The Dragon and the George (7 page)

"Nonsense. I'm willing to be reasonable, though. Four hundred and sixty pounds of gold."

"I tell you I don't have a hoard!"

"All right. Four twenty-five. But I warn you, that's my rock-bottom price. I can't work for less than that and still keep house and goods together."

"I don't have a hoard!"

"Four hundred, then, and may a magician's curse—Just a second. You mean you really don't know where this Gorbash-hoard is?"

"That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"Another
charity patient!" exploded Carolinus, flinging skinny fists in the air, furiously. "What's wrong with the Auditing Department? Answer me!"

"Sorry," came the invisible bass voice.

"Well," said Carolinus, calming, "see that it doesn't happen again—for another ten days at least." He turned once more to Jim. "Haven't you any means of payment at all?"

"Well," Jim said, cautiously, "about this stomach ache of yours. I've just been thinking… Does it go away after you eat something?"

"Yes," said Carolinus, "as a matter of fact it does, temporarily."

"I was just thinking you might have what people where I come from call a stomach ulcer. People who live and work under a good deal of nervous pressure often get them."

"People?" Carolinus looked at him suspiciously. "Or dragons?"

"There aren't any dragons where I come from."

"All right, all right," said Carolinus, testily. "You don't have to stretch the truth like that. I believe you about this stomach devil. I was just making sure you knew what you were talking about. Nervous pressure—exactly! These ulcers, how do you exorcise them?"

"Milk," said Jim. "A glass of cow's milk six or eight times a day until the symptoms disappear."

"Ha!"

Carolinus turned about, darted over to a shelf on the wall and took down a tall black bottle. Uncorking it, he poured what looked like red wine into a dusty glass goblet from one of the nearby tables, and held the goblet up to the light.

"Milk," he said.

The red liquid turned white. He drank it off. "Hmm!" he said, with his head on side, waiting. "Hmm…"

Slowly a smile parted his beard. "Why, I do believe," he said, almost gently, "it's helping. Yes, by the Powers! It is!" He turned to Jim, beaming.

"Excellent! The bovine nature of the milk has a remarkably placating effect on the anger of the ulcer, which must, by-the-bye, be a member of the family of Fire Demons, now I come to think of it. Congratulations Gorbash, or Jim, or whatever your name is. I'll be frank with you. When you mentioned earlier you'd been a teaching assistant at a college, I didn't believe you. But I do now. As fine a small bit of sympathetic magic as I've seen for weeks. Well, now"—he rubbed bony hands together—"to work on your problem."

"Possibly…" said Jim, "if you could get us together and start out by hypnotizing us both at once—" Carolinus's white eyebrows shot up on his forehead like startled rabbits.

"Teach your grandmother to suck eggs!" he snapped. "By the Powers! That's what's wrong with the world today! Ignorance and anarchy!"

He shook a long and not-too-clean forefinger under Jim's muzzle.

"Dragons galumphing hither and yon—knights galumphing yon and hither—naturals, giants, ogres, sandmirks and other sports and freaks each doing their billy-be-exorcised best to terrorize his own little part of the landscape. Every jackanapes and teaching assistant in his blindness setting himself up to be the equal of a Master of the Arts. It's not endurable!" His eyes lit up exactly like live coals and glowed fiercely at Jim.

"I say it's not! And I don't intend to endure it, either! We'll have order and peace and Art and Science, if I have to turn the moon inside out!"

"But you said for five hundred—I mean, four hundred pounds of gold—"

"That was business. This is ethics!" Carolinus snatched up some more of his beard and gnawed on it for a moment before spitting it out again. "I thought we'd chaffer a bit about price and see what you were worth. But now that you've paid me with this ulcer spell…" His tone became thoughtful suddenly; his eyes dimmed, unfocused, and seemed to look elsewhere. "Yes. Yes, indeed… very interesting…"

"I just thought," Jim said, humbly, "that hypnotism might work, because—"

"Work!" cried Carolinus, returning abruptly to the here and now. "Of course it'd
work.
Fire will work to cure a bad case of the dropsy. But a dead-and-cindered patient's no success! No, no, Gorbash (I can't remember that other name of yours), recall the First Law of Magic!"

"The what?"

