He nodded. “A milder and more civilized version of the original Spertin plan.”

  “Much more civilized.”

  “Perhaps. But just the same, these Nomorts and the others may be beyond even the power of demmie luck to control.”

  “We’ll manage,” Captain Ohm assured, coming around the bow of the shuttle craft, whose engines were starting to warm up. “With a little help from Ya-Tze’s dice, along with an alliance of free, sapient beings built on empathy and good will.”

  Behind him followed Nuts, cradling something creepily mechanical in her arms, along with Guts clutching a bulging bag of his precious samples from every life- and un-life form he had been able to poke with his greedy needle.

  Earl nodded. “Always self-assured. Ever-confident in your adaptability and manifest destiny – traits we humans once thought to be our foremost qualities. Only tell me, Captain, what will those avail you, when there are demmie vampires on the loose?”

  Remembering the alluring, hypnotic and deadly-dangerous creature that Lieutenant Gala Morell had become, I knew this Spertin-gone-native had a point. Still, I nodded.

  “And yet, we have our ways.”

  Earl’s sardonic expression seemed to say good luck with that. Without another word, he boarded, looking back at us with a theatrically toothy leer as the hatch closed. I stepped away with Ohm and Guts and Nuts to avoid the shuttle’s backwash, murmuring “Goodbye,” as together we watched our friends… and semi-friends… depart. In moments they were streaking toward a setting sun that reddened the foothills to the west. Soon, they would pass over a sugar wasteland of sparkling dunes and mighty worms, followed by glittering cities of the living and the dead… speeding toward a future that now held perhaps a little more hope than the past.

  “Three ones and then three sixes,” I murmured, recalling the oracular dice-roll, when our mission to this planet first began. And yes, things often do turn out all right. In the end.

  Alas, it is seldom the end for very long, without there also being a beginning. And it often happens without rest or letup.

  That was when I noticed the smug look at the face of Nuts, and heard a clicking-whirring sound. At which point I realized what it was that she held in her arms – the demmie Finder device had morphed yet again, looking now like a cherubic doll with a faux-innocent face, infantile yet fixated in concentration on the puzzle it had been given. And I realized also that my question for the Finder had been solved, and she must have asked another.

  “So, what is it looking for, now?” I asked.

  “I don’t gotta tell you,” Nuts answered, defiantly.

  “But you have to tell him.” I indicated Captain Ohm.

  “Yes Advisor,” he answered apologetically. “Though for now it’s – well – confidential. I’d like to tell you, and will, when appropriate, but—”

  “—but a promise is a promise. Sure, I get that. Though, are you aware how dangerous that thing is?”

  “Yeah, I know.” Despite that, his expression seemed less chagrined than guilty. He nervously avoided my eyes. And, from the look on her face, I was not at all sure I would like wherever our next adventure took us.

  So it was that four weeks later we stepped up to the slurry tube… now one of a dozen – with more being rapidly auto-produced in orbit – that were already sucking in sugars from the vast, sweet waistlands then sending down to several cities a steady stream of snacks-for-every-taste-and-appetite. So your neighbor you won’t have to bite, went a popular media jingle, penned by a pair of rising stars on the zombie-pop circuit. (Care to guess who? And yes, I should have signed on to be their manager. Last I heard, their group – the Talking Deads – was killing.)

  In fact, the biggest headache faced by our residual team of stay-behind technician volunteers was having to deal with rising cries of envy from every other metropolis – and all the various monster castes – demanding when will it be our turn? Well, nothing is punished like success. And I hope all of you suffer its highly-mixed pangs.

  Still, any sense of triumph that I felt dissolved when, after things seemed well in-hand, it was time for our bone-tired crew to depart for Alliance territory.

  I stayed on the ground as long as possible, supervising the reprogramming of the Big Computer so its ongoing activity, releasing milder doses of Leininger factor, would keep squiddish afterlife going while slowing the rate of death. After which I directed the final evacuation of Obtainia Base – a duty I took on in order to delay an inevitable unpleasantness.

