The Adventures of Duncan & Mallory

by Robert Asprin

  When he managed to push himself upright the man just sort of flowed down the doorway and onto the floor—out cold.

  Duncan looked from the unconscious man at his feet to the pillow in his hand. “What the hell just happened?”

  Mallory took the pillow from Duncan’s hand and shook it up and down. The coins rattled in the bottom of the pillow slip and he grimaced.

  “Oops,” Duncan said, shrugging.

  “Oops!” Mallory said in disbelief. “Oops! Quick. Help me drag him in here before anyone sees.” They dragged the guy in the room and Mallory quickly shut the door. The guy was big, even bigger than Duncan was. He was ugly, his head being really too big for his body, and his features too big for his head. His hair was nearly as dark as Duncan’s, cut in the same short, flat-on-top style his father had always worn, so Duncan was glad he’d knocked the guy out just on principle.

  Mallory paced back and forth then looked at Duncan and said, “We’d best pack our gear and be on our way.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? You just knocked this guy out and when he comes too he is going to be none too happy, I can assure you. He’s a big guy. If he goes to the local law… Let’s just say I just don’t want to deal with all of that. If Sadie and Bilgewater thought it was best to get out of town then I think it would be wise for us to follow suit.”

  “But I like it here.” Duncan sort of wanted to stay awhile see that girl (what was her name?) again.

  “What is it you said about when you know you should go?”

  Duncan nodded and started packing quickly. The dragon need say no more. It was time to go.

  * * * *

  They went to the store and bought Duncan a real pack to carry their gear in as well as some much-need provisions and a canteen for Mallory. Then they hit the road out of town, at first moving at a near run.

  Mallory could tell that Duncan was a little sad about leaving because he was quiet and thoughtful. Duncan was rarely quiet, and Mallory wasn’t sure Duncan really thought—at least not on the same level as he did.

  “Did you have a good time last night?” Mallory asked.

  “Yes,” Duncan said with a stupid grin. “She was a nice girl.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Do you have a girl friend somewhere, Mallory?”

  “Good heavens no! I’m only sixty-five.”

  “Sixty-five?!” Duncan said.

  “It’s rather young for a dragon. I’m not sexually mature and with the way I’ve seen others act, I have no desire to hurry the process along. Females expect you to spend money on them, and they want things and…I can’t imagine liking anyone enough to just give them my money. How much money did you spend last night anyway?”

  “Everything I had,” Duncan mumbled as he looked at his feet.

  And Mallory then felt completely justified in not telling Duncan about the extra coins he had hidden in his cheek frill pouches. “Your problem, Duncan, is that you don’t understand the value of money.”

  Duncan smiled stupidly again and said, “Oh I think I do, dragon. I think I do.”

  Mallory laughed and decided that from now on he’d never let Duncan carry more than a few coins at a time.

  The human moaned. “I can tell you right now I’m not looking forward to sleeping on the ground tonight. One night in an inn sort of ruined all the ‘glamour of the open road’ for me.”

  “I hear you. Still, when our fortune is made we’ll be able to stay in the finest hotels in the finest cities in this world,” Mallory said. They turned a corner in the road. Noticing that here the road was only a few feet from the Sliding, Mallory was glad to see that Duncan didn’t flinch, proving the human was putting his trauma behind him.

  Suddenly ahead of them on the left side of the road there was a sign that brought Mallory to a complete stop.

  “What’s it say?” Duncan asked.

  “It says boat for sale—cheap.”

  “Boat?” Duncan asked curiously.

  “Don’t you see, Duncan? A boat would be the perfect vehicle for us. All the towns are close to the river. We could ride the river, no more sore feet, and no road dust.”

  “Mallory, the river slides,” Duncan reminded him.

  “So, if you’re in a boat you just slide along with it.”

  “I was originally hoping to catch a ride on a boat. Of course that was before the river slid with me on it. Still I suppose it must be safe or there would be wrecked boats all along the shores. It couldn’t be as hard as riding in the back of a wagon.” Duncan smiled then and slapped Mallory on the back. “I think I would like to own a boat.”

