“Nothin’ more ’r less, Sire, than what the dragon would have us bring it: gold coins, precious stones, imported perfumes, an’ a passel o’ other valuables.”
This was truly incredible, for dragons never required such tributes, certainly not perfume—no perfume could ever mask their own natural fetor—and certainly not currency, which was useless to them.
“And does it ask for young virgins, my good man?” asked Klapaucius.
“Virgins? Nay, Sire, tho’ there war a time… we had to cart ’em in by the bevy, we did… Only that war before the stranger came, the furrin gentleman, Sire, a-walkin’ around the rocks with ’is boxes an’ contraptions, all by ’is-self…” Here the worthy native broke off and stared at the instruments and weapons Klapaucius was carrying, particularly the large dragon counter that was ticking softly all the while, its red pointer jumping back and forth across the white dial.
“Why, if he dinna have one… jus’ like yer Lordship’s,” he said in a hushed voice. “Aye, jus’ like… the same wee stiggermajigger and a’ the rest…”
“There was a sale on them,” said Klapaucius, to allay the native’s suspicions. “But tell me, good people, do you happen to know what became of this stranger?”
“What became o’ him, ye ask? That we know not, Sire, to be sure. ’Twas, if I not mistake me, but a fortnight past —’twas, ’twas not, Master Gyles, a fortnight withal an’ nae more?”
“’Twas, ’twas, ’tis the truth ye speak, the truth aye, a fortnight sure, or maybe two.”
“Aye! So he comes to us, yer Grace, partakes of our ’umble fare, polite as ye please an’ I’ll not gainsay it, nay, a parfit gentleman true, pays hondsomely, inquires after the missus don’t y’know, aye an’ then he sits ’isself down, spreads out a’ them contraptions an’ thin’s with clocks in ’em, y’see, an’ scribbles furious-like, numbers they are, one after’t’other, in this wee book he keep in ’is breast pocket, then takes out a—whad’yacallit—therbobbiter thingamabob…”
“Thermometer?”
“Aye, that’s it! A thermometer… an’ he says it be for dragons, an’ pokes it here an’ there, Sire, an’ scribbles in ’is book again, then he takes a’ them contraptions an’ things an’ packs ’em up an’ puts ’em on ’is back an’ says farewell an’ goes ’is merry way. We never saw ’im more, yer Honor. That very night we hear a thunder an’ a clatter, oh, a good ways off, ’bout as far as Mount Murdigras—’tis the one, Sire, hard by yon peak, aye, that one thar, looks like a hawk, she do, we call ’er Pfftius Peak after our beluved King, an’ that one thar on’t’uther side, bent over like’t’would spread ’er arse, that be the Dollymog, which, accordin’ to legend—”
“Enough of the mountains, worthy native,” said Klaupaucius. “You were saying there was thunder in the night. What happened then?”
“Then, Sire? Why nothin’, to be sure. The hut she give a jump an’ I falls outta bed, to which I’m well accustomed, mind ye, seein’ as how the wicked beast allus come a-bumpin’ gainst the house with ’er tail an’ send a feller flyin’—like when Master Gyles’ ayn brother londed in the privy ’cause the creatur’ gets a hankerin’ to scratch ’isself on the corner o’ the roof…”
“To the point, man, get to the point!” cried Klapaucius. “There was thunder, you fell down, and then what?”
“Then nothin’, like I says before an’ thought I made it clear. Nothin’, an’ if’n there war somethin’, there’d be some-thin’, only there war nothin’ sure an’ that be the long an’ the short of it! D’ye agree, Master Gyles?”
“Aye, sure ’tis the truth ye speak, ’tis.”
Klapaucius bowed and stepped back, and the whole procession continued up the mountain, the natives straining beneath the dragon’s tribute. He supposed they would place it in some cave designated by the beast, but didn’t care to ask for details; his head was already spinning from listening to the local official and his Master Gyles. And anyway, he had heard one of the natives say to another that the dragon had chosen “a spot as near us an’ as near ’isself as could be found.”
Klapaucius hurried on, picking his way according to the readings of the dragonometer he kept on a chain around his neck. As for the counter, its pointer had come to rest on exactly eight-tenths of a dragon.
“What in the devil is it, an indeterminant dragon?” he thought as he marched, stopping to rest every now and then, for the sun beat fiercely and the air was so hot that everything shimmered. There was no vegetation anywhere, not a scrap, only baked mud, rocks and boulders as far as the eye could see.
