Dare - rtf Page 5

  "Don't misunderstand me. The Arra are not supernatural beings. They're as much flesh and blood as you or I. Nor do I believe they work under direct orders from the postulated shadowy Powers. The Arra stands for both the reality we know and the reality behind that. You see?"

  Jack saw, but he didn't like the obvious idea that man was a child who had not yet learned the lesson of life and that the Wiyr were to be his teachers.

  Chuckswilly snorted and walked away. Egstaw smiled. Cage thanked the Watcher for his ex­planation and for the bread and wine. He said he'd have to be on his way, though he really would like to stay for the barbecue. He wasn't just being polite by showing reluctance to leave. Every step toward home brought closer the moment of reckoning with his father for having abandoned the shearing and gone hunting with the priceless scimitar.

  Deciding he couldn't put off the trip back any longer without admitting cowardice, he whistled to Samson. Chuckswilly had gone on, and he wanted to catch him. The stranger would be better than no company at all. Besides, he wished to ask him if he were going to take anybody along on the iron-sniffing expedition into the Thrruk. He was verycurious about what could be found up there.

  R'li called after him. He turned to find her walking toward him and wiping her wet skin with softgrass. "I'll go a little way with you." A loud whinnying startled Jack. From around the high stone wall of the far end of the bridge pranced two unicorns pulling a three-wheeled carriage. Chuckswilly was driving. When he saw the two walkers, he reined in his beasts. As usual, they would not quietly obey the driver but insisted on rearing and plunging and whistling rebelliously. Finally, the whip, cutting into their flanks, compelled them to stand motionless. But their long slanted eyes glared as if they would bolt at the slightest sign of weakness in their driver.

  Chuckswilly swore and shouted, "Holy Dyonis preserve me! That we should have to put up with such bundles of nerves and stupidity! I wish we'd brought along the legendary horse when we came here. That, they say, was a splendid animal!"

  "If any such thing ever existed," replied Jack.

  "May I ride with you?"

  "And I?" added R'li.

  "Get in! Get in! That is, if you want to chance breaking your neck. These things are liable to take off across a meadow or through the woods."

  "I know," said Jack. "Driving them's bad enough. But you should try plowing with them."

  "I have. You should try hitching a dragon to your plow. They're far stronger and much more co­operative."

  "What?"

  "Just jesting, Cage." Chuckswilly jerked a thumb at Samson. "You'd better keep him behind us. Otherwise, my team will panic."

  Jack gazed speculatively at him. He did not seem like the sort of person who would make a joke about dragons. Or about anything else.

  The dark man yelled "Giddap!" and flicked the woolly backs. The capricious team now insisted on trotting. Their driver shrugged and allowed them to set their own pace. The unshod two-toed hoofs clat­tered against the dark-gray stuff of the highway.

  The iron-sniffer began asking questions about Jack's goals. He replied curtly that he'd finished his studies at the monastery school last winter and since then had been helping his father.

  "What about the Army?"

  "My father paid the price to keep me out. We couldn't see my wasting my time there. It'd be dif­ferent if there were a chance for a war."

  R'li said, "Are you still planning to go to college at the capital?"

  He was surprised. He hadn't seen her for three years; he didn't remember saying anything to her about that before she'd left. It was barely possible he had, though, and horstels had long memories.

  Or could she have heard about it while she was up in the mountains? The horstel grapevine was far-reaching.

  "No, not now. I want to go to school, but not to St. Dyonis. I've become very interested in mental research. Brother Joe, my science teacher, was the one who encouraged me. He told me, however, that the best place for me to go was not to the priestly schools at the capital, but to Farfrom."

  "Why a foreign country?" broke in Chuckswilly loudly. "What's the matter with your own land? With your own teachers?"

  "I want the best," Jack replied harshly. He was sure now that he didn't like the dark man. "After all, it was a priest that told me about Roodman. He's supposed to know more about the mind of man than anybody else."

  "Roodman? I've heard of him. Isn't he on trial for heresy?"

  R'li said, "He was, but he was found not guilty."