  They followed the road a ways. It got further from the river and they still hadn’t seen any sort of boat. Mallory began to think that maybe it was an old sign and the boat had been sold long ago. Soon the river was obscured behind a row of thick trees and brush, and then there was another sign. This one also said boat for sale cheap, but this time “cheap” was in huge red letters. It pointed down a small dirt road.

  They followed it for about five minutes and then they both gasped as they saw the most beautiful thing either of them had ever seen. It was a not-too-small, two-storied house boat with a big paddle wheel on the back.

  They both stopped and just stared. Mallory immediately saw himself as a river-boat gambler with his own casino. Put in a few tables and a bar maybe.

  “Imagine,” Duncan said, a far away look in his eye. “Me at the wheel, a beautiful girl on each arm, the wind in my face and… There’s no way we can afford it is there?”

  “It says cheap,” Mallory reminded.

  “Cheap is still going to be fifty times what we have. It’s a river boat for Pete’s sake.”

  “Look, just keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking. Don’t say a word.”

  Duncan nodded, but it was pretty clear from the look on his face that he thought it was a lost cause.

  There was a shack not far from where the boat was docked and before they could even reach the door a bright pink creature with little short legs and arms longer than its whole body waddled over. Its arms stuck out of his head where its ears should have been. Its body and head were a rectangle with no real neck. Its eyes and mouth seemed sort of stuck on without anyone having thought about where they should go.

  Mallory thought he’d seen about every kind of creature there was to see, but this thing was really different. He accepted one of the outstretched hands reluctantly but shook it.

  Duncan, for his part, looked towards the boat, pretending not to notice the creature’s out-stretched hand. After a moment, the creature lowered his hand.

  “Are you here about the boat? Oh please tell me you’re here about the boat,” it said with a voice that sounded like it had a mouth full of marbles. Which it didn’t.

  Mallory was a little taken aback and he immediately started wondering just what was wrong with it. “Yes, we’d like to look at the boat.”

  The fact that this guy was in such a hurry to unload it meant it couldn’t possibly be as clean on the inside as it was on the outside. Mallory tried to think of some clever way of finding out what was wrong with the boat but when he failed to think of anything he just asked, “What’s wrong with the boat?”

  “Ahh, nothing. Nothing at all is wrong with the boat. Nothing you can’t see anyway. It needs to be painted of course, and it needs a good cleaning. That’s all. I just need money for my mother’s surgery. To tell the truth, I’m tired of sailing. In fact, I haven’t had her out in years. Come on; let me show her to you. She’s really a nice boat.” The creature practically pushed them across the gangplank and onto the deck. “It’s narrow, but the deck goes all the way round the living quarters on both stories.”

  The first story was broken into three rooms. At the stern was the engine room and the paddle wheel was behind that. Mallory noticed Duncan looking the engine over and wondered if he had any idea what he was looking at. He hoped the human did because he sure didn’t.

  Direc
tly in front of the engine room was a small kitchen, and it looked like the kitchen stove was connected to the furnace that ran the steam engine that made the paddle wheel go. That made a lot of sense.

  The kitchen was dirty and had a musty smell to it, but it had cabinets and a counter with a sink. Dirty could always be cleaned.

  There was not a single piece of furniture on the ship, but so far Mallory wasn’t seeing any reason for the man to want to sell the boat so badly. Surprisingly this only served to make him more suspicious. The man’s story about his mother was not a terribly imaginative lie. There was nothing obviously wrong, no pieces falling off, no large holes with water running in. So whatever the problem was, it couldn’t be seen and it must be huge.

  The other room on the bottom floor was pretty big and totally empty except for a small bar that was bolted to the deck about two and half feet from the wall that separated this room from the kitchen. The bar wasn’t much to look at—wooden with a front and top of some dark brown wood. It had a couple of shelves behind it as a back-bar. Still, the sight of it had Mallory once again seeing a floating casino with several tables for cards, maybe even a roulette wheel. Which would, of course, favor the house. But then they always did.

