Nothing But Blue Skies

by Tom Holt

  Karen shook her head. ‘Let’s go inside, shall we?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Why is it preferable to have a conversation in a confined space than out in the open? If you can call a landing inside a tall building the open, that is. Sorry, I’m not trying to be difficult—’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Karen replied. ‘I know what you’re doing. You’re making me notice things I’ve been doing without thinking for rather too long. Human things.’

  Hpq nodded. ‘Protective mimicry’s all very well for insects,’ he said gravely. ‘We’re bigger than that. Why are you doing this to yourself, Grnz?’

  ‘Come inside.’

  She unlocked the door, gave it a hearty shove to dislodge the maildrift behind it, and forced her way in. ‘Leave the milk,’ she called out. ‘I’ll do something about it later.’

  The expression on Hpq’s face as he looked round the flat was hilarious; likewise the way he instinctively ducked under a nine-foot ceiling as if he was afraid he was going to bang his head on it. Karen had done that, to begin with. ‘You live in this thing?’ he asked.

  Karen nodded. ‘When in Rome—’

  ‘When in Rome,’ Hpq replied sternly, ‘leave immediately. Old dragon proverb, which you’ve obviously forgotten. And this isn’t Rome, even. Grnz, what are you doing here?’

  Karen sat down on the chair that didn’t have dirty laundry piled up on it, and grinned sheepishly. ‘I fell in love,’ she said.

  ‘You fell in what?’

  ‘Love. Oh come on, Hpq, you know what love is.’

  ‘I know what tuberculosis is, but I don’t go out of my way to experience it. How do you mean, you fell in love? Who with? And why does falling in love mean you’ve got to dress up in that?’

  ‘With a human.’

  To his credit, Hpq managed not to say anything for at least ten seconds, after which he said ‘Oh’ in a completely expressionless voice. Of course, his sense of self-preservation might have had something to do with it.

  ‘Oh,’ Karen repeated. ‘Thank you very much. I’d have thought you’d have understood, of all people.’

  Hpq shook his head. ‘Understand? Don’t be ridiculous. I couldn’t understand something like that in a hundred thousand years, not if I went to evening classes. As you well know. What you mean is, you’d have thought that I of all people would stick by you and do what I can to help, even though it’s painfully obvious to anybody that you’ve gone one-wing-flapping mad. And of course you’d be right,’ he added, with a wry grin, ‘because I will. But understand—’

  ‘Hpq—’ Karen tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t; so she threw a cushion at him instead. ‘Thanks,’ she added. ‘I’m really glad you’re here, even if you are a mindless bigot with the imagination of a roof joist.’

  ‘You say the sweetest things,’ Hpq replied. ‘What’s a roof joist?’

  Karen made a dismissive gesture. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘Now you’re here, let’s think what you can do to make yourself useful. Any ideas?’

  ‘It’s your adopted habitat, you tell me,’ he said. ‘It’s as much as I can do to keep from treading on the wriggly little buggers. Even,’ he added with a grimace, ‘the ones who are taller than me. How the devil do you cope with that, by the way? The scale thing, I mean.’

  ‘It just sorts itself out, after a while. Like the claustrophobia. ’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Fear of confined spaces. Not liking being inside buildings, stuff like that.’

  ‘You make it sound like it’s an illness.’

  ‘It—’ Karen sighed. ‘For them,’ she explained, ‘it is.’

  ‘At least you said them that time, not us. So,’ Hpq went on, ‘tell me about him. Mr Wonderful. What’s the deal?’

  Karen stood up and walked across the room to the window, the one with the panoramic view of a courtyard and some dustbins. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s love, you can’t rationalise it.’

  ‘Since when? Of course you can. What is it about this joker? Smooth, shiny scales across his back and shoulders? Nice big hooked, rounded claws? Snout hairs like some ponce in a scale cream advert?’

  ‘Nothing like that, silly. He isn’t a dragon, remember.’

  ‘I’m having no trouble at all remembering that,’ Hpq said. ‘You’re the one with the fishnet memory. So; obviously it’s not a physical thing. Or are you about to tell me this - this anthropomorph has a beautiful smile?’

