Rogue Dragon

X

Aëlorix’s final words to his prisoner and former guest were never finished, but did not need to be. “Why you should live, and he be dead—” the man said; his face twisted with grief and hate and he turned away. It was the age-old cry of Why me and not another? and in his bitterness and his rage, fed from a hundred springs, somehow he blamed Jon-Joras for his own son’s death.

It was the time between dawn and earliest morning. Mostly the sky was gray, but the mist to eastwards had begun to show pink. All was quiet, all was cool, as they took him from the small house in the woods. The Gentleman himself said nothing more after that, but his lowborn thugs cursed and muttered and hawked and spat and complained of the chill. Dew still trickled and fell upon them, going down the barely visible path.

“Give it a blow, Big?” one of the men asked. Aëlorix nodded. The man fumbled in a kit by his side, took out a small bottle, swore, put it back, fumbled again, this time came up with something made of wood and bark, and put it to his lips. His cheeks inflated. Had Jon-Joras not been watching he would never believed that what he now heard came from anything but the mouth of a dragon.

The soft sad notes faded away on the dim air. All listened, all were still. For a while, nothing. Then, from off to the right and a distance (to Jon-Joras, incalculable) came what almost seemed a deeper echo of the same cry. The men nodded.

“That’s him,” they said. “Hasn’t moved much in the night.” The man behind him poked Jon-Joras with the huntgun. “Get flapping,” he instructed.

They came by and by to an end of the woods and entered onto a wide and flat park-like place covered with waist high grass and here and there a low tree. Again they sounded the dragon-call, and again and again. And the dragon responded and the voice of the real dragon came nearer.

Halfway across the great clearing all stopped. “As far as we go,” one of the thugs said. He gave Jon-Joras one last, painful prod in the kidneys with the squat muzzle of the huntgun. “You better not move away from right here,” he warned, “until the drag comes in. You do, and—” He imitated the sound of the capsule being fired.

“After the drag comes in, why, you can move all you like. Maybe — if you’re lucky — if you move fast enough…” He shrugged.

Jon-Joras half-turned, watched them walking back at a brisk pace in the direction they’d come from. Then he swung back to watch the woods ahead of him. His legs twitched, but he beat down the impulse to flee. After a long while, or so it seemed, the cow-call came again from behind him, was answered by the bull in the forest ahead.

A tree moved in the wind that blew from the west, from behind, then another. His heart swelled and his head snapped as he saw that the second moving thing was no tree. The long neck swung from side to side, the faceted eyes gleamed yellow and green. And then the body moved out into the open. The great mouth parted, sounded its immemorial question.

And then the utterly unexpected happened. A dragon call from behind… but not the submissive one of a cow-dragon as before. This was a bull, another bull, a defiant and challenging bull; instantly, along with it, came the strong and bitter reek of bull-scent. Jon-Joras felt his bowels turn. Trapped! Before and behind him! Trapped—

The visible dragon bellowed its vexation. And Jon-Joras saw it all.

There was no bull-dragon behind him, just as there was no cow-dragon behind him. The call came from the same source — a small instrument of bark and wood. And the odor of dragon-suint had come from the bottle in the same kit-bag. Trapped? Tricked! He and the dragon, both. Only — Only the dragon would not know that, could not know that. His tiny and now-troubled brain served chiefly as a clearinghouse for instinctual responses. Female dragon: Go to her. Male dragon: Will want her, too: Slay him.

The bull in the woods now left the woods behind him and began to cross down the clearing at a lumbering trot, shooting forth his bifurcated tongue, tasting the air… air in which Jon-Joras’s own scent was mingled with that of the “other”… man-scent now inextricably identified in the brute mind with that of its sexual rival and enemy.

The dragon did not know the trick, but the man did.

And the man reasoned and the man remembered, the man remembered what Hue had told him in the Kar-chee castle — that the dull brain of the great beast was mastered by misdirection alone. Aëlorix and his toadies now had none of the apparatus of the hunt except the single huntgun. They had no beaters, no musics, no archers, no banner-men. They were making up for all that now by using the artificial call-horn and the scent drawn from the musk-glands of some dead bull-dragon. These they had.

Jon-Joras had nothing but his mind.

Again the wind from behind brought the ugly reek and the male call. The dragon ahead paused for a slow second, a shiver of rage moving the powerful muscles beneath the green-black hide. His cheek-nodules began to puff with mindless rage. He bellowed, he hissed, he began to run. Run?

That was what they hoped Jon-Joras would do: panic. Run. “Maybe, if you’re lucky — if you move fast enough—”

But no man could move fast enough against a frenzied dragon. Long before he would have a chance to make the dubious safety of the woods (and behind, the great engine of the pounding dragon-body crashing the trees aside like reeds), the dragon would have seen him running, would have known him by his scent for enemy, and would have run him down, seized him, worried him, torn and trampled him.

Thus, the trick. And, thus, the game.

But Jon-Joras wasn’t playing according to those rules. His legs still twitched and trembled and he let them. His arms, it was, that moved now, moved swiftly. Arms and upper body slipped out of the loose hospital shirt which was still his only garment; arms reached up to the low branches of the low tree, little more, really, than a large sapling, and tied the shirt to them by its sleeves. The innocent wind at once caught at it and it flapped and flew about and danced.

If the shining eyes saw it, facets flashing yellow, flashing green, Jon-Joras could not say for certain sure. But the dragon roared at the same second, and at that same second.

Jon-Joras stooped into the grass which had been as high as his naked breast and now closed over his naked head. He still did not run.

He walked. Knees trembling, body sweating, he folded his arms upon his swift and fearful heart and walked away into the grass at right angles to the dragon’s path. He did not look up even when the earth shook and the noise grew nearer, grew louder. Dependent on the meagerness of the animal’s mind, hopeful of its not swerving from its path, trusting to its being for the moment intent upon the telltale shirt, Jon-Joras walked on.

To the men hiding in the woods it might have seemed that he had fainted after tying the shirt to the tree. Would they realize why he had tied it there? Or suspect in which direction he had gone if he had not fainted? Likely they would imagine that, if he were not now huddled at the foot of the tree, he would be surely taking the shortest way out of the clearing — the one he was, in fact, now taking.

