“Commander, your wound is so serious that-- ” The lieutenant paused, seemingly searching for words.
“If I cannot command, you must, Lieutenant. We must not surrender! We must fight on! My father and St. Helens are depending on us!”
“Yes, Commander Crumb. We will fight our way into the caps and into glory.”
With me or without me, Les added in his own troubled thoughts. He wanted to pass out, even to die, but thoughts of Jon would not allow it. Then it seemed that he was but a little boy, that he was lost, and that all others were gone.
*
Charlain moved her copper locks out of her violet eyes with a quick sweep of her slender hand. The cards she was laying out on the kitchen table had come out the same as before. Every time the Blind Fool headed Kelvin's file, designating great danger and uncertainty for him.
“Does the prophecy still apply?” she whispered to herself. “Can it still?”
She tweaked her right pointed ear to keep herself awake. John Knight had been intrigued by that habit of hers. Strange man, John. She had once thought of him only as a way of fulfilling the prophecy. He, a roundear, would mate with her, a pointed-ear person, and their son would be the one mentioned in the Book of Prophecy. It had all seemed so simple when she was young. John had come straight from the queen's dungeon, torn, lonely, and confess it now, handsome. She had wanted him from the start, and they had married quickly and without attracting attention. They had had their son, and then a daughter. Only roundeared Kelvin could relate to the prophecy, but pointeared Jon had supported him loyally.
In time Kelvin had indeed slain dragons, and freed their kingdom of Rud from the tyrannous Queen Zoanna. The prophecy was being fulfilled, as she had foreseen.
Then things had changed, and nothing was as she had expected. Perhaps her action in implementing the prophecy had caused the fabric of the situation to change. Kelvin had left this frame and returned to it just in time to save Rud and Aratex by uniting them, just as in the prophecy-- but that had been by the skin of his fingernails! Now “joining four” were the next words in the verse that applied to him. He was supposed to join four kingdoms. But how could he? Kelvin wasn't even here! He was in another frame, and the prophecy that he would rid his homeland of a sore was rapidly being nullified. Sometimes she almost thought that John Knight had been right.
“Nonsense, this prophecy business! Nonsense!” John had said, sometimes sitting at this very table. She had soothed him, calmed him, knowing even then that he would not always be hers. He had suffered himself to be soothed, not because he accepted magic, but because she was beautiful in his eyes (and perhaps in others’ eyes too), and he liked to be close to her. So his contempt of magic had been muted at times, until finally he began to believe. Then she had lost him, through no choice of either of theirs, in the necessary tragedy of the times.
Now things were changing again, becoming even less settled than before, and the cards reflected it. “John,” she whispered, pretending that he was there. Oh, how she loved him! Her second husband was a good man, taken as the law allowed on the extended disappearance and assumed death of her first. But John, John had been the stuff of story. Round ears, for sorcery's sake! And from another frame, a world too strange for comprehension. Moving pictures, talking boxes, horseless carriages, and more, much more. Strangest of all was John's insistence that none of those were magic.
“Well, John, I know you are alive now,” she murmured through her tears. “I never would have remarried had I known. I know now that somehow the cards lied, or I misread them, and that you survived what seemed a certain death. I know that I was not your first woman, or your last, and you were not my last man, but I love you and want you, and hope that you will still want me.” But there had been others to consider, including the man she had married. Hal Hackleberry-- she hated to admit it, but she was relieved that things had fallen out with Hal as they had. Perhaps she had suspected what would happen; the cards might have informed her, but she had resolutely avoided reading them with respect to the Brownberry family, after that first crisis. Even so, she had known that they had a buxom and lonely daughter . . .
Hal was good but fallible. Most men were. She had wept when she lost him, as much for her own complicity as for the loss. She had never been able to love him properly. “But you, John . . .”
She found herself weeping, and this annoyed her. Witchy people who read cards and tried to foretell events were not supposed to be soft and blubbery. She had to remember that.