  But it came at last, unavoidably. My turn to ride up-ship in one of the last parties, conveyed skyward by cellular-slurry transporter.

  While waiting in queue outside the liquescing chamber, along with some security greenies and a Ya-Tze priest, I admit that I felt yet again the Great Temptation. To ask myself if I truly was on the right side. To wonder if our Spertin cousins had a point, after all…

  But no, the doubt passed. As it passes almost every time. Even after a much later adventure finally forced me into retirement and left me here, whiling away time in this spaceport bar, telling stories to slumming academy students.

  What story is that? The thing that finally used up all my taste for adventure and made me flee back to Earth? Why, it was a ridiculous thing, A horrible, magnificent, transcendent storm of ironies, bizarre coincidences and terrible, terrible punning…

  No. I won’t talk about that. Not today.

  Anyway, are you seriously under the impression that my Planet-of-the-Undead adventure was over at that point?

  Yes, yes. I saw some of you eye-flicking and consulting official records, while I talked, checking on my veracity. And screw you, too. And yes, the tale tapers off here, as far as it applies to our principal mission, or to the famous Captain Ohm.

  But not for me.

  Within the liquescing chamber, we arranged ourselves along two nested circles, facing inward, since we were heading home, turning our backs to any danger, instead of confronting it. I recognized only a couple of the green-clad guys and now I knew why the others were strangers. Because the Gamble had replenished her ranks from the crew and passengers of a demmie-plus colony ship – long written-off as lost – that had been marooned beyond an impassible hyperspace reef, trapped in a tidal pool of semi-liquid time.

  How were the stranded ones finally rescued by the Clever Gamble? Commander Talon’s abbreviated report was lush with florid descriptions of successive adversaries who kept trying to capture or destroy our ship – first a Spertin cruiser that drew the Gamble into a trap, using the forsaken vessel Go-buy-a-chia as a lure.

  That conflict converted quickly into grudging alliance when both sides were attacked by a Mifrengi devourer fleet! Which was then sucked into battle among squadrons from three mutually hostile galaxies (!) – one flotilla crewed by living beings, one by AI-bots, and one by what might or might not have been made of some kind of inexpressibly ineffable stuff that bore a heavy grudge against all things that had names and descriptions…

  Then there was the very weird planet that the Gamble crew found in one corner of that interspatial tide-pool, where different versions of Talon’s landing party encountered each other and had some serious logical and existential and romantic conundrums to work out. Yipe.

  No wonder it took years for our unlucky crewmates to navigate through that mess, eventually negotiating an alliance of common cause with all of those forces against yet another one that was really dangerous!

  Then, picture their luck turning for the better, finding a risky but rewarding path back to normal space and the original temporality, returning to this planet just in the nick of time to answer the call from our landing party’s Finder apparatus, finally sending down a slurry tube just when we needed it most.

  Yep, that is the way things sometimes go. You get used to this sort of thing, in the Advisor Service. I was looking forward to immersing myself in the full report and recordings, back on-ship…

  Oh, hell no! I take that back. You never get used to it. Not ever. Don’t you believe anyone who says otherwise.

  Still, I did look forward to the full-immersion report, and I used that anticipation for distraction while standing nervously in the transporter chamber, trying to think about faraway things until a familiar, tingling sensation told me that liquescing had begun. Scanners read the positions of all the cells in my body. Then universal solvent poured in through wall vents, rising rapidly… and you can’t help hyperventilating, instinctively preparing to hold your breath, even though you know from experience that it won’t do the slightest good.

  Laser tagged and registered for later re-assembly, our clothes began dissolving, even before the fluid reached my chin. Which meant the excited demmies were even deeper. I saw their uniforms shred and float away along with outer layers of skin.

  Directly across from me, the thick cloak of the Ya-Tze priest took an instant longer, so my mouth and nose were flooding by the time the clerical garb fell apart, and I found myself looking at a naked – and stunning – demmie female, who smiled back at me, knowingly.

