Chapter 5

Coming down they found the Skr'a relaxing in a corner of the room. The keepers had built what to him looked most like some sort of nest for it wherein it rested, its legs folded around it. They were just going to call its attention when Sztra came slithering.

"Let her sleep, she has just finished her meal." He said. "They vegetate more often as the cold sets in." he explained. "And to wake her now would only make her grumpy."

Roland could easily see the wisdom in trying to not make an eight foot widow-maker grumpy. "Maybe you could tell us what you learnt while it rests, then? Wait, did you call it a she?" he asked, surprised.

"Yes, Roland. It is a she. And none to happy to be forced away from her mate and kin, either." answered Sztra.

"I see. So what did she have to say?"

Sztra thought some, and then suggested that they should move somewhere warmer first. It seemed that he missed his fire. They went up to see Sztra's new quarters, thoughtfully arranged by Magnus. There was not much in it, except for an enormous fire place, easily large enough to swallow four men, and their horses, too.

"Ah, there's nothing like a little fire" said Sztra.

Roland, who could agree that the stronghold had kept getting colder as the winter crept closer, nevertheless found the heat building up inside the Keeper's room somewhat overwhelming. The fireplace blazing away like a small wildfire. Pup seemed to have no problems with it, though. "Ah, just like summer." she said, smiling and eagerly looking around, just in case that there would be some apples lying about to roast, Katherine had introduced her to them, and she loved it.

Sztra seemed to appreciate her comment. "They said I was crazy to choose this old room, girl. And in a tower, too. But a Keeper knows what's important." slithering so near the fire place that Roland expected him to be set aflame at any moment.

Roland thought about it. A tower, that could explain the size of that fireplace? But inside a stronghold? Or did he just mean that it reminded him of one? He had never had any real time for exploring the stronghold, and, not for the first time, he wished he had.

"What on earth are you looking for, Pup." he asked, irritated as he saw her restlessly searching the room.

"Apples." She said, sounding as if that should be obvious.

Sometimes Roland felt as if stuck in a roman of that guy, the mathematician. What was his name, Lewis Carroll?

"Warmth. Every intelligent species know the value of warmth." Said Sztra contentedly, as he laid there, basking in the blinding heat. He turned his attention to Roland. "Why don't you join me?"

Roland smiled. "Thanks, Sztra, but it's quite enough where I am." he said as he took off his coat. "I don't like it too warm." he explained, as he continued with taking of his sweater. "So? If you don't mind?"

He stopped just before he started to take off his trousers, realizing the danger of that. No need to lead Pup into further temptations. He still found it rather strange to consider himself a sex-object, and finding himself being the goal for a demented sprite's perverted lusting.

"Of course not boy, do as you like. Mi casa es su casa." the Keeper sighed, a most satisfied sound, as he rolled over. "So, you would like to know what we have found?" Rolland nodded. "Yes, please, everything you can tell about them."

"Everything I can tell?" asked Sztra, sounding thoughtful. "That's asking a lot, but I can tell you what we talked about. Will that suffice?"

Roland studied him, wondering what he was thinking, "Yes please."

"She told a strange story, our friend did." said the Keeper. "And some of it unheard of in our history. We thought her to have come by way of a portal, but it seems we were wrong. And no, She couldn't describe the way back." he stopped to think.

"I couldn't make sense of the way she arrived here. As she told it, she was held inside that cage most of the time and with a cloth over it. She was taken prisoner without warning as she was out herding her flock. She doesn't know how they captured her, her best guess was that they somehow must have drugged her."

He sounded sad. "We still don't know how to find our way home, Roland, a pity."

Roland could sympathize with him, but it was more or less what he had expected. "I'm sorry, Sztra, I feared that it might be this way. But what did she tell you about our foes?" he asked a little impatiently.

"All in good time, young man." Answered the Keeper. "As I said, she couldn't explain how she came to our realm. It may be that she was drugged as she passed that portal, but as she told it to us, her cage was held inside a metal box. And the smells, and Skr'a is very good at identifying such, Roland, the smells were very strange to her."

