VMR Theory

by Robert Frezza

  But it was too late. Bucky banked his dragon hard, lit his pilot light, and dove at the Macdonalds. Cheeves went after him. Because they knew where we were going and I didn’t, I went after them, and the rest of the dragons followed, fat, dumb, and happy.

  A few of the Macdonalds noticed a shadow like a very pregnant cross and looked up as Bucky dipped low overhead. Suddenly cognizant of the terrible danger that somebody around here was in, they began shouting.

  Cheeves attempted a final appeal, “Your majesty, this is most unseemly—” Unfortunately—pardon me for phrasing it this way—Bucky was fired up.

  “Tally-ho! Bum, baby, burn!” He leveled out twenty meters over the courtyard and slapped his dragon in a sensitive spot between the shoulder blades. As his dragon’s sphincter muscles contracted, a jet of blue flame appeared from his mount’s posterior. Unfortunately, the Macdonalds were wearing flame-resistant uniforms, so the gout of fire the beast produced was awe-inspiring, but totally harmless.

  When Cheeves and I and the other dragons arrived a couple of seconds later, Mordred’s troopers were over their initial fright and pointing their rifles our way. As they opened fire I noticed they had red, green, and yellow tracers mixed in with their basic ammunition loads.

  I found myself wishing I’d brought my camera. I also found myself wishing I’d brought my flak jacket. It was a Kevlar moment.

  Big Susie did not like being shot at. After the first slugs came ripping past, I became aware that I was riding the only white dragon on IPlixxi*. A mob of dragons, now fully awake and equally terrified, wheeled frantically to port and starboard.

  “Nice Susie,” I muttered, wondering if this was how General Custer got his start. “Good Susie.” I concentrated on empathizing the concept “evasive maneuvers.” Responding to my feelings and her own, Susie began doing barrel rolls. Dragons are nervous creatures, and so am I, which meant that 1 lost my lunch over the starboard wing about the same time that Susie and fifteen of her colleagues lost their dinners farther aft. It was like having sixteen elephant-sized pigeons over a newly washed car.

  The Macdonald soldiers trapped in the deluge never had a chance. They began ripping their clothes off.

  “Dragons are not terribly cost-effective,” Cheeves remarked. “We have to assign workmen to follow them around with shovels. The peasants rather enjoy filing damage claims.”

  A few seconds later 1 saw a partially white undershirt go up on a stick. If I’d had one on me, I’d have done the same.

  A crowd of servitors poured out of the castle and surrounded the besieged Macdonalds, handing them towels in exchange for their rifles. Cheeves landed his dragon gracefully on the grass to take a call on his portable telephone. Susie and I did a belly flop on the lawn.

  As I unhitched myself and rolled into the shrubbery, Mordred came over, unbuckling his sword belt. “Mr. MacKay, I surrender.” He thrust his sword into my hands, which was a nice gesture because the way I felt, it would have taken me a week to find it.

  “Okay. You’re my prisoner.”

  “Now protect me from my former soldiers.”

  “Sure. Just let me rest here a minute.” I opened one eye and looked at the sword in my hands. “Nice pig-sticker.”

  “Heirloom,” Mordred assured me. “Look at the watered steel, beaten and folded over itself ten thousand times. Those Koreans sure do good work.”

  “Uh, right.” I ignored the flip-flops my stomach was doing and used the sword to totter to my feet, which was a mistake because Susie, still terrified, tried to crawl into my jumpsuit to hide. After we straightened this out, I looked at Mordred. “When you landed at the spaceport, did you see my crew?”

  Mordred dabbed ineffectually at the brown spots on his gaudy generalissimo’s tunic with a handkerchief and winked. “There is an etiquette to this sort of thing. As your prisoner, I can only be made to divulge name, rank, and serial number.”

  Cheeves, by now nearly buried under an armload of rifles and ammunition pouches, nodded almost imperceptibly.

  I grasped the sword by the handle and swished it around a bit. “You know, there used to be a special way to test the edge on one of these things.”

  “I suppose one shouldn’t always stand on ceremony,” Mordred said hastily. “We captured your crew when we seized the spaceport. That Lindquist woman really is rather vicious. You should try to do something about her. Anyway, Gregorio wanted them for something or other, so we diced for them and I had infernally bad luck. There is a Macdonald female named Trixie aboard my shuttle, but Gregorio has the rest.”

