Jack L. Chalker - X 2 - Charon - A Dragon at the Gate

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Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

A Del Rey Book

Published by Ballantine Books

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House,

Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada

Limited, Toronto.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 82-90379

ISBN 0-345-29370-3

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition: November 1982 Second Printing: June 1983

Cover art by David B. Mattingly

For Art Saha, longtime member of First Fandom, anthologist of exceptional taste

and discernment, and a Good Man

PROLOGUE:

A Time for Reflection

The naril circled and positioned themselves for the kill against the backdrop of the

onrushing al-wind. Opening their razorlike runners, which squeezed out through

slits in their skins, the naril started down.

The man looked around frantically without breaking his desperate run. There was

little shelter in the desolate desert landscape, and the cracked desert floor was

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Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

harder than concrete.

The naril were great creatures of the air, huge, speeding black ovals with great egg-

shaped eyes that made up what little face there was, tentacles behind shifting

subtly to aid in flight as if a solid tail and rudder. Underneath each black horror

were the two curved bony plates, almost like rockers, out of which came the

deadly sharp steel-like blades with which it would slash its prey.

The man realized that there was no place left to go and decided to make what

stand he could here, in the flat open land. One naril swooped down on him,

impossibly fast, but he dropped to the ground and rolled an instant before the

sharp blades struck, and the naril almost bit into the hard earth and spilled. No

such luck, though, and the man was quickly to his feet once more, cursing that he

had delayed so long. Taking a quick check of both naril, he knew that he needed

both of them in front of him, not flanking as they now were, so he summoned a

reserve only impending death could call up and ran at an angle to the two circling

monsters.

The naril were quite intelligent, but also overconfident. They had several square

kilometers of open country to play around in and never doubted the final outcome.

In the meantime, this was fun.

The man stopped once more and whirled again to face his tormentors. As he had

hoped, the pair had joined again and seemed to be almost hovering there in the air,

their yellow, expressionless eyes watching him and concealing, he had no doubt,

some great amusement.

He knew he had very little time.

From the naril point of view he seemed just to stand there, facing them, eyes

closed, hands outstretched. They took this act as a gesture of surrender and

submission, and, since this sort of thing was boring, moved in for the kill.

They dropped very low, only a meter or so off the desert floor, and sped toward

him, relishing the kill. As they neared their intended victim there was a rumbling

sound and the earth itself seemed to rupture. Around the man grew a wall of solid

stone as he himself sank down into the earth behind it The predators were so taken

by surprise that each struck an opposite side of the still-growing wall. There was a

shower of sparks as their sharp runners ground into the stone, but both had

sufficient balance to stay aloft and veer off.

Inside the sudden pit, in the darkness surrounded by four meters of stone wall, the

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Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

man heard the naril hiss in defiance and frustration. He was nearly spent; he had

used up half a day's water. The fort would have to hold. He sank down, relishing

the cool relief his tiny fortress afforded, and listened.

The naril adjusted quickly to the new conditions and tried to break down the

walls, hitting them hard and at careful angles. While they managed to do some

damage to the rocky fortress, they did even more damage to themselves, since

their blades were of bone. They soon gave up the attempt.

Settling down on top of the structure, they blocked what little light was left to the

man. He saw that he had judged the side of the pit well; both were too large to get

down the chimneylike opening to him.

Ultimately, of course, one of the creatures sat on top of the opening, trailing its

long tentacles down into the pit.

Again the man had been exacting in his measurements, although it was terrifying

to lie there in the bottom, with all light blocked, and hear those tendrils slapping

and searching about just a bit above him. Finally that, too, stopped, and he relaxed

a bit. He had come so far, so very far, and although momentarily safe, he felt his

reserves nearly gone.

He heard the naril shift again, and then he was subjected to the ultimate indignity.

Unable to reach him in any other way, they were trying to flush him ouf by

defecating on him.

There was an angry, frustrated growl from above and then the naril moved off,

allowing some light inside. He did not kid himself that they were gone. At least

one still lurked outside, waiting for him to come up, while the other was most

likely now up and away into whatever clouds there might be, soaking up moisture

as only naril could. He would have given anything for some of that moisture in a

form other than that he now wallowed in.

Clouds... He tried to think. What had the sky been like? His attention had been on

more immediate stuff. Still, there were always some clouds around. High ones, of

course, which contained less moisture than he would like, but some...

Concentrate... concentrate! If only he had the strength! With supreme effort he

closed his eyes and attempted to shut-out all but his sensitivity to the wa, an

attempt made doubly difficult by the slimy naril feces being baked even more in

the heat of the sun and stinking all the worse for it. He too would bake, he knew,

if he did not succeed, for his crude fortress was also a crude but very effective

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Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

oven.

