by Hogan, James
A moment of silence dragged by. Then the captain's voice came from inside the
ship. "Ship One to Surface One. It doesn't seem to be an attack. In fact I'm not
convinced they even know we're here at all. They started off fast just after
their tail-end-Charlie arrived up front. It looks more like they're trying to
lose that other bunch behind them."
"Surface Two to forward observation post. Do you see evidence of weapons or
hostile intent?"
"Negative, sir."
"We'll sit tight and see," Giraud's voice said. "Hold it for now."
"All units, hold your fire," Wallis instructed.
On the screen of his wristset, Zambendorf followed the progress of the Taloids
coming up the far side of the rise. It was unbelievable— clothed robots sitting
astride four-legged, galloping machines, now only a few hundred yards away.
"Do you see them?" Thirg called as Dornvald glanced back. Thirg was having
enough trouble clinging to the madly heaving mount beneath him as it tackled the
steepening rise, without daring to turn his own head.
"Just coming out onto the flat," Dornvald shouted back. "At least we're on" the
open ground. We should gain more distance now."
"There are heat lights shining from places above us on both sides," Geynor
called from Dornvald's other side.
"I see them."
"What manner of thing shines thus in the desert?"
"Who knows what guards the lair of dragons?"
Dornvald, Thirg, and Geynor reached the top of the rise together with Rex
whirring excitedly a few yards behind, and plunged on over its rounded crest. An
instant later they had crashed to a stunned halt, their mounts rearing and
bucking. The remaining outlaws stopped in confusion behind as they appeared in
ones and twos over the hill.
Before them, towering proudly inside a halo of almost brilliant dragon light,
was the King of Dragons, attended by servants lined up before it in humble
reverence. It was smooth and elongated, and had tapered limbs—much like the
dragon that had appeared over Xerxeon, but far larger. Its eyes shone like fires
of violet, but it made no move as it stood, watching silently. Thirg could do
nothing but stare, dumbfounded, while Dornvald and Geynor gazed at the Dragon
King in wonder. Rex was backing away slowly, and behind them several of the
outlaws had dismounted and fallen to their knees.
Then Thirg realized that one of the dragon's servants was beckoning with both
arms in slow, deliberate movements that seemed to be trying to convey
reassurance. The servants were not robeings as he had first thought, he saw now;
they were of roughly similar shape, but constructed not of metal but some soft,
bendable casing more like artificial organics from artisans' plantations . . .
like children's dolls. What manner, then, of artificial beings were these? Had
the Dragon King manufactured them to attend its needs? If so, what awesome,
unimaginable powers did it command?
The servant beckoned again. For a few seconds longer, Thirg hesitated. Then he
realized the futility of even thinking to disobey; who could hope to defy the
wishes of one with such powers? Without quite realizing what he was doing, Thirg
urged his mount forward once more at a slow walk and entered the circle of
violet radiance. Nothing terrible happened, and after exchanging apprehensive
glances, Dornvald and Geynor followed him. The others watched from farther back,
and one by one found the courage to move forward. Those on the ground rose
slowly. Then Fenyig, who was standing with the rearguard on the top of the rise
behind and looking back anxiously called, "Pray to the dragon to protect us,
Dornvald. The soldiers are below already, and almost upon us."
No sooner had he shouted his warning when the first missile from a
fireball-thrower sailed over the ridge and splattered itself across an ice
boulder. The second hit one of the pack steeds squarely, and the animal fell
screeching with its midbody engulfed in violet flames. On the rise, Fenyig and
his companions scattered amid a hail of projectiles hurled from below, one of
them slumping forward with a corrosive dart protruding from his shoulder. More
balls fell, and one of them ignited something metallic halfway up one of the
overlooking slopes.
"Number two searchlight emplacement hit!" a voice shouted over the radio. "No
casualties."
"Near miss on Yellow Sector. We've got equipment burning from splashes of
incendiary."
Another ball landed just in front of the assembled reception party, which broke
ranks and fell back toward the lander in alarm. "That one almost got the ship!"
a voice yelled.
"Colonel Wallis, engage with maximum force in the approach zone," Giraud
ordered.
"All forward units, fire for effect! Launch gunships and engage enemy below
point three-seven hundred!"
Thirg whirled to look behind as a thundering roar erupted suddenly from below
the rise, mixed with a hail of chattering, loud swishing sounds, and deafening
concussions. More roars came from overhead. He looked up. Two of the small
dragons were climbing; then violet-flaming darts streaked down and out of view,
and an instant later more concussions from beyond the rise jarred his ears. He
had never in his life experienced anything like this. His senses reeled. He sat
frozen, his body and his mind paralyzed by terror.
