"Are they sleeping?", he asked us.
He bent down and peeked into the burrow, hoping to at least see a part of wing or a tail, and Raleigh, to fool around, tried to push him in.
"Damn it, Raleigh", Ben protested. He grabbed onto the orange tree's bark and jumped over the whole. "You and your pranks".
To get back at her he turned to me and asked: "Is it true that the first time she came to the store you freed your Mustangs? I'll give you fifty bucks if you sell me the video of Raleigh pissing herself".
"Um", I stuttered, taken aback. I saw Raleigh's cheeks become pink all of a sudden.
"To tell you the truth", I told Ben, "you wouldn't do much with the video. She was brave".
I took care to avoid Raleigh's glance, as Ben sighed in disbelief.
"Yeah, sure. On Youtube I saw the video of a marine running away from a Mustang. A marine".
"It's the truth", I answered. "And I saw that video too. My Mustangs are twice that size".
Ben didn't want to believe me, but Raleigh gave me a silent "thank you" with her lips that made me blush. I chatted with the two scientists for another half hour or so.
Raleigh asked me to wait until her boss came too, but after a while Abrams notified them that he wouldn't be by that day. In fact, I never met the famous professor during the first few weeks of the experiment. I saw him for the first time when he tried to sneak into my aviary, but that happened several months later.
GOING BACK TO THAT AFTERNOON, around one o'clock I left Raleigh and Ben under the big Pandora 1 dome in the company of my dragons and I went back to my store. The move had kept me occupied the whole morning, and I was behind with my work. Without an assistant anymore, I realized I would have to take on a bunch of "dirty" jobs that, I admit, I had given Roger to do up until then.
During the first days of the experiment I went back often to see how the Outbacks were settling in. Meanwhile, in the Acrobatica, Whiskey was becoming bigger and bigger. If this were a diary, the pages from those days would be full of notes like:
- June 10th: Whiskey has colitis. I was in the infirmary with him for two days. His abdomen keeps on swelling. It's not a good sign. I see a s... storm coming.
- June 11th: colitis alarm off. But for a while the infirmary can't be used. I'll have to buy a new brush, and lots, lots of paper towels.
- June 15th: maybe dragons aren't dogs, but may I be expelled from the Breeder register if Whiskey isn't capable of social inference. We played with the ball again, and he "understood" what I was pointing out to him. Up until now, I thought Mustangs were the most intelligent species. But I was wrong.
- June 16th: How Whiskey loves bouncing his red ball around! Boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing. He goes on for hours and hours. Boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing. I tried replacing it with other toys, but he refused all of them. He only wants his ball.
- June 18th: Whiskey flies. Well, a little bit. He still looks like a drunk moth, but he's learning. When I have time, I put Sheela in the Acrobatica and I watch the dragon teach him how to fly. If Roger saw them, he would run away screaming again.
- June 20th: Raleigh's experiment is continuing. Today I went to see her at Pandora. Elen DeRosa and Ben are very friendly. Langley always talks with a tone of detached superiority that makes him so... charming. Like a piece of lettuce stuck between your teeth. The Outbacks are doing fine, even if they miss their orange tree and the other 'Backs.
- June 21st: What instinct brought us to create those games where you have to put an object -usually a sphere - into a hole? Whiskey discovered he can throw the red ball into the rings in the Acrobatica. He's the new Michael Jordan.
- June 21st/2: Two hours have gone by and he hasn't stopped playing. He never gets tired. Damned red ball.
- June 25th: Today Raleigh asked me if there are any golden dragons. Ha ha. I told her that no, they don't exist. Every now and then somebody (rich people, obviously) try to color the scales with a golden varnish, but it's stupid. Every six months dragons shed their skin, and all these geniuses are left with is an expensive molt.
- June 28th: What is Whiskey's Command Language? I've gotten to Swahili, and there hasn't been any reaction so far. Between languages and dialects there are almost six million languages in the world. I hope I'll find it soon. Today I had lunch with Raleigh. Langley wasn't there (yes!).