She forced herself to face the truth. She was dissembling when she told herself she had not loved Hal completely. She knew now that she had never loved Hal at all. She had told him she did, and tried to believe it herself, but it had always been John. So she was as much at fault as Hal for what had happened. Maybe he had known, and so had suffered, and been vulnerable. Certainly she hardly blamed him. She had said that before; now she believed it.
When in doubt, deal some cards.
She dealt them out, asking in her mind, Where is John? Where is John Knight who was my husband?
John was with Kelvin. Both in another frame. Both separated from her as though by death's gates. The Blind Fool leered and danced, promising naught. They might or might not return.
She turned a card. There it was again: the Coupling card. Kelvin was already married, to a nice girl named Heln, a roundear like himself. The Coupling card was an unmistakable reference. She placed it on file and turned the following card.
The Birthing card. So they were going to have a baby, a fact she had already learned. But then a third card, to follow the Birthing card-- and it came up, yet again:
The Twister card. Meaning grave danger and an uncertainty of outcome.
Poor Heln! Poor frightened little mother-to-be. You are in for great difficulties.
But would it be just the birth, or something happening to the child during the birth? Afterward? Stubbornly the cards would not say. Actually, it was wrong to blame the cards for being perverse; they were perverse only when the situation made them helpless. For example, when something they might reveal would be changed when they revealed it. If they told her she would stub her toe when she left the table, she would be careful to avoid that, making the cards wrong. Paradox incapacitated them. So they compromised by presenting the Twister. They weren't willfully difficult.
Maybe she should be with her daughter-in-law for the delivery? Usually that was not a mother-in-law's place, but under the circumstance . . .
Yes, she would go to Heln and try to help her. With the Blind Fool dominating Kelvin's fate and the Twister twirling in to link hers more closely with his, there was no alternative.
“I don't like to interfere,” she said aloud, “but what else is a mother to do? Heln, I'm going to come visiting!”
*
Jon did not like the way Heln looked! It seemed less like a healthy pregnancy every day. Not only was Heln disgustingly sick at frequent intervals, she was now having bad dreams.
“Jon, oh Jon!” Heln sat up in bed, her face pasty, her eyes wild and glassy. “I saw it again, the thing with three heads! Two of them baby heads and the other a dragon's. The baby heads were crying, and-- “
That settles it! Jon thought. I'm going to get something for her from the doctor. Dr. Sterk has to know something! He was royal physician before I was born!
“Where are you going, Jon?”
“I'll be back.”
She met Dr. Sterk in the hallway. He looked straight ahead with his birdlike eyes and pressed a small decanter into her hands. “Three drops twice a day in her tefee,” he said, and passed on.
Well, she thought, at least she hadn't had to press him. Evidently he'd noticed it too. But did she dare trust his medicine, considering his evident toadyism?
She reentered their room. Heln gazed at her with eyes seemingly reflecting horror. That was not the way a young mother-to-be should look!
That settles it! Jon thought again. Enough torment is enough! I j
ust have to trust. Who after all would want to harm an infant? Aside from certain royal figures. . .
“Heln, it's time for your tefee.” She pulled on the cord to signal the servant. In a moment the servant was there with a big steaming pot of the beverage and a plate with a selection of bite-sized cooakes.
Jon poured the tefee into the cups and carefully added three greenish thick drops to Heln's. She stirred it with a spoon and the syrupy medicine blended into the dark greenish hue of the beverage.
“Here you are, Heln.”
She watched as Kelvin's pretty dark-haired wife took the cup listlessly, and slowly sipped.
Heln's eyes widened. She raised the cup again, in both hands. Eagerly she sucked down every drop.
That was good, Jon hoped.
CHAPTER 15
Disappearance
Mervania's head moved close to Kelvin's and spoke in that disturbingly seductive tone she affected: “Kelvin, since you saved us by destroying the cruel hunter, we will not eat you or your companions.”