In which case, they might well divide their numbers and, by circling around, try to head him off. They could not move fast, for they would not dare to expose themselves in the clearing, and it would be slow going in the woods.

The sun was now high enough for him to feel its rays on the side exposed to it. Without lifting his head or shoulders or increasing his pace, he began to turn, turned, and walked in towards the sun. He could not see, he could feel the dragon as it passed, bellowing, to his left. He kept on walking.

It had not noticed him! It had not noticed him!

That it had noticed the shirt was almost certain, for it had paused in its rushing and he could hear the snapping of the tree and (so he thought) the ripping and the tearing of the cloth.

He kept on walking, the sun warmed his naked shoulders, and presently the sun ceased to do so and the grass fell away from him and underneath it was mossy and overhead it was shady. Slowly and cautiously, but still stooping, he turned around. He saw that he had entered the forest… and safety.

Farther off a dragon called and sounded, but he could not tell if it were real or false.

Once he had been lost in the woods after a dragon had been busy in a clearing, and he was worse off now than then in that he was now naked. But in everything else he was, he reflected, hopefully, better off. For one thing, he was only a foot-journey away from the town instead of a flight-journey. For another, should he find himself again among Doghunters, he could count on aid instead of capture.

But most of all he was better off now because he had already had the experience. And he was where he now was — and how he now was — not because he had fled in numbness from a scene in no way of his own making, but because he had brought himself out of danger into safety. He was mother-naked and alone, there was a wild beast to one side of him and men who sought his life to another. But — he found to his astonished and his marveling delight — he was no longer afraid.

The clean sweet smell of the woods was all around him. A tiny gray creature for which he had no name paused on its way up the side of a leaning tree and regarded him curiously.

“When in doubt,” Jon-Joras said aloud, “do as the natives do.”

He followed the gray one up the tree and looked all around him.

The trees here on Prime World — at least, in this particular area of Prime World — were not as tall as he had seen elsewhere. On Dondonoluc, for one example, or on its mirror-twin-world, Tiran-lou, with their incredible depths of top-soil, the mastadonic trees towered several hundred feet high. But, as though in keeping with the foliage, if Prime World’s trees were not tall, neither were Prime World’s buildings. How far he might be from the nearest settlement, Jon-Joras did not know. The oozy green gum of this one, rank and odorous but by no means offensive, ebbed out onto his flesh as he pressed against the bole and craned, and mingled with the hair. A breeze met his inquiring face, a little wind rich with the smell of sap and earth and plants. But all he could see, whichever way he looked, were more trees, and yet trees.

Not altogether realizing what he was doing (and, afterwards, somewhat surprised that he had in any way thought of doing it), Jon-Joras let his eyes go out of focus. The trees blurred, trunks and crowns and branches. And, in the corner of his eye, something which had not been there before… or which had not appeared to be there before… took shape… a wide, shallow concave arc… a tall, abrupt and flaring fin…

Slowly and carefully, as though fearful that the new shapes had newly materialized from the ambient ether and might, if he were incautious, take fright and vanish away again, he turned his head so that he might see clearly where they were and mark their location. He did, and they stayed where they were and then he climbed down the tree.

Despite his having taken a careful sight on it he still had a hard time finding the flyer. There were not many around, that he had seen; this depleted world could afford, neither materials nor fuel, and the cost of importing made it impossible there should be many. He had seen them, silver and gold and several other colors; no where on Prime World had he seen another one camouflaged. In fact, nowhere did he know of this being done at all… except, of course, on the so-called War Worlds, which did not form part of Confederation.

But he found the flyer at last.

The door was open, as though someone on guard had just slipped out, but if there had actually been someone on guard, and where or what he slipped out to, Jon-Joras never learned. It is only in fiction that all loose ends are always neatly tied up. A tiny nameless creature with stripes along its little back looked up with bright, blank eyes to see the naked man flitting from tree to tree all around the clearing and then dash across it and up and into something for which the small creature had no familiar image. It blinked, instantly forgot, and scurried on, looting for nuts.

There were many things on Jon-Joras’s mind, but one of them was a firm resolution that first things had now to come first. He padded quickly to the controls and he took the flyer up and up until he saw nothing but a green blur beneath him. Then he put her on Hover and locked her so. Then he sat down to consider things.

There was food and drink in the proper compartment and the greedy way he ate informed him that, for one thing, he had been quite hungry, and that, for another, he seemed now to be all better. He thought about this as he gobbled and gulped and picked at something which proved to be a bolus of sticky tree-sap entangled in the hair of his leg. This, in turn, reminded him that he was still naked. He stood up and patted his stomach and stretched and gave vent to an enormous and enormously satisfying eructation. Then he started rummaging around. He found clothes and those items which weren’t clean were clean enough to suit him now. He had a dim recollection of the fastidious Jon-Joras of M.M. beta-world who shifted himself from head to foot three times a day and tossed the discarded items in the incinerator; but he did not pause even to smile. He suddenly had something else on his mind. The under-tunic stayed for a moment just where it was on his arms about to slip over his shaven head. For in that moment everything stayed where it was. Then he lowered his arms and slipped the under-tunic off and held it in his hands, staring, staring at it. Then he brought his face close to, next to it. He did not really think that he was mistaken, but he thought that he might perhaps… just possibly… perhaps… be. So, slowly, one by one, he picked up the other articles of clothing and one, by one, he smelt them.

They smelled, every one of them, faintly, faintly, but definitely perceptively, of that ancient musty odor of the Kar-chee Castle.

But it had burned — had it not? It had. And he had seen it burning. Had… whomever these clothes belonged to… had he been there then or since, it was inconceivable that his clothes should not be smelling of smoke. Reeking of smoke. But it reeked of nothing, had merely the normal smells of man and of flyer fuel and (not, hardly normal, this—) the alien and shadowy scent of the old ruin’s ill-frequented lower passageways. Therefore—

Therefore the man who had worn these clothes there had worn them there and had been himself there before it had burned. And not too very long ago, either, or they would not still retain the scent.

Which made no sense at all.