An hour passed, the sun hung lower in the heavens, and Klapaucius still walked through fields of gravel and scree, through craggy passes, till he found himself in a place of narrow canyons and ravines full of chill and darkness. The red pointer crept to nine-tenths, gave a shudder, and froze.
Klapaucius put his knapsack on a rock and had just taken off his antidragon belt when the indicator began to go wild, so he grabbed his probability extinguisher and looked all around. Situated on a high bluff, he was able to see into the gorge below, where something moved.
“That must be her!” he thought, since Echidnosaurs are invariably female.
Could that be why it didn’t demand young virgins? But no, the native said it had before. Odd, most odd. But the main thing now, Klapaucius told himself, was to shoot straight and everything would be all right. Just in case, however, he reached for his knapsack again and pulled out a can of dragon repellent and an atomizer. Then he peered over the edge of the rock. At the bottom of the gorge, along the bed of a dried-up stream walked a grayish brown dragoness of enormous proportions, though with sunken sides as if it had been starved. All sorts of thoughts ran through Klapaucius’ head. Annihilate the thing by reversing the sign of its pentapendragonal coefficient from positive to negative, thereby raising the statistical probability of its nonexistence over that of its existence? Ah, but how very risky that was, when the least deviation could prove disastrous: more than one poor soul, seeking to produce the lack of a dragon, had ended up instead with the back of the dragon—resulting in a beast with two backs—and nearly died of embarrassment! Besides, total deprobabilization would rule out the possibility of studying the Echidnosaur’s behavior. Klapaucius wavered; he could see a splendid dragonskin tacked on the wall of his den, right above the fireplace. But this wasn’t the time to indulge in daydreams—though a dracozoologist would certainly be delighted to receive an animal with such unusual tastes. Finally, as Klapaucius got into position, it occurred to him what a nice little article might be written up on the strength of a well-preserved specimen, so he put down the extinguisher, lifted the gun that fired negative heads, took careful aim and pulled the trigger.
The roar was deafening. A cloud of white smoke engulfed Klapaucius and he lost sight of the beast for a moment. Then the smoke cleared.
There are a great many old wives’ tales about dragons. It is said, for example, that dragons can sometimes have seven heads. This is sheer nonsense. A dragon can have only one head, for the simple reason that having two leads to disagreements and violent quarrels; the polyhydroids, as the scholars call them, died out as a result of internal feuds. Stubborn and headstrong by nature, dragons cannot tolerate opposition, therefore two heads in one body will always bring about a swift death: each head, purely to spite the other, refuses to eat, then maliciously holds its breath—with the usual consequences. It was this phenomenon which Euphorius Cloy exploited when he invented the anticapita cannon. A small auxiliary electron head is discharged into the dragon’s body. This immediately gives rise to unreconcilable differences of opinion and the dragon is immobilized by the ensuing deadlock. Often it will stand there, stiff as a board, for a day, a week, even a month; sometimes a year goes by before the beast will collapse, exhausted. Then you can do with it what you will.
But the dragon Klapaucius shot reacted strangely, to say the least. True, it did rear up on its hind paws with a howl that started a la
ndslide or two, and it did thrash the rocks with its tail until the sparks flew all over the canyon. But then it scratched its ear, cleared its throat and coolly continued on its way, though trotting at a slightly quicker pace. Unable to believe his eyes, Klapaucius ran along the ridge to head the creature off at the mouth of the dried-up stream —it was no longer an article, or even two articles in the Dracological Journal he could see his name on now, but a whole monograph elegantly bound, with a likeness of the dragon and the author on the cover!
