Brian stared at him.
"Why not?" he said.
"He's all right!" said Carolinus from across the room by Dafydd's bedside, which was essentially Jim and Angle's bed, as opposed to the temporary one of piled-up furs that had been made up for Brian. "He's lost a little blood and the wine will help replace it. But come here to Dafydd!"
Jim went. Carolinus twitched back some of the covers. Dafydd's face, neck and what could be seen of one hand appeared completely bloodless.
"I am helpless to aid," said Carolinus, replacing the covers. "He has lost too much blood. About that, I can do nothing. I can heal the wounds of battle and accident; since these were damages that should not have happened in the first place. But magic cannot cure disease, nor make anything live that did not live before; and the blood in a man's veins, or a woman's, is a living thing."
Jim reached under the covers, found Dafydd's wrist, and felt for his pulse. It was very light and rapid.
"He needs a transfusion," said Jim, almost to himself.
"Oh, Jim," said Angie, standing on the other side of Carolinus by Dafydd's head, "how can you? We don't even know his blood type; and we don't have any glass tubes or needles to inject the blood into his veins… or anything."
"Wait a minute, though," said Jim thoughtfully, holding up a hand. "Maybe we can get around that. I seem to remember reading…"
He stood for a moment in silence, trying to remember.
"That's right!" he said at last. "The early way of comparing blood types was to put a smear of a person's blood on a glass slide and look at it through a microscope, then mix it with the blood from another person and see if the red blood corpuscles clumped."
"And how are you going to do that?" said Angie. "We don't have microscopes. We don't even have slides."
"Wait," said Jim, holding up his hand again, "let me think. There have to be ways around this lack of what we'd normally use. We do have magic."
"Well, I can see you transferring some pints of blood from one of us into the veins of Dafydd, magically," said Angie, "but if it's the wrong type, it'll kill him!"
"I know that, I know that," said Jim. "As I say, let me think. Now, first for a microscope…"
He turned on Carolinus.
"I need a microscope—" he began.
"A what?" demanded Carolinus.
"Now, now," said Jim, "I know you haven't got one. I know you don't even know what one is. That doesn't matter. What you can get me probably is a magnifying glass. Am I right?"
"A magnifying glass?" Carolinus echoed. His own faded old blue eyes became abstract. "I believe there are such things. Yes. This is what you mean, isn't it?"
Jim discovered that something that looked rather like an oversized monocle had appeared in his right hand. It was simply a circle of glass with, of all things, a carefully made and fitted, square wooden frame around it. The frame was wide enough so that someone could handle the glass without getting fingerprints on the transparent surface.
He used it now to examine the cloth on his sleeve. The glass did not have a great deal of magnifying power. He judged that it might magnify somewhere between two or three times—about as much as a cheap pair of child's binoculars might do. In addition, the lens part was not an excellent job of grinding. Things seen through it seemed to waver or bend in spots that they did not in real life.
"I'll need another one of these," said Jim, holding up the magnifying glass for Carolinus to see. "Also, perhaps you and I should step outside into the corridor. We're going to have to talk about magic and I would guess you wouldn't want anyone else to hear."
Carolinus's white eyebrows raised. But he followed Jim without a word across the room and out the door. Once the door had closed behind them, Jim turned to face him, holding the two framed pieces of glass.
"Let me give you the whole problem in as few words as I can," said Jim. "The only way of saving Dafydd is to fill his veins with more blood. Further, the only way to get that blood is from one of us and transfer it by magic from the veins of one of us into Dafydd's veins. Do you follow me so far?"
"I should be a child or an idiot if I did not!" said Carolinus. "This is a piece of magic I've never done but there's no reason why I can't do it."
He started to turn back into the room.
"Wait a minute," said Jim. "That's the last thing we do, and the easiest. First we have to make sure that the blood we give him won't kill him."
"Kill him?" demanded Carolinus. "Blood is blood. How could that kill him?"
"That's just where, if you'll forgive me, Mage, you're not correct," said Jim, as diplomatically as he could. Carolinus whirled about to face him.