Hue might not be there now, in the black basalt shell of a ruin, but he… and his people… had been there, steadily, for at least some period of years before. And Aëlorix… and his people… were Hue’s enemies. Jon-Joras stopped here and carefully considered all his thoughts. For one thing, what made him so certain that this flyer belonged to or had at least been used by Aëlorix? Its mere proximity?

Once again he explored the small cabin, this time not looking for anything in particular and therefore looking for everything in particular. The chart-cabinet, the gear-locker, the food compartment, the spaces under the seats, the boot — all yielded nothing in the way of information. Certainly, it was not certain that Aëlorix or any of his men had been the ones who brought the flyer here into the woods. But, if not them, who then? Who else had reason to camouflage the craft and secrete it here, so far from anything? He had no answer, and yet he would not accept that there should be no answer. So once again he began looking slowly through everything. And this time he found something.

It was only a small something which might turn out to be a nothing. The pile of charts was neatly stacked, perhaps a trifle too neatly. For the regularity of the pile disclosed one tiny irregularity which he would have failed to notice if the charts had been shuffled up in a disorderly manner — and this was the fact that one corner of one chart protruded just the slightest from the neat arrangement of the rest. As if the stack above it had been removed very carefully and then the one chart extracted and subsequently replaced with an elaborate care which had not quite come off. Was it so? Jon-Joras lifted up the charts above and removed this single one.

It was a map of The Bosky.

Or, to be precise, of one sector of it.

There were no notes or markings, no arrows, no circles-nothing of that sort. But he looked at the chart carefully, very carefully, scrutinizing it very closely, and it did seem to him that on one portion of it the paper was just a trifle smudged, as though it had been often traced by ascertaining fingers. Fingers intent on indicating the terminus of a secret route, perhaps… If one paid visits to The Bosky it certainly made sense to go there by air; it certainly wasn’t safe to go there by land if one could believe the stories. But… still unanswered… why should anyone want to go to The Bosky at all? That is — not to settle there or to pass through it in order to settle elsewhere, but to go there to one particular place and then return? And just once, either. The Bosky…

What did he know about it? It was the terra incognita, the land unknown, the land without people, and it lay beyond the farthest boundary of the land claimed by Sartor, Hathis, Peramis and Drogue. The land where hunts could not be held. No-man’s-land. Where, according to old Ma’am Anna, queen of the Northern Horde of nomads, the dragons were fiercer than elsewhere — so fierce that they needn’t be provoked into charging — so fierce that, time after time, they had prevented human penetration of the area by either herdsmen or farmers. Dragons with which Hue, so his daughter said, had nothing to do. That was The Bosky. And it was also the place where the unknown crew (unless the crew was, after all, composed of Aëlorix and his gang) of the mysterious flyer had gone, and gone again and again, on their even more mysterious errand.

Thus, the strange Bosky, and was it the strangest thing of all on this strange planet believed by most of humankind to be their own ancestral world? With all its peculiar features, known and unknown, hidden and revealed: no. Not stranger, certainly, than the whole antique structure of Prime World society. Certainly not stranger than the brutal-sophisticated customs of the Hunts. Gentlemen-Huntsmen hating their dragon-prey, Doghunters hating dragons even more than the Gentlemen did and simultaneously hating the Gentlemen and being hated by them; this was strange enough, but this was not all. Nomads hating nobody and trusting nobody, working against the Doghunters who were working against the Gentlemen, but sure that they the Nomads were in all this working only for their own selves and opposing the Doghunters because in doing so they were also opposing the Gentlemen. And the band of thieves whose code of battle was perhaps more brutal than that of the Hunts they ignored and scorned, delighting — it seemed so — equally in the most elaborate forms of poetry and in murderous wrestling matches which ended or which were supposed to end in an elaborate and attenuated form of ritual cannibalism. The urban mobs and the rural sycophants. The dragons roused to fury in the woods and the dragons goaded to frenzy in the pit. The beautiful, involved, involuted, convoluted, contrived and bloody ballet of the dragon hunt, which brought to Prime World the wealth and questing zealousness of men from a score of hundreds of other worlds… though Prime World grew no richer, its aristocrats deepening into moral decay, its poor either flinging themselves in murderous fury against the adamantine wall of their oppressors’ scorn or taking the slow road to sudden death in distant fields or submitting to the yoke in ignorance or in silence… or kissing the bloody hand and fawning at the bloody boot.

Jon-Joras sighed, shook his head. What was behind it all? Was anything? Was there a pattern? There did seem to be hints and shadows and he wanted to know and he had to know if there was more. The ancient saying of ancient Charles Ford or Fort, curious chronicler of curious occurrences in the history of pre-Expansion Prime World, arose in his mind. One measures a circle beginning anywhere…

He got to his feet and went to the controls, took the craft off Hover, placed the chart on its scan-sight alongside the drive-seat, and set himself a course for The Bosky.

Below, far, far below were the waters of the Gulf, the land lying to the south of it, and — beyond the land — partly obscured by a mass of cloud like fleecy smoke, were the yonder waters of the Bay. Behind him lay the Main Sea, before him the Main Continent. The original, or at least the natural contours of the Gulf floor lay revealed to him like some great relief map: shelves and shallows and banks and basins and deeps. And, flashing over and through and across all, like some jagged submarine lightning-bolt, was the deep-scored trench which the Kar-chee had made — one of thousands and of hundreds of thousands such in this one body of water alone. Like an ill-healed scar it showed there, and told its tale of how, floating down upon the planet from their lairs around the Ring Stars and finding a world whose land had been almost scraped bare of metals in making multitudes of ships to fling its children out across the galaxy, the invaders had delved into the seas themselves for metals of their own.

He wondered what ores they had sucked up from the hidden treasures of the sands there, beneath the water. Black sands, they looked to be, and had probably been rich in rare earths and heavy metals such as zircon, rutile, ilmenite and others. He wondered—

The flyer’s speaker broke into voice.