"The First Law—the
First Law!
Didn't they teach you anything at that college?"

"Well, actually, my field was—"

"Forgotten it already, I see," sneered Carolinus. "Oh, this younger generation! The Law of Payment, you idiot! For every use of Art of Science, there is a required or corresponding price. Why do you think I live by my fees instead of running through the aleph tables? Just because a number is transfinite doesn't mean you can use it to get something for nothing! Why use hawks and owls and cats and mice and familiars instead of a viewing crystal? Why does a magic potion have a bad taste? Everything must be paid for, in
proportion!
Why, I wouldn't have done what this wooden-headed Hansen amateur of yours did without having built up ten years' credit with the Auditing Department first; and I'm a Master of the Arts. He's pushed his debit right to the breaking point—it can't go any further."

"How do you know?" asked Jim. "Why, my good teaching assistant," said Carolinus, "isn't it obvious? He was able to send this maiden of yours—I assume she is a maiden?"

"Well—"

"Well, well, call her a maiden for form's sake. Academic question, anyway," Carolinus snapped. "The point I'm making is that he was able to send her back completely, body and all; but he only had enough credit with the Auditing Department after that to transport your spirit, leaving your body behind. Result, you're an Imbalance in the here and now—and the Dark Powers love something like that. Result, we have a nice, touchy situation—now that I look a little deeper into it—ready to turn things here very much for the worst. Hah! If you'd only been a little more clever and learned, you'd have realized you could have had my help without paying for it with that ulcer exorcism. I'd have helped you anyway, just in order to help myself and all of us here." Jim stared at him.

"I don't understand," he said, finally. "Naturally not—a mere teaching assistant like yourself. All right, I'll spell it out. The fact of your appearance here—yours and this Angie's—has upset the balance between Chance and History. Upset it badly. Imagine a teeter-totter, Chance sitting on one end, History on the other, swinging back and forth—Chance up one moment, then Chance down and History up. The Dark Powers love that. They throw their weight at the right moment on a side that's already headed down, and either Chance or History ends permanently up. One way we get Chaos. The other we get Predictability and an end to Romance, Art, Magic and everything else interesting."

"But…" Jim found himself drowning in a sea of words, "if that's the case, what can we do about it?"

"Do? Push up when the Dark Powers push down. Push down when the Dark Powers push up! Force a temporary balance and then hit them head on—our strength against their strength. Then, if we win that final battle, we can set your situation to rights and be back on permanent balance again. But there'll be trouble, first."

"Look here, though—" Jim was beginning.

He was about to protest that Carolinus seemed to be making the situation out to be far more complicated than was necessary. But he had no chance to finish his sentence. Just then a loud thud outside the house shook it to its foundations; and a dragon voice thundered.

"Gorbash!"

"I knew it," said Carolinus. "It's already started."

He led the way to the door, threw it open and strode out. Jim followed. Sitting on the path about a dozen feet from the door was Smrgol.

"Greetings, Mage!" boomed the old dragon, dipping his head briefly. "You may not remember me. Name's Smrgol. You remember that business about the ogre of Gormely Keep? I see my grand-nephew got to you, all right."

"Ah, Smrgol. I remember," said Carolinus. "That was a good job you did."

"He had a habit of dropping his clubhead after a swing," Smrgol explained. "I noticed it along about the fourth hour of the battle. Left himself wide open for just a second. The next time he tried it, I went in over his guard and tore up the biceps of his right arm. After that it was just a matter of finishing."

"I remember. Eighty-three years ago. So this is your grand-nephew?"

"I know," said Smrgol. "A little thick-headed and all that—but my own flesh and blood, you know. How've you been getting along with him, Mage?"

"Well enough," said Carolinus, dryly. "In fact, I'll venture to promise this grand-nephew of yours will never be the same again."

"I hope so," Smrgol said, brightening. "Any change is a change for the better. But I've bad news, Mage."

"Don't tell me!"

"Don't… ?" Smrgol stared.

"I was being sarcastic. Go on, go on," said Carolinus. "What's happened now?"

"Why, just that that young inchworm of a Bryagh's run off with our george."

"WHAT?" cried Jim.

The flowers and grass lay down as if in a hurricane. Carolinus tottered, and Smrgol winced.

