by Rick Cook
"Hey, that was nothing. The castle’s shields took most of the blast so we only got a little of it. And the best part is that the spell to compress that water is so simple I can make my H-bombs any size I want. A hundred megatons, two hundred, even a thousand megatons, no problem."
Craig leaned against the battlement to ease his shaky knees. "That’s some water balloon. You ought to put one of those things in the nose of an ICBM."
"ICBMs? We don’ need no steenkin’ ICBMs. Combine that with the teleportation spell. What do you think would happen if you shoved a mother big bomb down into the planet’s crust?"
"Jesus," Craig breathed. "You could sink half a continent!"
Mikey’s smile grew wider. "If you do it right you should smash the world." He looked out past Craig, past the fortress and past the dissipating cloud.
"The whole fucking world," he repeated dreamily.
Thirty-three: A FRIGHTENED DRAGON
In spite of the night’s activities, Karin and Mick got an early start. Mick caught a quick bath in the freezing stream at first light while Karin spent time with Stigi. Then they set out on the hunt as dawn turned the sky red.
The pickings weren’t as easy as they had been. The dinosaurs had learned to be wary of the humans and keeping Stigi fed now involved more stalking. Fortunately Karin was adept at hunting with a bow.
Still it was nearly noon before they found a likely looking herd and moved into position downwind for the stalk.
Karin was just sizing up the situation when a second sun blossomed in the northern sky. In an instant the world turned overexposed blue-white with stark black shadows, as if a gigantic flashbulb had gone off behind them.
"Get down!" Mick yelled and pulled Karin down beside him.
"What…" The dragonrider tried to look back toward the source of the flash, but Gilligan reached out and forced her head down.
"Don’t look! Keep your head down and close your eyes."
"I…" Karin begin, but her voice was drowned out when the shock wave hit.
Gilligan pressed his face into the dirt and screamed at the top of his lungs as the wall of dust and flying debris passed over them. The wind yanked at his flight suit and the wind-driven sand stung his exposed skin. He kept his head down and his eyes screwed shut until the gale ceased.
When he opened his eyes Karin was staring at him in shock. She tried to get up but at that instant the ground shock wave hit them and she was knocked first to her knees and then flat as the earth trembled beneath her. She lay on her stomach and clutched at the ground with clawed fingers as if she was afraid the shaking would throw her off.
Gilligan waited until everything was still and probably quiet-his ears were ringing so he couldn’t tell-before he climbed shakily to his knees and looked around.
Dust stained the sky an ugly mustard yellow and dimmed the sun to a reddish disk. One of the nearby trees had been blown down and limbs had broken off several others. In the distance a herd of reptiles stampeded blindly, bellowing their panic across the plain.
"Okay, you can get up now."
Karin’s face was white where it was not smudged with dirt and her freckles stood out starkly.
"Mick, what was that?" She clung to his forearms to hold herself erect.
"Let’s get out of here," Gilligan said grimly.
"But Stigi needs to eat."
"He’ll have to hunt for himself if we both die of radiation poisoning. Now let’s get the hell out of the open!"
She bent and retrieved her bow. "He will be frightened," she said by way of agreement.
He’s not the only one, Gilligan thought.
Karin was right. Stigi was blundering around roaring in fear and pain. The campsite was a wreck where the dragon had lumbered through it, flattening shelters and mashing things into the dirt.
The dragon rider set about the task of trying to calm her mount while Gilligan gathered everything of value and flung it under the overhanging rock for protection from fallout. He kept his eye on the skies, looking for rain clouds.
"Karin, get over here!"
"But Stigi needs me."
"Bring him here then. But get the hell under cover."
She led the dragon over to the rock shelter, still patting his great scaled neck and talking to him in soothing tones.
"Get in here with me and have him lay down next to the overhang so he blocks the entrance," Gilligan commanded.
For once Stigi did not object to Gilligan’s proximity. It was hard to imagine an eighty-foot monster cowering, but this one was shivering from fang to tail tip. Karin kept patting his back and talking to the dragon even after it lay down.
Gilligan checked his shoulder holster and found that about a handful of sand had gotten into it when he hit the dirt. Rummaging through the haphazard pile of equipment he found his cleaning kit and proceeded to field strip and clean his Beretta.
Objectively it didn’t help much, but it made him feel better.
"You said you would tell me what that was later," Karin said after a time. "Is now later enough?"
"It was an air burst," Gilligan said tightly. "I don’t know how big because I don’t know how far away."
He looked out around the quaking dragon at the sky. "Pretty far, I think. There’s no sign of blast-induced rain."
"It wasn’t natural, was it? I mean it isn’t something that just happens here?"
"No, it’s manmade. Or something made anyway."
Karin eyed him sideways. "And you have seen them before?"
"Never. I always hoped I never would." He slid the pistol back into its holster. "You remember I told you that we would fight an all-out war with weapons that could destroy a city in the blink of an eye? That was one of those weapons."
"Then your people… ?"
"No!" Karin jerked back as if she had been slapped at the violence of his reply. "I told you we’d never use them unless we were attacked. Nobody would. We’re all too afraid of them."
"I can see why."
