by Bill Fawcett
Regina and the others were ready. He braced himself, and gave a big smile to the audience.
“ ... And I’d like to give a big hand to all our special guests who have graced DragonCon. I’d like to start with a lady who started coming here long before Hollywood discovered her amazing talents, and now is celebrated for her work on the silver screen. I refer, of course, to this lady,” he gestured with an open hand, “Shawna Lacey!” Regina appeared at his elbow with a plaque. “Ms. Lacey, will you please come on up and accept this award?”
For a moment, the Ant Queen hesitated. She sensed some kind of trick. The dragon wished her to join him on the stage. Why should she cooperate? He was dangerous. The other dragon beside him was also dangerous. She had killed a soldier-general single-handed.
Then she realized that everyone in the big room was looking at her. They expected this actress to go up without hesitation. Was her army in place?
Yes, came the word through the antennae disguised in her headdress. She might be surrounded by dragons, but her forces were advancing, ready to leap on and disable the magicians the dragons still had, all of whom were in this room. Once they were disposed of, the spells would break down and she could invade the nesting space with no trouble. How convenient. She would have a very good view of the excitement. She rose to wild applause and climbed the stairs. Pat took her hand and bowed over it.
The Ant Queen smiled and waved. Through her antennae, she sent out the signal to her forces. The two columns of captains concealed in dragon costumes rose up and moved toward Anne McCaffrey. A host of them crept underneath the tables toward the others.
* * *
The two bad costumes came to flank Anne.
“Excuse me, Ms. McCaffrey,” one of them said in a high-pitched voice. “Can we have your autograph?”
Anne turned to look at them, and her jaw set firmly. She reached for her purse, and one of the costumed creatures slapped her hand down with one of its own. The hand seemed to be the wrong shape.
“Now, how am I supposed to sign a book if I can’t reach my pen?” Anne asked calmly, even though Koolness could hear her heart start to pound.
On the stage, Mr. Henry couldn’t move to help but Koolness could. He leaped out of his chair. In the twitch of a tail, he shed his human appearance and leaped over the table at the two costumed goons. The Pern fans didn’t seem too surprised to see a full-sized, long-tailed cougar in their midst, but the guests at other tables were shoving back their chairs in alarm.
Koolness hit the goons high and rolled over them onto the ground. To his surprise each body broke apart into five pieces, each about the size of a cocker spaniel. They brandished mandibles and pincers at him. He snarled. They scuttled to go around him, still intent on Anne. Koolness batted the first one back and sunk his teeth into the neck of the next. The sharp taste made his sensitive nose buzz in protest, but he clenched his jaws until he heard a crack. He dropped the body and made for the next one.
Hisham shoved back his chair and seized one of them around its four limbs. The mandibles tried to bite him. He pulled his head away from it. Aranel tied up the jaws with a cloth napkin. Hisham tightened his grip until he heard the carapace snap. He dropped it and seized another which had reached Anne’s chair and was attempting to climb. The other Pern fans joined in, kicking the huge ants away from their favorite author. Aranel lifted a chair and brought it down, smashing one of the ants to death. The audience laughed, thinking it was all part of the entertainment.
“Call them off,” Pat said to the Ant Queen. He held her arm tightly.
“They are following the orders I gave them,” the Queen said, with satisfaction. She tossed her head. “They only obey me. When the magicians are dead, my army will know where the rest of you are hiding.”
“You won’t be able to,” Pat assured her.
“You fool, you can’t stop me,” she said. “I—we—outnumber you a billion to one!” With a laugh, she shed the likeness of Shawna Lacey. Her thorax and abdomen began to swell, leaving her waist impossibly slender.
The moment she began to transform, Pat threw an arm around her and hurried her behind the curtain.
The beautiful face disappeared into a bulging-eyed head with serrated jaws that clashed sideways. She snapped for Pat’s throat.
No one except James Bond ever had a successful fight to the death in a tuxedo. Reluctantly, hoping the curtain concealed him adequately, Pat expanded into his dragon shape. As his wing tips appeared above the top of the riser, he heard an explosion. He peeked out of the curtain, and saw the audience applauding wildly.
The Ant Queen took advantage of his inattention and sank her jaws into his arm.
“Ah!” Hedaera cried. “Delicious!”
Pat smacked her away. Nothing human remained of her now. She laughed wildly. She snapped at him again and again, forcing him backwards out of the shelter of the curtain until they were in the center of the stage. She gloated.
“I’m so glad you invited me to this banquet, and banquet it really will be. I have enough of a force here to take over the entire crowd. It would be my pleasure.”
“You can’t conquer a whole room full of human beings,” Pat said. “Yes, I can,” she said. She flicked an antenna. To Pat’s horror, the carpet seemed to move. People began to jump out of their seats and bat at their ankles as thousands of ants swarmed them. A few people shrieked and dozens of them swore.