  ‘Actually, he does,’ Karen replied stiffly. ‘And it doesn’t look like a guided tour of a sawmill every time he opens his mouth, either.’

  ‘So? The sucker hasn’t got any teeth to speak of. That’s supposed to be a good thing?’

  Karen shook her head violently. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Really, I don’t. I just know I love him, that’s all. Enough to leave home. Enough to want to be human—’

  ‘Oh, for crying out loud.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Karen looked away. ‘So I know I’m going to have to make a few compromises—’

  ‘As the pig said to the sausage machine. But,’ Hpq added, holding up a hand, ‘the bottom line is, that’s your business and not mine. It’s not even why I’m here, so let’s just leave it be, before we fall out over it. Agreed?’

  Karen’s face melted into a grin. ‘Agreed,’ she said. ‘Anyway, now you know what brought me here. And it’s obvious that me being here’s what made Daddy come looking for me. If you want to say it’s all your fault, please do it now and get it over with.’

  ‘Nah.’ Hpq shrugged. ‘What good would that do? What matters is, we’re going to find him. And then I’m going to enjoy myself watching as he kicks your bum from here to Mercury.’

  ‘As well he might,’ Karen admitted. ‘Do you really think we can find him, Hpq?’

  Her friend, her oldest and dearest and most aggravating friend of all, grinned enormously, a reaction so typical that for a split second she almost thought she could see his face through the pink human flesh. ‘We’re dragons, Grnz. We can do anything. Well,’ he added, ‘we’re capable of anything, which amounts to the same thing, I guess. Don’t worry about it, everything’s going to be just fine. I promise you.’

  Karen giggled. ‘That’s supposed to make me believe, is it? You promise?’

  ‘Of course.’ Hpq looked at her sternly. ‘When have I ever failed to keep a promise?’

  ‘Well.’ Karen started counting on her fingers. ‘What about the time you promised faithfully that you were going to take me to the Stormtrotters’ Ball; and who did you end up going with?’

  ‘My sister,’ Hpq replied stiffly. ‘Duty called. But as soon as we got there I danced with you.’

  ‘And Gndva-S’sssn,’ Karen reminded him, ‘In fact, “danced” isn’t quite the word I’d have chosen. When I gave up and went home, you were trying to climb up her back like ivy on a tree.’

  ‘She’d pulled a muscle in her wing-case,’ Hpq muttered. I was giving her a back-rub. What’s a gentleman supposed to do?’

  ‘Not be so damned blatant about it. You know I can’t stand her.’

  Hpq looked genuinely surprised. ‘What, your cousin Gndva-S’sssn? You’re kidding. I always thought you two were inseparable.’

  ‘Inseparable,’ Karen agreed, ‘in the sense that I could never get her to go away. She hung round me like garlic breath.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Sorry, it’s a human thing. No, really, I just couldn’t make her leave me alone. It’s because I’m the adjutant-general’s daughter and both her fathers are just cloud-pushers in Ops. She never liked me, she just wanted the entrée.’

  ‘That’s not a very nice thing to say.’

  Karen wilted a little. ‘Maybe not. But bloody S’sssn always did bring out the worst in me.’

  The telephone rang, causing Hpq to jump several feet in the air.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Karen said, laughing. ‘It’s supposed
to do that. It means someone wants to talk to me.’

  ‘But there’s nobody else here.’

  ‘Through that.’ She pointed. ‘Mind out, I’ve got to answer it.’

  ‘Oh? It’s against the law not to, something like that?’

  ‘Out of the way.’ She pushed past him and grabbed the receiver. ‘Hello?’

  The voice at the other end of the line was warm, deep and cheerful. ‘Karen Orme?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  ‘Splendid. Look, you don’t know me,’ the voice went on, ‘but my name’s Paddy Willis. I think you may know my son Paul.’

  Karen reacted as if the telephone had just licked her ear. Paul’s father? Wasn’t he supposed to be some multi-millionaire businessman or something? And what was he doing calling her?

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said. ‘We used to work together.’

  Hpq was pulling funny faces and making painfully-not-laughing gestures, and she realised with a certain degree of annoyance that he could hear (more properly, see, with his third eye) what Mr Willis was saying. It broke her concentration, so that she missed what Mr Willis said next and had to ask him to repeat it.