It was a meaningless jumble of phonemes to him. Helplessly, he looked at the decoding cams under the speaker. But unless he knew the combination, he might press on them forever without result. The voice, having made its unintelligible announcement calmly, paused. Then it repeated it a second and then a third time, calmly. Then it waited. It spoke again in its broken syllables, and it seemed to Jon-Joras that there was now a touch of impatience… a fifth time… annoyance… pause… a sixth time… concern…

The voice barked its scrambled syllables at him now, abruptly ceased, abruptly spoke in plain speech, softly, so softly, that Jon-Joras jumped.

“Who has this boat up?” He made no answer. He could hear the man’s troubled breath. “Listen, now — Put the controls onto Receive and lock her so. We’ll guide her back and in. Do you understand? Or you’ll be in trouble. Answer. Answer.

“Answer—”

But Jon-Joras said nothing. And then, softer yet, sickening in its implications, the voice said, slowly, “Oh… you… karching… thief—” and clicked off on the closing fricative.

And the thief looked behind him in dismay, as if he expected pursuit to burst immediately from the nearest cloud. He laughed at himself, but not for long. What should he do now? Put her on All Speed? If he did, he would leave a trail along the sky. Head for clouds and hope to hide the trail? The clouds were too far away, and not where he wanted to go, anyway. He put her into a diagonal descent as fast as she’d go without making marks, and leveled off at about a hundred feet above the water, and locked her so. Then he swiveled the seat around and looked up and waited.

He had not much long to wait.

The pursuers seemed to come bursting out of the fabric of the firmament, their trails thick and heavy and angry. He shot down at forty-five degrees, surged forward against his safety-belt as she hit the surface and watched the sudden surge of frothy water close over the dome and bubble like a dying whale. He put her onto full descent; descend far she could not, of course not, but if it were only hold here where she was as she was — And if the seams and shell proved leak-proof — And if they, the ones so way up high, did not see him — He looked at the chronometer and tried to calculate how long it would take for them to pass over and be gone.

The small craft surged slowly back and forth and slowly up and down. A dull, grinding nausea which seemed to go down to the very marrow of his spine began to afflict him. Finally, he could not go on standing it, tried to surface slowly, shot up like a cork in a spume, fell back and wallowed and rocked again. Hastily, he looked up, but through the moisture running down the dome he could see nothing. And when, finally, he could, he saw only the fading trails of vapor, vanishing into the Gulf.

And now at last he came to the end of that more-than-peninsula and not-quite-subcontinent where it joined the main landmass. He looked at the chart a moment, magnified in the sight-scan, then looked again below. Those rounded hummocks (from above they seemed little more than that) must be the Sixteen Hills; those sudden sparkles of light, the sun reflecting on the Sweet and Bitter Lakes. And there, there, shadowy and sere, was the abrupt descent of the Great Dry Valley. All the landmarks.

Beyond lay The Bosky.

He dropped lower. He looked up and around again. And still no signs of recurrent pursuit. The speaker was, as it had remained, silent. Whom had it been? Who were they? Again, Aëlorix? Or — his mind raced and tumbled about a bit — the Chairman of Drogue? Was there perhaps some force on Prime World of which he had never heard? After all, there was a lot more to it than this part which lay behind him and which was about all that he had ever known. Were there not thriving cities, so it was said, on that great archipelago which formerly formed part of Australia and ringed round that shallow sea once called Lake Eyre? It was possible that the flyers might have come from down there. But bound upon what mystic errands which required them to camouflage their craft, hide in woods, speak in code, and pursue him as though he were himself a rogue dragon—? He could conceive of nothing, in answer. And turned again to chart and to controls.

Meanwhile, let him pursue some answers to some previous questions. And follow his course to the nameless, numberless hill which seemed to have been the locus or focus of the unknown fingers whose tracery had left, faintly, the only clue there was. He went lower. He went lower. And there he saw where it was and what it was. His breath hissed in between his teeth. His decision was immediate, neither to stop nor even — there — to slow down. He went on as though he had not seen it at all. He had certain qualms as to whether or not it had seen him, though. But these did not preoccupy him long.

They came down on him like stooping falcons while he was still thinking of what he had seen. Them, he had not seen. The warning he had was cast by shadows and was a matter of seconds, but it was enough, and he did what the weaker birds do (if they can) when the falcon stoops: He hid in the thickets.

Not precisely, of course. What he did, precisely, was to dart down into a glade of great-boled trees with low and widespreading branches; he simultaneously turned obliquely and shoved her speed as low as it would go and still keep him aloft. She wobbled and wavered, but she bore it wonderfully, and he floated in between the sunshine and the shadow, between the branches and the ground, turning round and round the tree-trunks as close to them as he could in a sinuous figure-of-eight movement.

But the nigh pursuer was not as fluent of flight as a falcon. One convulsive effort he made to break — then he crashed. The off one did manage to break, escaping by the breadth of a cry. Up and up he went, hovered and darted and swooped. Time and time again he made as though to dash down into the glade, but his flyer was three times the size of the one Jon-Joras was in, and so, every time, he withdrew. But even while Jon-Joras played at his little game in safety below — in and out, in and out, around, around, around — at every tiny clearing and across every beam of light, he saw the great, dark, heavy, hovering shadow.

Once, skimming round the bole of a vine-encrusted tree, Jon-Joras caught a glimpse of the smoke and fire of the wrecked plane. Then, turning and twisting, he saw the end of the glade up ahead, and the rough and broken ground which ran for a good wide way until ended abruptly by the gaunt escarpment of a tumbled cliff. He made to go back the way he had come and keep up the game until his fuel ran out or until the other’s fuel ran out or until… until… he scarcely knew what, until.

The idea came to him more suddenly than its execution followed. It might work, it might not work, it was infinitely risky, foolhardy, it was all those things — but he could not go on flitting up and down the glade like a butterfly.

So he took his flyer deeper and deeper back into the thickest of the glade, slower and slower, and lower and lower. He put the controls on Circle, and locked her so. Then he stepped to the door and stepped out. It was just a short jump. Slowly and ponderously, like a fat woman who has had just a shade too much to eat and drink, the flyer went wobbling around and around. He turned and looked back after a minute. But, so well had she been painted, he could no longer see her at all.

