by Lee Abrey
In this woman’s case the solid colour was a tawny gold, as if her eyes were made of some fiery topaz opal. The pupils were vertical slits, real cat’s eyes. I blinked, twice. I could see why she wore sunglasses. People must stare. I tried not to.
“Hello, Polo,” she said, “good to see you up.”
“Virginia?” I said, recognising her at last. She gave me a cheeky grin. She had such an infectious smile. I laughed. “This is my first proper day out of bed,” I said, “thank you, for everything.” She made a shooing gesture with one hand, as if it were nothing.
“My pleasure,” she said.
“Thank Murray for me too,” I said, and she smiled.
“Idiot,” she said, “him, not you. Come on, I’ll roll you to the edge of the Green.” She took hold of the wheelchair back and began to push me along faster than I’d managed.
“You’ve been friends a long time?” I said. She laughed.
“We’ve been married a long time.” That seemed shocking to me. “We squabble, we don’t really fight,” she said, “we agree about most things.”
“You called him a gaybo dragon,” I said. She chuckled.
“Yes, for using a scalpel. It’s quite tricky using tools when you’re dragon-shape, he might have stabbed himself. As I recall, during that argument he called me a girly-girl. I suppose if I thought he meant it I’d be upset.”
She parked me on the grass next to a flowerbed, under a big tree, and sat next to the chair. I had a real dragon right in front of me. I wasn’t going to waste the chance.
“Virginia,” I said, “the shape-changing, please, how do you do it? Is Azrael right? Can we all do it?”
“I just think myself there,” she said, looking serious, and pushed her glasses back on her nose. I carefully stood and she offered her hand. I lowered myself unsteadily to the grass. The effort caused a lot of pain which I tried to ignore. It felt so good to touch the earth. “In theory, yes,” she explained, “Azrael’s right. Whether individuals can, well, that’s up to the individual. Before you get started properly, you should know that you might get stuck.”
An orange-and-black bumblebee swooped erratically past us, all busyness. It nosed into a primrose and I admired the sight, the tiny polished yellow flower twitching as the fat bumblebee waved its velvet abdomen in the air, its leg baskets stuffed with bright yellow pollen. I had nearly died. Imagine not being able to see a bumblebee or a flower again. Then what Virginia had said sank in.
“Stuck?” I said. “As a dragon?” She nodded.
“Or part of one. Some people can’t get back to human-shape. The eyes are tricky. The most common problem is being unable to get your eyes back again from vertical pupil to round. I can do it but leaving mine like this is easier. Worth the price of a good pair of sunglasses. On the other hand, you might not get your human skin back. Or you might get some of it. I’ve seen people with a patch of scales they can’t remove. Some only manage one change to dragon then back and never do it again. It’s all in the mind, of course, like most things.” She waved a hand, dismissing the idea for now. “You need to heal first, and then you can mess with trying to learn another form. First we need to make sure you know your history and why Dragon is. I’ll bring you some books, alright?”
“Aye,” I said, “thanks. What about Azrael?”
“He’s allowed to read them,” she said, and I smiled.
“I mean, will he be taught?” She shrugged.
“He’ll be taught,” she said. I bit my lip.
“You don’t think he can shape-change?” She shrugged again.
“Not really. His line, the Westwych line, it’s rather weak. Her Majesty thinks you’re purer than he is. You’re lucky, your mother was a Casterton, and one of the old lines, as was his, but your father was a particularly fine specimen of peasant.” I laughed so much I hurt myself, but had trouble stopping anyway.
“Aside from the alcoholism,” I said when I could talk.
“Unfortunately,” she said, smiling, “we are all imperfect. We still have weakness, madness, stupidity, foolishness, dishonesty and all the other human qualities. Some of them are taught, some are a genetic predisposition.”
“Like love?” I said. She smiled.