  ‘I said,’ Mr Willis told her, ‘Paul’s disappeared. He’s been kidnapped.’

  Karen didn’t mean to make a sort of glugging noise in the bottom of her throat; it just came out that way. ‘No!’ she squealed, ignoring Hpq’s query about what the matter was and frantically gesturing to him to go away, which he entirely failed to do.

  ‘Afraid so, yes,’ Mr Willis said. ‘Apparently two men in ski masks dragged him out of that ridiculous office of yours, bundled him into a car and drove off before anybody could do a thing.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ Karen said. ‘Has anybody got any idea who’s responsible?’

  ‘I do,’ Mr Willis said. ‘Me.’

  What Karen wanted to say was ‘What?’ or ‘Huh?’, something along those lines. It didn’t quite come out that way; more a sort of nasal grunt, like a pig trying to sing ‘My Way’.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Mr Willis was saying, ‘I’m not going to hurt him, provided he doesn’t try anything stupid - and I know Paul, he’s much too chicken to try and escape or anything dumb like that. He’ll just sit there like a battery hen, the way he used to do when he had an exam the next day. You have no idea how embarrassing it is having something like that for a son. Anyway,’ he went on, ‘I didn’t ring you up just to bore you with my hard-luck stories. Here’s where you come in. You still there? Hello?’

  ‘Yes,’ Karen managed to say. ‘I’m still here.’

  ‘Oh good. You hadn’t made any of those cute stuck-pig noises for a while, I thought maybe you’d fallen asleep or something. It wouldn’t have surprised me. A lot of people tend to fall asleep when the conversation gets round to my son.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Karen said.

  ‘That’s what I like,’ Mr Willis replied. ‘Straight to the point. Like a rat up a drain, as we used to say back in Queensland. I saw your turn on the telly last night. Well, that’s not strictly true, because I don’t watch that garbage. Make it a rule never to watch a station I own, it only depresses me. But one of the little people taped it for me. I was impressed. Maybe when this is all over we can line you up a show of your own. You could be the next Jerry Springer, if you set your mind to it.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re—’

  ‘Course you do, Karen - you don’t mind if I call you Karen, do you, only I can’t pronounce your other name. No vowels in it, it’s as bad as bloody Czechoslovakian. Odd people, the Czechs. Fall off boats a lot, if you get my meaning. Not that falling off a boat would worry you, of course. You’d just turn into a fish.’

  ‘Hey,’ Hpq muttered in her other ear, ‘I like this one. He’s got a bit more oomph than the rest of them.’

  ‘All right,’ Karen said, ‘So you know my guilty secret. How the hell did you—?’

  Mr Willis laughed. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘Some overpaid clown from R&D came up with the actual technology; tried to explain it to me, I told him to shut up and go away. Some nonsense about a fourth eye—’

  ‘Third eye.’

  ‘Whatever. What matters is, we’ve known about your lot for quite some time - really interesting, if you’re into wildlife stuff, which I’m not, though you’d be amazed how many people are. What interests me is the commercial angle, needless to say - and of course the commercial possibilities of a resource like you lot are absolutely mind-bending. But of course, it was all pi-r-squared-in-the-sky until we finally managed to get our hands on a sample of the merchandise.’

  Karen managed to catch the thunderstorm just in time. ‘Are you trying to tell me you abducted my father?’ she said.

  ‘Us? No. It was some little nerd of a weatherman who did that. Credit where it’s due, though, the way he went about it was pretty smart. We just took your old man off him, that’s all.’

  You—’

  ‘When I say we,’ Mr Willis went on, ‘what I should say is, Her Majesty’s government. Wonderful people, the lot of ’em, and a bargain at half the price. But don’t let me get started on that subject, please; I can remember when all you had to do was shove an envelope full of dollar bills under a lavatory door. Now it’s all got to be contributions to party funds, that sort of thing. It’s a scandal, really; I do editorials about it in my papers all the time. Anyway, that’s beside the point. My boys have got your dad. He’s perfectly safe and well, we’re not going to hurt him - bloody stupid move that’d be, after what I’ve spent getting hold of him. But if you want him to stay that way - no more guest spots on the weather show. Got that?’

