Dragon Space

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  What's the matter, Jael? Don't you want to come out?

  She hesitated, torn by conflicting desires. He would be waiting to give her the pallisp, she knew. But this was not a good place to leave the net unattended, not with the mountains approaching. It might not be safe to leave right now, she said finally.

  Not safe? Why not?

  She spread her wings to catch a warm updraft. Because . . . there might be dragons.

  His eyes squinted furiously, or so she imagined. Dragons? Dragons? Jael, have you taken the mountain route?

  Jael beat her eagle wings with sharp strokes. Yes. That is—no, not exactly. But we're near there.

  Find a stretch of safe passage. And then you come out and see me in my cabin, Jael. His voice touched her like ice, and she stopped pumping her wings. His anger made her tremble. She saw distant lightning among the peaks, reflecting her sudden fear.

  All right, she whispered, and the world suddenly seemed even colder and lonelier. She did not want to leave here to face him, of all people. But neither did she want to lose the pallisp tonight.

  You should have thought of that before, she thought.

  Banking left, she brought the ship into a heading that would take it parallel to the range, if there were no unexpected shifts in the wind. She thought she could probably safely leave the net here. Still, she delayed leaving—gliding in a gentle breeze, watching ominous dark peaks drift past, far off to the starboard. She wished that somehow the fear and the loneliness would subside.

  Finally, when she could no longer justify staying, she set the stabilizers and the alarms. Her senses melted back into her body as she withdrew from the net, and she opened her eyes, blinking, half expecting to see Mogurn squinting in at her. But the bridge was deserted, gloomy and lonely. There was nothing here to greet her but the instruments, and for that she was grateful.

  She stretched as she stood beside the rigger-station. She realized for the first time that she was hungry. And tired; her limbs were heavy with fatigue. She wasn't sure which she wanted more, sleep or food. But Mogurn had said to come immediately. Sighing, she left the friendly gloom of the bridge and went to Mogurn's door. She pressed the signal. The door paled and she stepped inside.

  Mogurn was seated, smoking his long pipe. His eyes betrayed nothing of his thoughts. He rose and silently gestured for her to sit. She slid onto the bench-seat, conscious of the crystal tapestry twinkling over her head, wishing she could spin around and disappear into that miniature world of light and refraction. Mogurn frowned, studying the end of his smoking pipe. The smoke curled toward her, stretching out like a vaporous hand. "Why did you disobey me?" he asked.

  Jael shivered, certain now that she would be denied the pallisp. Perhaps that was for the better, but she could not see it that way now; all she could see was the relief and the warmth that the pallisp could bring to her. "I . . . meant no disobedience," she murmured, shamefully aware that it was only half true. Yes, he had not strictly forbidden her to fly that route, but of course she had been aware of his desires and had—yes—rather relished ignoring them. Had quietly relished his fear of the mountains—his fear, she presumed, of dragons that almost certainly were not real.

  Mogurn stepped closer, hovering over her, alternately blocking and exposing the light behind him. Jael squinted nervously up at him. "Did I not say that I preferred the longer route, Jael? Was there some special circumstance you haven't told me of, some need to take the more perilous course?"

  Was that fear in his voice? No. He was the master. Jael bit her lip. "I . . . was having trouble, the other way. But this way it was clearer. And I wasn't worried. I think, well, the stories about . . . dragons . . . are just stories. I don't consider them real."

  "Oh?" Mogurn glared at her with his bloodshot eyes. "Tell me, Jael—what is real to a rigger? Can you tell me that? Is it what is in the Flux—or what is in the rigger's mind?" He drew a lungful of smoke and exhaled it as he spoke. "It doesn't matter, Jael—either one can destroy us."

  Jael met his stare for a moment, then nodded mutely.

  "And, drunken sods though most riggers may be," he added bitterly, "one should never laugh at their reports, should one?"

  Her face burned at his sarcasm. "No. But still, it's just legend!"

  "Is that it, Jael? Just legend? When riggers report what they have seen and felt, is that just legend?"

