The Dragon and the George (6 page)

He could stand the suspense no longer. He opened his eyes and looked.

Once more, as when he cried out on seeing Angie, he had underestimated dragon capabilities. The ground was not rushing up to meet him. To the contrary, it was far, far, below him, odd little patches of wood alternating with open country. He was at least a couple of thousand feet up and climbing rapidly.

He paused for a moment and his wings stiffened out automatically in glide position. Still, he did not descend. He woke abruptly to the fact that he was soaring—instinctively riding a thermal, an uprising current of warm air, after the fashion of balloonists, sailplaners and the large birds of his own remembered world. Of course! He kicked himself mentally for not thinking of it before. The larger birds were mainly soaring birds because of the effort required for them to fly. He remembered now hearing that most of the heavier hawks and eagles would refuse to fly on days that were completely windless.

The same thing had to be true—or more so—for dragons, with their enormous weight. Evidently, like the lion, who could make a very fast charge but maintain it for only a small distance, a dragon's great muscle power could lift him quickly to soaring heights. But from then on it must be a matter of his riding the available winds and thermals.

Apparently, such riding was instinctive stuff to his Gorbash-body. Without conscious thought he found he had lined himself up with the sun above his right shoulder and was sailing northwestwardly away from the cliff face where he had taken off. In fact, the cliff itself was now dwindling into inconspicuousness behind and below him. Far away on the rim of the horizon before him was the dark-green belt of a wide-stretching forest. It moved steadily toward him, and he toward it without effort; and almost without his being aware of it, he began to enjoy himself.

It was hardly the time for such self-indulgence, particularly with Angie held prisoner behind him in a cave; but Jim found it so difficult not to feel good that he finally relaxed and allowed himself to do so. For one thing, it was just past noon of a thoroughly superb day sometime in late spring or early autumn. The sky was a lucent blue, touched here and there by just that small number of little, fleecy clouds that would serve as grace notes to set off the beauty of the day as a whole. Even from a couple of thousand feet up (dragons apparently shared the telescopic vision of the large birds of prey as well as their soaring inclinations) the gorse-fuzzed open moors, the pines and oak tree clumps he saw below him had a sort of dewy freshness about their appearance. With Gorbash's acute sense of smell, Jim could even catch the faint medley of green odors rising from the countryside; and the scent slightly intoxicated him.

He felt powerful, capable and a little reckless. In fact, for two cents he would go back and face down the whole rest of the dragon community, if necessary, to free Angie. The double-thinking back part of his mind even seemed strangely sure none of the others could match him at flying. He puzzled over that impression, then remembered that Smrgol and even Bryagh had referred to Gorbash spending more of his time aboveground than was usual for dragons. Perhaps because he had been out of the caves more and had had to fly more frequently, Gorbash was in better training than the others?

An unanswerable question. But it reminded him of all the other questions that his incredible adventure raised. This world had more unreal elements in it than a sane mind could imagine. Dragons—let alone dragons that talked—were incredible. Somehow this world must have a set of physical and biological laws that made this possible; and someone with a doctorate in history, with a fair number of science courses along the way, ought to be able to figure those laws out—and, having figured them out, make use of them to his and Angie's advantage.

He would have thought that language would be the main problem in this other world. Only, it wasn't. The more he thought of it the surer Jim was that he, in this Gorbash-body, was not talking modern English—or any other form of English. Apparently he was talking dragon with no trouble at all; although the mental channels that seemed to translate this into modern English—colloquial modern English at that—in his head, were puzzling, to say the least. As a medievalist, Jim could both speak and read Middle and Old English, and with a doctorate he could also read and make himself understood in modern French and German. In addition to these languages, he had a smattering of modern Spanish, a few words of modern Italian, and a good knowledge of all the Romance languages in their medieval forms. Finally, he could read both classical and church Latin with facility, and work his way through classical Greek with the help of a dictionary in that language.

