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Site content may offend. Content includes horror, murder, torture, lawlessness, military carnage, Anglo Saxon crudities, occasional adult incidents and George Bush |
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Slowly, Paraban's eyes adjusted to the gloom of the cavern. And, bit by bit, something came into view. The dragon. There it was, huge, and really close. Carefully, Paraban unhooked the pack he was carrying at the front and lowered it to the floor of the cave. Then unhooked the main backpack. This, too, he tried to lower carefully, but it escaped from him. Fell heavily. Did the dragon move? Paraban unholstered his glade gun, the sidearm with the long barrel. It fired explosive darts. Paraban was tempted to pump a dozen rounds into the dragon. But his instructions were clear. "Tamper with the flow of time as little as possible, because we don't know what the consequences might be." He should limit his use of weapons to encompassing the death of Morgan Hearst. "Or use them freely," said Paraban, reminding himself of his earlier decision, the decision that he would annihilate his enemies by wrenching time from its ordained course. "Anger speaking," murmered Paraban. He was very sore as a consequence of having been slammed against the wall of the cave. Pain made him conscious of his own fragility, his own mortality. Do reckless damage to the flow of time? He might destroy himself along with the others. Given that the consequences of reckless gunplay might include, amongst other things, his own death, Paraban decided not to fire the glade gun unless he had to. The dragon was plainly dead. The cave stank of death. And, had the dragon been alive, it would have shown some signs of aggression by now. The breathing sound? Some trick of the air, evidently. "It is as the old man said," muttered Paraban. The official story, the one told by the alleged dragon-killer Morgan Hearst, was that he had climbed to the heights of the mountain of Maf. There he had met the dragon Zenphos in single combat, and had slaughtered the beast. Surveying the whale-sized bulk of the dead dragon, Paraban could see for himself the falsity of that story. No man could do battle with such a beast and lived. Not unless he had a modern arsenal, like Paraban's. In later years, according to the old man - a storyteller from a place called Thunder Forge - Hearst had confessed the truth when drunk. The truth was that Morgan Hearst, on climbing to the heights of Maf, had found the dragon dead. Dead in its cave, its trove unguarded, its gemstone eye there for the taking. The dragon must have been mortally wounded by its earlier encounter with the wizards Miphon, Phyphor and Garash at the border of Estar. Damaged, it had managed to fly back to the cave, but there had perished. Of blood poisoning, perhaps. Or loss of blood. Or, to judge from the stench, from gangrene. "Dead is dead," said Paraban, finding that he really had no interest in the question of how the dragon had died. Actually, he was finding that he had no interest in anything. Now that he was here, he was safe. Free from captivity. He explored. He had a full week before Morgan Hearst showed up. And he was feeling, abruptly, enormously fatigued. It was a natural reaction to the extreme stress he had been under. Apart from anything else, he was still struggling to adapt to his condition. To adapt to the fact that he was a flesh animal, a mortal creature walking around, exquisitely vulnerable, in the peril of the open air. Subjectively, he still thought of himself as Paraban the AI, the master of the Combat College in Dalar ken Halvar. "Check around then sleep," said Paraban. From the mouth of the cave, he looked out over the lands of Estar. Gray. Cloudy. Misty hills in the distance. No signs of buildings, no signs of smoke. A bleak and underpopulated place. "I need to sleep," said Paraban. But the main cave felt uncomfortably open. He wanted somewhere smaller, tighter, safer. A crevice he could creep into. A place where he could lie down. Paraban opened his main pack and took out the flamethrower. He tested it, unleashing a very small flame. Then he prowled into the depths of the cave, deeper, in beyond the dead dragon. He found a hole leading downward - perhaps the start of the downward route which was said to lead through the heart of the mountain all the way to a secret exit at the foot - but found no place to rest. Heading back toward the cave mouth, Paraban spied, on his right, a chink of what looked like daylight. He realized there was a gap leading through to ... what? The gap was a crack, a little tight for comfort, which allowed him to work his way through to a small cave, parallel to the main cave. Here, away from the sound of breathing, it was really quiet. Lichen-growing quiet. The ground underfoot was oddly soft, carpeted by a kind of fungus. Paraban moved forward, heading toward the mouth of this second cave. Abruptly, something lunged at him from above. "Gah!" shrieked Paraban. Thick, gloopy growths of jelly had lunged down from the ceiling, enveloping both the flamethrower and Paraban's arms. Paraban tried to pull himself free but could not. In desperation, he bit the jelly. It released him. But kept the flamethrower. The weapon was yanked upward to the main body of the jelly, which was clinging to the cave roof. "God!" said Paraban. And beat a hasty retreat to the main cave, where at least there was honest rock underfoot and honest rock