuries in those stars.

Orion thus and so, Aurega here! and where Taurus? There!

His eyes narrowed. His lips spelled out the year.

"2349."

An odd number. Like a school sum. They used to say a man couldn't encompass

any number over a hundred. After that it was all so damned abstract there was no

use counting. This was the year 2349! A numeral, a sum. And here he was, a man

who had lain in his hateful dark coffin, hating to be buried, hating the living people

above who lived and lived and lived, hating them for all the centuries, until today,

now, born out of hatred, he stood by his own freshly excavated grave, the smell of

raw earth in the air, perhaps, but he could not smell it!

"I," he said, addressing a poplar tree that was shaken by the wind, "am an

anachronism." He smiled faintly.

He looked at the graveyard. It was cold and empty. All of the stones had been

ripped up and piled like so many flat bricks, one atop another, in the far corner of

the wrought iron fence. This had been going on for two endless weeks. In his deep

secret coffin he had heard the heartless, wild stirrings as the men jabbed the earth

with cold spades and tore out the coffins and carried away the withered ancient

bodies to be burned. Twisting with fear in his coffin, he had waited for them to

come to him.

Today they had arrived at his coffin. But—late. They had dug down to within an

inch of the lid. Five o'clock bell, time for quitting. Home to supper. The workers had

gone off. Tomorrow they would finish the job, they said, shrugging into their coats.

Silence had come to the emptied tomb-yard.

Carefully, quietly, with a soft rattling of sod, the coffin lid had lifted.

William Lantry stood trembling now, in the last cemetery on Earth.

"Remember?" he asked himself, looking at the raw earth. "Remember those

stories of the last man on earth? Those stories of men wandering in ruins, alone?

Well you, William Lantry, are a switch on the old story. Do you know that? You are

the last dead man in the whole damned world!"

There were no more dead people. Nowhere in any land was there a dead person.

Impossible? Lantry did not smile at this. No, not impossible at all in this foolish,

sterile, unimaginative, antiseptic age of cleansings and scientific methods! People

died, oh my god, yes. Butdead people? Corpses? They didn't exist!

What happened to dead people?

The graveyard was on a hilt. William Lantry walked through the dark burning night

until he reached the edge of the graveyard and looked down upon the new town of

Salem. It was all illumination, all colour. Rocket ships cut fire above it, crossing the

sky to all far ports of earth.

In his grave the new violence of this future world had driven down and seeped

into William Lantry. He had been bathed in it for years. He knew all about it, with a

hating dead man's knowledge of such things.

Most important of all, he knew what these fools did with dead men.

He lifted his eyes. In the centre of the town a massive stone finger pointed at the

stars. It was three hundred feet high and fifty feet across. There was a wide entrance

and a drive in front of it.

In the town, theoretically, thought William Lantry, say you have a dying man. In a

moment he will be dead. What happens? No sooner is his pulse cold than a

certificate is flourished, made out, his relatives pack him into a car-beetle and drive

him swiftly to—

The Incinerator!

That functional finger, that Pillar of Fire pointing at the stars. Incinerator. A

functional, terrible name. But truth is truth in this future world.

Like a stick of kindling your Mr. Dead Man is shot into the furnace.

Flume!

William Lantry looked at the top of the gigantic pistol shoving at the stars. A small

pennant of smoke issued from the top.

There's where your dead people go.

"Take care of yourself, William Lantry," he murmured. "You're the last one, the

rare item, the last dead man. All the other graveyards of earth have been blasted up.

This is the last graveyard and you're the last dead man from the centuries. These

people don't believe in having dead people about, much less walking dead people.

Everything that can't be used goes up like a matchstick. Superstitions right along

with it!"

He looked at the town. All right, he thought, quietly.

I hate you. You hate me, or you would if you knew I existed. You don't believe in

such things as vampires or ghosts. Labels without referents, you cry! You snort. All

right, snort! Frankly, I don't believe in you, either! I don't like you! You and your

Incinerators.

He trembled. How very close it had been. Day after day they had hauled out the

other dead ones, burned them like so much kindling. An edict had been broadcast

around the world. He had heard the digging men talk as they worked!

"I guess it's a good idea, this cleaning up the graveyards," said one of the men.

"Guess so," said another. "Grisly custom. Can you imagine? Being buried, I

mean! Unhealthy! All them germs!"

"Sort of a shame. Romantic, kind of. I mean, leaving just this one graveyard

untouched all these centuries. The other graveyards were cleaned out, what year was

it, Jim?"