"I? Not correct?"
"Where I come from," said Jim, as gently and as clearly as he could, "we've discovered in my time and world that human beings have different kinds of blood. There are only a few different types of this blood. But if you mix the wrong two together you kill the person in whom the mixing is done. Please, Mage, take my word for that."
Carolinus stood glaring for a second. Then his face relaxed.
"Well, well," he said, suddenly weary. "I'm getting old. I'll listen, Jim. You talk."
"Thank you," said Jim gratefully. "Now, what we've found out is that there are four main types. There are actually more than this, but there's no way we would be able to distinguish between those. Just possibly, you and I, here and now, using this instrument called a microscope, may find someone whose blood can safely be put into the veins of Dafydd. That's if we can bring the microscope into being, and some pieces of glass on which to put a drop of blood from everyone in the room and you and I as well. The different types of blood are called A, B, AB and O. Someone with AB can take anyone's blood. Dafydd may have AB. If he has, we're lucky—but there's no way I know of that we can be sure that that's what he has. Anyone who has type O can give his blood to anyone else."
"I see," said Carolinus. "But to find out whose blood is safe you need this—what did you call it—'microscope'. And there's no way I can give you such a thing. I'm sure I explained to you—but if I didn't, I should have—that magic is creative. That's what makes you so useful, even disgracefully ignorant of ordinary magic as you are. Because you've come from an—er—different world, you can imagine things even I can't. I can't imagine a microscope. So I can't make one for you, for all I know of magic."
"I understand," answered Jim, "but if we work together and I tell you what I want, part by part—"
Carolinus's face lit up.
"Of course!" he said. "Jim, my boy, you've had an idea, a magical idea of worth! Just describe what you want, and I'll produce it for you."
"Well, first," said Jim, "I need another magnifying glass just like this one. Oh, thank you. Now, I need the glass taken out of these wooden frames and put them at opposite ends of a black metal tube. Better put them in the very ends of the tube so they'll stay there. Thanks."
Jim took the rather clumsy steel cylinder that now had two oversized magnifying glasses in it and took another look at the sleeve of his left forearm.
"I must have one of these in backward, or something," he said. "All I get is a blur. Let's try reversing the bottom lens. No, that doesn't do any good. Try reversing the top one now. No, that doesn't seem to help either…"
They worked together for the better part of half an hour, by the light of a torch in the wall nearby, and at the end of that time they had an apparatus; but one that seemed completely useless.
"I guess we'll have to give up, Carolinus," said Jim finally. "I'm sorry to have put you through this. I really thought we might be able to do it. But come to think of it, I don't think those glasses magnify enough for me to see the clumping of the corpuscles anyway."
"Pack of nonsense," said Carolinus grumpily. "There ought to be a way of doing it directly by magic."
Chapter Thirty
Jim lit up.
"Of course!" he said. "Look, this is an easy one, Mage. Will you do this for me? Just give me some rectangular pieces of glass ab
out two inches long and one-half inch wide and about, oh, an eighth of an inch thick. Give me six of them."
"That," said Carolinus acidly, "is something you ought to be able to do for yourself, magically. However, to save time, here you are."
Jim found himself with a stack of the glass pieces he had requested in his hand. They were not as clear or as nicely formed as the microscopic slides he had been thinking of. They were also too thick. But that didn't matter. They had surfaces that would work for him.
"Now that you've got them," said Carolinus, "what do you propose to do with them, pray?"
"Let me try out a spell," said Jim. "I'll say it out loud as I write it on the inside of my forehead and you can stop me if I'm doing something wrong. Ready?"
"Of course I'm ready!" snapped Carolinus.
"All right, then," said Jim. He spoke the following lines of a spell as he formed them inside his head.
A BLOOD WILL REFUSE TO MIX WITH B BLOOD IF
PUT TOGETHER ON THE PLATE → NOW
BOTH A AND B WILL EACH MIX WITH O AND AB → NOW
IF BLOOD WILL MIX WITH ANYONE ELSE'S BLOOD
THEN THAT OTHER PERSON'S BLOOD CAN BE USED
TO TRANSFUSE INTO DAFYDD → NOW
Jim paused, looking at the senior magician.
