The Dragon and the George (3 page)

Grottwold was standing before what looked like some sort of control panel to Jim's right; and he looked around startledly as Jim burst in. Angie was seated against the far wall in what looked like a dentist's chair, facing Jim, but with her head and the upper part of her face completely covered by what looked like the helmet of the hair dryer in a beauty shop.

"Angie!" Jim snapped.

She disappeared.

Jim stood for a timeless moment, staring at the empty chair and the empty helmet. She could not be gone. She could not have just winked out like that! What he had just seen was impossible. He stood there waiting for his eyes to disavow what he had just seen and return him sight of Angie, still before him.

Apportation!"

The strangled yell from Grottwold jarred Jim out of his half-stunned condition. He swung about to face the tall, shock-haired psychology graduate, who was himself staring at the empty chair and helmet with a bloodless face. Life and purpose came back to Jim.

"What is it? What happened?" he shouted at Grottwold. "Where's Angie?"

"She apported!" stammered Grottwold, still staring at the place where Angie had been. "She really apported! And I was just trying for astral projection—"

"What?" Jim snarled, turning on him. "What were you trying?"

"Astral projection! Just astral projection, that's all!" Grottwold yelped. "Just projecting her astral self out of her body. I wasn't even trying to get her to experience an actual projection. All I was hoping for was just enough astral movement to register on the microammeters connected to the plant ganglia I'm using as response indicator. But she
apported
instead. She—"

"Where is she?" roared Jim.

"I don't know! I don't, I swear I don't!" the tall young man's voice climbed the scale. "There's no way I can tell—"

"You better know!"

"I don't! I know what the settings on my instruments are; but—"

Jim took three steps across the room, picked the taller man up by the lapels of his lab jacket and slammed him back against the wall to the left of the instrument panel.

"GET HER BACK!"

"I tell you I can't!" yelled Grottwold. "She wasn't supposed to do this; so I wasn't prepared for it! To get her back I'd first have to spend days or even weeks figuring out what happened. Then I'd have to figure out some way of reversing the process. And even if I did, by that time it might turn out to be too late because she'd have moved out of the physical area she's apported to!"

Jim's head was whirling. It was unbelievable that he should be standing here listening to this nonsense and shoving Grottwold against the wall—but far more believable, at that, than that Angie should really have disappeared. Even now, he could not really believe what had happened.

But he had seen her disappear.

He increased his grip on Grottwold's lapels.

"All right, turkey!" he said. "You get her back here, or I'll start taking you apart right now."

"I tell you I can't! Stop!—" Grottwold cried as Jim pulled him forward from the wall preparatory to slamming him back against it—or through it, if that was possible. "Wait! I've got an idea."

Jim hesitated, but kept his grip.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"There's just a chance. A long chance," Grottwold babbled. "You'd have to help. But it might work. Yes, it might just work."

"All right!" Jim snapped. "Talk fast. What is it?"

"I could send you after her—" Grottwold broke off at something that was almost a shriek of terror. "Wait! I'm serious. I tell you this might work."

"You're trying to get rid of me, too," said Jim between his teeth. "You want to get rid of the only witness that could testify against you!"

"No, no!" said Grottwold. "This will work. I know it will work. The more I think about it, the more I know it'll work. And if it does, I'll be famous."

Some of the panic seemed to go out of him. He straightened up and made an effort—an unsuccessful one—to push Jim away from him.

"Let me go!" he said. "I have to get my instruments, or I can't do Angie or anyone else any good. What do you think I am, anyway?"

"A murderer!" said Jim, grimly.

"All right. Think what you want! I don't care what you think. But you know how I felt about Angie. I don't want anything to happen to her, either. I want to get her back safely here as much as you do!"

Cautiously, Jim let go of the other man but kept his hands ready to grab him again.

"Go ahead, then," he said. "But move fast."

"I'm moving as fast as I can." Grottwold turned about to his control panel, muttering to himself. "Yes, that's the way I thought I set it. Yes… Yes, there's no other way…"

"What are you talking about?" Jim demanded.

Hansen looked back at him over one bony shoulder.

