Norman Invasions (12 page)

We were aghast at this confession, but had always recognized that Stevens was very little socially controlled.

“I was stopped twice by policemen before I reached the parking lot.”

“At least those fellows are on their toes,” I said.

“Next,” said Stevens, “cigars will be against the law.”

“I do not think so,” said Abramowitz, who had a background in law, “as that would infringe freedom. It is more likely that the planet will be declared a no-smoking zone.”

“Next,” said Stevens, “it will be against the law to leap off bridges.”

“It may already be,” said Wentworth.

We all looked to Abramowitz.

“I'm not sure,” he said.

We were all uneasy at the course the conversation was taking. Stevens did not seem his normal, robustly arrogant, lustily ebullient self. This talk of unbuckled seat belts and bridges was alarming.

Stevens had not seemed the same since his return from the Carpathians.

There was a silence, moderately pregnant.

“Tonight is the full moon,” said Phillips, apropos at the time, as far as I then knew, of nothing.

Stevens nodded grimly. “I must be going,” he said, bringing his ponderous bulk to his feet, and flinging another fold of the silken scarf about his neck with a flourish. Stevens had style. It was apparently one of the things which the fair sex found irresistible about him.

“Don't go,” protested Brooks. “The evening is young. I had hoped to hear of your recent adventures in the Carpathians.”

“Do not detain him,” said Phillips, lighting a fresh cigar.

And the bulk of Stevens trundled away, toward the cloakroom. The room seemed emptier, now that he had gone, and, from the point of view of classical physics, it doubtless was.

“I don't understand Stevens,” said Wentworth. “He seems to have changed.”

“You were with him in the Carpathians,” said Hastings to Phillips. “Did anything occur there?”

“There was an incident,” said Phillips.

We replenished our brandy.

“You may recall,” said Phillips, “that Stevens and I, at the behest of the Smithsonian, had formed an expedition to inquire into certain troubling rumors emanating from various obscure provinces in Romania, rumors having to do with occult fauna.”

“Oh, yes,” said Hastings, the matter coming back to him now, “vampires, werewolves, that sort of thing.”

“Poppycock,” said Wentworth.

Vulgarity was not characteristic of Wentworth.

“Sorry, chaps,” he said.

“Mathematics is against such hypotheses,” said Abramowitz. “It is a simple doubling problem. If one bitten by a vampire becomes a vampire, and one bitten by a werewolf becomes a werewolf, and such, then, unless they go about biting one another, you would soon have a geometrical progression, two vampires or werewolves, then four, then eight, then sixteen, then thirty-two, then sixty-four, one hundred and twenty-eight, two hundred and fifty-six, five hundred and twelve, a thousand and twenty-four, two thousand and forty-eight, and so on. In a few nights everyone on Earth would be a vampire or werewolf.”

“Have you ever noticed that vampires and werewolves have not yet become politically organized,” observed Hastings.

“Odd,” said Brooks.

“You might think so,” said Phillips, “but it doesn't work that way. Not everyone bitten by a vampire becomes a vampire. It has to do with genes, predispositions, allergies, and such. Indeed, in Transylvania a serum has been developed, administered in early childhood, which tends to produce immunity to the vampire syndrome. Several vampires funded the original project, probably in order to control the vampire population, diminish the likelihood of famine, and such. But vampires are not the most serious problem, especially with the development of all-night blood banks. Vampires can now meet their basic needs in socially approved manners, by working at night, usually as watchmen, or as clerks in minimarkets, liquor stores, and so on.”

“But what of werewolves?” said Hastings.

“Ah, yes,” said Phillips, “they are not the handsome, suave, sophisticated, romantic chaps that vampires are, who dress well, gargle frequently, keep their fangs clean, and so on. No, they are quite different. Every so often, at a certain point in the feral cycle, they develop a ravening taste for human blood. They prowl about, leap forth from the shadows, rip out throats, and such. Not even vampires are safe. Many carry a hand weapon, appropriately licensed, loaded with silver bullets, in the predawn darkness, returning to their crypts.”