AT THE END OF THE MONTH Whiskey had grown almost another foot, and had put on more than three pounds. He had learned to fly (more or less), and it was time to bring him into the Garden with the other dragons. His size didn't worry me anymore, seeing as he was about twenty inches long, and in a short time he would become bigger than Sheela.
I took my precautions in any case. For a whole day, I left him in one of the transportation boxes, without letting him come into contact with the other dragons. In the beginning, the remaining Outbacks and Deirdre's henchmen ignored him. I spent the whole night attached to the portable monitor, checking on what they were doing, but nobody got close to his cage.
The next morning, however, when I went back to the Garden, all the dragons were gathered around Whiskey's box. This was something new. Usually, when I bring a new dragon, the others take turns smelling it and then they leave it alone. Only with the Tangs, Deirdre had decided it was her duty to knock over their boxes and torment them. But this one?
Both the Mustangs and the Outbacks were still, their wings folded on their backs and their necks stretched out toward the opening where Whiskey's snout was poking out.
"What the hell is going on?" I asked out loud.
None of my dragons bothered to look at me. They were as if hypnotized. To my surprise, I noticed Deirdre was among them as well, just like the others she was bent forward, with her elegant blue silhouette resting on the grass. It looked like they were immersed in a sort of reverence, a dragon version of a bow. I made way scooting over Lutezia and Wagga, crowded near the box's door.
"What's going on, guys?"
The dragons hissed and fluttered their wings, restless, but they didn't make a move. I looked at Whiskey, in the box. The Primus was comfortable, all that attention didn't seem to bother him.
He looked back at me and scratched his right paw on the little door.
He wants to get out, I understood. I knew that moment would have arrived sooner or later. Let's just hope they don't attack him.
But the dragons didn't seem ready to do anything of the sort. They were waiting.
I undid the steel lock on the box and opened the door. Whiskey put a paw out onto the grass and walked out into the middle of the other dragons, one step at a time, puffing out his chest and keeping his back straight. I held my breath.
Then something I had never seen happened: all the Mustangs and Outbacks stepped back and set themselves aside, dividing into two sides. Whiskey continued on, walking in the middle of them. He ignored the hooked and peeling noses that grazed him to smell him and reached the pond. He roared a Waaa! to the Flight Garden's holed ceiling. Then, with a bounce he jumped into the water, making a big splash.
As if that were the signal, the other dragons followed him all together, filling the pond and splashing water all around the grass. I sat there watching, unbelieving, that orgy of scales, wings and claws until I realized the dragons were playing.
I let out a sigh of relief. I had never seen such a ritual, before then, but one thing was clear: Whiskey had been accepted.
Good. Phase one is done, I thought leaving the Flight Garden.
God only knows how relieved I was. Introducing a new dragon is a delicate moment and can become a mess, if there aren't the right conditions.
Now the fun part comes.
That evening I moved the transportation box next to the Garden's perimeter, just a few feet from the Tang's old peach tree, so Whiskey could use it as his "nest" for the night.
However, in the store I had already gotten ready for Phase Two: find his totem plant.
The special relationship between a dra
gon and his plant is a singular phenomenon but not very well known among people, and this is because the majority of dragons that are sold are domesticated and used to living in homes. Many of you have surely noticed a certain preference your dragon has for a certain fruit, or its tendency to sleep in vases in your living room, cuddled up around one of your plants. But the bond that is created between wild dragons and their totem plant is much deeper, and makes dragons a unique species on Earth. Some scientists even compare it to our falling in love.
It's always lots of fun to watch a dragon's reaction in front of their totem plant's fruit. They go crazy. It's like putting a three year old kid in front of the best candy in the world. For several years GeNext, XiLong and the other bio-engineering companies that deal with dragon creation have been releasing a list of totem plants connected to the various species. The Pink French are tied to Asian Persimmons, as you already know; Mustangs to cherry trees, purple Brits to pear trees and so on. For each wild species there's a fruit plant of reference, and breeders are forced to respect the manuals to the T, otherwise they risk seeing their dragons become weak, sad and sickly.