  And I knew her too.

  Gala Morell. The demmie vampire Gala Morell, whom I had last seen plummeting twenty stories toward a Cal’mari street. As ravishing as ever – more so, in her brief nudity – but with her native charisma amplified many fold by flashes of light. Gleaming off twin predatory fangs. And shining with soul-piercing intensity from her penetrating eyes.

  “Hello Doctor,” her mouth shaped the words, but I had no need to hear them amid the gurgle of solvent filling my ears. Her greeting was conveyed by that gaze, its hypnotic glint.

  “I was so looking forward to our meeting again.”

  Though surrounded by security guards, I could not cry for help. For a moment I was able to cut off the mesmerizing sheen by closing my own eyelids. Alas, those protective flaps soon dissolved away, leaving me exposed again.

  So I decided to see if the channel went both ways.

  “Hello lieutenant… or is it Countess, now? Are you so eager for a rematch?”

  Apparently it was bidirectional, indeed. And I knew that she knew my confident riposte was all bluff.

  “Just Gala. And the captain ensured that this time we’d both be unarmed. No biting… and no sneezing!”

  By that point my eyes collapsed like sugar in hot water and vision scattered into a swirl of speckles, vaguely reminiscent of dreaming. I felt the rest of my body dissolving away… and yet, the fey link between me and the Nomort demmie stayed open.

  Captain Ohm… knows about this?

  Oh yes. He agreed, partly in exchange for my help breaking the landing party out of a dungeon…

  I felt betrayed – a sadly pure sensation, like any emotion that surges over you, when you’re in a slurry.

  …but also because I am the first demmie vampire… though surely not the last…

  So this is an experiment?

  One with much hinging on the outcome.

  Okay. There was a logical reason behind this. Though I still felt used and deceived. No wonder Ohm looked so guilty, before he hurried back to the ship, leaving me in charge down below. And I had walked right into this, by delaying my own departure till the very end.

  Although I lacked any true hearing, I could still somehow feel a churning rush as the transporter tube gathered a dense paste of all our bio stuff, finished chewing – and then swallowed, sending a gulp-packet of disassembled demmie, human and other cells hurtling upward, toward outer space.

  Usually, long before this point, conscious thought fades away – as well it should, if the universe obeyed logic all the time. Which it doesn’t. And didn’t on this occasion, as our conversation continued. While our constituent materials swirled and intermixed, I felt Gala Morell’s hypnotic power inveigle through my inner mind.

  So this is what it’s like to be human.

  Hey, cut that out!

  But my objections were half-hearted as she rifled through memories. And not just randomly. Sifting with feral sensitivity for some of my more sensitive moments, even embarrassing ones from adolescence.

  I always viewed Earthlings as such logical beings. But it’s all a front, isn’t it?

  Of course it is! Ohm knows it. So do Guts and the wisest demmie –

  Hm. Well I wasn’t one of the wisest. Not before. But I’ve lately decided… with these powers… maybe I should try to be.

  Hey! Leave that memory alone. It hurts.

  Yes, I feel it. Let me drink –

  Vampire!

  There came a pause. Her mind touch retracted a bit. Then returned.

  You’re right. This should be reciprocal.

  Which was when she opened herself to me.

  And right then, as our cells and souls swirled physically around each other, I felt some of what it means to be a demmie.

  How passionate. How mercurial and frantic to make the most of their brief lives.

  How eager to love and to be loved-back by a cold universe.

  How insecure they are, beneath their overcompensating bravado. Terrified that others will discover how terrified they are.

  And I understood why Captain Ohm deemed this experiment to be important – so much so that he was willing wreck the trust we had between us. A trust that would never be the same, even when I fully understood his motive.

  A demmie vampire… isn’t ‘undead,’ but a new phase of life, I realized, sharing with her the same, swirling thought. It’s a possible way for some of you –

  And she completed my thought as if it were shared, in unison

  —for some of us to finally grow up. At least, maybe, a little.

