Kirlian Quest (11 page)

"I am to marry Cupid?" she asked in wonder. "The God of Love?"

"Your namesake did. For you, perhaps it will be an extremely lovable man. Yet the love of Cupid and Psyche was not without peril."

"Oh,
tell
me!" she cried, clapping her hands girlishly.

"With pleasure. Seldom do I discover so willing an audience for technical matters in my specialty. Psyche was the daughter of a king, and so lovely that she outshone Venus herself. This made Venus jealous, for the emotions of the gods reflected those of their creators. She sent her son, Cupid, to pierce the breast of Psyche with his arrow of love, and make her love the most vile and miserable creature available. This was the goddess's way of punishing the mortal girl whose only fault was beauty. But when Cupid saw Psyche, he was as it were scratched by his own arrow and stricken by love himself.

"Psyche's mortal family knew nothing of this. But somehow no offers for her hand in marriage were made. When the king consulted an oracle to determine whom his daughter should marry, he was told—"

"The Scion of Skot?" Psyche inquired with a twinkle.

But Hweeh was deep in his narrative and did not heed the interjection. "He was told to dress her in clothing of mourning and leave her on a mountain, where a fierce winged serpent would claim her for his bride. So with much regret the king did this. But Psyche was transported from the mountain to a pleasant valley where there was a magnificent palace. Here invisible servants catered to her every whim. But at night when she went to her bridal bed, it was dark and she could not see her husband at all. He did not
feel
like a winged snake—not in his entirety, at any rate—but as he departed before dawn, she could not be
sure
."

"But it was Cupid!" Psyche said. "Not a dragon, not a monster, not an amoeba, but the God of Love!"

"Yes," Hweeh agreed. "It—she—@@@@—" He slumped.

Herald launched himself at the bowl, trying to bring his aura into play before the Weew faded out, but he was too late.

"I did what he asked—and it sent him back into shock," Psyche said, the fingers of one hand touching her mouth. "I'm sorry."

"You did very well," Herald assured her. "You caught us all by surprise. I did not realize what you had said until he reacted. Now we know that it is the single word 'amoeba' that sets him off. That's progress."

"But will he be hurt?"

"No, this merely delays us again. I think it was inevitable. And we are learning. His mind is whole; it is only this one thing that knocks him out. When he wakes, he has sealed it off again, until a direct reference sends him back into shock. A highly specific complaint."

"What does it mean?" Psyche asked.

"I wish I knew," Herald admitted. "It is hard to avoid the suspicion that we are all in deadly danger from the Space Amoeba. Yet this is hardly credible."

"I do love a mystery!" Psyche said. "I used to wish Kastle Kade had a ghost or something."

"It has one," Whirl said.

She shrugged that off. "I hope I can hear the rest of the story of my name."

"You could look it up in one of your references," Herald pointed out. "An excellent library like the one you have should certainly have—"

"No, that would not be fair. It is
his
story."

Herald shrugged at this new girlishness. They left the room.

 

* * *

 

In the afternoon the Duke took them on a hunt. "One of the animals has gone berserk," he explained. "It has ravaged the demesnes of the Baron of Magnet, my vassal, and killed several of his servitors. It behooves me to rid my environs of this menace. I caution you not to seek participatory action, as the beast is imbued with Transfer aura and is dangerous."

One of the prisoners of Keep, Herald realized, thus an animal with sapient cunning and criminal intent. Just the thing to lend adventure to this situation. Probably the nobles of the planet valued such prey, as it justified their position. If there were never any crises, there might cease to be any need for this feudal society and its warrior class.

They mounted steeds. The upper wheels of the Sador horses were shaped into seats, with holes for human legs, and the outer rim served as a rail to contain the upper body and provide handholds.

Psyche looked very refined in her riding habit, with its red jacket and white tight trousers. Her legs showed beneath the saddle wheel, extremely well formed. Herald was beginning to realize how much a simple tunic masked. Her fair hair was tied back in the fashion called a ponytail, changing the lines of her head and face. Like the mythological princess: lovely.

