A Throod mercenary screamed and fell back, a short-shafted arrow protruding from his throat. Blood stained the ground and the arrow shaft.
Damn! Real this time!
Mor shouted orders, climbing upon his horse, drawing his sword. In a moment they were battling for their lives. A Klinglander raced for him on a big bay mare, spear leveled at his chest. It was like a dragon spear, Mor thought, positioning his shield to take the point. He braced himself for impact, knowing it would be the last thing he ever felt. The point was at the shield, ready to shatter it and take his life.
Then spear, spearsman, and charger vanished, leaving him alive and shaken.
Damn! Another phantom! Mixed right in with the real combatants! Thank the gods, this time.
“Watch out, General!”
He moved his head aside and caught a sword low on his mailed sleeve that almost dislocated his arm. This one was real! Damn!
“Fight for victory, men! Fight!” He hoped his words would do some good.
Swords and shields clanged steadily. Bowstrings twanged. Men and horses screamed and both died. Blood bubbled in crimson puddles from torn throats and pierced chests.
On and on into an increasingly weary day. Whoever had thought that war was glorious should be here now!
*
General Lester Crumb positioned his army for the big charge at the oncoming cavalry. He did not know why he felt so certain about it, but he knew the Kancians were real this time. Real with death and the means to deliver it.
An arrow narrowly missed him and thunked into a rock. That one was real, at least.
Then they were met on the plain behind the row of hills. Ignorant armies, as John Knight would have said. Ignorant armies clashing just before the fall of night.
He had his sword out and was clanging it with a Kancian. The enemy soldier was very good, and he did his best not to lose to him. A second Kancian came in fast and cut him on the arm above the left elbow. He winced, sickened and weakened all in a heartbeat. He opened his mouth to shout, and then the first Kancian lunged hard.
He barely managed a grunt as the blade skidded off good mail and then penetrated, going deep into his chest. He fell, and his thought, strangely enough, was of his father and what he must be experiencing in the adjoining kingdom.
“Commander! Commander!” a voice shouted in his ear.
But by then he was hearing everything as though it were far, far away. Horses’ hooves, poundings, screams, swords clanging against sword, shouts-- all changed for him, as if to a babbling of a crowd or a murmuring of a brook.
Faint, fainter, faintest.
*
Jon could hardly give the war a thought. She was too concerned with Heln and what was happening to her. What was happening to her? Jon wished she knew. Every single morning Kelvin's wife was sick and vomiting, and it was no innocent morning sickness. It was so violent that sometimes there was blood speckling it, and that didn't seem to her to be right.
Jon, watching Heln's pale face as she picked at her tray of fancy palace food, wished that she had been a girl. She hadn't been, really, until she got together with Les. Growing up she'd avoided girl things. Climbing trees, slinging rocks at targets she moved farther and farther away, angling for fish in a way her foster father enjoyed-- these had been her things. Soft girlish interests and especially those having to do with a girl's interest in boys she had dismissed with contempt. She had never worn dresses if she could help it, and her interest in infants had been nil. Now as an adult, as a woman, she had to feel a lack.
Was there a difference between roundears and pointears when it came to birthing? Jon had no way of knowing. How many roundear women had there been in this frame? Heln was the only one she had known, though there had been two females in John Knight's small band of roundears. Two females with round ears somewhere in this frame, maybe having babies in the natural way. Jon wished she had known one.
Heln gave a gasp, rose from her chair, and ran for the bathroom. Sick again, and not gently so. If this was natural pregnancy, Jon wanted no part of it for herself!
Jon picked up the orangmon fruit from Heln's plate and sniffed it. The fruit smelled fine. She didn't believe it was this that was making Heln sick. But just in case it might be-- she ate the fruit, finding it good and tart and satisfying. She was wiping the yellow juice from her mouth when Heln returned, looking pale and worn.
“Heln, I'm worried about you,” Jon said as her brother's wife resumed her chair. “You've been sick every morning lately. I don't think it's the food; I just tried some.”
“It will pass,” Heln said almost disinterestedly.
“Yes, but when? You have to think of the baby, Heln. This may not be good for it.”
Heln looked impassively out the window at the gardener working on the tulppies and poplics. The flowers were really beautiful this time of year, their red and white, and blue and white blossoms a solace for their eyes. She didn't answer Jon.
That does it! I'm going to get Dr. Sterk to prescribe for her vomiting.
But then a troubling thought: did she trust Dr. Sterk and his medicine! Considering the way he was acting she wasn't sure.
She wondered about it as the sunlight crept over the flower beds and brightened the windows as the birds began to sing. She worried all that morning, and worrying was not like her. Then before she knew it, it was the next day. The oddest thing was that Heln herself did not seem to be worrying; in fact she seemed to have very little interest in anything. What was the matter with her?
There was of course no answer.
Heln was in the royal bathroom, vomiting.
CHAPTER 13
Stapular
Father! Kian!”
They all embraced there in the chimaera's larder while the alien hunter looked on. As Kelvin had gradually come to accept, looking on was what Stapular did best.
“You've got your belt, Son! And the Mouvar weapon! And your gauntlets! Even your sword!”