He moved slightly away from the fireside to roll over to warm the other side. "Yes, young Pup, remember this when you grow old, a good fireplace is of the utmost importance for keeping your vigor." Pup nodded, as she waited for him to continue.

"She saw very little of her captors, but what she saw seemed as men like you, Roland. Dressed in strange clothes, she said, wearing no arms. Or so she thought until she made the mistake to attack one coming to close. As she was starting to drag him inside the cage, there came a heat so strong that the end of the leg, the one she was using to spear him with, was clean burned of. She saw them pointing what looked as small tools of some kind at her as they dragged her prey away."

He stopped again, rolling over closer to the fire. "It took her a long time to regrow it, and in all that time she was held in that room. Normally, such a regrowth takes months to accomplish, and that's why she suspect that something else than a portal was involved."

Roland, who had listened more and unbelievingly to his tale, couldn't stop himself. "And the next thing you will tell me is that she saw stars, right?" The Keeper looked at him much impressed. "Yes, the golden was right. A seer and a chosen one. Did you see it in a vision?"

Roland stared at him. He had to be joking, this was fairyland. Well, maybe not fairyland, but close enough. Magic everywhere and fair maidens, an evil overlord, and strange sentient creatures placed in what, to him, seemed most like some mediaeval Earth. And now, space ships? Little green aliens perhaps? But thinking of the implications, he decided to stop arguing and listen first. Sztra waited some more for him, but as no answer was forthcoming he continued.

"Yes, you are right. They moved the cage, and as they did it she saw stars, Roland. But she said that they were as no stars she ever had seen before. Like fiercely burning white pinpricks they were, enshrouded in a darkness stretching forever. She said that she felt as if she had lost her place, as if she was dead yet alive, when she saw it."

He studied Roland thoughtfully. "I will not ask what you think, Roland, although I know you recognize it. She saw one of the men talking to another, pointing at her with one of his appendages. She thought they were going to kill her then, but they just moved her to another box. And then one day, she felt as if the whole box became heavy, and when the heaviness stopped they took her out of the building to place her on a pedestal of some sort?"

He seemed to study Roland thoughtfully as he leisurely turned again, presenting a new body part to the fire. "She said she saw what seemed to be a fair, or a market of some kind, with the men making agreements with another. After doing so they left her there." He stopped to look at Pup, who had started to undress.

"And the strangest thing, Roland, the strangest thing was the way that building disappeared. She said it started to shine so brightly that she had to look away, and when she looked back it was just gone. They must truly be frightfully strong in their magic."

Once more Roland wondered what the hell he was doing there. To be fighting that stinking Lord was one thing, he had came to terms, well, he had almost come to terms, with himself being able to do magic, but this? still, it did explain his GPS working. If there was a technologically developed race involved in this somehow, they sure would want a positioning system.

What was she doing? He looked confused at Pup, who suddenly had appeared in the middle of him assaying the importance of those new findings, stark naked, stretching up his arms to be lifted, just like a little child. Without reflecting, he lifted her up as he continued to weight his possibilities.

And what was better than a GPS, but using the same wavelength as him? It just didn't make sense. He knew one thing though, it couldn't be his species. Manlike yes, but not men. If he hadn't traveled in time, too, of course? The implications were becoming more and more convoluted, he thought bitterly. Pup, who saw his worries, tried to comfort him saying "Don't worry, Roland, it can't be that bad."

Roland looked down at her bleakly. "I don't know, Pup. It's one thing worrying about magic, but magic and hi-tech together?" he shook his head helplessly, as he tried to get his thoughts together. "Well maybe they were traders of some sort? I hope it was so, but they will still be a serious problem for us if they are allied to Lord Foul."

Pup smiled, sure in her knowledge over her champion's invincibility. "I'm not worried, Roland, we will overcome." She cuddled closer to him as Roland smiled back, patting her back, thinking that he wished she was right. "I hope we will, Pup." He answered, trying to sound optimistic. "We will do our best."

Sztra rolled over again. "Our best, Roland? No, we will do better."

"What is hi tech, Roland." Asked Pup

As Roland wondered how he should explain, the Keeper slithered away to come back with a matt black object. "As she tried to drag her prey through the bars, this fell of the body, Roland. I don't know what it is, but she said she thought it to be sentient, it spoke to her during the journey, but as she refused to answer it soon stopped."

