by Tom Holt
‘I don’t believe it,’ the dragon roared. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, he’s practically given the game away. I could have made that shot wearing boxing gloves, using my tail for a frigging cue.’
The scientist couldn’t take any more. She grabbed the remote and hit the off button, and the screen immediately reverted to black.
‘Hey,’ growled the dragon, ‘what do you think you’re playing at? Switch it back on.’
‘Why should I? You’re enjoying it. You aren’t here to enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be torture, dammit.’
‘You can’t turn it off now,’ the dragon shrieked, ‘it’s the decider. All square going into the last frame. The whole championship’s hanging on this. It’s sporting history.’
‘Tell you what.’ The scientist grinned. ‘I’ll turn the TV back on if you answer a few simple questions. Deal?’
‘What? Oh, yes, right. Whatever you say. Just turn the damn’ set on. Thank you,’ he added, as the picture came back. ‘Oh snot, I’ve missed the break. I hate missing the break, it’s so important.’
‘Okay.’ The scientist leaned forward and touched the record button on the tape deck. ‘Now then, first question. What—?’
‘Shhh!’ the dragon hissed, making a noise like a kettleful of snakes. ‘I’m trying to concentrate here.’
‘You can watch and answer questions at the same time, can’t you?’
‘Yeah, yeah, in a minute. Let me just watch this shot.’
‘Not in a minute. Now.’
‘Quiet!’ The dragon’s voice was so vehement that for a moment the scientist felt deeply ashamed of her lack of consideration. Then she remembered just who was supposed to be torturing who. She made a tut-tut sound to signify disapproval and switched the TV off again.
‘Priorities,’ she said. ‘And the first priority is, answer my questions. Otherwise - are you listening to me?’
The dragon obviously wasn’t. His eyes were closed, and although he didn’t even have a face in any conventional sense, it didn’t take a giant leap of intuition to realise that the set of the muscles around his jaws and snout signified rapt attention. Shit, the scientist growled to herself, he’s figured out how to watch the snooker with his third eye. The thought of it appalled her rather, from an ethical and cultural viewpoint. Causing dragons to use their awe-inspiring enhanced perceptual abilities for watching the Embassy World Championships was behavioural pollution of the worst possible kind; worse than all the carrion-eating sparrowhawks on motorway verges or urban foxes ripping open dustbin bags put together. She felt as if she’d just bought Texas from the Comanches for a crate of firewater and a couple of strings of cheap beads.
And it wasn’t getting the goddamn’ questions answered, either. She’d had virtually no contact with her employer as yet, but (like everybody on the planet with the exception of a few small tribes in the depths of the rain forest) she knew that he was reckoned to have a quick temper and about as much patience as a mayfly in a dole queue. No two ways about it, she was going to have to think of something, and she didn’t have much time to do it in.
Which brought her back to the same old question: how the hell do you torture a huge, massively-armoured lizard without damaging him severely in the process? Boredom had seemed to be the obvious way to go, and for a while there it had looked like it was going to work; but the critter’s tenacity and adaptability had been too much for her. Outclassed; there was no other word for it. Weighed in the balance and found wanting. Pathetic.
Pathetic . . .
Abandoning Operation Self-Pity in mid-flow, she applied her mind. She remembered having read somewhere (probably on one of those thought-for-the-day desk calendars; it was that kind of sentiment) that the way to overthrow an opponent stronger than oneself is to lead to his strengths, not his weaknesses. Trite, but valid; the weak spots on the wall are the ones that are heavily guarded, leaving the strong points virtually unmanned and ripe for a sneak attack with scaling ladders.
‘It’s all right for you,’ she said quietly.
‘Shh.’
‘I mean to say,’ she went on, ‘nothing I can do’s going to get to you, so I might as well stop wasting my time and go home now. I mean, better to quit voluntarily than be fired.’
The dragon didn’t say anything, but one eyelid twitched uneasily.
‘Not that you’d be able to grasp the concept of fired,’ she went on. ‘I doubt very much whether it’s much of an issue with dragons. Is there even such a word as ‘unemployment’, where you come from?’
