Flight of the Gryphon

by Ann Durand

  Katera shook her head. "First of all, you didn't get me involved without my consent. And secondly, I'd trade my life for Rorken's any day. And don't be so sure that either one of us will perish, either." Katera leaned into her ear. "Mikolen's here. He's on his way to us right now."

  Before Adrella could answer, the trunk shuddered from the vibrations of heavy feet pounding into the ground as three rocsadons charged forward on their newly lengthened chains. Katera and Adrella gripped each other as the beasts roared and jostled for the lead. A weakness gripped Katera in her knees as she held Adrella's trembling body. She stared, strangely captivated, as the beasts rumbled to within a few feet of them. Their open mouths looked cavernous, their teeth long and needle sharp, dripping with saliva like wet daggers. As they flung their wide heads, froth flew from their mouths in great strings, showering both women. The foul-smelling heat from their breath belted Katera in the face. Adrella buried her head in Katera's shoulder and wept.

  Katera stole a glimpse toward the gate. Still no Mikolen. Where was he? Please, hurry. Her heart flipped wildly inside her chest. We don't have much time.

  Just when she thought it couldn't get any worse, a Rocsdaon bellowed behind her. She swirled around in time to see Kastak Morchison fixing another animal with a piece of cloth and a large dose of suderik. The rocsadon thumped its head into a piece of cloth on the ground. Her body stiffened as she recognized her own shipunta. The animal lifted the waistband in its mouth with a savage look in its eyes. It reached its long neck skyward and screeched again. The shipunta, dripping with spittle, fell to the ground where Morchison snatched it with a long tiket. Katera watched spellbound as the rocsadon turned toward her. Straining forward, it fixed its dark, unblinking eyes on her as Morchison worked furiously to unwind the winch that would release more chain. Behind Morchison, she watched with mounting horror as Timoton carried her shipunta to another rocsadon.

  Merciful Lupana.

  Adrella screamed again, and Katera felt the hot breath of another beast on her elbow. She turned to see that three rocsadons on the other side were a foot away. Another length of chain and that would be the end. But no, these rocsadons weren't looking at her. They were fixed on Adrella, their eyes focused as they lunged toward her. These rocsadons were not her predators.

  She turned back to Timoton. Another rocsadon was thumping its head into her shipunta. So, that was the game: three rocsadons for Adrella, and three for her. This was part of Askinadon's revenge: to unnerve them before they died.

  Morchison worked the chains on the rocsadons designated for Katera as Timoton trotted back to the winches on the other side. When he reached them, he waited with hands on hips as Morchison played out his chains until the newly fixed rocsadons were snapping at Katera from ten feet away. The noise was deafening, and the pole vibrated violently as Katera and Adrella struggled to keep their balance.

  "I can't do this!" Adrella wailed. "I'm going to fall!"

  "Hang on! It won't be much longer. Mikolen's coming!"

  The pole shuddered again, and Adrella's foot slipped. She stumbled onto her knee. Another shudder, and she was off the platform, hanging on by her fingers and clawing the surface. Katera leaned over and grabbed her by the hair, jerking her chest and head back onto the platform. She stepped over Adrella's head so that she was straddling it and revived her grip on her hair. There was no way, with all the shaking, that she could help her sister stand back up onto this tiny platform. She prayed that she could hold her long enough for Mikolen to arrive.

  Beneath her, Adrella was kicking her feet trying to propel herself back on top. As her foot jutted out behind her, a rocsadon reached out its long neck and deftly grabbed it. In a terrifying moment, it tore Adrella shrieking from the pole. The rocsadon lowered its neck to the ground, and, for a moment, Katera thought that it was going to deposit Adrella there. But then, it whipped its head back, tossing her up, up and over Katera's head. She flew thirty feet before she came screaming back down, her arms and legs fanning the air. The rocsadon lowered its neck again-its head bent up at an odd angle to receive her in its wide mouth.

  Lupana, no.