He stared at it. Matt black and as big as his palm, with grooves for what looked fingers to rest in, it looked very strange.

"She said that they came searching for it several times, but as she had hidden it inside her egg pouch they couldn't find it. In the end they seemed to give up on her having it. She's not even sure if they understood that she was a sentient being. They never once tried to speak with her, not that she would have answered, but still?"

Slowly Roland took hold of it, it seemed to fit itself to his hand seamlessly, somehow adapting to his hand. It was the strangest feeling, as if it somehow was a fluid as well as a material. He experimentally tapped his fingers in the grooves, feeling how they sort of fitted, almost clinging to him. After a while it stopped doing it, and then come a voice from it. He couldn't understand one word of it. He looked at Sztra but saw that he was as stupefied as him.

"Pup? Do you understand it?" asked Roland. She just shook her head.

The machine, if that was what it was, seemed to listen to them, as it stopped talking as they did so. As soon as they stopped, it repeated his question word perfect, with the same exact intonation. "Pup? Do you understand it?"

"It knows my name." Screamed Pup. "Kill it."

Roland just stared down at her.

"It's dangerous, my name is yours to know, and my friends, not this, this creature." Roland almost dropped both her and it, as it screamed the same as Pup and in almost the same voice, but keeping his cool he tried to smile reassuringly as he looked down at her. "It's no creature, Pup, you asked me about hi-tech, remember? Well, this is seriously hi-tech I think. And I think it's trying to learn our language."

Then as he woke up to her. "And where are your clothes, girl?" The Keeper who had watched their mating-ritual, at least he thought it to be such a one, silently congratulated himself on his species' more sane approach. When the female smelled and moved right it was time, as simple as that. But he still found it most instructive to learn about this strange species' mating-rituals. Perhaps he would become a bard at last. After all, it was his duty to record the chosen one.

The rest of the day Roland spent walking around the stronghold feeding it with words, sentences, and concepts. Now and then remembering the feel of Pup in his arms, but nobly repressing as much as he could. It seemed to learn as they kept on, in the end almost able to put together sentences of its own, but making little meaningful with them. "Egg it in the yellow stone thank you."

Roland could just hope that it somehow could see what he was doing as he pointed to different objects naming them. Considering that it seemed to be built of 'intelligent materials', as he remembered some geeks in the army call it, he had some hopes that it might. ' And probably in the infrared, too, and only God knows how many more wavelengths ' he thought, as he finally took it and Pup to the captain and his Katherine.

Sztra had preferred too bask at the fireplace instead, telling them that the Skr'a wouldn't be approachable before the next day at the earliest. "It takes some time for it to metabolize its food, Roland. She said that the prey we offered is not what she is used to have, harder to digest and not very tasty. So you better be real nice to her."

Then he started wheezing as he saw Roland freeze, listening. "Sorry, a small joke, Roland, don't worry. Skr'as are a honorable species, just as us Keepers." 'So now I'm being consoled by giant bugs, too' thought Roland fleetingly, wondering what his former mates would have said, seeing him getting comforted by Sztra. "Okay, Sztra, but please, no more jokes, I'm jittery enough as it is."

When they were sitting discussing at the table, Roland almost forgot the device clinging to his hand, it was only as he tried to use that left hand he remembered. By now it looked more like some strange lady's glove, or as some very freaky armor, as the material had adapted and stretched itself out almost up to his elbow. Looking at Katherine and Lance, he saw their unease looking at his arm. But as he had found out earlier, it wouldn't come off.

Seeing them, he realized that he should be a lot more worried than he was. It was as if it released some soporific in him, and he just couldn't make the effort to care. It still kept parroting words and sentences, making the discussion seriously weird, as it did their voices almost perfectly by now. A little like sitting in the middle of an echo chamber hearing everything twice. But they managed, and as the night came, Pup and Roland went to their room.

"Are you going to take that, creature, off?" asked Pup.

"Wish I knew how." Answered Roland. "But as I don't, I think it'll have to stay."

"It will not see me naked." Declared Pup.

