Tomorrow Sucks Part 21

Maels fought down his excitement and smiled his best smile. "I kept your place," he said with just enough pretended gruffness.

"Am I all that predictable?" Her voice seemed to vibrate in his belly. He estimated her age at twenty-two but, sharing her frank gaze, elevated that estimate a bit.

Maels wisely denied her predictability, asked where she found earrings of beaten gold aspen leaves, and learned that she was from Pueblo, Colorado. To obtain a small commitment he presently said, "The body is a duty, and duty calls. Will you keep my place?"

The long natural lashes barely flickered, the chin rose and dropped a minute fraction. Maels made his needless roundtrip to the men's room, but hesitated on his return. He saw the girl speak a bit crossly to a tall young man who would otherwise have taken Maels' seat. Maels a.s.sessed her fine strong calves, the fashionable wedge heels cupping voluptuous high insteps. His palms were sweating.

Maels waited until the younger man had turned away, then reclaimed his seat.

After two more drinks he had her name, Barbara, and her weakness, seafood; and knew that he could claim his quarry as well.

He did not need to feign his easy laugh in saying, "Well, now you've made me ravenous. I believe there's a legendary crab c.o.c.ktail at a restaurant near the wharf.

Feeling like exploring?"

She did. It was only a short walk, he explained, silently adding that a taxi was risky. Barbara happily took his arm. The subtle elbow pressures, her matching of his stride, the increasing frequency of hip contact were clear messages of desire. When Maels drew her toward the fortuitous schoolyard, Barbara purred in pleasure.

Moments later, their coats an improvished couch, they knelt in mutual exploration, then lay together in the silent mottled shadows.

He entered her cautiously, then profoundly, gazing down at his quarry with commingled l.u.s.t and hunger. Smiling, she undid her blouse to reveal perfect b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

She moved against him gently and, with great deliberation, thrust his sweater up from the broad striated rib-cage. Then she pressed erect nipples against his body. Maels cried out once.

When European gentlemen still wore rapiers, Maels had taken a blade in the shoulder. The memory flickered past him as her nipples, hypodermic-sharp, incredibly elongated, pierced him on lances of agony.

Skewered above her, Maels could not move. Indeed, he did not lose his functional virility, as the creature completed her own pleasure and then, grasping his arms, rolled him over without uncoupling. He felt tendons snap in his forearms but oddly the pain was distant. He could think clearly at first. Maels thought: How easily she rends me. She manipulated him as one might handle a brittle doll.Maels felt a warm softening in his guts with a growing anaesthesia. Maels thought: The creature is consuming me as I watch.

Maels thought: A new subspecies? He wondered how often her kind must feed. A very old subspecies? He saw her smile.

Maels thought: Is it possible that she feeds only on feeders? Does she read my thoughts?

"Of course," she whispered, almost lovingly.

Some yards away, a tiny animal scrabbled in the leaves.

He thought at her: "... and so on, ad infinitum. I wonder what feeds on you"

As "And Not Quite Human" was one of the young Greg c.o.x's favorite stories, so I was moved by Susan Petrey's tales of benevolent vampires on the Russian steppes before I became an editor. I was extremely disappointed to learn that this unique voice had been silenced before her time, indeed before she had published enough stories to fill a book. However, several years after investigating her work for possible publication, I learned of a hard-cover volume containing her complete works-including several previously unpublished stories and vignettes about the vampire tribe. The book, Gifts of Blood, was a labor of love produced by members of the SF fan community in Oregon as a tribute to one of their own. I was able to purchase the paperback rights for Baen and publish an author I had admired for years. If you find this story as intriguing as I did, I suggest you contact the publishers of the hardcover at Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund, P.O.

Box 5703, Portland, OR 97228. All proceeds go to a.s.sist new writers to attend the Clarion Workshops. This story, "Leechcraft," is the culmination of her vampire series, and one of the best meldings I've seen of fantasy elements with a science fictional approach.

Leechcraft.

SUSAN PETREY.

Leechcraft: the art of healing (archaic); also the art of bloodletting.

-Words and Their Origins.

by K.A. Haberthal.

At 1:30 a.m. Myrna, the lab technologist, bent over the struggling patient, syringe in hand, and searched his arm for a vein. Dr. Meyer, one of the interns, held the mandown as Myrna tried to tie the tourniquet.