“No, Polo, love is a reason to be. Real love, not the kind that’s dependent on one’s emotional baggage and how well you manipulate each other. A relationship between equals, that’s something to aim for. Emotional manipulation is a sign of weakness, both doing it and allowing it. Except of course, to get one’s way.” She looked cheerful. “Murray shouts at me and says I’m a manipulative cow, but he makes coffee if I beg nicely.” She fluttered her eyelashes and I laughed.
“I’m sure you can be very persuasive,” I said. She looked smug.
“I made you come back. From the meadow.” I thought that was Cree. “Tell Cree hello, when you see him again.” I stared at her. “Did you think he was yours?” she said. “Your ghost? He’s a promiscuous sonofabitch. He said I was closer, might have more impact. He was right, you came back.” I was stunned.
“Can you read minds too?” She shook her head. “He talked to you,” I said, “about me?”
“Aye.” Her mouth twitched. “He says you’re a promiscuous sonofabitch too.” I laughed carefully, getting the knack of it without jogging my injuries. She looked over her glasses again.
“Seriously,” she said, “young Azrael having a Dragon for a great-grandmother helps, and his grandmother on his father’s side is half-peasant, but it’s a wonder any of them are sane. That Westwych line is so corrupt and inbred. And none of them can fly.” She sniffed. “This place hasn’t changed in a thousand years.”
“Azrael wants to change it,” I said, “isn’t that a reason to help him?” I was thinking she was going to show me how to change and if she didn’t show Azrael too he’d be heartbroken. She shooed the idea away with an airy gesture.
“He’s being helped by someone else. You’re my pet project. I’m to take you through physical therapy and meditation techniques, and teach you how to change your shape.” I nodded. Even through the drug haze I was excited by this development, more than I hoped for.
“I’m guessing,” I said, “this is because I have Dragon closer in my genes than I know. Do you know who my closest Dragon ancestor is?” She was watching my bumblebee, which had moved on to another flower, still head down and bum up. Virginia looked at me.
“They’ve hidden that from you?” When I nodded, she sighed. “Closest is your mother’s mother. Daeva Casterton.”
“Grandmama Daeva?” I said it quite loud. I dropped my volume. “Grandmama Daeva is Dragon?” She shook her head. Not saying I was wrong, but at me not knowing.
“I can’t believe nobody told you,” she said. I couldn’t either. I spent large periods of my childhood with Grandmama and even she never thought to tell me. I was a quarter Dragon! Plus whatever percentage Grandpa Casterton, Grandmama’s late husband, had been. Then I remembered why I spent so long with Grandmama.
“Probably because of my father,” I said, “he hates Dragon. They would hide it.” Virginia made a snorting noise.
“Specieist,” she said, sounding annoyed. “People are always afraid of what they don’t understand, or even someone different. Like kids in a schoolyard, people are. I’m always surprised they don’t just throw rocks at each other and grunt, instead of talking.” I shrugged.
“I’ve always suspected there’s Dragon blood on Father’s side,” I said, “the way he looks.” She said something that shocked me.
“He’s a throwback. To the Yusaf.” I looked up from the bumblebee, my mouth open.
“Really?” I said, “I assumed he must be Dragon somewhere.” I thought so to the point where I thought Father was an idiot for pretending otherwise. She shook her head.
“Herself, Lilith, had him checked out,” she said, “you being so interesting, as Her Majesty puts it.”
The Dragon queen had me checked out? I was moving up in the wo
rld, with two heads of state investigating me in the space of three months.
“It’s possible to smell any Dragon blood in a person,” Virginia was saying, “he hasn’t a scrap. People who looked like him, though they were a minority, were found among the Yusaf. Let’s not forget, the original Dragon were Yusaf tweaked a little. With two thousand years of inbreeding before Dragon turned up, certain colourings became rare here, like blonde or red hair and coloured eyes. Nevertheless they do turn up, or mutations occur.” She gestured to her eyes. “Originally all humans were brown-eyed. Then along came one person with blue eyes, which is a lack of melanin in the iris. That one mutation led to all the variations, the light-eyes, the greens, blues, greys, and so on. Many hundreds of thousands of years later, when they made Dragon, they made the Dragon genes dominant.”