above. A pity that he had lost the flamethrower. But he didn't really need it. Anyway, he could always go back and kill the jelly, if he decided he had to recover it. "Well, hell," said Paraban. He was desperately tired, and he needed to sleep. The only place to sleep was in the main cave. But he could not shake the uneasy notion that the dragon might, after all, not be dead. The brute did look uncannily as if it was alive. There was, to start with, the gleam of red from the left eye. Even though Paraban knew full well that the redness was that of a ruby, set there in ancient times by the wizard Paklish, it still disturbed him. There was also the matter of the glowering fires. Though Paraban had been briefed well, and knew that the fires of a land dragon may smoulder on for weeks after the beast itself is dead, that smouldering still disturbed him. "Well, the hell with the sanctity of time," said Paraban, coming to a decision. "Shoot it a few times and make sure." And he drew his glade gun, and fired a round into the dragon's flank. There was a faint "splot," the sound of an explosive projectile bursting inside the dragon's flesh. And the dragon's right eye opened, and gazed on Paraban with malevolent fury. And then its jaws opened as it hoisted itself upward, like thunder rising. And it roared. "No!" screamed Paraban. And aimed the glade gun and fired, once, twice, three times, five. As he fired, he was staggering backwards, trying to shoot and flee at the same time. He tripped over one of his packs, and his gun went flying. And the dragon, snarling, reared up until its bulk scraped against the roof of the cavern. Then it lunged at Paraban. Helpless on his back, Paraban scrabbled frantically for the jump switch, slapping in raw panic at the jumpback, screaming in frustrated terror as the device failed to respond. The dragon's jaws engulfed him, closed. For a moment, Paraban was lost in darkness. He felt no pain. Felt nothing. Then the dragon was recoiling. "Dead," said Paraban, describing his own fate. The dragon outbreathed fire. Paraban saw the fireball, a gout of orange-red death. Then the flames surged round him. Cool. Odorless. Harmless. The dragon roared, but Paraban heard the roar distantly only. Again the dragon breathed out flames. And, this time, both of Paraban's packs exploded. Paraban heard then a shrill scream of agony from the dragon, and watched it thrash and roil in agony. The dragon hauled itself toward the cave mouth, as if it might launch itself out into the sky. Then, thinking better of it, the brute lurched backwards into the cave. Then, abruptly, collapsed. Dead? Or just faking it? Paraban tried to get a grip on himself. He tried to take a deep breath but could not. He seemed to have volitional control over his lungs. In fact, he did not seem to be breathing. "Yet I can hear myself talk," said Paraban. Maybe some warp of this weirdness enabled him to vocalize without benefit of air. Or maybe the voice he heard was purely subjective. "What is happening to me?" said Paraban, in wonderment. He seemed to have a body, but he did not seem to be able to touch it. He had hands, and they moved in response to his commands, but they found only emptiness where his knees appeared to be. He tried to pull out a strand of his own hair. He could not get to grips with it. There was nothing there. He could see the world, in a ghostly fashion, and the world could perhaps see him, at least as a kind of intermittent glimmer. Certainly, the dragon, attacking, had seemed aware that someone was there. "I get it," said Paraban. Just before the dragon's jaws had closed on him, he must have succeeded in triggering the mechanism that was designed to return him to Odrum. He was moving forward, but he was moving at the same pace as the normative world. "But that doesn't make sense," said Paraban, frowning. "Jumpback only took an eyeblink." Then he realized he was making an intellectual error which stemmed from an over-familiarity with computer processes. In the world of computers, processes are generally reversible. A click takes you forward and another click takes you back. In real life, there is often not such a convenient relationship between doing and undoing. Suppose you jump from a bridge into a river, for example. The plunge may take hardly longer than an eyeblink. However, getting back to the bridge may be rather more complicated. Similarly, imagine parachuting from the heights of a cliff. The journey to the foot of the cliff may be swift - particularly if your parachute fails to open - but the return will not be so easily accomplished. "So how long am I here for?" said Paraban uneasily. He knew that he had changed some of the controls when scrabbling at the controls on his utility belt. But how had he changed them? For how long was he now destined to travel forward in time? Paraban thought of Antasy. Antasy, tasked with the job of finding out why the Chasm Gates had collapsed, had been jumped back more than twenty thousand years into the past. "Twenty thousand years," said Paraban, at last understanding. Antasy had endured more than twenty thousand years as an uncommunicative shadow, unable to breathe, taste, smell, spit - no wonder his mind had ended up getting wiped clean, with no more cognitive ability than a jellyfish. "Well," said Paraban. "Assume that I do escape from this ... eventually." If he were to be abruptly returned to normative reality, set free from his journey forward into the future, then the immediate