All in all, a pretty fair set of qualifications for anyone adventuring into any period of the European Middle Ages. Only, it seemed, none of these were useful. It was not his major areas of interest that he would find useful here but his minor ones. Still, there had to be a system of logic behind any operating environment; and if he kept his eyes open and put two and two together…

He soared on steadily through the air, thinking intensely. But his thoughts eventually went in a circle and ended up getting nowhere. He simply did not have enough data yet to come to conclusions. He gave up and looked around below him once more.

The wood had evidently not been as close as he had first thought. Although he was making very good time indeed—Jim estimated his air speed as somewhere in the area of fifty to seventy miles an hour—the green band of trees was still the same small distance off. On the other hand, he did not seem to be tiring at all. In fact, he felt as if he could soar like this indefinitely.

He did feel the first, slight tickling of an appetite, however. He wondered what, as a dragon, he ate. Not—he winced away from a thought—no, definitely not human beings. If that was ordinary dragon fare, he'd just have to go hungry. Perhaps the magician could help him out in the food department as well as with the means of getting Angie and himself home again. He was finally beginning to get close to the wood now. He could make out separate trees. They were all pine, spruce and balsam, growing close together. For the first time a doubt crossed his mind. If he had to search through that forest on foot… But then he reassured himself. He could not have been expected to know exactly where this Tinkling Water place was, or Smrgol would not have reminded him that it lay to the northwest. On the other hand, if it had been a hard place to find, the older dragon, with the low opinion he had of Gorbash's mentality, would have given more explicit directions and double-checked to make sure his grand-nephew had them straight.

Possibly there would be something he could see from the air, Jim thought, as he began to swoop down on a long arc that would bring him in close above the treetops.

Suddenly, he saw it: a tiny clearing among the trees with a stream running through it and cascading over a small waterfall at its upper end. Beside the stream was a pool with a fountain, and a small, oddly narrow, peaked-roof house surrounded by grass and flower beds, except where a gravel path led from the edge of the dense woods up to the house's front door. A signpost of some sort stood to one side of the path just before the door.

Jim set down on the path with a thump.

In the silence that followed his rather heavy landing, he distinctly heard the sound of the water of the fountain falling and splashing in the pool. It did, indeed, tinkle—not like the sound of small bells, but with the very distant, fragile notes of glass wind chimes, clashing in the light breeze. The sound was somehow inexpressibly lulling to the nerves, and the rich and mingled odors rising from the blossoming flowers in the flower beds reinforced the effect; so that all at once Jim felt as if he had been plunged into a dream place where nothing was quite real and certainly nothing was overly important.

He moved slowly up the path and paused to read the signpost before the house. The sign itself was a plain, white-painted board with black lettering on it. The post on which it was set rose from among a riot of asters, tulips, zinnias, roses and lilies-of-the-valley, all blooming in complete disregard for their normal seasons. Printed on the board in black, angular letters was the name S. Carolinus. Jim went on up to the front door, which was green and sat above a single red-painted stone step.

He knocked.

There was no answer.

In spite of the soothing effect of the fountain and the flowers, Jim felt a sinking sensation inside him. It would be just his luck and Angie's to arrive at the residence of S. Carolinus when S. Carolinus was not within it.

He knocked again—harder, this time.

The sound came of a hasty step inside the house. The door was snatched inward and a thin-faced old man with a red robe, black skullcap and a thin, rather dingy-looking white beard stuck his head out to glare at Jim.

"Sorry, not my day for dragons!" he snapped. "Come back next Tuesday."

He pulled his head back in and slammed the door.

For a moment Jim merely stared. Then comprehension leaked through to him.

"Hey!" he shouted; and pounded on the door with some of his dragon-muscle.

It was snatched open furiously once more.

"Dragon!" said the magician, ominously. "How would you like to be a beetle?"

"You've got to listen to me," said Jim.

"I told you," Carolinus explained, "this is not my day for dragons. Besides, I've got a stomach ache. Do you understand? This-is-not-my-day-for-dragons!"

"But I'm not a dragon."