"My boy," he said, reproachfully. "How many times must I tell you not to shout? I said Bryagh's taken the george."

"WHERE?" Jim yelped.

"Gorbash!" said Smrgol severely. "If you can't talk about this in a polite tone, we won't include you in the discussions after this. I don't know why you get so excited whenever we mention this george."

"Listen—" said Jim. "It's time you found out something about me. This george, as you call her, is the woman I—"

His vocal cords seemed to become paralyzed suddenly. He was unable to say another word.

"—and to be sure," Carolinus interrupted quickly, shoving into the gap caused by Jim's sudden and unexpected silence, "this is a matter of concern to all of us. As I was telling Gorbash, the situation is bad enough already without our making it worse. Eh, Gorbash?"

He bent a penetrating eye on Jim.

"We want to be careful and not make it any worse than it is already, don't we? We don't want to disturb the already disturbed fabric of things any more than it already is. Otherwise, I might not be able to be of any help."

Jim found his vocal cords suddenly free to operate again.

"Oh? Oh… yes," he said, a trifle hoarsely. "And to be sure," repeated Carolinus, smoothly, "Gorbash has asked the right question. Where has Bryagh taken this so-called george?"

"Nobody knows," Smrgol answered. "I thought maybe you could find out for us, Mage."

"Certainly. Fifteen pounds of gold, please."

"Fifteen pounds?" The old dragon visibly staggered. "But, Mage, I thought you'd want to help us. I thought you'd—I don't have fifteen pounds of gold. I lived up my hoard a long time ago."

Shakily, he turned to Jim.

"Come, Gorbash, it's no use. We'll have to give up our hope of finding the george—"

"No!" cried Jim. "Listen, Carolinus!
I'll
pay you. I'll get the fifteen pounds somewhere—!"

"Boy, are you sick or what?" Smrgol was aghast. "That's only his asking price. Don't be in such a sulphurous hurry!"

He turned back to the magician.

"I might be able to scrape together a couple of pounds, maybe, Mage," he said.

They dickered like fishwives for several minutes while Jim sat quivering with impatience; and finally closed on a price of four pounds of gold, one pound of silver and a large flawed emerald.

"Done!" said Carolinus.

He produced a small vial from his robes and walked across to the pool at the base of the fountain, where he filled the vial about half full. Then he came back and searched among the soft grass around the edge of one flower bed until he found a small, sandy, open spot between the soft green blades. He bent over and the two dragons craned their necks down on either side of him to watch.

"Quiet now," Carolinus warned. "I'm going to try a watchbeetle—and they're easily alarmed. Don't breathe."

Jim held his breath. Carolinus tilted the vial in his hand and a drop fell on the little sandy open spot with a single glass-chime musical note.
Tink!
Jim could see the bright sand darken as the moisture sank into it.

For a second nothing happened; then the wet sand cracked, opened, and a fine spray of lighter-colored, drier sand from underneath spouted into the air. A small amount of this under sand grew about a depression that sank and became a widening hole, like the entrance to an anthill. An occasional flicker of small black insect limbs could be seen, rapidly at work. After a second the work ceased, there was a moment of silence, and then an odd-looking black beetle popped halfway out of the hole and paused, facing up to them. Its forelimbs waved in the air and a little, squeaky voice like a cracked phonograph record repeating itself far off over a bad telephone connection came to Jim's ears.

"Gone to the Loathly Tower. Gone to the Loathly Tower. Gone to the Loathly Tower."

The watchbeetle stopped abruptly, popped back out of sight and began churning away inside the hole, filling it in.

"Not so fast!" Carolinus snapped. "Did I give you leave to go? There're other things than being a watchbeetle, you know. There're blindworms. Come back at once, sir!"

The sand spouted into the air once more. The watchbeetle reappeared, its front limbs waving agitatedly.

"Well, well—speak up!" said Carolinus. "What about our young friend here?"

"
"Companions
!" creaked the watchbeetle. "
Companions! Companions
!"

It ducked out of sight again. The sand began to work itself smooth once more; and in a couple of seconds the ground looked as if it had never been disturbed.

"Hmm," Carolinus murmured thoughtfully. "It's the Loathly Tower then, that this Bryagh of yours has taken the maiden to."