Paint Your Dragon

by Tom Holt

  ‘Well?’

  Pigeons; Mother Nature’s flying diplomatic corps. ‘The sword,’ it said. ‘The armour. The horse. The being seven and a half feet high. Frowned upon.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Times change,’ said the pigeon. ‘Not to mention fashions. Can you do anything about that?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ George concentrated. ‘Apparently I can. Is this better?’

  The pigeon looked down. It was now sitting on the head of a short, bald man in a blue donkey jacket, jeans and scruffy trainers. ‘Fine,’ it said. ‘How did you do that?’

  George shrugged. ‘Dunno. Who cares? When I get there, what should I ask for?’

  ‘Um.’ The pigeon searched its memory - about a quarter of a byte, say a large nibble - for a phrase overheard in crisp-shrapnel-rich beer gardens. ‘A pint of bitter, please, mate, and a packet of dry roasted peanuts. That usually does the trick.’

  ‘A pint of bitter, please, mate, and a packet of dry roasted peanuts.’

  ‘You’ve got it.’

  ‘Right. A pint of bitter, please, mate, and a packet of dry roasted peanuts. A pint of bitter, please, mate, and a packet of dry roasted peanuts. So long, birdbrain. A pint of bit ...’

  Standing on the empty plinth, the pigeon watched until George disappeared through the pub doorway, still rehearsing his line. It waited for a while. Then it preened itself. Then it started to peck at a cigarette butt. Two minutes or so later, the whole incident had been edited out of the active files of its mind and was held in limbo, awaiting deletion. And then ...

  The pigeon looked down.

  It was, once again, standing on a statue.

  Vaguely, it recalled something it had learned recently about statues. It took another look at what it was standing on. Ah shit, it said to itself.

  ‘Mike.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Just come and have a look at this, will you?’

  Instead of folding the tarpaulin, Bianca just let it fall. Then they stood for a while and took a long, hard look.

  ‘Swings and roundabouts,’ Mike said eventually. ‘Snakes and ladders. Maybe even omelettes and eggs.’

  ‘What?’

  Mike shrugged. ‘I’m trying to be balanced and unhysterical,’ he said. ‘We now have the dragon back. True, we do seem to have lost Saint George, but...’

  Slowly and very tentatively, Bianca leaned forwards. She laid the palm of her hand on the dragon’s cold, scaly flank. Marble. Solid, cool, bloody-awkward-to-move-about stone. ‘This,’ she said at last, ‘is beginning to get on my nerves.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a form of advanced job-sharing,’ Mike suggested. ‘You know, like flexi-time. I think West Midlands Council’s all in favour of it, and I suppose you could just about classify these two as Council employees.’

  ‘Mike.’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Please go away.’

  Alone with her creation, Bianca thought long and hard. Sometimes she leaned against the statue, holding it. Sometimes she pressed her ear against it, as if listening. From time to time she kicked it.

  After a while, she opened her portfolio and studied some sketches and plans. She took out a tape and made some measurements, both of the statue and the surrounding area. She climbed up onto its front paws and sniffed its spectacular, gaping jaws.

  A mother, they say, instinctively knows what her baby is thinking. If it’s in trouble, she can feel it, deep inside. Bianca frowned. No, not trouble, exactly. More sort of up to something. But what?

  Finally, she packed up, replaced the tarpaulin and started to walk away. Having covered ten yards she turned, faced the statue, and put on her most menacing scowl.

  ‘Sit!’ she commanded, and stalked off down Colmore Row.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Having parked his shape in Victoria Square, the dragon ambled down Colmore Row to Snow Hill and consulted the railway timetable. Three minutes later a rather bemused train pulled up (wondering, among other things, how the hell it had managed to get there from Dumfries in a hundred and eighty seconds) and he climbed aboard.

  ‘Colchester,’ he said aloud.

  The voice of the train, inaudible to everyone except the dragon, pointed out that the Snow Hill line doesn’t go to Colchester. The dragon smiled pleasantly and invited the train to put its money where its mouth was.

  Alighting at Colchester, a place he had heard of but never actually been to, the dragon took a taxi to 35 Vespasian Street, explained to the driver and climbed the stairs.

