Reaper Man

it off.
    “It’s having to sleep with the window open all night that I object to,” she said vaguely. “I wish they’d stop that music! I’m getting a headache.”
    There was another whoomph . Arthur reappeared upside down and landed on his head.
    “It’s the drop, you see,” said Doreen. “It’s like a run-up, sort of thing. If he doesn’t get at least a one-story start he can’t get up a proper airspeed.”
    “I can’t get a proper airspeed,” said Arthur, struggling to his feet.
    “Excuse me,” said Windle, “The music doesn’t affect you?”
    “It puts my teeth on edge is what it does,” said Arthur. “Which is not a good thing for a vampire, I prob’ly don’t have to tell you.”
    “Mr. Poons thinks it does something to people,” said Ludmilla.
    “Sets everyone’s teeth on edge?” said Arthur.
    Windle looked at the crowd. No one was taking any notice of the Fresh Starters.
    “They look as though they’re waiting for something,” said Doreen. “Vaiting, I mean.”
    “It’s scary,” said Ludmilla.
    “Nothing wrong with scary,” said Doreen. “ We’re scary.”
    “Mr. Poons wants to go inside the heap,” said Ludmilla.
    “Good idea. Get them to turn that damn music off,” said Arthur.
    “But you could get killed!” said Ludmilla.
    Windle clapped his hands together, and rubbed them thoughtfully.
    “Ah,” he said, “that’s where we’re ahead of the game.”
    He walked into the glow.
    He’d never seen such bright light. It seemed to emanate from everywhere, hunting down every last shadow and eradicating it ruthlessly. It was much brighter than daylight without being anything like it—there was a blue edge to it that cut vision like a knife.
    “You all right, Count?” he said.
    “Fine, fine,” said Arthur.
    Lupine growled.
    Ludmilla pulled at a tangle of metal.
    “There’s something under this, you know. It looks like…marble. Orange-colored marble.” She ran her hand over it. “But warm. Marble shouldn’t be warm, should it?”
    “It can’t be marble. There can’t be this much marble in the whole world…vorld,” said Doreen. “We tried to get marble for the vault,” she tasted the sound of the word and nodded to herself, “the vault, yes. Those dwarfs should be shot, the prices they charge. It’s a disgrace.”
    “I don’t think dwarfs built this,” said Windle. He knelt down awkwardly to examine the floor.
    “I shouldn’t think so, the lazy little buggers. They wanted nearly seventy dollars to do our vault. Didn’t they, Arthur?”
    “Nearly seventy dollars,” said Arthur.
    “I don’t think anyone built it,” said Windle quietly. Cracks. There should be cracks, he thought. Edges and things, where one slab joins another. It shouldn’t be all one piece. And slightly sticky.
    “So, Arthur did it himself.”
    “I did it myself.”
    Ah. Here was an edge. Well, not exactly an edge. The marble became clear, like a window, looking into another brightly lit space. There were things in there, indistinct and melted-looking, but no way in to them.
    The chatter of the Winkings flowed over him as he crept forward.
    “—more of a vaultette, really. But he got a dungeon in, even if you have to go out into the hall to shut the door properly—”
    Gentility meant all sorts of things, Windle thought. To some people it was not being a vampire. To others it was a matched set of flying plaster bats on the wall.
    He ran his fingers over the clear substance. The world here was all rectangles. There were corners, and the corridor was lined on both sides with the clear panels. And the non-music played all the time.
    It couldn’t be alive, could it? Life was…more rounded.
    “What do you think, Lupine?” he said.
    Lupine barked.
    “Hmm. Not a lot of help.”
    Ludmilla knelt down and put her hand on Windle’s shoulder.
    “What did you mean, no one built it?” she said.
    Windle scratched his head.
    “I’m not sure…but I think maybe it was…secreted.”
    “Secreted? From what? By what?”
    They looked up. A trolley whirred out of the mouth of a side corridor and skidded away down another on the opposite side of the passage.
    “Them?” said Ludmilla.
    “I shouldn’t think so. I think they’re more like servants. Like ants. Bees in a hive, maybe.”
    “What’s the honey?”
    “Not sure. But it’s not ripe yet. I don’t think things are quite finished. No one touch anything .”
    They walked onward. The passage opened up into a wide,