At the first bend he crouched behind a boulder, pulled out his improbability automatic, took aim and actuated the possibiliballistic destabilizers. The gunstock trembled in his hands, the red-hot barrel steamed; the dragon was surrounded with a halo like a moon predicting bad weather— but didn’t disappear! Once again Klapaucius unleashed the utmost improbability at the beast; the intensity of nonverisimilarity was so great, that a moth that happened to be flying by began to tap out the Second Jungle Book in Morse code with its little wings, and here and there among the crags and cliffs danced the shadows of witches, hags and harpies, while the sound of hoofbeats announced that somewhere in the vicinity there were centaurs gamboling, summoned into being by the awesome force of the improbability projector. But the dragon just sat there and yawned, leisurely scratching its shaggy neck with a hind paw, like a dog. Klapaucius clutched his sizzling weapon and desperately kept squeezing the trigger—he had never felt so helpless— and the nearest stones slowly lifted into the air, while the dust that the dragon had kicked up, instead of settling, hung in midair and assumed the shape of a sign that clearly read AT YOUR SERVICE GOV. It grew dim—day was night and night was day, it grew cold-—hell was freezing over; a couple of stones went out for a stroll and softly chatted of this and that; in short, miracles were happening right and left, yet that horrid monster sitting not more than thirty paces from Klapaucius apparently had no intention of disappearing. Klapaucius threw down his gun, pulled an anti-dragon grenade from his vest pocket and, committing his soul to the Universal Matrix of Transfinite Transformations, hurled it with all his might. There was a loud ker-boom, and into the air with a spray of rock flew the dragon’s tail, and the dragon shouted “Yipe!"—just like a person—and galloped straight for Klapaucius. Klapaucius, seeing the end was near, leaped out from behind his boulder, swinging his antimatter saber blindly, but then he heard another shout:
“Stop! Stop! Don’t kill me!”
“What’s that, the dragon talking?” thought Klapaucius. “I must be going mad…”
But he asked:
“Who said that? The dragon?”
“What dragon? It’s me!!”
And as the cloud of dust blew away, Trurl stepped out of the beast, pushing a button that made it sink to its knees and go dead with a long, drawn-out wheeze.
“Trurl, what on earth is going on? Why this masquerade? Where did you find such a costume? And what about the real dragon?” Klapaucius bombarded his friend with questions. Trurl finished brushing himself off and held up his hands.
“Just a minute, give me a chance! The dragon I destroyed, but the King wouldn’t pay…”
“Why not?”
“Stingy, most likely. He blamed it on the bureaucracy, of course, said there had to be a notarized death certificate, an official autopsy, all sorts of forms in triplicate, the approval of the Royal Appropriations Commission, and so on. The Head Treasurer claimed he didn’t know the procedure to hand over the money, for it wasn’t wages, nor did it come under maintenance. I went from the King to the Cashier to the Commission, back and forth, and no one would do anything; finally, when they asked me to submit a vita sheet with photographs and references, I walked out—but by then the dragon was beyond recall. So I pulled the skin off it, cut up a few sticks and branches, found an old telephone pole, and that was really all I needed; a frame for the skin, some pulleys—you know—and I was ready…”
“You, Trurl? Resorting to such shameful tactics? Impossible! What could you hope to gain by it? I mean, if they didn’t pay you in the first place…”
“Don’t you understand?” said Trurl, shaking his head. “This way I get the tribute! Already there’s more than I know what to do with.”
“Ah! Of course!!” Klapaucius saw it all now. But he added, “Still, it wasn’t right to force them…”
“Who was forcing them? I only walked around in the mountains, and in the evenings I howled a little. But really, I’m absolutely bushed.” And he sat down next to Klapaucius.
“What, from howling?”
“Howling? What are you talking about? Every night I have to drag sacks of gold from the designated cave—all the way up there!” He pointed to a distant ridge. “I made myself a blast-off pad—it’s right over there. Just carry several hundred pounds of bullion from sundown to sunup and you’ll see what I mean! And that dragon was no ordinary dragon—the skin itself weighs a couple of tons, and I have to cart that around with me all day, roaring and stamping —and then it’s all night hauling and heaving. I’m glad you showed up, I can’t take much more of this…”
“But… why didn’t the dragon—the fake one, that is— why didn’t it disappear when I lowered the probability to the point of miracles?” Klapaucius asked. Trurl smiled.
