[Kelvin 03] - Chimaera's Copper (with Robert E. Margroff) (23 page)

He looked at Kian, held by two of the soldiers, disarmed. His own arms were similarly taken. With regret he watched the soldiers go through his pack.

"King Hoofourth will be interested," said the craggy-faced Lieutenant.

"King Hoofourth of what country?" John asked.

"Silence, prisoner!" The slap stung his face, as he knew the lieutenant intended. "You will speak when spoken to!"

Exactly as it had been in Hud! Only of course this could not be the frame where there was a kingdom named Hud or a kingdom named Rud. It would have a name that would be similar and much else would be similar, but not identical. Obviously the bad guys were in control here; there had been no hero of prophecy to set things right. It was almost like a movie that kept subtly changing every time it was watched. Only this was no movie, and like it or not he was a participant.

Movie--now there was one of the few things he missed in his home world. How nice it would be to go into a theater and have a vicarious experience! There was a lot to be said for vicarious experience; it didn't lock a person in a cell for months or years, it didn't threaten the person with death. He could break it off at any point and go home to the familiar. That would be nice, right now! If he got out of this, maybe he would see about finding his way to his true home. It wasn't as if there were a lot to hold him in the magic worlds, now that his children were grown, and he had lost the one woman he really cared for. The last thing he intended to do was interfere with Charlain's second marriage, and his mere presence in her frame would do that. So it behooved him to go elsewhere and find his own woman, and try to forget.

"We'll take them to the capital. King Hoofourth will put them in a dungeon, torture them a little, and get answers from them before throwing them away."

"Answers?" the fellow officer asked.

"Like why are they here? What are they doing at the secret cave? Are they planning on invading us?"

"Oh, you mean routine stuff." The officer pulled his right earlobe. It was a round ear, similar to the others here. Once it had seemed that round ears were a sign of special qualities, but now it was apparent that their shape was all that distinguished them. There were truly special pointeared folk--he thought of Charlain again--and ignoble roundeared folk, such as evil King Rowforth of Hud. Unfortunately, King Hoofourth sounded similar.

"Now, out!" Pushing Kian and himself ahead of them the soldiers emerged from the wall of rock. John had to shake himself mentally. That chamber they'd been in was identical to the other except that it had no transporter. Did the bad guys in this frame know about the network of transporters? If they did, why didn't they use theirs? If they didn't, why did they stay here, watching?

"You and you stay. Watch," the main officer commanded, using the celebrated army volunteer system to select two men. "You, down the tree. You, you guide the prisoners."

Without hesitation Kian moved ahead to the cliff and the ladder and descended after the two soldiers. John followed, feeling the unnecessary prod the man behind gave to his buttocks. The descent into the tree was one he had not actually made before, though he had climbed an identical tree and ladder in the frame of the silver serpents.

He wondered, as he carefully made his way down, branch by branch, if this time there would be a rescue. Maybe, just maybe, it was foreordained that he and his son were to die here. That would certainly simplify Kelvin's life, allowing him to complete the prophecy without interference.

Now I'm thinking like Charlain, he thought. Next I'll be reading her Book of Prophecy and studying her predicting cards!

But will there ever be a chance? Will I ever see Kelvin's mother again? Will I ever even see her duplicate?

He sighed soundlessly. Obviously his heart wasn't in his resolution to stay out of Charlain's life. But if he should encounter one of her alternates in another frame, and not an evil one, what then? Actually there had been another woman in his life, evil Queen Zoanna. In the serpent frame he had encountered her good version, Queen Zanaan. Now there was a prospect to conjure with! If Kian could marry in that frame, why not John himself?

His feet touched the ground, bringing his mind to reality. What use were dreams, when he wasn't free to do anything about them? There were more troops and horses waiting here. There was no chance for escape.

At the commander's orders they mounted horses and rode what seemed a very familiar path. Would they meet flopears, he wondered? Maybe Smoothy Jac's duplicate? What about Lonny? Would her duplicate appear? And Zanaan--suppose she was here, too? That could really complicate things!

