I returned to life with a grimace. I had a sour taste in my mouth, the acrid tang of rusted iron. I frowned and rubbed my gums gingerly. My finger returned, dripping with blood. I groaned. I had been feeling guilty for months now about missing my last check-up with my regular dentist, Barbie's dad, Dr. Boopstein. But what would that mild-mannered balding Rotarian say when he saw my newly acquired fangs?
"Lots of vampires in Kalifornia," a voice said gruffly. I opened my eyes. Sure enough, sitting at my sickbed was my mind-reading boss, Otto Hell. He fixed me with his beady brown eyes. "Rudi tells me you're a little shaken up."
I laughed wildly, spitting out a fine red spray of blood. "How would you feel after discovering that you've been carrying around a spirit within you without even knowing it?"
"Depends whose spirit," Hell answered evenly. "Aren't you glad that Anastasia is with you?"
"Within me," I corrected him. "Not with me. Within. There's a difference."
Hell shrugged. "So spit her out. You need to find a suitable body for Anastasia's spirit. Lots of fish in the sea."
"What about the other girl's spirit?"
"Big fish eat little fish."
"You want me to commit murder!"
"More like theft, really. Besides, you're just an accomplice."
Pipi emerged from her bathroom in a slinky pink bikini. "Like it?" she asked, pirouetting before us. "I'm going to lunch."
"Dressed like that?" Hell scowled. "This is, after all, a university. Might consider my reputation."
Pipi's little face contorted. She burst into tears. "I'm good for your reputation!" she sniffled. "You're old and I'm sexy. I'm a fine trophy!"
"Good point," Hell agreed.
Pipi sobbed a little longer, dried her eyes, put on a dressing gown, snapped her fingers, and disappeared. Lady Rudolphine sat before us, white haired, dignified, sedately smiling. "As you see, my dear, it really is quite easy to change bodies," she remarked calmly. "And most enjoyable."
"For you maybe, Lady Rudolphine," I replied acerbically. "But how does Pipi feel about it?"
Lady Rudolphine shrugged. "Does it matter? To be honest, I doubt if the silly little thing has even noticed." She rolled her eyes in her head and vanished. Pipi wriggled in her chair. "Are you coming to lunch?" she pouted. "I'm hungry. You talk too much."
"I can't handle this," I groaned. "Are you really suggesting that I should seduce some brainless little chiclet and pour Anastasia into her? It seems so immoral..."
"What's morality got to do with it?" Hell growled. "Just pouring old wine into new bottles."
"But I don't even know how to do it..."
"Didn't have any trouble decanting Anastasia into Madlenova," Hell pointed out. "Follow your instincts."
"I must have been following my instincts when I went with Madlenova. And it didn't work."
"Too ambitious. You're just a novice vampire. Madlenova is a tough cookie. Need to practise your bite on softer prey."
Lady Rudolphine reappeared, nodding. "Otto is right. In any case, don't worry about getting it wrong. We can replace your missing instincts."
"Oh no," I wailed in horror. "More drugs?"
Lady Rudolphine grinned wickedly. She dug out a small glass bottle from her handbag and held it up. The little phial glittered in the light. "Basic Instinct."
"Is that another of your pet drug designer's special creations?"
"Dear Hans van der Annersvoort." Lady Rudolphine smiled fondly. "He really is very inventive."
I hazarded a guess. "Is he also in England now? Along with Sleaze and Nina Hamidi?"
Lady Rudolphine gazed at me coolly. Generations of aristocrats frowned haughtily at me through her deep blue eyes. "I don't keep track of Hans' precise movements. I'm not that fond of him." She handed me the little glass phial. "This is the small emergency supply of Basic Instinct I keep with me when I travel. It's very easy to use. Just dab a drop into any open wound. A scratch will do. I usually use a sharpened hairpin. I shall leave it with you when I go."
"You're leaving?" I asked in distress. "When? Where are you going?"
"My dear little man, I do have other responsibilities besides dealing with your absurdly trivial emotional storms in a teacup," Lady Rudolphine replied evenly. "I have to go to various gallery openings, opera premieres, charity balls, and visit the Queen, whom I have been neglecting shamelessly in the last few weeks and the poor dear does take on so if I don't pop in every once in a while even though it is such a bore for she has absolutely no conversation and she has taken to pouting (and given her lower lip, can you imagine the sight? It really is quite frightening) and stamping her feet and throwing infantile tantrums, quite absurd behavior, really, even if these are trying times for her, what with the most peculiar way in which her children are behaving, positively encouraging the press to photograph them posing naked on Swiss ski slopes and having their toes sucked on Caribbean beaches, and people burning down her castles, and those silly Australians wanting to get rid of her and set up on their own, and even the most die-hard Tories are demanding that she pay taxes and she can't very well move her assets offshore, now, can she, it would be setting a bad example, besides which, Britain already is an island, and, you know, I really do have to take care of my paralysed son."
