by Robert Adams
Of
Myths and Monsters
Robert Adams
In memory of Robert A. Heinlein 1907-1988
PROLOGUE
In one of the larger cities of an Eastern Seaboard state of the United States of America, in the first year of the last quarter of the twentieth century, a man sat at a desk in a modest office which was located in a building that, though it once had been the mansion of a well-to-do family, was now become one- and two-room offices. The man resembled in his physical appearance, dress, and usual manner only what he was supposed to resemble, a businessman of indeterminate age but probable middle years, a run-of-the-mill, middle-class American who was possessed of sufficient business acumen to afford to dress well, drive a mid-priced but new auto, pay his bills on time and in full. A bachelor who had been known to make allusions to one or more former wives, he occasionally wined and dined and otherwise entertained acquaintances of the female persuasion and later, in his comfortable apartment, often shared sex with them. That he never allowed any serious or lasting relationships with them to develop was usually ascribed to his understandable fear of repeating the pain of his late marriage or marriages.
In fact, the man was nothing of the sort. In the strictest sense, he was not even a man—male, but not human, not completely human, at least. Not that there had not once been a truly human man just like this being, but he had died and his husk had been used as the pattern for fashioning the body that this being now inhabited; his brain and selected portions of several others had been skillfully merged to occupy the skull of this "man" by a technology so far beyond the "man's" present contemporaries as to be unbelievable.
Although other beings considered this being to be almost young, still had the being been in existence in one or another form for almost half a millennium, by the standards of authentic men.
He sat at the desk, speaking in a conversational tone although he was alone in the office. The language in which he spoke, however, was one incomprehensible to any save two or three other beings like himself on all the earth. He spoke to a dimly pulsing spot of light that hovered in the air before him, its glow all but invisible in the shafts of sunlight spearing between the slats of the window blinds.
"I am certain that it is more well-meant idiocy on the parts of those cretins who are mining the easternmost reaches of the largest northern-hemisphere continent of the world we call 3-9-23-1. It is but more proof of what has been said by beings before this: Their available technologies have far outstripped their intellect and judgment and, are they not more strictly controlled and guided in the proper ways, they will eventually be the innocent instigators of real difficulties for all of us."
"In an attempt to return certain humans to this world which is my current station of duty, said humans having been plucked into the world of 3-9-23-1 by way of a malfunctioning primitive projector out of the world that we call 3-9-18-20, they managed to instead lose all of them somehow, on exactly which world and in exactly which line of time I have yet to ascertain."
"I came upon all of this by way of purest accident. I was called upon in the line of work that this creature I here am conducts to investigate disappearances of valuable items from the properties of a firm that specializes in the sale and resale of weapons of many varieties. Seated with the senior officer of the parent firm in his office, I was able to sense the afterglow of one of the carriers used by the miners of 3-9-23-1. This alerted me and I was caused to recall that close relatives of this very man had but recently disappeared under most singular circumstances. He had, indeed, asked me to investigate those disappearances, and I had so done, my conclusions having been reported to you higher beings in my report #11.523LSP12RF."
"Had immediate remedial action been taken at that time, doubtless none of the present threatened problems would be occurring; but the circumstances prevented speedy action, I was informed, and so we now are faced with the result. I will be unable to report on the degree of gravity of this result until I can discover just where and when these subjects were projected, of course."
"The artifacts being apparently projected from this world are very oddly assorted, and many of the varieties of foods and weapons have disappeared in quantities much larger than the ten or twelve human projectees could use themselves, so I must assume that they are giving them or selling them to humans indigenous to that time and world, and all of us are unpleasantly aware of the certain outcome of such interference if it is allowed to go on for any length of time. It was interferences akin to this, allowed by the lesser ones who preceded us, that brought about the sorry state of affairs now so bedeviling us."