“I have, Father.” And a lot of good they've done me so far! “I've tried the Mouvar weapon but it had no effect. The chimaera could have taken everything from me, but it seems contemptuous and didn't bother.”
John Knight heaved a big sigh. “It's something, being prisoners of a creature that doesn't fear our weapons, apparently with reason.”
Kian jerked a thumb at Stapular. “The chimaera must fear his kind. They came here to kill it.”
“Did, perhaps.” And probably never will again. “How'd you get caught?”
“Coming back for you,” Kian said, seeming annoyed. “We guessed you'd run into difficulties.” Politely he did not mention that it had been Kelvin's own choice.
“You were right,” Kelvin acknowledged. “The chimaera's too much for me.”
“Too much for anyone,” Kian said. He did not quite say that that should have been obvious.
“Too much for anyone from an inferior frame,” Stapular sneered. The alien had moved away from the wall. One of his hands reached into the trough, picked up a luscious nectorfruit and squeezed it. Pulp and juice squirted from between Stapular's fingers. His hands had to be quite as strong as the gauntlets, yet he had launched no attacks on the chimaera. Kelvin hadn't seen him actually eat, either, though probably he sneaked that in when Kelvin was asleep. Didn't want an inferior observing a superior taking nourishment like any other person, no doubt.
Distracted by Stapular's actions and his own thoughts, Kelvin tried to think of something the two of them had talked about. But had they ever really talked? He remembered trying to interest Stapular in doing something to save their lives, but the hunter had been as adamant then as now.
His father slapped him across the back in a friendly fashion he knew was calculated to build his courage. “Well, Son, we're in trouble!”
“Father, when were we not?” The awkwardness of the situation, and his father's attempt to make light of it were hardly lost on him.
“Say, Stapular, you old phony,” Kian said, turning to th
eir cellmate. “You ready to break out of here?” It was a return dig for the hunter's taunt about inferior life-forms.
“Stupid inferior being!” Stapular snapped. As usual his thinking seemed centered on that. Maybe it was because he feared that he himself was mentally deficient?
“Well, we have to do something, don't we, Father?” Kelvin asked. Desperation made his voice squeak. He hadn't felt so unsure of himself since Mor Crumb had propelled him into his first sword fight. The single gauntlet he had then worn had saved him then and many times afterward. Would that it and its mate would do so again!
“I could wish for a laser,” his father said. “Unfortunately your father-in-law lost the last one before we fought the final battle for Aratex.”
Kelvin remembered. According to St. Helens it was either drop the laser over the Aratex courtyard or let Heln tumble to her death. Although his father-in-law had done many things of which Kelvin didn't approve-- in fact, the man had been downright aggravating at times-- he had to feel that this was one time he had made the right decision. Now Heln was back home, quietly preparing to have their baby. How glad he was that she wasn't in any of this horror with the chimaera!
Kian spoke up. “A pair of magic gauntlets once propelled me to the top of a huge silver serpent. Once I was up there they knew how to keep me there and how to fight. Kelvin, do you suppose that if you got on top of the chimaera behind the sting-- “
Stapular laughed bitterly. “Dumb, inferior life-form!”
“The sting can send out blue lightning bolts,” Kelvin said, cutting through his brother's annoyance. “It shot them at me, and-- ” He launched into his tale.
“Electricity!” John said when he had finished. “It has to be! Like the electric eels we had back on Earth! That's why an antimagic weapon had no effect! Electricity is science!”
“Brilliant!” Stapular said. “For a dumb inferior life-form.”
“Listen, Stapular, I'm getting tired of that!” John said, whirling on him. “If you're so brilliant and superior, why don't you tell us how to save ourselves?”
“Because there isn't any way,” Stapular said. “You either kill the chimaera with laser bursts or you get caught by squarears and eaten by it. After you're caught you're finished. All you can do is enjoy the food, until you become food.”
“You were planning something,” Kian said. “You and Kelvin.”
“When was that?” Kelvin asked. Never before had he been so puzzled by anything his brother had said. With the puzzle came a lancing pain through his head. This business must be wearing him down more than he thought!
“When I was here before. Not physically. I mean when I returned in my astral form.”
“You were here? Astrally?” Now Kelvin understood it, or almost did. His head continued to hurt, as though protesting something. Why was Stapular making that mechanical frown and motioning as if for silence?
“I was. I had those dragonberries we brought, and-- “
“Shut up, all of you!” Stapular said.
“Why?” Kian glared at the red-haired, glass-armored cellmate. His expression suggested that he didn't want Stapular ordering them to do anything.
“Because the chimaera reads minds that don't know how to block and compensate.”
Oh. They all fell silent.
It was the nearest Stapular had come to admitting that there might actually be a plan.
*
Mervania tugged at her copper earrings and considered the matter carefully. They had been planning something, Stapular and Kelvin. Probably they intended some ruse, some trick. Stapular, being a hunter, would have controlled his thoughts. But Kelvin-- impossible. She considered what she needed to do.
What she wanted was those dragonberries. They would work on her kind, if the legend was correct. They worked for roundears and dragons; thus she, Mertin, and Grumpus all qualified. Together or singly they could search this frame for interesting sights.