  Jack's eyebrows rose. Their grapevine, again. . .

  "I heard they freed him because his accusers disap­peared under mysterious circumstances. There was talk of black magic, of demons snatching away those who wanted to burn that sorcerer."

  R'li asked, "Has anybody ever seen a demon?"

  "It's the essence of demons that they're not seen," said Chuckswilly. "What do you think of it, Cage?"

  Uneasily Jack wondered if the fellow could be an agent-provocateur.

  He said cautiously, "I've seen none. But I will say I'm not afraid to be alone on the nightroad. Werewolves and mad tailbears are the only things I look out for.

  "And mad men, too," he added, thinking of Ed Wang. "But not demons."

  Chuckswilly snorted like a unicorn. "I'll give you a word, my hayseed friend. Don't let anybody hear you talk like that. You might be able to get by with it in this frontier settlement. But a statement like that would be bomb powder in the older parts of Dyonisa. There are a million ears to hear and a million tongues to carry your words to the gray torturers."

  "Stop the carriage!" shouted Jack. He yelled at the team, "Whoa!"

  They halted. Jack jumped out and walked around the vehicle to the driver's side. "Get out, Chuckswilly. I don't allow anyone to call me a hick. If you're going to shove your lip around, you've got to back it up with your arm."

  Chuckswilly laughed, white teeth showing against the swarthy skin. "No offense, youngster. My speech, I'll admit, is rather free. But I meant what I said about your getting into trouble. However, let me remind you that I am on the Queen's business. I don't have to take up challenges -- sword, ax, fist, or otherwise. Now, jump back in, and we'll be on our way."

  "Not me. I just don't like you, Chuckswilly."

  He turned and began walking down the road. Chucks willy's whip cracked. Hoofs drummed, and the wooden wheels clattered.

  "No hard feelings, young fellow," the driver called out as he flew by.

  Jack didn't answer. He took two more steps. And stopped. The siren had not been in the carriage.

  He wheeled and said, "You didn't have to get out just because I did."

  "I know. I do pretty much what I want to."

  "Oh."

  Why should she want to be with him? What were the thoughts beneath that swarm of lovely red-gold? She wasn't hanging around because she liked his big brown eyes, he was sure.

  A flutter in the shadows of a tree trunk caught his eye. Without saying a word to her, he walked to the tiny creature that was beating its half-formed wings in a vain try at flying. Samson leaped at it, but he stopped short and nosed it. His master did not bother to tell him to leave it alone; he knew the dog was too well trained to bite without his permission.

  "A bluebeard fledgling," he called back to R'li.

  He held up the minute flying mammal with its fringe of blue-blackish hair around the monkeylike face.

  "Fell out of its nest. Wait a minute. I'll put it back."

  He removed his weapons belt and shinnied up the trunk. As it was a spearnut tree, it lacked branches for the first thirty feet. He hugged the smooth bark, legs and arms embracing it tightly, while one hand held the tiny bunch of fur and wings away from the bole. Thus he was forced to press hard with his wrist, using it in place of the occupied hand. It was a very tiring and awkward posture, but he had climbed all his life.

  Not stopping to rest, he inched up steadily until he reached the first branch. Then he hooked an arm over it, swung his
body up with a jerk, clamped a leg over another branch, and in a short time had deposited the fledgling with two of his brothers. They barked small-throated welcomes. The parents were nowhere to be seen.

  When he got down, he saw the siren looking at him with shining eyes.

  "You have a tender heart beneath that angry mouth, Jack Cage."

  He shrugged. What would she say if she knew he'd helped bury her cousin, Wuv?

  They resumed walking. She said, "If you want to go to Farfrom, why don't you just go?"

  "As the eldest son, I'll inherit most of the farm. My father depends on me. He'd be heartbroken if I were to give up my future here and study under a man he considers to be a black magician, a mind doc­tor.

  "Besides," he ended lamely, "I haven't the money I need to live on while I'm studying."

  "Do you quarrel often with your father?" He decided not to take offense at that question. Horstels weren't expected to have human manners.

