Avram Davidson - Rogue Dragon

Therefore it had sent its other self!

The flyer in which Jetro Yi and his two fellows had come was in the clearing where it had landed and which smelled of the stale fuel of its many prior comings. Perhaps forewarned against leaving it alone by Jon-Joras’s theft of the other one that morning, they’d left a man on armed guard. But he was dead now, too, and from the shape (or shapelessness) of him, it would have been neither grace nor favor to him if he were still alive. Jon-Joras, infinitely weary, glad of the excuse given him by the slow and limping Kar-chee, slowed his own walk. It was almost dark when they reached the craft. He put its lights on and the two of them entered. Fortunately it was a larger craft than the one he’d made off with this morning, but even so the alien had to crouch, looking not less fearful because he was huddled instead of erect. But there was no longer, so it seemed, fear between them. And Jon-Joras made a wry smile at the thought that perhaps the Kar-chee was even now reminding itself that the fact that Jon-Joras had a bad smell did not mean that Jon-Joras was therefore bad!

He settled into the drive-seat with a grateful groan of relief. He took the craft up and then he radioed in to ConfedBase, down on the underside of the Earth in a small continent which the Kar-chees had raised up around what had once been the Andaman Islands, and had ConfedBase connect him to Delegate Anse.

“How are you? Where are you? How have you been? Why did you go away from the hospital?” the questions came pouring out.

Jon-Joras said, “I’m in a stolen flyer up at 30,000 feet. I am very tired, but otherwise well. One group of men tried to kill me early this morning. Another group of them — or maybe just another group — tried to kill me late this afternoon. I have a Kar-chee with me, and—”

“You have a what?” Anse interrupted, in a low voice.

“A Kar-chee, he’s injured, but I don’t know how much or how seriously. Where should we meet you? Sir? Delegate? Are you—”

“I’m here, yes. I’m just thinking. I’m afraid that you’re still quite ill. The best thing would be for you to put down in the nearest place you can. Would that be Peramis?”

Jon-Joras later found it easier to see things as Anse had seen them, but at that exact moment he saw nothing incredible in his own report. He did not make things any better by shouting that nothing would persuade him to go anywhere near any of the four city-states or, for that matter, anywhere near any place where dragon hunts were conducted. “Think fast,” he wound up. “They may be monitoring this call right now. They may try to bring me down.”

“Oh, dear,” said Anse. “Oh, oh, oh… Hold on. Hold on.”

Later, too, Jon-Joras realized that the anxiety was not at all occasioned by belief, but entirely by disbelief. At the moment, though, he found it somewhat gratifying. Anse came back in a moment, asked him how his fuel was, gave him a course to set, and informed him that a special fast-flyer was being sent out and would pick him up in as little time as possible and bring him down to ConfedBase. And this it did. That is, it did not so much pick him up as scoop him up. Then it went down a great ways and leveled out to allow him to transfer. Part of the crew were Prime Worlders, and promptly went into something approaching hysteria when they saw the Kar-chee. But the others had seen enough of aliens even more uncanny-looking than the Kar-chee, and, moreover, had no backlog of almost hereditary fear and hatred concerning Prime World’s former conquerors. They even made educated guesses as to what it would eat and drink, and although it did not do much of either, it did enough of both to relieve Jon-Joras’s mind. He reproached himself for not having thought of this, and was engaged in formulating a useless and incomprehensible apology when he fell asleep sitting up.

The sun was shining when he awoke, and, not reflecting that it was in the nature of things sun-time at ConfedBase when it was night-time on the other side of the world, he thought he had had a good night’s rest. He nodded amiably at the immense avenues of gorgeous flowering trees through which they passed, and, his memory of having seen them at the time of his arrival here on Prime World becoming confused with his seeing them now, he passed into a state where he was not very far from dreaming, and thought of what he recalled having been through as being but singularly vivid visions seen along the roads of sleep. He was in fact thoroughly asleep in a very few minutes, and so he remained for hours yet to come. At one point or at several points he heard familiar voices and this comforted him and it was of no matter to him at the moment if they were dream-voices or real-voices or what they were.

“I was certain that he was feverish or hallucinating or something of that sort — result, you know, Confidential Chief, of his previous illness.”

“Were you?” said the other voice, the voice which pleased him most to hear, although the voice itself seemed not pleased at all.

There was a short pause; the first voice said, “You know that we have little investigatory apparatus here. There has never been any need for it. I saw him briefly when he came through here to make arrangements for you and he said nothing of your special status then—”

“He didn’t know anything about it. Go on—”

“I heard nothing further from him. Then your communication arrived, and I wondered that I’d heard nothing. I sent word out and was told of his being missing after attending an impromptu hunt which had evidently been attacked by a rogue dragon. So many had been killed… I offered a reward… But still nothing turned up. Then came his radio message and his, well, rather wild-sounding story. The physician said he was certainly ill. Then he vanished, as you know, from the physician’s care. And when he said that he had been attacked twice yesterday and had stolen a flyer and had a Kar-chee on board with him — Now, would you not, in my place, have thought—”

And the second voice said, “I am not in your place, Delegate. Nor are you in mine.” Then it asked, “What do you think of his story now? Of all of it, I mean?”

“A living Kar-chee? Here? After all these centuries? A living dodo or dinosaur would be less of a marvel. Much less. If that much of his story is true — and it obviously is! — then all the rest of it could be true, too. And what it all means, is more than I can guess. — You?”

“Me? I have neither need to nor intention of guessing. When my boy wakes up he will tell me. He looks so thin and worn. And so young, so young, so very young…”

The voices fell away. And the young, young, very young man slept on and on. Now it seemed to him that he was aware that he was sleeping and this was pleasant. Somewhere outside was danger. Inside all was safe. The Kar-chee was at the head of his bed and the dragon was at the foot of it and Por-Paulo sat beside it, on the right, the side of honor, which was proper. For he was the proper man, the proper proper man. It was a pity that no one could tell this to the Kar-chee. But perhaps he knew it anyway.

“In a way, old Ma’am Anna was right,” Jon-Joras explained over a long and leisurely breakfast, after having slept the clock around. “Because, in a way, the dragons did turn into Kar-chees. And, in another way, Hue was also right. Because, in a way, the dragons were Kar-chee. Neither was altogether right nor altogether wrong. I think that the truth — as nearly as we can arrive at it — lies somewhere in between. And I think that it goes a long way towards explaining the whole history and mystique of the dragon hunts. Where to start?”

Well-rested, well-washed, well- and cleanly-clothed once again, in slow contented process of becoming well-fed, and two exceedingly important older men listening intently to his every spoken word — Jon-Joras had reason to be as well-pleased with his present situation as, indeed, he was. He had surprises to spring… but then, surprises had been sprung on him as well. And on an empty stomach, too.