“Do you really expect,” one grizzled oldster demanded, “that we believe that? Dragons are impossible enough, but dragons with golden scales?”
Annoyed, Kelvin broke off his narrative to explain. “They swallow golden nuggets from the streams. Since dragons live until they are slain and many have lived for centuries and possibly for thousands of years, the gold migrates to the scales.”
A young man there for recruitment shook his head, studying Kelvin with a skeptical expression. “I've heard of migrating metals in the bodies and shells of shellfish. That's science. But dragons aren't. Dragons are myth.”
“Different worlds, different rules,” John broke in. “Go on, Kelvin.”
He wanted to, but to his astonishment he was losing his audience. None of these tough fighting men wanted to believe this junk. He was hardly into his tale of how they'd had a people's revolution in Rud and the prophecy had made him important, particularly after the dragons.
“And these posters you put up, they really did get you men?”
Kelvin stared at the commander with disbelief. He sounded as skeptical as the recruit.
“Untrained ones. Volunteers. Farmers and others who had had enough of oppression.”
“Go on.”
He did, but it wasn't fun. Everything he said convinced them that he lied. The painful thing was that lying was one skill he had never cultivated, and one talent that he lacked. He could no more have exaggerated his own part than Jon's.
“That's blood transfusion!” the young warrior snapped. Kelvin had been giving a graphic description of what befell Jon and himself at the hands of the sorcerer.
“Uh, if you say so. Now the dwarf Queeto was catching her blood, and-- “
“Science.”
“Magic where I come from. Zatanas was using sympathetic magic, the only magic he was skilled in. Rather than using a doll with my fingernail parings or hairs in it, he used my sister. Same blood, so as she weakened, I weakened.”
“That's bunk! I don't believe that one.”
Kelvin felt exasperated. How could he get through to this clod?
“You have scarebirds here. I'd say they are sometimes as big as dragons, and fully as dangerous.”
“Scarebirds are natural! They have been a part of the natural world since before men! What you're talking about is unnatural.”
“Here, maybe. Not at home. At home scarebirds would be unnatural.” He did not mention the chimaera; he saw no need to stretch their incredulity that far.
“I can vouch for everything he says,” Kian offered. “You see, Zatanas was my grandpa, and Zoanna my mother.”
There was instant silence. Someone slurped bleer. Then a big veteran with a craggy face and bulging muscles laughed. In a moment all the Blroodians were laughing. Kian's apparently ridiculous statement had convinced them that it was all a joke.
Kelvin felt alarm at the look on his brother's face. In a moment, if he did not act, Kian would. That would mean trouble-- big trouble-- and he had had more than enough of that! Kian might have better self-control than his father-in-law, but barely.
Though it pained him to do it, he started to get up. If he challenged the big man right there and the gauntlets helped him in the fight, that would at least end the laughter.
His father came to their rescue. “It's something to laugh at here,” he said calmly, addressing the bleer, “but back then it wasn't. Remember I originated in a world where it would all have sounded ridiculous. We didn't believe in magic there. But let me tell you what we did believe in: we believed in the scarebird.”
Silence. Every eye turned to John, diverted from the promise of immediate action.
“Father,” Kelvin broke in, “you never said you had scarebirds!” Immediately he wished he had kept his mouth shut. Now everyone was looking at him.
“I didn't mean they were there when I left! But Earth had them before I was born. Way, way back in my planet's history. They were around before any humans were. Every now and then some of their bones were found, sometimes a complete skeleton. They weren't as big as the ones here, but they were similar. The scientists in my time called them pterodactyls. They existed, let's see, approximately one hundred and twenty million of our years before my birth.”
“How did you know that, Father?” Kelvin had to ask. When his father started talking about Earth stuff Kelvin almost reverted to child stage. He'd been a question box, his father had said, and Kelvin wasn't certain he'd changed.
