"Dickson, Gordon - Dragon And The George Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

"What's wrong?" demanded Angie.

"I just thought," Jim said, a little thickly. "Gorbash obviously knew how to fly. But do I?"

"You could try it," she suggested. "It'll probably just come to you. I'd think it would, instinctively, once you were in the air."

Jim looked down at the jagged rocks far below.

"I don't think so," he said. "I really don't think so. I think I'd better move the boulder there and go back down the inside route."

"Didn't the old dragon- What's his name... ?"

"Smrgol."

"Didn't old Smrgol warn you not to come downcave again? What if you meet him on the way and he says you're not to go, after all? Besides, the Tinkling Water may be far enough away so you'll need to fly to get there."

"True," said Jim, hollowly. He thought it over. There seemed to be no alternative. He shuddered and closed his eyes. "Well... here goes nothing."

He jumped outward and began to flail his wings wildly. The air whistled about him as it might if he was either flying or falling like a stone. He was sure he was falling. There was something like a sudden soundless explosion in the back of his head, and his wings stretched, slowed and began to encounter resist- ance. He could feel air against they undersurfaces in the same way the back pressure of the water on an oar can be felt by somebody rowing.

Hope flickered faintly alight in him. If he were go- ing to smash on the ground, he certainly should have done it by this time? On the other hand, maybe he was just managing to delay his descent, sliding down at a steep angle toward a collision with the rocks some distance from the base of the cliff?

He could stand the suspense no longer. He opened his eyes and looked.

Chapter 4

Once more, as when he cried out on seeing Angie, he had underestimated dragon capabilities. The ground was not rushing up to meet him. To the contrary, it was far, far, below him, odd little patches of wood alternating with open country. He was at least a couple of thousand feet up and climbing rapidly.

He paused for a moment and his wings stiffened out automatically in glide position. Still, he did not descend. He woke abruptly to the fact that he was soaring-instinctively riding a thermal, an uprising current of warm air, after the fashion of balloonists, sailplaners and the large birds of his own remembered world. Of course! He kicked himself mentally for not thinking of it before. The larger birds were mainly soaring birds because of the effort required for them to fly. He remembered now hearing that most of the heavier hawks and eagles would refuse to fly on days that were completely windless.

The same thing had to be true-or more So-for dragons, with their enormous weight. Evidently, like the lion, who could make a very fast charge but main- tain it for only a small distance, a dragon's great mus- cle power could lift him quickly to soaring heights. But from then on it must be a matter of his riding the available winds and thermals.

Apparently, such riding was instinctive stuff to his Gorbash-body. Without conscious thought he found he had lined himself up with the sun above his right shoulder and was sailing northwestwardly away from the cliff face where he had taken off. In fact, the cliff itself was now dwindling into inconspicuousness be- hind and below him. Far away on the rim of the horizon before him was the dark-green belt of a wide- stretching forest. It moved steadily toward him, and he toward it without effort; and almost without his being aware of it, he began to enjoy himself.

It was hardly the time for such self-indulgence, par- ticularly with Angie held prisoner behind him in a cave; but Jim found it so difficult not to feel good that he finally relaxed and allowed himself to do so. For one thing, it was just past noon of a thoroughly superb day sometime in late spring or early autumn. The sky was a lucent blue, touched here and there by just that small number of little, fleecy clouds that would serve as grace notes to set off the beauty of the day as a whole. Even from a couple of thousand feet up (dragons apparently shared the telescopic vision of the large birds of prey as well as their soaring inclina- tions) the gorse-fuzzed open moors, the pines and oak tree clumps he saw below him had a sort of dewy freshness about their appearance. With Gorbash's acute sense of smell, Jim could even catch the faint medley of green odors rising from the countryside; and the scent slightly intoxicated him.

He felt powerful, capable and a little reckless. In fact, for two cents he would go back and face down the whole rest of the dragon community, if necessary, to free Angie. The double-thinking back part of his mind even seemed strangely sure none of the others could match him at flying. He puzzled over that im- pression, then remembered that Smrgol and even Bryagh had referred to Gorbash spending more of his time aboveground than was usual for dragons. Perhaps because he had been out of the caves more and had had to fly more frequently, Gorbash was in better training than the others?

An unanswerable question. But it reminded him of all the other questions that his incredible adventure raised. This world had more unreal elements in it than a sane mind could imagine. Dragons-let alone drag- ons that talked-were incredible. Somehow this world must have a set of physical and biological laws that made this possible; and someone with a doctorate in history, with a fair number of science courses along the way, ought to be able to figure those laws out- and, having figured them out, make use of them to his and Angie's advantage.

He would have thought that language would be the main problem in this other world. Only, it wasn't. The more he thought of it the surer Jim was that he, in this Gorbash-body, was not talking modem English -or any other form of English. Apparently he was talking dragon with no trouble at all; although the mental channels that seemed to translate this into mod- em English-colloquial modem English at that- in his head, were puzzling, to say the least. As a me- dievalist, Jim could both speak and read Middle and Old English, and with a doctorate he could also read and make himself understood in modem French and German. In addition to these languages, he had a smattering of modem Spanish, a few words of modem Italian, and a good knowledge of all the Romance languages in their medieval forms. Finally, he could read both classical and church Latin with facility, and work his way through classical Greek with the help of a dictionary in that language.

All in all, a pretty fair set of qualifications for any- one adventuring into any period of the European Mid- dle Ages. Only, it seemed, none of these were useful. It was not his major areas of interest that he would find useful here but his minor ones. Still, there had to be a system of logic behind any operating environ- ment; and if he kept his eyes open and put two and two together...

He soared on steadily through the air, thinking in- tensely. But his thoughts eventually went in a circle and ended up getting nowhere. He simply did not have enough data yet to come to conclusions. He gave up and looked around below him once more.

The wood had evidently not been as close as he had first thought. Although he was making very good time indeed-Jim estimated his air speed as some- where in the area of fifty to seventy miles an hour- the green band of trees was still the same small dis- tance off. On the other hand, he did not seem to be tiring at all. In fact, he felt as if he could soar like this indefinitely.

He did feel the first, slight tickling of an appetite, however. He wondered what, as a dragon, he ate. Not -he winced away from a thought-no, definitely not human beings. If that was ordinary dragon fare, he'd just have to go hungry. Perhaps the magician could help him out in the foot department as well as with the means of getting Angie and himself home again.