The Adventures of Duncan & Mallory: The Beginning

by Robert Asprin

  Duncan still wasn’t sure he understood the question. “What do you mean exactly by skills?”

  “Is there anything that you are really good at?”

  Duncan’s eyes got bright and he said, “I’m good at fixing things.”

  “Fixing things?” she said carefully.

  “Yes. Well, you know, I’ve never been trained and I can’t build things from scratch like a blacksmith, but I can take things that are broken and figure out how they’re supposed to work. I can take pieces of things and make other things, too. Machines that do stuff. I’m a tinkerer I guess you could say.”

  “A what?” the grey lady asked, and he thought he noted a suspicious tone to her voice, but it was hard to tell since at any minute he was sure she might breathe her last.

  “I’m a tinkerer,” Duncan said proudly, wishing he’d thought of it sooner. Surely it would be easy to find him a job where he fixed things.

  The little grey lady stood up to her full height—which meant Duncan wasn’t able to see much but her hair over the desk—her hair and her arm—as she pointed at him and said, “Out! Get out of my office this very minute!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I knew there was something crooked in your beady little eyes. Now you get out right now before I have you thrown out and tell the whole town just what you are.”

  “Is this some sort of joke, lady?”

  “Joke! I should think not. How dare you pretend to be normal. Now get out! I’m warning you, I’ve got mace!”

  “All right.” Duncan stood up and looked down on her. He didn’t see a mace anywhere and doubted she was in good enough shape to hit him with one if she had it. “I’m going. I don’t understand why, but then I haven’t really understood much of anything ever since I left home.”

  Duncan walked down the street back towards the pub feeling completely confused. “Crazy old woman…or whatever she was.” He wasn’t really worried. Austin had pointed him in the direction of the Everybody Needs a Job Employment Agency and he was sure he’d know where another one was.

  But as he walked into the bar everyone stopped talking and it seemed to him that they all just started staring at him. He shrugged it off as his imagination, but when he walked up to the bar and ordered Austin glared up at him.

  “You!” Austin yelled accusingly, waving a finger in the newly-unemployed man’s face. “Get out of my bar! Pack your gear and get out of my stable. In short, just get!”

  “But I’m still paid for the stable for two more nights,” Duncan protested.

  “Consider it a small fee to pay for lying about what you really are.”

  “Seriously, is all this because I told the lady at the employment agency that I’m a tinkerer?”

  “Ha! You admit it. Get out! Get out right now before I have you thrown out.”

  “People just keep saying that,” Duncan muttered.

  “I mean it boy! We don’ need yer kind hanging round here.”

  “What is going on?”

  “Don’t act like you don’t know. I run a top-drawer establishment. I don’t need ya’ll giving the place a bad reputation. Now go and don’t let the door hit ya on the back side on your way out.”

  Some of the customers grumbled in his general direction, too, and Duncan decided fate was once again pointing him on down the road.

  He went to the stable and started packing, “Geez, boys, can any of you tell me what I did wrong?” he asked the horses. “I’m going to miss you all. It’s been swell bunking with you. I want you to know how much I appreciate how gracious you all were when I brought a date home. I should have asked first but none of you complained… I wish I could say the same about the girl. She was all, Yuk, you live in a barn. I’ve dated a lot of scum in my life but never someone who lived in a barn full of horse crap.” He finished packing. “Well I better go before men come after me with lanterns and pitchforks… I’ll write when I find work.”

  The human reject left the barn and started walking. He asked a stranger on the street which way was both down stream and out of the city. The man pointed him in the right direction with a smile since after all he couldn’t tell by looking at him that Duncan was a tinkerer.

  It took him most of the rest of the day just to walk out of the city. On the outskirts of town just past the last of the houses there was nothing but acres and acres of crop land.