"But worse than the projections of artifacts of this world to another is what I noticed in a research laboratory of the firm on which I was calling. The carrier afterglow was very strong in one room of that place, and certain traces remained as to lead me to believe that the room and some of its equipment had been used to reproduce technologically sophisticated devices of the miners' culture, world, and time. If such knowledge as was necessary to do what was done there falls into the hands of even so primitive a culture as this one the result could be chaos for us."
"It is for this reason that I send this report and why I most urgently request that my other duties be either assigned to other beings or allowed to be suspended until I can put this dangerous matter to rights. The only viable alternative will be to assign an emergency team of beings to the situation, with all that attends to such assignment and preparations of the beings for it."
"My report is now concluded."
Immediately his last syllable was pronounced, the dimly pulsing light winked out of existence.
CHAPTER THE FIRST
His name was Brian, the eighth man of that name to reign as Ard-Righ or High King of Eireann or Ireland, but Brian VIII was only seen on documents or used orally by a filid as he sang the long, rhymed, often rambling genealogical records that had never been written in all the many centuries they had been compiled.
He was called Brian the Burly, and burly he was. Scion of a long line of warriors, fighting monarchs and fighting chiefs, he was obviously their true get. Although not truly a tall man, he nonetheless gave a first impression of size, of massivity; though well formed and graceful, his hands were large, strong, hairy-backed, and heavily scarred. His frame was all big bones and rolling muscles sheathing them, the hips as wide as the shoulders that looked almost too broad and thick for his body. His head rested on a neck nearly as thick as the head itself. His lower extremities, though no less solid and strong than his arms, were clearly those of a horseman, with flat thighs. Now, in his middle years, his waist was beginning to thicken slightly and strands of gray were appearing in his hair and beard, but still he looked as powerful, vital, and incipiently dangerous as ever he had in the past.
And Ard-Righ Brian the Burly was indeed dangerous in many a way. In his prime, few men in all of Eireann had been his match with the fearsome Danish-style axe he favored, ahorse or afoot; and even now, when he was in his fifties, many a younger man would be inclined to think twice before meeting the monarch in lists or on field of battle. But as deadly an opponent as he certainly was sitting his spotted destrier in armor grasping his fearsome axe, this was not the only danger he represented . . . or even the most significant.
For Brian was not only physically strong, he was possessed of wealth and power, wealth, power, and an ambition that gnawed at him without cease, waking and sleeping. Countless men had died, countless gallons of blood had been shed, in his years-long attempts to assuage the pangs of his ambition, and, ruthless as he was, he stood quite prepared and ready to see half the male population of the entire island done to death if it would achieve his ends.
For years without
number, Brian's paramount title, High King, had been mostly a mockery, for the high kings had held no more land than any of the other kings in Eireann, had had no hint of true sovereignty over these other kings, in fact, had acted as little better than a referee in wars between kings and kings, kings and would-be kings and the like. Brian's sire and predecessor had envisioned an Eireann over which the high kings would hold such sway as the kings of other lands—England, Scotland, France, Norway, Denmark, and Aragon—did over theirs, and he had inculcated his son with an equally driving ambition from his very earliest years.
Of course, Brian did not, would not, could not admit to the fact that personal ambition drove him, rather did he often cite his desire to bring to an end, once and for all, the small wars between the kings that had, for year after year, century after century, racked and impoverished what could have been a rich, fertile, productive land and people. These citations, however, were only taken at face value by foreigners who did not know him or know him well; his kingly opponents in Eireann knew better. And foreigners of any intelligence or intuitiveness who served him or had any depth of dealings with him for any length of time quickly sensed a real difference between that in which Brian believed and that in which he wished others to believe he believed.
