by Tom Holt
The dragon stayed where he was, the last four feet of his tail still inside the cell. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, his voice suddenly candied in charm. ‘I’m Xyxxzpltyssxz, crown prince of . . .’ For some reason he stopped and giggled, as if at some private joke. ‘Dragon king of the north-west,’ he went on. ‘And you are—?’
‘I’m Zelda and he’s Neville. We’ve all been captured by a man called Willis. He’s an evil overlord type who owns newspapers. ’
‘Right,’ the dragon said. ‘With you so far.’
‘And he knows about dragons,’ Neville put in. ‘So do we, come to that.’
(‘Speak for yourself,’ Zelda muttered grimly, but too quietly for anybody to hear.)
‘But,’ Neville went on, ‘he’s planning to use dragons to take over the world, or some shit like that. He kidnapped one of your people,’ Neville added, showing a flair for the truth that’d have earned him a speechwriting job with the politician of his choice, ‘but he helped us escape. Then we got captured again. She thought you were him.’
‘Got you,’ the dragon said. ‘I suppose one goldfish does look pretty much like another.’
‘Not to me,’ Neville said with a smirk. ‘I spotted the difference. But she wouldn’t listen.’
‘Which is probably just as well,’ the dragon replied. ‘What a force for good in the world human ignorance is, to be sure. By the way, you don’t happen to know how he managed to trigger the morphic shift, do you? A human who can make dragons change shape whenever he wants to could prove something of a nuisance.’
‘Sorry,’ Neville said. ‘You could ask her, I suppose. She’s one of his dragon experts.’
The dragon made a purring sound. ‘Is that right?’
‘Was,’ Zelda said quickly. ‘Now I’m one of the good guys.’
‘Really.’ The dragon didn’t seem particularly interested in her any more. ‘Well, I think it’d probably be in order to proceed with a certain amount of caution, unless I want to find myself turned into a goldfish again. That would be extremely tiresome, especially if it happens when there’s no water handy for me to be one in.’ His tail slithered out of the cell. Zelda and Neville followed.
The adjoining room was just another cell, like the one they’d just left, so they went through the dragon-shaped hole in the far wall and found themselves in the space they’d just been told about. It was certainly big; an enthusiastic Zeppelin collector could have shown off his prize specimens in elegant comfort without crowding the place out at all. The ceiling was as high as the room was long and wide, and apart from some bunches of ironmongery that reminded Zelda of theatrical lighting, hanging from brackets in the corners, it was completely empty.
Except for one shortish middle-aged man, who was standing in the middle of the floor with his hands in his pockets. There was a little black box the size and shape of an old-fashioned light meter on a string around his neck. His tie didn’t go with his suit, either.
‘Good day,’ he said, in a fairly dilute Australian accent. ‘I’m Paddy Willis; short for Paddington, but if you’re wise you won’t ever mention that again. You found your way here all right, I see.’
The dragon made a low growling sound, like a cornered Harley Davidson, and crouched, ready to spring. Then he stayed crouched.
‘Don’t bother trying to move,’ Mr Willis said. ‘Something my R & D people slapped together - a pain in the trouser seat, scientists, but just occasionally they come in handy, like Irish money. There’s some technical stuff about morphogenic fields they tried to make me listen to, but if you ask me they just copied out some stuff from Star Trek and pretended it was real science. As far as I’m concemed it’s magic; anyhow, it works. Bloody well should, it cost me enough. Bottom line is, if I don’t want you to move, you don’t move. If I want to turn you into a bloke, or a goldfish, suddenly that’s what you are. I think it’ll help us relate to each other on a more level playing field; me completely in control, you paralysed and helpless. It’s the way I’ve always done business, and it generally seems to work.’ He appeared to notice Neville and Zelda for the first time. ‘As for you two,’ he said, ‘you’re getting to be a nuisance. Still, I’m not a vindictive bastard, and besides, I’m running a bit short of storage areas with four walls and a roof. You can stay here till I decide what to do with you. Oh yes,’ he added. ‘You. What’s your name.’
‘Me?’ Zelda asked.