In this case, the golden rule is: "A dragon with his tree is a happy dragon".
My problem though, was that I didn't have the slightest clues what Whiskey's totem plant was. I didn't even know what species he was! His physical characteristics weren't in any of the manuals and I didn't know how Mister Dao had gotten his hands on the egg.
I had prepared the stable to show the little dragon the most commonly sold fruit plants, and see if he would recognize "his" among these. I thought it would be fun, but I soon found out that the issue was far more complicated than I had foreseen.
The day after introducing Whiskey into the Garden, I went to get him early in the morning and brought him into the small stable. Honey the horse had resolved the problem with her ear and her owners had come to get her a couple days before. We were alone. On a large wooden table I had placed a dozen different fruits: a bunch of grapes, a grapefruit, an entire melon, a tangerine, a kiwi, a fig, an avocado, a watermelon, a handful of blackberries and two strawberries.
I was trying to cover more or less the whole biological calendar (from January to November) and at the same time I had chosen fruit I knew wasn't tied to any other existing species.
I placed Whiskey on the table and let him smell the fruit, without forcing him. He gave the bunch of grapes a lick, but he didn't taste it. He showed the same enthusiasm for the blackberries.
A little bit at a time, I put all the fruits in front of him, but he rejected them one by one. He ate the strawberries, that's true, but only because he was hungry. And in any case just a few minutes later he threw them up half digested onto the stable floor. It wasn't the reaction I was looking for.
When a dragon has a mature fruit from his plant in front of him, the first thing he does is start to drool. His pupils get bigger, his heart beat accelerates and for a few minutes he rocks his head and tail as if he were disoriented and confused. His only desire is to eat the fruit.
Whiskey didn't do any of this. That day I didn't have anything else for him to try, so I waited for the next day, and I brought the dragon another basket of assorted fruit: coconuts, pineapple, mango, everything that came to mind. I even got some lemons, but Whiskey didn't show any reaction. He just limited himself to smelling and licking, and then looking at me with an interrogative face. I was perplexed. I had finished the most common types of fruit, they were off the list, and all I had left were exotic things like passion fruit, papaya, prickly pear or tamarind (it cost me almost fifty dollars to have my fruit vendor bring it to me, there were few plants left in the world). I carried on like that for a week. I would find a fruit I didn't know about online, or that had an unpronounceable name, and I had it brought to me. The dragon, however, nixed them all. I had even tried nuts. Almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, peanuts, chestnuts. Nothing, I didn't know where to look anymore.
It was Raleigh that gave me a hand.
We talked almost everyday since I had loaned the dragons to the college. If it wasn't me going to Pandora 1, it was her to video call me to update me on their health. I would tell her what Whiskey was up to and she would try to explain the theories her group was trying to prove.
"Maybe I have an idea", she told me during one of my outbursts.
"Really? Because I've even tried prunes. Prunes, Raleigh! Good God, for a moment I thought he may really like them. But then he shit all over the place..."
"No, no prunes", she smiled. "But you could bring him to the ArK".
"The ArK?
"Yeah", she said. "We have a greenhouse, next to Pandora", - she explained to me, "where we grow all types of plants, and there's fruit ones too. Trust me, if you don't find your totem plant in the ArK, it means Whiskey doesn't have one".
I thought about it for a moment. What did I have to lose? I had shown Whiskey more than fifty types of Fruit.
"Ok", I answered. "But only if you take us. I really wouldn't know where to go".
"Haha, okay. Let me talk to the others, maybe I can be available as soon as tomorrow, after the two o'clock shift. I'll call you back".
And she closed the video call.
Darn, I thought. If Langley is involved, I'll have to wander around this ArK by myself.