“It is clear, or reasonably so,” said Abramowitz, “that one who has had his throat ripped out by a werewolf would not be likely, in his turn, to become a werewolf.”

“Yes,” said Phillips, “and that constitutes yet another check on the werewolf population.”

“Are the animal rights people interested in protecting werewolves?,” asked Brooks.

“Yes,” said Phillips. “Two were sent in.”

“What happened?” asked Brooks.

“They had their throats torn out.”

“I have sometimes wondered,” said Brooks, “why an ordinary bullet would not do a werewolf in.”

“It has to with biochemistry and the atomic structure of silver,” said Phillips, “incompatibilities with metals and proteins, molecular disaffinities, that sort of thing.”

“Please, go on,” urged Wentworth.

“You inquired about dear Stevens,” said Phillips.

“Yes,” we said.

“Was he attacked by a werewolf?” inquired Wentworth.

“I dare say that would be traumatic,” said Hastings.

I, personally, would not have wanted to be the werewolf who chose to attack Stevens.

“No,” said Phillips.

“You said that there was an ‘incident,'” said Hastings.

“Yes,” said Phillips.

“Does it have to do with werewolves?” asked Abramowitz.

“No,” said Phillips.

We waited while he took two puffs on his cigar.

“Werewolves receive the most attention,” said Phillips, “presumably because of their understandable interest to human beings who value their lives, but, interestingly, they are only one variety, so to speak, of a larger, lesser-known population of similar creatures, other forms of occult wildlife.”

“Other forms?” asked Wentworth.

“There are, for example, many different forms of mammals,” said Phillips, “and even within types of mammals, different sorts of mammals; marsupials, for example; consider, if you will, the Australian kangaroo and the American opossum, not to mention the bandicoot, wombat, and yellow-footed pouched mouse.”

“True,” said Wentworth.

“The origin of the werewolf remains obscure, especially that of the first one,” said Phillips, “but their later manner of reproduction is well authenticated. Some unfortunate, often a kindly, devout fellow, perhaps returning from evening services, is set upon by a werewolf, and survives the attack, but, in heroically fighting off the monster, is bitten. Later, he notes that he is periodically transformed into a wolflike creature with a ravening taste for human blood. Most victims find this initially disturbing, but, after a time, make accommodations and adjustments, and, in general, learn to handle the matter. They continue their predations until decrepitude reduces their powers, and they become laughing stocks to small Romanian children, or, more tragically, are finished off with a silver bullet. Psychotherapy is unavailing, and more than one psychotherapist was lost. Stevens and I met several of the afflicted while in the mountains. One was the mayor of a small town, whose citizens, liberals, would not deny him office because of his handicap. They would, however, keep him chained up, and hungry, at regular intervals.”

“But what has this to do with Stevens?” pressed Hastings.

“The werewolf,” said Stevens, “is doubtless the most dazzling example of the phenomenon in question. Indeed, one hears about little else in the “were” family, but, not surprisingly, the werewolf is not unique. For example, there is the werechicken, in which a human being, commonly a robust, coordinated chap, is periodically transformed into a chicken, and is overwhelmed with a ravening hunger for corn. Peasants, hearing its lugubrious, threatening cackle outside, hurry to fling grains of corn upon the door sills of their huts. It can be slain only with a silver hatchet. To be pecked by one means risking the occult contagion. There are many forms of werebeast, and not all are confined to the superstition-ridden precincts of obscure provinces in Eastern Europe. In Africa there is the were-elephant, particularly dangerous in its rogue phase. Why else to you think that certain African nations have negotiated for guided missiles with silver warheads? There is the weregiraffe. Few people, I fear, ever managed to associate the two stories recently mentioned in the
Times
, that of the ecological damage suffered by certain trees in Central Park and the claimed sightings of a formally attired giraffe entering the Plaza Hotel. One of the most hideous examples is that of the wereworm. One unfortunate fellow, in the vermiform phase, found himself dug up, placed in a can and later threaded upon a fish hook, after which he passed through the alimentary system of a large bass. He suffered acute discomfort, but survived, as the hook had not been of silver.”