  With her eyes frozen on the rocsadon, Katera almost missed what happened next. She sensed it in the rush of the body, the long, extended neck, and when she looked again, Adrella was gone. She had never reached the mouth of the expectant rocsadon, who was roaring in frustration. Katera turned her attention to another rocsadon backing off from the fray. It was chomping its teeth together, its mouth filled with blood. In one hellish glimpse, Katera spied a delicate, disembodied arm inside its mouth. She recognized the rings on her sister's hand. And then, the horrific vision was gone. The beast threw back its large head, opened its throat, and gulped. In several spasmodic swallows, the business was done.

  Trembling, Katera lowered herself into a crouching position, her eyes glued to the monster as she struggled to comprehend what had happened. Where was her sister? Did that rocsadon swallow Adrella? Was that Adrella's blood flowing from its mouth? Katera blinked in disbelief.

  Driven by an overdose of suderik and with their primary target gone, the rocsadons formerly fixed on Adrella sniffed at the air around Katera. Soon, they too fixed on her. Within the minute, all six rocsadons thrashed around her, diving viciously toward her face against their restraints, but Katera was too numb to care.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mike stormed out of the lab and into the courtyard like a charging takatak. He had little time to reach Katera. He didn't think Askins would kill one of his own wives-they brought him too much pleasure-yet Adrella's betrayal signaled the ultimate insult to a man who'd grown more egomaniacal as time passed. A death sentence was not out of the question, and since Askins had sentenced Katera to the rocsadon's pen, the penalty had likely extended to her. Mike quickened his pace, bolting between the pine trees and onto the path toward the rocsadons' lair…then he skidded to a halt.

  Ten feet away, his archenemy was walking briskly toward him with his head bent, lost in thought. Mike attempted to draw back out of sight, but his foot crunched over a twig. Askins looked up, startled.

  "Who are you?" he demanded. Mike froze as Askins' eyes swept over him, his face, his cotton pants and shirt. "You're not from Parallon," Aksins said, in amazement.

  "No."

  Mike stepped onto the path and into full view. Askins moved closer, peering intently. Mike tightened his grip around the knife in his belt and waited for recognition to register. Slowly, Askin's forehead creased as his eyebrows floated up, a look of disbelief in his widened eyes.

  "You," he breathed. "But how? I killed you. Unless…"

  Mike laughed dryly. "No, I have not arrived from a parallel universe. I'm the same Mike Leno you betrayed on Earth…2275 AD, wasn't it? I'm the same Director of Research at Tescali Lab…that is, before you killed seven of our scientists and stole Star Gate One."

  Mike's cheeks turned hot as he remembered.

  "I shot you," Askins said. "I shot you with a Beam 4000. That thing tears holes as big as melons through people. And I saw your body…your guts were hanging out all over the place."

  "Not my guts," Mike said, wondering if Askins still carried the deadly Beamer. Those lasers could tunnel through thick metlon one thousand times more resilient than steel in a second. "Trust me, you never shot me ."

  "But the blood…I saw your intestines, and animals dragged your body away and devoured it."

  "You saw the intestines of the young kiddik you killed while you were aiming blindly through the trees trying to hit me."

  Askins blinked in surprise. "I didn't see a kiddik. The blood was on your body..."

  "Kiddik blood," Mike repeated, waiting for Askins to comprehend. "I scooped out the animal's guts from the hole your laser made, then dragged its body into the brush. I returned to the spot, lay down, and hoisted the entire mess onto my stomach. The only way to keep you from hunting me down was to play dead. After you left I used the guts to map a trail into the trees, so you'd think
animals dragged me off and you wouldn't look for my remains."

  Askins curled his upper lip. "You were taking quite a chance. I might have shot you again just for good measure."

  "No, I don't think so." Mike eyed him carefully. "There is no way to recharge those Beamers in this world. Even the Sphere doesn't work for that-the lab has no energy transfer mechanism. You left all the compatibles behind when you brought us here. You fire a Beamer a dozen times, and the power's spent…you weren't going to waste any shots. You couldn't afford to fire at me again." A flash of fear sparked in Askin's eyes, and Mike knew he'd hit a nerve. "Yep, that was ten years ago. All the Beamers are dead soldiers by now, right? Must have used them up years ago." Mike relaxed his hold on the knife. "Hell, there were only ten in the lab to begin with."

