The Last Dream

by Gordon R. Dickson

  The day faded. A dank mist came rolling in from the sea and fled in little wisps and tatters across the plain of battle. Jim’s body ached and slowed, and his wings felt leaden. But the ever-grinning face and sweeping club of the ogre seemed neither to weaken nor to tire. Jim drew back for a moment to catch his breath; and in that second, he heard a voice cry out.

  “Time is short!” it cried, in cracked tones. “We are running out of time. The day is nearly gone!”

  It was the voice of Carolinus. Jim had never heard him raise it before with just such a desperate accent. And even as Jim identified the voice, he realized that it came clearly to his ears—and that for sometime now upon the battlefield, except for the ogre and himself, there had been silence.

  He shook his head to clear it and risked a quick glance about him. He had been driven back almost to the neck of the Causeway itself, where it entered onto the plain. To one side of him, the snapped strands of Clarivaux’s bridle dangled limply where the terrified horse had broken loose from the earth-thrust spear to which Nevile-Smythe had tethered it before advancing against the Worm on foot. A little off from it stood Carolinus, upheld now only by his staff, his old face shrunken and almost mummified in appearance, as if the life had been all but drained from it. There was nowhere else to retreat to; and Jim was alone.

  He turned back his gaze to see the ogre almost upon him. The heavy club swung high, looking gray and enormous in the mist. Jim felt in his limbs and wings a weakness that would not let him dodge in time; and, with all his strength, he gathered himself, and sprang instead, up under the monster’s guard and inside the grasp of those cannon-thick arms.

  The club glanced off Jim’s spine. He felt the arms go around him, the double triad of bone-thick fingers searching for his neck. He was caught, but his rush had knocked the ogre off his feet. Together they went over and rolled on the sandy earth, the ogre gnawing with his jagged teeth at Jim’s chest and striving to break a spine or twist a neck, while Jim’s tail lashed futilely about.

  They rolled against the spear and snapped it in half. The ogre found its hold and Jim felt his neck begin to be slowly twisted, as if it were a chicken’s neck being wrung in slow motion. A wild despair flooded through him. He had been warned by Smrgol never to let the ogre get him pinned. He had disregarded that advice and now he was lost, the battle was lost. Stay away, Smrgol had warned, use your brains…

  The hope of a wild chance sprang suddenly to life in him. His head was twisted back over his shoulder. He could see only the gray mist above him, but he stopped fighting the ogre and groped about with both forelimbs. For a slow moment of eternity, he felt nothing, and then something hard nudged against his right foreclaw, a glint of bright metal flashed for a second before his eyes. He changed his grip on what he held, clamping down on it as firmly as his clumsy foreclaws would allow—

  —and with every ounce of strength that was left to him, he drove the fore-part of the broken spear deep into the middle of the ogre that sprawled above him.

  The great body bucked and shuddered. A wild scream burst from the idiot mouth alongside Jim’s ear. The ogre let go, staggered back and up, tottering to its feet, looming like the Tower itself above him. Again, the ogre screamed, staggering about like a drunken man, fumbling at the shaft of the spear sticking from him. It jerked at the shaft, screamed again, and, lowering its unnatural head, bit at the wood like a wounded animal. The tough ash splintered between its teeth. It screamed once more and fell to its knees. Then slowly, like a bad actor in an old-fashioned movie, it went over on its side, and drew up its legs like a man with the cramp. A final scream was drowned in bubbling. Black blood trickled from its mouth and it lay still.

  Jim crawled slowly to his feet and looked about him.

  The mists were drawing back from the plain and the first thin light of late afternoon stretching long across the slope. In its rusty illumination, Jim made out what was to be seen there.

  The Worm was dead, literally hacked in two. Nevile-Smythe, in bloody, dinted armor, leaned wearily on a twisted sword not more than a few feet off from Carolinus. A little farther off, Secoh raised a torn neck and head above the intertwined, locked-together bodies of Anark and Smrgol. He stared dazedly at Jim. Jim moved slowly, painfully over to the mere-dragon.

