The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  Mama Schimmelhorn indicated grimly that indeed she did.

  “But worst of all,” Mrs. Peng continued, “he wants to bring the dragons back again, even though he knows I can’t stand snakes and lizards and all those horrible crawly things. You see, in ancient China his family had charge of them, and they became quite devoted to the creatures. Can you imagine having the sky full of dragons, Mrs. Schimmelhorn?”

  “Dragons?” Mama Schimmelhorn snorted. “Herr Gott, iss bad enough vith seagulls und die filthy shtarlings! Efery day on der front porch—you vould nodt beliefe!”

  “Exactly,” said Mrs. Plantagenet, putting her tea-cup down. “We’d better phone and find out what sort of progress they’ve been making. I’ll charge the call to my account.”

  “Der phone iss in der hall,” said Mama Schimmelhorn.

  Five minutes later, her guests returned with grave faces. “Your husband has already constructed his device and is about to give it a preliminary testing,” Mrs. Peng announced. “According to Miss Kittikool, however, he doesn’t plan to make the breakthrough until late tomorrow afternoon. If we hurry, we may still have time. Will you come to Hong Kong, Mrs. Schimmelhorn?”

  Mama Schimmelhorn’s expression would have done credit to a Grand Inquisitor. “Ja, I vill come!” she told them. “Ve finish up der tea, und I call Mrs. Hundhammer to come und feed mein Gustav-Adolf, und ve shtart right avay.” She picked up her umbrella. “Papa,” she proclaimed, hefting it, “this time vhen I catch you I make you vish I am chust a dragon inshtead of Mama Schimmelhorn!”

  Fifteen minutes later, black hat firmly on her head, hands folded tightly over the umbrella’s handle, she rode between her new-found friends in the back seat of the Imperial yellow Rolls, headed for the airport. She was in no way impressed by the luxury surrounding her. Her mind was fixed on one objective, and she smiled grimly as she contemplated it.

  * * * *

  For security reasons Papa Schimmelhorn had installed his interdimensional gate inside a huge godown owned by Peng-Plantagenet; and there, early next morning, he arrived with Little Anton and the two pretty Balinese to find Colonel Li already on duty at the doors and his employers awaiting him in the Dutch taipan’s borrowed equipage beside the Stanley Steamer.

  Once, as a youth in Switzerland, Papa Schimmelhorn had spent a pleasant summer driving a horse-drawn char-a-banc full of twittering female tourists from one romantic Alpine spot to another, and as the taipan’s coachman had prudently been escorted home, he at once offered to take the reins. As soon as he had made sure that steam was up, he kissed the Balinese goodbye, showed Colonel Li the lever that dilated the gate, and he and Little Anton climbed to the box.

  The gate expanded. The other China appeared there before them. The sleek, black powerful horses pawed the ground and snorted. Papa Schimmelhorn shook out the reins and clucked them forward. “Zo!” he cried out. “Dragons, here ve come!”

  They moved through the gate at a brisk trot, but now the landscape no longer showed the rock, the sage, the waterfall. A wide, smooth road took shape before them; it looked like porcelain, but on it the horses’ hooves made virtually no sound. It did not, like most roads, simply wait for them, but changed form and direction much faster than it should, and the surrounding landscape altered with it. They were passed by crags and pines, by bamboo groves and orchards full of flowering trees—and suddenly they noticed that they were not alone. Behind them and to either side, vehicles escorted them, vehicles that called to mind at once the majesty of a Bugatti Royale and the glowing purity of fine Sung Dynasty celadons. They had no wheels, and floated silently a foot or so above the ground—and overhead, now, half a dozen discoid aircraft hovered just as silently. Bells sang their deep brazen song into the air—

  “They appear to have achieved a considerable technology!” said Mr. Plantagenet apprehensively.

  “I never expected anything like this!” whispered Mr. Peng. “Dear me, I hope they’re friendly!”

  But Papa Schimmelhorn just took off his Tyrolean hat and smiled and waved at all of them.

