Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 11th Part 5

When she fell asleep, her dreams were unlike any she'd ever had before.

They would have been nightmares, but the necessary terror was lacking. Mr.

Varri woke her up again just before dawn, singing the same tune he'd whistled the night before. The words brought recognition; her father sang it sometimes, and it always made her mother angry-why, Anna never knew.

It seemed so silly and harmless; the words the same as in a thousand other folksongs. So, although Mr. Varri wasn't singing in English, she understood him...

Do not cry, my dearest one, There is no need for weeping.

Happiness I'll bring to you, Softly while you're sleeping...

As he pa.s.sed beneath her window, he looked up, directly at where she was standing, and she felt awareness come alive between them, although she knew it was her imagina-tion; he couldn't possibly see her in the darkness.

Yet he smiled and moved his hand in a diffident wave. Mrs. Brumi must have told him about me, she a.s.sured herself. But she crossed her arms across her chest to cover the thin nightgown and the strap held up by asafety-pin, because his face looked as if he saw her quite clearly.

The next morning she deliberately sought out Mrs. Brumi. "That man-the one you said must be Mr. Varri-woke me up again. He was singing, and so loud it's a wonder the whole street didn't wake up. Can't you ask Mrs. Lugat to speak to him?"

"I didn't hear nothing," Mrs. Brumi said. "And I sleep to the front."

"But you must have heard," Ann insisted. "It was so loud."

Mrs. Brumi shook her stolid head. "Girls who aren't mar-ried think their dreams are real..."

The nasty, lying old b.i.t.c.h, Ann thought. She's just get-ting even because I told her to mind her own business. On her way to work, she met several people whom she knew slightly. All of them lived on the street; none of them had heard any singing in the night.

After that, he sang every night as he came home, sang until the gla.s.s in all the windows on the street should have quivered and angry heads come popping out. But no one seemed to hear; it was as if his voice existed only in her head. She was eager to see him by daylight, to speak to him, not to stop his singing, but to have him a.s.sure her that he had sung. She never saw a sign of him.

One morning she went boldly into Mrs. Lugat's house and pressed the bell marked "Varri." When there was no an-swer, she tugged at the inner door-often the buzzers didn't work-but it was locked. Mrs. Lugat was there, behind the gla.s.s, tall, gaunt, with an incongruous red smile painted on her bony face. "Can I help you?"

"I-I wanted to speak to Mr. Varri," Ann said, clutching her handbag with claw fingers, wondering, in a panic, what she could possibly say to him.

"My tenants all work at night," Mrs. Lugat told her. "They don't like to be disturbed daytimes. Come back after dark, and I'll let you in."

When Ann came back to the house that evening, Mrs. Brumi gave her a gap-toothed grin. "I'm glad you went to see Mr. Varri," she said. "He's a shy boy-he needs encour-agement."

"You said he came from the old country!" Ann stormed. "How could he?

There hasn't been any travel between the United States and Albania for years. It's behind the Iron Curtain. How could he get here?"

Mrs. Brumi's smile broadened. "Maybe he flew," she sug-gested.

Mr. Varri seemed to be very much encouraged. All night he sang under her window, and she was afraid to try to go to sleep, afraid he might work his way into her dreams...

You sit and long for one true love, While true love you're denying, The only kind of love that's true Is the love that is undying...

But maybe the translation wasn't quite right, she thought; maybe it should have been "the love of the undying." Maybe that was why her mother had hated the song.

What would they have done about this in the old country? Probably gone to an exorcist; and, in the new country ... an a.n.a.lyst. But a.n.a.lysts were so expensive; besides, she wasn't sure they could cope with fantasies outside the mind.

She'd thought Tom would help, simply by being so solid and real. But he was a little too much of both. She looked at the hay-colored hair mown close to his blocky head and sprouting thickly on his soft-muscled arms, at the circles of sweat under the nylon shirt sleeves-for he'd taken off his coat. And she knew that he was as clean and sanitized and deodorized as a man could be, because odors were part of appearances. But it was a hot night, and he was a man.