"I'm sorry, Lady Rudolphine," I said remorsefully. "I had totally forgotten..."
"Oh, Murti Bing is probably fine," the old lady replied. "He keeps himself busy. He has rather a lot of colleagues working with him at the moment."
"Colleagues? What does he do?"
"Oh, this and that. You might say that he is a sort of... chemist." Lady Rudolphine chuckled. "Alchemist is more like it, actually."
"Alchemist." I stared at Lady Rudolphine. My brain felt oddly clear and it wasn't just that I hadn't had a drink in a long time. Little snippets of various casual conversations flashed before me, gleaming bits of information like random pieces of cardboard thrown up into the air, mere confetti until one saw how they fell, settling themselves into place, integral parts of a complex jigsaw puzzle. Some unidentified expert had altered the chemical structure of the pill which Luke Leazy had designed for the X-O-X Foundation. Luke had been invited by the X-O-X Foundation to work in England with a genius who had designed drugs in the sixties in San Francisco. Saure had told Anastasia that the woman who designed her love potions, Nina Hamidi, had gone to England on urgent business, an opportunity she couldn't pass up. Lady Rudolphine had revealed to me that she obtained Lethe from the underground drug designer in Amsterdam, Hans van der Annersvoort, and that she had heard of my friend Luke. And on our first meeting at Prince Ludwig's suicide party she had told me that her son Murti Bing had spent a lot of time in San Francisco in the sixties. Murti Bing, the alchemist. What the hell was he stirring up in his little cauldron together with the best underground drug designers of the world? And to what terrifying end?
"I'm sure you can guess," Lady Rudolphine smiled.
"Xox wants to take over the world."
"He's already done that," Hell replied casually. "By far the richest man in the world now. Probably the most feared as well."
"What about the Sultan of Arabia?"
"Cutting off arms and legs is small stuff," Hell said dismissively. "Feudal foolishness. Flogging frightens nobody anymore. Whole crowds of Western degenerates flocking to Arabia these days. Punish us, the masochists bleat, and the mullahs don't know how to respond. In any case, the Sultan is terrified of Xox."
"Why?"
"Asking questions again," Hell said reprovingly. "Use your head instead."
"I'm on sick leave. What does Xox want?"
"To win friends and influence people."
"By giving them drugs?"
Hell shrugged. "Why not? As good a way as any other."
A sudden flash of insight blazed through my head. My eyeballs nearly popped. "Did Xox set up the University of Truth and Justice as an experiment? To test all these new attitude-changing drugs on a bunch of depressed intellectuals?"
"Did you just figure that out?" Hell looked at me in surprise. "Thought you knew it all along."
I giggled hysterically. "How silly of me. Of course I should have known. Why else would anyone set up a university in Central Europe?"
"The alchemists began by experimenting with prisoners on death row," Lady Rudolphine recalled. "But then we realized that we needed to test the Nice pill's effects simultaneously on three dimensions: intelligence, morality, and pleasure. And it's hard to check pleasure levels on death row..."
"So you decided to experiment on students instead. Giving them `vitamins'."
"Exactly. It was the perfect pretext."
I looked at Hell severely. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
Hell scowled back at me. "What for?"
"You're the greatest living intellectual in the world," I protested. "You've been teaching in institutions of higher learning all your life. Aren't you shocked and dismayed at this sort of subversion of academic standards?"
"How did you spend your time when you were in university?" Hell demanded.
I looked down, shame-faced. "Taking drugs and hanging out with other delinquents."
Hell shrugged. "Our students do that too. Just in laboratory conditions. What's the problem?"
"Oh, nothing really, I guess." I sat up in alarm as Lady Rudolphine approached. "What are you doing?"
"Another dose of Lethe." Lady Rudolphine deftly dabbed the lotion onto my forehead and balls.
I squirmed at her touch and giggled. "It tickles. Am I going to forget everything again?"
"Just inconvenient memories. This should keep you from feeling heartbreak," Lady Rudolphine explained. "And you will only remember Basic Instinct when the time is right. The repeated dose will keep you out of mischief for a while."
"Whatever." I spat out another mouthful of steaming-hot blood into my handkerchief. "Why is there all this blood in my mouth?"
"Just means you're hungry. You're a vampire, aren't you?" Hell reminded me. He rose to his feet and put his arm around Pipi's waist. "Coming down to lunch? There's a meeting afterwards which I particularly want you to attend."