  It was pretty, and the tension he’d been carrying since the minute he’d entered the city melted away. In spite of the fact that he’d been run out of yet another town he had to admit part of him was glad to be out of Tarslick. He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think he liked big cities. Everything was so loud, and people all seemed to talk at once but never seemed to hear what anyone else said.

  No, he decided, city life wasn’t for him. But he’d enjoyed sleeping out of the elements and eating regularly. Of course just living there had taken most of the money he’d made, and he only had a few more coins in his pouch now then he’d had when he’d arrived. Drake hadn’t been wrong, and now he knew what he meant when he said that everyone had an angle.

  Yes, all in all, he had to say he wasn’t really very impressed with his whole Tarslick experience. Though he had to admit he’d seen a lot of amazing things that he didn’t even know existed till he got there. There were neon signs that flashed words in bright colors and lit up the night. Huge windows filled with displays showing off everything from clothing to small machines that did everything from washing your clothes to mixing your cake batter.

  To his ultimate dismay there was even a machine that put filling into donuts. He’d felt robbed when he’d seen it working in the window of a bakery. Ever since he’d seen that he’d doubted he’d ever find a place where he mattered at all. As far as he could see all the really great stuff had already been invented by someone else.

  There was a world full of cars and buses and trucks and machines that tore up streets and made them. There wasn’t a single thing worth inventing he could think of that someone else hadn’t already invented.

  Tarslick had in fact been a crash course about the world outside his small village. Of course, most of what he’d learned he wished he still didn’t know. And he now had many things to add to the ever-growing list of things he wasn’t any good at.

  “Maybe I should have eaten something before I left the city. Not in the inn, though, because I’m pretty sure they all wanted to kill me. I still have no idea why,” He thought about it for a minute. “Maybe tinkerer means something different to them.”

  His stomach made an unhappy noise which fit his mood. “So stupid. A city full of places to buy food and I walk right out of it without so much as a sandwich. Now I’m starving and there is nothing to eat, except…” On the other side of the hedge he was walking beside was field after field of turnips. From the look of them he knew it was close to harvest time. “Surely no one would begrudge a hungry traveler a few turnips.”

  Duncan looked around quickly to make sure no one was coming down the road and that no one was in the field to see him. He took off his pack, set it on the ground, got down on all fours and reached through the hedge. He felt around till he found something that felt right, then he grabbed hold and gave it a tug.

  When it didn’t give he crawled through the hedge to see what the problem was. He looked from the odd-looking blue thing in his hand up and up at the most frightening thing he’d seen yet.

  He screamed before he had a chance to think about it and the thing screamed back. He cringed.

  Standing above him was a creature over seven feet tall. Mostly blue except for its white chest and belly, and white tips on its cheek fringes and the tip of its pointed ears. Its long legs, arms, and slender body were covered in scales, and sharp claws tipped its fingers and toes.

  Worst of all, its huge mouth was full of razor-sharp teeth.

  Duncan looked at what he had in his hand and realized with a lump in his throat that it was the tip of the dragon’s tail.

  He scream
ed again.

  The dragon screamed right back.

  “Ah…I…I was trying to get a turnip,” he said with a gulp.

  “Well then you really have made a huge mistake. That’s my tail,” the dragon said.

  “Yes I see, and I’m very sorry,” Duncan said. The dragon cleared his throat and looked at his tail where Duncan still held it. “Ah…sorry. I’ll just put this right back where I found it.” He laughed nervously, dusted the dragon’s tail off, and then gently set it on the ground. “Well, I better be going now.” He turned and started to crawl back through the hedge.

  “Nonsense,” the dragon said, grabbing Duncan by the arm with his tail and dragging him back. “Help yourself to some turnips. Heavens know there are plenty. Mind you, it’s not dragon’s tail, but that’s probably tough and full of fat anyway.” The dragon laughed at his own joke, showing off that mouth full of razor sharp teeth. Yet suddenly Duncan no longer felt he was about to be eaten.