‘On the tip of my tongue,’ Mr Willis said. ‘I’m proud of the fact that I know all my employees’ first names. Couldn’t give a toss about their surnames, mind you, I’ve got personnel officers to handle all that crap. Zelda,’ he said, snapping his fingers. ‘Begins with a Z, sounds like zebra.’
‘That’ s right,’ Zelda said, impressed in spite of herself.
‘Zelda, love,’ Mr Willis said, ‘you’re sacked. Right, don’t go away, any of you. There’ll be some blokes along shortly wth some electronics shit - transformers and power cables, that sort of thing. They’ll see to you.’
Zelda was puzzled, but too smart to attract attention to herself again. Neville wasn’t.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but what’s that for?’
‘What? Oh.’ Mr Willis chuckled. ‘Of course, you don’t know, do you? And of course Zelda doesn’t, because all the time she thought she was doing research on that other dragon, it was just to distract the bugger’s attention so the other blokes - the real scientists - could do their scanning and what have you without it noticing. It’s what I wanted dragons for in the first place.’
‘Well?’ Neville asked impatiently.
‘Or at least,’ Mr Willis said, ‘bits of dragons. Zelda was way off line,’ he went on, ‘when you lot were nattering back in there. Evil overlord my arse,’ he added with a chuckle. ‘That’s no way to rule the world, young lady, as you’d know if you had a brain. You rule the world by owning newspapers and TV stations; bloody sight less fuss, and they pay you for the privilege. Own enough newspapers and you get to own governments absolutely free, it’s like those special offers where you send away so many box tops. And you don’t do it so you can sit on a throne and do silly hysterical laughter. You do it for the money.’
‘Oh,’ Zelda said. That, she decided, was her told.
‘No,’ Mr Willis said, ‘what I want dragons for is so I can save a bloody fortune on communications satellites, broadcast relay stations, cables, DVD, the lot. Who needs all that Japanese crap when all you’ve got to do is put your fist down inside some animal’s skull and pull out its third eye?’
He looked up and stared at her for a moment before he said anything.
‘Karen?’
She looked back at him, just as the door slammed and a key ground in the lock. ‘Hello, Paul,’ she replied, in a small, tired voice.
‘Karen? What are you doing here?’ he said. He sounded completely bewildered - which, if anything, overlaid the present crisis with a deceptively specious coating of apparent normality. Chances were that Paul had been born bewildered; it was easy to imagine him looking up at the midwife with a dazed expression on his puckered little face, as if asking, ‘Nurse, what’s this silver spoon doing in my mouth?’ A wave of fondness enveloped her, like locusts when they fly so thick they blot out the sun.
‘More to the point,’ she said, ‘what are you doing here? Do you know?’
‘Haven’t a clue,’ Paul replied sadly. ‘Some men grabbed me from the office, gave me an injection to put me to sleep; when I woke up, I was here. That was a long time ago,’ he added mournfully.
‘And what have you been doing since?’
‘Nothing much,’ Paul said. ‘I walk up and down now and then, just for the exercise. When they put the lights out, I go to sleep. Apart from that, I just sit here, mostly.’
‘You just sit there.’
He nodded. ‘Not much else I can do, really.’ He shifted a little on the concrete bench. ‘I did think about digging a tunnel, like Richard Chamberlain in that film, but it’s a concrete fl
oor and they only ever give me plastic spoons to eat with. Besides, I wouldn’t know how to dig a tunnel. You’ve got to have pit-props and ventilation holes and stuff or it all falls on your head and buries you, or you choke. So I thought, even if I did have a bash at it I’d be bound to get it all wrong, so I decided I’d be better off sitting still and waiting till they let me go.’
Karen sat down beside him. He didn’t move. ‘When you say they,’ she said, ‘do you happen to know who they are?’
‘No,’ Paul replied. ‘I’m assuming it’s a kidnapping thing, because my dad’s so rich. He owns newspapers and stuff, you know.’
‘I had heard, yes. So you reckon that sooner or later he’ll pay up and they’ll let you go?’
