[Kelvin 03] - Chimaera's Copper (with Robert E. Margroff) (13 page)

Kelvin reached out and touched the transparent plating. It covered all of the hunter except the head and the hands. Just like the armor worn by his Knights of the Roundear and the royalists fighting for the queen. Only this armor was not metal. His father had labeled it "Some sort of glass or plastic." It looked very light, but felt hard.

"The chimaera lets you keep this on. Surely it will take it off you before it dines on you."

"That it will, pale hair. How'd you guess?"

"Seems sensible. I don't think Grumpus could dent this."

"It won't have to. The armor's stout but that's not its value." "Then--"

"It insulates against the electric bursts. The bolts can climb all over it but not get inside. Particularly when--" He touched something inside his collar with a nudge of his chin. Instantly a transparent hood that covered his entire head sprang up from in back and snapped securely down in front. Similar hoods in the shape of gloves snapped over his hands, and others protected his feet. Stapular was now fully encased.

Kelvin was amazed. "You mean the chimaera couldn't have hurt you at all if you'd done that?"

"Where's your brain? Of course it could. It just couldn't have electrocuted me."

"But--"

"The sting could have pried me right out. Likely Mervania will get me out with lye."

Kelvin shivered. Lye! But he had known that was in the monster's plans, and indeed that had figured largely in his return. Still, it angered him to think that Stapular had remained back in the cell and not attacked the creature's elevated sting from behind, when Kelvin was distracting it. That jointed abdomen must have a weak spot, and if the lightning couldn't strike him...

"You think I should have jumped on the tail, right?"

Kelvin nodded, and refrained from saying something nasty like "How'd you ever guess, idiot?"

"Dumb, Minor World imbecile! It would have whacked me against the roof! Maybe flung me over its heads and against you!"

Surely a fate worse than death! But Kelvin refrained from making that sarcastic comment too. "I could have dodged, or even caught you and helped you get your feet."

The man merely glowered at him.

Kelvin tried again. "I once saw a dragon attacked in almost that manner. Of course the heroic knight paid for his bravery with his life, but at least he'd made the gesture, and perhaps saved the lives of his companions."

"You think I should have, don't you?"

Idiot! "You were wearing the armor," Kelvin pointed out. "You might have survived. It might have given me a chance to--"

"To what? Attack with your sword and magic gauntlets?" The tone made this seem ludicrous.

"Better than nothing." He didn't like the disparagement and contempt at all, but realized that this was just Stapular's way. Did the man have any love-life? That thought almost made Kelvin laugh.

"You think so, do you? You know how quickly one of the bolts would have shriveled you? If the chimaera hadn't been playing with you, you'd have been charred."

Undoubtedly true! But Kelvin pressed on. "I will be charred later anyway, according to you. Why not in a fight?"

"Because there would be no fight! The chimaera controls great quantities of electricity it makes in its body. You'd be no threat at all."

Kelvin tried to consider that, mindful that Stapular was repeating his prior argument. Yet the redhead was after all from a world he called Major.

"Nothing to be done, then?" He remained perplexed by the man's seeming reluctance even to oppose his fate.

"No."

"But you were going to attack it. You and your companions. How?"

"With lasers, of course. Some of us would have been destroyed, but we'd have lopped off the heads and tail."

"That tail means something to you, doesn't it?" "Yes, profit."

Kelvin wondered about that. Could copper be so valuable where Stapular came from? It didn't seem possible.

"You're confused, aren't you, dolt? Huh, let me tell you those stings are no minor matter. Conductors of electricity while they're growing and attached, and afterward--"

"Yes?" Stapular had shut up, as if catching himself revealing too much. What could be so secret that it couldn't be told even to a companion in death?

"Other," Stapular said. "On Minor Worlds, at least."

Conductors of other on Minor Worlds? Minor Worlds were magic-using worlds. That suggested that the stings were conductors of magic! The revelation made his knees sag.

"What's the matter with you?"

"There's a fence made of those old stings outside. You saw the lightning leap."

"So? A fortune, but not for us. For the next hunters perhaps."

"Magic, Stapular. Magic."

"What are you getting at, Minor brain?"