  The top floor of 35 Vespasian Street is given over to a suite of offices consisting of a chair, a desk, a computer terminal, an electric kettle, an anomaly in the telephone network and seven hundred and forty-three filing cabinets. The door says:L. KORTRIGHT ASSOCIATES

  SUPERNATURAL AGENCY

  Lin Kortright was on the anomaly when the dragon walked in. He was explaining to Horus, the Egyptian charioteer of the Sun, that simply picking it up, moving it along in a straight line and putting it down again without dropping it was no longer good enough to guarantee him full employment, and had he considered, for example, juggling with it or balancing it on a stick while riding a unicycle. As the door opened he didn’t look up, merely made a go-away gesture. He was about to suggest training it to do simple tricks when he noticed that the receiver was back on its cradle and he was, in fact, talking to the palm of his hand. He raised his eyes, impressed.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘how’d you do that?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘It’s purely instinctive with you, huh? No matter. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m looking,’ the dragon replied, sitting on a chair last seen two seconds previously under an actuary in Stroud and still warm, ‘for a job. I imagine you might be able to help.’

  Mr Kortright studied the chair for a while, and then nodded. ‘Possibly, possibly,’ he said. ‘What d’you do?’

  ‘What needs doing?’

  Mr Kortright frowned. ‘No, no, no,’ he said, ‘that’s not the way it works. You gotta have an act before you come bothering me. Let’s see. You can do telekinesis, right?’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Oh boy, a natural,’ Mr Kortright sighed, rather as Saint Sebastian would have done if, just as the last arrow thudded home in his ribcage, he also remembered he’d left home without switching off the oven. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he added, ‘maybe I can still find you something, if you don’t mind touring. Done any poltergeisting?’

  The dragon’s brow furrowed in thought until he looked like a fight between two privet hedges. Ever since he’d come back, he’d been letting his subconscious fill in as many of the gaps as possible, mostly by opening a direct line from his exceptional ears to his memory. In consequence, the back lots of his brain were stuffed with thousands of unprocessed eavesdroppings, waiting to be filtered and condensed into usable ready-to-wear background information. ‘Poltergeists,’ he mused, accessing a fragment of a documentary overheard when the taxi drove within a mile of a TV showroom. ‘That’s a ghost or similar evil spirit who throws things, yes?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  Mr Kortright’s shoulders rose and fell like share prices during a closely contested election. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You wanna learn?’

  ‘Not really, no. All seems a bit gratuitous if you ask me. And besides, I don’t plan on being here very long, so there’s little point learning new skills.’

  ‘Picky, huh? You got a nerve.’

  ‘Several,’ replied the dragon, absently. ‘In this body, anyway. The other one’s just animated rock.’

  It took Mr Kortright’s brain three quarters of a second to pick up on the words this body and the other one, speculate on the significance and dismiss the whole as too much hassle. ‘So what did you used to do? Have an act then?’

  The dragon nodded. ‘I flew about breathing fire, making rain, that style of thing.’

  ‘Dragon, huh?’

  ‘You’re very perce
ptive.’

  After a moment’s hesitation Mr Kortright correctly interpreted the dragon’s remark as a compliment. ‘Not much around at the moment for dragons,’ he said. ‘Endangered species regulations,’ he added.

  ‘Ah.’ This seemed to confirm what the dragon had assumed about a national dragon shortage. ‘So dragons are protected, are they?’

  Mr Kortright grinned. ‘Dragons?’ he said. ‘No way. Nothing in the legislation about dragons. Now crocodiles, yes. Which means the supply of raw material for the handbag trade is down to last knockings. But if you’re good you can make dragon look like crocodile ... You get my meaning?’

  A corner of the dragon’s mouth twitched. ‘I seem to remember you people have a saying,’ he said. ‘First catch your...’

  ‘Been away a long time, have you?’ The Kortright grin widened, until it looked like the aftermath of seismic activity. ‘In which case, here’s a tip for you. If you’re flying along and you see something long and grey and kind of tube shaped with little fins coming straight at you, don’t try chatting it up or asking it out to the movies. They call them wire-guided missiles, and—’

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ said the dragon. ‘I found out about those for myself. So there are still dragons about, then? People seem to react as if I’m extinct or something.’