Think... think! Think only of the wa...

He felt the wa that built his fort from the start, of course, but those he needed now

to shut out. He reached out, wa to wa, his to those others, and broke free his vision

onto the desert floor once more.

Of the naril there was no sign, but there were two bar-bushes nearby that hadn't

been there before. Inwardly this made him smile, although he had little to smile

about. The naril were intelligent animals, it was true, but barely that.

It would never occur to them that bushes in a place like this were as conspicuous

as the naril themselves—which is what the bushes most certainly were.

The fact that both waited, so still and patiently in the heat, confirmed his worst

fears about them. Trained and under orders they most certainly were, possibly

Yatek Morah's own personal hunters.

He felt the wa of the thick desert air around them all, but again he ignored it,

reaching up, up, ever higher, hoping, praying that somewhere within his range

was enough cloud to form what must be made.

It was there, of course, but terribly sparse and high up. He hoped it was enough. It

had to be enough.

Slowly, carefully, he reached the wa of the cloud, of the water molecules, reached

and talked to it and carefully guided and cajoled it into patterns, clumps, groups

growing thicker and thicker, bringing it together centered on the tiny instant fort

far below.

He wasn't sure if he had enough power, but it was all his strength and power could

muster. It had to be enough. It just had to be...

Now fly, wa of the clouds, fly upward, rise toward the sun your nurturer. Rise...

rise...

The two "bushes" lying in wait outside trembled, shimmered, and were naril once

again. They did not quite understand what was happening, but they saw the

shadow on the ground and felt its coolness. Great yellow eyes looked skyward and

beheld the clouds gathering together, coalescing at hundreds of times normal

speed, growing thicker and darker as they did so. The naril did not understand

why it was happening, but they knew, could smell and sense, that a small but

powerful thunderstorm was building just over them most unnaturally, and they felt

real fear. For a moment they were poised between their fear and natural instincts

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Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

and their command to pursue and kill this man, but as thunder boomed out of the

strange, unnatural cloud and echoed eerily across the vast desert, fear and instinct

won out. They rose into the air and sped away, toward the sunlit desert outside the

boundaries of the clouds' shadow.

The rain came now, falling not heavily but steadily on the small fort and an area

of approximately eighty or so meters around it. The man wasted no time in

commanding-the wa of the walls to return to form, and as the walls shrunk, he

rose until he stood once more on the desert floor with no sign of structure. The

naril feces still clung to him, and he shed all but his empty water flask and black

skin belt, letting the rain wash him. For a minute or two he just stood there

enjoying the rain and the cool relief it brought, but he knew he dared not linger.

There was not much water up there, and it could give out any time.

The recovered naril, understanding that their quarry had somehow caused the

storm and regaining their confidence, hovered just at the edge of the clouds,

waiting for the rain to end.

The parched ground, which had seen rain perhaps two or three human generations

ago and not since, could not absorb the water, and this made the hard ground

slippery and treacherous going. As the man moved, the center of the storm

traveled with him, keeping him in its center, while at the edges the naril moved at

his pace, waiting for the rain to give out. The rain itself would foul the naril's

delicate membranous wings, invisible in flight or hover, but once the rain stopped

they would move once more.

The man prayed the rain would hold, and it almost did, getting him to within a

hundred meters of the mountains before it started to give out. All the wa in the

world could not conjure more rain if there was no more water to use, and he hadn't

time to take the evaporation from behind him and recycle it into the diminishing

cloud.

The naril, wary of more trickery and fearful that he had stopped the rain only to

lure them in, held back, though, and this extra time gave him the opportunity to

run for the rocky outcrops just ahead.

Seeing him sprint, one naril forgot its caution and, hissing, shot out after him,

overtaking him just at the base of the rocks and striking him in the back. He flew

against the rocks from the force of the blow and gave a terrible scream, but the

naril had forgotten to extend its blades, and while the blow was crushing, it

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摘要：

Charon:ADragonattheGateCharon:ADragonattheGateADelReyBookPublishedbyBallantineBooksCopyright©1982byJackL.ChalkerAllrightsreservedunderInternationalandPan-AmericanCopyrightConve tions.PublishedintheUnitedStatesbyBallantineBooks,adivisionofRandomHouse,Inc.,NewYork,andsimultaneouslyinCanadabyRandomHo...

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Jack L. Chalker - X 2 - Charon - A Dragon at the Gate

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