"I'll tell it to close its eyes."

"It has eyes!"

"Yeah, I think so?"

"You can leave, I'll call for you when I'm ready."

As Roland went out, he found himself alone in the kitchen, except for Lilah and Vanja, sleeping like two angels in each other arms. He sat down at the corner of the bed, muttering to himself. "You can't live with them, and you can't live without them." Not realizing he was waking the girls.

"Sorry, girls. Didn't want to wake you. Go back to sleep." As they still looked at him, he tried. "And that's an order." Roland was the first to admit that he didn't really have that hand with kids that most adults had. It was a shortcoming, but a livable one he thought

The girls still looked at him and his new glove.

"Hi, glove." Said Lilah. "What's your name?" The glove was quiet, as if processing.

"Hi Lilah, hi Vanja, hi Roland. I'm glove."

The girls became very exited at that, and Roland belatedly realized that they would never go to sleep after that. Not before having their little chat with, ah, glove?

"Where is your doll?" Asked Vanja sympathetically. "You didn't lose it, did you?" assuming that all non-humans were like her, needing their own doll. "You do have one, don't you?"

"No."

"You could borrow mine?" Offered Lilah, hospitably.

The processing took a lot longer this time.

"What are doll." Asked the glove.

Now both girls felt sorry for the glove. And Roland decided that whoever wrote this novel had to be even further out than that mathematician.

"You haven't ever played with dolls?" Asked Lilah, sounding as if she couldn't believe her ears.

The glove hummed some more as it thought about that and dolls, but at last it said.

"No."

"You can play with us tomorrow." Promised Vanja. "We can have a tea party."

The glove processed and processed. Dolls, Tea-party? Could be code, but for what?

"Thank you."

After that, Roland almost forced them to bed again, thinking and fearing the morning. 'consoled by bugs, and now? A tea party?' He almost forgot about the glove's remarkable learning curve as he thought about it, but as he came into his own room again he asked it.

"Can you dismantle yourself from my arm, please."

"What are dismantle?"

Roland realized that there was a lot more left to wish, before that glove would be any conversationalist of magnitude.

"Can you let go of my arm again, like when I held you first?"

"No."

What the? "Are you saying that I will have you on me forever?"

It processed.

"No."

Damned computers. thought Roland, bloody literates all, no matter how hi-tech. "So why can't you let go of my arm?"

"The processes are not finished."

"What processes?"

"Adapting us."

'Shit, it's turning me into a cyborg?' "Are you doing something with me?"

"Adapting."

Roland gave up. "You better not harm me, glove."

It processed for a while and then replied.

"No harm, Roland, adapting."

"Just as a tip, glove, you have your 'it' and 'are' all mixed up.

Thinking some more.

"And you better be real quiet, or Pup will throw us both out."

"Okay." In a very weak tone. 'It seemed to have a real respect for Pup, if not for him. But hey, what's new with that?' Roland sighed as he crept to bed beside Pup, for once being reasonably sure he would be left alone. "Goodnight, Pup and glove. No more talk until I wake up, please."

The glove kept silent. As Roland fell asleep he wondered how much that damned glove would have covered by tomorrow. Perhaps he should change his name to 'The Dark Avenger?' That would show them, he thought sleepily, a little unsure who 'them' was.

As he woke up, the first thing he did was to look at his arm. 'It's gone.' He thought. 'but where?' He looked around the room. "Where is that damned thing." He swore. 'It can't have assimilated me, can it?' he rushed to the mirror to see, but he looked just the same. Thinking of it, he realized that it was him that would have assimilated it, if so.

"Never mind." He muttered. "As long as I'm still me." He could hear the girls laugh in the kitchen, so he went to see. There they sat, all three, four? He counted again. Lilah, Vanja, Pup, and something that looked like a poodle? A matt black poodle? Talking?

Seeing it, he realized that he should have checked his eyes long ago. 'Talking poodles don't exist' he told himself sternly. The problem being that he saw one right in front of him. "Ah, anyone seen glove?" he asked.

The girls started to laugh, and then Pup pointed at the poodle. "He's so much cuter now." She said happily. "He promised not to peek, too."