"Besides, if we did use them we wouldn’t set one off over a deserted plain like that and we wouldn’t use just one of them."
"But you are expecting more of them. You make us stay under the rocks."
"If there were going to be more we never would have gotten off the plain. We’re here because of fallout."
"What is that?"
He turned to her. "Nuclear weapons don’t just make a big explosion. They produce all kinds of poisonous byproducts. Even if the blast doesn’t get you you can still sicken or die. That stuff will be coming out of the sky for the next few hours and it will be dangerous for the next few days. That blast was a pure air burst so there won’t be as much fallout as there could have been. The wind is generally away from us so the plume may not reach us. We may be safe, but I don’t want to take chances."
"What about Stigi?"
"You see any place around here that could shelter him?"
Karin shook her head reluctantly.
"Besides, he may not be as affected by this stuff as we are." For all I know he’s got a nuclear reactor in his gut, Gilligan thought. He wondered if anyone had ever worked out the dose response tables for a firebreathing dragon.
There was no rain that night, and no more explosions. Sometime on toward dawn Gilligan finally drifted off into an uneasy sleep. He dreamed of ruined deserted cities and Karin with her hair falling out.
He awoke numb and muzzy headed. The sun was above the horizon, Karin was gone and so was Stigi.
He cast about frantically for a moment, but Karin’s pack and Stigi’s saddle were still where he had piled them. Obviously Karin expected to be back soon. Gilligan forced himself to sit down under the overhang and wait.
Perhaps an hour later Karin led Stigi back up the path and into the wrecked campsite.
Heedless of the possibility of fallout or Stigi’s steamwhistle snort, he raced across the clearing to meet them. "Karin, I was worried about you," Gilligan said as he took her in his arms. They kissed deepl
y and then Karin broke away.
"Stigi was restless so I took him to the stream for a bath," she explained. "It always calms him."
"That wasn’t safe. We don’t know we’re out of the fallout plume."
"Oh, but that thing did not leave poison here," Karin said almost gaily.
"What makes you so sure?"
"This," she said, digging into her pouch and producing a small object apparently carved out of jet. "Scouts carry these because sometimes we must forage abroad. It tells us if something is safe to eat or drink. I checked everything I could find and there was no sign of harm."
"I don’t know how good it is at detecting fallout," Gilligan said dubiously.
Karin returned the amulet to her pouch. "It has never failed us."
Mick nodded. It was possible serious fallout hadn’t reached this far and they had nothing to worry about. If the fallout had reached them they were already facing a bout of radiation sickness. Logically there was no reason to believe Karin’s magic rock was telling the truth, but it felt better that way.
He hugged her again "I was worried about you," he said with his nose and lips buried in the hair on her neck.
"I am sorry, love."
"That’s the first time you called me that."
Karin pulled her head away and laid her fingertips on his cheek.
"Well?"
"Well, I like it." He kissed her again.
After a long moment Karin pulled away. "Mick, we have to talk."
"Okay, about what?"
"What happened yesterday. We cannot stay here now."
"You got that right. The best thing would be to move to the opposite end of the island, as far away from that castle…"
"No," Karin cut him off. "I need to go the other way. I need to get as close to that castle as I can to spy out its defenses."
Mick dropped his arms to his sides.
"One of those ’defenses’ you’re talking about is nuclear weapons. That’s crazy!"
"Nevertheless," Karin said quietly, "I must."
"Look, at least wait until Stigi’s wing is healed. That’s, what, another week?"
"Longer than that, I fear. He apparently tried to fly yesterday in his panic and re-injured it."
"So you’re going to walk?"
"I have no other choice."
"The hell you don’t! You can stay here like a sensible person. Until help arrives or until that dragon can fly."
"And meanwhile the ones in that castle will be brewing up who knows what kind of horrors," Karin blazed back. "No. I have my duty as a scout and flier and I will not shirk it to lie around here while my very world is threatened."
"I don’t know how it is in the dragon cavalry, but in the Air Force a recon pilot’s first job is to get the information back to his base."
"A scout’s first job is to gather information. Having no way of getting anything back, I can only gather more."
"I’ll bet you’ve got some kind of regulation against this kind of behavior," Gilligan said with a shrewdness born of desperation.
"There is also a regulation saying regulations are guides and must be applied with wisdom. This is an unusual situation and I must take unusual action."
Like me sending Smitty back and pressing on alone, Gilligan thought. Somehow he felt that the universe was getting even with him for that.
"What about Stigi?"
Karin frowned. "That is the thing which made it so hard. I will take Stigi with me. He can walk and dragons can keep a fairly good pace."
"Okay, you feel you’ve got to scout ahead. You could do it faster once Stigi’s wing heals."
"It will heal just as well on the march as here."
"And if you’re caught in the open?"
"That is a chance I must take."
Gilligan opened his mouth and found he didn’t have any more arguments. Karin obviously wasn’t thinking straight, but that didn’t matter. She was driven by an overpowering urge to do something, anything, except the intelligent thing, which was sit and wait.
Intellectually he could understand that. He felt the same way. But the kind of training it takes to fly a high-performance jet had drummed the value of patience into him. Dragon riding didn’t demand the same qualities, or maybe Karin was still too inexperienced to have learned them.
