I, the discontent, the unjunked, live here in RosewoodPark, among the dogwood and myrtle, the headstonesand broken angels, with Fritz—another legend—in ourdeep and peaceful mausoleum.
Fritz is a vampire, which is a terrible and tragic thing.He is so undernourished that he can no longer moveabout, but he cannot die either, so he lies in his casketand dreams of times gone by. One day, he will ask meto carry him outside into the sunlight, and I will watchhim shrivel and dim into peace and nothingness and dust.I hope he does not ask me soon.
We talk. At night, when the moon is full and he feelsstrong enough, he tells me of his better days, in placescalled Austria and Hungary, where he, too, was fearedand hunted.
"... But only a stainless steel leech can get blood outof a stone—or a robot," he said last night. "It is a proudand lonely thing to be a stainless steel leech—you arepossibly the only one of your kind in existence. Live upto your reputation! Hound theml Drain theml Leave yourmark on a thousand steel throatsl"
And he was right. He is always right. And he knowsmore about these things than I.
"Kenningtoni" his thin, bloodless lips smiled. "Oh,what a duel we fought! He was the last man on earth,and I the last vampire. For ten years I tried to drain him.I got at him twice, but he was from the Old Country andknew what precautions to take. Once he learned of myexistence, he issued a wooden stake to every robot—butI had forty-two graves in those days and they never foundme. They did come close, though....
"But at night, ah, at night!" he chuckled. "Then thingswere reversed! I was the hunter and he the preyl
"I remember his frantic questing after the last fewsprays of garlic and wolfsbane on earth, the crucifix