"About 2260, I think. Yeah, that was it, 2260, almost a hundred years ago. But

some Salem Committee they got on their high horse and they said, 'Look here, let's

have just one graveyard left, to remind us of the customs of the barbarians.' And the

gover'ment scratched its head, thunk it over, and said, 'Okay. Salem it is. But all

other graveyards go, you understand, all!' "

"And away they went," said Bill.

"Sure, they sucked 'em out with fire and steam shovels and rocket-cleaners. If

they knew a man was buried in a cow-pasture, they fixed him! Evacuated them, they

did. Sort of cruel, I say."

"I hate to sound old-fashioned, but still there were a lot of tourists came here

every year, just to see what a real graveyard was like."

"Right. We had nearly a million people in the last three years visiting. A good

revenue. But—a government order is an order. The government says no more

morbidity, so flush her out we do! Here we go. Hand me that spade, Bill."

William Lantry stood in the autumn wind, on the hill. It was good to walk again, to

feel the wind and to hear the leaves scuttling like mice on the road ahead of him. It

was good to see the bitter cold stars almost blown away by the wind.

It was even good to know fear again.

For fear rose in him now, and he could not put it away. The very fact that he was

walking made him an enemy. And there was not another friend, another dead man, in

all of the world, to whom one could turn for help or consolation. It was the whole

melodramatic living world against one William Lantry. It was the whole

vampire-disbelieving, body-burning, graveyard-annihilating world against a man in a

dark suit on a dark autumn hill. He put out his pale cold hands into the city

illumination. You have pulled the tombstones, like teeth, from the yard, he thought.

Now I will find some way to push your damnable Incinerators down into rubble. I

will make dead people again, and I will make friends in so doing. I cannot be alone

and lonely. I must start manufacturing friends very soon. Tonight.

"War is declared," he said, and laughed. It was pretty silly, one man declaring war

on an entire world.

The world did not answer back. A rocket crossed the sky on a rush of flame, like

an Incinerator taking wing.

Footsteps. Lantry hastened to the edge of the cemetery. The diggers, coming

back to finish up their work? No. Just someone, a man, walking by.

As the man came abreast the cemetery gate, Lantry stepped swiftly out. "Good

evening," said the man, smiling.

Lantry struck the man in the face. The man fell. Lantry bent quietly down and hit

the man a killing blow across the neck with the side of his hand.

Dragging the body back into shadow, he stripped it, changed clothes with it. It

wouldn't do for a fellow to go wandering about this future world with ancient

clothing on. He found a small pocket knife in the man's coat; not much of a knife,

but enough if you knew how to handle it properly. He knew how.

He rolled the body down into one of the already opened and exhumed graves. In

a minute he had shovelled dirt down upon it, just enough to hide it. There was little

chance of it being found. They wouldn't dig the same grave twice.

He adjusted himself in his new loose-fitting metallic suit. Fine, fine.

Hating, William Lantry walked down into town, to do battle with the Earth.

II

The Incinerator was open. It never closed. There was a wide entrance, all lighted

up with hidden illumination, there was a helicopter landing table and a beetle drive.

The town itself was dying down after another day of the dynamo. The lights were

going dim, and the only quiet, lighted spot in the town now was the Incinerator.

God, what a practical name, what an unromantic name.

William Lantry entered the wide, well-lighted door. It was an entrance, really; there

were no doors to open or shut. People could go in and out, summer or winter, the

inside was always warm. Warm from the fire that rushed whispering up the high

round flue to where the whirlers, the propellers, the air-jets pushed the leafy grey

ashes on away for a ten mile ride down the sky.

There was the warmth of the bakery here. The halls were floored with rubber

parquet. You couldn't make a noise if you wanted to. Music played in hidden throats

somewhere. Not music of death at all, but music of life and the way the sun lived

inside the Incinerator; or the sun's brother, anyway. You could hear the flame

floating inside the heavy brick wall.

William Lantry descended a ramp. Behind him he heard a whisper and turned in

time to see a beetle stop before the entrance way. A bell rang. The music, as if at a

signal, rose to ecstatic heights. There was joy in it.

From the beetle, which opened from the rear, some attendants stepped carrying a

golden box. It was six feet long and there were sun symbols on it. From another

beetle the relatives of the man in the box stepped and followed as the attendants took

the golden box down a ramp to a kind of altar. On the side of the altar were the

words, "we that were born of the sun return to the sun." The golden box was

deposited upon the altar, the music leaped upward, the Guardian of this place spoke

only a few words, then the attendants picked up the golden box, walked to a

transparent wall, a safety lock also transparent, and opened it. The box was shoved

into the glass slot. A moment later an inner lock opened, the box was injected into

the interior of the flue and vanished instantly in quick flame.

The attendants walked away. The relatives without a word turned and walked out.

The music played.