“They obey me,” she said.
Soldier-generals, the largest of the ant breed, dropped their own disguises and went for the other dragons in the room. Regina slipped behind the curtain and emerged in her natural form just in time to meet a hulking ant. She roared at it. It shrilled back.
Pat set his jaw. Then the only way to stop the attack was to stop the one giving orders. Mouth open, he went for her neck.
Her movements were astonishingly swift. She turned her head to the side and bit his throat instead. Pat recoiled, hissing at the pain. The poison began to work at once. The tissue started to swell. If he didn’t get rid of the toxin soon, he’d be strangled by his own neck muscles.
He took a mighty leap and landed on the other side. With his tail, he knocked all four feet out from under the queen. She landed on her back with a boom! Pat flitted upward and came down on her midsection. He dug his talons into the thorax and abdomen and pushed outward, hoping to break the slender section that joined them. The queen wailed. The soldiers and captains nearest to them abandoned their opponents and scuttled toward Pat. Hundreds of tiny ants crawled up under his scales, stinging his tender flesh.
No time for subtlety. Pat summoned up a measure of power and filled his lungs. Hoping no one was going to get heroic and try to help him, he breathed out.
The flames crackled as they struck the oncoming ants. Some of the giants simply melted. The others flattened themselves on the floor and dragged human diners down to use as shields. Pat recoiled. He refused to endanger any of his guests.
The fierce itch of myriad small bites muddled his brain. The queen used her immense strength to topple him to the stage. He fell on his back. She tore at his unprotected stomach with her pincers. Pat was mortified. It tickled. He kicked all four legs in the air, hoping to connect with her head, and knowing he looked like a Labrador retriever getting a belly rub.
The human guests ran for the doors, but they were blocked by more of the queen’s forces. The ants herded them back to the center of the ballroom.
Pat filled his lungs with fire. He bathed the queen’s thorax with flame, hoping he could make her explode by boiling the liquid inside her armor. She trembled as the fire hit her. Pat struck again and again, satisfied at the crackle of the splintering carapace. The queen’s body grew brighter and brighter, then faded. Pat redoubled his efforts, drawing all the power he could. It had no effect that he could see, except that the Ant Queen grew larger and larger until her head brushed the
ceiling. She laughed down at him.
“Thanks for the power!” she cried. “It saves me drawing upon my army.” She thrust out her arms, and all the chandeliers went out. In the feeble yellow illumination of the emergency lights she glowed. She reached for Regina, who was pinned against the wall by a couple of soldiers, and lifted her up toward her clashing jaws.
Pat leaped for the queen and wrapped himself around the arm. Regina dropped free.
“Thanks, boss,” she said. “What can we do?”
“Power,” Pat said. “Give her all the power she wants.”
“Cooperation!” the Ant Queen crowed. “That’s what I like to hear. Give me all of it!”
“What ... ?” Regina asked. She followed Pat’s eyes. “Why not? We’re already going to lose our security deposit for this year.”
Together the dragons focused their fire breath on the Ant Queen. She threw her head back to bathe in it, as if it was no more than a shower bath. As many of the committee who could help, did. The queen grew and grew, until her mandibles touched the row of carbon arc lights set up to illuminate the stage.
The queen tossed her head as the first carbon arc exploded. She tried to move away, but she was already too large to get off the stage. Her mandibles pierced the lenses of more of the heavy lights. She thrashed and turned, and got tangled up in the framework and the yards upon yards of cable attached to it. Pat flitted over the heads of the crowd toward the lighting control board and knocked all the levers up to full.
Power she wanted, and power she got. The Ant Queen burst into flames as the full force of the electrical grid of the hotel hit her. Pat heard her cries over the zapping of circuits. Pat flew back just in case he had to finish her off. There was no need. He used the last of his power to blow under his scales and chase all the small fire ants away. The terrible itching stopped. He felt almost as if he could collapse in relief. He cleared his throat.
* * *
Brenda looked up. “The scratching! It stopped!”
The other dragons, in a ring facing outward around the nesting boxes, listened closely.
“The ants are gone,” John said.
The tension drained from the conclave chamber as though a plug had been pulled. Power the others had drawn into themselves to breathe fire to defend their young to the death returned to the great pool of energy within every dragon.
“Thank Fafnir,” a Scandinavian visitor exclaimed, pulling a huge guitar from under his wing. “Well! Would anyone like to join in a talk sing, then?”
“Certainly,” said the Asian dragon. “Does anyone know ‘Genghis Khan Knew My Uncle?’ ”
“No,” said the Welsh red, “but if you hum a few bars, we’ll fake it.”