  Jim came up and looked down at the two big dragons. Smrgol lay with his eyes closed and his jaws locked in Anark’s throat. The neck of the younger dragon had been broken like the stem of a weed.

  “Smrgol…” croaked Jim.

  “No—” gasped Secoh. “No good. He’s gone… I led the other one to him. He got his grip—and then he never let go…” The mere-dragon choked and lowered his head.

  “He fought well,” creaked a strange harsh voice which Jim did not at first recognize. He turned and saw the Knight standing at his shoulder. Nevile-Smythe’s face was white as sea-foam inside his helmet and the flesh of it seemed fallen in to the bones, like an old man’s. He swayed as he stood.

  “We have won,” said Carolinus, solemnly, coming up with the aid of his staff. “Not again in our lifetimes will evil gather enough strength in this spot to break out.” He looked at Jim. “And now,” he said, “the balance of Chance and History inclines in your favor. It’s time to send you back.”

  “Back?” said Nevile-Smythe.

  “Back to his own land, Knight,” replied the magician. “Fear not, the dragon left in this body of his will remember all that happened and be your friend.”

  “Fear!” said Nevile-Smythe, somehow digging up a final spark of energy to expend on hauteur. “I fear no dragon, dammit. Besides, in respect to the old boy here”—he nodded at the dead Smrgol—“I’m going to see what can be done about this dragon-alliance business.”

  “He was great!” burst out Secoh, suddenly, almost with a sob. “He—he made me strong again. Whatever he wanted, I’ll do it.” And the mere-dragon bowed his head.

  “You come along with me then, to vouch for the dragon end of it,” said Nevile-Smythe. “Well,” he turned to Jim, “it’s goodbye, I suppose, Sir James.”

  “I suppose so,” said Jim. “Goodbye to you, too, I—” Suddenly he remembered.

  “Angie!” he cried out, spinning around. “I’ve got to go get Angie out of that Tower!”

  Carolinus put his staff out to halt Jim.

  “Wait,” he said. “Listen…”

  “Listen?” echoed Jim. But just at that moment, he heard it, a woman’s voice calling, high and clear, from the mists that still hid the Tower.

  “Jim! Jim, where are you?”

  A slight figure emerged from the mist, running down the slope toward them.

  “Here I am!” bellowed Jim. And for once he was glad of the capabilities of his dragon-voice. “Here I am, Angie—”

  —but Carolinus was chanting in a strange, singing voice, words without meaning, but which seemed to shake the very air about them. The mist swirled, the world rocked and swung. Jim and Angie were caught up, were swirled about, were spun away and away down an echoing corridor of nothingness…

  … and then they were back in the Grille, seated together on one side of the table in the booth. Hanson, across from them, was goggling like a bewildered accident victim.

  “Where—where am I?” he stammered. His eyes suddenly focused on them across the table and he gave a startled croak. “Help!” he cried, huddling away from them. “Humans!”

  “What did you expect?” snapped Jim. “Dragons?”

  “No!” shrieked Hanson. “Watch-beetles—like me!” And, turning about, he tried desperately to burrow his way through the wood seat of the booth to safety.

  It was the next day after that Jim and Angie stood in the third floor corridor of Chumley Hall, outside the door leading to the office of the English Department.

  “Well, are you going in or aren’t you?” demanded Angie.

  “In a second, in a second,” said Jim, adjusting his tie with nervous fingers. “Just don’t rush me.”

  “Do
you suppose he’s heard about Grottwold?” Angie asked.

  “I doubt it,” said Jim. “The Student Health Service says Hanson’s already starting to come out of it—except that he’ll probably always have a touch of amnesia about the whole afternoon. Angie!” said Jim, turning on her. “Do you suppose, all the time we were there, Hanson was actually being a watch-beetle underground?”

