The Cyborg and the Sorcerers

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  "Praunce is very large, and rules more lands than any other city, as I have said. It's built on ruins, so of course there are a lot of freaks and monsters and stillbirths. There are even said to be dragons about; perhaps that's why it's never been attacked."

  "Dragons?"

  "So they say."

  That interested Slant; were dragons a revived myth, or was there some sort of large indigenous beast that had been given the name?

  "What does a dragon look like?"

  "I've never seen one."

  "What are they said to look like, then?"

  "Descriptions vary—and there aren't all that many descriptions, since most people who encounter a dragon up close don't live to describe it. They all agree that they're big and dangerous and they kill people."

  "How big are they?"

  "The smallest claim I ever heard was twice the size of a horse. Of course, tale-tellers exaggerate."

  Slant was well aware of that, and guessed that the described size was closer to an average than a minimum. He said nothing further on the subject, but asked more questions about Praunce instead.

  By the time they arrived at the gates of Arbauru, he had detailed instructions for reaching the city and was fairly certain that Thurrel could provide no further useful information about it.

  The village was located at the confluence of two good-sized streams, which provided water, transport, and defense on two sides of a triangle. The third side was blocked off by a sturdy wooden palisade. Slant wondered where the village got its food, since there were no surrounding farms and the rivers didn't appear large enough to provide sufficient trade, but then he noticed nets strung across the water. The fishing must be very good indeed, he decided.

  The gate was open; a bored guard rhetorically asked their business, and Thurrel replied they sought food and shelter. The guard waved them through, and they rode on into the village.

  Slant immediately noticed another source of food; small gardens were everywhere. The streets were narrow paths leading from building to building through a maze of vegetables and fruit trees. Such an arrangement certainly simplified withstanding a siege, he decided, but it was very inconvenient in other regards. What would happen when the population of the village began to crowd out the gardens? The wall had been built across a narrow point between the two streams, just before they diverged widely; it could not easily be moved or extended.

  Perhaps they had some method of controlling the size of the population. It was no concern of his, in any case.

  Thurrel spotted an inn, where they bought themselves a good and filling meal of fish and fruit. Slant had relented of his original intention of leaving Thurrel penniless, and had instead swapped three of his gold Imperials for the contents of the bandit's purse, a collection of three dozen coins of a dozen different kinds, mostly copper, a few silver. Either gold had more value here than in Awlmei or he had been cheated much worse than he had realized before, because a single gold coin paid for a lavish meal for the both of them and brought a few bits of silver in change. He remarked to Thurrel that the locals seemed to have no objection to foreign currency.

  Thurrel shrugged. "Why should they? Money is money. Gold is good anywhere."

  "That doesn't seem to be the attitude in Awlmei."

  "Then they're fools in Awlmei."

  "It must be a nuisance converting the different currencies, though."

  "What converting?"

  "They don't use the same units everywhere, do they?"

  "No, but the weights don't change. They just weigh the coin—or raw metal, if you prefer to pay that way. The problem with raw metal is that you can't be sure it's pure."

  "Are all the coins pure?"

  "Certainly. See there?" He held out a copper coin, and Slant looked closely at the writing on it. There was an emblem resembling a coronet around a tower, surrounded by the legend "Certified in Praunce to be pure copper." There was no mention of any number of units, no government motto. The other side of the coin was blank except for a single letter P.

  He looked through other coins and found the names and seals of various cities and towns, but all simply announced the coins to be pure metal. He discovered that with a little effort he could bend any of them. His Imperials, of course, were not absolutely pure; he wondered if he should mention that fact but decided against it, and went on eating his meal without further comment

  When he had finished he sat back for a moment, gazing out the window of the inn at the fruit trees that shaded it. He felt good, contented and relaxed; it was an unfamiliar sensation. He relished it for a moment, then reminded himself that he still had a long way to travel, even if he was only going to Praunce instead of Teyzha, and that there was no sense in wasting the few remaining hours of daylight. He had no intention of staying the night at the inn in Arbauru; that would cost money. He would find somewhere to camp again. He felt himself quite capable of dealing with anything he might run across, be it bad weather, more bandits, or even a dragon—whatever dragons were.

  "I'll be going now, Thurrel." He noticed the bandage on the man's shoulder and remarked, "You should have that wound looked at by someone who knows about such things; it's not a very serious injury, but it could get infected."

  Thurrel glanced at his shoulder and replied, "I will. Thank you for treating me with such kindness; it's more than I could have expected."

  "Will you be staying here, or do you still think you may go back to your old occupation?"

  "I don't know. This looks like a pleasant enough place, I have to admit; I'll give it a try."

  "Good." Slant rose and left the inn, feeling pleased that he had not had to kill Thurrel and that he had apparently convinced the man to give up banditry, perhaps saving other lives. He mounted his chosen horse, the largest of the three, and rode out the gate, leading the other two.

  Before he had gone half a dozen kilometers he found himself wishing Thurrel were still with him. The bandit was the first human being he had been able to hold a casual conversation with since he left Mars, and he had enjoyed it far more than he had realized; for the first time in years he was aware how lonely his life was, since he finally had something to compare it to.