He paused a moment to calculate his bearings by the angle of a pencil-thin sunbeam. Then he slipped away through and into the woods. Later, looking back again, he saw the other craft still patrolling.

The trail, when he came upon it, puzzled him. There should by right be no trail here, in fact, how could there be, when there were no people? There were no people, but other things lived in the forests here beside birds (and, for that matter, dragons) and had to move about. Often he saw the rough patches of rougher hair upon the sides of the tree, two or three times he saw the small neat heaps of dung, and once he saw (but passed along as though he did not see) the twin spotted fawns lying so securely in the shady covert of the glen.

But of dragon he saw none. Nor did he hear any.

“Dragon? Dragon? Are you a dragon-chick?” he stooped to ask and to pick up a tiny, delicate orange lizard. It pattered cleanly and delicately along his hand and paused at the cushion of his upturned palm and looked at him so bravely, gravely, carefully he put it down upon the mossy rocks a foot or two in and off the trail where (he hoped) not even the dark hoof of a deer would menace it. He moved on.

Finally, as the sun commenced its decline, he saw what he had come to see, though of course by no means at first knowing that it was this that was here, had been here, waiting for him all alone. He had the notion of his having come full-circle, and of the thing there saying to him that he should Look — See? — You cannot escape. Not from me.

Not from us. Not from them. It was though he saw now as a whole the same place he’d seen before as a collection of fragments. But still all he saw was now an outside, looming and staring and gathering in its black stiff folds about it, head and snout thrust forward darkly from the green over-mantle—

A Kar-chee castle …

And what was in it?

More men like monomaniac Hue and all his crew? More dragons being tormented into murderous patterns of behavior? More plots and plans to overthrow the status quo? He crouched and stared and thought that all the sweet waters of the Earth must be stained with blood; he saw them welling and spreading like a great scarlet stain across all the face of this aged and afflicted world.

But from within the black basalt walls came neither signs nor sounds nor movement.

His own movements, as he backed off, lips bared, were — though he did not know it, did not have the image, even, in his subliminal memory — for all the world like those of a dog in the presence of something known to be deadly and dangerous but otherwise all unknown. And, like a dog, he began to circle about the thing of menace. And it was while so doing that he observed for the first time a dragon.

With its green-black, black-green, green and black skin, its deep-set and faceted eyes flashing yellow and green and blue and red, long neck and huge body, it looked no different than any other dragon. In form and body, no different, that is. But immediately and immensely and frighteningly obviously it looked very different than any dragon he had ever seen, and the difference lay in its manner. It did not move in a mindless rush capable of being instantly diverted by a waving flag or the sound of a horn. And neither did it move in the relentless fashion of one intent upon its prey and knowing just what and just where that prey was. Least of all did it move along like some great, grazing pea-brained cow.

The word (it came to him in a moment that seemed to chill his skin) the word for this dragon was alert. And the other world for it (the echo after the shot) was intelligent.

It came slowly along, slowly and carefully, head turning from side to side, tongue tasting the air. Now and then it paused and it raised its head, slowly and deliberately, gathering in the details of sight and sound and scent at all levels. Then it proceeded in its careful, one might almost say its measured, pace. Then, too, in a third terrifying flash of understanding, Jon-Joras understood what now in retrospect seemed blazingly obvious to him: that the paths which he had been treading through the forest were too wide by far to have been made entirely by the narrow slots of deer’s hooves. He had been walking, careless — almost — and certainly all unknowing, in the dragons’ walk! He had been treading in the dragons’ tracks! And now he had at once to retreat and to vanish, otherwise this careful questing beast of a dragon would certainly, soon, be treading in his, Jon-Joras’s, tracks—!

But even as his tendons tensed to move him back and away, the dragon, as though in obedient command to his, the man’s own fears, turned aside and moved away and in another moment was hidden in the woods and in the towering thicket. Jon-Joras did not relax, gratefully or gracefully; he slumped and almost fell over his own sweating legs. He had come here in response to a stupid bravado, and now he was trapped — at least twice-trapped. The patrolling flyer kept him captive here in one way. And now, it would seem, the patrolling dragon might (if he were not exceedingly careful) keep him captive in another. If it didn’t kill him first. The strange thing (the strange thing? and was all else commonplace?) was that the dragon had not looked fierce. Its fear and its terror came from other attributes entirely. This beast might not charge him upright upon its hind legs… neither, though, was it likely to be diverted by a rag of a shirt fluttering in the breeze, or some other trick of the sort.

Time enough some other time to wonder why this one dragon was so different. Time now all but screamed aloud to be used to go as far and as fast away from here as might be possible. He would head back as silent-swift as ever he could to the general area where he had left the stolen flyer. The patrolling vessel might have gone away. Or its pilot might have landed it and come out himself to investigate. Or Jon-Joras might simply regain the one he’d used before and continue a terrain-hugging, tree-hiding tactic until some better notion or occasion offered itself.

Then he looked up and saw that, although he had moved and the dragon had moved, the dragon was in front of him once again. He crouched. He slunk off to the left. The dragon, moving slowly and without undue concern, moved in the same direction. He moved more quickly. So did the dragon. And now, from a great distance, overlaid with a multitude of memories, he heard the voice of Aëlorix speaking to him at the estate, back when all was well and all was amity and peace. They were the Kar-chee’s dogs… They hunted us… Was that what this one was doing now? Hunting him? With deliberate speed and awful majesty? No… No… Not quite, not quite. Jon-Joras crept here and crept over there, crawled, dodged, twisted, retreated, retreated… The dragon followed, followed, followed. But actually it was not at all that Jon-Joras was going where he wanted and the dragon merely following.

Actually, Jon-Joras was going where the dragon wanted him to go, the way the dragon wanted him to go. He wasn’t being hunted. He was being herded.

And so, through the great, crouching, vine-heavy gate of the castle, Jon-Joras walked with slouching shoulders and with hanging head, and the dragon walked watchfully behind him.

The dragon had ceased to be a surprise and, when he saw it at last, the Kar-chee really came as no surprise. It was not just that he had smelled it, the scent not faint and old and musty as it had been in the other, in the abandoned castle, but strong and fresh. But scent and, subsequently, sight, were but confirmations of what logic — without either — had already revealed. For if the dragons had been the Kar-chee’s dogs and if here and if now a dragon was acting like a dog, then—

It was the man who was the surprise.