They rode on, through what became a very tiring day.

Kelvin stepped out of the transporter closet into an empty chamber. Kian and his father were nowhere in sight. Yet they must have come here. Should he stay and search? Or go back and ask the squarear's advice?

He decided to have a look outside. This seemed to be the frame of the silver serpents, but wasn't quite right. There wasn't the dust he remembered. Of course that could mean that this was the right frame and that others had since been here.

He crossed the chamber and walked through the shimmering golden curtain under the glowing EXIT sign. Outside, the cliff behind his back, he saw the tree and the ladder he expected. Only the ladder was down into the tree now, and it had been pulled up. He frowned, wondering, and then his gauntlets began to tingle.

If there was one thing he would never do again, he had promised himself, it was to ignore the gauntlets' warning. Obeying them as much as his own thoughts, he drew his sword and whirled.

A uniformed man, half in and half out of what appeared to be solid rock, was about to strike him on the head with a short club. His sword confronted the man, and at the same time he found his voice, letting the gauntlets somehow choose his words and rap it out as a command.

"Freeze! How many of you in there?" he demanded.

The man was evidently startled to have the tables so abruptly turned. "J-just two. Me and Bert."

"Tell him to come out. Slowly, without a weapon."

"You hear that, Bert? He's got a sword against my gullet. Don't be a hero, Bert. I'm your friend and the commanding officer isn't."

Bert came through the rock, unarmed.

Kelvin sighed with relief. He had been afraid the hidden man would fire an arrow from cover. Give the gauntlets a chance and they took control!

"Where are my friends? Do you have them?"

Bert spoke, looking scared. "Those two men? On the way to the king's dungeon."

"King? What king?"

"King Hoofourth, of course!"

So it was a different frame! He had thought so, when he saw the setting at %, but was taking nothing for granted now. "King of what country?"

"King of the Kingdom of Scud," the crafty-faced roundear said.

So it was a frame not too different from the silver serpent one, but not identical. "Tell me, is there an outlaw somewhere in the desert by the name of Jac?"

"Jac? You mean Scarface Jac?"

Why not? "Enemy to the king?"

"What else? An outlaw has to be, no matter what else."

"Skin thief?"

The soldiers looked puzzled. "Skin? I don't know what--"

"Silver!" Kelvin said impatiently. Not that it mattered, but the silver skins of serpents had proven to be of great importance.

Both men shrugged. Bert said, "I know he's robbed, but--"

"Doesn't matter." Kelvin decided he'd pay the local Jac a visit before planning his rescue of his father and brother. Even with his gauntlets and the Mouvar weapon and the levitation belt he was just one person. This frame, like every frame he had visited, probably contained some surprises.

"Tell me, can anyone in this frame levitate?"

"You mean fly? Mouvar is said to have flown."

"Good enough," Kelvin said briskly. "Turn your backs."

The two men obeyed him and he wasted no time in activating the levitation belt. Silently he rose above their heads and above the cliffs that towered higher than he remembered, then moved out over the tree and the river. The river was much broader than the rivers in the other frames. He looked back and saw the two soldiers still standing with their backs turned. Good, no arrows would be following him!

He settled down to the business of flying. It wasn't nearly as hard as he had once imagined. His father said he had a natural ability, as he did himself. He gathered that some people couldn't get used to the ground sliding away beneath their feet, the clouds rolling in front of their faces. It wasn't anything to do with bravery, for he certainly wasn't brave. Nor could he credit the gauntlets for his acceptance of flying. It was just a case of being lucky in one thing and unlucky in others.

As he drifted dreamlike over the rolling hills of the kingdom of Scud, he found himself thinking about luck. He had been lucky. Time after time he had been saved from impossible situations by what seemed chance. The silver serpents that could have swallowed him, for instance. The chimaera that could have cooked him with tail-lightning and eaten him steaming hot. Was that the effect of the prophecy, as his mother would say? Was that what was protecting him? To him it felt like mere fortune, that could reverse at any time. He really didn't have a lot of confidence in the accuracy of the prophecy, at least not as it might relate to him. It might be talking about some other roundear entirely.