What a release that would be! Their body might remain prisoner here on the isle, but their minds would range everywhere! They could spy on squarears who were their keepers. They could watch the froogears at their yearly secret rituals. It would be such a relief to the boredom they suffered here.
Then, too, there was the possibility of visiting other frames, of seeing even more entertaining sights, of listening in on the talk and thoughts of strangers, humans and their superiors. Oh what fun, what incredible fun they could have! As well as, just maybe, finding a potential mate, somewhere.
All of it dependent on dragonberries. There was the treasure beyond reckoning!
“You thinking of that trade plan again?” Mertin grumbled.
“Yes, Mertin, I am.” She felt pleased that Mertin was actually asking her thoughts. Maybe she had succeeded in interesting him in something other than food or sex. Of course he would probably just want to use the astral travel to spy on the matings of assorted creatures. Still, if that made him cooperate with her effort, it would be worth it.
“Offer them freedom,” Mertin advised. “Let the older roundear go with the one who had the berries. Tell them to find the berries for us, get them back, and bring them here. Then when they don't come back, we eat those who are left.”
“Mertin, that's perfect!” she exclaimed, thrilled as much by his support as the notion itself.
“That's logical, Mervania, as you should be.”
“Grrrromph,” Grumpus added, clicking his mouth as if sampling the tender flesh of a captive.
Mervania sighed. Neither of them had much use for feeling; that was her department. Nothing to do now but go to the larder. She could take along some of the fruit they liked so much, and then she could ask. She did hope they would be open to reason. They should be, but human foodstuffs were notorious for being less than smart about certain matters. Suppose they said no? She tried not to think about that. Maybe if they said no and she butchered one and she and her companion heads ate it while the others watched, that would help them see reason. Yes, if they said no, that indeed might be necessary. Just so long as at least one survived to fetch the berries.
She touched the companion minds and they flipped up their tail and scuttled across the ground to the orchard. She and Mertin filled their joined arms with nectarfruit, and Grumpus pinched a cantemellon from a vine with their pincers and stuffed it inelegantly into his own mouth.
Properly loaded with fruit and plans, they scuttled for the larder.
*
Squirtmuck could not get the collecting tree out of his mind. The objects taken from strangers had never interested him greatly, but those berries were tempting. The one he had sampled had made him embarrassingly sick, but if a roundear's stomach could handle them, then so should his. It was so intriguing, the thought of dying as the young roundear had done, then coming back to life. Squirtmuck had never thought much about it before, but now that he did, the thought of what existed after dying was intriguing.
Irresistibly, bit by bit, he toyed with the notion. Late during the day, while searching for squiggle worms, he managed to get back to the area of the tree. He looked around, saw none of his mates, and made a splashing run for it. Soon he was there, looking into the cavity and its collection of visitor artifacts.
If he took just one of the berries, would anyone know? Suppose it killed him, and he did not return to life. He wasn't quite old enough to want to die. True, he was tired of a lot of what made life, but not tired enough to give it up yet.
He thought about it for a moment more, while the sun started setting and dappling the trees and the greenish water with orange. Why not, he thought, why not indeed? He might not have another chance.
Reaching into the tree's cavity, he drew forth the bag.
*
Bloorg scratched a square ear and remembered that he had not used his viewing crystal yesterday. As leader of his people and official greeter of visitors he should check the transporter. As usual there would be nothing, but then again there might. There was always that ho
pe.
Sighing, he picked up the squarish crystal from its stand, held it before his eyes, and concentrated.
At first, as was usual, he saw nothing but his own square pupils in his own square eyes. Then he could see into the pupils that expanded and expanded, and then he was seeing back at the transporter cave. It was as he had last seen it, with a drying narcofruit left by the froogears near the exit.
Why was he here? Oh, yes, to check for possible visitors. There were none, as he had expected.
So he would direct his thoughts elsewhere. He should check briefly on the froogears, and then maybe the chimaera's island. It was a chore, but his job. Work, work, work, always the same boring necessities.
He drifted his sight across the swamp, finding the froogears at a camp on a platform of floater weeds. They were doing froogear things. Here one froogear dived off the platform and crawled along the bottom, finally surfacing with a wriggling stinkfish firm in his jaws. There a female covered her breasts and stomach with greenish muck, the better to attract a lover. There child froogears splashed joyfully at the edge of the platform and took turns diving under. The male with the stinkfish in its jaw swam up to the platform and the female. The female took the fish from his jaws, bit its head, and oogled his form. The male climbed up beside her. In a moment the two would be joining. At such moments Bloorg, bored, moved his viewing elsewhere.
He had almost brought his sight back to the crystal when he remembered the froogear leader. Where was Squirtmuck, anyway? Efficiently he moved his sight in circles, checking froogears. Squirtmuck was not there.
What an irritation! He had to search until he located the missing creature, or was assured that it was dead. Wider and wider he viewed, until finally he thought to check the collecting tree.
Squirtmuck was there. He held a bag in his webbed fingers and from it he took a berry. He held it poised in front of his mouth.
Berry? What berry? As from a great distance-- which of course it was-- it leaped at him: dragonberry!