Fevre Dream Page 0,48

could keep my Eli Reynolds and maybe show a profit with her, send you a little as it come in."

"Is that the way you'd prefer it?"

Marsh glared at him. "Damn you, Joshua, you know it ain't."

"Abner," York said, "I need you. I cannot run the Fevre Dream by myself. I am learning a little of piloting, and I've become somewhat more familiar with the river and its ways, but we both know I am no steamboatman. If you left, half of the crew would go with you. Mister Jeffers and Mister Blake and Hairy Mike for certain, and no doubt others. They are loyal to you."

"I can order 'em to stay on with you," Marsh offered.

"I would rather you stayed on. If I agree to overlook your trespass, can we continue as before?"

The lump in Abner Marsh's throat was so thick he thought he would choke on it. He swallowed, and said the hardest thing that he had ever said, in all his born days: "No."

"I see," said Joshua.

"I got to trust my partner," Marsh said. "He's got to trust me. You talk to me, Joshua, you tell me what all this is about, and you got yourself a partner."

Joshua York grimaced, and sipped slowly at his drink, considering. "You will not believe me," he said at last. "It is a more outlandish story than any of Mister Framm's."

"Try it out on me. Can't do no harm."

"Oh, but it can, Abner, it can." York's voice was serious. He put down his glass and went over to the bookcase. "When you searched," he said, "did you look at my books?"

"Yes," Marsh admitted.

York pulled out one of the untitled volumes in the leather bindings, returned to his chair, and opened it to a page full of crabbed characters. "Had you been able to read it," he said, "this book and its companion volumes might have enlightened you."

"I looked at it. Didn't make no sense."

"Of course not," York said. "Abner, what I am about to tell you will be difficult for you to accept. Whether you accept it or not, however, it must not be repeated outside the confines of this cabin. Is that understood?"

"Yes."

York's eyes wondered. "I want no mistake this time, Abner. Is that understood?"

"I said yes, Joshua," Marsh grumbled, offended.

"Very well," Joshua said. He put his finger on the page. "This code is a relatively simple cipher, Abner, but to break it you must first realize that the language involved is a primitive dialect of Russian, one that has not been spoken in some hundreds of years. The original papers transcribed in this volume were very, very old, They told the story of some people who lived and died in the area north of the Caspian Sea many centuries ago." He paused. "Pardon. Not people. Russian is not among my best languages, but I believe the proper word is odoroten."

"What?" said Marsh.

"That is only one term, of course. Other languages have other names. Kruvnik, vedomec, wieszczy, Vilkakis and vrkolak as well, although those two have somewhat different meanings from the others."

"You're talkin' gibberish," Marsh said, although some of the words Joshua was reciting did kind of ring familiar, and sounded vaguely like the gibble-gabble Smith and Brown were always spouting.

"I won't give you the African names for them, then," said Joshua, "or the Asian, or any of the others. Does nosferatu have meaning for you?"

Marsh regarded him blankly.

Joshua York sighed. "How about vampire?"

Abner Marsh knew that one. "What kind of story you tryin' to tell me?" he said gruffly.

"A vampire story," said York with a sly smile. "Surely you've heard them before. The living dead, immortal, prowlers of the night, creatures without souls, damned to eternal wandering. They sleep in coffins filled with their native earth, shun daylight and the cross, and each night they rise and drink the blood of the living. They are shape-changers as well, able to take the forms of a bat or a wolf. Some, who utilize the wolf form frequently, are called werewolves and thought to be a different species entirely, but that is an error. They are two sides of a single dark coin, Abner. Vampires can also become mist, and their victims become vampires themselves. It is a wonder, multiplying so, that vampires have not displaced living men entirely. Fortunately, they have weaknesses as well as vast power. Though their strength is frightening, they cannot enter a house where they have not been invited, neither as human nor animal nor mist. They