Professor Abram's assistants, as far as I understood, were four. Besides Raleigh and Ben Dameshek there were Elen DeRosa and Langley. The experiment's supervisor was actually that nice boyfriend of Raleigh's. Somebody could say it was only because of certain generous donations that Stephen's father (the famous Stephen Langley the Third Sr. or was it Fourth Jr? Honestly, it's easy to get confused even with numbers) had given to the university. But hey, it certainly won't be me to whisper this totally founded gossip in your ear.
In any case, dear Stephen wasn't happy that Raleigh was spending so much time with me. He considered me a failed scientist, and a common breeder.
Whenever he had the chance, he would do everything to interrupt our conversations or, if I went to see her at the College, he would take her away with some excuse, leaving me with Elen DeRosa or Ben in the dragon slice.
I don't think he was jealous, at least not during that period, he was just an arrogant bastard. Or maybe he was also a bit jealous. All in all, what did he have? A mansion in the Hamptons, a manor house in Surrey in England, dozens of houses scattered around the world; money came out of his ears, and he was a real botany scientist.
But I, my friends...I had dragons. I raised a colony of Mustangs by myself!
No woman can resist a dragon breeder's charm for long, and if it's not his charm it'll be his smell to knock her out (let's tell the truth, if human beings had evolved without a sense of smell, mine would be the perfect job).
Langley must have been occupied elsewhere, those days, because after a few minutes, Raleigh called back to tell me she could take us to the ArK.
Inside I was beaming. Raleigh, Whiskey and I, searching for the lost plant. It would be a nice afternoon.
And it was, in fact. The next day I put Whiskey in the transportation box and met up with Raleigh just outside the large greenhouse. The botanists called it "ArK", and it was almost three times as big as Pandora 1. According to Raleigh, it had more than one thousand five hundred edible plants, including almost five hundred fruit plants, not considering the different varieties.
The greenhouse was divided into climactic zones, each with its own temperature, humidity and different type of lighting. Botanists, I have to give it to them, were racking their brains to produce new plant varieties that could withstand the Drought.
"Are you ready?" she asked me.
She went toward the watertight entrance and showed her badge to the security guard. I held up the box and looked at Whiskey. It was the first time he had gone out into the open, but he seemed at ease.
"Yes, we're ready", I said.
But I was lying. Nobody could be ready for the concentration of Nature squeezed into the ArK.
As soon as we left the air tight room and went into the greenhouse, a blow of hot air hit me in the face, and a concert of sounds, smells and colors assaulted me. It was a stunning vision.
The first section, in a counter-clockwise direction, contained native plants from South America. There were gigantic ferns everywhere, and vines that dangled from trees that were at least a hundred feet tall. Beautiful flowers, some as big as my hand, others as big as a car tire, with pink petals like Sheela's scales or yellow like the sun. And the smell, my goodness. A mix of sweetish pollen and water vapor that hovered amongst the plants and above our heads. It was like being in the Amazon's armpit.
The path zig zagged through the forest, often hidden by the trees' fronds. I was stunned, plants surrounded me on all sides and I was short of breath. I was having a claustrophobia attack. Raleigh had to take me by the hand and guide me.
"What's going on, Jack?"
She had a strange smile on her lips. Or maybe I was having hallucinations. Raleigh guided me through the path following signs that I was unable to see. A couple of flowers - or plants that looked like flowers - even tried to eat Whiskey and his whole box, fortunately she pulled me away in time.
Going into the southern Europe section was like waking up from a bender. I got out of the air tight passage and took in a breath with my mouth open.
"A couple of plants...", I wheezed bent on my knees "...eat me and Whiskey, they tried..."
Raleigh towered over me, not even a drop of sweat on her forehead.
"Don't be silly, Jack", she laughed. "Plants don't eat people".
I breathed in heavily several times, before getting up.
The Dragon Seller: A Tale of Love and Dragons Page 8