"What's the matter with you, anyway?" he asked petu-lantly. "I thought New York girls were supposed to be-well-broad-minded, and, h.e.l.l, you're worse than the chicks back home." He took hold of her again. "Don't you like me, doll?" he asked throatily. "Am I so hard to take?"

"I do like you, Tom," she said, trying to make her pulling away look more like a retreat than a reflex. "But it's so hot, and that thing flopping at the window..."

"It's been gone for ages." She didn't say anything. His voice rose. "The fellows at the office told me you were ... funny, but I couldn't believe it; you didn't look like that kind of a girl to me. Now, I'm beginning to wonder."

She looked at him. He averted his eyes. "Ann, honestly, I didn't mean anything like that. I-oh, h.e.l.l, why are you acting like this, then?"

She was no longer under any obligation to placate him. "Have you ever thought that perhaps you're not the most irresistible man in the world?"

"But-but all the other fellows said you were the same with them."

"I'm glad to see you do such a thorough job of research before embarking on a new project," she said. "You should go far. Out that door, to begin with."

He got up, his face a fiery red. "For Pete's sake, Ann..." But it wasn't she he was upset about. He had fumbled the ball; he had goofed; he had failed to live up to his own picture of himself.

"Good-night, Tom." The door crashed shut. Then it opened a little way, and his head came apologetically through the aperture. "Sorry, I didn't mean toslam it, but the wind-Ann, I truly am sor-"

"For G.o.d's sake go!" She almost pushed him down the stairs. "A storm's coming up; you wouldn't want to get caught in it and spoil that pretty new silk suit."

Watching from the window, she saw him come out into the empty street.

Not quite empty ... as he walked west, something swooped out of the shadows and fluttered after him. Yes, I'm ... funny, she thought. And I have funny acquaintances.

Lightning streaked the sky; thunder crashed, and the rain did come, in wild sweet gusts. She slept peacefully and comfortably. When Mr. Varri's singing awakened her just before dawn, the rain had stopped, and it was cooler.

She looked down from her window, and he grinned up at her, with a face that was darkly handsome, and, at the same time, curiously innocent. His shining immaculacy was gone; great dark stains marred the whiteness of his clothes. "Mud," she said to herself, "just mud..." She began to giggle.

Tom didn't come to the office next day. "He's in the hos-pital," Bill Cullen, the sales manager, Tom's boss, told her.

"Oh, poor Tom." She tried to sound convincingly surprised and regretful.

"Awfully sudden, wasn't it? I hope it's nothing serious."

"He was attacked, or something, last night. Got his throat slashed." And Bill looked at her curiously. "He had a date with you, didn't he?"

"Do you think I'm that desperate?" Bill's face took on a "this is no joking matter" expression. She changed her tack. "And how do you happen to know I had a date with him?"

He turned pink. "Well, he just happened to mention to a few of the fellows that he was taking you to see Gypsy."

She could almost hear Tom's confident voice: "So you guys couldn't make any headway with her, eh? Well, maybe we country boys can teach you city fellows a trick or two..." She choked back unseemly laughter. "He was all right when he left my place," she said demurely. "I suppose it must have happened on his way back."

"Looks like it." Bill ran a hand through his thinning crew cut. "But what's funny is he says he's not coming back here afterward. He's quitting. Just like that. And he seemed so happy here, so anxious to get ahead."

"Big city must've been too much for him," she said, and she wondered dreamily what the doctors at the hospital had made of the marks on Tom's throat.

That night the bat hovered outside her window, plain-tively begging, "Please let me in, Anna. Please..."

She wasn't afraid any more. "That would be very foolish of me," she toldhim calmly, "after what you did to Tom."