“The prettiness gene,” I said. She smiled.
“The first Dragon were very beautiful,” she said, “fine physical specimens, chosen for their grace, strength and abilities, both mental and physical.” I wondered if they all had ghosts. Cree materialised near me. Beings-not-in-body, I thought at him, before he could start arguing. “And let’s not forget the ultra-senses.”
“Like sensing danger before it comes?” I said to Virginia, and she nodded.
“That and other things.” I paused.
“Don’t you think it’s wrong,” I said, “to treat the peasants as if they’re less than us? I mean, without that my father couldn’t say he was being overlooked for promotion because he’s a commoner.”
“Who does that?” she said, frowning. Out on the Green a magpie landed, tilted its head to one side and then began to hunt, stabbing its beak into the ground. I was still quite floaty from the drugs. I looked at Virginia, aware she’d said something and with no idea what it was.
“Sorry,” I said, “who does what?”
“Who treats peasants as less?” she said, “I don’t, do you?”
“No, but-” She fixed me with a look.
“No but nothing,” she said, and I shut up. “However,” she went on, “give the peasants the chance, and what do you think will happen to us? They’re pure human mostly, scared of anyone who even seems a bit different, always looking to blame that person for everything wrong instead of looking at themselves or their governments. Ever read any histories of Home? All those people killed because their skin colour was different? Or their religion wasn’t the one of the ruling party?” I nodded. She scowled. “People killed, burned, torn apart by ignorant mobs, even having limbs amputated to be used as lucky charms. Their hearts torn out when still alive as a sacrifice to some weaselling god, because the people who live in the next valley, they’re not like us. They’re not really human so we can do what we like with them. What do you think would happen to Dragon if we let the humans rule?” She snorted. She was so passionate. I adored her. “There’s a book in the library,” she said, sounding calmer, “called When Dragon Came. I’ll bring you a copy. It’s about Dragon, and our arrival here. After our creation we spent two thousand years wandering the Quadrants, looking for a place we could call home. By the way, peasant simply means “of the soil” in an old Home tongue, it’s not derogatory. It’s a way of saying their seed is native to Galaia, or as native as any of it.”
“Aye,” I said, “that’s something my parents always say.” She gestured at the magpie.
“He’s an interloper from Home, hunting feral worms in introduced grass. So are the peasants. We’re all aliens.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said. She shrugged and smiled.
“I’m not upset,” she said, “I was just getting heated.” She grinned. “I’ll get you that book then I have to go. I’ll be back tomorrow morning and we’ll start your physio. Do you need to be wheeled back?”
“Um,” I said, hesitating a moment before giving up my pride, “yes please.” I could have done it without help, if over a long time and with much pain and sweating. I decided that while I needed to use my body, I didn’t need to kill it. Virginia helped me up and back into the chair.
“There’s nothing new under the sun, Polo,” she said, as she wheeled me along. I leaned back to hear her clearly. “We have Yusaf books with devices in them we on Galaia can’t even imagine making because not only do we not understand the science behind them, we don’t understand the precursors, or the pre-precursors. You can’t make a house from stone if you don’t know how to work stone, how to cut it from the World. What use is a wheel if you can’t make an axle and the cart to ride in, if you’ve forgotten everything you knew about taming horses? How can we make objects out of rare metals if we don’t have the skills to work them when we find them?
“We have so many products, like wheelchairs, hypodermics, saddles, and of course, anything made of bioplas, where we learned from books how to build them, how to do them, best practice. We didn’t discover how to do them, we just studied the excellent reference material. Everything was detailed, with measurements.”
We rolled into the hospital and she pushed me into my room then helped me into the bed. She was incredibly strong, not just ‘for a woman’, but for anyone.