“I didn’t want to take any chances,” he explained. “Some fool of a hunter might’ve happened by, maybe even Basiliscus himself, so I put probability-proof shields under the dragonskin. But come, I’ve got a few sacks of platinum left —saved them for last since they’re the heaviest. Which is just perfect, now that you can give me a hand…”
The Fourth Sally
or
How Trurl Built a Femfatalatron to Save Prince Pantaloon from the Pangs of Love, and How Later He Resorted to a Cannonade of Babies
One day, in the middle of the night, as Trurl lay deep in slumber, there came a violent knocking at the door of his domicile, as if someone was trying to knock it off its hinges. Still in a stupor, Trurl pulled back the bolts and saw standing there against the paling stars an enormous ship. It looked like a giant sugar loaf or flying pyramid, and out of this colossus, which had landed right on his front lawn, long rows of andromedaries laden with packs walked down a wide ramp, while robots, garbed in turbans and togas and painted black, unloaded the bags at his doorstep, and so quickly, that before Trurl knew it, he was hemmed in by a growing embankment of bulging sacks—though a narrow passageway was left therein, and through this approached an electroknight of remarkable countenance, for his jeweled eyes blazed like comets, and he had radar antennas jauntily thrown back, and an elegant diamond-studded stole. This imposing personage doffed his armored cap and in a mighty yet silken voice inquired:
“Have I the honor to speak with his lordship Trurl, Trurl the highborn, Trurl the illustrious constructor?”
“Why yes, of course… won’t you come in… I wasn’t expecting… that is, I was asleep,” said Trurl, terribly flustered, pulling on a bathrobe, for a nightshirt was all he was wearing, and that wasn’t the cleanest.
The magnificent electroknight, however, appeared not to notice any shortcoming in Trurl’s attire. Doffng his cap again, which purred and hummed above his castellated brow, he gracefully entered the room. Trurl excused himself for a moment, perfunctorily performed his morning ablutions, then hurried back downstairs. By now it was growing light outside, and the first rays of the sun gleamed on the turbans of the robots, who sang the old sad and soulful song of bondage, “Tote Dat Jack,” as they formed in triple rows around both house and pyramidal ship. Trurl took a seat opposite his guest, who blinked his shining eyes and finally spoke as follows:
“The planet from which I come to you, Sir Constructor, is at present deep in the Dark Ages. Ah, but Your Excellency must forgive our untimely arrival, which did so incommoditate him; on board we had no way of knowing, you see, that at this particular locus of this worthy sphere, which your abode is pleased to occupy, night still reigned supreme and stayed the break of day.”
Here he cleared his throat, like someone playing sweetly upon a glass harmonica, and continued:
“I have been sent to Your Exalted Person by my lord and master, His Royal Highness Protuberon Asteristicus, sovereign ruler of the sister globes of Aphelion and Perihelion, hereditary monarch of Aneuria, emperor of all the Monodamites, Biproxicans and Tripartisans, the Grand Duke of Anamandorinth, Glorgonzigor and Esquacciaccaturbia, Count of the Euscalipü, the Algorissimo and the Flora del Fortran, Paladin Escutcheoned, Begudgeoned and of the Highest Dudgeon, Baron of Bhm, Wrph and Clarafoncasterbrackeningen, as well as anointed exarch extraordinary of Ida, Pida and Adinfinida, to invite in His munificent name Your Resplendent Grace to our kingdom as the long-awaited savior of the crown, as the only one who can deliver us from the general mortifaction occasioned by the thrice-unhappy infatuation of His Royal Highness, the heir to the throne, Pantagoon.”
“But really, I’m not—” Trurl tried to interpose, but the dignitary waved his hand, signifying that he had not as yet finished, and went on in that same resonating voice:
“In return for the gracious loan of your most sympathetic ear, and for your succor in the overcoming of our national calamity, His Royal Highness Protuberon hereby promises, pledges and solemnly swears that he shall shower Your Con-structorship with such riches and honors, that Your Esteemed Effulgence will never exhaust them, even until the end of his days. And now, by way of an advance or, as they say, a retainer, I forthwith dub thee"—and here the magnate rose, drew his sword, and spoke, vigorously punctuating each word with the flat of the blade on both Trurl’s shoulders—"Earl of Otes, Grotes and Finocclea, Margrave Emeritus of Trundle and Sklar, Eight-barreled Bearer of the Great Guamellonian Hok, not to mention Thane of Bondacalonda and Cgth, Governor General of Muxis and Ptuxis, as well as Titular Viscount of the Order of Unwinched Waifs, Almoner in perpetuum of the realms of Eenica, Meenica and Mynamoaca, with all the attendant rights and privileges accruing thereto, including a twenty-one gun salute upon rising in the morning and retiring at night, an after-dinner fanfare, and the Extinguished Exponential Cross, duly certified and carved in ebony, slate and marzipan. And as proof of his royal favor, my Lord and Liege sends you these few trifles, which I have taken the liberty to place about your dwelling.”
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