  There were supposed to be things that prevented him from feeling lonely, he reminded himself; his body chemistry was carefully regulated, his mind controlled by hypnotic suggestion. He was not supposed to need or want human companionship.

  Assuring himself of that seemed to relieve a little of the sadness he felt, and he told himself that he had only thought he felt lonely, that he had only remembered what loneliness was like rather than actually experiencing it.

  It occurred to him that perhaps the mechanisms that controlled his emotions were beginning to break down; he knew they were not designed to last forever. He had been able to remember his name any number of times, and there had been that suspicious failure of his training while attempting to evade pursuit in the Teyzhan palace—though that might have had something to do with wizardry, one way or another.

  It didn't really matter, anyway; after all, with the computer down, he no longer needed to be lonely. He could make friends if he chose, live among ordinary people.

  Of course, that assumed he couldn't get the starship back into usable shape. Or did it? Perhaps he could take others with him if and when he left this planet. It might be difficult finding people who wanted to go, though, and he was unsure how many people the ship could support. It could certainly handle two, as he knew it was equipped for taking and escorting a prisoner if necessary.

  He tried to imagine what it would be like to be back aboard ship, with himself setting the course instead of the computer, with someone else aboard.

  He was still trying to imagine it, and failing, as he made camp and settled down for the night two hours later.

  Chapter Fifteen

  HE HAD REMEMBERED TO SET HIMSELF A TIME WHEN going to sleep, and therefore woke at dawn, just in time to see the first light of morning find its way, green an
d gold and pink, through the leafy treetops.

  The morning was just a trifle cooler than the morning before, which had been cooler than its predecessor; he was unsure if this was simply a quirk of the weather or if the summer was really ending. It made very little difference. He could handle a little cold weather, especially now that he had the horses and supplies he had taken from the bandits. The only thing that would even slow him up measurably would be a real snowstorm, an event that must surely still be weeks, if not months, away—and even if a snowstorm struck, he would just take shelter in a village or city. He had all the time he needed. Without the computer hounding him, he could wait out anything. He was still young, despite the fourteen years—fifteen, including basic training and so forth—spent in the military.

  It might almost turn out that his wandering damnation had been worth the years it cost; after all, he was free now, and alive, which might well not have been had he stayed on Old Earth. Leaving aside the three-century time difference—obviously he would not have lived three hundred years—it was extremely unlikely he would have survived to his current physiological age of thirty-three. If the D-series itself hadn't gotten him, the inevitable aftermath of the collapse of civilization might have.

  Instead, he was alive and well, albeit on a backward and alien planet, and possessed of several valuable resources: his strength, speed, and training; the horses and supplies that he had acquired; and a starship that might be available someday for his own personal use.

  It was going to be a good day, he decided. He ran through the stretching exercises taught him on Mars fourteen years ago, as he had almost every time he awoke aboard his ship, then mounted and headed east. Praunce was less than three days away; in seventy-two hours—no, sixty hours, with the shorter days—he might no longer have that infernal thermite bomb in his skull. That was a truly wonderful thought, and he savored it at length.

  He paused briefly at midday, and ate a good-sized meal of dried fruit and salted meat from the supplies that had been in the bandits' packs; he knew that his ship's stores would keep indefinitely, while this other food might not, so he was using it up first. Besides, it tasted better.

  He had finished and was about to remount his horse when a distant cry distracted him; he turned and looked westward in time to see a dark shape plummet from the sky and vanish amid the trees.

  Some sort of large bird, he decided, probably a bird of prey attacking something he hadn't seen. It was nothing that concerned him. He swung into the saddle and rode on.

  Approximately twenty minutes later his horse slowed its gait, unbidden; Slant was instantly wary. Had it detected something ahead it didn't like? Had it smelled something, perhaps? He had no idea what might lurk in these woods; just because he had not yet encountered any predators except humans, that didn't mean there weren't any.

  His mount tried to stop completely, but Slant would not allow that; he urged it forward, giving an encouraging yank to the other horses' lead ropes as well. He drew his machine-pistol from his pocket, holding it loosely in his right hand while his left held the reins.

  The stretch of road he was on described a reverse curve, turning first right and then back toward the left before the next straight section, and as he rounded the second bend he saw the thing asleep beside the road, on the right, its tail curling halfway across the highway. He guessed immediately that this was one of the "dragons" Thurrel had spoken of.

  The beast was immense; Slant could not see its full size, curled up as it was, but its unmoving head appeared to be a good two meters from the base of the skull to the tip of the snout. Its body did not seem quite as large, proportionately, but was certainly large enough to deserve extremes of caution and respect

  It was the size that convinced Slant it was a dragon, nothing else, because the creature was not reptilian at all. It resembled a cat of some kind, save that its mottled hide was almost hairless; it had fangs that would do justice to a saber-tooth tiger. The shape of its head was distinctly feline, but it had no visible ears, which gave it a certain wrongness. Its black-spotted pink-and-brown skin had a raw, unhealthy look.