And then all was quiet. He looked around fearfully. Dornvald and Geynor were
sitting petrified where they had been before the thunder. Farther back, Fenyig
and the rearguard were motionless, staring back down the rise. They seemed
bewildered. Thirg looked at Dornvald. Dornvald shook his head uncomprehendingly,
and after a few more seconds called back, "What terrifies you so, Fenyig? What
has happened?"
At first Thirg thought Fenyig hadn't heard. Then Fenyig turned his head slowly,
raised an arm to point back the way they had come, and answered in an unsteady
voice, "The King's soldiers have been destroyed, Dornvald . . . Every one of the
soldiers is destroyed—torn to pieces and smitten by dragon fire ... in a
moment."
"A storm of lightning bolts!" another, just before Fenyig, choked hoarsely. "We
saw it. The whole of the King's army would have fared no better, nor even
twelve-twelves of armies." He looked at Thirg. "What league have you entered
into, Sorcerer?"
The servants who had retreated to the dragon for protection were advancing
again, and the stunned outlaws were slowly returning to life. More servants were
appearing from concealment on the slopes above— there were more of them than
Thirg had realized. Although still shaken, he was beginning to feel that the
worst was over, as if they had passed a kind of test. For he had seen the
awesome anger of the dragon, and the dragon had spared them. Perhaps, then, only
those foolish enough to provoke its anger had reason to fear it, Thirg thought.
He looked at it again. Still it stood watching calmly, as if nothing had
happened. Had disposing of a whole company of King's soldiers really been so
effortless and insignificant as that?
The other outlaws seemed to be
arriving at similar conclusions. Dornvald had
dismounted and was cautiously leading his mount toward the central group of
servants, and Geynor was following suit a few yards behind. The servants seemed
to be encouraging them with arm motions and gestures. Thirg noticed a movement
just to one side and turned his head with a start to find a servant standing
close below, with another watching from nearby. A feeling of revulsion swept
over him as he glimpsed the grotesque features glowing softly behind the
window-face of the head that was not a head—a deformed parody of a face, molded
into a formless mass that writhed and quivered like the jelly in a craftsman's
culture vat. Luminous jelly held together by flexible casing! Had the Dragon
King made its servants thus as a punishment? Thirg hoped that his thoughts and
feelings didn't show.
Zambendorf gazed up incredulously at the silver-gray colossus staring down at
him from its incongruous seat. It had two oval matrixes that suggested compound
eyes shaded by complicated delicate, extendable metal vanes, a pair of
protruding concave surfaces that were probably soundwave collectors, and more
openings and louvers about its lower face, possibly inlet/outlet ducts for
coolant gas. It had nothing comparable to a mouth, but the region below its
head, which was supported by a neck of multiple, sliding, overlapping joints,
was recessed and contained an array of flaps and covers. The robot was wearing a
brown tunic of coarse material woven from what appeared to be wire, a heavy belt
of black metallic braid, boots of what looked like rubberized canvas, and a
voluminous dull red riding cloak made up of thousands of interlocked, rigid
platelets. Its hands consisted of three fingers and an opposing thumb, all
formed from multisegmented concave claws connected by ball joints at the
finger-bases and wrists. A smaller machine, suggesting in every way a ridiculous
mechanical dog, stayed well back, keeping the steed between itself and the
humans.
What kind of brain the creature contained, Zambendorf didn't know, but he felt
it had to be something beyond any technology even remotely imaginable on Earth.
And yet, paradoxically, the culture of the Taloids showed every appearance of
being backward by Earth standards—medieval, in fact. And everything that
Zambendorf saw now confirmed that conclusion. So what would a medieval mind have
made of the army's recent performance? He examined the robot's face for a hint
of bemusement or terror, but saw nothing he could interpret. The face seemed
incapable of expression.
"I still don't believe this, Karl," Abaquaan's voice whispered in his helmet,
for once sounding genuinely stupefied. "What kind of machines are they? Where
could they have come from?"
Still awestruck, Zambendorf moved a pace forward. "It seems to want to say
something," he murmured distantly without taking his eyes off the robot. "But it
makes no move. Does it fear us. Otto?"
"Wouldn't you, after what just happened to that other bunch?" Abaquaan said,
beginning to sound more normal.
To one side, in an attempt to convey reassurance, Charles Giraud and Konrad
Seltzman, a linguist, were gesticulating at two robots who had dismounted, but
without much apparent success. Maybe the robots hadn't realized that they were
safe from their pursuers—some of them kept looking back, as if they still
thought they were likely to be attacked. Zambendorf thought he could do
something about that. He operated the channel selector on his wristset to
display the view from over the rise being picked up by an image-intensifying
camera in the army's forward observation post, and raised his arm so that the
robot could see the screen. The robot looked at his arm for a second or two,
moved its head to glance at his face, and then studied his arm again. Zambendorf
pointed to the wristset with his other hand.