  Duncan got slowly to his feet then carefully took his sword off his back. When he did the dragon lifted an eyebrow. Duncan gave him a nervous shrug and then started using his sword to dig up some turnips. He reached back through the hedge, grabbed his pack and started stuffing the turnips into his bundle. “I must say this is awfully nice of you, dragon.”

  “Think nothing of it. Name’s Mallory and you are?”

  “Duncan. And thanks again, Mallory. I was getting a little hungry.”

  “Don’t mention it. I’m a giver. It’s what I do.”

  Duncan had just finished stuffing his pack as full as he could get it when an angry human woman wielding a cross bow ran into the field. “You ruffians had best get out of my turnip patch!”

  Mallory smiled at him. “Of course it’s always easiest to give away things that aren’t yours.” He made a mad dash for the hedge, tearing through it. Leaves went everywhere. Duncan ran through the curtain of hedge debris following the dragon as the first of the crossbow bolts whizzed past his head.

  “You better run!” she screamed after them, “or I’ll make a rug out of you, human, and use that dragon for a furnace!”

  Mallory had both fists full of turnips, holding them by the green tops, and as he ran the bulbs on the bottom seemed to dance. Mallory turned and said over his shoulder, “Who does she think she’s kidding? I’d make a lousy furnace.”

  They ran till they were well clear of the woman and her crossbow bolts of farming fury and then they both stopped to catch their breath.

  Duncan suddenly started to laugh in between gasps for breath.

  “What’s so funny?” Mallory asked, a hint of laughter in his own voice.

  “Well back there I really thought you were going to eat me. Then who tries to kill me? Another human.”

  “Eat you!” The dragon cringed at the thought. “Revolting! I’m a vegetarian. Eat you indeed. What would that do to my cholesterol level?”

  “What! You’re kidding me! A vegetarian dragon?” He started to laugh even harder.

  Mallory seemed something less than amused. “Yes. Laugh it up, chuckles. My father thought it was quite funny as well. Well, maybe not so much funny as disgraceful. Of course, according to father dearest, every single thing I did brought shame to him and the family name.”

  Mallory started walking down the road and Duncan followed.

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you. Mostly I was laughing at myself. Man, the world sure isn’t what I thought it was.” The human fell into step beside the dragon. “I never got along with my father, either. I, too, was always just a huge disgrace. Nothing I ever did was right. He wanted me to be a great warrior and die like all my brothers, but my heart just wasn’t in it—especially not the dying part.”

  Mallory looked down at him and smiled. “So, did you just leave the scum-sucking city of Tarslick, too?”

  Duncan sighed. “Yes. It seems like everywhere I go they either want to kill me outright or run me off.” Then he told Mallory about all the problems he’d had in Tarslick finishing with his job as a stripper. That made Mallory laugh. “And when I told the employment lady that I was a tinkerer.…”

  Mallory laughed louder, getting almost hysterical. “Oh, you didn’t!”

  “Why is that such a bad thing? Does it mean something different here?”

  “It means exactly the same thing, I’m sure. My friend, no one likes a tinkerer.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Duncan shrugged.

  “A tinkerer is always screwing something up because he doesn’t really know how to do anything. He guesses at how stuff is supposed to work and tries to ‘fix’ it accordingly and usually winds up ruining whatever it was.

  “Everyone has had something expensive or something that they really cared about ruined by an uncle, aunt or cousin who swore they could fix it. You might as well have declared to the world that you were a murderer or a tax collector. On most of Overlap tinkerers are despised.”

  “But I really am good at fixing things and building things and…”

  “That’s great and very useful I’m sure, but never tell anyone you’re a tinkerer. Say instead that you are a skilled, trained, fully-licensed and warranted professional.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “Why not? Because you didn’t go to school or pay for some piece of paper? Listen, just as many professionals ruin things as tinkerers do, but do you know what the difference is?”

  “Not really,” the self-professed tinkerer said with confusion.