  He wondered how such a thing could exist, even on a planet like this one, and remembered that Thurrel had spoken of freaks, monsters, and stillbirths as commonplace in Praunce, which had been built on ruins. The ruins must have been left after a nuclear attack, saturated with hard radiation; how could people have been foolish enough to live in such a place?

  Furthermore, how much lingering radioactivity could there still be after three hundred years? He refused to believe that a thing like this dragon was an actual viable mutation, breeding true after three centuries; what could the first of its kind have bred with? He knew enough genetics to be certain that the odds against two such creatures occurring at once and both being fertile were absolutely astronomical. And nothing so nearly feline could reproduce asexually. Besides, Thurrel had spoken of strange births as a continuing phenomenon. There must still be a very high level of radiation.

  He vaguely recalled a briefing on enhanced radiation weapons and government policy toward enemy territory, and decided that he shouldn't have been surprised. He began wondering about the local life expectancy, fertility levels, and cancer rates—and about his own life expectancy if he stayed around. He wished he had the computer available to measure just how much radiation he was exposing himself to. He knew that the equipment in his body included radiation counters, but the data were only accessible through the computer.

  His horse did not want to go closer to the dragon; it made this known by planting its hoofs firmly and refusing to take another step. He could hear its breathing, rough and harsh, and sensed that it was on the verge of panic. Fortunately, even in its terror it had enough sense not to make unnecessary noise—or perhaps it was frightened beyond being able to make noise.

  That was inconvenient. He had been lucky enough to come across the creature while it was asleep, and his best chance for safely continuing his journey was to go around it before it awoke. If it had the habits of lesser felines, it could wake up at any moment. Therefore, every delay increased the risk.

  He wore no spurs, and his mount refused to respond to his boot heels; he managed to twist the stirrups so that the bottom inside corners dug in as well, and thereby coaxed the horse into taking a few more steps before it froze again.

  He considered dismounting and leading the three horses past, but he was unsure he could hold and control them. If he stayed astride, he would not lose all three, at any rate; the other two might flee, but wherever the first went he would go as well.

  He wondered whether he might do better to backtrack and loop around the dragon or wait until it departed on its own, but he rejected both ideas. He did not know the way well enough to risk leaving the road, and the dragon might not leave for a good long time—or it might smell his horses wherever he chose to wait, and pursue them.

  He reached back with his right hand and slapped the horse's rump with the butt of his machine-pistol, and it took another few hesitant steps. He was encouraged; he might coax it past yet. He directed his mount well to the left, along the verge of the highway, and managed to work it along until he was about even with the monster, almost directly across the highway from it, less than five meters away, but within two meters of its tail.

  He looked the creature over while waiting for his mount to calm enough for another prodding. The great size, lack of fur and external ears, and oversized fangs were not the only changes from more ordinary felines; even curled up as it was, Slant could see that the creature's proportions were wrong, its head too large for its body, its legs thick and awkward. He wondered what it would look like in motion but was not foolish enough to risk waking it. He glanced back at the other two horses, which had so far followed without much resistance; as he did, he heard a call from somewhere overhead.

  "Slant of Teyzha! Is that you? Are you there? Slant?"

  It was a woman's voice, high-pitched and piercing. He made no effort to recogniz
e it and paid no attention at all to what it said; he was too busy watching the dragon, which began to stir.

  He gave his mount a sharp, sudden slap on the rump with the trailing ends of the reins; the frightened animal responded by rearing up, then plunging forward and charging down the road at full gallop, past the dragon and away. Slant did not mind in the least that he found himself clinging for his life, jarred violently up and down. Several items fell from his pockets as the horse leaped a fallen branch and came down still running, but he did not worry about what he had lost. He was gratified to hear the galloping hoofs of the other two horses close behind, and to see that the lead-ropes were still secured to the back of his saddle.

  Somewhere behind him he heard tree branches breaking; he assumed it was the dragon's doing until the woman's voice called again.

  "Help! Slant, help me!"

  Cursing in three languages, Slant struggled to rein in his mount. He had no idea what was going on behind him, and couldn't get a good look while the horse was galloping.

  The horse was in no mood to slow down, but eventually it gave in to his brutal yanking on the bit and came to an uneasy halt, allowing Slant to look back up the road.

  A girl was lying on her back in the middle of the road, the dragon standing over her, looking at her curiously. Slant was tempted to turn and flee, it being none of his business, but he recognized the girl as Ahnao, the wizard's apprentice he had taken hostage in Awlmei. That explained how she knew his name. It did not explain what she was doing there. Had something happened to his ship? Had the wizards of Awlmei reconsidered their sentence? Was his banishment voided, or had they perhaps decided to kill him after all?

  He had to know what was going on; the machine-pistol still in his hand, he dismounted and ran at the monster, shouting.

  The dragon, or the cat, or whatever it was, had been watching the girl, waiting for her to make a move. Had she moved, it would doubtlessly have pounced, in the tradition of cats everywhere, or perhaps just batted at her with a paw. Even a tap from a paw would put an end to any attempt at flight; it would probably mash her flat. Slant's shouting distracted it only momentarily; it glanced in his direction, apparently decided he was harmless, and then, intent on its chosen prey, turned back to Ahnao.