"And we have taught him to drink tea." Said Lilah, sounding proud over his and their achievement. Vanja nodded enthusiastically.

"He's so clever." She said.

From a killer hi-tech glove taking over the world, to a talking poodle taking over? A tea-party? "Something is wrong with this picture." Muttered Roland. So he was no cyborg then, thank god for that at least. "Hi, Glove."

"Hi, Roland, sleep well?" said the poodle.

Roland made a conscious effort to accept his eyes. It was a real life, if small, talking Poodle, as cut out from some fem magazine.

"You're a walking talking clusterfuck glove." He said, forgetting the audience. He tried to calm down, trying for that odd bit of humor. "So? have you decided your gender?"

"Naturally, I'm perfectly male, and proud of it." the poodle said challengingly.

Roland stared at it, him. "Okay with me. Hey, your language improved." he complimented it.

"Naturally, why shouldn't it? My nanobots had the whole night on them to assimilate your thoughts and memories. Do you know that you have a memory block?"

"Amnesia, yeah."

"No, a very sophisticated memory block, possible to solve if you would allow my bots to disassemble you." As the poodle saw Roland start backing away, he coolly calmed him.

"Don't worry, they are all professionals. Satisfaction guaranteed, and, if not? Well, you won't come back to complain, will you." Then he started to laugh, a metallic rusty sound, like a poodle coming down with a severe case of sore throat.

A poodle with a sense of humor? And a sick one, too. "We need to have a talk, Glove, and soon." He said, feeling nettled.

The damned poodle nodded "Yes, Sir." It said, suddenly sounding more obedient.

"Goddamn" swore Roland, too late remembering the young ladies present. "Forget that, and cluster, ah, too, you hear." He ordered them curtly, as he went about fixing the scones and tea. At least the damned dog knew what a 'chain of command' was, he thought grudgingly.

"Yes, Sir." He heard them giggling.

"Damned impertinence." He muttered under his breath, as he sat down to eat his belated breakfast. Thinking of how well-behaved the girls had been at home, well, as he remembered it at last. Or not really at all, he realized, as he tried to dwell deeper into his memories.

Maybe he should see if that Glove really could help him? He hated not being able to remember, a memory block was it? After his breakfast he felt so much more human than before. He turned to the quartet still having their tea party, showing them his more lenient attitude.

"Pup, Glove. We need to talk. Lilah and Vanja, you have to excuse them, go to bed." As the girls finished their party, Roland impatiently waited, tapping his fingers.

As they went into the room to parley, he could hear the girls testing their new big words. "God damned, Vanja. Where's the tea?" "How the god damned clusterfuck should I know?"

'This is going straight down to hell' he thought, his only hope being to plead temporary insanity when Katherine discovered it, swearing again under his breath, once more fervently wishing that Mari could have been there to help him.

"Okay, Glove, You have to tell me what you've done to me, every detail, hear."

Glove didn't so much compute anymore, as scratch while he thought.

"Come on, Glove, fleas? Isn't that going a bit far?" he said, getting peeved again.

"What good is an impersonation if you don't perfect it." protested the poodle, slightly insulted as it let its tongue hang out, wagging it.

Roland decided to let that go for the moment, but that wagging was getting on his nerves. "Okay, but you better start speaking."

The poodle studied him as if trying to judge his mood, and finding it pressured almost to the boiling-point, he reluctantly agreed.

"Well, Sir, don't know what good it will do you this quick, but as you insist. Got to warn you, though. Don't get too exited, it may change the parameters of your development. It all started with you touching my grooves, I'm afraid that you inadvertently gave me an override that was the signal for me to adapt. And as I wasn't fully conscious then, I had no choice. And the rest we know, Sir."

"We know?"

"Yes, Sir, you just have to relax a little and breath normally. It will all fall in place, Sir. Just think about Glove."

Roland tried to relax, but he found it hard. But after a while he could feel himself breath easier. And in the end he tried the name 'Glove'. He felt something, but nothing seemed to happen.

But as his breathing became deeper and slower, it was as if his brain opened up, presenting him with a ordered system of patterns. Some of them were related to his body, sorting through them he found that he had became a yogi, or at least something resembling them.