  "Yeah, and you forced me to use the charge of one entire Beamer when you hid behind Star Gate One. I had to destroy it-I thought you were hiding on the other side. Our only stargate, and our only hope of getting out of here. When Star Gate One went up in smoke, the spare EM Sphere went with it. Did you know it was still in there?" Askins lifted his chin. "I only had time to grab one sphere for the control center. I never got the other. It was still inside. You made me do it, Leno."

  He said this as if Mike had aimed the deadly shot that had sent Star Gate One splintering into countless fragments.

  Then it hit him. No extra sphere? That meant that Askin's power base had crumbled . The last EM Sphere in existence on this planet was at this moment in Mike's pocket, bumping against his thigh. He smiled as he savored the thought: this was the end for Askins, and the creep didn't even know it.

  "But you didn't really care what happened to Star Gate One, did you, Askins? You didn't want to return to our time, to 2275 AD, because you had no plans to ever leave Parallon again, isn't that right?" Mike wondered if Askins would admit it. "It didn't matter to you whether you kept Star Gate One intact or not. Getting out of our world and back to the past…to here, Parallon, was the whole point, wasn't it? To return with the lab was the plan, because you'd been here before, and it was all you ever wanted."

  Askins' eyes glazed over. "Sure. Why not? Beautiful virgins…unlimited power."

  "And that's why you waited twenty-five years before returning to the future and Tescali Lab, to ravage all the virgins first, right?"

  "What twenty-five years? I was only gone one day in your time." Askins threw back his head and laughed. "One day and two hundred virgins later." He brought his chin down and leveled his gaze at Mike. "Must have been quite a shock to see an old gray-haired guy when I got back, but at least you knew Star Gate One worked."

  "Yes," Mike said, quietly. "If only the scientist operating it had been working, too."

  He drew in a deep breath, recalling the betrayal in full measure. Askins had been entrusted with one of the greatest missions ever handed to a man-to travel through time in Star Gate One, the first stargate ever built, to discover other eras and cultures, to collect data, and, after a month, to return home. He had pledged to leave the people he'd visited in peace, and to come home when his work was done. Instead, he'd spent 25 years in the past, though it had only been a day in Mike's time. But in that time frame, he'd ruined an entire village, violating his oath of non-interference.

  When he did return, he claimed he'd been imprisoned and forced to work in a slave labor camp. Mike believed him even as the others questioned it by pointing to his soft hands and fat belly-not the physical profile of a prisoner, they said. Yet Mike staunchly defended him, until they pulled the telescan recorder from the stargate the next day, revealing the undeniable truth. Hordes of Parallonians were seen in the recording as they surrounded the stargate, yelling obscenities and cursing Askins' tyranny.

  Before the authorities in 2275 had a chance to arrest him, Askin's repositioned Star Gate One's electronic magnetic plates to encompass the entire lab. When he activated the exotic matter in the EM Sphere, the whole lab and every scientist and technician within it at that moment was spirited six thousand years into the past…to Parallon.

  Mike shook his head in disgust as he recalled the events afterward: the needless and ruthless killing as Askins promptly shot every scientist with one of the Beamers recovered from his prearranged secret stash. They'd all been killed except Mike, who escaped by feigning his death. Askins had then secured his position of power by locking the sphere into the control center for the VisiOrbs. The technicians, herded earlier from the wrong side of a Beamer into a locked room during the melee, were forced to accept the VisiOrbs into their foreheads one by one, collectively sealing their fate as members of Askin's slave army. Mike studied the hard look in the eyes of the older man, a man who had once been his own age…a man who had once been his friend.

  "Tell me, Askins, I'm a little curious. Just how hard was it for you to forget every shred of trust and faith that everyone at Tescali placed in you?"

  "It was easy. So what? Tescali never did anything for me."

  "An Associate Directorship wasn't doing anything for you? Being the first human to travel through time wasn't good enough?"

  Askins laughed. "Petty stuff. No, I never got first prize. It was always you. Starting with our graduating class at that venerable old institution, M.I.T. You took the top honors. Then, you were the first to publish those oh-so-laudable groundbreaking papers on time travel. If that weren't enough, you were made the first Director of Tescali Lab, and you were only 25 years old. Unprecedented. Then, of course, you had to be the first person to actually build a working stargate."

  "Is that what this is about? Me being first?"