  Maybe. A little.

  At which point the incongruity of it all made me do something that I till-then did not realize you could do, when in a slurry.

  I laughed.

  And then I sang for her.

  “If growing up means it would be

  Beneath my dignity to climb a tree,

  I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up!

  Not me!”

  And I felt her laughter too.

  16.

  What happened after that?

  Well, the simple answer is that it’s none of your damned business what happened after that! And don’t pretend you just came down here to buy an old retiree some drinks and squeeze some fun out of him. You and I both know this is part of the advanced, command-track seminar. A way to keep me teaching, even after I told them to take their tenure and shove it up their –

  Oh, but here comes proof. Look who just slipped into this spaceport dive, gliding down the steps like a wraith. None other than the one who generations of students nicknamed Professor Bloodsucker!

  Oh for Ya-Tze’s sake, don’t bolt up to attention! You’re off duty, remember? Anyway, that’s not the Academy Superintendent. Just another emeritus admiral, a legendary explorer and former Academy Superintendent. Now retired like me. Well, semi-retired.

  So stop staring at those teeth and relax, guys n’ gals. If you plan to serve as human advisors out there, you better get used to this kind of demmie, too. Trust me, it’s better now. Mostly.

  Anyway, it’s not you Admiral Bloodsucker has come hunting for, you cheeky shavetails. It’s me. And that’s my wife you’re staring at – still a beauty after all the decades and light-years and shattered foes we left in our wake.

  As for those teeth? Forget about ’em.

  They’re for me. Just me.

  The end

  Appreciations and Afterword

  Okay, okay. Comedy is hard.

  No, seriously, I’ve had a wider range of responses from The Ancient Ones, across its many drafts, than any other book I’ve written. Some sober professional agents and editors even called this work a “career-killer!” Is that how you feel right now?

  But then, if you made it this far…

  Humor has so many variants and styles, ranging from Stooge-slapstick to tragicomic irony, as in Catch-22. I was naturally inspired by Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, but also by delights ranging from the Hoka series of Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson to the wry wit of Connie Willis, to the broad hilarity of Bored of the Rings. Some folks kindly say they chuckled often while reading my novels Kiln People and The Practice Effect.

  In those tales… and this one… I aimed at a particular part of the humor spectrum, a style where the reader first accepts a far-out premise, then nods and says: “within that strange context, yeah, it could happen.”

  Other kinds of comedic writing make strange bedbug-fellows. Did you notice a change in tone, during our hero’s voyage across the sugar desert? Much of that material was offered up by sci fi grand master Mike Resnick, when we discussed possible collaboration. I found his sample chapter hilarious… though alas incompatible overall. That’s all right; Mike and I will find another route to working together. (See his magazine Galaxy’s Edge!) Meanwhile, I found a way to insert some of his lovely weirdstuff in the context of Alvin Montessori’s high-fructose delirium. Did that work?

  I should mention: early versions of the first four chapters of The Ancient Ones were serialized in Baen’s Universe magazine, edited by another modern SF master, Erik Flint. Oh and the song “I’ll Never Grow Up” was from that Peter Pan musical. And no, there never was a “Road to Transylvania” film by Hope, Crosby and Lamour… at least to my knowledge… or that I’d confirm to you.

  Among others who pre-read or critiqued along the way… either offering fresh puns and crackups, or else helping me to notice things best omitted… were Beth Meachem, William Taylor, Wil McCarthy, Robert Qualkinbush, David Pomerico, Pat Scannell, Alex Tosheff, Max Thiemens, Mike Halbrook, Alan Beatts, Cheryl Brin, Bing Chen, Bill Schafer, Betsy Wilcox, Dave Schroeder, Daniel I. Radakovich…

  …plus (I am sure) others who were kind enough to read drafts without moidering me, but whose names didn’t make it into notes. It happens every time, sorry.