I sighed and got out of bed. I knew that I was going to spend the next few days looking around furtively for fresh meat. I wondered if I would spot a potential target at lunch. I wanted Anastasia back, even at the cost of my better feelings. I felt sorry for my prey but I really had no choice. There's no such thing as a free lunch, especially for the victim.
"Lots of vampires in Kalifornia," a voice said gruffly. I opened my eyes. Sure enough, sitting at my sickbed was my mind-reading boss, Otto Hell. He fixed me with his beady brown eyes. "Rudi tells me you're a little shaken up."
I laughed wildly, spitting out a fine red spray of blood. "How would you feel after discovering that you've been carrying around a spirit within you without even knowing it?"
"Depends whose spirit," Hell answered evenly. "Aren't you glad that Anastasia is with you?"
"Within me," I corrected him. "Not with me. Within. There's a difference."
Hell shrugged. "So spit her out. You need to find a suitable body for Anastasia's spirit. Lots of fish in the sea."
"What about the other girl's spirit?"
"Big fish eat little fish."
"You want me to commit murder!"
"More like theft, really. Besides, you're just an accomplice."
Pipi emerged from her bathroom in a slinky pink bikini. "Like it?" she asked, pirouetting before us. "I'm going to lunch."
"Dressed like that?" Hell scowled. "This is, after all, a university. Might consider my reputation."
Pipi's little face contorted. She burst into tears. "I'm good for your reputation!" she sniffled. "You're old and I'm sexy. I'm a fine trophy!"
"Good point," Hell agreed.
Pipi sobbed a little longer, dried her eyes, put on a dressing gown, snapped her fingers, and disappeared. Lady Rudolphine sat before us, white haired, dignified, sedately smiling. "As you see, my dear, it really is quite easy to change bodies," she remarked calmly. "And most enjoyable."
"For you maybe, Lady Rudolphine," I replied acerbically. "But how does Pipi feel about it?"
Lady Rudolphine shrugged. "Does it matter? To be honest, I doubt if the silly little thing has even noticed." She rolled her eyes in her head and vanished. Pipi wriggled in her chair. "Are you coming to lunch?" she pouted. "I'm hungry. You talk too much."
"I can't handle this," I groaned. "Are you really suggesting that I should seduce some brainless little chiclet and pour Anastasia into her? It seems so immoral..."
"What's morality got to do with it?" Hell growled. "Just pouring old wine into new bottles."
"But I don't even know how to do it..."
"Didn't have any trouble decanting Anastasia into Madlenova," Hell pointed out. "Follow your instincts."
"I must have been following my instincts when I went with Madlenova. And it didn't work."
"Too ambitious. You're just a novice vampire. Madlenova is a tough cookie. Need to practise your bite on softer prey."
Lady Rudolphine reappeared, nodding. "Otto is right. In any case, don't worry about getting it wrong. We can replace your missing instincts."
"Oh no," I wailed in horror. "More drugs?"
Lady Rudolphine grinned wickedly. She dug out a small glass bottle from her handbag and held it up. The little phial glittered in the light. "Basic Instinct."
"Is that another of your pet drug designer's special creations?"
"Dear Hans van der Annersvoort." Lady Rudolphine smiled fondly. "He really is very inventive."
I hazarded a guess. "Is he also in England now? Along with Sleaze and Nina Hamidi?"
Lady Rudolphine gazed at me coolly. Generations of aristocrats frowned haughtily at me through her deep blue eyes. "I don't keep track of Hans' precise movements. I'm not that fond of him." She handed me the little glass phial. "This is the small emergency supply of Basic Instinct I keep with me when I travel. It's very easy to use. Just dab a drop into any open wound. A scratch will do. I usually use a sharpened hairpin. I shall leave it with you when I go."
"You're leaving?" I asked in distress. "When? Where are you going?"
"My dear little man, I do have other responsibilities besides dealing with your absurdly trivial emotional storms in a teacup," Lady Rudolphine replied evenly. "I have to go to various gallery openings, opera premieres, charity balls, and visit the Queen, whom I have been neglecting shamelessly in the last few weeks and the poor dear does take on so if I don't pop in every once in a while even though it is such a bore for she has absolutely no conversation and she has taken to pouting (and given her lower lip, can you imagine the sight? It really is quite frightening) and stamping her feet and throwing infantile tantrums, quite absurd behavior, really, even if these are trying times for her, what with the most peculiar way in which her children are behaving, positively encouraging the press to photograph them posing naked on Swiss ski slopes and having their toes sucked on Caribbean beaches, and people burning down her castles, and those silly Australians wanting to get rid of her and set up on their own, and even the most die-hard Tories are demanding that she pay taxes and she can't very well move her assets offshore, now, can she, it would be setting a bad example, besides which, Britain already is an island, and, you know, I really do have to take care of my paralysed son."