  "Often."

  "Over that?"

  "Over that. Father's a rich farmer. He could send me away for four years. But he won't. Sometimes I think I'll leave anyway and work my way through Roodman's Academy. But my mother gets sick when I talk of going. My sisters cry. Mother would like me to be a priest, though she never stops to think that the Church is likely to send me far away and that I'd seldom return.

  "It's true I could, as a priest, study psychic science by applying for entrance in the Thomistic College. But there is no guarantee I'd be admitted. And even if I did get in, I'd be under strict control in research. I'd not be a free agent, as I would under Roodman.

  "Something else. If I became a priest, I'd have to marry at once. I don't want a wife and children. Not just now. Maybe later.

  "Of course, if I entered the Philippian Order, I'd be a monk. But I don't want that, either."

  He paused for breath. He was astonished that he had picked himself up, so to speak, like a pitcher, and poured himself out. And to a siren, at that.

  But, he comforted himself, he often spoke his problems to Samson. She was in the same class as the dog. And the results were also the same. She would not report what he'd said to his parents.

  "Perhaps if you found something that would free you financially, you might be able to decide."

  "If I'd taken the dragon's head, I'd have had enough. Lord How's reward, plus the Queen's bounty, would have made it."

  "Was that why you were so angry when you found out we had made a contract with it?"

  He nodded. "One of the reasons. I --"

  "If it weren't for those agreements, human territories would be ravaged," she interrupted. "You've no idea how terrible or how invulnerable they are. They could devastate a farm in one night, kill all the animals, and uproot the houses.

  "Moreover, if it weren't for the contract, you'd be dead now. The dragon said she could have surprised you half a dozen times.''

  His woodsman's pride was stung. He barked out a four-letter word that had spanned many centuries and many light-years unchanged. "I can take care of myself! I don't need any siren to tell me how!"

  He walked on silently, hot and tired and irritated.

  "How would you like a loan?" she said. "Enough to take you through school?''

  It was a day of shocks.

  "Loan? Why? With what? You horstels don't use money."

  "Let met put it this way. First, we know this man Roodman. We think his psychology is correct, and we'd like to see it spread. If enough humans become psychically cleansed of their aberrations, they may be able to ease the terrible tension between them and us and avert the war that is otherwise inevitable.

  "Second, you may not know it, but the Wiyr have long had their eye on you. They know that you are -- consciously or unconsciously -- sympathetic to us. They want to develop that.

  "No. Don't protest. We know.

  "Third, we are trying to get representation in your Parliament, human representatives to sit in the Houses for us. If we do, we think that someday, after you mature, you would make a good delegate for the Slashlark County Wiyr.

  "Fourth, you need money to go to college. We'll give you what you want. All that's necessary is that you make the usual verbal contract. My father, the Blind King, may be the recorder, if you wish. Or if not, anybody else will do. And if you insist, you may have a human lawyer draw up papers -- for your con­venience. We, of course, will have nothing to do with that."

  Jack said, "Wait a minute! You've not even seen your folks. How do you know what they're planning for me? And how did you get the authority to offer me a loan?"

  "That's easily explained. But you wouldn't believe me if I told you. As to authority, any adult has it. I'm an adult."

  "Then quit using child-talk! I'm not an infant. And -- and how can I know these things unless I ask?"

  "True. Now, what's your decision?"

  "Why -- that'll take time. Your offer is something I never heard of. It has many angles that have to be considered carefully."

  "A horstel would make up his mind at once."

  He bared his teeth and shouted, "I'm not a hor­stel! And there is the meat of the matter. I'm not a horstel, and the answer is no! Why, if I took money from you, do you know what the people around here would call me? Dog-eater! I'd be ostracized; my father would kick me out of his house. Nothing doing. No!"

  "Not even a loan just to go to Roodman's Academy? No strings attached?"

  "No!"

  "Very well. I'm going back to my uncle's. Good­bye until we meet again, Jack Cage."

  "Farewell," he growled, and he began walking down the road. Before he'd gone two yards, he heard her call.