"We can't do anything about getting her back until we know where she's gone," he said. "Now, all I know is I asked her to concentrate on anything she liked and she said she'd concentrate on dragons."

"What dragons? Where?"

"I don't know where, I tell you! It could be dragons in a museum, or anyplace! That's why we have to locate her; and why you've got to help or we can't do it."

"Well, tell me what to do, then," said Jim.

"Just sit down in the chair there—" Grottwold broke off as Jim took a menacing step toward him. "All right, then, don't do it! Take away our last chance to bring her back!"

Jim hesitated. Then, slowly, reluctantly, he turned back to the empty dentist's chair at which Grottwold had been pointing.

"You'd better be right about this," he said.

He walked over and seated himself gingerly.

"What are you going to do, anyway?" he asked.

"There's nothing to worry about!" said Grottwold. "I'm going to leave the control settings just the way they were when she apported. But I'll lower the voltage. That must have been what made her apport in the first place. There was just too much power behind her. I'll reduce the power and that way you'll project, not apport."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you won't go anywhere. You'll stay right there in the chair. Only your mind'll reach out and project in the same direction Angie went."

"You're sure about that?"

"Of course I'm sure. Your body will stay right in the chair. Just your astral self will go to join Angie. That's the way it should have worked for her in the first place. Maybe she was concentrating too hard—"

"Don't try to blame it on her!"

"I'm not. I just—Anyway, don't you forget to concentrate, too. Angie was experienced in this sort of concentration. You aren't. So you'll have to make an effort. Think of Angie. Concentrate on her. Concentrate on her in some place with dragons."

"All right," Jim growled. "Then what?"

"If you do it right, you'll end up wherever she apported to. You won't really be there, of course," said Grottwold. "It'll all be subjective. But you'll feel as if you're there, and since Angie's on the same instrument setting, she ought to be aware of your astral self being there, even if no one else there is."

"All right, all right!" said Jim. "But how do I get her back?"

"You'll have to get her to concentrate on returning," Grottwold answered. "You remembered how I taught you to hypnotize her—?"

"I remember, all right!"

"Well, try to hypnotize her again. She's got to become completely oblivious to wherever her present surroundings are before she'll be able to apport back here. Just put her under and keep telling her to concentrate on the lab, here. When she disappears, you'll know she's come back."

"And what," said Jim, "about me?"

"Oh, it's nothing for you," Grottwold said. "You just close your eyes and will yourself back here. Since your body never left here to begin with, you'll automatically return the minute you don't want to be someplace else."

"You're sure about that?"

"Of course I'm sure. Now, close your eyes—No, no, you've got to pull the hood down over your head…"

Grottwold stepped over and pulled the hood down himself. Jim was suddenly in a near-darkness faintly scented with the perfume of Angie's hair spray.

"Remember now," Grottwold's voice came distantly to him through the open bottom of the helmet, "concentrate. Angie—dragons. Dragons—Angie. Close your eyes and keep thinking those two things…"

Jim closed his eyes and thought.

Nothing seemed to be happening. There was no sound from outside the helmet, and with the thing over his head he could see nothing but darkness. The scent of Angie's hair spray was overwhelming. Concentrate on Angie, he told himself. Concentrate on Angie… and dragons… Nothing was happening, except that the hair-spray odor was making him dizzy. His head swam. He felt huge and clumsy, sitting under the hair dryer with his eyes closed this way. He experienced a thudding in his ears that was the sound of his heart, beating along the veins and arteries of his body. A slow, heavy thudding. His head began to swim in earnest. He felt as if he were sliding sideways through nothingness and in the process expanding until he bulked like a giant.

A sort of savagery stirred in him. He had a fleeting desire to get up from where he was and tear something or someone apart. Preferably Grottwold. It would be sheerly soul-satisfying to take hold of that turkey and rip him limb from limb. Some large voice was booming, calling to him, but he ignored it, lost in his own thoughts. Just to sink his claws into that george—

Claws? George?

What was he thinking about? This nonsense was not working at all.

He opened his eyes.