  “I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter,” interrupted Angie, firmly. “Honestly, Jim, now you’ve finally promised to get an answer out of Dr. How-ells about a job, I’d think you’d want to get it over and done with, instead of hesitating like this. I just can’t understand a man who can go about consorting with dragons and fighting ogres and then—”

  “—still not want to put his boss on the spot for a yes-or-no answer,” said Jim. “Hah! Let me tell you something.” He waggled a finger in front of her nose. “Do you know what all this dragon-ogre business actually taught me? It wasn’t not to be scared, either.”

  “All right,” said Angie, with a sigh. “What was it then?”

  “I’ll tell you,” said Jim. “What I found out…” He paused. “What I found out was not, not to be scared. It was that scared or not doesn’t matter; because you just go ahead, anyway.”

  Angie blinked at him.

  “And that,” concluded Jim, “is why I agreed to have it out with Howells, after all. Now you know.”

  He yanked Angie to him, kissed her grimly upon her startled lips, and, letting go of her, turned about. Giving a final jerk to his tie, he turned the knob of the office door, opened it, and strode valiantly within.

  Critics may break butterflies on the wheel, but never dragons.

  The Present State

  Of Igneos Research

  Research—serious research, that is—into the subject of the large igneo-eructidae known familiarly to scholars in the field as “igneos” and to the layman as “dragons,” has always been hampered as much by lack of a place to publish results as by the general skepticism of the public—to say nothing of the skepticism of most present-day biologists and zoologists—concerning the existence of this species. The effect of this has been that efforts to publish in the field have produced activities on the part of the researcher more resembling those of the hero in a late-night spy movie than those of someone engaged in ordinary scholarly investigation. Occasionally, of course, this unorthodox behavior has paid unexpected dividends, as in the discovery of new channels of information, such as the publication in which you are now reading his monograph. True to a long-standing policy of barring nothing from its pages which might be of interest to its admittedly highly-selective readership, Analog has emerged as the one publication of the last several decades which had continuously striven to keep its readers up to date on the latest igneos research.

  Occasionally, we must admit, this information has had to be presented in fictional form, even here. But I need not rehearse examples of excellent information on the igneos, reaching this publication’s readers from highly qualified workers in the field such as Anne McCaffrey and Poul Anderson, to name only two. Having, however, cited this pair, who by their scholarship and renown are hardly in a position to be shaken by any ordinary attack, let us move along to the main topic. For the subject of this particular paper is not the conditions and problems surrounding igneos research, but a fortunate discovery of a piece of invaluable new evidence which bids fair to shine a powerful, valuable—if not revolutionary—light on the whole species.

  This discovery consists of a manuscript that presents an account, in verse, of an encounter between an igneos and a human. It is not, however, merely the account of any random encounter, but details the exact actions of a member of the “Dragon-Runners’ Guild” toward one particular igneos, in accordance with the rules of that Guild. The Dragon-Runners’ Guild is an organization, the existence of which has been long suspected by researchers into the igneos situation. Now, with this manuscript, proof has at last been obtained that the Guild did indeed exist—and may still, in fact, be not only in existence, but in active existence, even in our present era.

  But more of that in a moment. Let us pass on to more solid matters. It is necessary before building conjecture upon fact to give a more precise description of the manuscript, and an account of the information to be deduced from it.

  On first examination the narrative appears to be written in something very like Fourteenth Century Middle English. Closer scrutiny, however, reveals two puzzling inconsistencies. One, the chronicler who wrote it was clearly unused to the making of such chronicles. There are variances within the text that show that it was penned with a good deal of carelessness and little thought beyond that of setting down the immediate information it contained. Second, the language used, while it has some of the tricks of spelling common to Middle English in the period mentioned, also shows a meter and rhyme that is only consistent if the words set down are pronounced as a speaker of Modern English would pronounce them.