"Conductors of magic. Magic to fight the chimaera with."

"You're crazy!"

"So you have remarked. I have my levitation belt and my gauntlets now, and I come from a world where magic exists. If I can get outside again, get one of the spikes uprooted, hold it with the gauntlets and channel magic through it--"

"You've got magic?" Stapular seemed less skeptical.

"Y--" Kelvin had never been so tempted to lie before. But deep-grained habits were hard to break. He converted what he had been about to say to the exact truth. "--es. My gauntlets are magic. They often know what to do when I don't."

"Seriously?"

"Yes." But a pang of conscience forced him to add, "Swords, shields, crossbows--they even used a laser."

"But do they know how to use magic?"

"M-maybe. Perhaps."

"And perhaps not?"

Kelvin shrugged. "Any chance, it seems to me, is better than none."

"Right, Minor brain. Right. So what are your plans?"

"To get a sting. To confront the chimaera with it."

"While I distract it, I suppose?"

"You'll have to."

"And if it knows your thought? I can keep it out of my head. Can you?"

"I'll have to."

"Easily said. But when it's around, your mind is open to it. You know you can't conceal your plan. Whatever plan."

"Then that is why we must do it now," Kelvin said. In that moment he realized that the only plan he had was for him to get the sting while Stapular interfered with the chimaera. That would be difficult, even if Stapular was effective.

"You could grab hold of the chimaera's sting. Hold on to it. Keep it from directing its bolts."

"I could put my entire weight on it and I don't think I could hold it."

"But you will try?"

"I will try," Stapular said.

Kelvin dared hope. He had finally gotten the man to cooperate. That meant they had a chance, maybe, however small.

Kian looked at his father in astonishment. "What will we do, Father? We can't leave him!"

"No. Of course not. But it's a long way back. We were carried before, remember?"

Kian nodded, looking at the transporter and thinking secret thoughts. Darkly secret thoughts.

Kelvin was his brother. Half brother, anyway. He should not, would not abandon him, especially since Kelvin had followed them to the serpent world. Kelvin had saved them all, several times. He had first saved their homeland of Rud from Kian's own mother. Following the Rud revolution which Kelvin had led, Kian had gone through the transporter searching for his missing father and mother. In the frame-world that was so similar and yet so different from his own, Kian had found his missing father, and the girl he now wanted so desperately to return to. Kelvin had arrived late, defeated the royalists, and gotten Kian and John Knight out of King Rowforth's dungeon. Now Kian had a chance to repay all that.

But damn it all, damn it, Kelvin had been stupid! Going back to that monster-lair to save that--that poacher! No one with any sense would have done that! No one but an idiotic hero!

"Maybe," John said, "we can get help from the squarears. They do want us out of this frame."

"If they'll let a hunter be destroyed, they'll let a fool be destroyed." Immediately he regretted the application. Kelvin was at times a fool, but he was also his brother.

"I'm afraid I agree with you," John said. "But if we just start back through the swamp, we'll be caught by the froogears. Then it will be the same as before."

"Will it, Father?" Kian wished there were some other way.

"It will have to be."

Kian scuffed at the floor of the chamber with his toe. "Father, do you think they'd rescue us all over again?"

"I don't think we can count on it."

"Neither do I. Why should they have patience with fools?"

"Why indeed!" John exclaimed with an ironic laugh.

"If only Kelvin had left us with something. He took the levitation belt and the Mouvar weapon. What have we got to fight with?"

"One pair of magic gauntlets and our swords. Plus our wits," John said.

"Lot of good they'll do."

"I'm not so certain. That fruit the froogears rolled in here--do you suppose that grows nearby?"

"Suppose it does? It'd knock us out if we breathed the scent from it."

"Yet the froogears handled it."

"Maybe they're immune. Maybe it just doesn't affect them, Father."

"Hmmm. Possibly. I'm not saying we could use it, just thinking of possibilities." "The gauntlets, do you suppose they can lead us through the swamp to the island?"

"Possibly. Just barely possibly. They have a wonderful sense of direction, you remember."

"But only the one pair."

"I'll tell you what." John Knight stripped off the right gauntlet and handed it to him. "I'll wear the left and you the right. That way we'll both be protected to some extent."