— then there had to be Kar-chee to direct them.

But he did not expect to see the man and the Kar-chee together; he did not expect to see the man at all. Any man at all.

One picture only had he ever seen, and then the carven figure in the frieze, dusty and webby and observed from a bad angle; but there wasn’t and couldn’t be a second’s question or doubt. The dull black and ten-feet tall form, the comparatively tiny head, the huge anterior arms bent so that the hands or paws were folded loosely together upwards, the upper body slanted and canted forward, seemingly under the weight of its limbs: unmistakably, the Kar-chee.

The man was colorless, ageless, dirty, face and figure loose where one would think to find them tight, tight where they should have been loose. He sagged, blinked, mumbled his mouth and smacked his lips and he said nothing. In his hands, hands held up hieratically as a Pharoah’s with crook and flail, he the man held some curious arrangement of fans or fronds and sticks.

The dragon composed itself for rest and observation on the mossy, grassy terrace, ran its tongue out once more, hissed a bit and made a slight coughing, barking, grunting sound.

The Kar-chee snapped its head up and began to move itself in an odd way and made an odd sort of rustling, clicking noise. And the man, in turn, cocked his head and looked away and the Kar-chee stopped and the man looked at Jon-Joras, and, in a curious sing-song voice he said, “Oh, mmmm, message, mmmm, so, It appears that he this man has not come here-place in, mmm, a proper, an authorized, mmm, orderly fashion, purpose, mmm.” Click, click, rustle, rustle, click-clack. “Does-has he the man a correct mmm intent, mmm in coming here-place, so, or is it mere, mmm, intrusion; what reply is conveyed? Mmm, so.”

Jon-Joras, astonished, allowed his mouth to fall open, said nothing. The Kar-chee clicked and rustled and the interpreter, allowing his dull and uninterested eyes to slide over the newcomer, said, “Communicate with, mmm, he the man and obtain, mmm, mmm, the reply. So.” The voice changed a trifle in tone and timbre and the empty eyes appeared to try to concentrate. “Why did he the — No. Why did you come?”

Thinking rapidly and fearfully for what might be an acceptable answer, even a lie which — if not too outrageous — might be carried off — Jon-Joras said, “The overlords have sent me.”

The interpreter clicked and rustled his stick and his fan or frond. The Kar-chee rustled and clicked, and Jon-Joras stared at its gaunt, chitinous body.

“‘What overlords?’”

“The overlords of all the stars of men.”

“‘Why approached in furtive manner?’”

“Desired not to be seen by the other men who sometimes approach.”

“‘Why desired not?’”

“Lest they prevent the consultation.”

“‘Purpose of consultation?’”

Here it was, and Jon-Joras could think of nothing safe to put forward. So he decided to leave this to the other, and so he said, “To discuss and discover what it is that the Kar-chee most want, with a view to adjusting matters.”

Silence fell. After a moment the Kar-chee clicked, then stopped, then rustled, and stopped. The interpreter coughed a bit and cleared his throat. Then the Kar-chee “spoke” rapidly and abruptly turned and made off in its eerie, stalking, waddling gait. The interpreter spat on the ground and rubbed his spittle into it with his foot. He glanced up, grimaced, shrugged, seemed to hang and dangle on invisible wires which, if cut, would let him collapse into a huddle of puppet-cloth.

“What did he — What did it — What did the Kar-chee say?”

“Mmm? Say? Said to give you food, take care of what you, mmm, will want… What will you want?” the old man asked, almost querulously. And added, “Come, then. Come. Come on.”

The rank odor of the Kar-chee was thicker down below, but it was largely replaced in the old man’s quarters, away off in a distant chamber down long and dusty echoing empty corridors, by the at least equally rank odor of the old man himself and his quite indifferent housekeeping. New clothes were piled in a niche in the wall and old clothes mouldered on a heap in the corner and one nasty garment hung over the sill of the high slit-window as though the effort of tossing it there precluded any attempt to correct the poor aim and shove it on through. The old man sat down on his frowsty bed and coughed and rumbled and spat. Then he stared blankly at his sudden guest, a long while. From time to time a flicker of something passed over his dehumanized face and it twitched and made movements as though it were about to express interest or another emotion. But before ever this was done, the face sagged into the same blankness as before. Was he drugged, perhaps, Jon-Joras wondered.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

This did produce reaction; after all, the old man’s function was to serve as a channel for questions and answers to pass through and to repass through; he had to employ his own mouth and tongue and vocal cords for one of these passages, and his mind, no matter how mechanically, for both. “What’s…” the question seemed to sink into the sands of stupor and there be lost, but after a moment it welled up again, a bit diminished: “… name?” Blear eyes looked up, slack mouth pursed and twisted, lips blubbered in a short, abrupt sound which might have retained the ghost of scorn or pain or laughter: the scornful, painful laughter which ends in a little bubble of blood, seen or unseen: the hands fluttered in the briefest, slightest gesture of pushing things away; then fell back and down.

There was a not-quite-mutter, a more-than-whisper, which might have been, “Never mind…”

“Well, but… Where do you come from?”

No. Not drugs. The old man’s mind had simply rusted away. Who could say how long he had been here, a prisoner? A prisoner-at-large, but still a prisoner. He licked his thin lips with a bluish tongue, stirred on his dusty couch and looked about him. “Food,” he said. Sighed. Pointed. There was a small pile of camp-rations, and empty and part-empty containers lay where they had fallen or had been dropped, adding the rotten-sweet tainted smell of garbage to the other ill smells of the room. “Food,” he said again.

Jon-Joras got up and helped himself, paused with a bit of something almost at his mouth. “They bring it here for you?” he asked. And, answering his own question, said, “Yes. They bring you the food and the clothes, too. The other men who come here — the ones who approach in a proper order. Who are they? Who are they? And what is this all ab—”

Now the old man leaped up and scuttled across the dirty floor and sort of crouched before him, looking up and breathing into his face a fetid breath and now his face was distorted with feeling and he grasped Jon-Joras’s arms and he said to him in a whisper like a scream, “Oluc? Oluc? You know Dondon-oluc?”

