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"I don’t remember" He rubbed his eyes "I woke up alone in the EMT ambulance I knew I didn’t want to be there When they stopped, I let myself out"
"But weren’t you hurt?" I could see only his silhouette now, and the gleam of his hair
"Yes, I’d inhaled a lot of s I bounce back quickly Your father, with his diet of tonics and cow’s blood and artificial supplements…" He shook his head "He was "
I didn’t want to think about Malcolm’s dietary habits "What happened to Dennis?"
"Apparently he left while I was trying to put out the fire He must have, because when I tried the door, it was locked frohts now Unless he was a re to hi me the truth Yet part of me held back He still was the one who’d killed my best friend
"I killed her to protect you and your father" His voice was almost a whisper "She knew that you’re vampires, and she planned to expose you Why can’t you believe that?"
I put up my hand Once a story has a villain, it’s very hard to recast him as a friend, almost as hard as it would be to make him into a hero "Tell me some other tiht"
He leaned forward, and the light fro nose, one corner of his thin mouth "But you said you wanted answers Don’t you want to knohat’s going on here?" He waved in the direction of the wall map "Don’t you want to knohat that’s all about?"
"Could we turn on a light?" The sight of his half-face madeinto being: bookshelves, fireplace, furniture Now he had three dimensions, too He was just a man, I realized--just a vampire, I corrected myself He wasn’t a demon, or a monster
"Okay" I looked across at him "What’s this all about?"
He stood up, went to a corner cabinet, calasses of Picardo and handed me one I hesitated, then I took it We drank
He said, "Welcolethorpe Square was a regional outpost of the Nebulists, Malcolm said "I assume that you knoe are?"
I res," I said "Mythe vaan to protest
"Sara never did understand the differences" Malcolm pushed his hair from his forehead "Neither did Raphael No doubt they put the Sanguinist spin on whatever they told you They typecast us They say they’re the ones who care about preserving resources, about sustaining the earth, but they don’t do much to make it happen"
"They try--"
"They aren’t prepared to make it happen" Malcolm had none of my father’s inhibitions about interruptions "But we are"
"I didn’t know that Nebulists cared" Froathered the Nebulists were self-centered, ruthless, aht
He sht hi takes the forine a world without huo, they leave waste They pollute the soil and the atmosphere, the ocean and the rain They cut down trees andin the simplest terms possible, but there are other, more sophisticated analyses
"The truth is, if humans iped out tomorrow, the world would be a better place Within perhaps twenty thousand years, everything one The hideous houses, the factories and nuclear reactors, the skyscrapers and schools--all would crumble into dust The air, water, and land would cleanse themselves Species would rebound All of that would happen on its own--and happen even sooner, if we vampires helped the recovery process"
His speech see as Ca?" I asked "Exter the human race?"
"Of course not" His tone was ht, But you wouldn’t rule exter the Sanguinist spin on it again Once, I admit, the Nebulists were proponents of such a plan But we’ve evolved, as all intelligent beings do Noe advocate a forlass, and the Picardo glearee that things can’t go on as they are?"
I nodded, slowly All I’d seen and heard and read about environe
"Then it’s apparent to you that even enlightened hue to the ecosystehtbulbs is all very well, but hardly athe proble?"
He clasped his hands over one knee "We’re proposing ful modifications of huine hue consequences of their behavior Iine huratification, who live frugally and respectfully"
I shookit happen" He gestured toward thecoo Eventually there will be more circles, and they will overlap and cover the entire continental US If you went to our outposts in Europe, Asia, and Africa, you’d see similar maps"
I looked at the map and at the pins stuck in it, and I didn’t understand