Gilligan considered knocking her out and tying her up. But Karin was lithe and strong. Then he considered Stigi’s likely reaction if he tried it and quickly discarded the notion.
The dragon rider set her jaw defiantly. "You have your own rations and equipment. I am sure that you will have no trouble reaching the far end of the island. I will give you a note so that your story will be believed should you meet one of our patrols. Then you can send help on to me."
"You’re crazy, you know that?"
Karin shrugged. "I have my duty."
Mick stepped forward and grasped her hands in his. "I’m not going to let you do this. Not alone." Karin looked at him and then smiled.
Hell of an expeditionary force, he thought as he pulled her close and kissed her hard. Two crazies and a gimpy dragon. Then he opened his eyes and looked at the woman in his arms.
Still, he thought, there are compensations in being crazy.
They spent the rest of the day packing and headed out across the plain the next morning. Karin took the lead with Gilligan beside her. Stigi followed at her heels like an overgrown hound.
The morning was bright and the sky was painted pastel blues and pinks by the rising sun. Except for an occasional broken limb or an uprooted tree there was nothing to suggest what had happened here two days ago. The plains animals had returned to their normal habits and several times they passed herds of them grazing in the distance.
Once Stigi bridled and snorted as though an animal had come near, but he quickly relaxed and resumed walking. Either there had been nothing there, Gilligan decided, or whatever it was had gotten a look at Stigi and decided not to try anything.
Thirty-four: REC0N BATTLE
For three days they trekked across the plain. The tree-studded veldt gave way to grassy savanna and the grass grew shorter and sparser. The soil was brick red now and vegetation grew poorly. Water was something you found in greenish sinks instead of rivers or streams and trees became a memory.
Several times they saw large columns of dust to the north, as if distant armies were on the march. They tried to go between them and saw nothing. The herds had been left behind them on the veldt and now even the antelopelike runners were scarce.
There were signs, however. Twice they crossed ground which had been torn up by treads. Once the tread marks were accompanied by what appeared to be enormous footprints, as if some unimaginable two-legged beast had been following the vehicles.
On mid-afternoon of the third day they were approaching a low ridge of reddish earth when Karin called a sudden halt.
"Wait." She held up her hand and dug something out of her pouch. "There is magic ahead of us."
Gilligan reached for his gun. "What kind?"
"It doesn’t tell me that, only…"
With a thundering roar a tank burst over the hill. Beside it came three two-legged robots, springing forward on back-flexing limbs. While the tank nosed up and over the hill, the robots leaped over the ridge like giant grasshoppers.
Stigi reared back, wings spread and neck extended, and roared a challenge. Karin dropped to one knee and had the bow off her shoulder and an arrow nocked in one fluid motion. Without seeming to aim she fired at the tank.
The arrow hit the tank’s armor without seeming effect. With a roar of its engine it continued down the hill straight at the party.
"Run for it!" Gilligan yelled and dashed to his left to try to circle the attackers. Seeing his action, Karin broke right.
Stigi had a different idea. The dragon inhaled and blasted a gout of flame straight ahead, bathing the tank in fire. The flame splashed off the tank, but here and there it caught. A tiny tongue of orange licked out of the deck behi
nd the turret. It spouted thick black smoke and grew larger. The tank stopped and the tongue turned into a gout of orange and black as something in the machine’s engine compartment caught.
Meanwhile Karin had dropped to her knee and fired another arrow at one of the robots. Again her aim was true and again the robot continued to advance apparently unheeding.
Karin tried to run again, but as she rose she got tangled in the lower limb of her bow and went sprawling into the sand. She rolled to the side and threw her arm up in a futile attempt to shield herself from the advancing robot.
The robot never noticed. It continued unerringly straight toward the place where she had been. Then it emitted a despairing whine and toppled into the sand beside her.
Karin looked up, shook sand from her eyes and tried to locate Mick and Stigi.
Mick’s sudden dash had attracted the attention of two of the robots and now he was frantically dodging blasts of energy from their snout cannon. By a combination of broken field running and dive-and-roll, he had managed to stay ahead of them so far, but the robots had split up and they were coming at him from different directions.
Karin grabbed another arrow, but Stigi reached Mick first. With a roar, the dragon charged full on into one of the robots, catching it at knee level in a way that would have earned him a clipping penalty if they had been playing football. The robot lurched forward onto its snout, then got its feet under it and tried to rise.
It got halfway up when a whipping blow from Stigi’s tail hammered it to the ground again. This time the robot didn’t try to rise. It swiveled its body around to face the on-rushing dragon and let loose with a bolt from its cannon.
Fortunately energy cannons don’t work any better than regular ones when the barrel is full of sand. There was a muffled "whump" and the cannon barrel glowed cherry red and went limp. Stigi grabbed the fifteen-foot-tall robot in his powerful jaws and shook it the way a terrier shakes a rat, slamming it into the ground and tossing it into the air until pieces began to fly off.
Meanwhile, Karin’s arrow had found the third robot. It took two more steps and collapsed with the iron arrow sticking straight out of its back.