But that line of thinking led only to mischief. It was better to believe that his mother was right. That the prophecy applied to him, and that he would prevail. So he would do his best to believe that, so that he could rescue his father and brother.

Down below was the first of the connected valleys. Serpent's Valley, home of great silver serpents and their spiritual brothers the dwarf flopears. He looked close but saw no serpents. No holes in cliffs that could be serpent tunnels. Sad to think that they were not here. What would Hud have been without its serpents and flopears? What would Scud be like? Whatever dangers he faced here he hoped--no, knew now that he could handle them. With his levitation belt and his gauntlets and his antimagic weapon there just couldn't be anything against which he couldn't triumph. Unless there was another chimaera here, which seemed highly unlikely. Like it or not he was a hero, uncertain nature and weak stomach aside.

He left the valley, passing over the cliff where Kian had once fought a flopear and, almost miraculously, survived. The flopear had also survived, he remembered, falling with his club off the cliff and down, down, to land with a probable splatting sound. As Kian had told it the tough little warrior had not only survived the fall, but had a short time later intercepted him and Lonny at the base of the cliff! Obviously Kian too had lived through great dangers, but so too had that murderous flopear. If it was really the same one.

How familiar the country looked! How very familiar. He flew at near minimum speed into the desert. At home they called this land the Sadlands, while in Hud it was the Barrens. In Scud it would be called something equally appropriate. Strange, though near duplication in people and geography prevailed in related frames the names always changed. Fortunately, perhaps, otherwise the confusion for a frame-hopper would be even worse. Suppose he were to meet his mother's duplicate in this frame, and she not only looked like his mother and acted like her, but had his mother's name? Or suppose his wife? If he met Heln here and she looked the same as the Heln he had left at home, and had the same name, he'd think of her as the same person. That could be very bad, and he was thankful that duplicate individuals bore separate identification. For one thing, the only way a local Heln could have the same name was if she had married a local Kelvin. Was he ready to meet himself?

He shook his head, trying to free it of burgeoning concepts that threatened to make it explode. Flying along at a little over a good running speed he began some unaccustomed philosophizing. It was what he had warned himself against. The squarear had said it was bad to think about such things, but now he did. The thought was, which was real? Was it home or was it the silver-serpent world, or the chimaera world, or his father's Earth? Bad question, and quite senseless, maybe. For of course all realities were real in equal proportion. It depended where a person was, and when. Thus the warriors of the past, and ancestors he had never seen or known existed--they seemed unreal, yet were the very substance of reality, for who would exist without that ancestry? Likewise every possibility, every slight change with infinite variations was, by the very nature of things, real and leading to real realities somewhere else. When such realities mixed, as when folk used the Mouvar network to travel between them, or when John Knight and his band accidentally crossed over--

And there was an answer to one riddle! There would be no Kelvin here, no Heln, because they were the children of the members of that group. They would exist only in the particular world to which that band had come. There might be a Charlain here, but she could never have married John Knight. Maybe Hal Hackleberry, or his equivalent, but not--

Head buzzing, as it always did when he tried to think about such things, Kelvin looked down and spied what had to be Scud's outlaw camp. He would land boldly, and--

But suppose it was the bad Jac who had stolen the dragon scale and kidnapped Jon? That was in his home frame, but couldn't a Jac of that nature exist here instead of the Jac he had more recently known? He hoped the answer was no, but he couldn't be certain. An evil Jac and an evil king in the same frame was more than he thought he could manage. Would Lonny be here? And another dwarf either as evil as Queeto or as saintly as Heeto? These thoughts were making his head more than just swim. The height did not make him dizzy, but the thinking it engendered did. He had to get down and put an end to this.

Since he did not want to be pierced with crossbow bolts or arrows, he would land a short distance away and walk in to the camp. Probably he should have been thinking about that instead of those other things.