  ‘In these parts,’ Mr Kortright explained, ‘you are. In this century, in fact. That doesn’t worry transtemporal poachers any; just means that by the time they market the goods, they’re also genuine antiques and therefore legal to sell.’

  ‘Ah.’ The dragon shrugged. ‘But so long as I’m now, I’m relatively safe?’

  ‘Safe.’ Mr Kortright savoured the word. ‘From poachers, maybe. I mean, chances are, if you stick around any year with nineteen on the front of it, you won’t suddenly find yourself full of powder compacts with a zip up your back. There are,’ he added, ‘other dangers.’

  ‘Thought that might be the case,’ the dragon replied. ‘Which is precisely why I’m in plain clothes and looking for a job. You see, I have things to do in the here and now. Once they’re done, I’m off somewhere and when a bit less paranoid. While I’m here, though, I thought a job’d help pass the time and help me blend in.’

  ‘Very wise. So,’ Mr Kortright went on, steepling his fingers, ‘where are we at? Ex-dragon. Ex-dragon. Now then, let me see.’

  The dragon waited patiently while Mr Kortright played with his computer.

  ‘Any luck?’

  Mr Kortright pursed his lips. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘like I say to all the kids just starting out in the business, when you’re trying to make your way, sometimes you’ve gotta do things you’d rather not. You sure about poltergeisting?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Shucks. Hey, what’s this?’ He peered at the screen. ‘I can get you six weeks’ volcanic activity in Hawaii, covering for the local fire-god while he takes his kids to Disneyland. All you gotta do is lie on your back and blow up through a small hole.’

  ‘Sorry. Got to be in this country. Anyway, where’s Hawaii?’

  ‘Please yourself. Gonna be difficult, though. How do you feel about hallucinations?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Hallucinations. For health-conscious druggies. All the weird visions without actually taking the drug. Growth area, steady work.’

  ‘Not really me, somehow. I’d feel self-conscious. Besides, don’t you have to be a pink elephant?’

  ‘Boy, are you behind the times.’ Mr Kortright frowned, and tapped a few more keys. ‘Okay, okay, you’re gonna love this. This is really so you. Security guard.’

  ‘Security guard?’

  ‘It says here, traditional security guard needed for substantial art collection. Full board. The successful applicant will be at least fourteen feet long, green and covered in scales. No time wasters. There now, what can I say?’

  ‘Okay,’ said the dragon. ‘When can I start?’

  George sailed through the air in a graceful arc and landed in a dustbin. Behind him came a voice, warmly recommending that he stay out. After a short pause for regrouping, he climbed out, brushed trash off his person and staggered away down the alley.

  Seems like old times, he said to himself, getting slung out of drinking establishments. Some things had changed, of course; for one thing, getting slung out was now a whole lot easier. Definitely a regrettable tendency to over-react.

  His mind drifted back to the bars of his youth. Pendle’s, the roughest saints’ bar in Albion. The Caerllyr Grill. The Grendel’s Torso. What the hell was wrong with this goddamn country?

  Half an hour’s slouching, lurching and bumping into things brought him back to Victoria Square, and he realised that he didn’t have anywhere to sleep for the night. He saw...

  ‘Immediately,’ said Mr Kortright. ‘Here’s the address. Do well.’

  The dragon trotted down the stairs into the street and whistled. A moment later, a huge green shape, flying faster than the wind, descended on him and he vanished.

  ... An empty plinth. He thought of his nice warm statue; good, solid marble that didn’t wobble about all over the place like this blasted cheapskate flesh-and-blood outfit did. Climbing the plinth, he sighed, closed his eyes and was stone once more.

  ‘I’m not saying,’ said Chubby Stevenson, his brain racing, ‘it’s impossible. Nothing’s impossible. All I’m saying is, it’s going to be tricky.’

  Fifteen impassive Japanese faces regarded him, until he began to feel like asking for his blindfold and last cigarette. These people, he realised, don’t want to hear this. Pity.