The helmet was gone. Instead of into hair-spray-scented darkness, he stared at rock walls leading up to a ceiling also of rock, high above his head and flickeringly lit by reddish light from a torch blazing in a wall sconce.

"Blast it, Gorbash!" roared the voice he had been trying to ignore. "Wake up! Come on, boy we've, got to get down to the main cave. They've just captured one!"

"One… ?" Jim stammered. "One what?"

"A george!
A george
! WAKE UP, GORBASH!"

An enormous head with crocodile-sized jaws equipped with larger-than-crocodile-sized fangs thrust itself between Jim's eyes and the ceiling.

"I'm awake. I—" What he was seeing suddenly registered on Jim's stunned mind and he burst out involuntarily, "A dragon!"

"And just what would you expect your maternal grand-uncle to be, a sea lizard? Or are you having nightmares again? Wake up. It's Smrgol talking to you, boy. Smrgol! Come on, shake a wing and get flapping. They'll be expecting us in the main cave. Isn't every day we capture a george. Come on, now."

The fanged mouth whirled away. Blinking, Jim dropped his eyes from the vanishing apparition and caught sight of a huge tail, an armored tail with a row of sharp, bony plates running along its upper surface. It swelled larger as it approached him—It was his tail.

He held up his arms in front of him. They were enormous. Also, they were thickly scaled with bony plates like those on his tail but much smaller—and his claws needed manicuring. Squinting at the claws, Jim became aware of a long muzzle stretching down and out from where his formerly "invisible" nose had been. He licked dry lips and a long, red, forked tongue darted out briefly in the smoky air.

"Gorbash!"
thundered the voice once more; and Jim looked to see the other dragon face glaring at him from a stone doorway. It was in fact, he saw, the entrance to the cave he was in. "I'm on my way. Catch up or not—it's up to you."

The other disappeared and Jim shook his head, bewildered. What was going on here? According to Grottwold, no one else was supposed to be able to see him, let alone—Dragons?

Dragons who talked… ?

To say nothing of his being—he, Jim Eckert—himself a dragon…

That was the absolutely ridiculous part. He, a dragon? How could he be a dragon? Why would he be a dragon, even if there
were
such things as dragons? The whole thing must be some sort of hallucination.

Of course! He remembered, now. Grottwold had mentioned that what he would seem to be experiencing would be entirely subjective. What he was apparently seeing and hearing must be nothing more than a sort of nightmare, overlying whatever real place and people he had reached. A dream. He pinched himself.—And jumped.

He had forgotten noticing that his "fingers" had claws on them. Large claws, and very sharp ones. If what he was experiencing was a dream, the elements of that dream were damned real!

But, dream or not, all he wanted was to find Angie and get out of here, back to the ordinary world. Only, where should he look for her? He had probably better find someone he could describe her to, and ask if she'd been seen. He should have asked whoever it was he had been "seeing" as the "dragon" trying to wake him up. What was it the other had been saying? Something about "capturing a george… ?"

What could a george be? Or was it George with a capital G? Maybe if some people here appeared as dragons, then others would appear as St. George, the dragon-slayer. But then, the other dragon had referred to "a" george. Perhaps the dragons called all ordinary, human-looking people by that name, which would mean that what they had really captured was probably—

"
Angie
!" Jim erupted, suddenly putting two and two together.

He rolled to all four feet and lumbered across the cave. Emerging through its entrance, he found himself in a long torchlit corridor, down which a further dragon shape was rapidly receding. Concluding this must be the—what it had called itself—grand-uncle of the body Jim was in, Jim took after him, digging in his memory to turn up the name the other had used for himself.

"Wait for me, uh—Smrgol!" he called.

But the other dragon shape turned a corner and disappeared.

Coming up rapidly in pursuit, Jim noticed that the ceiling of the corridor was low, too low for his twitching wings, which he could now see out of the corners of his eyes evidently trying to spread themselves in reflexive response to his speed. He turned the corner himself and emerged through a large entrance into a huge, vaulted chamber that seemed jammed to overflowing with dragons, gray and massive under the light of a number of wall torches that cast large shadows on the high granite walls. Not watching where he was going, Jim ran squarely into the back of another dragon.