  “Where did he take them?” I was tempted to grasp Mordred by the lapels and shake him, but standing upwind of him, I thought better of the impulse.

  Mordred twirled his whiskers. “Hmrn. I can’t think where he’d have gone, unless, of course, he went to his estate on Medamothi Island. He has a little place on the volcano there. Actually, it’s a little place inside the volcano there.”

  “He built a house inside a volcano?”

  “Well, why not? You humans built the city of Los Angeles on top of several major earthquake fault lines.” “Yes, but that was to get people who would want to be Los Angelinos to move there so we could wipe them off the welfare rolls once every century or so.”

  By now the rest of the dragons had landed, and most of them looked like they could have used a stiff drink.

  I saw Trixie hop out of the shuttle. As she ran over to us and a couple of servitors arrived to take Mordred off my hands, I asked Cheeves, “What’s the situation on the rest of the planet?”

  “We appear to have captured the first battalion of the Klo’klotixag Footguard, as well as Mordred’s command group, Minister Ken.” Cheeves’s beeper sounded again, and he paused to shut it off. “The remaining soldiers landed appear to be garrison troops of noticeably low morale. Our citizens have been purchasing their weapons from them and, ahem, engaging them in games of chance. Matters appear to be under control.”

  “Can I borrow a dragon to get out to Medamothi Island? Smith has my crew and I need to rescue them.” I realized what I’d just said when Susie came over and licked my face again.

  “Why don’t you take one of Mordred’s shuttles?” Cheeves suggested. “I would not expect the warships to lire upon it, and I imagine that it has navigational aids built in.”

  “Good idea, but how am I going to find Smith’s hiding place when I get there?”

  “I could go wit’ you,” Trixie volunteered. “I am very good at finding t’ings in shopping malls.”

  Having finished basking in success, Bucky finally wandered over. “Friend Ken, I must say that was an absolutely smashing victory! You have fully vindicated yourself as defense minister, although demi-brother Mordred did complain to me that the tactics you employed were unfair.”

  Before Bucky had a chance to suggest whipping out the old accordion for an impromptu victory celebration, Cheeves interrupted. “Your majesty, Defense Minister Ken needs to be off to deal with the miscreant Smith and rescue members of his crew.”

  “Oh, right!” Bucky squinted up at me. “Medamothi Island—did I hear you say you were going there? That’s rather rugged terrain. Are you sure you’re dressed for the occasion? We still have some clothing of yours in the palace, you know.”

  My Elvis garb was somewhat the worse for wear, so I accepted one of the cleaner rifles from Cheeves and went inside to slather myself in SP 400 sunscreen and change into boots, breeches, a brown leather jacket, and one of those floppy bush hats that Indiana clones wear. Cheeves found Trixie some Rodent clothes to change into, and I gave her the bull whip to carry.

  “Very nice, Ken’s hat especially,” Bucky said, admiring the two of us, “but shouldn’t you wear disguises?” He felt around in his waistcoat pockets and produced a false nose and mustache attached to a pair of black eyeglasses.

  “Perhaps not, your majesty,” Cheeves recommended tactfully.

  The Thrilling Denouement

  Moments later Trixie and
I were airborne, with a very nice picnic luncheon, searching for Smith’s hideout. In between helpings of Daube Avignonnaise, Lobster au Cognac, and Blanquette de Veau, we flew over, successively, the Moist Sea, the Wet Sea, and the Watery Sea. When it comes to place names, Rodents can be surprisingly unenterprising.

  “I did not t’ink t’at vampires could eat meat. Won’t t’is rich food make you sick?” Trixie asked, spooning up the last of the Gateau Saint-Honore.

  I lifted my head from scanning the islands of the Watery Sea, which were strung like jewels beneath us. “It’s worth it.”

  She used an elegant cloth napkin to wipe her mouth. “Why would tee Plixxi allow Smith to buy a whole island on t’eir planet?”

  “Plixxi don’t swim or use seagoing ships much, and they prefer to settle places where they can burrow, so most of their islands aren’t inhabited. They were probably happy to sell one to Smith.”