vicinity would be distinctly unhealthy. He could see at least half a dozen blamber mines scattered about the cave. Scattered when the two packs had exploded. "Okay, then," said Paraban, retreating deeper into the cave. "How about ... here?" The place seemed good enough. And Paraban settled himself, making himself as comfortable as he could - it felt oddly disconcerting to lie down yet have no contact with anything at his back - and slept. Paraban was awakened from sleep by the sound of his own name. "Paraban? Paraban, I'm here to help you." Paraban opened his eyes. Was he a part of normative reality or was he not? He tried to grasp his own nose. His ghost-like hand found nothing to grip. He was still safe from reality, then. At least for the moment. Safe from the hunter. The hunter - Paraban was not tempted to think of him as a potential rescuer, not even for a moment - was Stelven Zilcher. Stelven Zilcher, armed and alert, was looking around for an enemy, human or dragon. He was equipped with an infra-red monocle for his right eye. He was carrying a scatter gun. He did not look down. Rather, his boots scuffed the rock as he tested each footfall before trusting his weight to it. With a horrified fascination, Paraban watched Stelven coming closer and closer to one of the blamber mines. Then Stelven's boot bumped against the mine. There was a soundless concussion, and Stelven was down, one leg blown off. Paraban turned away. He could not watch. Then, later, there a mewling cry from Stelven, a strange sound which was more desperate horror than pain. Paraban looked in Stelven's direction. And saw a huge white worm flowing out of the darkness, heading in Stelven's direction. Stelven was trying to sit up. But he could not. The worm flexed open and engulfed Stelven's head. The worm had to stretch hugely to engulf the head. Through the thinness of its substance, Paraban could see the outlines of Paraban's face. Certainly he could see, at least, the sharpness of Stelven's nose. Stelven looked as if he had been attacked by a huge homicidal condom. Stelven thrashed in desperation, his air supply cut off. His body convulsed for a surprisingly long time before it eventually was still. Watching this, Paraban experienced a shock which felt strangely soundless. For the moment, his physical body was effectively non-existent. His cognitive mind remained, free from the world of hormones, liberated from the animal world of fight and flight chemicals. He had left, at least temporarily, the realms of the heartbeat. And yet he still felt a kind of shock, the intellectual equivalent of a bodyblow. "They are coming for me," said Paraban, later, when he had had time to compute it. Because there was no doubt in his mind that Stelven had come to kill him. In the future, something had gone wrong. Things had become worse, not better. Or maybe things had stayed the same, but the people on Odrum had imagined that things had gotten worse. How would they know, in any case? There had been hints that they had a method ... hints that there was an insulation bubble, of sorts, in which the favored few could shelter ... could protect themselves from change ... could stay the same while the world changed around them ... but who knew for sure? Stelven is dead," said Paraban, computing something else. Now he knew the answer to one of his questions. Could you die here? Yes, you could. Time was flexible enough to permit the death of the time traveler. Watching, Paraban saw other worms. They had come out of the darkness and were feeding their way into the dragon's body. "What a place," said Paraban. Sunset. Dawn. Another sunset. Another dawn. Paraban began to worry. Was he doomed to travel all the way back to Odrum? If so, his return destination lay more than twenty years in the future. And, if he was traveling back to Odrum, why was he moving in time only, and not in space? Sunset again. And then, agan, dawn. And then, abruptly, the stench of death. Rot and decay. "Alive," whispered Paraban. The first thing he did, before anything else, was to check the controls of his utility belt. He set things up so that, with one slap of his hand, he could jump forward precisely one hour. An hour should be enough, he thought. Sufficient to evade any sudden threat, but not so long that he would need to sleep. Not long enough to disorient him. The geoshift setting, as he suspected, had been reset to zero. He left it there. Carefully, wary of the unexploded blamber mines, Paraban picked his way forward, heading for Stelven's corpse. He wanted Stelven's weapon. The worms had gone, leaving the body sucked dry, husklike. Paraban recovered Stelven's scatter gun, and, also, the infra-red monocle. Experimentally, he fired at the dragon. No response from the dragon this time. It still looked fairly lifelike - the left eye open again, the gleam of the ruby visible - but it was definitely dead. "I hope," said Paraban, not too definite about anything any more. "Is the mission still one?" said Paraban. He hadn't decided yet. But, if he was to kill Morgan Gestrel Hearst, then he needed the most effective weapon he could get.He needed his flamethrower. But, first, he would have to wrest that weapon from the grip of the cave jelly. |
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This story, "The Dragon Zenphos", made its first appearance when posted online by Hugh Cook on 2003 September 15 Monday. Copyright © 2003 Hugh Cook. All rights reserved. |
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