[Kelvin 03] - Chimaera's Copper (with Robert E. Margroff) (32 page)

A great beaked head with huge yellow eyes was looking at him under the gray belly. It was mama's beak and mama's eyes. She would snatch him from her foot like a scared rodent, and some lucky chick would be the recipient. As for Jillip, who was costing Kelvin his life--

"NO!" Kelvin shouted, and jabbed his sword into the fleshy part of her left foot.

The bird's head shot back out of sight, her talons opened suddenly, and she let out a screech which made the prior ones seem faint. Kelvin wasn't waiting, nor were his gauntlets. With one clumsy lunge he grabbed Jillip and tumbled with him into space.

Wind whistled by their ears and brush slapped by their faces. Bits of bone and rotting animal carcasses were strewn on branches they passed. Somehow the gauntlets managed to hold the boy, yet also activate the belt. Upside down scarebirds hung from branches bigger than normal tree trunks. He glimpsed these briefly, peripherally, hoping they got even lesser glimpses of him, and then he was flying.

Below them were hard rocks in deep water. Past them, so close she almost touched, passed the angrily screaming big mama.

Kelvin adjusted their acceleration as the bird caught the air again, ending her dive. They were soon speeding up the river, back the way they had come. When he knew the bird was far outdistanced, he took a more comfortable grip on Jillip, who was now returning again to consciousness. He had fainted somewhere during that mind-numbing scream, which was perhaps just as well.

"Jillip, your leader assured me that there were no dragons, no giant silver serpents, no magic in this frame! What by all the gods is that creature back there?"

"Scarebird," Jillip said, puzzled. "Don't you have scarebirds in your frame?"

"Never heard of them! Never want to see one of them again!"

"Must be a placid existence you have," the boy remarked.

CHAPTER 24

Army

The journey to Blrood was surprisingly uneventful. For a full day Kelvin labored with the belt transporting the copper from atop the cliff to the ground. Constantly he broke off in his labors to reconnaissance for guardsmen or scarebirds. The guardsmen never came, nor did the wings of the great bird again darken the cliff.

Getting packhorses for the copper proved to be easy. The Loafers knew the farmers they could count on, most of whom had suffered at the hands of guardsmen. Help for them now was not in short supply.

Disguised as merchants, they made their journey and met the Blrood soldiers who had been dispatched to see them on their way. The territory, the fruit they ate along the way, even the people they saw all seemed a rerun. Once a large violet and light-rose bird flew over calling from a long beak "Pry-Mary! Pry-Mary!"

"Primary bird!" Kelvin guessed. He was certain it couldn't be the purgatory bird, though except for plumage they did seem much the same.

"Political bird," Hester explained. "Also termed beginning bird."

Kelvin nodded and let his eyes wander on to the expected monument. The cairn appeared almost identical to those he had seen on similar missions in two related frames. About the only difference was the inscription which here dedicated the cairn to the memory of Blrood's soldiers, rather than Shrood's or Throod's. Again it seemed they had perished in a two-hundred-year-old war, but not against Hud or Rud. Though he had forgotten to inquire, the kingdom he was now attempting to free was the kingdom of Fud.

"Recruitment House!" Bilger called. This time the fruit juice dripping from the revolutionary's mouth was definitely red rather than orange or yellow. More packhorses more heavily laden, more local armed men accompanying them.

This time it was not a Captain MacKay with pointed ears or a Captain McFay with round, but a Commander Mac. The commander had round ears as did the last such individual, and his facial and body conformations had similar outlines. But in Throod the big gray-haired, gray-eyed man had lost an arm. His equivalent in Shrood had been slightly balding, had had two good arms and one peg leg. Commander Mac had all his hair but was missing half his teeth, a fact that became evident as soon as he spoke. He had all his extremities, but his back was bent more than the others and his right shoulder sloped. In addition to all the other differences, Mac wore a patch over his left eye.

The commander held out his hand. Talk and drinking and card playing ceased. Veterans and recruits alike turned their attentions. "Marvin Loaf. You've got the copper?" "Some. More back in Fud. Safe, I hope."

Mac and two veterans went out and checked the packs. The stings had worn through their coverings in places and the copper was drawing attention from those who dared not touch. A path cleared for the commander. He cut open a couple of bundles, scratched the copper with a knife, smiled, and felt the other bundles with his hands.

"With what you have here you can buy our finest and best fighting men, all equipment, horses, and catapults. Gods, I didn't know there was that much copper! You've got your army."

"Actually there is a catch to our generosity," John said quickly.

They all looked at him inquiringly. Particularly Marvin Loaf.

"Let's go back in and discuss it," Commander Mac suggested.

They did. On the way in John explained: "The catch is that when all of this is over my boys and I leave this frame forever. We're here by mistake. Marvin's help makes us indebted to him, and we pay our debts. Besides, we had much the same situation back home until we did what Marvin's doing. Only our land is called Rud and its tyrant was a woman."

"Either sex, an army's an investment!" Mac said. "A tyrant is a tyrant is a tyrant until it's dead."

"I like that," Marvin Loaf said.

They found a table, mugs of bleer, and soon had a large assemblage of onlookers. As in similar situations two times before in two different frames, Kelvin was pressed to talk. He did so now with pleasure. But long before he had recited their adventures skepticism reared its monster head.

"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.