Wyvernhold
L. Sprague de Camp
VERA TOBIAS knew that the gatekeeper of Wyvernhold was a giant but was still surprised when he proved tall enough to look over an elephant.
This giant could not be a real person—a zoon as the scientists put it. He was a zooid. The process of making zooids had earned Sigrnund Palraa the fortune needed for Wyvernhold.
The giant bent to peer. With a trembling hand, Vera thrust the invitation-card out of the window. The giant took it and began reading it with a flash light the size of a hydrant, Palma had warned Vera to bring the card to show, just as he had warned her not to tell anybody she was coming. The reason for the latter demand was his desire to keep people off his estate. If the news got out that he was entertaining, he said, reporters and other vermin would try to sneak in. And, while the grounds were well posted about the dangers of trespassing, he did not want the complications that ensued when even the most flagrant trespasser was killed.
He added something about parking her 'plane on the meadow across the highway from the main gate, but she laughed and asked him what sort of 'plane he thought a poor widow and librarian could keep?
Probably, he thought her husbands had been rich. Others thought that. But Robert, the first, had no backlog behind his big earning power and had killed himself leaving not even an insurance-policy. Adrian was a four-flusher, a faker who spoke vaguely of non-existent investments, trusts, homes, and other property. Nothing you could pin down, but enough to fool everybody but the Department of Internal Revenue. (In her rare candid moments, Vera admitted she had used the same tactics on Adrian, so it was hard to say who got fooled the worse. ) He made a modest living as a salesman until he dropped dead of heart-failure.
So here was little Vera, only in her middle thirties and still not at all bad-looking, a real sod-widow twice over, driving up in a battered little old automobile for dinner with one of the world's richest men.
The giant tucked the card into the leather scrip that hung from the belt of his medieval-looking costume."Drive in, madam, and stop a few feet inside the gate," he said.
Vera did. She heard the gate close and big bolts shoot home. Ahead rose a dark mass of forest. She thought she could see a tower over the trees in the fading light.
The giant reappeared."Follow me, madam," he said. His voice was no deeper than that of an ordinary man, though one would have expected a bass boom. On the other hand it had the flat, mechanical quality of all zooidal speech.
The giant strode off up a winding graveled road. Vera followed.
She tried to repress, as foolish, phantasies in which she snared and married Sigmund Palma. A man in his position could have a harem chosen from the planet's beauties. Of course if by some fluke she did land him, she could manage him. She could manage any man; she had proved it. Her bridge-friend Bea had been a lying, slandering cat to say behind Vera's back, that Robert's suicide and Adrian's early death had resulted from too much management.
Still, Vera couldn't help regretting that awful quarrel, seventeen years ago to the day, when she had thrown Sigmund Palma over for Robert Gingrich. Bob had seemed to have much better prospects. Sigmund had called her a mercenary little vampire, incapable of love, and she had called him an empty, neurotic poseur, incapable of truth.
Well, poseur he might be; but one could put up with a lot of affectation from a billionaire interstellar explorer and industrial tycoon...
THE GIANT shouted. Vera looked out the side of her car and almost drove off the road.
Beside the road stood a unicorn. It stamped and lowered its horn as if to charge, but the giant's shout seemed to check it. One might have thought it as big Belgian cart-horse with a four-foot twisted horn glued to its forehead; but a close look, even in this poor light showed that this was no horse. The details were different. It had three hooves on each foot and a long tufted tail like a lion's.
Vera fought down her fear. If the knowledge that Sigmund Palma had brought back from Fleury's planet enabled him to make zooids in the form of people and real animals, he could make them in the form of fabulous monsters, too. Come to think, a literate zooid probably violated some law. Wasn't there a rule that no zooid should be made that intelligent? The question had come up among librarians, who were asked what they'd do if a zooid came in and asked for a book. No doubt the creator of zooids could get permits for experimental types.
The trees closed in: big old pines and cedars. Sigmund Palma must have covered the estate with the darkest evergreens he could find. The effect was somber.
The road dipped and crossed a wood en bridge. Hemlocks replaced the other evergreens. The stream gurgled blackly under the car. '
With a loud splashing, a huge reptilian head rose from the water and arched towards the car on a long neck. The head had long, writhing, whiskery filaments. The jaws gaped to show foot-long teeth. The giant shouted again and the head withdrew.
Vera pulled her shaken nerves together. Well, she thought, if by some chance she did land Sigmund Palma, she would insist on getting rid of that thing. If he wanted fabulous monsters, he might have something pretty like the unicorn, but no dragons, dinosaurs, or other reptiles, real or synthetic. She would be firm.
The giant had been striding for several minutes. They must have come miles. The road forked again and again. The giant always chose one way without hesitation, but Vera could never have remembered all the turnings.
The black shadow of the forest lifted and there was the castle. It looked medieval, but not quite authentically so. There was a histrionic boldness, a self-assertiveness, about its lines that would not be found in a real castle; (Vera's eidetic memory turned the pages of Angelucci's "The Castles of Europe," a big picture-book in the Reference Department. ) Wyvernhold looked like a stage-set wrought by a non-literal stage-designer for "Macbeth" or "Lohengrin". A pair of orange flames blazed on each side of the en trance, across the drawbridge. Their reflections in the water of the moat made a rectangle of four orange splotches. The giant raised a hand.
"Park here, madam," he said.
VERA DREW up to the side of the moat and got out. The giant started to lead her across the drawbridge when there was a rustling overhead. Vera looked up and shrieked. Something batlike but condor-sized was swooping down upon her. She made out a hooked beak, pointed ears, and a long snaky tail. The giant shouted again and the thing sheered off. Vera recognized a wyvern from Schwarzbach's "Heraldry". The wyvern flew in slow flapping circles to regain altitude and came to rest on the battlements. There it sat silhouetted like a gargoyle.
Vera would have given up and driven away but for the thought of those billions. The wyvern, too, would have to go. If Sigmund wanted a wyvern to symbolize his castle, he could have this one stuffed and mounted on a turret.
She asked: "What was that word you shouted? Isn't it the one you used on the other things?"
"Follow me, madam," said the giant, starting across the drawbridge.
The flames flanking the portcullis came from a pair of bronzen torcheres that leaned out from the wall. They were, she decided, gas-flames. The main door, behind the portcullis, was closed. The giant banged the knocker. The door opened.
"Mrs. Adrian Tobias," said the giant.
"Come in, Mrs. Tobias," said a flat, toneless voice.
The speaker was a kind of djinn seven feet tall, clad in a turban, baggy silken pants, and slippers with turned-up toes. The skin of his face and bare torso was dark; his nose was hooked; his chin was adorned by a black forked beard.
"Let me take your coat," said the djinn, bowing.
Well, at least he would not squash the life out of her by accidentally stepping on her, as the giant might have done. She gave her coat to the djinn, who hung it in a closet and said: "This way, please."