however smal, should die on their telescopic slides and in the chemicals of their experiments. I did not want myself... examined. But I could find no logical argument against the promotion of life, from the ugly, wriggling, otherwise useless hordes of my loins.'
'You came in a botle for them,' Chang Lun, too, could be cold, emotionless. They froze your sperm and took it away ...'
To Chungking,' Drakesh whispered.
'Indeed. And that was nine years ago.'
'And fifty came forth!' Drakesh's eyes seemed afire in the cave's weird light.
'Out of the flower of China's womanhood, yes. You, father to a horde,
when loyal, weeping Chinese parents were strangling their babies in the name of the People's Republic!' (Chang Lun was merciless, by his lights at least). To what end, Drakesh? What of Colonel Tsi-Hong's genetic experiments now?'
'I told him how it would be,' said the other. That one may not grow exotic orchids in a paddy field; that they will come up twisted and strange. But if they are tended by caring gardeners, watered by familiar rains, and reared in their natural, their native soil...'
'In other words, you'll "grow" them yourself. What, here? And how will the brothers react to that, Daham Drakesh?
A monastery, or a harem? A holy place, or a place of holes?'
'If it's your intention to offend me, your time is wasted here,' Drakesh answered. 'What will be will be ... not necessarily because / want it, but because your leaders want it. And if in order to exist I must obey, then I will obey. I will not be forced out of being, driven from my place.'
'You don't fool me,' Chang Lun shook his head. 'Your so-called "emissaries" are out in the world even now, to what end if not to find a new place for you? I fancy you'll flee before your deceptions are discovered. Let's be clear on this: I consider you a fraud, yes. But I also consider you evil. This ... this spawn that they bred by artificial insemination in Chungking is proof of it. Sooner or later even Tsi-Hong will recognize the truth, and what of you and yours then? I don't know what you are, Drakesh, but you're no holy man. And you're not up to any good, I'm sure. As for this monastery: do you think I can't see why you chose this place, so close to so many borders? Even now your boltholes are ready to receive you, when you are found out!'
Drakesh touched his robe, the place of the letter. Major Lun's raving didn't concern him; his mind was on other things. Fifteen of his 'children' deformed, destroyed at birth. He had known about that long ago, of course. But fifteen out of fifty? It was hardly surprising: freak births and nightmarish malformations had been all too common among the Wamphyri of Starside; so Egon had informed him. As for grotesque autisms - bone and brain disorders - tendencies to extreme violence and madness - 'unnatural' lusts: what else would one expect? These children, these creatures, had been vampires! Daham's blood-brood, his creatures, aye ...
The last six escaped,' Chang Lun broke into his thoughts, made no excuse for knowing every smallest detail of the letter. 'Only eight years old, and apparently perfect apart from their accelerated growth rate. They killed their keepers and instructors; they not only bit the hands that fed them ... but fed on them! Drinkers of blood, cannibals, homicidal maniacs! In only eight years they'd grown to men, and sexually voracious women! Finally they were hunted down to the last one, and eradicated. But it wasn't easy ...'
And again Drakesh said, 'I told them how it would be. But this time we'll do it my way.' His whisper was a hoarse rustle in his pipestem throat. 'My way, yes ... "
All of his 'children' gone now - the nucleus of an indefatigable army, which Tsi-Hong had tried to create as a unique breed, protectors of China - all gone now. But Drakesh knew no pain. He had known what the outcome would be.
Tsi-Hong had tried to teach them to be human; Daham would teach them to be what they were, and to hide what they were until he was ready!
It was what he had wanted from the beginning. It had been the way of the Drakuls since a time beyond memory - to infiltrate and eat out an enemy's heart from within. But China, the enemy? Not at all; the enemy was Mankind! China was merely the