  “The difference is that if I let a tinkerer work on say my TV and it no longer works, then I have to say to myself, ‘I should have known better than to let anyone but a trained professional work on my TV.’ But if I hire a trained professional to work on my TV and he charges me a bunch of money and he still doesn’t fix it, then I get to say to myself, ‘Well I guess it just couldn’t be fixed if a trained professional couldn’t fix it.’”

  “But…that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No it really doesn’t. Welcome to the real world. Remember this, Duncan. No one ever wants to admit that they are wrong about anything, so they’re always looking for someone else to blame things on. You never want to be that person.”

  “Let me get this straight. People would rather pay some guy who says he’s a trained professional…”

  “Especially if he has a piece of paper to prove it,” Mallory interjected, waving a claw in the air flamboyantly.

  “…to not fix their TV—whatever that is—than have their uncle work on it for free and not fix it.”

  “To-zactly.”

  “It still doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “And if you’re very lucky it never will.”

  “Why’d you leave the city?” Duncan asked after a few moments of confusion. He wondered how someone like Mallory could fit in anywhere.

  “Ah…I’ve always found it best not to stick in one place very long. It’s better to keep moving. It helps keep things from getting stagnant.”

  “That’s funny. I’ve found it’s best to keep moving as well. Makes you a harder target.”

  Chapter Four

  He really wasn’t much to look at. Probably handsome enough by human standards, Duncan was big and all arms and legs. His skin was a pinkish-brownish color. He had nice, brown eyes, a nose that was biggish for his face, and black hair that looked like someone had stuck a bowl on his head and trimmed around the edges.

  Frankly, in Mallory’s eyes the human was ugly as sin, but he couldn’t help that, and after all, Mallory was enjoying his company. The truth was, the dragon had been mostly alone since he’d run away from home, and it was good to have someone to talk to that wasn’t running from him screaming, “God, please save me! Don’t let it kill me!”

  They had walked along talking till it was almost dark, then they’d decided to build a camp together without any real discussion.

  “I don’t usually get this far off the road,” the human, sa
id following him.

  “Then you’re lucky highwaymen haven’t beaten and robbed you yet.”

  “Highwaymen?”

  “Robbers who travel the roads looking for idgits like us to roll for coin.”

  “Isn’t there any place on this whole world where there isn’t any trouble?”

  Mallory laughed. “Not even over the rainbow, my friend.”

  They both gathered wood, and then as Duncan was dragging out his flint and steel to light the fire, Mallory said, “Allow me.” He breathed just enough fire into the wood to get a nice blaze started.

  “Wow! I’m impressed,” man-boy said.

  “As well you should be. It’s quite a trick.” Mallory picked up one of the turnips he’d dropped on the ground and started rubbing it on his scales to clean it. He held it out and spun it around. Deeming it clean he enough ate it, top and all, in two bites. Then he started on another one. He was hungry. He watched his camping companion peel a turnip with his knife. skewer it with his sword and hold it over the fire to cook it.

  “So, the vegetarian thing, is that why you ran away from home?” Duncan asked.

  “No, no. Nothing as simple as that. No, the big falling-out was over my failure in the family business.”

  “Terrorizing villagers?” Duncan guessed.

  “Please. Like I couldn’t terrorize me some villagers if I took a mind to. No, we were accountants and financial advisors. Boring, right? But believe it or not, on most of Overlap, dragons are as well known for their financial prowess as they are for their terrorizing of villagers.

  “Of course there are now just scores of back-to-our-beginnings freaks who scream that we’ve forgotten our ancestral ways, yada, yada, yada. You know how elders are always going on about the good old days? You know, the days when you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a village that some dragon or other had sacked. ”

  “Do I ever. So what happened?”

  That was a very good question. The truth was Mallory just wasn’t up for an office-dress-code kind of life. In fact, if given only the two choices, he would have rather burned villages. And he had no desire to do that, either.