‘Hope so,’ Paul said. ‘Though Dad can be a bit funny about things like that. He doesn’t like being pushed around, you see; it’s like when the people in one of his companies wanted to join a union. He said that was bullying, and he’d rather close the company down.’
‘And did he?’
‘Oh yes. So,’ Paul went on, ‘he might feel that them demanding a ransom before they’ll let me go is bullying, too.’
‘It’s a rather different situation, though, don’t you think?’ Karen heard herself say. ‘His own flesh and blood, I mean, in deadly danger. Surely—’
‘It’d be a matter of principle,’ Paul replied. ‘Dad’s hot on principles. Which is good, if you ask me. I mean, you can’t just go around giving in to people, can you?’
Gazing at him sitting on his bench like an overfed rabbit in its hutch, Karen found it hard keeping a straight face. ‘I suppose not. So what do you think he’ll do?’
Paul swung his head slowly from side to side. ‘Not sure,’ he said. ‘Probably tell the police. Dad knows lots of important policemen all over the world. We were always having policemen over to the house for dinner when I was a kid. I expect that’s what he’ll do,’ Paul said, straightening his back a little. ‘Though on the telly the kidnappers always say, “No police or the victim dies.”’
‘I see. And is that what usually happens?’
‘I don’t know.’
Karen had a theory about humans; that they were only ever really themselves when they were alone, not exposed to the influence of others, not busily trying to match their colours to those of the branch or rock they happened to be sitting on. Humans, she believed, instinctively imitated the people they were with so as to be more likely to fit in, be accepted, be liked (oh, that human need to be liked . . .), a tendency that could cause worse communications breakdowns than anything British Telecom ever perpetrated, when you get six or seven people all trying to imitate each other at the same time. The result, inevitably, is like that strange effect you sometimes get in lifts, where both sidewalls of the lift are covered in mirror glass, and your reflection bounces backwards and forwards between them an infinite number of times, the image getting smaller and vaguer at each stage. Well, that was her theory; and here was Paul, after an extended period in solitary confinement. If she was right, what she was getting now was the genuine, pure-as-Evianwater, concentrated essence of Paul, unadulterated by her, Susan, Mrs White, or any of the other bits of personality-fluff that stick to us as we’re bounced about during our bumpy ride in life’s trouser pocket. Here he was.
Yes. Well.
‘It’s funny,’ he was saying, ‘you and me being locked up together like this. We spent all that time in the same office, and most days I don’t suppose we said more than a few sentences to each other.’
Karen looked away. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘there was a reason for that.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. I was afraid of making a fool of myself—’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘—Just like I’m doing now. But anyway, here goes. You see - oh for God’s sake, this is going to sound so gut-wrenchingly coy - you see, I was getting very, um, I liked you. A lot . . .’
‘But - Oh.’ Paul’s face suddenly solidified, like molten lead dropped into water, leaving him with that death-by-embarrassment stuffed stare that’s unique to the English during romantic interludes. ‘I see.’
‘So obviously,’ Karen went on, (of course he didn’t see, not with just two eyes), ‘the logical thing to do was stay out of your way as much as possible, get on with my work, stay on my side of the office—’
‘Why?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Why was that the logical thing to do? Why didn’t you just tell me?’
Karen stared at him as if a sunflower had just burst out through the top of his head. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’
‘No.’
‘But—’ Karen took a deep breath. ‘But I - but you just don’t, that’s all. Except, apparently, in leap year, and that’s not for ages yet. And besides, you’re in love with Susan.’
‘Am I?’ It sounded like a genuine question. ‘I don’t think so.’ He smiled weakly. ‘I’m sure I’d have noticed something like that.’
‘But of course you—’ Karen stopped. ‘You mean you aren’t?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’ Karen looked up at the ceiling for five whole seconds. ‘Well, at any rate, you aren’t in love with me, so it doesn’t really make much difference.’ She hesitated, as a horrible thought crossed her mind. ‘You aren’t, are you?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied, not knowing how close those words came to earning him a broken eye-socket. ‘Truth is, I was a little bit afraid of you.’