‘No,’ the dragon muttered. ‘Now be quiet.’
‘Didn’t think so,’ the scientist continued, in a small, sad voice. ‘Not in your vocabulary. Like such concepts as mortgage repayments, tax demands, health-insurance premiums, pension contributions, utility bills, living expenses - Oh, I suppose you could look them up in a dictionary, but there’s no way you could ever understand what they mean. After all, you aren’t human.’
‘Quite true,’ the dragon said. ‘Fortunately.’
‘Very fortunately,’ the scientist sighed. ‘What wonderful luck, not to have all that garbage hanging over you all the time, making you lie awake at night worrying, still there the next morning even if you do manage to grab a few hours’ sleep. Talk about privilege. You people don’t know you’re born.’
The tip of the dragon’s tail flicked to and fro. ‘Nobody’s going to sack you for not being able to do the impossible. All you’ve got to do is explain; you gave it your very best shot—’
‘Hah! Like I said, you’re just not human. If you were, you’d understand.’
‘That would be a high price to pay for understanding,’ the dragon replied. ‘Why should I care about what’s going to happen to you if you fail to bully me into betraying my own kind? Do you agonise over whether your food forgives you before you eat it?’
‘As it happens,’ the scientist lied, ‘I’m a vegetarian.’
‘Really.’ The dragon clicked its tongue. ‘If you could see through your third eye, I’d show you the sound of a carrot being boiled. You’d never be able to sleep again.’
The scientist didn’t want to think about that; it gave a whole new, rich penumbra of meaning to the expression ‘eating something that disagrees with you.’ ‘Be that as it may,’ she said, ‘when all this is over, you’re not the one who’ll be working night shifts in a hamburger bar. I’d hate to think what your precious third eye would make of that.’
‘I am not responsible for the misfortunes of my enemies,’ the dragon said coldly. ‘Only for the trouble I cause my friends.’ He snorted suddenly. ‘Shit a brick, call that a safety shot? Bloody fool’s left a red straight into the left-hand centre pocket. Calls himself a professional . . .’
‘That’s fine,’ the scientist muttered, with a hint of bitterness in her voice that was at least forty per cent genuine. ‘My life is tumbling in little pieces all round my ears but you’re watching the snooker - I know, I can’t see it, but it’s there - so that’s all right. I’m just sorry my pitiful bleating’s spoiling your enjoyment of the game.’
‘That’s all right,’ the dragon said, ‘you’re not that difficult to ignore. Go on, you bastard, miss, miss, miss - Yes! Couldn’t hit his own bum with a frying pan.’
The scientist scratched the tip of her nose thoughtfully. Maybe, at a very fundamental level, dragons and people weren’t all that different. Male dragons and male people, anyhow. Why is it, she asked herself, that it’s easier for humans to communicate with dolphins than for women to get a simple, self-evident message through the Kevlar-armoured skulls of men? Actually, it wasn’t such a hard question, at that. Dolphins are quite intelligent.
She reviewed her other options, all none of them. She decided to try again.
‘It’s not as if I’m asking you to do anything bad,’ she said. ‘I’m not after military secrets or the design of some dragon superweapon, or anything that’ll make life any harder for your lot or mine. All I want is a few scientific fa
cts. The truth. Knowledge. Dammit, if we know a bit about you people, it’ll help us understand you better, and surely understanding can only be a good thing, the first step on the road leading to peace, friendship, an ongoing mutual relationship of trust and brotherhood between Man and Dragon.’
No answer.
‘A few trivial little biological and biochemical details,’ she ground on. ‘More along the lines of giving some helpful hints to a primitive but up-and-coming species that’s desperate to improve itself. Drag itself up to your level of progress and development. Think of it as the sincerest form of flattery.’
No answer.
‘If you don’t answer my fucking questions,’ the scientist growled, ‘I’m gonna connect you up to the mains and fry your ass to charcoal, you goddamn’ intercontinental ballistic newt.’
The dragon didn’t look round. ‘Sorry? I missed that.’
‘Nothing. Doesn’t matter, it was only me, blathering on.’
