The VMR Theory (v1.1) (27 page)

“Uh, thanks, Cheeves.”

A pert female Rodent in a blue uniform appeared to show us how to fasten and unfasten our safety harnesses and announce that there would be no in-flight movie, and then Bucky’s dragon began to roll. Susie began trotting toward the edge flapping her wings up and down as the dragons ahead of us began dropping off the edge like rocks.

As a spacer, I often tell people that I can fly anything, and sometimes suffer the misfortune of having people believe me. I shut my eyes and murmured a quick prayer to St. Mathurin, who is the patron saint of idiots, fools, and the really, really stupid. A few seconds later I felt Susie give a little “umph.” I waited a few seconds for the thump, and then I opened my eyes and looked around. Nineteen dragons were cruising along in a ragged vee, with Bucky in the lead and Cheeves and me to his left and right. Apart from an occasional belch, the dragons were astonishingly quiet. The Macdonald soldiery in the courtyard appeared oblivious to our presence. Off in the distance, I noticed work crews installing a cherry lane and mist blowers.

“Minister Ken, please attempt to keep the herd pointed away from the river,” Cheeves directed. “Dragons tend to regard fish traps as handy places to stop for a snack; however, rebuilding a weir after a dragon has sat upon it is a frightful nuisance.”

I tried to recall what dumbats ate. My little pet had been fond of fruit and nuts, which wasn’t promising given the probable state of my mental health. “Ah, what do you feed them?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t say stray passersby.

“They are omnivores,” Cheeves explained in a quiet voice. “Generally, we feed them grain, usually in the form of beer.”

“Great. Nothing like riding a tipsy dragon.”

“Friend Ken, it’s very good to see you finally entering into the exhilarating spirit of the venture!” Bucky exclaimed. “Our next big genetic engineering project will be the reindeer. We’ve already started testing luminescent bacteria for the noses.”

I noticed that we were drifting uncomfortably close to Mordred’s shuttles. “Don’t we want to put some distance between us and Mordred’s storm troopers?”

“I’d like to take a quick peek and see what they’re up to,” Bucky confided, steering our formation to the right, his long white scarf trailing in the wind. “I see Mordred on the ravelin haranguing the troops. I wonder what they’re up to.” Suddenly he gasped. “Cheeves, look! Do you see? They’re stealing my collection of first edition Bucky Beaver manuscripts!” There was a long, drawn-out quaver in his voice. Then he clutched at his chest. “Cheeves, they’re building a bonfire! Could it be?”

“Your highness, I fear the worst,” Cheeves replied. “Cheeves, this is horrible! This is monstrous! Those precious documents are priceless, irreplaceable! All the distilled wisdom of humankind is locked up inside them!”

“Well, maybe not all—” I started to say.

“They contemplate a truly unspeakable crime against civilization!” Bucky’s voice hardened. “This will not stand!”

“Sir, your nonviolent principles,” Cheeves called out desperately.

“There comes a time to do what is right and just.” Bucky adjusted his goggles and shook his fist. “Curse you, Red Baron!”

I looked at Cheeves. “Red Baron?”

“It is de rigueur,” Cheeves explained. “Our marketing experts assure us that the tourists demand it. Your majesty, if I may—”

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 I 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 I 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.

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.”