"All right?" he asked.
"It'll do," said Carolinus. "Clumsy, but it will cause what you want to happen. Let's go back into the room again."
They went back in and back up to the bedside of Dafydd. Dafydd was as white as ever and had appeared not to have moved. Suddenly alarmed, Jim hastily felt for his pulse again, and breathed easily only when he felt it. He turned to Carolinus.
"Now I can probably get a drop of blood from one of Dafydd's wounds," he said, "by pressing the flesh around it. But wouldn't it be easier on him to get the blood by magic—and for that matter, from the rest of us by magic?"
"You want me to do this, of course," said Carolinus.
"If you don't mind," said Jim. "I know it's—"
"An imposition!" snapped Carolinus. "And you know it. Nonetheless, for the sake of Dafydd, we'll do it that way. Where do you want this drop of blood?"
"On one end of one of these pieces of glass," said Jim. He took the top one from the pile and held it up. "If you'd put it toward the left end, I can remember it's Dafydd's. It's his left arm that controls his bow. And then when we take a drop of blood from someone else we can always put it at the right end. Then I'll try to mix them and see if they will."
He had hardly finished saying this when a single drop of red blood appeared at the left end of the single piece of glass he was holding.
"Good!" said Jim. He turned around to see the rest of the room. "Now, we want a sample drop of blood from—"
"Me!" said Brian, starting up. "We fought together, and now we must share what blood is left."
"No, Brian," said Jim. "You may not have lost as much as Dafydd, but you have lost more than you should have. We'll use another donor. Now, sit down—if you won't lie down!"
Indeed, Brian was wobbling a little as he stood and was forced to support himself with his fingertips on top of the table beside him. Reluctantly, he dropped back heavily into his seat.
"Try me," said Jim.
"No," said Angie. "Try me first, Carolinus. Jim, I think I remember that I'm O type. And O type is universal donor. I asked them what type I was, the first time I donated to the Red Cross; and they told me. I'm sure it was O type."
"If your blood mixes, then you're about to lose a pint of it," said Jim. "Think of that, Angie."
"It's not going to kill me!" retorted Angie. "Besides I've done it plenty of times when I donated blood. They always took that much."
A second drop appeared at the far end of the piece of glass Jim was holding. He took the knife from his belt sheath and used the point to try to mix the two drops together. But the reaction of the two drops was that of a couple of blobs of mercury. The two bits of blood would have nothing to do with each other.
"Sorry, Angie," said Jim, "you must be wrong about that O type."
"I could have sworn!" said Angie. "I'm sure they told me O type!"
"Well, if it was O type, then Dafydd's blood should be willing to mix with it. I'm sorry, Angie," said Jim. "Carolinus, clean off that drop of Angie's blood and try one from me. I'm rather afraid, though, that I'm A type. So, if Dafydd's anything but A type, then my blood won't work either."
He felt nothing, but another drop of blood appeared where Angie's had been after the glass had for a moment been clear of anything at that end. Once more Jim used the point of his knife to try to mix the two together.
"It works!" cried Angie. She ran to Jim and hugged him. "Jim, your blood works! It mixes beautifully!"
"Good!" said Jim, enthusiastically hugging her back. "Well, Carolinus, all you have to do now is transfer a pint of my blood into Dafydd's veins. Even an imperial pint shouldn't be too much for Dafydd the way he is now; and if it should be too little, we can tell by his color and give him another quarter-pint, or some such—wait a minute, though!"
He had suddenly remembered something.
The transfer of blood that he had experienced, like Angie, when donating blood in their original world, had been a slow process with the blood flowing slowly out of a blood vessel in his arm into the waiting bottle that collected it. That slowness might well have been because the blood came only as fast as it could be pumped by his heart. On the other hand…
"I think," he said, "we'd better play it safe. Perhaps a pint of blood dumped all at once into Dafydd's veins, partly collapsed as they are now, might be dangerous. Carolinus, can you magically make the blood be transferred from me at about the rate my heart would pump it from its source in me into Dafydd's veins and arteries?"