‘Something about the news.’
‘Not news. Newt.’
‘Ah.’ The dragon nodded. ‘Quaint dialect sayings from your north-eastern region. Newt so queer as folk. I don’t know,’ he added doubtfully, ‘in his position I’d go for the pink. Screw back off the pack of reds and be perfect for the blue into the middle.’
The scientist looked away. It had been a good idea, but it had gone nowhere so many times it was probably eligible for citizenship. All the effort, all the pain, and she’d learned exactly one thing about dragons; namely, that the adult males don’t bother listening to you when you’re trying to have a serious conversation. Maybe her father had been a dragon. Wouldn’t surprise her in the least.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘you win. I’ll stop asking.’ She sat down behind her desk, pulled out the middle drawer and propped her feet on it. ‘I’ll just sit here, wait for them to come and repossess my car, and you can lie there feeling smug and watching two men wearing evening dress in the middle of the day poking at plastic balls with overgrown cocktail sticks. Eventually one of us’ll die - probably me, I suspect you guys live a whole lot longer than us, though of course I don’t know that for a fact since you won’t damn’ well tell me - and when the smell gets into the air-conditioning system and all the guys in suits on the sixteenth floor start yelling blue murder, someone’ll come along with one of those big dustbins on wheels and clear away my desiccated remains, and my sister in Boise can have my aunt’s watch and my framed print of Guernica, and I seem to remember something about a death-in-service clause in the pension scheme which ought to cover the cost of the funeral, though that really shouldn’t be a major item, hire of one JCB, one black plastic garbage sack—’
‘What on earth are you wittering about now?’
‘But there’s just one thing I would like you to do for me,’ the scientist went on. ‘That’s if you’re not too busy watching the crown green bowling or the sheepdog trials. I’d like my fiancé to have this locket.’ She fished inside her lab coat and brought out a small gold heart on a chain. ‘It was a sort of pre-engagement present, with his picture in it and our initials on the back—’
‘I didn’t know you were engaged,’ the dragon said. ‘It only goes to show, there really is somebody out there for everyone, no matter how improbable it may seem. I mean, if you . . .’
‘I was, the scientist replied. ‘I broke it off.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘I got bored standing around outside the church. Anyway,’ she said, her voice as brittle as a Chinese screwdriver blade, ‘if you could see to it that he gets it; his name’s on the back, and if you look . . .’
‘The man in the picture?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The picture inside the locket. There’s a photo, it’s either a small, thin man or a very large weasel. That’s him, is it? Your ex-fiancé.’
The scientist thought about it for a moment. Third eye. Can see clean through a closed locket. Neat trick. ‘Yes, that’s him,’ she said, trying to sound unconcerned. ‘And he doesn’t look like a weasel.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘Weasels have more like a point to their snouts. You’re thinking of a polecat. He looks just like a polecat.’
‘Ah. What’s a polecat?’
The scientist rubbed her eyes. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘You were about to say something?’
‘What? Oh, yes. All I was going to ask was,’ the dragon went on, ‘why don’t you give it to him yourself?’
‘Well, for a start—’
‘I mean, now’s as good a time as any, when he’s only about a hundred yards away, as the armour-piercing bullet flies.’
‘What the hell are you talking about, dragon?’
‘Oh, come on, it isn’t exactly difficult. The man whose photograph you carry around in that little gold box is here in this building. Right now, he and some other man are running down a corridor, headed in this direction. If you open the door in, let’s see, twelve point nine six seconds, he’ll run straight into it and probably break his nose. That would undoubtedly be an improvement, aesthetically speaking. ’
The scientist scowled horribly, then relaxed. ‘Nice try,’ she muttered, ‘but I’m not that dumb. I’m not opening that door for—’
‘Sshh!’
She shushed; and heard the sound of heavy footsteps thundering past in the corridor outside. She jumped to her feet, hesitated and sat down again.