But she doubted that Tom had invited him either, so why did Mr. Varri ask her permission? Was it because he came from the same tribe as her father ... or because she was a woman?

"It's because I love you, Anna. That Tom, he was just food; all I wanted from him was his blood, and that I did not need to ask for. I took what I wanted, and I hurt him because he hurt you. But with you, Anna, it is different. I want your love; so I can come to you only if you ask me. Ask me, Anna, please ask me; I will show you a happiness greater than you have ever dreamed could be possible."

For three nights she held out against him, but, on the fourth, she moved slowly through a fog that seemed to swirl around the room and took out the screen. The black wings swooped in, beating the air into coolness, fluttering against her cheeks in a caress. "I love you, Anna; don't fear me."

Her body relaxed into trembling quietness; her throat throbbed expectantly even before she felt the p.r.i.c.kle of the two tiny sharp teeth gently piercing the thin skin, gently drawing out her blood, and, with it, her fears and anxieties and self-doubts. This is love, she thought wonderingly as her throat swelled to meet the vampire's kiss-a true kiss, not the clumsy suction of damp lips and the thrust of slimy tongue, not the disgusting fumble of sweating, odorous human bodies. She wanted it to go on until every drop of blood was drained from her body, leaving her utterly clean, utterly pure.

"No, no, not yet," she moaned, as the pressure started to slacken.

Reaching out, she tried to grasp the wings, but they eluded her.

"No more tonight, dearest," he whispered. "It would be too dangerous for you. But I will come to you again to-morrow night ... and every night."

All day at the office she sat surrounded by filing cabinets and telephones and typewriters, dictating letters and memorandums and making decisions with her body, while her mind dreamed of the night that had pa.s.sed and the night that was to come. Through her fog, she heard little secretaries talking ecstatically about their dates that evening. For the first time in her life, she had a date she was looking forward to; for the first time in her life she had tasted ecstasy...

Night after night, the vampire returned to bring her all the happiness he had promised-and more. As the days and nights pa.s.sed, she changed, but she wasn't aware of it, or that the change was visible, not until the day Bill Cullen came into her office and asked if she were free that evening ... Bill, who had dated her several times when he'd first joined the firm; then became merely an office friend.

He had to ask twice before his words filtered through the golden fog that insulated her all the time now. "Sorry, Bill," she murmured. "I'm busy tonight. I'm busy every night...""You're in love," he told her. "There's something about you, something different. You're softer, more-more human, more like a woman."

She wasn't angry or annoyed or ... anything. "Yes, I am in love." She knew that the word had no real meaning for him, and she did feel a faint emotion-pity.

He looked at her. "Better watch yourself, kid. Don't over-do it. You look wonderful, but you don't look good, if you know what I mean."

The one thing the fog couldn't completely insulate her from was vanity. She went and looked at herself in the washroom mirror. She had always been pale and slender and pretty; now she was chalk-white, gaunt ... and beautiful. But it was a distinctly necrotic loveliness. Shock began to grow in her, dissipating the fog. Almost with clarity, she started wondering what would happen when all the blood had been drained out of her.

That evening, when she got home, she was close to being awake for the first time in days. "I'm so glad everything's turning out so nice for you, Anna!" Mrs. Brumi was beaming from the doorstep.

Ann looked at her, unable to put the question she wanted to ask into words. "It won't be long," Mrs. Brumi said rea.s.suringly.

The words came, then, and, with them, the fears-new fears piled upon the old. "It won't be long until what? Until I'll be of no use to him any more?

Until I'm-" and still that was the lesser horror-"dead."

Mrs. Brumi looked appalled. "What a thing to say, Anna! of course you won't be dead. You just won't be alive-that's all."

That's all. Ann was becoming her old bitter self. "What will happen then?

Will he buy that house in Long Island, so we'll have a nice place to keep our coffins?"

"You can't expect that, Anna. For a skinny girl who isn't so young and who hasn't any dowry, it's a good match. And there's always room in Mrs.