"What's wrong with this guy?" she asked.

"DTs," said the intern.

"How come you don't tranquilize him?" asked Myrna.

"I don't like to coddle alcoholics."

Myrna found a vein in the emaciated arm and shoved the needle home, but the patient flinched away. When she pulled back the plunger, she drew no blood, only a vacuum.

"What's wrong, Vampira? Forgot to sharpen your teeth this evening?" quipped the intern.

Myrna groaned inwardly. Vampire jokes were an occupational hazard of medical technology. She withdrew the needle and tried again. This time she was successful.

"Now that's more like it," said Dr. Meyer. "I was afraid I was going to have to waste an hour, showing you how. Can we get STAT amylase, CBC and a crossmatch on that?"

Myrna injected the blood into tubes, some with anticoagulant, some without.

"Why does he need a crossmatch, STAT?" she asked. "Are you going to do surgery?" In hospital jargon STAT meant immediately.

"He needs it STAT because I ordered it STAT. Who's the doctor here, you or me?" said the intern.

"I want to know, because if I have to work my f.a.n.n.y off all night, I'd like to think it's for a good reason. Not just because some doctor decided to write STAT on the order."

"My, you're an a.s.sertive little lady," said Dr. Meyer. "If you must know, yes, we might nave to do surgery. We think this guy has a 'hot' appendix, and the sooner you get those lab reports back, the sooner we'll know. So hustle back to the lab and get busy. You might win a date with a handsome, young doctor."

"Yuck!" said Myrna and walked away, leaving him standing there with a quizzical look on his face.

"Vampira, indeed!" she said under her breath as she stabbed at the elevator b.u.t.ton. But when she thought about it, it made sense. A blood-drawer intent on collecting a specimen had to have a knowledge of veins and arteries, had to have a calming effect on agitated patients, and had to be able to coax blood out of the weakest, most scarred old veins; in effect, had to think somewhat like a Vampire.

When she got back to the lab, she plopped the tubes of blood into the centrifuge to spin down the clot. She threw a switch and a grumbling roar commenced as the centrifuge gained speed.

The lab was a small room crowded with machine consoles. Myrna took an anti-coagulated sample and fed it to "Clarabelle" the Coulter Counter, which slurpedit up in pneumatic tubing. She watched as the little snake of red traveled up the tubing and into the reaction chambers. Winking indicated that the red and white blood cells were being counted. The printer chattered and spat out answers: Hematocrit 47.8, white cell count 16,700.

The hematocrit, the percentage of red blood cells, was normal but the white count was elevated. They would probably operate if the amylase was normal. A high amylase meant that the pancreas, not the appendix, was involved.

When the centrifuge clicked off at the end of ten minutes, Myrna reached in and slowed the spinning head with her hand to save precious minutes. She grabbed for squishy plastic bags of blood out of the refrigerator and lined them up on her desk to set up the crossmatch. Then she took serum to another console to run the amylase.

On the day shift, 30 people worked in the laboratory. On the graveyard shift, Myrna worked alone, handling the emergencies. She was a genius of time organization, as one had to be to keep up with the work of a whole hospital on a busy night. She often felt that the doctors and nurses got all the glory and that she was one of medicine's unsung heroes.

The amylase was normal. Myrna checked her cross-match tubes and saw no clumping, a compatible reaction. She phoned Dr. Meyer with the report.

"Well, I guess you'll have to set up that crossmatch after all," he said.

"I already did," she said. "You've got four compatible units for surgery."

"My G.o.d, woman, you must be the fastest crossmatch in the West," he said.

"How would you like to go out Sat.u.r.day night?"

"I'm busy," said Myrna. "I've got to get my horse ready for a show."

"You mean you'd turn me down in favor of a horse?"

"Absolutely," and she hung up on him.

Shanty, a big Tennessee walking horse gelding, was the love interest in Myrna's life. His big free-swinging stride had carried her to the Plantation Walking Horse trophy last year. On the back of her tall graceful horse, Myrna felt a sense of accomplishment similar to that which she felt in her work. A lab tech working the night shift did not have much time to develop a social life, but Myrna sometimes went out of her way to avoid contact with men. And when she did go out, she was careful not to get involved. She had loved once and decided that was enough to play the fool.

