by Bill Fawcett
“You’re a little short for a storm trooper, aren’t you?” I asked.
Then, in a move that I hope would have impressed my martial arts sensei, I twisted to my right, launching a kick at the gun. The trooper pulled back before my blow could connect, but he didn’t retaliate. Behind me there was a distinct whooshing sound, kind of a mini sonic boom.
“Crikey, mate, that kick of yours was a little too close for my liking,” said the storm trooper, as he reached to pull his helmet off.
“Reg, that was the whole idea,” I said, looking back at the bank of phones where no one was standing now.
* * *
“So what am I going to do with you, little brother?” Elaine asked, speaking softly in spite of the background noise on the airport-bound MARTA train.
“You could always pull a gun and pistol whip me,” I said.
“There is that option. As I recall, I never did get even for you putting your iguana in my closet during that slumber party when I was in the fifth grade.”
“Hey, a little brother’s got to do what a little brother’s got to do,” I said.
It was still strange talking to her. Part of me remembered that irritating older sister who was mine alone to torment, anyone else stay the hell away from her, whose departure from my life on a rainy street ripped a hole in my soul that didn’t heal for a lot of years. The little brother in me I was very glad to have her back, even for a moment. Another part of me said who the hell is this woman?
“I still am amazed that you were able pull the whole thing off,” she said.
As a matter of fact, I was, too, but I wasn’t going to admit it. Right up until I heard the sound of air rushing into the space that Bucky had occupied when he phased out to his own timeline, I had been convinced that the whole thing would end up as major failure. I was not eager to see my other self mad; I know how I am when I get mad, and it isn’t a pretty sight.
“It was just a matter of letting him see what we wanted him to see and making him think what we wanted him to think—basic Stage Magic 101. You keep the audience looking at the right hand while it’s the left hand that is getting into mischief. Of course, if he knew that you and I had talked, that might have skewed the whole thing,” I said.
Reg had come onto the train with us, though he had taken a seat several rows away, to give us the illusion of privacy. But I would bet my bottom dollar that he could hear everything we said and was ready to step in on her side, if for some reason she thought me departing from our little arrangement.
From my jacket I pulled a thin manila envelope. Inside were three foil-wrapped packages, with names written across them, featuring a familiar figure in a red cape with an S on his chest. Elaine nodded, confirming that these were the items that my other self had “borrowed” from her.
“What’s so special about these particular ones?”
“They come from a timeline where the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, did not get screwed by their publishers and had very long, successful careers. You should see the other superheroes they created. Amazing,” she said, grinning. “Those cards are rare enough to begin with; there aren’t that many timelines where they were actually produced. To have them signed by both Siegel and Shuster, well, to say the least, it quintuples their value. They are worth a fortune to my client, and that’s why Bucky wanted them for his client,” she said. “The madness of collectors; I have never understood it but, it has proved very profitable to me.”
“What I didn’t understand from the beginning was, why you just didn’t grab Bucky get them from him, without involving me.”
“There was no way to know if he had opened the box, and if he had, then he could hidden them anywhere. Face it, downtown Atlanta is big and has more nooks and crannies than I care to contemplate, especially when you are looking for things as small as trading cards.”
I pushed the envelope toward her, but pulled it away before Elaine’s fingers could touch it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Reg turn, and he was obviously ready to step in if things got out of hand.
“So, now, about my finder’s fee,” I said.
Elaine pursed her lips for a moment and then smiled. “I anticipated that, little brother. If you check your bank account, you will find a substantial payment had been deposited. Your regular daily fee tripled, plus a bonus for your time.”
“That sounds fair. Can I trust you?”
“I’m hurt. Of course you can trust me. After all, we’re family,” she said.
Just then the door between cars flew open and a couple of teenagers came in, two young men maybe sixteen. From their outfits, baggy pants, vinyl vests and do-rags, they could easily have been the same ones who had been there when I rode in from the airport, or at least of the members of the same gang. They were arguing about the relative merits of a rap group named The Deep Ones and a goth band called Death’s Big Brother, and got rather loud about the whole thing. Elaine looked at them with some distaste and then turned back to me.
“I think this concludes our business,” I said as I passed the envelope to her.
“It’s been a pleasure,” she said. Reg came back to where we were standing; they both produced small silver tubes similar to what I had given Bucky, and made some quick adjustments. They didn’t fade away; they were just simply not there. The whoosh of air rushing into the space the two of them had occupied was in no way as a loud as when Bucky had shifted time lines, but it was noticeable.
“Damn,” said one of the gang bangers who came up next to me. “Two people just disappearing, there’s something you don’t see every day.”
“Indeed, you don’t,” I nodded and passed him another picture of Mr. Franklin, to go with the one I had given him and his friend earlier, when we made our arrangements. Cold cash does have a way of silencing any sort of awkward questions that might come up.