  Jael shrugged. How many riggers, she wondered, had actually reported dragons? Not many, she was sure. But she said nothing.

  "Now, are we still close enough to our original course to turn back onto it?" He exhaled another cloud of smoke, which drifted past her face before being drawn into the ventilators. Jael opened her mouth to reply in the affirmative, but something made the words stick in her throat. Instead, she shook her head. "We can't avoid the mountains?" he growled. She shook her head again, with greater determination. Mogurn stared at her, drawing smoke from his pipe and exhaling it in repeated large plumes. Finally he turned away in silence.

  Jael watched as he laid his pipe on the reading table and returned to her, pallisp in his hand. "All right. It is time." His voice held no kindness, nor did his eyes. But the sight of the pallisp sent a thrill down Jael's spine. Unhappiness and loneliness welled up in her; she hated the realization, but she was shivering in anticipation of the joy that would come from the thing.

  At Mogurn's gesture, she bent her head forward and pushed her hair aside. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mogurn's arm reach, saw the pallisp gleam . . . and felt the cool touch of the probe. She felt the pallisp's warmth reaching into her with shimmering energy; felt that warmth encircling the ugly, waiting feelings of alienation, fear, anger; felt it closing around those feelings like flowing blood, healing and soothing and transforming the emotions, softening her inner defenses and filling her with the warmth of joy and love . . .

  The wave turned icy cold. Jael swayed dizzily as a tide of fear and dread welled up inside her, sweeping away all other feelings. For a moment, she was disoriented as well as frightened. Her thoughts were flooded with pain and confusion. Then she realized—the pallisp was gone. She sat back, blinking wildly, struggling to hold back a rush of tears. As Mogurn spoke, she could hardly see him through blurred eyes; but he had stepped away from her, and she could see the glint of the pallisp in his hand. "That's all for tonight, Jael. You must understand what obedience means, even for a rigger." Jael tried not to tremble under his gaze, but she was desperate with frustration and need, and helplessness. Slowly, and with great effort, she steadied herself, drew herself upright into a semblance of dignity. Mogurn nodded. "Now, Jael, help me with my augmentor. Then you may retire."

  Though dying to scream, she obeyed. Mogurn reclined and she fitted the synaptic augmentor to his head and adjusted the controls, and when Mogurn was reduced to a silent figure fluttering his hands and pawing himself with a blind-eyed grin, she backed away and fled to her cabin.

  * * *

  Her thoughts seemed to roam about the cabin like birds on wing against a distant sky. Her cabin was at once a boundless space in which she felt tiny and insignificant, and a grim claustrophobic cell, threatening to crush her. She stalked the little room like a caged animal, brooding.

  The question kept coming back at her: why had Mogurn done this to her? Why use a device that would make her addicted? Was there any doubt that he had known what would happen? What had he wanted, a rigger who was so dependent upon him that she would never leave unless dismissed? It seemed likely. She thought of the pictures she had seen in his cabin, the haunting despair in the eyes of those riggers. Am I that far gone? she wondered. Could she leave him now? Would she have the courage, if given the opportunity?

  And what about his promise of heightened sensitivity in the net? Was that a lie, too? She had felt something, to be sure; but was it truly an improvement in sensitivity, or was it just an altered coloration of perception? It might well have been real; indeed perhaps that was another of his goals—to have, not just a rigger
-servant, but one who could sense the realm more keenly, and perhaps fly faster and more stealthily in the service of his smuggling activities. But at what cost to her mind, to her soul?

  She peered at her reflection in the mirror and tried to decide if there was anything different in her own face. Did she look thinner, more worn? More experienced, more capable? She pushed her fingers back through her hair, and exhaled deeply. Lord, how she wanted . . . how she needed the pallisp! How she wanted it to take this lonely bitterness from her soul and turn it into something warm. She would almost kill for that. But only Mogurn knew precisely how to use the thing, and so she needed Mogurn, too.