* * *
With the queen dead and unable to think for them, the rest of the ants stopped what they were doing and began to mill around aimlessly. It took little time for security, both human and dragon, to round them up and get them out of the ballroom, then start to herd the guests back to their tables. Pat slipped behind the curtain and resumed his human shape. The pants and shirt of his formal attire were all right, but the jacket, with its center seam ripped out and sleeves burst from the cuff upward, was probably a write-off. He put it back on and walked out to cheers from the audience, who sat down more peacefully than he would have believed. Fans, he thought gratefully, were the most resilient people on the planet.
“I hope you all enjoyed that little entertainment,” Pat said, straightening his torn jacket. “That was, uh, special effects from an upcoming movie produced by, uh, our guests, and starring ...”
“Me!”
Shawna Lacey marched into the room, followed by the rest of the magicians. Bill and Everette, bringing up the rear, gave Pat a thumb’s-up. The head of childcare came running up to the Fulbrights with their little girl, who didn’t seem at all upset that Mommy and Daddy had been missing for more than a day. Anneli Madden looked as calm and cool as if she had spent the time in the library.
The actress sashayed onto the stage to loud acclaim. No one mentioned the fact that she had been wearing gold lame and was now clad in creased black silk pants and a scanty midriff top. She gave Pat a cool, smug smile.
“I believe you have something for me?”
Regina ran for the plaque. Pat took it from her and presented it as the crowd cheered. Shawna gave him an air kiss, during which she whispered, “I’d like to talk to you later about some serious compensation.” She gave him a sweet smile that presaged a long talk, possibly involving lawyers.
Pat saw her off the stage and turned to the magicians, who looked tired but pleased, and the fans around Anne’s table.
“I’d like to thank all our bit players for helping out with our presentation. I don’t remember exactly where cats fit in on Pern,” Pat said, as Koolness sat on the bodies of the ants, trying to figure out how he was going to explain his transformation to his fellow fans who hadn’t known, especially Anne McCaffrey, but when he looked up at her the twinkle in her eyes suggested she had known all along. “But let’s give him a big hand!”
“Mixing my worlds,” Anne declared. “A Hrruban, helping to fight wild whers! He didn’t beat up a dragon, because Hrrubans are very civilized, and so are dragons. Very well done!” She began clapping, encouraging everyone else to do the same. Koolness stood up and slurped Anne’s hand. He noticed that she was writing under the table with her special pen. He met her eyes and she gave him a wink. “Everyone’s just going to forget about the ant bites. Take a bow.”
“As you wish, my lady,” he said, and did.
A hearty voice from the audience burst out above the wild applause that filled the room.
“This is the best convention ever!”
Pat smiled. “Glad you think so,” he said.
* * *
Crack!
Right on schedule, early Monday morning, the dragon eggs in the conclave center began to crack open. Annette was the first to welcome her youngsters. All six were males, and everyone bleated with hunger the moment their mouths were free. She bent to feed them a meal of whole plucked chickens. The other nesting mothers stood aside with pride as their offspring burst their shells and were welcomed into the worldwide dragon community.
At the side of the room, well out of the way of flying shell fragments, Anne McCaffrey sat in a place of honor beside Pat and his committee, beaming her pleasure. She clapped as each egg hatched, and crowed over the different baby dragons. The dragon chicks mewled for more food, and regarded their parents with huge, adoring eyes. They took their first tottering steps, tripped on their own feet, and waved their little wings that were drying faster than a butterfly out of the cocoon.
“I got it right!” she said, with delight. “It’s like an Impression without the riders. Thank you, dear Pat, for such a marvelous opportunity.”
“It was the least we could do for you,” Pat said. “You and your helpers. Without them this room wouldn’t have remained safe.”
The humans and others behind her looked abashed but pleased. To Anne’s everlasting delight, one of the hatchlings, an opalescent chick with a blunt nose and softly rounded scales on the ridge of its head, tottered over and put its nose in her hand. She petted it and murmured softly. The chick crooned.
“It knows its godmother,” Pat said.
“This was the best conclave we’ve ever had, in spite of everything,” Regina said.
Pat smiled, showing all of his teeth. “If you think this was good, wait until next year.”
“Next year!” Regina exclaimed. “We haven’t even started cleaning up from this one yet!”
Pat laughed. “We have to think ahead. How do we top this?”
* * *
All that day, the dragons departed for their distant homes. Some crept back into the dealers’ room to be packed up among the depleted supply of baubles and books. A few changed themse
lves into human form and walked out of the hotel. The Florida-bound dragons flattened themselves once again and became one with Janny Wurts’s art, but on a single canvas, as one of her big pieces had sold at auction.
“It is too crowded,” the opalescent female complained. “We had more room in the conclave chamber in spite of all the commotion.”
“Ah, yes,” the blue dragon said, reminiscently. “Those hatchlings will never forget the grand battle fought almost on their very birthday! “
Don and Janny looked at each other.
“Sounds like it would make a terrific painting,” said Don.
“Maybe a book,” added Janny. “Tell us all about it.”
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