“Well, Kelvin, it wasn't magic. My people mostly didn't believe in magic, you see, and certainly the scientists didn't. There were scientific ways of determining the ages of bones and other things. The pterodactyls, what you call the scarebirds, flew Earth's skies long, long before there were men, but their bones proved their existence.”
“No humans to see them at all, Father?”
“Not on Earth. In other frames, perhaps. Earth didn't have humans and pterodactyls living at the same time. In other existences, such as this one-- yes. These are a lot larger than those we had, however; they've had more time to evolve.”
The faces had all grown serious. Now Marvin, looking so much as Morton Crumb would have looked back home, spoke:
“I don't know about what these fellows say, but there are mighty strange things in other frames. Tell them, Hester. Tell them what we saw.”
Lester's look-alike said: “Short fellows made all of squares. Crystals that they saw things in-- things at a great distance. Some big creature we don't even have legends about that ingests copper and produces the copper stings we brought. People that seem descended from froogs, with the ear patches of froogs and a froog's habits.”
“All that's true,” Marvin said. “We were all of us there. So do you want our copper or don't you?”
Commander Mac swallowed. “Those stings were produced by some monster? Grown on it?”
“You calling us liars?” There was danger in the big man's voice, as though he would risk his beloved revolution on it.
Commander Mac took a swig of bleer, lifted his eyepatch, and rubbed a nasty scar where an eye had been. He contemplated, as a soldier had to, then spoke in a very reasonable voice. “I believe copper's copper.” He looked around at his friends and associates. No-nonsense types, all of them more concerned with their skills and their work of killing than with the wild fantasies of others.
“Maybe that's all we need to know,” the grizzled old fellow said. “The rest, that's none of our concern. Copper, after all, is copper.”
Having pronounced a verdict, the unofficial judge retreated to a distant chair. Others joined him, and someone dealt cards. Left was only the young mercenary.
“Well, I think we really need to proceed on that assumption,” said Commander Mac.
Kelvin looked at his father and brother and felt his own mouth gaping. It was all over then-- all his story telling. It didn't seem to him to be right.
“Yes, I quite agree,” Marvin said. “Why don't you visitors go out and see the Flaw. Quite a sight! You've probably never heard of it.”
They had of course heard of it, but didn't say so. “Come along,” John Knight said. So they trooped out together, one collection of male kin. Left behind were the locals, who had an important matter pertaining to the revolution to decide.
“Why, Father?” Kelvin wanted to know. “Why leave, when there's so much that's so fascinating to tell?”
John checked to make certain no one else was following. “We have to give them a chance to hash things out alone. As for their incredulity-- well, people were that way on Earth, too, Kelvin. Not all folk, but some. If they don't want to believe, they don't want to know. Something like magic.”
Kelvin wondered, and thought he understood. His father hadn't wanted to believe in magic for the longest time. He had denied that there was magic until it was impossible to doubt it anymore. He still tended to think in a nonmagical way.
“I want to see that Flaw, boys,” John said. “You know I've heard about it, and
I've been through it, but I've never actually seen it. Not when I had my wits with me.”
Kelvin remembered the first time he had seen the Flaw. That had been at the beginning of his warring experience. He and the Crumbs had been buying an army to use against Kian's evil mom. Jon had tried to shoot a star with her sling, and she had been frustrated. Like people who refused to believe in magic even while experiencing it, Jon hadn't believed in the inefficiency of her sling or the distance of stars.
When they reached the wooden barrier it looked just the same as it had in the other two frames, except that some of the graffiti were different. His father stood, openmouthed, staring through the observation hole and into the velvety-black, star-filled depths.
“It's-- it's the womb of creation!” His voice carried awe. “Gods, it's a crack through Earth, Earth's worlds! An opening through all worlds, all possible worlds, all alternatives!”
“You had it on Earth, Father?”
“I ... don't know. I don't think we did. But maybe another part? Maybe in the Arctic-- or maybe another time.”