Such men as these were three condottieri temporarily resident in widely separated portions of Eireann. One was an Italian—Sir Timoteo, il Duce di Bolgia—who had, along with his justly famous condotta, been hired by one Cardinal d'Este and sent to the Irish Kingdom of Munster to help to modernize its existing army and hold it against the incursions of the High King for the Church and the House of FitzGerald, scions of which had been its kings for centuries—the second was also an Italian, actually, the full brother of the first, Roberto, and he now reigned as an Irish king over the kingdom called Ulaid, in the northeast of the island. Righ or King Roberto, who had realized even as the ancient crown of Ulaid was lowered upon his brow that his small, weak, impoverished little holding had had all the chance of a wet snowball on a hot griddle against the power and the wealth of the grasping High King, had sought about and then made the short sea journey to the Hebrides Islands, where—after certain negotiations—he had given over the Kingdom of Ulaid to Sir Aonghus, Regulus of the Isles, then received it back of the powerful old man as a feoff.
In due time, the Regulus had sent formal notification to the Ard-Righ and all other nearby rulers that, as in archaic times, Ulaid was once more a feoff of the Western Isles of Scotland, its king his vassal and, therefore, henceforth under his fearsome protection. At receipt of that letter, Ard-Righ Brian the Burly had, so said his people who waited upon him, cursed and blasphemed most sulphurously, then set about recalling the bulk of his large army from campaign in the Kingdom of Connachta, his fleet from interdicting the ports of that western kingdom, and otherwise had looked to be making every preparation to mount a full-scale invasion of the Hebrides, Ulaid or both.
The third condottiere, Sir Bass, Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Rutland, Markgraf von Velegrad, Baron of Strathtyne, Knight of the Garter (England), Noble Fellow of the Order of the Roten Adler (Holy Roman Empire), and holder of other honors too numerous to list, in addition to being Lord Commander of the Horse of Arthur III Tudor, King of England and Wales, presently on loan with his condotta by his own monarch to Arthur's cousin, Ard-Righ Brian VIII, took alarm at this turn of affairs, not wishing to see troops that he considered to be pledged to the service of Arthur and England sent off to fight Scots who were just then allies of Arthur. He had dispatched a letter and a trusted, noble officer of his command—Reichsherzog Wolfgang, who was at one and the same time uncle of the reigning Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, sometime uncle-in-law of King Arthur, and overlord of the Mark of Velegrad which Sir Bass held in feoff from him—aboard one of the smaller ships of his private war fleet to London and his own king.
Shortly, Ard-Righ Brian was in receipt of a letter from his "loving and concerned cousin" Arthur. The words were indeed loving, the tone was diplomatic and as warm and smooth as thick samite, but still to the knowing reader was the hard steel beneath apparent . . . and Brian was, if anything, knowing.
Distilled down to its essence, the royal missive had said: "The Kingdom of Scotland is now my confirmed ally and the Lord or Regulus of the Hebrides or the Isles is a Scot. If you are so unwise as to attack him openly, then King James of Scotland will own no option but to attack you, and I, being his ally, cannot but lend my own forces if he so request. Haven't you more than enough sworn enemies in Ireland but that you must seek out more and newer ones overseas? In any case, I must forbid you the use of the troops I loaned you—Duke Bass et alia—against Scotland, the Scottish Isles, or any vassal or feoff of King James or Earl Aonghus, the Lord of the Isles."
Brian the Burly sat in a cathedra chair in one of his smaller rooms of audience with Sir Bass Foster, Duke of Norfolk, seated in a lower-backed armchair across an inlaid table from him. A ewer of Rhenish wine and a brace of gilded silver goblets sat on the table, along with a loosely rolled letter writ upon flawless vellum and adorned with colorful, impressive, much-beribboned seals. Sir Bass had but just finished reading the letter, while Brian had sipped wine slowly, watching the condottiere over the golden rim of the goblet.
"Well, Your Grace of Norfolk," said Brian at last, "what do you think of your monarch's, my own cousin's, letter to me, eh?"
Bass felt it best to be cautious here, as cautious as he would have been on a narrow, slippery river ford over deep and deadly water. "King Arthur expresses true regard, deep respect, and sincere regard for Your Highness . . ." he began.