  Maybe, she thought, a mist-bath would make her feel better. Checking that her door was locked, she shrugged out of her clothes and stepped into the tiny mist cubicle. She elbowed the start button, and closed her eyes as the mist issued from the walls and surrounded her with a warm swirling dampness. Sighing, she allowed the mist to gently scrub her clean, and she blinked as the droplets dispersed, leaving her skin tingling. She tentatively ran her hands down her body. She inhaled the moist ionized air, savoring the physical refreshment. As she stepped out, she grabbed a towel and rubbed herself down. Then she pulled some loose-fitting clothes out of a drawer and slipped into them. Though she intended to sleep, she felt safer dressed.

  She sat cross-legged on her bunk, thinking, feeling the weight of her worries pressing down upon her again. She began to think of her father, to wonder if he had done things like this to riggers in his employ. She drew her knees up under her chin, thinking of Dap, whom she had trusted. Sighing, she switched off the light and stretched out, and after a moment turned on the sleep-field to lift her gently, not quite off the surface of the bunk, to help her sleep.

  And then she tossed and writhed, unable to rest at all. Unable to stop thinking. To stop her anger at Mogurn. To stop remembering Gaston's Landing, where her unhappiness had been so great that it had driven her to accept this instead. To stop remembering Dap . . . and that night, and the dreamlink . . .

  * * *

  His willful insistence, his gentle but deliberate deception, promising intimacy and understanding; she remembered the offer of friendship, and his eyes dark and earnest, and his vow: "We'll be looking right into each other, and our souls will link . . ."

  And the golden glow of the dreamlink, and the warmth and the seduction . . . and the opening up of her heart and memory . . . and the devastating awareness of Dap's reaction to her need; his revulsion and his fleeing . . .

  And her own muted cry of pain, which she had wrapped about herself and forced back in, bottling it so it could no longer hurt her . . .

  And going back to the hall, determined to get an assignment . . . and meeting Mogurn, who had offered her the job—and the pallisp.

  * * *

  She started out of a brooding daze, in the near-darkness of her cabin. One small light was glowing at its lowest setting. Obviously, sleep was impossible. She could not forget the pallisp, or the cruel way in which Mogurn had torn it from her. But the pallisp was the only thing that could soothe away these anxieties and fears. It was her only release.

  Except, of course, for the net.

  Sitting up, she thought about that for a long time. She could go to the net now, of course. That was the one place where she could shape her feelings and play them out in images and render them harmless. Letting dark feelings loose there could be perilous, but was it any less perilous to keep them corked inside herself until they exploded? Mogurn had already warned her once; he would be furious if she went to the net again while he was under his bliss-wire. But if she didn't do something, she would go crazy.

  She sat for a very long time, weighing the consequences. The longer she thought, the faster her heart beat, the more it cried out with need. Damn it, you have to do something! She could not have the pallisp. There was only one other way out of this.

  You are the rigger. You have the power and the need.

  Swallowing, she rose from her bunk. And she stood there, swaying, trying to find some resolve that would keep her from returning to the net . . . that would allow her to sleep, or if not to sleep, then at least to bear the pain and the need.

  She didn't find the resolve. She found only the need.

  Chapter 9

  Highwing

  SHE CREPT onto the bridge and slipped silently into the rigger-cell. The neural contacts touched her neck. Her senses, electrified, sprang into the net.

  Her imagination at once sparked a new image: the ship was a balloon-borne gondola in a nighttime sky, riding the winds downrange of a long line of mountain peaks. Jael let the breeze soothe her. After a time, she changed altitude, seeking higher crosswinds that would take her closer to the mountains. She wasn't sure why she was doing it. Revenge against Mogurn for the way he had treated her? Or was it that she was already being punished, and what more could happen to her? Or was it that she really was taking charge, and this simply felt like the right direction to fly? She didn't know. The gondola swayed as she passed through an air stream moving the wrong way; then she found another that carried her in the direction she wanted.

  She set her sights upon the approaching range. A single full, creamy moon sank slowly toward jagged black peaks, jutting like sullen teeth against the horizon. Backlit by the moon, a blunt-nosed mass of clouds was moving out of the mountains toward her. She liked the effect: the gloom of night and eerily lighted clouds that looked like moving glaciers. Or like bold angry pincers that could reach out to shred her balloon . . .