Once I was alone, I pulled three foil wrapped packages out from under my left leg and smiled at the figure in the red cape on their front. If what Elaine had said was even half true in this time line, then these should fetch a nice price, more so than the ones I had switched them for when she had been distracted by the gang bangers. I knew some crazy collectors, too.
But even if, in this timeline, these things weren’t worth anything, I felt good about the whole matter. It had come down to whether I trusted my “sister” Elaine or my “brother” Bucky.
I learned to trust my gut a long time ago; that’s how I’ve stayed alive all these years in this business. In this little matter, my gut had told me not to trust either one; they’d both been playing me and I doubted that I had gotten the full story from either one of them. Instead, the safest path was to trust one person and one person only. Me.
MOMMY, why do they call it DragonCon?” a little girl asked as they followed the long, snaking line through registration. Pat Henry smiled to himself. The mother, somewhere in her middle thirties and fan-shaped, caught a glimpse of both the expression and the convention committee badge.
“Well, why do you call it Dragon-Con?” the woman asked him point blank. Pat nodded to her deferentially, but his only choice was to lie through his teeth.
“We’re pretty fond of dragons down here,” he said. “They’re the biggest of the fantastic beasts, and even from the beginning we intended this to be the biggest and the best convention anywhere in the country.”
He glanced around. He didn’t see any fire ants yet, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there somewhere. Better check with Security and see there had been any sightings. He scanned the long lines. Security and operations personnel, many from central Georgia, but many who came all the way from North Carolina and Virginia, browsed the room, checking for those telltale signs of trouble. This was their first contact with attendees, and hence, their first line of defense. Pat knew the signs well: eyes that were just a little too shiny, fingers that made a clicking noise w
hen they moved, and that odd smell that human beings usually couldn’t detect. Each of his people carried a Black Box. To the uninitiated, the Box looked like a walkie-talkie, and Pat was content to let them think so. Modern electronics had reduced reliable communication devices to the size of a matchbook. The real phone set was hidden inside a shirt collar or under long hair and attached by cord to the earpiece worn by each patroller. The Black Box contained a stun gun that could bring down a charging buffalo and a hypo loaded with formatoxin. Neither of those would do more than slow down a fire ant, but it would be enough to keep it immobile long enough for help to arrive. Pat hated to use the Boxes; there was a risk of collateral damage to human beings. Fire ants never went quietly.
The earpiece blatted out a burst of static.
“Looking for me, Bill?” he asked.
“We’ve got an arrival,” his ops chief, Bill Mann, Jr., said in a calm voice, knowing that the walkie-talkie system was overheard by non-committee members. “You might want to get to the primary location.”
Pat started moving, dodging among the rows of people waiting to register.
“Excuse me,” he said, absently, his mind racing. None of the special attendees was due until the evening. What on earth were they thinking, coming in in broad daylight?
From the ballroom, it was a solid ten minutes’ run up crowded escalators and through corridors until he was out on (street between hotels). Not for the first time he cursed the territoriality of the Atlanta hoteliers who, though they joined their establishments together at the second-floor level, refused to allow a tunnel system when the hotels were built. It certainly would have made his life easier. Not that he could have explained in plain language to the association or the Atlanta police why it was a good idea. On the other hand, he blessed the architect who built the Hyatt, designing two basements that didn’t seem to connect to one another. The space between them provided a safe and secure location that only a select few knew about.
The security guard at the doorway that led down to the motor lobby almost stopped him, but she was an old hand at DragonCon, and recognized him. She waved him in. A dozen fans tried to follow. Pat heard their protests as she halted them and sent them up the stairs to the entrance on the next level. Because of the heavy foot traffic, the route he was taking was one way coming in the other direct ion. Normally, he set a good example, but he had to get to the concealed door, pronto.
Pat fumed, though he knew Bill couldn’t give him any more data over an open frequency. Who could it he? Didn’t they know that they might be endangering the entire conference, arriving early?
He strode through the corridor, noting that the ochre paint had been recently renewed, as was the plain carpet underfoot. Everything was clean and in good repair. The Hyatt, glad to be a part of the annual DragonCon festivities, had done them proud. The surroundings weren’t flashy, but the fan convention overhead provided all the color and visual distraction that was necessary. He wound through the labyrinth of meeting rooms, heading toward a blank wall at the end of the corridor.
To be honest, DragonCon had outgrown its location, and could really have used a dedicated facility that could hold the multiple thousands who came to enjoy the weekend, both convention and conference, but he couldn’t fault the hard work and confidentiality that maintained it here in the heart of the largest city in southeast America. Still, he and the committee weren’t ready to move. There was no place big enough that was ready to go. Pat pressed his lips together, formulating what he was going to say to the fool who had come in, forcing them to open the secret rooms up ahead of time, before all the protective cantrips and wards were in place. He took the key from his inner coat pocket and inserted it into the camouflaged keyhole at the end of the corridor of alphabetized rooms and muttered a familiar phrase. He felt the wards slide back. The door opened and he slipped inside, ignoring the curious glances of the few fans who were wandering around, checking the place out. He hoped none of them were fire ants.