William Lantry approached the glass fire lock. He peered through the wall at the

vast, glowing, never-ceasing heart of the Incinerator. It burned steadily without a

flicker, singing to itself peacefully. It was so solid it was like a golden river flowing

up out of the earth towards the sky. Anything you put into the river was borne

upwards, vanished

Lantry felt again his unreasoning hatred of this thing, this monster, cleansing fire.

A man stood at his elbow. "May I help you, sir?"

"What?" Lantry turned abruptly. "What did you say?"

"May I be of service?"

"I—that is—" Lantry looked quickly at the ramp and the door. His hands

trembled at his sides. "I've never been in here before."

"Never?" The Attendant was surprised.

That had been the wrong thing to say, Lantry realized. But it was said,

nevertheless. "I mean," he said. "Not really, I mean, when you're a child, somehow,

you don't pay attention. I suddenly realized tonight that I didn't really know the

Incinerator."

The Attendant smiled. "We never know anything, do we, really? I'll be glad to

show you around."

"Oh, no. Never mind. It—it's a wonderful place."

"Yes, it is." The Attendant took pride in it. "One of the finest in the world, I

think."

"I—" Lantry felt he must explain further. "I haven't had many relatives die on me

since I was a child. In fact, none. So, you see I haven't been here for many years."

"I see." The Attendant's face seemed to darken somewhat.

What've I said now, thought Lantry. What in God's name is wrong? What've I

done? If I'm not careful I'll get myself shoved right into that damnable fire trap.

What's wrong with this fellow's face? He seems to be giving me more than the usual

going over.

"You wouldn't be one of the men who've just returned from Mars, would you?"

asked the Attendant.

"No. Why do you ask?"

"No matter." The Attendant began to walk off. "If you want to know anything,

just ask me."

"Just one thing," said Lantry.

"What's that?"

"This."

Lantry dealt him a stunning blow across the neck.

He had watched the fire-trap operator with expert eyes. Now, with the sagging

body in his arms, he touched the button that opened the warm outer lock, placed the

body in, heard the music rise, and saw the inner lock open. The body shot out into

the river of fire. The music softened.

"Well done, Lantry, well done."

Barely an instant later another attendant entered the room. Lantry was caught with

an expression of pleased excitement on his face. The Attendant looked around as if

expecting to find someone, then he walked towards Lantry. "May I help you?"

"Just looking," said Lantry.

"Rather late at night," said the Attendant.

"I couldn't sleep."

That was the wrong answer, too. Everybody slept in this world. Nobody had

insomnia. If you did you simply turned on a hypno-ray, and, sixty seconds later, you

were snoring. Oh, he was just full of wrong answers. First he had made the fatal

error of saving he had never been in the Incinerator before, when he knew damned

well that all children were brought here on tours, every year, from the time they were

four, to instill the idea of the clean fire death and the Incinerator in their minds. Death

was a bright fire, death was warmth and the sun. It was not a dark, shadowed thing.

That was important in their education. And he, pale thoughtless fool, had

immediately gabbled out his ignorance.

And another thing, this paleness of his. He looked at his hands and realised with

growing terror that a pale man also was non-existent in this world. They would

suspect his paleness. That was why the first Attendant had asked, "Are you one of

those men newly returned from Mars?" Here, now, this new Attendant was clean and

bright as a copper penny, his cheeks red with health and energy. Lantry hid his pale

hands in his pockets. But he was hilly aware of the searching the Attendant did on

his face.

"I mean to say," said Lantry, "I didn't want to sleep. I wanted to think."

"Was there a service held here a moment ago?" asked the Attendant, looking

about.

"I don't know, I just came in."

"I thought I heard the fire lock open and shut."

"I don't know," said Lantry.

The man pressed a wall button. "Anderson?"

A voice replied. "Yes."

"Locate Saul for me, will you?"

"I'll ring the corridors." A pause. "Can't find him."

"Thanks." The Attendant was puzzled. He was beginning to make little sniffing

motions with his nose. "Do you—smell anything?"

Lantry sniffed. "No. Why?"

"I smell something."

Lantry took hold of the knife in his pocket. He waited.

"I remember once when I was a kid," said the man. "And we found a cow lying

dead in the field. It had been there two days in the not sun. That's what this smell is.

I wonder what it's from?"

"Oh, I know what it is," said Lantry quietly. He held out his hand. "Here."

"What?"

"Me, of course."

"You?"

"Dead several hundred years."

"You're an odd joker." The Attendant was puzzled!

"Very." Lantry took out the knife. "Do you know what this is?"

"A knife."

"Do you ever use knives on people any more?"

T. K. F. Weisskopf & Greg Cox Ed. - Tomorrow Sucks

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