"Thank you, Father." Kian put on the gauntlet. Though his father's hand was larger than his, the soft dragonskin contracted and made a perfect fit. Had his hand been larger, it would have stretched, magically.

John shrugged. "Why should I let my son be in avoidable danger?"

That was rhetorical, but it made Kian feel warm. He knew that Kelvin was the hero, the son borne of the woman John truly loved, and sometimes he doubted John's feelings for the son of the evil queen. Kian flexed and unflexed his right hand with the gauntlet. He drew his sword, made some experimental slashes at the air, and returned it smoothly to his scabbard. How, he wondered, would his right-handed father handle his sword?

John Knight was already adjusting his scabbard on his right side. He drew the sword left-handed, swished it expertly, twirled it, and resheathed it. The glove made any hand dexetrous!

Kian nodded appreciatively. "That's better than I believe Kelvin could do."

"I'm not so certain. He fought most of the war in Rud with just the left gauntlet. Remember?"

Kian remembered. Lying on the ground in the swirling dust kicked up by the war-horses. His right gauntleted hand locked with Kelvin's left. The two gauntlets wrestling for their wearers, moving their fingers and wrists, pulling their arms and bodies along. It had been a draw. It had been the first indication he had had of the full extent of the power of the gauntlets.

"I'm ready, Father."

"Yes, I thought you would be."

With that they turned their backs on the chamber, and its transporter and all of Kian's waiting dreams. Together they left the cave and walked step by step, never faltering, to the greenish swamp and its incalculable dangers.

There were many, many steps, and many, many wearying days ahead.

Bloorg, the squarear chieftain, scratched his straw-colored hair on his blocky pate and indicated to Grool, his second in command, the crystal. In the crystal were two tired, hungry, insect-bitten roundears, slogging their way through hip-deep greenish water. The roundear known as John Knight suddenly grabbed a serpent in its left hand and flung it far. Kian, the younger roundear, congratulated him.

"Should we let the chimaera have them?" Grool asked. "They are innocent, and intended no harm."

Bloorg shrugged. "Innocent is as innocent does. They are also stupid."

"Stupid. Yes, by our standards. Still--"

"Still they have chosen. They could have gone their way."

"But the other one chose first. If he had not gone back--"

"Yes, as the hunter says, he was very stupid."

"But can we just leave them? Let our cousins the froogears take them again for tribute?"

"It is our ethics not to destroy or allow to be destroyed the purely innocent. Yet once made wise--"

"No longer innocent!" Grool sighed, fluttering her triangular eyelashes above her blue and squarish eyes. "It is an old, old truth, as old as our civilization. They should have learned." "But it bothers you?"

"Yes, I don't think they intend other than a rescue."

"Unaided? Hardly that."

"Then they are doomed."

"Assuredly. As certainly as the other and the hunter in the chimaera's larder."

"A shame."

"Isn't it."

Bloorg made a magical gesture with entwined fingers and the crystal flickered and went blank.

The chimaera was digging in Mervania's garden. It had a nice assortment of herbs growing for use as condiments. Onlics tossed their purple heads in the breeze blowing over the island, their bulbs waiting below ground.

"I don't know why you bother with this!" Mertin grumbled. What he really meant was that he was not all that enamored with the flavor of onlics, chilards, and musills.

Grumpus' head suddenly snapped upward, and its mouth opened. At the same time the chimaera sting elevated. A bolt of blue sparked from the tip and into the sky above. Sizzling, smoking, still on fire, a foolish swampbird fell into Grumpus' waiting maw. Grumpus crunched, chewed, and swallowed. The chimaera's abdomen unbent and its sting lowered.

"Now, Mertie, you know you like the stew I make," Mervania chided her headmate. "None of us refuses it. Even Grumpus likes it."

"Ain't fittin'," Mertin said. "We, a superior species, eating like our foodstuffs!"

"Nonsense." She patted the dirt lovingly over the bones she had brought from the pantry. Good fungus would grow up out of those eyesockets. It always seemed appropriate that they be buried here. "You know you're just saying that. Fitting and not-fitting has nothing to do with it."