Why did the servant wear a small vegetable on his arm, and why was he showing
it? Thirg wondered. Perhaps it was an indication of rank or status. No, that
wasn't it; the servant wanted him to look at it. He looked. Shapes were visible
in the square of violet light, faint and difficult to distinguish in the glare.
Thirg adjusted his vision to the nearest he could manage to dragon light and
stared for awhile before he realized what he was seeing. It was a view looking
out over the open ground they had crossed back beyond the rise. Piles of debris
were scattered here and there and lots of buckled and twisted machine parts
spread over a wide area, with violet glows and obscuring patches of smoke
hanging above . . . And then Thirg gasped as he realized what it meant. Now he
understood what devastating powers Fenyig had been trying to describe. In those
few brief seconds . . . and there was nothing left. Then it came to Thirg slowly
that the servant was trying to show how the dragon had helped them.
But what form of magic vegetable was this, that could see through a hillside?
Thirg looked at the servant, and then turned his head several times to look back
at the rise, just to be sure he was not mistaken.
Zambendorf felt a surge of elation. Something that they both recognized as
having meaning had passed between him and the robot. "It understands!" he said
excitedly. "Rudimentary, but it's communication! It's a beginning, Otto!"
"Are you sure?"
"I showed it the scene from over the hill. It understood. It's trying to ask me
to confirm that it's seeing what it thinks it's seeing."
Abaquaan motioned for the robot to climb down from its mount, and after a few
seconds of hesitation it complied. Then it gestured at Zambendorf's wristset
some more, and held up a hand and began pointing at it repeatedly first from the
front and then from the back, and in between pointing back at the rise. "It
can't make it out," Abaquaan said. "It can't figure how the picture could be
coming through solid ground from behind the hill."
The robot was mystified and curious. Suddenly much about it seemed less strange.
Zambendorf could feel himself warming toward it already. "I'm sorry, but how
could I even begin to explain the technology, my friend?" he said. "For now, I'm
afraid, you'll just have to accept it as magic."
"Try getting the idea of a camera across," Abaquaan suggested. "At least it
would say we're not actually looking through the hill from here."
"Mmm . . . maybe." Zambendorf switched the wristset to another channel, this
time showing a view of the lander and its immediate surroundings from the drone
hovering above the landing site.
It took Thirg a while to comprehend that he was looking down on the Dragon King
now. Then it came to him with a jolt that the dots to one side of the dragon
were the dragon-servants and robeings around him; in fact one of them was
himself! He looked at the servant and pointed down at the ground, then up at the
sky. The servant confirmed by mimicking him. Thirg tilted his head back to peer
upward, and after searching for a few seconds made out a pinpoint of violet
light hanging high overhead. Could the servant's magic vegetable see through the
eyes of the flying dragons
? But that meant that a mere servant who possessed
such a vegetable could send his eyes anywhere in the world and see all that
happened without moving from one place. If the dragon bestowed such powers upon
its servants, what unimaginable abilities did it possess itself?
Zambendorf could sense the robot's awe as it finally made out what the screen
was showing. He switched from the drone's telescopic channel to a lower
resolution, wide-angle view. The screen now displayed a much broader area of
terrain, with the lander barely discernible as a speck in the center. After more
pointing and gesticulating, the robot seemed to get the idea. Zambendorf
switched to a high-altitude reconnaissance flyer circling just below the aerosol
layer, whose cameras covered several hundred miles of the surrounding desert and
a large tract of the mountainous region beyond its edge. Then the robot started
making excited gestures, pointing upward again with its arm extended as far as
it would stretch. "Higher! Higher!" It was important. The robot seemed to be
going frantic.
Zambendorf frowned and turned his head inside his helmet to look at Abaquaan.
Abaquaan returned a puzzled look and shrugged. Zambendorf stared at the robot,
tilted himself back ponderously to follow its pointing finger upward for a few
seconds, and then looked at its face again. Then, suddenly, he understood. "Of
course!" he exclaimed, and changed bands to connect the wristset through to an
image being picked up from orbit by the Orion and sent down in the trunk beam to
the surface lander via a relay satellite.
Giraud and the others had noticed what was going on and were gathering round to
watch curiously. "What's happening with this guy?" one of the group asked.
"What lies beyond the clouds has always been a mystery to its race," Zambendorf
replied. "It's asking me if that is where we come from, and whether we can tell
it what's out there and what kind of world it lives on. They've never even seen
the sky, don't forget, let alone been able to observe the motions of stars and
planets."
"You mean you could get all that from just a few gestures?" Konrad Seltzman
sounded incredulous.
"Of course not," Zambendorf replied airily. "I have no need of such crude
methods."
But beside them, Thirg had almost forgotten for the moment that the