  “They used to throw parties here. Go on fishing weekends and such,” the creature showing them the craft said. Then it rushed them over to a set of stairs so narrow that Duncan had to walk up sideways and it was a tight squeeze for Mallory, too.

  He wondered if the creature was aware that he’d said they’d thrown parties and not he had. He got the feeling the creature had seldom, if ever, used the boat. And if he hadn’t, why not? After all, the boat looked far nicer than the shack the creature lived in.

  Stopping on the second floor in a small block-type hallway the creature explained, “This is where all the bedrooms are. There are four of them and a bathroom.” There was another set of stairs in the hallway and he started to go up those.

  Mallory took hold of the creature’s arm. “Wait a minute, my good fellow. Let us look around a bit.” The creature looked annoyed but nodded and let them look around.

  The four rooms were all small and filthy. The “bathroom” was beyond filthy. He doubted the shower had been used in years. And the “commode” was a hinged lid that opened to a hole that went all the way through the ship to the river below.

  Duncan made a face, turned to Mallory and said, “And I was drinking out of the river.” He gagged, and for a minute Mallory was sure Duncan was about to add some filth of his own to the boat.

  Mallory made a face, too.

  The creature then rushed them up to the wheel house, a small room on the very top of the boat. “Pretty straight forward. Stoke the furnace, pull the lever back to back up, push it forward to go forward. Then it’s just adjust the speed and steer it one way or the other. This here lever pulls the anchor up and this one drops it down. So make me an offer I can’t refuse.”

  He was in too big a hurry. Duncan must have realized it too because he asked, “Does the engine work?”

  “Sure it does. You don’t take me for a crook, do you?

  “Not at all sir, but a shrewd business man can make fools out of simple folks like me and my friend,” Mallory said, and made his way down the stairs. The others followed. “Could you give us a second to talk it over?” Mallory asked.

  “Not much more than that,” the fellow said, and he started tapping his foot as Mallory took Duncan into one of the bedrooms which—like the rest of the boat—lacked any actual furniture.

  “What do you think?” Mallory asked.

  “We’re never going to be able to afford it,” Duncan said.

  “I don’t think that’s the real rub. Truth is, right now we have a lot of money and he’s in an awful big hurry to unload it,” Mallory said. “I don’t think money’s going to be a problem. I am a bit worried about what’s wrong with the thing. It’s too good to be true and I never trust things that are too good to be true.”

  “If we can really get it for what we’ve got, and if it doesn’t sink, who cares?” Duncan said excitedly. “It’s everything we need—transportation and a place to live.”

  “And see, Duncan my boy, that’s why I’m the financial genius in this team. You leave it up to me. He’s in a hurry to sell. Unless I get the sense that he’s selling us something worse than the nothing we have now, I think we’ll have us a boat. Go on out and look around the deck. Look forlorn and uncertain.”

  “How will that help?”

  “For one thing it will make him think we aren’t really that sure. For another… I’m not so sure we shouldn’t be forlorn and uncertain.”

  The guy tried to get more money, but when Mallory told him the amount he offered was all they had—which it wasn’t, but it was closer than he liked to play it—the guy had immediately yelled out, “Sold!”

  He didn’t even try to haggle after that, and the dragon’s gut twisted because he knew, just knew, there was something seriously wrong with the boat.

  He wanted the boat so bad he just made the part of his brain that kept telling him he was being cheated shut up. He paid the guy and took the title and receipt.

  * * * *

  Duncan looked down at the waves lapping against the side of the boat and day dreamed about everything they’d do and everywhere they’d go. He didn’t know why he had no doubt that Mallory would get them the boat. He wasn’t sure he approved of Mallory’s methods most of the time, but this time he just didn’t care as long as it meant sailing away the proud owners of this river boat.