  The balloon disintegrated abruptly. She caught at the air with her hands. For a moment, she and the starship tumbled earthward, her arms flailing and grasping; then she overcame her panic and deliberately remade the image. The ghostly net shimmered and became a varnished wooden glider, whispering in the wind as it sliced downward through the air. She was perched astride its fuselage, and she tugged and pulled at the airfoils until it leveled out in flight. And she thought: Take care! Dangerous thoughts could smash the ship into splinters as well as any physical force, and the pieces would be left to drift forever in the currents of this strange reality, the Flux.

  The wind soothed her face, and gradually soothed her mind and her spirit as well. She let her feelings swirl ahead of her in the sky, in the emptiness between her and the clouds far ahead. Her feelings would not hurt her out there. Let them dissipate in the cool emptiness.

  Time passed and she drew steadily closer to the mountain range.

  * * *

  The dragons stormed out of the clouds in random formation, like gulls out of a rain squall.

  Jael stared out into the moonlit night in astonishment. Dragons! Dreadful winged shapes, they wheeled before the distant clouds. Sparks of red flame flickered about them. Jael could scarcely believe the sight before her. Dragons couldn't be real! They were something from fairy tales and primal dreams, from racial fears and magical desires . . . from lies fabricated by boastful or delirious riggers. But . . . there were dragons in the sky right now. And several of them were flying toward her.

  Jael searched her thoughts, wondering if she might have provoked this image from her own imagination. She felt nothing, not even the slightest tingle of recognition. Was it possible that the dragons actually were real . . . living creatures, living in the Flux? She controlled the glider with tight movements and watched them come.

  The dragons grew in the moonlight. They certainly appeared real enough: rugged, fierce-looking creatures, breathing fire into the air like the dragons of folklore. Most of them banked away to soar and circle far off her wingtips. She felt a moment of relief. But three of the creatures closed to intercept her, circling into a tight orbit around her glider. They maneuvered quickly, banking and veering, their movements hard to follow.

  One swooped close, startling her, but giving her a good glimpse of its features. It was solid all right, its scales like polished pewter gleaming in the moonlight, but with subtle colors rippling beneath the surface. The creatur
e's head was rough hewn, as though of living stone. Its nostrils flared coal red as it craned its neck toward her; its eyes shone with ghostly green light. Its wings were broad and serrated, beating the air powerfully. As it circled around behind her, another dragon swept directly across her path, alarmingly close; then all three drew off to a more comfortable distance.

  She held her course, thinking frantically. What was one supposed to do when met by dragons? Storytellers in the spacebars spoke of dueling. Could it be that those tales were not just boastful nonsense? These dragons looked real, and fierce, and eager for battle!

  This one is mine, she imagined she heard a voice say.

  She shivered, wishing she had flown another way.

  Are you afraid? she heard, and this time she knew she really had heard it.

  She glanced around, frightened, thinking that perhaps Mogurn was on the bridge, taunting her in punishment for her disobedience. But the voice, though it murmured in her head, was not Mogurn's.

  You are afraid, said the voice. Shall we be kind, and kill you quickly?

  It was one of the dragons speaking! She was terrified and astounded. She glanced over her left shoulder and discovered one of them flying close alongside, just a little behind her. Its gleaming eyes and smoldering nostrils were as clear as marker lights. What do you want? she asked, her voice trembling.

  The dragon exhaled a plume of flame, startling her. It edged closer, its eyes flickering like green lanterns. She banked to the right, thinking, This can't be happening! The dragon drew even closer as she veered, following her movements with ease. Its eyes glowed brightly, emerald green. The turbulence from its wings buffeted her, and she had to fight to control the glider. What are you doing? she cried in protest. Leave me alone!

  The dragon puffed a cloud of sparks. Does that mean you don't want me to kill you straightaway? It dropped back . . . and then, with a powerful series of wingstrokes, flew up in a tight loop around her, peering closely at her as it banked and dived. Moments later, it was once more flanking her left side. Do you prefer to die in battle?