The afternoon passed while John gradually built acceptance for something he hadn't quite believed in. Another day passed while a message was sent to the Fud palace. Another day drinking bleer, playing cards, and waiting for an unanticipated reply to the ultimatum. Still another day while Kelvin worried. Then finally they set out.
At the border a delegation of uniformed guardsmen met them with the Fud flag and a surrender flag. An enormous cheer went up and down the ranks of mercenaries, though many might have experienced regrets. An adventure too soon over. A war not fought. Bonus pay but not fighting pay. No spoils, no captive wenches. Back home to the Recruitment House to wait unemployed for possibly many more months.
“And so,” the guardsman spokesman was saying, “His Majesty surrenders unconditionally to overwhelming numbers. In anticipation of a change in government he has abdicated his throne.”
Amazing! Evidently the despot of this frame was relatively cowardly. They would have to make sure he didn't have some treachery in store.
“Well, now that that little matter is settled-- ” Kian said, looking happy.
Kelvin knew that this entire adventure had been just a little matter delaying a wedding, in Kian's view. Well, maybe so.
CHAPTER 25
True Love Runneth
Heeto the dwarf met them first. They had been traveling their weary way from the transporter by foot, Kelvin now and then soaring overhead to see if he could spot someone. They bypassed Serpent's Valley, not wanting to get involved with the flopears and their reptile ancestors this trip. The gauntlets had been very faintly tingling, not really signaling danger but suggesting that he should move right along to avoid it. In fact, they had been tingling that way for the past day or so, as if they, too, wanted to get this matter over and done with. Finally when their party was on a good road with maybe half a day's hiking ahead, there was the dwarf.
“Heeto! What are you doing here?” Kelvin asked, dropping down out of the sky and landing right in front of him. Was this another wrong frame? He had set the indicator carefully, but there had been so many nasty surprises! Would they never get back to the frame of good Queen Zanaan and lovely good girl Lonny Burk?
The dwarf jumped, startled, then stared at Kelvin incredulously. “You can fly!"
“Yes, I can fly, but only with this belt. It's nothing to get worried about. I'm Kelvin, the same Kelvin whose life you saved.”
“You saved us all,” Heeto said. “From an evil king and his attempted alliance with flopears. Now, thanks to you, we live in a decent kingdom.”
“My father and brother and I have come back. But we won't all stay. Kian wants badly to see his Lonny.”
“Yes, Lonny Burk. She is to marry Jac.”
“WHAT?” Kelvin felt nearly as devastated as he knew Kian would be. To have gone through so much and to have got here finally at long last and to find her marrying Jac! Not that Jac wasn't a fine fellow, a good skin-thief as his fellows had proclaimed, and a capable revolutionary when helped as required. No, Jac was fine, but not marrying Lonny!
“Your brother has returned to her?”
“Yes.”
“She did not think he would, ever.”
Kelvin looked at the sky. It was early morning now; only a short time since they had risen. But how long had they actually been gone from this reality? He could feel the sun warming his skin, and he knew that this reality felt like the only one, and certainly it was now for him. But they had been weeks away by their reckoning. Suppose time here was different, and instead of weeks it had been months, possibly even years?
“She missed your brother, but she thought him gone,” the dwarf explained. “She faced the prospect of life as an old maid. Jac believed this too, and asked her to marry him.”
“Right, I understand.” I just hope Kian does.
“Jac would not have asked if he had known Kian would be back. Jac is an honorable man.”
“He is.” Here, he thought. In other frames he's a villain. But here, yes, as honorable a person as ever comes.
“You will attend the wedding? You and your brother and father?”
“It's today?”
“Yes. The Grand Ballroom is in the official Hud palace. The ceremony is to take place at noon.”
“We'll be there,” Kelvin said, knowing now that they were in the right frame and much nearer the palace than he had thought. Now he understood the quiet urgency of the gauntlets: it wasn't a physical danger, but an emotional one. They must have known what was about to happen here, and urged him to get here before it was too late. “Where's your horse?”