  Mallory joined him on the deck a few minutes later, and the look on his face told Duncan they’d not gotten the boat—which Duncan found surprised him more than a little.

  “It was too much money?”

  Mallory pulled a piece of paper out of his vest pocket and waved it in the air. “It’s ours. He insisted we leave immediately.” Mallory didn’t look or sound happy, which puzzled Duncan more than a little because he was sure Mallory wanted the boat as much as he did—maybe even more.

  The boat needed a lot of work, but so what? Most of it was as simple as sweeping and mopping. Anything beat sleeping out in the rain and cold.

  Mallory hadn’t quite finished folding the deed and putting it back in his vest pocket when the creature brought a wheelbarrow load of coal up and dumped it in the engine room, and then they could hear him making a fire. Mallory answered the puzzled look on Duncan’s face.

  “Before dark. Part of the deal is that we have to leave before dark. That couldn’t be good. Something’s definitely not right. Still, you roll the dice; you take your chances.”

  Duncan agreed it was strange that the creature insisted they be gone by dark. He even shared Mallory’s belief that it couldn’t be a good thing, but he didn’t share Mallory’s sudden lack of enthusiasm.

  “Maybe he doesn’t really own the boat,” Duncan suggested.

  Mallory shrugged. “Maybe. Why don’t you go help him? Make sure the engine really works? Ask some questions and find out all you can about how it works.”

  Duncan nodded and headed for the engine room. He helped the creature stoke the fire in the boiler and then listened carefully as he told him how the engine worked. He started to leave and Duncan grabbed him by his shirt. “Wait a minute. You have to show us how to drive this boat.”

  “I already did. It’s simple, self-explanatory really.” He started to leave the boat again and this time Mallory, who had walked back in to the boat, put a hand on his shoulder.

  “I’d still like you to show us,” Mallory insisted.

  Grudgingly the creature started up the stairs to the bridge. He showed them what did what and told them when to pull or push what. Then he started going down the stairs while Mallory and Duncan were still asking him questions.

  Mallory looked at Duncan. “Do you know how to operate this boat?”

  Duncan shrugged. “I’m not sure.” He started to go after the guy, and then the boat lurched backwards and ne
arly knocked both of them off their feet.

  Mallory looked out the window to see what had happened and it was clear that the creature had already lifted the gangplank and cast them off from the shore.

  “Well you better get sure in a hurry because we’re adrift,” Mallory said, looking over his shoulder. “Well, don’t just stand there! Do something.”

  “Why me? You were here too when he was telling us how to run the thing.”

  “Are you kidding me? I wasn’t listening to him. Frankly I was way too busy trying to figure out why he was in such a hurry to sell this boat. You know, like he’s in such a big hurry to be rid of it that he untied us from shore without so much as a ‘Bye! See ya later.’”

  Duncan looked at the pressure gauge—it read fifty percent—so he hit what he was sure was the reverse lever for the paddle wheel. He then pulled on the lever he believed put the steam power to the wheel and said a little prayer. The boat started backing away from the shore and soon he was pushing the lever forward and they were chugging down the river.

  Duncan was glad it was as simple as it had seemed because otherwise they would have been lost without a clue. “Luck is smiling on us, Mallory. This thing is easy to sail.”

  “I don’t know,” Mallory said at his shoulder. “I’m afraid we just got hornswoggled. Look,” he pointed out the window at the creature, who was dancing on the shore as they floated away. “That can’t be good. There has to be something seriously wrong with this boat. Something we just haven’t found yet.”

  “Quit saying that. You’re just cynical, Mal. Maybe he’s happy he has the money to save his sick mother.”

  “Yeah and I’m a house cat,” Mallory mumbled.

  Duncan didn’t completely disregard what Mallory said, but he couldn’t imagine anything was seriously wrong with the boat. The engine seemed to be chugging along fine and though they checked a dozen times, they didn’t find any leaks. What else could possibly be wrong?

  They made it quite a way down the river before it started to get dark. “You know what’s odd? I haven’t seen another boat all day.”