“You are letting us go?” Was she toying with him again? Playing with her food, as her fellow head put it? Kelvin did not in the least trust her.
“Yes, yes, but there is a price.” It was prettily said, her face almost touching his. Even her breath was sweet as she said it.
“What price?” They were already in its power. Anything Kelvin or his companions had, the chimaera could take away, for reason or whim. Surely she wasn't bargaining for a kiss!
“Those dragonberries Kian used-- I want some.” Very plainly spoken, no artifice showing.
Kelvin looked unhappily to Kian. He hated speaking for him and he hated not to.
“Lost,” Kian said, helping John to his feet. “Froogears.”
“Unfortunate,” Mervania said. This time there was just a touch of sadness. If the dragonberries were lost, then they were lost, and there was nothing to be done about it. Which meant that the human party had nothing with which to bargain.
“Groompth,” remarked Grumpus. He opened his dragon's mouth wide enough to display his swordlike teeth.
“Now we eat!” Mertin said, making a superfluous translation. He didn't sound at all sorry. If dragonberries were of great importance to Mervania, they were less so to him.
“Wait! Wait!” Kelvin cried. He had never felt so panicky in his life. To fail to say the right thing now would be to condemn himself and his companions to being eaten. “Suppose-- suppose we get you some? Maybe we can bring you some seed so you can grow them here on your island. Then you'll always have a supply.”
Mervania's head tipped coyly to one side. “That would be nice, Kelvin.”
Yes, Kelvin thought. If we can get the seeds back home, and if the squarears will let us.
“I read your thoughts, Kelvin,” Mervania said reprovingly, “the squarears will let you. But you must tell them first.”
“We will,” Kelvin said. Unconsciously he picked up the old copper sting with its green patina scratched from being dropped on the floor. Then he looked over at Stapular, now silent and unarrogant, the oil no longer flowing from his pierced throat.
“You may take back your weapon,” Mervania said, “but you must not touch the hunter's.”
“Fair enough,” Kelvin said. He crossed the cell to Stapular's pinned body, and without his willing it his right gauntlet reached for the sword haft. Fascinated he watched his arm lift the sword from the oil. The blade was covered with a thick dark grease that probably would help preserve its metal. The gauntlet wiped off most of the stuff on a clean section of the body, then sheathed the sword in its scabbard. Kelvin's arm was his own again.
“You must tell the squarears about this,” Mervania cautioned. “They must know what was planned. They will come to get this robot and its weapon and guard against this ever happening again.”
“I'm glad to have been of service,” Kelvin said. He looked into the open blue eyes of the robot he had believed to be a person and was forced to think Junk, nothing but junk. Not flesh and blood at all.
“Yes,” Mervania said. “An excellent imitation.”
Yet he had felt that Stapular was living. Had he been, or was that magic?
“It is what your father calls science,” Mervania said. “You are now free to go. Do not forget, though, what you have agreed to do.”
“We'll talk to the squarears,” Kelvin said. “If they will permit us, we'll get your dragonberry seeds.” Unconsciously he hefted the sting in his left hand.
“You may take that with you,” Mervania said. “To me it is of no more importance than your hair and nail clippings are to you.”
“Thank you,” Kelvin said. “Thank you for-- “
“Come!” his father said. “Before it changes its mind!”
“Minds,” Kian corrected.
Kelvin had only one objection: they didn't have a boat, and he doubted that they could swim all the way back to the swamp.
“You will be met,” Mervania said, knowing his thought. “Froogears will come.”
“They-- know?”
“Some are quite near. Their minds, like yours, are always open.”
“Oh.” That was all he could manage. He looked at his father and brother, but they were already on their way out of the larder and into the gloriously warm and mild sunshine beyond.
Kelvin looked once more at the dead robot. Why did he persist in thinking of it as a once-living man, though now he knew better?