‘Very nice try,’ she said. ‘You heard someone coming down the corridor with your super-sharp dragon hearing and made up this dippy story to make me open the door so you could escape—’
The dragon sighed. ‘It’s remarkable,’ he said, ‘how the same species can be both insanely suspicious and tragically gullible. You won’t believe me when I tell you, out of the kindness of my heart, that your long-lost true love is just outside the door—’
‘He is not—’
‘But still you read newspapers, watch the television news and vote in elections. I suppose it’s endearing in a way, but hardly what I’d call a survival trait. Still, I’m only a visitor here, it’s not my place to criticise.’
‘He is not,’ the scientist repeated, ‘my long-lost true love. He’s the jerk who left me standing in a church porch wearing a six hundred pound non-returnable dress. The only possible reason for seeing him again is that you can’t very well rip a person’s lungs out with a blunt spoon if you don’t know where they are. Since I don’t happen to have a blunt spoon with me right now—’
The dragon shook his head. ‘Bullshit,’ he said. ‘You aren’t fooling me. Third eye.’
‘What, you mean you can read my—?’ The scientist goggled at him in panic. ‘You can’t, can you? You’re kidding.’
‘Yes,’ the dragon admitted. ‘And you’ve just admitted I was right all along.’
‘No way. No way.’
‘You’re more than welcome to lie to me if it makes you feel better. After all, it’s none of my business. Just think of me as a fellow scientist carrying out a few gentle, non-invasive experiments on a specimen. Nothing personal.’
If the scientist was furiously angry, she didn’t stay that way for long. ‘It’s lucky for you I left my blunt spoon at home,’ she said. ‘So, all right, who’s winning?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘In the snooker match. Who’s in the lead now?’
The dragon lifted his head a little. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I’d forgotten all about it. Let’s see. Oh. It’s finished.’
‘You missed the end? You don’t know who’s won?’
‘Apparently.’ The dragon frowned. ‘Annoying,’ he said. ‘But my own fault, for letting myself get distracted. And yours, for making such an interesting lab rat.’
The scientist wasn’t sure what to make of that.
CHAPTER NINE
‘All right,’said Hpq, ‘we’ve tried that. Now what?’ Karen, who’d been dozing in her chair, looked up and blinked at him. ‘Whu?’
‘Patience,’ Karen replied, tentatively flexing her seriously cricked neck. ‘With humans, everything takes much longer than you’re used to.’
‘Fair enough,’ Hpq replied. ‘Excuse me if this is a personal question, but what were you doing just now?’
‘I wasn’t doing anything,’ Karen told him. ‘In fact, I think I nodded off to sleep for a bit.’
‘Sleep,’ Hpq said. ‘That’s what it’s called. I’ve heard about it from time to time, but that’s the first time I’ve ever seen it happen. Weird.’
‘What? Oh.’ Karen remembered. Once upon a time, when she hadn’t been human, she had never slept at all. It was hard to imagine that - God, you’d be exhausted. ‘I suppose I’ve got used to it,’ she said, a little self-consciously.
‘For a while there I thought you’d died or something,’ Hpq said, stretching out on his back on the floor, with his hands behind his head. ‘Then I saw you were breathing, so I guessed it couldn’t be anything too deadly serious. So what do you do when you’re—’
‘Asleep?’ Karen laughed. ‘You don’t do anything. You just are.’
‘Really. Why?’
Karen closed her eyes, then opened them again. ‘It’s so the body can rest and recuperate,’ she said. ‘It’s a human thing.’
‘Oh. And how often do you have to do it? Once a year, something like that?’
‘Eight hours a day. Well,’ she qualified, ‘some humans can get by on less, but not me. I mean, not me when I’m being a human. Of course.’
Hpq was looking at her oddly. ‘Eight hours a day,’ he repeated. ‘That’s, what, twenty-four divided by . . . That’s a third of their lives.’ He looked mildly shocked. ‘Remarkable,’ he said. ‘There I was, thinking what a swizzle it must be only living ninety years; and now you tell me that in real money, they only live sixty.’ He squinted into the air for a moment, then relaxed. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘humans seem to do that a lot - take great chunks of what little they’ve got and throw it away, I mean. Sleep and taxes. Bloody funny way to carry on, if you ask me.’