Remembrance sprang into the young man’s mind and must have instantly been reflected on his face, for the old one tightened his timid grip and made anguished little noises.

“Dondon-oluc and Tiran-lou,” said Jon-Joras. “And the huge old trees—”

“And Lou! And Lou!” the old man cried, in a jerky voice. “Oluc and Lou, ah! And the trees, the trees! The trees…”

He fell into a heap of smeared and smattered clothes that cried and twitched and made dreadful, sobbing noises. Jon-Joras was torn between pity and dismay and hope, and then the old man scuttled backwards away from him and rose to a slouch and stared at him with his awful crumpled face askew and then turned and ran, tottering, out of his nasty room and down the dim, black corridors and whimpered and flapped his wrinkled, dirty hands.

Jon-Joras stared after him. Run after him? No, no, he might get lost, and he had no desire to get lost here in this place where the Kar-chee scent was forever strong, forever fresh. Was the old interpreter off to reveal something to his alien masters? It seemed not likely. Likelier only that he had been all unsettled by having some of the rust and dust of decades fall in scales and flakes from his poor withered mind and memory. The young man put the bit of food into his mouth and looked out the tall slit-window. Outside, downside, between the castle and the woods, the dragon patrolled. Alert, watchful, and with deliberate leisure.

“I’m afraid, I’m afraid,” the old man said. “I’m so afraid.” He spoke in halting, stifled tones, again his face so close to Jon-Joras’s.

“Of what, Old Man?”

“I could be punished. Back there. Ah, back home. Why I came away. Ran. Left me here. Didn’t dare, don’t dare. Afraid,” he wept.

“Confederation has a twenty-five year statute of limitations,” Jon-Joras reminded him. “And Dondon-oluc and Tiran-lou, both, are confederate-worlds. Surely it must be longer than that, you’ve been here?”

Bit by bit and scale by scale by flake, he was trying to do a work of repair. Vast holes had been hopelessly eaten away. The Old Man was either determined to have no name or had simply lost that intensely important part of his persona. Nor would he, or, perhaps, nor could he, describe how or when he had come here or who had taken him here — the who being certainly those still supplying, the those in contact with the Kar-chee. It seemed obvious, though, that whoever they were they had taken advantage of his fugitive status. An interpreter was certainly always needed here, the Kar-chee being incapable of articulate human speech. There had been an interpreter here, of course, when the Old Man had first arrived. “The Poor Woman,” he called her. However awful this life-in-death must be to a man, how much more so must it have been to her! — whoever she was or had been. Poor woman, indeed. For some while at any rate they had been some company for each other, she teaching him to understand the Kar-chee “speech” and to reproduce it; and then she had died.

Longer than twenty-five years that he’d been here? Closer, probably, to fifty!

“Afraid all changed, on Oluc. Oh, terrible—!”

“I was there just two years ago. It didn’t seem to be a place of the sort which changes fast. And the soil was still as thick and rich and the trees were still gigantic.” He reached into his memory for such names as he could recall, trees, rivers, towns… the Old Man made dreadful attempts to smile.

“Afraid of them, still, always. Here.”

“The Kar-chee?”

“Of them, too. But most afraid of this?” And again the dreadful terror-whisper. “Suppose they go? The Kar-chee. And take me with them!”

Enough, indeed, to make the mind of any man, even if young and even if strong and sound, freeze with fear: the Kar-chee departing at long and ancient last for their lairs around the Ring Stars, black and cold and devoid of man and the things which stood between man and madness: this was indeed just cause for fear, to be taken along and to tarry there forever.

Slowly, simply, repetitiously, firmly, Jon-Joras told the Old Man that he was in close contact with the Confederation Delegate on Prime World, that he was also the Private Man of an important outworld ruler. That, whoever had brought him, the Old Man, here and kept him here, it was not Confederation. And therefore it and they by definition were of lesser power and hence unable to withstand the wishes and directives of Confederation… once Confederation knew.

“So the thing that must be done is this: I must get to ConfedBase or at least make contact with Delegate Anse, if I can get away from here in time to meet him when he comes to Peramis. In either case, you see, I must get out of here.”

It was not to be done, it could not be done. The guardian dragons would not allow him to make an escape. They would tear him in pieces. “But,” Jon-Joras protested to the protesting Old Man, “the dragons here obey the Kar-chee, so—”

Now he was to see the other side of the mirror, and its image was at first to be as obscure as its obverse; for the interpreter knew only of the dragons “here” and of none other. “The dragons,” he said, shaking his head, “are the Kar-chee…”

Jon-Joras stared. “But that’s what Hue said!”

“‘Hue’?”

“Old Man, I don’t understand. I saw a dragon. I saw a Kar-chee. They were not the same. How can you say that they are?” Explanations, though, were not forthcoming. Merely he repeated, They were the same. So another question was asked. “What is the set-up between the Kar-chee — and these other men? The other men do something for the Kar-chee, that is, they do something for you. They bring you food and clothing. But what do the Kar-chee do for the other men?”

They kept guard. They let no other men through. They — the Kar-chee who were also dragons — destroyed any others who attempted to enter this territory. Why? Ah. Mmm. The muttered, fragmented pieces of comment scarcely deserved to be called information. But here and there and finally some pieces fell into place. The Old Man was terrified to approach the Kar-chee unsummoned. He had never done so, dared not do so now. Did not even know where, in the maze below his level, it laired. But his will-power, positive or negative, had so long ago fallen into complete desuetude that he could not resist Jon-Joras’s mild but insistent pressures.

They came out blinking into the sunlight and went to the rampart. The dragon presently came into view, glanced at them, paced onward. With hands which trembled at first, but soon fell into habitual and pacifying actions, the Old Man fell to rattling and clicking and rustling his artificial but quite intelligible reproduction of the Kar-chee language. And the dragon paused and looked and it was plain that the dragon listened.

And then, up from where? No matter. Up from wherever it had been, the Kar-chee came.