“Being shod,” the dwarf replied. “I was going to get a silver ring.”
“Silver ring? Why?”
“For the wedding. For Jac to slip on his bride's finger.”
Kelvin felt stunned. But then he remembered his father telling him of a similar custom on Earth. When his mother and father had wed they had simply declared before witnesses that they were married, and after that they were. People wishing to end a marriage divorced in similar fashion.
“May I come with you?”
“Of course. Can you fly with two?”
“You want to fly? Yes, my belt should support your weight too. But you will have to hold on tightly, because-- “
“Don't worry! I don't know how to fly, but I know what a fall can do!”
Thus it was that Kelvin went with the dwarf to the jeweler. The jeweler was an elderly, wizened man who seemingly dwelt in his shop. In addition to accessories to his daily life, there was a fine display of clocks, rings, silver plate, and assorted jewelry. He reached under a counter to a secret place and brought out a polished, highly decorated silver band.
Heeto took the ring and examined it. He held it up for inspection in the morning sunbeam coming through the shop's window, then handed it to Kelvin.
Kelvin looked at the workmanship. Flopear without a doubt. In the narrow silver band, just the right size for Lonny's finger, were incised tiny figures. Held to the light the figures seemed to be those of children, and as Kelvin squinted it seemed that the children were running and tossing a ball.
“I never get over what the flopears can do with silver,” the oldster wheezed, leaning over the counter. “Those old folk, strolling hand in hand through flowers. How do they do that?”
“Magic,” Kelvin answered, remembering his problem with the skeptical men of the other frame who refused to believe in magic. He did not tell the old man that his eyes saw something entirely different. That artistry was twice as special as it seemed! The old man needed all the comforting illusions he could get. Did the picture change for every viewer? Kelvin had more than a suspicion that it did, and that each would find pleasure in what he or she saw. Heeto did not have to worry whether Lonny would like the ring; it would make her like it!
They left the shop, Heeto carefully putting the ring in a small bag he hung over his shoulder. As they emerged int
o the bright glare of early day Kelvin had an idea. It was a foolish one, but maybe he was ready to be foolish for a change.
“Heeto, would you like to fly yourself?”
“With you hanging on to me, Kelvin? I don't think that would work very well.”
“Well, by yourself, then, if you don't go far or fast. Just to feel what it's like.” The gauntlets gave no warning, so this seemed safe.
The dwarf's eyes lighted. “Not far or fast!” he agreed.
So Kelvin squatted and put the belt on Heeto and instructed him in the handling of the lever. When he was certain Heeto understood, he stood back and let the dwarf try it.
Heeto nudged the lever ever so gently. Suddenly he shot up high. “Slow!” Kelvin cried, alarmed.
“I did it slow!” Heeto cried.
“Then even slower on the reverse!”
The dwarf's progress slowed, then he hovered, and finally he came slowly down. “I know what happened,” he said, breathless. “I was too light for it.”
That made sense. Kelvin caught him as he came within range, so that there could be no further misjudgment. They both agreed that they had had enough experimentation. Yet despite his scare, Heeto was flushed and happy. He had had an experience he would never forget. So it had been the right thing to do, risk and all.
Kelvin donned the belt again. Then he held Heeto, and they flew at a comfortable walking speed the short distance down the road to where John and Kian Knight were still plodding.
“Kelvin, what's that you've got?” Kian demanded.
“Come see for yourself,” he replied as he landed.
Kian came forward, squinting his eyes against the far too bright sunlight. He paused, and his eyes widened. He held out his arms. “Heeto! Heeto, my friend! What are you doing here?”
“I was on a mission,” Heeto explained, and rushed forward on short little legs that nevertheless were quite swift. He grabbed Kian around the waist as a child might. Kian hugged the dwarf with just as much affection.