“You have a quaint human way of anthropomorphizing,” Mervania said. “You want to believe that thing was human because it seemed so, even though all it did was insult you in order to keep you from getting too well acquainted and perhaps fathoming its secret prematurely.”
That must be it. He looked at the Mervania head. “I-- “
“Just as you persist in thinking of me as a pretty woman, though you know even better that I am nothing of the kind. Your human capacity for willful self-delusion is amazing.”
Just so. Kelvin turned and walked after John and Kian.
“I like you too, Kelvin, perhaps as foolishly,” she murmured almost inaudibly. “I would have missed you, after we ate you.”
*
Bloorg withdrew his mind from his viewing crystal and considered the implications. He had just seen and overheard the conversation of Mervania Chimaera and the visitors. So they had agreed to return with dragonberry seeds for the chimaera. That should be fine, so long as they thereafter stayed away. If those berries kept the chimaera entertained, better yet, and should it actually manage to fulfill its dream and discover some other creature of its kind, making a mating unit, that would be wonderful. How interesting that the man's magic gauntlets had fathomed all that, and acted correctly despite temptation to do otherwise.
Yes, he thought, rubbing his square ears with his usual afterviewing massage, that should work out very well. They would meet the human party at the transporter cave and make certain the visitors got their correct transporter setting. After that there would be an end to commerce. Who would ever have suspected that the foolish visitors would not only survive, but benefit the situation!
Think-whistling an inspiring song, Bloorg stepped outside his dwelling and prepared to summon his underlings for the start of a new day.
*
The trip away from the island and back through the swamp was one Kelvin had not expected to make. He looked over at his father and Kian as the froogears carried them, wondering whether they were as amazed as he at the turn of events. If they survived this journey in good order, he planned to give up this life of involuntary adventure. Nothing was going to pry him away from Heln and his home again! Froogears, squarears, chimaera . . . just too much! Back home things were sensible with only a bit of magic and sorcery and golden-scaled dragons to break the monotony of everyday life. It was so much better to be among normal things, instead of out among exotic and unnatural things like robots and laser weapons!
“I can't believe it,” Kian said. “I'm actually going to s
ee Lonny again!”
That was right! All this had started when they headed out to attend Kian's wedding! But Kelvin was ready to skip that event at this point, not wanting to risk another journey through the transporter. He just wanted to stay with safe, normal Heln and their safe, normal baby on the way.
John Knight said nothing, and the froogears splashed away, transferring them from the lake to the swamp and then, by infinitely slow progress, to the edge of the swamp and finally the transporter cave.
Squarears were waiting there. The big squarear with the chimaera's sting greeted them. “I am Bloorg, the Official Greeter and Sender, Keeper of the Transporter to Other Worlds, Keeper of the Last Known Existing Chimaera, Chief.”
That had been his ritual greeting before. Kelvin wondered if Bloorg wondered why they had not left.
“I know,” Bloorg said, “where you have been. I know you were to have been eaten but I would not have interfered, after freeing you the first time. You are forbidden to go to the chimaera's island again.”
“Mervania wants-- ” Kelvin gulped and started over. “Dragonberries. They are the price of our release.”
“I know.” Bloorg lifted a squarecut crystal of smoky color in his hand. “The Chief of the squarears tries to know all. Watch!”
With a wave of his boneless fingers Bloorg changed the flat smoky surface into a living picture. In the picture was a chimaera, a now-animate Stapular, and Kian, John, and Kelvin.
Kelvin gulped. “That's in the larder. Where we were kept. And-- is this television?” That was another unnatural wonder he could live without!
“Watch!” Bloorg commanded.
In the crystal a tiny chimaera was attacked by an even tinier Stapular. As Stapular hung on the sting there was a flash of blue light. The chimaera, John, and Kian fell unconscious. The tiny Kelvin staggered outside, struggling to tear up the sting from the ground. He pulled the sting out of its row and ran back with it. Stapular mouthed at him, and he was over the Mervania head with the sting positioned above a very feminine eye.