  Then suddenly the road took an abrupt turn and ended at a meadow between arcs of glorious flowers; and at its end a palace stood—a palace of unreflecting glass and porcelain, faceted in the most abstract and complex simplicities. An enormous yellow dragon was stretched out comfortably in front of it; and around him, and to either side, the meadow was thronged with dignitaries—gray-bearded sages, high mandarins in their embroidered robes, stately men and women who (Mr. Peng observed sotto voce) could only have been tributary kings and nobles. Between them, near the dragon’s head, stood an empty throne carved of a single block of jade, carved intricately in ancient and more ornate times.

  The horses spied the dragon. Eyes rolling, ears laid back, they balked; they plunged and reared; they paid no heed when their coachman tried to quiet them. Then suddenly the dragon looked at them out of his great golden eyes, and they stood still, tense and sweating, totally motionless. Several functionaries came forward, to take their bridles, to help Mr. Peng and Mr. Plantagenet alight, to offer Papa Schimmelhorn a polite hand down, which was cheerfully ignored. Behind them, other officials stood, looking by no means as cordial and holding short metallic rods with control buttons on them.

  “They’ve got lasers, Papa!” whispered Little Anton.

  “Ja wohl!” answered Papa Schimmelhorn. “Chust like in Shtar Vars. But do nodt vorry. Somehow I vork it out.”

  The functionaries parted as obligingly as the Red Sea had for Moses, and through them strode a very tall Chinese, magnificently robed, who stood eye to eye with Papa Schimmelhorn. He addressed himself to Mr. Peng, who simply couldn’t take his eyes off the dragon.

  “I, sir,” he declared, in very strangely accented Mandarin, “am Prince Wen, the Prime Minister. I marvel at your insolence in coming here. Using this person’s extraordinary talents and endowments you have crossed forbidden frontiers. We have been observing you for centuries—” He gestured at the discoid aircraft. “—and we have even retained an understanding of your barbaric tongue. The dragons were indeed wise to have abandoned you. In your universe, yang and yin are perilously out of balance. Now you endanger ours. Had I not been ordered otherwise, I would at once have disposed of you and your illicit gate. Have you no idea of the dangers involved in tampering with Black Holes?” He shuddered. “But the Daughter of Heaven is too merciful. She has decreed that she must judge you personally.”

  He bowed three times toward the palace. Bells rang. Trumpets sounded.

  “D-daughter of Heaven?” quavered Mr. Peng.

  “Of course,” answered the Prime Minister. “In our universe yang and yin are in perfect balance. This is Thursday—therefore you will appear before the Empress. Had it been yesterday or tomorrow, the Son of Heaven would have examined you. Only on Sundays do they rule China and the world together.”

  “N-naturally,” remarked Mr. Peng.

  The Prime Minister smiled cruelly. “I promise you that, once she sees how you have trespassed here, flaunting your unbalanced yang in our very faces, she will be quite as merciless as I.” Again the trumpets sounded. A crowd of courtiers and of ladies-in-waiting emerged from the palace’s jade doors, moving in a pavane of abstract, highly ordered patterns. In their midst, robed in richly ornamented but curiously diaphanous brocades and wearing a spreading headdress of gold filigree adorned with pearls and jade, strode a Personage. Now in her late middle years, she had been and still was beautiful, but her eyes were cold and clear and calculating, and on her face was an expression of iron determination.

  Papa Schimmelhorn, unable of course to understand the conversation, had been amusing himself by contemplating the ladies-in-waiting as they came out, rather lasciviously because some of them were very pretty pussycats indeed. Now, looking on the Empress, he gulped. That expression was only too familiar. He had first seen it on th
e face of Mama Schimmelhorn when he was courting here, and blinded by her girlhood pulchritude had failed to grasp its meaning. Mama’s eyes were gray; the Empress’ were black. Mama was a Swiss, originally a blonde; the Empress, quite as tall as she, Chinese. But that was unimportant. Papa Schimmelhorn knew instinctively that they had much in common, and suddenly a panic premonition told him that he should run away. But there was, obviously, nowhere to run to.

  Cymbals clashed. Wind instruments cried out like unseen sea birds. The Empress advanced through the pavane and mounted to her throne. Just once, she clapped her hands. There was instant silence. Then she addressed Prince Wen in a strange, singing, fluting language; and he replied at length in the same tongue, interspersing his comments with strong crystalline notes of emphasis whenever he gestured toward their visitors.