‘Of me?’
Paul nodded gravely, like a small baize-covered figurine of Confucius hanging in the back window of an ancient Cortina. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I mean, you were always glowering at everyone - Susan, and me. And you were so efficient and good at your job. That’s pretty intimidating, you know.’
As an insight into human reasoning, Karen would have found that remark extremely valuable in another context (generations of British economic policy, for example, expressly designed so that even the most timid citizen could-n’t find it the slightest bit intimidating). ‘I see,’ she said. ‘But being - excuse me, being afraid of me isn’t the same thing as, well, you know. Love. And stuff.’
‘Sometimes it is,’ Paul replied. ‘It’s like you were saying. About not telling me, because you were afraid you’d make a fool out of yourself. Isn’t that the same thing, more or less?’
There was an awkward silence.
‘Well,’ Karen asked brusquely. ‘Do you or don’t you?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Love me.’
‘Like I said, I’m not sure. Probably, yes. I don’t know.’
Imagine how a keyboard feels when someone spills a cup of hot chocolate all over it; or how a digestive biscuit feels when it’s been dunked in the tea a little bit too long, and half of it drops off and sinks to the bottom of the cup. Karen’s mind was saturated and soggy with emotion. She wanted to throw her arms around him, to hold him tight and never let go, to bang his head repeatedly against the wall for being so infuriating. And yet, right in the centre of all this seething passion, there was one tiny cold spot. It was telling her, That’s all right, then, you’ve won. Now can we end this, please?
And then she realised the truth.
‘On balance,’ Paul said, ‘yes. I think I do.’
‘On balance?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah.’ Karen stood up and walked the few paces that brought her to the cell door. ‘That’s a pity,’ she said. ‘Because I don’t love you any more.’
‘Oh.’ He frowned. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Mphm. I did,’ she added. ‘Quite definitely. Up to about ten seconds ago. But now I don’t.’
Paul looked at her with the eyes of a sweet old sheepdog staring up at the muzzle brake of the vet’s humane killer. ‘That’s a bit sudden, isn’t it?’
‘Volatile,’ Karen replied. ‘That’s me, volatile as an overheated chip pan. You see,’ she went on, ‘I was ever so much in love with you. Really I was. A
nd yet,’ she went on, ‘I could never for the life of me imagine why.’
‘Oh,’ said Paul.
‘No,’ Karen went on, ‘not a clue. Not even the faintest trace of one, anywhere, ever. You’re quite good-looking, and you were there, and that’s it. I got the job in the office,’ she went on, thinking aloud, ‘and there you were, and I must have told myself, if you’re going to be human, really be human. Do the things they do. And everything I’d ever seen or read or heard about humans told me that love is the most important thing, right? The sweetest thing, all you need is, makes the world go round. And you know what my trouble is? With being human, I mean. I’m just too damned thorough.’ She laughed. ‘It’s what my father always told me; if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. So I did. And really, I didn’t know any other young human males. So—’
Paul was giving her a really funny look.
‘What I’m saying is,’ Karen went on, ‘I was trying to be the best student in the class, handing in the best project; and you happened to be in the way.’ Suddenly, out of nowhere, she smiled. ‘Which is stupid, really,’ she went on, ‘because I was already in love with someone else when I came here, though I’ve only just realised it. You don’t know him,’ she added lamely, ‘I mean, how could you, he’s a dr—’ She managed to guillotine off the fatal second syllable just in time, leaving the problem of finding a suitable word beginning with ‘dr’ to take its place. Driving instructor? Drug addict? Drag artiste? ‘Dreadfully nice man, but he lives in a totally different part of the country, so the chances of you ever having bumped into him are, well . . . But like I said, I didn’t know till just now. Actually, he’s an old friend. I’ve known him since we were at school together, hundreds of years - I mean, it feels like I’ve known him for hundreds of years. Anyway,’ she went on, ‘that’s more or less it. Sorry,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘Probably I chose you because I thought you were in love with Susan.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘You sure you’re not in love with Susan? Really?’
Paul shook his head. ‘Positive,’ he said.