  Karen breathed hard through her nose, swallowing back lightning.

  ‘Because,’ Mr Willis went on, ‘if you make trouble for me, then it won’t just be your old fella who’ll live to regret it. That’s how come my idiot son’s being useful for the first time in his worthless life. You know I won’t do anything drastic to your dad, because that’d defeat the whole object of the exercise. As far as Paul’s concerned, though, any excuse. Have you got that?’

  Karen closed her eyes. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t hurt your own son.’

  Mr Willis’s laughter was warm and mellow, like good Blue Mountain coffee. ‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘Come on, you’re the superior life form, use that enormous brain of yours. It’s a simple matter of obtainability. I can get myself another son any time I like - takes about ten minutes, and it’s quite fun to do. You, on the other hand, can’t get another father, or another Paul. But if you’re a good girl and do as you’re told, when this is all over I’ll give you my son as a present. Yours, no questions asked, shipping and handling included. That is what you want, isn’t it? The reason you came here in the first place?’

  Karen forced herself to relax enough to be able to speak. ‘I’ll see you in Hell first,’ she said.

  ‘Uh-huh. Sorry to break this to you,’ Mr Willis went on, ‘but there isn’t one. I had my research people check it out, and for what it’s worth there’s no such place. I’ve got definitive proof of it in a drawer somewhere, if you’re interested. That was a whole bunch of money wasted, I can tell you. Look, I don’t care whether you take my son to be your reptilian love-slave or whether he goes back to wasting his life in that poxy little office. What matters is, you care. Which is why you aren’t going to do anything. Nothing at all. Capisce?’

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ Karen said quietly. ‘Take me instead. Let my father go. I’m just as much of a dragon as he is.’

  Mr Willis was silent for a second or two. ‘Interesting idea,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to think about that. Meanwhile, stay put and don’t do anything annoying. If you like, I can send you something to remember Paul by, such as an arm. It’d make a nice keepsake, scented with lavender. You could wear it round your neck or something. Hey, that’s a thought. You could have his arms about you any time you wanted, without having to put up with the rest of h
im.’

  The line went dead. Karen suddenly thought to look for it with her third eye, but the trace had vanished.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Hpq said beside her. ‘I know you weren’t watching, but I was.’

  ‘What?’ Karen asked distractedly.

  ‘Where that funny voice was coming from. I can take you there right now, if you like. It’s somewhere called . . .’ He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Canberra,’ he said. ‘Down Uncle Wzzxdydpwq’s neck of the clouds. Never been there before.’

  ‘No,’ Karen replied gently. ‘It’s not worth the risk. He’s human, remember; I don’t understand his kind well enough to know what he’s capable of doing.’

  If Hpq noticed the significance of the expression ‘his kind’, he was tactful enough not to mention it. ‘Up to you,’ he said. ‘Well,’ he went on, ‘at least we’re getting somewhere. We know more or less where he is.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Karen said, getting up and walking a few steps away from him. ‘You know,’ she went on, ‘it really wasn’t meant to be like this. All I’ve done since I’ve got here is hurt everybody I care about. And now you’ve turned up, and I’ve got this awful feeling—’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Hpq interrupted. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to any of us. Not even,’ he added with a grin, ‘this human you’re apparently so fond of. Sooner or later you really are going to have to explain that to me, by the way, because I just don’t get it. But,’ he added quickly, before Karen could say anything, ‘there’s a time and a place for that. What do you want to do now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Karen replied. ‘Really I don’t.’

  Hpq looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Now that’s worrying,’ he said. ‘You can’t have an indecisive dragon. It’s impossible, like a dry waterfall. Impulsive, yes. Splat with all four feet where angels fear to tread, most certainly. That’s our way. Or could it be you’ve forgotten that already?’

  Karen shook her head. ‘But we’re dealing with humans,’ she replied. ‘They’re devious. So we’ve got to be devious too.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Hpq said. ‘You might as well say that in order to make fudge, you need a chocolate saucepan. If it was me, I’d be over at this Canberra place kicking their devious backsides out through their ears.’