  Finally he turned. “I have recommended your instant dissolution,” he declared. “Painlessly, of course.”

  “That is unfair!” Mr. Peng cried out. “At least you ought to let us present our gifts and our petitions!”

  “It is unsporting!” put in Mr. Plantagenet.

  The Empress silenced them. She spoke again in the alien tongue.

  “I have been ordered to consult the great Chut’sai,” Prince Wen announced, pointing at the dragon. “The Daughter of Heaven wishes him to decide your fate.”

  He and the Empress spoke again, addressing their remarks to Chu-t’sai himself. The dragon listened. With enormous dignity, he stood. He stretched his great neck over the courtier’s heads until his twenty-foot-long head was directly in front of Papa Schimmelhorn. For a long minute, while Little Anton trembled in his boots and even the Prime Minister held his breath, they regarded one another. Then Papa Schimmelhorn, with a chuckle, reached up and rubbed Chut’sai’s mighty chin, and winked—and, never changing his expression, Chu-t’sai winked back.

  “P-p-papa,” stuttered Little Anton as the vast head drew back again. “Did you see what he did?”

  “Naturlich,” replied Papa Schimmelhorn. “Ve undershtand each oder. He iss like Gustav-Adolf. I think maybe he iss a Dirty Old Man dragon.”

  Suddenly, then, Chu-t’sai himself spoke in the singing, fluting language, its words and notes pitched several octaves lower. He spoke only for a moment, but the Empress nodded.

  “The great Chu-t’sai,” translated Prince Wen with ill grace, “says that we must wait. It is fortunate for you that we, so much more advanced, learned to converse with dragons a thousand years ago. I shall find out how long the waiting is to be—”

  But before he could put the question, Little Anton nudged Papa Schimmelhorn. “Listen!” he whispered. “Do you hear what I hear?”

  Papa Schimmelhorn listened. So did Mr. Peng and Mr. Plantagenet. Unmistakably, on the road behind them, a powerful car was racing at full speed—and now everyone was staring past them in its direction.

  Tires screamed on curves. The engine roared.

  “Richard,” said Mr. Peng apprehensively. “That—that sounds to me like Mrs. Plantagenet’s Ferrari.”

  “It does to me too!” moaned Mr. Plantagenet.

  “Did you tell Colonel Li that they were on no account to be admitted?”

  “Horace, I didn’t. After all, they were in Europe! Why didn’t you?”

  “I—I never even thought of it,” admitted Mr. Peng.

  There was a final screech of brakes. The throng parted. The bright red Ferrari slid to a harsh stop beside them. In it were three old ladies, all looking extremely angry. The door flew open, and the first out was Mama Schimmelhorn. She ignored everything and everybody. At her expression, even the great Chu-t’sai snorted dolefully. Her umbrella at the ready, she advanced against her husband.

  “Hah!” she roared. “Again you get avay, to chase bad girls und play vith dragons und Black Holes und shpoil Little Anton so he forgets about Confucius!” She seized Papa Schimmelhorn firmly by the ear, and started applying the sharp point of her umbrella to his brisket by way of punctuation.

  “Mama! Mama! Bitte schon, nodt in public, in front of eferybody! Only look—on der throne iss die Empress of China!”

  “To her you should apologize!” Mama Schimmelhorn continued unrelentingly. “Coming to shteal her dragons und her dancing girls! Ach, do nodt argue—chust vait till ve get home—”

  Meanwhile Mrs. Peng and Mrs. Plantagenet had descended on their own husbands rather more genteely, but with equal resolution; and the Empress, gazing at the scene, turned to Prince Wen and said, in the singing tongue, “The great Chu-t’sai was right. Though they are of course still barbarians, their yang and yin may not be as hopelessly out of balance as you thought.” She pointed at Mama Schimmelhorn. “At least, her yin certainly seems to be as effective as his yang. We’ll keep them for a time at least, and find out their reason for coming here. Of course, we will make sure that their gate is closed and never built again. But who knows?

  Perhaps we may be able to help them become truly civilized.”