“Galaia doesn’t have the science levels to make bioplas, you know,” she said with a grunt, as she lifted me up the bed so I could sit up, “anyone coming across this civilisation would wonder what in the name of Thet was going on. The Galaians have some very advanced technologies yet they’re still on horseback. If they have bioplastics, why don’t they have flight? They have steam, where are the railways? They have electricity so how come half the planet is living without it, in semi-tribal groupings without even permanent buildings?”
“Do you know why?” I said. She smiled and smoothed the sheet.
“Well,” she said, “there’s more than one reason. That book I mentioned lists some. The early settlers had to settle on the essential technologies, and stick with those. They eventually forgot why things were done just so but kept doing them that way because it worked. Some books were preserved, but with limited paper stocks they only printed what was essential. How-to books mostly. By the time Dragon got here most of the Yusaf descendants thought they were created here on this planet.” She looked at her watch. “I have to scoot, back with those books later.”
After she left, I asked for pen and paper and made notes for my journal, particularly what we talked about on the Green.
****
Chapter 24 – When Dragon Came
An hour later Virginia was back. When Dragon Came was bound in red leather, the name stamped in gold on the spine. The flyleaf said it was three hundred years old. I held it, feeling the weight of the centuries. There was another book called A History of Galaia, written a thousand years ago when Dragon arrived, but the copy was a reprint and only a hundred years old. It was written by an S Westwych.
“Oh,” I said, “what beautiful books.” The skin around Virginia’s topaz eyes crinkled as she smiled. I was thinking about her in a way that wasn’t seemly for one’s physical therapist. I quashed the thought, focusing on the embossed leatherwork.
“This one’s a gift,” said Virginia, pointing to A History of Galaia. “It’s one of the few complete histories of this world up to when Dragon came, written by Dragon.” I thanked her and she headed off.
****
I’d barely opened When Dragon Came when I was disturbed.
Afternoon, Polo! It was my ghost.
“Hello Cree,” I said aloud, “I hear you called me a promiscuous sonofabitch.”
You’re jealous, he said, how sweet. You know, I could hang around all the time, but I think I’d bore you.
“You scare me,” I said.
Scare you? He looked down at himself. Bits were transparent. I suppose I’m not very solid.
“Oh, I can deal with seeing you,” I said, “and even with seeing and not-seeing you at the same time, but when other people see you it means I’m not crazy and you’re real. Alternatively we’re all mad. Group delusion.” He laughed.
&
nbsp; Thank you, beloved, he said, you do amuse us.
“Us?” I said. He shrugged.
Figure of speech, he said.
“Do you want to talk? Or can I read?” He gestured that I should read and sat, or levitated, smoking a pipe, about five feet up the wall.
Most of the book’s first page was taken up with a stylised line drawing of a starship shuttle dropping through clouds. Although I knew it was possible, the idea of flight seemed fanciful. I looked at Cree. As fanciful as some kind of spirit guide smoking a pipe in the corner of the room? I tried not to think about Cree. He made my brain hurt. I skipped through the first pages, a Glossary, after I knew the first few definitions.
A.E. - After Exodus. Though the date is taken from the approximate start year of the first colonies in the Alpha Quadrant, the name marks the massive exodus of humans from Home.
Computer - a kind of electric book, like a window into a million other books, (erroneously referred to in some histories as a ‘magic’ book). It could memorise and dictate printed books, transmit messages over huge distances, and thanks to being able to memorise knowledge and perform mathematical calculations, could give answers to questions.
Quadrants - Galaia is in the Sigma Quadrant, far away from the tightly grouped planets of Alpha and Beta Quadrants, and even further from Home.
I turned the pages carefully. The book was so old and I didn’t want to damage it, especially seeing it was in very good condition. I’ll reproduce it pretty much directly as it summed up many aspects of our history I was unsure of.
Nowadays of course it’s a school history text, but in those days I was one of maybe a dozen people in the kingdom who’d read it. It began as the starships from Home stopped coming.