  ‘It’s all to do,’ he continued, cramming charm into the meter of his smile, ‘with the fundamental nature of Time. Now, with my supplies of raw Time, I can prolong the present, no problem. In certain circumstances, I can sometimes recreate the past - not travel back in time, now that is impossible. Nobody can do that. What I sometimes do, for specially favoured customers, is make a synthetic recreation of a specific episode from the past, using a raw Time base and...’

  They weren’t interested. He wasn’t answering the question they’d asked him. Jesus, these guys!

  ‘The future,’ he therefore said, ‘is something else entirely. Future’s different from past and present, see. Future hasn’t happened yet. If it hasn’t happened, we don’t know what it’s like. If you don’t know what it’s like, you can’t copy it. Now...’

  One of the fifteen leaned forward and, terribly politely, cleared his throat. With respect, his expression said - his lips didn’t move and he didn’t make a noise, but there was no need, just as you don’t need to speak fluent Gun to know that when a .44 revolver stares at you with its one big eye it’s informing you that you are probably going to die - they knew this already. What they didn’t know, and what they wanted him to tell them, was whether it was possible to arrange an artificial future, in which certain specified events would happen; and if so, how much would it cost? If he didn’t know the answer, the expression continued, then perhaps he would be good enough to say so.

  Chubby sighed, and got a grip on himself. ‘It can be done,’ he said. ‘The principle is quite straightforward; simple, even. The practicalities ...’

  Please explain the practicalities.

  ‘Okay. It’s all relativity, right? Travel faster than light around the Earth to accelerate forward through Time. Once you’re there, or do I mean then, you set up whatever it is you want to happen in the future. Like, you want to bet heavily on the Superbowl, you fast forward to the day of the match, see who . wins, now you can place your bet - provided you can get back to your own time, or get a message back, anyhow; obviously, you can’t get back yourself, because pastside travel’s out, see above. Sending a message, though, that’s no problem.’

  Really?

  ‘Trade secret,’ Chubby said. Normally he’d have winked as well, but there was something about the wall of stone-faced scrutiny opposite him that put him off the idea. ‘We can do it, anyhow. The technical problem,
of course, is finding your faster-than-light courier.’

  A soluble problem?

  ‘I feel sure we can sort it out,’ Chubby lied. ‘Of course, if we knew we’d be successful, we’d just get the courier to report back from the future on how we’d managed it, the same time as he passes back the Superbowl results; but that’s a bit hit-and-miss so far as I’m concerned. Sloppy, you know?’

  Indeed the fifteen did. Sloppiness, the expression gave him to understand, was anathema to them. Chubby painted a smile over the cracks in his composure and continued. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you boys are going to have to let our R & D people kick this one around for a day or two. As soon as we’ve got the ans-’

  You will report back to us in forty-eight hours? Very well.

  Chubby’s Adam’s apple bobbed like a Formula One lift. ‘When I said a day or two, I didn’t actually mean two days, I meant ’

  You are already suggesting a postponement. Seventy-two hours, then.

  ‘How would it be,’ Chubby croaked, ‘if we call you when we’re ready to roll? We’ll be as quick as we can, naturally.’

  You are asking for an indefinite postponement while you attempt to find a way to do this?

  ‘Yes.’

  We would prefer, said fifteen expressions simultaneously, a specified time limit. That is the way we do business. We trust you can accommodate us on this point.

  ‘Just give me a week, will you?’ Chubby’s tone suggested that he was Faust offering the Devil double or quits, and even as he spoke a small, rather naive part of his brain demanded Why are you so scared of these guys? ‘By then, I’ll have definite plans, costings, all that kind of stuff ready for you to see. Agreed?’

  Long pause. It was like the moment of thoughtful hesitation on the Seventh Day just before Man, having been assured by God that it was a nice little runner, genuine low mileage, normally you only get oceans of this quality on the top-of-the-range models, said, Okay, we’ll take it. Then fifteen heads nodded. A moment later, the conference room was empty, and a helicopter engine started up somewhere on the roof.