"I'm sorry, Lady Rudolphine," I said remorsefully. "I had totally forgotten..."
"Oh, Murti Bing is probably fine," the old lady replied. "He keeps himself busy. He has rather a lot of colleagues working with him at the moment."
"Colleagues? What does he do?"
"Oh, this and that. You might say that he is a sort of... chemist." Lady Rudolphine chuckled. "Alchemist is more like it, actually."
"Alchemist." I stared at Lady Rudolphine. My brain felt oddly clear and it wasn't just that I hadn't had a drink in a long time. Little snippets of various casual conversations flashed before me, gleaming bits of information like random pieces of cardboard thrown up into the air, mere confetti until one saw how they fell, settling themselves into place, integral parts of a complex jigsaw puzzle. Some unidentified expert had altered the chemical structure of the pill which Luke Leazy had designed for the X-O-X Foundation. Luke had been invited by the X-O-X Foundation to work in England with a genius who had designed drugs in the sixties in San Francisco. Saure had told Anastasia that the woman who designed her love potions, Nina Hamidi, had gone to England on urgent business, an opportunity she couldn't pass up. Lady Rudolphine had revealed to me that she obtained Lethe from the underground drug designer in Amsterdam, Hans van der Annersvoort, and that she had heard of my friend Luke. And on our first meeting at Prince Ludwig's suicide party she had told me that her son Murti Bing had spent a lot of time in San Francisco in the sixties. Murti Bing, the alchemist. What the hell was he stirring up in his little cauldron together with the best underground drug designers of the world? And to what terrifying end?
"I'm sure you can guess," Lady Rudolphine smiled.
"Xox wants to take over the world."
"He's already done that," Hell replied casually. "By far the richest man in the world now. Probably the most feared as well."
"What about the Sultan of Arabia?"
"Cutting off arms and legs is small stuff," Hell said dismissively. "Feudal foolishness. Flogging frightens nobody anymore. Whole crowds of Western degenerates flocking to Arabia these days. Punish us, the masochists bleat, and the mullahs don't know how to respond. In any case, the Sultan is terrified of Xox."
"Why?"
"Asking questions again," Hell said reprovingly. "Use your head instead."
"I'm on sick leave. What does Xox want?"
"To win friends and influence people."
"By giving them drugs?"
Hell shrugged. "Why not? As good a way as any other."
A sudden flash of insight blazed through my head. My eyeballs nearly popped. "Did Xox set up the University of Truth and Justice as an experiment? To test all these new attitude-changing drugs on a bunch of depressed intellectuals?"
"Did you just figure that out?" Hell looked at me in surprise. "Thought you knew it all along."
I giggled hysterically. "How silly of me. Of course I should have known. Why else would anyone set up a university in Central Europe?"
"The alchemists began by experimenting with prisoners on death row," Lady Rudolphine recalled. "But then we realized that we needed to test the Nice pill's effects simultaneously on three dimensions: intelligence, morality, and pleasure. And it's hard to check pleasure levels on death row..."
"So you decided to experiment on students instead. Giving them `vitamins'."
"Exactly. It was the perfect pretext."
I looked at Hell severely. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
Hell scowled back at me. "What for?"
"You're the greatest living intellectual in the world," I protested. "You've been teaching in institutions of higher learning all your life. Aren't you shocked and dismayed at this sort of subversion of academic standards?"
"How did you spend your time when you were in university?" Hell demanded.
I looked down, shame-faced. "Taking drugs and hanging out with other delinquents."
Hell shrugged. "Our students do that too. Just in laboratory conditions. What's the problem?"
"Oh, nothing really, I guess." I sat up in alarm as Lady Rudolphine approached. "What are you doing?"
"Another dose of Lethe." Lady Rudolphine deftly dabbed the lotion onto my forehead and balls.
I squirmed at her touch and giggled. "It tickles. Am I going to forget everything again?"
"Just inconvenient memories. This should keep you from feeling heartbreak," Lady Rudolphine explained. "And you will only remember Basic Instinct when the time is right. The repeated dose will keep you out of mischief for a while."
"Whatever." I spat out another mouthful of steaming-hot blood into my handkerchief. "Why is there all this blood in my mouth?"
"Just means you're hungry. You're a vampire, aren't you?" Hell reminded me. He rose to his feet and put his arm around Pipi's waist. "Coming down to lunch? There's a meeting afterwards which I particularly want you to attend."
I sighed and got out of bed. I knew that I was going to spend the next few days looking around furtively for fresh meat. I wondered if I would spot a potential target at lunch. I wanted Anastasia back, even at the cost of my better feelings. I felt sorry for my prey but I really had no choice. There's no such thing as a free lunch, especially for the victim.
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