A tapestry-covered partition had been set up across the entrance of the main hall to prevent anyone glancing through the door from seeing the occupants of the huge hidden chamber. Pat heard groaning and panting noises. If two of his guests had arrived early to make love and had attracted any attention from the humans upstairs, he was going to give them a piece of his mind!
He rounded the partition and heeled to a stop. The words he had been readying faded away, forgotten. He stared up at the slender female red dragon perched on one of the nesting boxes, her tongue darting between her teeth, her wings flapping in agitation.
Pat thumbed his walkie-talkie. “Who’s up there?”
“This is Everette.”
“Everette, can you send someone from first aid down here?” he asked, hoping his voice sounded casual in spite of his pounding heart. “We’ve got eggs.”
“Really?” his ops chief responded, forgetting himself. “Who?”
“Everette! “
“Sorry. Switching over now. Back to you in a minute.”
“Annette, someone’s coming pretty soon,” he called. “I’ll help you until one of the midwives gets here. Are you okay?”
“I’m so sorry,” she wailed, her long neck whipping back and forth. “I was too close. I couldn’t hold back any longer!”
Hell of a time, he thought, stripping off his tie and jacket; they wouldn’t survive his transformation. But that was why DragonCon existed.
With large brains, muscles and wings, dragons had held the upper hand for a good deal of prehistory. Since the evolution of smart predators, however, dragons had become an endangered species. They were at a particular tactical disadvantage with regard to homo sapiens. Though many human cultures had deep-seated respect for draco draconis, the fact was that very few human beings liked the idea of sharing territory with them. They were suspicious of large, smart carnivores that could fly. Then there was the problem with greed. Dragons had an affinity for gold and glittery minerals. They drew magical energy from those substances. Humans, not surprisingly, also valued these selfsame natural resources, but as wealth, wealth that often robbed them of what good sense they had. It took a considerable amount of effort to mine gold and cut gems, so if one happened upon a cache of treasure guarded by one large beast (dragons were solitary most of the time), one might think it cost effective to dispose of said beast and claim the treasure. Fighting a dragon was more momentarily dangerous than mining, and a good deal more glorious to talk about later on. Pat hated treasure hunters, but he understood them. Dragons weren’t innocent in the treasure-hunting racket, either. Plenty of them had stolen their gold from humans, who’d gone to as much trouble as any dragon to mine, refine and cast it.
But over the centuries both dragons and humans had become more civilized, though humans had developed advanced weaponry, and dragons had kept only the armaments provided by nature: teeth, claws, wings, superior size, and magic. In the greatest part, humans had stopped believing in dragons altogether, a disbelief fostered and encouraged by dragons who had no trouble passing among humans in disguise. That growing disbelief enabled dragons to live on in secret, but it was no help to their continued existence. Their numbers dwindled over the centuries, largely because of vanishing habitat. With satellites surrounding the planet, there were few places, if any, that large winged creatures could fly without appearing on the next update of Google Earth. (Needless to say, one of the places that had been necessary to infiltrate was the geography wing of that ubiquitous online service. At that moment, four dragons were on the payroll in the home office as senior programmers.) Humans had also increased in numbers so spectacularly that the balance between them and dragons was irredeemable. The Internet, television, hidden cameras and other means of surveillance had driven the dragons underground, so to speak.
Hence the need to band together on a regular basis. True, dragons were solitary by nature, but safety in numbers was an undeniably useful concep
t. Any intelligent being would understand that. After endless decades of argument over where and how often they should meet, Pat and the other dragons of the Atlanta area declared unilaterally they had organized an annual moot. All were welcome to attend—if they followed certain rules, such as no blood feuds, settling of ancient scores, or eating the locals. DragonCon was for the future, not reliving the past over and over. There was an old saying, that a dragon may forget his name, but he’d never forget a grudge. Pat and his fellow founders were determined to make certain peace reigned.
Like any venture, the event had started small, with a few who believed and trusted the Atlanteans. The early meetings were a little on the formal side, no bad direction to air, considering. Gradually, other dragons had seen that DragonCon was a safe venue. As each year passed, more and more of them made the journey, and departed reluctantly at the event’s end, vowing to return the next year. It came to be known as the place to air grievances and settle disputes, discuss the problems with ever-encroaching human habitations, and to lay eggs.
Unlike the human perception that dragons sat on their clutches forever, eggs hatched a mere four days after laying. During that time the females, who refused to leave their incipient offspring no matter what the peril, were vulnerable to attack. Infant hatchlings had to be protected during that time. Being in the company of numerous males obviated the fear of losing dragonets, since no human, no matter what his or her motivation—having a unique pet, entertaining a foolish notion of raising a mythological creature, opening a sideshow or starting some kind of scientific research—was going to steal an egg or a baby dragon in front of anything from a hundred to a thousand angry adults. With a little sunshine, a little gold, a suitably bloody first meal, and the baby dragons would be ready to spread their wings and follow their parents to the four quarters of the wind.