  “Some of t’ese islands look awfully familiar.” “According to the navigational aid, we have about another twenty minutes, so sit back and relax.”

  “Are you sure we are not lost? We could stop and ask directions.”

  “I know what I’m doing, and we’re not lost.”

  “Oh, look,” she said, pointing at the viewscreen. “A volcano!”

  “Cheap, lousy navigation aids,” I muttered.

  “Did you say somet’ing?”

  “I said, We’ll have to land the shuttle and walk the rest of the way.”

  We found a patch of firm sand to set down. We’d come about seven time zones worth, and vamps are terribly prone to jet lag, but sheer mental toughness and memory of that lovely Lobster au Cognac pulled me through.

  Originally, I’d intended to wait until dark to make my move, but a look at the dark, brooding clouds hiding the sun overhead convinced me that we could do it.

  We got out, split up the water and truffles au chocolate to carry, and walked through a bleak and barren land to the volcano’s base. A sign with a large arrow on it said to the dark tower. Crossing over a rusty iron bridge spanning an abyss—Trixie tossed a coin over the edge for luck—we then passed between two smoking chasms to a long sloping causeway that wound its way up the mountainside.

  The trip up the side of the volcano seemed to take us hours. In places, the path paved with broken rubble and beaten ash had crumbled away or was crossed by gaping rents. Animals had used it, so there were other hazards when we put our feet down. Saving our truffles au chocolate for emergencies, we stopped to snack on some iPlixxi* waybread. !Plixxi* waybread is a fancy name for hardtack, which has the marvelous property of tasting the same whether or not it’s stale. I think I chipped a tooth.

  The path carried us up the east face of the mountain before it bent backward at a sharp angle and swung us around to the west. “Darn,” I puffed as we passed through a deep cut in a crag of weathered stone long ago vomited from the mountain’s burning interior. “I’m getting winded.”

  “It is just a little fart’er,” Trixie said.

  The path bent again with a last eastward course, and near the reeking summit, we came to a dark entrance. The sun, piercing through the smoke and haze for a moment, burned ominously, a dull, dreary red disk above us. The mountain waited, silent, folded in shadows. “I don’t see any tower,” Trixie said accusingly. “Did you bring tee street address?”

  I stuck my head inside. “Hello? Is anybody home?” Trixie flicked on the flashlight that Cheeves had handed her, but it was cold and pale in her trembling hand and cast little light into the stifling blackness.

  “Dam.” I took a few uncertain steps into the dark. “I wish we’d brought fresh batteries.”

  The entrance led us into a long tunnel bored into the heart of the mountain. “Lava tube,” Trixie commented knowingly.

  A short way ahead, the cavern floor and the walls on either side were rent by a great fissure. A red glare came leaping up, to die back again, and we were troubled by a rumbling noise from the depths of the earth below.

  “T’ey should put down some carpeting, maybe a warm color to brighten tee place up.” Trixie dropped the kit bag holding her share of the truffles and pointed to a gaping gate of steel and adamant in the wall to our left. “I see an entrance.”

  I pounded her on the back. “Hot dog! This must be it!” Past the gate, the cavern was filled with heat and red light. Rising up toward a ceiling hidden in the blackness above us stood tall pillars of black iron covered in graffiti like “This way to the diamonds!” and “Frodo lives!” From the cracks in the stone beneath our feet, we could hear the unearthly wailing of a punk rock band. I checked the magazine of the rifle Cheeves had taken from one of the Macdonalds and handed it to Trixie. “Smith must be around here somewhere. Hide behind these pillars. I’ll flush him out. When you see him, plug him. Okay?”

  She nodded, brave, but obviously frightened.

  I patted her on the shoulder. Walking around a couple of immeasurable pits and a chasm or two, I saw an eerie light and heard a familiar voice humming “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”

  I spotted Smith just ahead of me, dumping some papers into a fiery crack from a beat-up old box labeled Cox & Co., Charing Cross, London in Victorian script. He was wearing a red jumpsuit. Beside him were two glowing braziers which periodically erupted in gouts of oily smoke, and a swimming pool filled with mounds of cash. There were a couple of skeletons propped up in the comer, although one of them still had the “Made in Taiwan” label tied to the toe.