“‘Message. If he the man inquires if we the Kar-chee desire to depart, then he the man understands that we the Kar-chee desire to depart and his the man’s question is no proper question.’”

“‘Always they the proper men offer future-when to depart we the Kar-chee to the proper place of we the Kar-chee but never from first-when to present-when have they the proper men done so.’”

“‘If the message of he the man is properly communicated and properly understood, is it that he the man declares that the proper men are not the proper men, but that he the man and his fellows are the proper proper men and that the never-kept promise will in present-when be kept? These the before-when declared being the Overlords?’”

And Jon-Joras reiterated that those selected by all the worlds and stars of men to run their common affairs were indeed, through him, offering to return the Kar-chee to their Ring Star lairs; and this to be done as near to immediately as could be managed. “Only,” he said, firmly, and reassuringly, “that this man who communicates messages is not to depart with the Kar-chee but is to remain here with us his fellows.” And he emphasized this with gestures and at length he put his arm around the Old Man’s trembling shoulders, and added, “For when the Kar-chee are in their own and proper places they need never and will never communicate with men again, and so will have no need of him.”

The Kar-chee’s dull eyes showed nothing. And then, in an abrupt and shocking change of pronoun and of phrase, it said, “I must consult with my other self. Await.”

There was a silence, and a long silence. The Kar-chee above did not move and the dragon below did not move. The Old Man trembled and trembled. The dragon hissed. The Kar-chee lifted its tiny head. Overhead a flyer shot into view. Jon-Joras started, stared.

“‘He the man is at this present-when to go below and there remain.’”

Jon-Joras moved as quickly as his legs would let him, and as he ran he called out, “Don’t tell them anything and don’t worry. Don’t worry!”

He made his way towards the Old Man’s room, but recollection of its dirt and disorder dissuaded him, so he went to wandering in an off-corridor. A wink of light caught his eye as he passed one of the chambers, and he turned to look. It was a mirror, of the quaint hour-glass shape once so popular… how long ago? On his own distant and orderly world, the beta-planet of Moussorgsky Minor, perhaps more than a century ago. Allowing for the lag in time and transport and fashion… here?… who could say how less long ago. Fashionable, yes. But only among women. He entered the room.

Dust had almost deprived the old mirror of reflective capacity, and dust cloaked and choked everything in here. Yet, despite and underneath the dust, things were all arranged in order. A bed was neatly made. Clothes hung in orderly rows. An antique desk still bore a scripter set with all as it had been left, well-readied to use. It came to Jon-Joras with a shock and pang of pity that here had been the room of the previous interpreter, “the Poor Woman.” He opened the scripter, slowly, delicately, with even a slight touch of fear.

it should make no difference to me how things will go here, for well or ill, but as this unfortunate young man must probably remain here for his own forever, it’s well that he has learned as much as I can teach him. And now there is no more reason I should delay Death, that importunate suitor, any longer. He does but carry me across this dim horizon, and I hope it will be brighter there.

He had no time to reflect on this. Somewhere up above someone was calling his name. It sounded vaguely familiar, and a wild surge of hope brought him almost to the door — Delegate Anse? — Delegate Anse’s voice would not sound familiar, he had heard it only twice and was sure this wasn’t it — Por-Paulo? It was not that voice at all, the thought made a wave of longing for his still-absent king sweep over him, but it was not his voice — a prickle of unease slowed him up and kept him inside. Who had been in the flyer and knew that he was Jon-Joras and knew that he was here? Aëlorix? It was not the Gentleman’s voice, but it might still be that of one of his associates. But why did it sound so familiar?

Perhaps, though, whoever it was did not know that he was here at all. He might be guessing, trying… trapping. Well. If friend he was, then some delay would little matter. And if he were no friend…

Jon-Joras flitted through the back of the room and into the next one and thence to the next. The voice seemed to be rather nearer, but he was sure it was still in the main corridor. His intention was to get behind it and have a look at whomever it belonged to.

“Jon-Joras?”

“Jon-Jo-o-o-r-as…”

“Jon-Jor-as …?”

If it were a friend, why did he not announce and identify himself?

He was about to peer with considerable caution out into the corridor, when a voice, and not that voice, said, close by and with disgust, “It sure stinks in here.” Jon-Joras hugged the webby wall.

“‘Money never stinks,’” a second voice quoted.

“Freaky vermin,” the first one commented, unappeased. And then, “I always hate coming here…Where is that son of a karche’s egg?”

The voices ebbed away. Now Jon-Joras did peer out. The two men met the third one, presumably the first one, the one who had been calling, at the turn of the corridor. They shook their heads. There seemed, certainly, something familiar about his stance and movement, as there had been about his voice. But he was friend to these other two, and they were no friends to Jon-Joras. Friends do not come seeking friends with drawn weapons in their hands. And besides — I always hate coming here, one had said. So. These were the “proper men,” the men whose coming was regular and by arrangement, and who had been coming here for decades. At least for decades. Who had provided at least two wretched devils of interpreters. Had allied themselves with the alien Kar-chees and with their murderous dragons. Who?

I must consult with my other self. What of that, for a conundrum?

Nothing of that, for now. For now there was only the matter of keeping out of the way. Had the Kar-chee, after consulting with its “other self,” decided not to trust Jon-Joras? Decided to turn the matter over to the familiar, the “proper men”? Certainly it did seem so.

He came to another slit-window and looked out. There was no one and nothing to be seen. From the slant rays of the declining sun it appeared that he was now on the other side of the castle from where the Kar-chee (was there only one Kar-chee? Did not its curious reference to the “other self” plainly indicate there was at least one other?) and its domestic dragon were. Jon-Joras sighed. Let him but once get off this troubled world, he would take good care never to return to it. Now, how wide was this window?

It was wide enough.

There were foot-holds enough, too, and a conveniently canting, slanting tree. He made his way to the ground with no more difficulty than that provided by the constant fear of death, and then he crept into the underbrush like a lizard. He had gotten a good ways off and had raised himself from all fours to that same crouching or rather, stooped, walk, which had stood him in such good stead so early this morning, when a shout came from behind him and a tussock beside him exploded into a gout of dust and earth.

They had seen him.