She usually found herself the huntress, the predator, the seducer in her relationships. The men she ensnared on her forays into beery, cigarette-smelling nightspots were sometimes unkind. One had called her "hairy chested" after seeing the patch of silken mouse-like down that grew between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Before embracing them to that hirsute bosom, she sometimes warned, "Be careful, I bite."

But after the o.r.g.a.s.mic relief, she was always left feeling vaguely unsatisfied. Even the one man who had loved her had not fulfilled all her need, and she had backed out ofthe relationship feeling guilty and ungrateful. She sometimes wondered if she might be a changeling from some secret elder race.

Now that all her work was finished, she was free until the next emergency cropped up. Myrna loved the stressful nature of her work. When she had nothing to do, she would drift off into fantasies. She would imagine that she could travel back in time and bring modern medicine into a primitive setting.

Tonight she was working in an early 19th century laboratory with Robert Koch, founder of modern bacteriology. She was showing him how the growth of bread mold on a gelatin plate could inhibit the growth of bacterial colonies. Out of grat.i.tude he pledged her his undying love and devotion (all in German) and crushed her against his bushy, bearded face, losing his pince-nez in the process.

Now that was silly!

She was feeling bored and hoped something would happen to get her through the rest of the night. "The said irony of it is," she thought, "that nothing fun happens around here unless someone's dying," and with this ghoulish thought in mind she put her Bell-boy beeper in her pocket and went downstairs to get hot brown water out of the coffee machine.

II.

1845. Russia. The Caucasus.

Against dark hills burst occasional red flares as Imam Shamil's troops displayed their heavy artillery against the forces of Czar Alexander II. An orange blast of cannon fire exploded in the night, and in the distance could be heard the crack of musket fire and the shouts of men. Outside a large tent, a horse-drawn wagon pulled to a halt in the mud.

"There are two more wounded out here," a voice called. "One's taken a ball in the leg and the other has a saber wound in the gut."

"Thank you," another voice answered from the depths of the tent. "Please put them on my last two beds."

In the dark, stuffy tent Vaylance knelt by a pallet on the mud floor. One of his patients was dying. He peeled back the b.l.o.o.d.y piece of cloth and observed the neat flax string st.i.tches that closed the wound. The man stirred in his uneasy sleep. The bleeding had stopped externally but not internally, and if it did not stop soon, he would have to resort to the dangerous process of transfusion.

"How's he doing?" asked Dr. Rimsky as he made his way among the pallets, holding a lantern high. Vaylance squinted away from the lantern. "He needs a transfusion."

The art of transfusion was seldom practiced in European medicine after the studies of Robert Boyle and others in the 17th century had shown it to be often fatalto the recipient. Vaylance, however, had learned his medical skill from a different tradition and had devised a method that worked fairly well in most cases.

"It's up to you to do it, then," said the doctor. "You have the best luck with it of anybody I've ever seen. I won't try my hand at it. Killed more than I ever saved with that method."

"Well, I guess I'd better find a donor then," Vaylance stood up. He was tall, lean and dark-haired with a sickly sallow complexion, and the most striking dark eyes-eyes that could read the soul. He staggered as he tried to stand, and Dr.

Rimsky caught his arm to help him stabilize.

"I know you're not one of us, lad," said the doctor, "but even you must have your limits. You haven't been eating lately. Something is wrong."

"It bothers my conscience to feed, when you are all so sickly," said Vaylance.

"When you were all fat and healthy, it was different. Now the cost is too high."

"Small good you'll be to us if you shrivel up and die of starvation," said the doctor. But he saw that his strange young friend was not to be persuaded. Vaylance, when he set his mind to follow his own inner law, was never waylaid by good advice. The fast would continue.

A year ago Vaylance had gone to Dr. Rimsky to tell him that he wished to serve in this war. Rimsky, an army surgeon, gray with age and much responsibility, had tried to discourage this young son of the Varkela from serving with the Russian soldiers.

"They would not accept you once they found you out, dear Vaylance," said the older man. "They would find out your hiding place and stake you while you slept. I cannot allow it. You must serve the Lord in some other way."

"You misunderstand my meaning," said Vaylance, fingering the wooden cross at his throat. "I would not serve as a soldier, but as a medical a.s.sistant with you. I must, for you, because you have saved me from the black-water sickness. You know my people are known for their herbal lore, leechcraft, and some for the healer's touch, and you have taught me much of the science of surgery. Let me come with you."