Whirl of Dollar was braced in his circular saddle by his own projecting wheels, and seemed to be quite stable. At first the sight of a six-wheeled creature astride a six-wheeled creature seemed odd to Herald but he quickly acclimatized. It was really no stranger than one quadruped astride another, which was how it had been on Planet Earth.

The Duke and his men-at-arms carried lances—long poles with guards at the rear to protect the hands, and sharp points at the forward ends. They also had shields and wore light armor and helmets. This was a truly medieval expedition, with all its pomp and fanfare. There was even a servitor honking periodically on a musical horn.

Each shield, of course, bore its heraldic device, and this enabled Herald to recognize the participants instantly, much better than by face or form. The ramifications of Galactic intercourse had provided legitimacy for an extraordinary number of Achievements, so that even the lowliest servitors of Kastle Kade bore the proud Arms of distant planets.

They boarded the ferry and crossed the lake. The craft was bulky and slow, but it carried the full party of twenty mounted knights. Water reptiles swam close, pacing the ferry: huge, long, toothy, sinuous things.

The Duke noted Herald's interest. "We keep Lake Donny stocked with the finest Solarian alligators, so that it shall not be forded or swum."

"You imported reptiles from Sphere Sol?" A colossal expense!

"A few reptile eggs were shipped by freezer ship with our ancestors a thousand years ago. We took good care of those eggs." The Duke looked out over the water, counting snouts. "Aren't they beautiful!"

"Um," Herald agreed faintly. Now he knew why no one swam in the beautiful lake!

The ferry's powerplant was intriguing yet practical: A dozen large Sador animals sat in harnesses around the sides, paddles affixed to their wheels. They were like so many rotary motors, propelling the craft vigorously forward. The paddles were designed so that the toothy reptiles could not get at the tender portions of the animals.

The party debarked at the North Landing, where the North Road wended its way through the deep forest west toward other castles of Keep. But a branch road coursed south around the west shore of the lake, toward the dam. They took this branch, and wheeled forth on the packed-dirt highway. The wheels of the horses propelled them with greater speed and endurance than sapient bodies could produce, and Herald clung to his saddle wheel tightly. The wind of motion whipped through his human hair, rapidly tugging it into disarray; but Psyche's ponytail remained distressingly neat.

The scenery was refreshing after a day shut up in the castle. The trees of Keep were Sadorian, probably seeded several thousand years before when Sphere Sador first colonized it. They were monstrous barrels with wheels projecting irregularly, their flat spokes angled to catch the sunlight. As the shadows changed, the wheels turned to maintain optimum position. But the lesser vegetation differed. There were fields of Sol-style grasses, probably imported to halt soil erosion and to provide the grains so beloved of Solarians. This was very much a planet of compromise: Sador and Sol. At leisure, be would have to review local history and discover exactly how this had come about. There must have been at least two Terraforming operations following several Sadorforming stages, as alien species of vegetation normally did not take readily to the soils and microbes and light of a local environment.

There were animals, too. Small wheeled things scooted off the road and hid in the grass, and in the distance were grazing herds of cattle, cutting swaths through the grass with their bottom wheels and sucking up the fragments. Their top wheels were used to blow away flies. Flies, of course, accompanied cattle wherever they went, and there were as many species of flies as there were of other creatures. Some flies had wings, some jets, some magnetism—but they were always a similar nuisance. Herald remembered the laser-flies of his homeworld in Sphere Slash with no particular fondness. And there were birds, hovering on their heli-wheels, snapping up these flies. No matter how mixed, the ecology was always in balance.

Almost halfway around Lake Donny they diverged from the road, going up a steep gravel rut into the western ridge of mountains. Herald clung to his saddle-rail with both hands as his body tilted back and back; the incline was such he feared his mount would fall over backwards. But the other members of the party seemed unconcerned, and he knew the wheelers were extremely stable, so he concealed his alarm.

Up and up they went. At last the path leveled off and he glanced back. There, in the center of the lake, was Kastle Kade, marvelously scenic with its walls and embrasures and turrets and the flag of Kade flying from the pinnacle. But he shuddered at the narrow, excruciatingly steep path down to the water.