  "No. Not any more. Once I discovered Parallon, none of that mattered. Hell, I didn't need to prove myself here. In Parallon, I was king. All do my bidding. I had everything: servants, slaves, women…oh! The women! And the feasts: the wine, music and dance, jesters, all the entertainment a man could possibly wish for. I was having the time of my life. It was the perfect world, until..." His face clouded over.

  "Until that…little rebellion?" Mike asked.

  Askins straightened his carriage. "It wasn't little. Half the men in the village came after me. They stormed my villa one night. I barely got out with my life. It's a good thing I kept Star Gate One in working order. I jammed that thing back to 2275 AD in a hurry."

  "Yeah, the telescan tapes showed us everything."

  "The second time in Parallon was much better." Askins' eyes sparkled with twisted joy.

  "No great feat when you bring the entire lab and all its technology with you."

  Askins smiled. "Yeah, you can only get so far threatening people with mere weapons. I couldn't wait to get back here with the VisiOrb Control Center." Askins looked elated, as if he knew his story was torturing Mike. "Ruling over Parallon was about to become as easy as strolling in the sunshine. With the orbs, I knew I'd have the fear and respect of every man, woman, and child." Askins' face flushed as he rubbed one hand over the fist of the other. "Read a few minds and everyone bows to a new god. No one dared to challenge me this time around." He shook his fist for emphasis.

  "So, you started over." Mike said, recalling that Katera and Adrella had no memory of Askins before ten years ago.

  That meant that Askins had arrived in Parallon moments after his first arrival twenty-five years earlier. Since it's impossible to coexist with oneself in the same time period, the wormhole for Star Gate One had warped and created a parallel universe where there would not be two Askins. The new Parallon they were now in had been created when Askins bent the fabric of time by arriving simultaneously with his other self, the one who was twenty-five years younger. Mike narrowed his eyes.

  "No one in the new Parallon knew who you were, did they? Because you had never been here, in this new universe."

  Ironic , Mike mused. Somewhere in another universe, a different Parallon existed without Don Askins, a Parallon with villagers that had overthrown him and were able to live in peace.

  "Yeah, I could have come back and taken up where I l
eft off, but the villagers would have known me as the guy they had overpowered. They'd have known the VisiOrbs were only a device. My power would've been compromised. If they had no prior memory of me, I'd be able to convince them I was a god. A god who could enter their minds and read their thoughts." Askins laughed, his eyes glowing. "I have all the power I need. I even have my own little army this time around. Those mild mannered technicians make surprisingly good Kastaks, don't you think?"

  "The scientists you murdered would have made good Kastaks, too."

  Wondering if the man had any remnant of a conscience left, Mike asked quietly, "Why'd you kill them, Don? Was it really necessary? Greg Kurtz, Walt Schneider, Lon Sandersen, Jaime Sanchez…all of them. Marianna Lennon, Rito Vargas, Jamieson Williams…they were all your friends. Why did you kill your friends?"

  Askins grinned, showing his yellowed teeth. "First, they were scientists, not friends. And scientists know too much. Eventually, one of them would have done something to modify the VisiOrb system so it wouldn't work. They had the knowledge. If anyone was going to overpower me, it would've been one of them."

  Mike paused, staring at the man he thought he had once known. "Maybe one of them already did."

  He knew that Askins hadn't discovered the missing sphere, and he couldn't resist planting a seed of doubt. Askins studied Mike carefully, and dropped his jaw.

  "You." He raised a finger at Mike. "You modified the Orb in Adrella's ear." Once again, anger flooded into Askins' eyes, crowding out any semblance of reason. "Why are you helping them? Are they giving you favors? You keep your hands off. They're mine. They're my wives, you greedy sonofabitch."

  "No wife is a wife if she is forced to wed. They do not belong to you."

  A rocsadon's squeal punctured the air, and Askins gave him a wicked grin. "In a very short while, they may not belong to me…or anyone else."

  Mike's blood curdled. "What have you done?"

  Askins gave a low laugh. "I thought it was nice of me to allow them to ride out their terror together. They're on the pole. Do you know of this pole from your clandestine forays past the pen? Hm? Ah, I can see that you don't," he added, when Mike frowned. "Well, allow me to explain."