"The Varkela are known for other things besides their skill at healing," said Rimsky. "Even as a convert, you would be mistrusted by the men, and, besides, this is not your war, Vaylance. Your people are considered Tartar and not subject to the Czar." Rimsky hoped that Vaylance would survive the war and become a leader of his people, an ancient race that might become extinct. He had met Vaylance's father while stationed near the Caucasus. He had been surprised to find the old Varkela leechman living with a group of Kalmuck nomadic tribesman who still paid the ancient blood-price for his medical services.

Vaylance had not given up, however. "You forget," he said, "that I was born on Russian soil. And, remember, it has always been the custom of my people to heal the sick and wounded. When the Mongols came over the steppes and made war, did not we Varkela come in the night to ease pain and bind up wounds? All I require is that you provide me with a place to sleep, and I will keep the night watch while youwork days."

"Very well," Dr. Rimsky had sighed. "You have my permission, and I will be very glad to have your a.s.sistance."

The volunteer came into the dimly lighted tent and sat on the campstool. Vaylance recognized the man.

"You can't give blood again so soon, Sarnov," he said. "It takes at least a month for your body to make more. Go and send someone else."

A few minutes later another man came and presented himself. Vaylance had him lie on the cot next to the wounded man and rolled up his sleeve. He applied the tourniquet and the veins bulged like rope cards. As he worked, Vaylance sang softly the "sleeping song" of his people, which had the effect of inducing a hypnotic state in the volunteer.

With his fingers he traced the swollen veins. He could actually hear the blood hum as it pulsed through the arteries like the rushing of water in subterranean caverns. His mouth began to water as he knelt next to the cot. Gentle as a kiss, his mouth touched the exposed arm, his hollow teeth entered the vein, and a swirl of blood flowed into his mouth. A taste was enough to tell him what he wanted to know. He withdrew his mouth and licked at the wound with his thin, doe-like tongue. Saliva from his lower gland bathed the p.r.i.c.k and stopped the bleeding.

There were four blood types Vaylance could recognize by taste: salty, more salty, bitter and slightly sweet. This was the bitter, same as his patient, and without further delay he began to set up the transfusion. He had two hollow needles, and connecting the two was a crude form of rubber tubing. In the middle of the tubing was a gla.s.s reservoir with a pair of stopc.o.c.k valves, a gla.s.sblower's nightmare. Vaylance selected the proper vein on the donor's arm and inserted the upper needle, and the lower he placed into the chosen vein of his patient. Slowly the reservoir filled with the dark fluid. Vaylance reversed the stopc.o.c.k and forced air into a vent on the side of the reservoir, and it slowly emptied.

Knowing that there are four major mood types was a breakthrough in the art of transfusion, but it didn't rule out all danger. There was an antibody lurking in the serum of the patient. A more sophisticated test might have detected the telltale clumping in the bottom of a test tube, but Vaylance, limited to tasting the blood, missed it completely. For this reason he did not know anything was wrong until he saw the skin of his patient go all mottled with reddish splotches. He yanked the needle from the arm, but it was too late to save the man. Hemolyzed red blood cells had already dumped a toxic load of raw hemoglobin into the system. The patient burned with fever as the night wore on. His kidneys, confronted with the hemoglobin, failed, and he entered the coma from which there was no return. As the sun came up, the surgical a.s.sistant fought his weariness and stayed near his patient's side, but abruptly he ceased to breathe, and Vaylance admitted defeat. There was nothing to do but clean all the paraphernalia and remove the corpse for burial.Vaylance went to Dr. Rimsky's tent and woke the doctor. After telling him of the failed transfusion, he prepared to sleep. He always slept in Dr. Rimsky's tent, which was strictly off-limits to everyone except himself and the doctor. Vaylance lay on his cot thinking. Presently his breathing slowed and his pulse dropped to 20 beats per minute. He slept as only the Varkela sleep.

Vaylance awoke with a start to find a crushing weight on his chest. The sun had gone down: it was time for him to work again, but something was wrong. Around him he heard the sounds of men groaning in pain. Hoof-beats approached and then receded in the distance. Then he heard a voice: "The medical tent's been hit! Give us a hand."