They proceeded along a ridge. It was cool up here, and a brisk breeze tugged at him, making him shiver for more than one reason. He had never spent much time in the heights; his species of Slash rolled along on disks, and a long slope could be deadly. Here the path dropped away steeply on either side, and the barrel-trees crowded in close. There was really no danger of a long fall here, as any creature rolling down would soon fetch up against a tree trunk, but still it seemed precarious.

Psyche drew abreast of him. There was just room for two horses on the path, no more. "This is the Ridge Road," she explained as her bright hair-tail whipped first one way and then another in the wind, as if struggling to be free. "Our cattle use it to get to the high pasture."

"Oh," Herald said in human idiom, for what that was worth. He noticed how the wind flattened her jacket against her front, making her twin young breasts stand out attractively. In his natural body, Herald would never have been concerned about such a detail. But in Transfer the standards of the host became, in large part, the standards of the Transferee, and this intensified with the passage of time. As a Slash he would have looked for precise lasers and clean disks in a female; as a human—well, Psyche was something special, despite her youth. Or perhaps
because
of it. The blooming of Solarian females seemed transitory, so that by middle age they had lost much of their sexual appeal. Certainly the older females of the Kastle Kade staff illustrated this condition; there was little about them to tempt any man in this respect. But a girl like Psyche...

In due course the path broadened into the high pasture, a generally cleared slope with a broad spread of tall Solarian grasses and multicolored flowers. Beyond it was a small castle: residence of the Baron Magnet.

The party drew up to this edifice, and were met outside it by a modest hunting group. One horse detached itself and rolled up. In its saddle rested a creature perfectly designed for it: a metallic sphere whose Shield of Arms was painted right on its surface. An entity from Sphere Magnet, of course, whose sapients had achieved prominence in the Second War of Energy. It moved and acted by using magnetic attractive and repulsive forces. Since Keep was not a high-metal planet, the Baron would be virtually helpless if thrown from the saddle. But of course his type was extremely tough, being metallic, and he had his retainers to assist him.

"Greeting, my Liege," the Baron said via a speaker set in his saddle. His magnetic waves of communication were not audible to human perceptions, of course.

"Greeting, Baron," the Duke replied. "Be introduced here to my party: the Lady Kade, my daughter"—Psyche nodded politely—"Herald the Healer of Andromeda"—Herald emulated the nod—"the Earl of Dollar."

The Baron lifted momentarily in his saddle. A metal ball detached itself from its pocket in the saddle and swung in orbit around the magnet ominously. "Dollar aligns with you, now?"

Whirl rotated his wheel. "Have no concern, Magnet. Sheathe your mace. I am the Enemy Witness, present by the covenant to observe the Lady."

Magnet settled down again. His ball dropped back into its pocket. "Oh, naturally." He seemed relieved to know that Dollar remained an enemy knight.

"If you will direct us to the most recent sighting, we shall rout out the monster," the Duke said.

"Please follow, Liege," the Baron said, riding off.

They soon left the pavement and crossed open countryside. The tall grasses brushed against the horses' wheels. Herald found the swishing sound pleasant to his human ears, though fine pollen was flying up in brief clouds to tickle his nose and discolor his uniform. Now they were going uphill, and the horses were laboring. When one of the sets of wheels grew tired, they simply rotated a quarter turn and used the other set, the top saddle-wheel turning just enough to keep the riders facing forward. The horses were remarkably sure-wheeled, never bumping or skidding, though this cross-country climb was necessarily slower than the highway roll had been.

Abruptly they stopped. "Here the beast attacked my cattle, devouring one cow," the Baron said. "There are the wheels and axles of the loss, and there is the spoor of the attacker."

They made a large circle around the indicated spot. The tall grass was flattened to the ground, and there was a pile of animal wheels with dark stains upon them, as of dried blood. Sadorian entrails showed gruesomely between some of the spokes. There was no question about the violence of the death. Large, deep wheel tracks led away, up the hillside into the forest. Evidence enough.

"Flankers out," Kade ordered, and the human and Sador riders spread out to either side. "Lances ready." And the long spikes that had been pointing into the air dropped to parallel the ground. "Swords ready." And the Solarians loosened the blades in their sheaths, while the Sadors spun their forward wheels momentarily to show that their sharp spokes could function.