"Of course!" said Carolinus. "There, I've made it so."
"You mean you've begun pumping already?" asked Jim, curiously.
"Why," demanded Carolinus, "do you keep asking me to do something; then ask me immediately if I've done it? Did you want me to wait? If so, you should have said so."
"It's just that I don't feel anything."
"What makes you think you should?" asked the magician.
There was, of course, no reason. What Jim actually had felt during the times he had donated blood back on his own world, he realized now, had been the needle in his arm that led the tube carrying the blood to the collecting bottle.
"I really should be getting back downstairs," said Jim uneasily. He had been carrying in the back of his head for quite some time an image of Chandos left alone with no one to talk to but Secoh. This would be all right if Secoh did not venture to say anything. But Secoh just might. Also, a snub by the knight might shut Secoh up again—but then again it might not. The knight had endured enough interruptions and slights for one day. Jim felt that it was time for an apology. "How far can I go and still have the transfer of blood from me to Dafydd keep up?"
"Go?" said Carolinus. "You can go anywhere. You can go to the other end of the world, if you want. It doesn't make any difference where you are. Magic is magic."
He looked upward at the ceiling.
"—And they want me to make magicians out of the kind of apprentices that come along nowadays!" he said.
"You might want to stay," said Angie to Jim, a little sharply, "and see if Dafydd needs any more blood. He just might, you know."
"Yes," said Jim. "But I'll only be downstairs; and if Carolinus calls me the way he did a little earlier when I was at the high table—and that's where I'll be again—I can be back up in seconds. Meanwhile, Dafydd will still have the first pint inside him. I just want to soothe any rough feathers that Sir John has, from being left alone this way, particularly with Secoh."
"Secoh?" asked Angie.
"Yes," said Jim hastily, already on his way out the door. "He's seated at the near end of the low table. Close enough to talk to and be talked to by Sir John. I don't think it's the best of ideas for them to have a conversation. Also,
Sir John is owed an apology or two. Call me and I'll be right back up."
As he said the last few words, he was already closing the solar door behind him. He started to run along the corridor; but Angie's voice stopped him.
"Jim!" said Angie. Her voice was pitched low, but imperative. He checked himself and whirled about.
She was standing outside the door to the room they had been in, which door she was now closing behind her; she beckoned him back to her.
He returned.
"I thought I'd tell you," she said in low tones, "I signaled Aargh to come in. He's in one of the other rooms here—he doesn't like it, by the way, waiting there by himself, but I had to keep him hidden until I had a chance to speak to you. I'm going to have him look at Carolinus and see what he thinks about this difference in him."
Jim nodded.
"That's a good idea," he said. "After all, he's known Carolinus longer than any of us—and his senses are not human senses. He may notice something, or understand things better than we do."
"That's what I thought you'd say—or something like it," said Angie. "But I wanted you to know. It hurts me to see him trying to cover up whatever's bothering him by being grumpy in ways that he usually isn't. It must be something really bad that's preying on him."
"Yes, I think so too," said Jim. "Well, maybe Aargh can tell us something."
"I hope so," said Angie. "Now you go on downstairs, and I'll take Aargh in, and we'll pretend he's just come to see how the others are doing."
"Good," said Jim and took off.
This time she did not stop him.
He ran along the corridor and down the stairs; and so made his way to the Great Hall, where Sir John was still seated with the dragon.
To his relief, as he got close, he saw that the two were evidently very cheerfully and amicably in conversation. Evidently, he should not have worried. They had talked after all; but Sir John seemed to be, if anything, enjoying it.
"Ah, Sir John," said Jim, interrupting and sitting down breathlessly beside the knight at the high table, "sorry to have left you alone like this—"
"He wasn't alone," said Secoh. "I was with him. How are Dafydd and Brian?"
The Dragon At War Page 29