  He turned, pulled around in spite of himself. She'd sounded so urgent.

  She had her hand up in a sign for silence. Her head was cocked. "Listen. Hear that?"

  He strained his ears. He thought he could make out a very low rumbling to the west. It wasn't thun­der; he was sure of that. And the sound faded out now and then.

  Samson was a yellow statue, pointed to the west. His throat-rumble echoed that in the forest.

  "What do you think it is?" he asked.

  "I'm not sure."

  "The dragon?" He drew the scimitar.

  "No. If it were, I wouldn't investigate. But if it's what I think it is. . ."

  "Yes?"

  "Then. . ."

  She walked into the dark shadows thrown by the tall spearnuts, towering copperwoods, and tangled vines growing overhead. He followed, curved steel in hand. They zigzagged perhaps a mile as the bear am­bles, perhaps a quarter-mile as the lark flies. Several times he had to cut away a barricade of vines or stingbushes. It was the thickest and most im­penetrable growth he'd ever seen. Though close to the farm, it seemed never to have been explored.

  Finally she stopped. An arm of sunlight had pushed through a hole in the green ceiling and spread its fingers over her red-yellow hair. Haloed, she stood there, listening, and Jack, behind her, forgot about their quest long enough to admire her. If he were a painter, like her uncle. . .!

  Suddenly the noise came to life close by. She started, and she and the light seemed to break into pieces. The next he knew, she had glided into the shadows.

  When he caught up with her, he whispered, "I've never heard anything like that. It sounds like a giant trying to sob and gurgle at the same time."

  She said softly, "I think you're going to get to go to Farfrom, Jack."

  "You mean it's the dragon?"

  She didn't answer but leaped over a fallen log. He reached out his free hand and clutched her arm.

  "How do you know it's the same dragon? Maybe it's one that's not made a contract?''

  "I didn't say it was a dragon."

  She was standing close to him, her naked arm and hip brushing his.

  He strained his eyes to make out shapes in the gloom.

  "Maybe it's a mad tailbear. This is the season. And you know what one bite means."

  "Oh!" she breathed, and she moved closer. Un­thinking
ly, he gave way to his protective feeling -- later he excused himself by saying she'd reminded him of his younger sisters -- and put his arm around her waist.

  Her eyes were half closed, so he could not see the light in them. Thinking back on that particular moment during the succeeding days, and he did much of that, he remembered the slight smile on her lips. Were those indentations the marks of amusement? And if he could have read her eyes, would he have seen that their expression matched her lips? That she was not at all frightened but was laughing at him?

  Or would there have been a third emotion? Whatever he thought later, he had no doubt at that instant. He forgot about the mysterious danger ahead. His arm squeezed her waist, pulling her to him. He was breathless. Human or not, there was no woman as beautiful as she or as desirable.

  The peculiar rumble brought him back to his senses. Dropping his arm, he stepped up ahead of her where she could not see his face.

  "You stay behind," he said in a choking voice. "I don't know what it is, but it sounds very large."

  "It also sounds very sick," she added. Her voice held the same breathlessness as his.

  He pushed through the vegetation.

  Somewhere, hidden in the green tangle but near, a behemoth retched.

  Tony burst in.

  His mother, sisters, and brothers were half raised from their chairs and staring at their father with astonishment, rage, fear, or barely hidden amusement. The master of the house was the only one yet sitting; he was as if struck by a club. Nor could he have been more paralyzed. His half-bald head was covered with thick, yellow, and steaming egg pudding; a viscous cataract flowed down his face and sank into his beard.

  Lunk Croatan was a wax dummy. The bowl remained upside down in his hands. His brown face was opened wide: jaw hanging, nostrils flared, eyes round.

  There was no telling what might have happened next, for Master Cage was not a man to take such things laughingly, even though accidental. That is, if it were an accident, for in the following moment Lunk's eyes closed, his eyes wrinkled, his nostrils pinched, and the thin lips curved into an idiotic grin. Giggling, he blew out a cloud of wine.