On the other hand, there are a few vampires who attempt to accomplish the same thing by aligning themselves with human society. They don’t pretend to be human. Rather, they immerse themselves in human affairs, try to feed on human purpose at the same time they feed on human blood. But this strategy, too, almost never works. It requires too fine a balance between emotional involvement and ruthless detachment. The fundamental relationship of eater to eaten constantly upsets the balance. Mio was the only vampire I’d ever known who could maintain that balance for any length of time. I couldn’t do it. It required an affinity for contradictions that I simply lacked.
The problem was really deeper than that. Everything a human being does is ultimately driven by mortality. The motivations that feed human ambition draw their energy from impending death. All the paraphernalia of human life—wanting a family, a career, success, fame, fortune, security, the longing to make something of themselves—all of it draws its urgency from the fact that death is just around the corner. Human civilization is a complex web of rationalizations, not only to aid survival, but also to create the illusion that there is some pressing reason why they ought to survive.
None of this computes for a vampire, for the simple reason that death is not around the corner, at least not on a human scale of time. The human agenda—get an education, choose a career, find a mate, make more little humans, work like a slave, retire, lapse into a second childhood, die—is an itinerary for a journey vampires don’t take. As far as I was concerned, if I wasn’t going to take the journey, there wasn’t any reason to carry the baggage.
All of which for me came down to a life of solitude, punctuated intermittently by brief periods of intimacy with Mio—the only vampire I’d met in a hundred years who offered even the slightest possibility of companionship. The others, if I’d had to associate with them on any regular basis, would have quickly driven me to take a short mid-afternoon stroll. But Mio and I were not emotionally dependent on one another. We were always conscious of moderating our involvement, knowing as we both did that our compatibility was inversely proportionate to the amount of time we spent in one another’s company.
“Maybe you’re right,” Mio said. “Maybe you don’t have a choice. Maybe solitude is the only realistic option for you.”
“Solitude doesn’t recommend itself to you because you actually like people,” I said.
“So do you, sometimes. Your new driver, for instance. The way you talk about her, it’s obvious you like her.”
“I do like her,” I admitted. “And that’s a problem for me in a way that it wouldn’t be a problem for you. You can socialize with humans, be with people you like, people whose company you enjoy. You can work with them, employ them, entertain and be entertained by them, and turn around and kill them at the drop of a hat. It’s not easy for me to do that.”
“So kill the ones you don’t like. There are plenty of those, especially in your case.”
I grew silent.
“Look, Shake, the big difference between us is that you think human beings should be divided into two groups: those whose lives are less important than your dinner, and those who, for some arbitrary reason of your own, deserve to be taken off the menu. I don’t make that distinction. If I choose not to drink someone’s blood today, that doesn’t mean they won’t be the soup du jour tomorrow. Either way, I really don’t care about the reasons. Whatever they are, they’re good enough for me. Because no matter what they are, they’re my reasons. They’re always my reasons. And that’s what counts for me.”
“I understand what you’re saying, Mio, and it’s not so much that I disagree with you. It’s just that when I decide to let someone live, my reasons for doing so tend to take on a life of their own. I suppose because I want them to. I want the reasons to endure. I want the reasons to be there for me in the future.”
Mio was giving me what I took to be a quizzical look, which, since her face rarely betrayed any emotion, consisted of tilting her head slightly to the side. “My dear Shake, you’re thinking like a human. A hundred years from now, the people you’ve let live will all be long dead, and your reasons for having let them live will be forgotten. You however, will be just as you are now. Or very nearly so. Perhaps in another hundred years you will have given up your search for good humans.”
“I know you don’t agree,” I said. “But some people deserve to be taken off the menu.”
“If you say so, Shake. But I think that’s your own self-interest talking. For some reason, you want there to be good humans. But what you aren’t willing to admit is that what makes them good is your own interest. As I see it, the good human is one who has a diminished capacity to do me harm. But all that really means is that they are people of diminished capacity. Give them power and you’ll see what their goodness is worth.”
I didn’t exactly disagree, but I couldn’t get around the feeling that Mio’s point of view was just too simplistic. The world isn’t that black and white. As important as Mio was to me, I knew that her world was governed by self-interest because she was governed by self-interest. She wasn’t burdened by the choices she made because everything else was secondary to her own needs and desires. Of course, according to her, I was the same.