  * * * *

  So for three days Mr. and Mrs. Peng, Mr. and Mrs. Plantagenet, Papa and Mama Schimmelhorn, and Little Anton were entertained imperially, with only the slight condescension inevitable in dealing with barbarians. Banquet followed banquet, feast followed feast, one magnificent spectacle followed closely on another: dances, dramas, and rituals almost unbelievable in their splendor dazzled the visitors, but most impressive of all was a ballet performed for them by the great Chu-t’sai and his wives high in the air during a thunderstorm. (Rather patronizingly—and to the annoyance of Mr. Peng, who of course knew it already—Prince Wen pointed out that dragons, by virtue of their perfect yang and yin, had natural anti-gravity, and that that was why Chinese dragons were always depicted without wings.)

  Mr. Peng and Mr. Plantagenet were permitted to present their gifts, which were very graciously received, much being made of the Faberge Easter Egg and especially of Papa Schimmelhorn’s cuckoo-clock which the Emperor himself averred would thenceforth hang in the Imperial bedchamber. They were also allowed to introduce themselves formally to the entire court, after which—partly because of the family credentials Mr. Peng and Mr. Plantagenet presented and partly because of the marked favor shown Papa Schimmelhorn by the great Chu-t’sai—their status improved noticeably, even Prince Wen mellowing a bit.

  Mr. Peng and Mr. Plantagenet were awed and delighted by all they saw. Mrs. Peng, Mrs. Plantagenet, and Mama Schimmelhorn got along famously with the Empress via two or three interpreters, though Mrs. Peng found it difficult to concentrate when she looked up and saw dragons watching her through the window. Little Anton, having been assigned a pair of pretty pussycats so that his yang would be in better balance, had a ball. Only Papa Schimmelhorn failed to enjoy himself; constantly surrounded by young women of surpassing beauty, he was never permitted out of range of the umbrella, and once or twice when he tried to sneak away, he was stopped effectively by enormous female attendants.

  Not until the last day were Mr. Peng and Mr. Plantagenet given permission to submit their petition to the Throne, and they did so with the utmost politeness and strictly according to protocol as defined by Prince Wen.

  The audience was, of course, conducted on the meadow, so that Chu-t’sai could comfortably participate. He and the Imperial couple listened. Then they took counsel, speaking in hushed voices.

  Finally, the Empress proclaimed their decision. She and the Emperor and the great Chut’sai all recognized the singular virtue of Mr. Peng and Mr. Plantagenet, particularly in a world so gone to seed. They realized that Mr. Peng was fully qualified to function as Hereditary Keeper of the Imperial Dragon Hatchery, if his world had only had one, and that Mr. Plantagenet would have made a marvelous King of England. She spoke of how impressed they were by Papa Schimmelhorn’s genius and his tremendous yang, unparalleled since the days of the Yellow Emperor. However—

 
She paused and the great Chu-t’sai uttered a deep and mournful sound.

  “However,” she went on, “because the balance of yang and yin in your own world is so grievously impaired, and because it obviously will be very difficult to make the place habitable again, the great Chu-t’sai has regretfully denied permission to any of his relatives to return there with you.”

  Mr. Peng’s face fell. Mr. Plantagenet looked stricken.

  “And as for your Black Hole and its illicit gate,” she said, “much as we dislike dismantling so great and rare an accomplishment, for our own protection we must do so the instant you return—”

  Mr. Peng and Mr. Plantagenet started to protest, but she held up her hand.

  “—and, as a condition of our letting you return, we must have your solemn promise that you, at least, will never try to reconstruct it. We are going to give you many gifts to take back with you, but after you have promised you shall receive, from the great Chu-t’sai, the most precious gift of all, which shall be your responsibility and the sacred responsibility of your sons and daughters. Do you promise solemnly?”

  Mr. Peng looked at Mr. Plantagenet. Mr. Plantagenet looked at Mr. Peng. “We promise, Daughter of Heaven,” Mr. Peng said sadly.

  The Empress smiled. “Very well.” She gestured, and four servitors came up carrying an enormous covered hamper, which they set down before Mr. Peng.

  “That is the great Chu-t’sai’s gift to you,” the Empress said. “It is lined with silk and with the softest down. It holds a clutch of eight dragon eggs, together with the latest scientific instructions on their proper care. A great honor has been paid you.”