Brian laughed once, harshly. "Cousin Arthur, or whoever really dictated that letter, is by it proven a true master at the coating of bitter gall with honey, no mistaking that. Nonetheless, it is nothing less than a threat, a firm promise that if I do the most honorable thing and attack this foxy, poxy Aonghus Mac Dhomhnuill, this aging by-blow outcome of the unnatural coupling of a tusked seal and a perverted, udderless cow, then I will certainly stand to be invaded by the combined forces of both Scotland and England-Wales. Was this what Your Grace expected when he sneaked a letter-bearing ship out of the anchorage of his fleet to bear word to his monarch of my advertised intentions, then?"
"I had hoped," answered Bass, "that, being Your Highness's cousin, King Arthur might be able to reason with Your Highness and . . ."
The blank, cold stare of Brian's eyes departed to be replaced by a twinkle of merriment, then he laughed, true laughter, and said, "Your Grace, it has been unfair to dangle you on hooks for so long today, when really you were a large part of my scheme from its very inception, you know."
Bass Foster knew that the Ard-Righ was truly friendly again from his use of the first person rather than the royal third person with which he had begun this meeting. "Your Majesty means that he truly wanted me to dispatch letters to King Arthur, then?"
Taking the near-empty goblet down from his lips, Brian replied, "Of course I did, Your Grace, else your little dispatch ship would never have made it down the Liffey to the sea. You've seen my forts, man, my gunners are all masters, Venetians, the best. They have the finest of modern, brazen long guns—demi-cannon, culverins, and demiculverins—to work with, they know the capabilities and peculiarities of each and every piece of ordnance under their care, and they know the ranges to any point in the river within bare feet and inches. Your rakish little ship with the Roman name could have been blown out of the water in a mere twinkling, Your Grace."
"No, I knew from the onset that, whether provoked or nay, any meaningful attack I mounted against Lord Aonghus would require near every man I own and that that would be the truest folly, all other things considered. However, I still saw the need to make the proper-sounding and -appearing noises and actions, lest I lose the respect of such as the kings of Laigin, Connachta, Breifne, and the Northern Ui Neills, who might have declared that I lacked the will and courage to fight for my honor and possessions against any save those weaker th
an me."
"And so, Your Grace, I made all of the expected noises and did all that would lead men to believe that I would pool every available resource and strike hard and true at the Regulus, imminently. Had you not sent out a messenger so promptly, so cooperatively, I would have had to prime one of my own to do it, but he would not, I fear, have been nearly so convincing as was your letter borne by Reichsherzog Wolfgang."
Bass shook his head slowly. "But . . . but why, Your Majesty? I do not understand it, any of it."
Brian smiled again and indicated that Bass should refill both goblets from the ewer. With a full goblet once more in his hand, the Ard-Righ retained his smile and said, "Of course, Your Grace does not understand, but an Irishman would, even a Scot—that's because both the Irish and the Scots own a common, ancestral race, the Gaels, from which race the most of our customs, usages, and thought processes descend."
"The Gaels of old, Your Grace, inveterate warriors that they all were, still owned many peculiarities of thought as to what was proper or not proper in fighting and warfare, what was most honorable and least honorable as regarded warlike conduct of a warrior, a chief, or a king. The last of the true Gaels have been but bones and dust for time beyond reckoning, but still they and their ancient codes live on in the hearts and minds of us Irish and right many of the Scots."
"For good or for ill, had I seemingly made no move to revenge myself upon the lands if not the person of the Regulus—who is held to be roughly my equal in military terms—the other kings in Eireann, even those who are my clients, would have named me either coward or dishonored, and God alone knows to just what extremities that unholy mess would have led."
"These same old Gaels, however, were quite realistic in many a way, Your Grace. They also felt that for a man to decline combat with an opponent or opponents so far superior to him in strength or armament that he was certain to die—such as, say, a naked man with only a small knife against an armored man with sword and axe—was to be held prudent rather than either cowardly or dishonored to decline combat even if that meant flight."