Lugat's house."

"The bride was white," Ann said hysterically, "and a coffin was her dowry."

And this is how folksongs start. How had she let herself slip into this? Calm Ann, cool Ann, collected Ann? She was lonely and romantic and she had the heritage ... but that was no reason to have let herself go primitive. She should have known better than to accept a fantasy love. Of course it was more beautiful than a real love; otherwise fan-tasies would never have come into being. Weakness made them real, and she had let herself be weak, but, essentially, she knew, she was strong.

That night the vampire sobbed and pleaded outside her window. She wanted to let him in, but she rehardened her heart against him. "Why, Anna, why?" he moaned. "I love you so much. I thought you loved me."

"I do. But when all my blood is gone, then you won't love me any more.""Of course I will!" he told her eagerly. "You'll become like me, then. We'll always be together. We'll go out every night, and, after we've drunk our fill, we'll dance together high above Central Park in the silvery moonlight."

"But you'll never be able to drink my blood again; you'll never be able to love me again."

"Of course I will love you, Anna-only in a different way. Love changes after marriage. Even for the others it does."

"Their kind of love isn't love. You taught me that."

"Anna," he wept, beating his head against the screen, "you can't leave me now; you can't leave me alone again. It's wrong; we are betrothed."

"This isn't the old country," she said, angry that he should take so much for granted. "In America, people make love casually, without being betrothed."

"But how could their kind of love be anything but casual? Our kind could never be. Anna, come with me. I'll give you your heart's desires, though you may not know them..."

She thought of going out night after night and feeding on the coa.r.s.e thick throats of strangers. Disgusting, she thought; what love could survive that?

"Look," she said coldly, "my parents didn't come from the old country and work like slaves to give me a decent home and a good education so I should wind up spending my days in a coffin and my nights going out sucking people's blood."

He beat his wings frantically. "But, Anna, all the time you've been living in a coffin. By making you one of the undead, I am bringing you to life-"

Her tone was even chillier. "I despise cheap symbolism," she said, "even in a vampire."

He couldn't understand; his concern was only for him-self. "Anna," he wept, "Anna, I'm so alone. I love you so much. Have pity on me-don't go away from me."

But she left him. The next day she rented another apart-ment-on the West Side, where luxury apartments were cheaper, because it was unfashionable.

However, it was on West Seventy-second Street, which is a broad, well-lit thor-oughfare, full of patisseries and quite safe. And it wasn't only to save money that she moved across town; it was to be as far as she could get from the old neighborhood while still being conveniently situated with respect to her office.

She didn't give Mrs. Brumi notice, because she didn't want to give her time to hatch any new plots; she paid her a month's rent instead. And she hired professional packers; so the whole operation could be over in a day, and she wouldn't have to spend another night in the apartment. Not that she was afraid of Mr. Varri-she knew he wouldn't hurt her-but of herself.The new apartment was completely air-conditioned, so she would never need to open windows. But sometimes, late at night, over the hum of the machinery, she thought she heard something flapping against the windows, and a tiny desperate voice singing...

Do not weep my dearest one, There is no need for weeping.

Happiness I'll bring to you, Softly while you're sleeping.

The words were appropriate now, because sometimes she found herself quite openly in tears. Just the same, she didn't open the windows. She was strong.

It took a long time for the marks on her neck to heal. But it was easy to hide them with tight wide necklaces, which were expensive, because everything she put on her body had to be of good quality. However, she got a new boy friend who was a jeweller, and, while he lasted, she got substantial discounts.

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The demands that magazines and book publishers have been making in recent years on Dr. Asimov's science non-fiction talents have brought his fiction output virtually to a halt. We are delighted that we were successful in chivvying him into producing this story-particularly because it illuminates so neatly an aspect of computer uses ordinarily left unde-veloped in current scientific reports.

THE MACHINE THAT WON THE WAR.