  Smith winked at me. “Hello, MacKay. I’ve been expecting you. Nice hat. Did you do something to your hand?”

  “Never mind.” Curiosity got the better of me. “What’s going on here?”

  “I was just cleaning up some old loose ends.” Smith dumped the remaining contents of the box into the fire. He also tossed in a bloody glove, a diagram labeled “Grassy Knoll, and about eighteen and a half minutes of old audio tape.” He dusted off his hands. “Then I plan to take a roll in the clover.” He gestured toward the money in the swimming pool. “I was a banker once, you know. You wouldn’t believe the things that bankers do with money when they’re alone.”

  A little hunchback wearing a checkered suit, a red bow tie, and wingtip shoes came sidling into the room from a hole in the floor. He had red lips and slicked-down hair, and he was unnaturally pale. In the flickering light the lopsided expression on his face made him look like a rabid weasel. “Master, master, the prisoners are ready for you!”

  “Thank you, Coleman. I’ll be down presently,” Smith replied, dismissing him.

  I gestured. “What’s with little Igor, Gregorio? Are you auditioning for Richard HIT

  Smith smiled indulgently and turned his head. “Oh, and Coleman?”

  “Yes, master?”

  “Please move your bicycle out of here. We have company.”

  “Yes, master!!”

  “And don’t ring the bell.”

  “Yes, master!”

  As the little dweeb scuttled off pushing his twowheeler, Smith explained, “Coleman is my accountant. Torturing prisoners is just sort of a fringe benefit for him. I suppose I could afford to let him go, but one must keep up appearances. So what brings you here to my humble abode?”

  “Yeti’ve got my crew, Smith. I want them!”

  “Tell me,” Smith chuckled, “did you recruit them all from the same institution? Harry is the one that interests me. He’s brain-dead, isn’t he? What do you use to make him move, little wires?”

  “I’m serious, Gregorio. Read my lips—let my crew go.”

  He stared at me. “You are serious. You actually want them back.” He tugged on his mustache. “I was thinking about keeping Harry for research—you wouldn’t happen to be running any experiments on him, would you?” “Knock it off, Smith.”

  “You’re becoming tiresome.”

  “Face it—the party’s over. Your Macdonald assault battalions have been routed, and Mordred’s turned himself in. So it’s time to stop whatever it is you’re d
oing and give it up.” I paused. “What are you doing?”

  “Preparing to move on to the next phase of my little plan. It’s a shame about Mordred. He was such a handy tool.” Gregorio reached down, opened up his briefcase and began rummaging through it. “Now, the next step is to do something about you. You’re a vampire, aren’t you?”

  “We prefer to refer to it as McLendon’s Syndrome.” “And I prefer to be called an entrepreneur. Let me just see what I have here in the way of nifty vampire banes. Ah, here we go!” He held up an item. “A cross!”

  I folded my arms. “Nope. I’ve been to confession, and my conscience is clean.”

  “Pity. How about silver?” He held up two ingots of the stuff.

  “Sorry. It didn’t work for William Jennings Bryan, either.”

  He put the silver down and rubbed his hands together. “Well well well. How about a nice string of garlic, then?”

  The garlic worked. Between you and me, it’s difficult to be suave, sophisticated, and slightly sinister when you’re throwing up uncontrollably.

  I wiped some of the tears from my eyes. “All right, Smith, why don’t you give up?” I practiced a few more dry heaves. “I’m still on my feet, and you’ve taken your best shot.”

  “Not quite. Not yet, at least. I have one more item here, one you may recognize.” He reached into his bag and produced a large handgun. “This is a .55 Magnum, the—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know—the most powerful handgun ever produced.” I tapped my chest. “I’m a vamp, remember? You need silver bullets to hurt me.”

  Smith strewed up his face and stared at me. “Ah, MacKay—”

  “Yeah?”

  “You don’t actually believe that crap, do you?”

  “Well, not really.” I stared at the pistol. “This doesn’t look good.”

  “It shouldn’t. I have Lindquist and the rest of your crew, and now I’ve got you.”

  “Look, Smith, keep the girl and let me go.” I paused. “That didn’t quite come out right, but you know what I mean.”

  “True. But now that I have the drop on you, I think we can come to an understanding. You may be surprised to learn that I’ve actually thought of a way I can use you.”