  However, tests of the parchment on which the manuscript was written, and the ink used, have proved that neither parchment nor ink were of any more recent vintage than some five hundred years, and possibly much older. This has left only one possible conclusion, by anyone knowledgeable in the igneos field. That is, that while the manuscript had to be written by someone with a modern ear, it was nonetheless written by such a person while he or she was existing in the Fourteenth Century or earlier.

  In short, we must assume that a case of temporal translation (i.e., time-traveling) was involved in the production of this manuscript.

  Startling—even self-contradictory—as this may sound to those unacquainted with the work already done in this field, it is quite consistent with other evidence previously published. Those informed about the igneos will undoubtedly recall Ms. McCaffrey’s references to, and descriptions of, the phenomenon of temporal translation as achieved by these remarkable creatures, in her earlier papers in this publication. It therefore becomes entirely conceivable that the author of this manuscript was originally of our own modern era.

  Once this fact is accepted, the internal evidence of the manuscript delivers up that information which I have—and I believe justly—referred to as revolutionary. For centuries researchers have puzzled over what actually extinguished the race of the igneos. Naturally, among knowledgeable scholars, the mistaken folk-tale notion that the igneos were evil creatures destroyed by human heroes— the “St. George and the Dragon” legend, for example—has long been recognized for the cruel distortion of fact that it is. I, myself, have had a few words to say on this matter in another publication, some seventeen years ago (“St. Dragon and the George,” Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1957); and the georgists, I am confident, are a dying breed. For some centuries we in the field have been convinced that igneos-nature was just the opposite of evil; although it is only for the first time, in this manuscript, that we have documentary proof of the fact—documentary proof provided by a human writer.

  I refer you to stanza twenty-four, lines one and two, of the manuscript:

  “Ye whole world knowes—despyte hys fercer parte. How ech Dragon wythin ha the noble herte…“

  The important information here lies in the words “… hathe noble herte.” As I say, anyone expert in the field has long suspected this to be true. But we must ask ourselves, since igneos were noble-hearted, and known by humans to be so, how did canards like the St. George and the Dragon legend get started?

  I believe the answer to that can be given simply, in one word. Guilt. As internal evidence in this manuscript makes clear, humans were indeed responsible for the disappearance of the igneos from among us; but not by force of arms. Rather by neglect and inattention, a treatment these noble-hearted creatures could not endure.

  As a careful examination of the manuscript will show, a close association between man and igneos was originally considered not merely advantageous, but necessary to the igneos. Observe that the story set down in these lines is that of an igneo
s revived from a poor state of health by a human. Lacking such human association previously, the igneos Shagoth, as it is noted near the beginning of the poem, has become “fatte” and “styffe,” with a temper that “wasse notte gude.” He has, in fact, become so debilitated as to lose his natural ability to fly.

  Contrast this condition with the accounts of the same igneos, further on in the poem after he has been contacted and exercised by a comparably noble-hearted human—the Prentice (later Knight, still later Baron) Morlet:

  “… Above ye rockye strande and cruel sea, SHAGOTH bete upward, lyght as fethers bee; Swoopynge and makynge Turnes Immeleman, And Loope-ve-Loopes, all suche as Dragon canne…”

  Note, also, how it is later remarked that the now-slim igneos continues to “ronne” and lift “hevie weightes to keepe hym trim” although Morlet, in person, has already parted with him. Above all, note the extremely important lines emphasizing that, as a result of Shagoth keeping up these activities, “all other Dragones envie hym…” (!)

  To the trained professional eye, lines and line-fragments such as these fit together to make certain unmistakable statements. Shagoth is not just one igneos, left to lead a solitary existence—but all igneos in such condition of human neglect. Morlet is not merely one human, but representative of a whole class of humans who have always concerned themselves with the welfare of the igneos. And the message, in brief, is plain. Igneos require human contact and assistance for their existence in this world. A lack of such contact in recent centuries was obviously a primary reason for their disappearance from among us.