Carolinus stared at Jim for a long moment, then threw up his beard with both hands in a gesture of despair, caught some of it in his teeth as it fell down again, and began to chew on it fiercely.

"Now where," he demanded, "did a dragon acquire the brains to develop the imagination to entertain the illusion that he is
not
a dragon? Answer me, O Ye Powers!"

"The information is psychically, though not physiologically, correct," replied a deep bass voice out of thin air beside them and about five feet off the ground—causing Jim, who had regarded the question as rhetorical, to start.

"Is that a fact?" said Carolinus, peering at Jim with new interest. He spat out the hair or two still remaining in his mouth and stepped back, opening the door. "Come in, Anomaly—or do you have a better name for yourself?"

Jim squeezed through the door and found himself in a single cluttered room which evidently took up the full first floor of the house. It contained pieces of furniture and odd bits of alchemical equipment indiscriminately arranged about it. S. Carolinus closed the door behind him and walked around to face Jim again. Jim sat down on his haunches, ducking his head to avoid hitting the ceiling.

"Well, my real name is James—Jim Eckert," he said. "But I seem to be in the body of a dragon named Gorbash."

"And this," said S. Carolinus, wincing and massaging his stomach, "disturbs you, I gather." He closed his eyes and added faintly, "Do you know anything that's good for an unending stomach ache? Of course not. Go on."

"I'm afraid not. Well, the thing is—Wait a minute. Are you talking dragon, or am I talking whatever language you're talking?"

"If there's a language called 'dragon,' " said S. Carolinus, grumpily, "naturally, you're talking it. If you were talking it, I'd be talking it with you—naturally. Actually we're simply talking. Will you stick to the point? Go on about yourself."

"But, I mean, do dragons and humans here—I mean georges—speak the same language? I mean, I seem to be speaking your language, not mine—"

"Why not?" Carolinus said, closing his eyes. "In the domain of the Powers there is only one language possible—by definition. And if you're not talking to the point in five seconds, you're a beetle, on general principles."

"Oh. All right. Well," Jim explained, "the thing is, I'm not so interested in getting out of this dragon-body as I am in getting back to where I came from. My—uh—Angie, the girl I'm going to marry—"

"Yes, yes, on October thirteenth," said Carolinus impatiently. "Get on with it."

"October thirteenth? This October? You mean in just three weeks?"

"You heard me."

"But, I mean—so soon? We didn't hope—"

Carolinus opened his eyes. He did not mention beetles, but Jim understood immediately.

"Angie—" he began hurriedly.

"Who is where?" Carolinus interrupted. "You're here. Where's this Angie?"

"At the dragon cave."

"She's a dragon, too, then?"

"No, she's human."

"I see the difficulty."

"Well, yes—No," said Jim. "I don't think you do. The difficulty is, I can send her back, but possibly I can't get back myself; and she won't go without me. Look, maybe I better tell you the whole story from the beginning."

"Brilliant suggestion," said Carolinus, wincing and closing his eyes again.

"You see," said Jim, "I'm a teaching assistant at a place called Riveroak College. Actually, I ought to be an instructor in the English Department…" He ran rapidly over the whole situation.

"I see," Carolinus replied, opening his eyes finally. "You're sure about all this, now? You wouldn't prefer to change your story to something simpler and more reasonable—like being a prince ensorceled into a dragon by a rival with access to one of those Inner Kingdom charlatans? No?" He sighed heavily and winced again. "What do you want me to do about it?"

"We thought you might be able to send both Angie and myself back where we belong."

"Possible. Difficult, of course. But I suppose I could manage, given time and a proper balance between Chance and History. All right. That'll be five hundred pounds of gold or five pounds of rubies, payable in advance."

"What?"

"Why not?" Carolinus inquired, frostily. "It's a fair fee."

"But—" Jim almost stammered. "I don't have any gold—or rubies."

"Let's not waste time!" snapped Carolinus. "Of course you have. What kind of a dragon would you be without a hoard?"

"But I don't!" Jim protested. "Maybe this Gorbash has a hoard someplace. But if so, I don't know where it is."