“I had not known of this sort of thing,” said Wentworth, who was pale.

“These things are not as well publicized as the werewolf syndrome, of course,” said Phillips. “Too, the victims seldom bring their symptoms to public view.”

“What has this to do with Stevens?” asked Hastings, his voice a trifle, I thought, unsteady.

“The moon should be full by now,” said Phillips, finishing his brandy and plunging the glowing tip of his cigar into the ash tray, grinding it firmly down into a small pile of brown flakes and smoking gray ash.

“It is,” said Abramowitz, who could see our natural satellite through the lofty, velvet-draped window from his deep armchair.

“I think I shall be on my way,” said Phillips.

“What happened to Stevens, out there in the mountains?” asked Hastings.

But Phillips was on his way to the cloakroom.

In a moment, I had joined him.

“I thought you might be coming,” said Phillips. “Get your coat.”

We had soon left the city and were driving east on the Long Island Expressway, left the expressway at Exit 32, and were soon heading north, entering Great Neck, a small Long Island metropolis from which it is difficult to recruit jurors. We then were moving north on Bayview Avenue, crossed the bridge by the library, and were on West Shore Road. I now decline to supply further details, lest they prove too revealing.

“I have noted, as have others,” I said, sitting beside Phillips, staring ahead as he drove his land rover over the library bridge, on which it is improper to park, “that Stevens seems rather different now, after the Carpathians.”

“What he needs, I think,” said Phillips, “is a good woman.” He chuckled. “Oh, yes,” he said, “you think that is heresy, blasphemy, a betrayal of the charter, inconsistent with several of the bylaws, perhaps, but there is something to it, young fellow, propriety, society, civilization, tradition, biology, the rest of it, you know. Not for us, perhaps. But for a settled fellow like Stevens.”

“But he despises women,” I said, eager to recall Phillips to his senses.

“But no more than necessary,” said Phillips. “Never more than is appropriate.”

“True,” I granted him, recognizing the justice of the qualification.

I myself had not, as far as I knew, managed to replicate my genes, and I would not have been impervious, I suspected, to the charms of some romantic young woman who might be interested in a project of reciprocal assisted replication.

We did not admit such things, of course, to our fellow members. One owed certain things to the club, and, beyond that, to simple civility.

Salacious innuendoes were not in place amongst gentlemen, saving perhaps those pertaining to missionaries and native maidens, say, two-coconut, or three-coconut, girls.

“Stevens,” I said, “has had, I understand, some twelve to fourteen thousand nights of love, and seldom with the same lady twice. Surely some reasonable percentage of these curvaceous, appetitious delights must have been ‘good women.'”

“Stevens thinks they were only interested in his genes,” said Phillips. “Women these days know too much about biology. Half of them, it seems, are geneticists and the other half biochemists and statisticians.”

“He wanted someone who would love him for himself, and not for his genes alone?” I said.

“Yes,” said Phillips, driving on through the near darkness, as is comprehensible to anyone familiar with the placement of street lamps in Great Neck.

“Where are you heading?” I asked.

“To the terrarium,” he said.

We parked before an impressive mansion in Kings Point, not far from the Merchant Marine Academy.

It backed on a small lake.

“This is Stevens' place,” said Phillips. “I have a key.”

In a few moments, pausing only to disarm various devices, we were taking our way through long, dark halls, adorned with, as might be supposed in any noncanvas residence occupied by Stevens, a variety of hangings, paintings, trophies, prizes, and such; there were some griffin tapestries, for example, woven in the Low Lands, in the fourteenth century; and weapons and shields were in evidence, some from the siege of Acre; there was an assegai here, awarded by a Zulu chieftain whom Stevens had once rescued from the midst of leopards, a Malay kris there, wrested from a kerchiefed pirate, and such.

“Look here,” said Phillips, opening a door and switching on a light.

It was a well-appointed office, suitable for serious writing and dogged research, and there were, not unexpectedly, many lofty bookshelves about, laden with scholarly tomes, oiled scrolls in vellum, parchment manuscripts, and unreadable journals.