He found that he, without effort, could control parts of his nervous system that normally were without conscious control. It was if he had become his own puppet master, a very strange experience.

He also found new knowledge implanted about a lot of strange things, some of them related to combat, but also of other, and to him weirder, subjects, as etiquette, and how to dance, eightlegged?.

"How can one brain hold so much shit" he muttered to himself.

"It can't." Answered Glove without being asked. "You and I have a connection through my bots. But for you to take to them was a wild chance. Not that I knew of it then."

"A symbiosis?" asked Roland, confused, and then realizing something. "You're not made for a human at all, are you?"

The dog, for the first time since their little chat started, seemed to have to do some fast processing again.

"Correct, Sir. I'm originally meant to become the personal defense and teaching system for one Monarch to be, Ralk of Majigstan. I, and the ship, too, got hijacked as we landed on Wertr, and as nobody realized what I was, I decided to leave it that way." Wagging his tail in mute admiration over his own craftiness.

"If I had been conscious, I might have done a better work of it, Sir. But, as it is, I'm happy to state that I, according to all known laws, now belong to you, Sir, as salvage of piracy." He thought a little.

"Well, that is." As he moderated his former statement. "As long as we keep quiet about it, Sir, and don't go to Wertr. Or in any other way makes it clear that I exist. But other than that, I'm pretty sure I'm correct. I'm also happy to report that I'm a state of the art, latest, in weapon and personal combat systems bio-electrical sapient, or so near that nobody will see any difference." Here he seemed to consider his own words for a moment.

"Although we might have some adjustments to do, as the Ralk had a somewhat different physiognomy than yours." He studied Roland somewhat more, shaking that poodle head as if slowly going mental, if now poodles could do so. Or as if at least mentally thinking, 'tsk tsk tsk' and then remarked.

"They have a so much more pleasing form, you see, not so brutishly angular in shape. Still, one has to work with what one has to work with, ain't that the truth, Pup?" Looking at her as he sadly shook his head again. Pup nodded. 'You little traitor' thought Roland bitterly as he saw her, listening to the dog's insults. 'Noted and remembered.'

"In fact they had a very pleasing physiognomy, so different from your angular deformity, Roland. Perhaps we could do something about..." Here he stopped as if considering, studying Roland much as a tailor would, if now a tailor also would be your brain surgeon.

He seemed lost in remembrance, which was a rather impressing sight, considering the fact that he never even had gotten so far as to meet a Ralk in real life. As he woke up he continued.

"So aesthetically perfect, indeed, that they have become the very symbol of beauty. Reminding me more of an octopoid shape, with eight limbs coming out approximately where your neck ends."

And then finishing in a perky upbeat tone. "But I'm sure we will find a way to work around it, after all you do have four, right?" Then he seemed to process some more.

"As for his majesty's pleasure circuits, I didn't install them. The human wiring system is very hard to understand, even for an intellect as large as mine. Also I'm computing that you're not readily attracted to octopoid shapes."

He studied Roland for a moment, lost in thoughts. "although I'm sure the pleasure circuits could correct that." He muttered doubtfully, as if to himself, but as he saw Roland's and Pup's expressions, he hastily continued in that same upbeat voice.

"No, no, Roland. Keep your tastes, how hard it ever may be for me to understand your perverse leaning toward angularity. I'm still glad to report that most of what I gave you are succeeding in adapting and adjusting themselves to you." He smiled.

At least it seemed a smile to Roland, who by now just sat, dumbfounded, staring at his worst nightmare ever, alive? "I compute a thirty four to ninety three percent adaptability success between us, in just some few months, possibly years, as your body adapts, hopefully."

"Adapts?" Roland got a sudden image of himself crawling around the floor on his four limbs, like some obscene land based octopod. "And what the hell did you mean by hopefully? And 'most of' and thirty four? And..."

"Don't worry, relax, slow down, Roland. There will be nothing visible, I think? I've just accelerated your evolution a little. You will find yourself somewhat quicker, with a clearer mind, and with the ability to actually use your evolutionary possibilities. But it will all come naturally, Roland, hopefully. Let it rest for now."