Still, there had to be people who, as mirrors, were better able to reflect things of value. And if there were such people, then what could make them better mirrors if not the fact that they were somehow better people? Clearly, there were people I could kill without undermining my own awareness. People like Danny Weiss, for instance. Or Bill, the psycho who had terrorized Karla that night in Sloughhouse. And if there were negatives, then there had to be positives. There had to be people who reflected a better picture of the world.
“When you think about it,” Calvin said, interrupting my thoughts, “it really isn’t all that mysterious. We, you and I, don’t like the company of other vampires because they reflect too much of what is ugly and aberrant in us. Fortunately, we can get by without them. We don’t like the company of most people because, lacking any real strength of character, they reflect too much of what is weak and inadequate in us. Unfortunately, we can’t get by without them.”
“How do you choose?” I asked, the question popping out on its own.
“How do I choose what?” he asked.
“Whose blood to take?”
Calvin stood up and quietly paced the room for several minutes. “If I correctly understand the motivation behind your question, what you want to ask is: How do I decide whose blood not to take?”
“Yes,” I agreed, “that’s the question.”
Calvin paced some more before answering. “What should I do? A question people have been asking for thousands of years, and they’ve come up with quite an array of answers, everything from the carefully reasoned arguments of philosophers, to the tritest clichés of the simpleminded, to the preposterous ravings of lunatics. In the end, it’s difficult to say if the philosophers have gotten any closer than the lunatics. But one thing seems certain to me. The search itself is perilous for the simple reason that it’s so easy and so tempting to convince yourself you’ve found an answer, when in fact you haven’t. Don’t get me wrong. It’s better to search than not to search. It’s just that, in retrospect, it often seems like it would have been better not to search, rather than delude yourself about what you’ve found.”
“Does that mean you’ve stopped asking?”
“In a way, yes. I was turned in 1581. You can do the math. That’s a lot of time to be wrong in, and I have to admit, I haven’t wasted the opportunity.”
I had no idea Calvin was that old. “So it has been a problem for you, deciding who not to kill?” I asked.
“Of course it’s a problem. The problem of value: Why is one life worth more than another? I’ve never come up with an answer that would hold water. But it’s not as much of a problem for me as it used to be.”
“Because you stopped asking?”
“No, because now I think there are mysteries that are better left as mysteries. There are questions I’m never going to be able to answer, and I prefer not to delude myself into thinking that I have, or that I ever will.”
I understood what Calvin was saying and my own experience suggested he was right. The difference between us seemed to be that Calvin had found a way to live without the answers, whereas I hadn’t, not with any peace of mind.
“It’s different for vampires than it is for people,” Calvin continued. “You might say that humans have perfected the art of extracting benefit from falsehoods. If you want a good example of this, look at the Roman Catholic Church, or any other religion, for that matter. But for a vampire, there isn’t much profit in the cultivation of falsehoods, because a vampire isn’t part of the social structure those falsehoods buttress. We don’t have to situate ourselves inside a social hierarchy in order to secure a better life for ourselves. We’re not part of the fabric of the institutions—religion, politics, etc.—that exist primarily to give humans a way to gain status and power. This kind of willful delusion doesn’t help a vampire get by. Or, at any rate, not vampires like you and me. Mio is arguably an exception. But for us, human society doesn’t help much because its foundations are built on greed, ignorance and fear. At bottom, people’s rationales are all hopelessly incoherent. Vampires like you and me are better off staying away from all of that.”
“It sounds to me like what you’re saying is that it’s a mistake for a vampire to ask questions that are fundamentally human.”
“I don’t mean to go that far. The questions aren’t the problem. But there are a lot traps along the road to answering them. People fall into those traps by sabotaging their own critical faculties. Human beings have to anesthetize themselves against the inadequacy of their answers. A vampire shouldn’t have to do that.”
I was intrigued by what Calvin had said, but it didn’t help me resolve the problem of who not to kill. “I don’t see a practical solution in any of this,” I said. “How does this help you choose?”
“A hundred years ago,” Calvin said, “I walked away and left you to fend for yourself. I wasn’t happy about it, but as I’ve already explained, there were reasons for what I did. I can’t change the past. I don’t even want to. Our respective situations are much different now, and the truth is, Shake, I rather like you. I’m surprised by that. I would like to give you an answer, but I’m not sure I have one that would be of any
