Dragons in the Stars

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  Chapter 18: Ed

  THOUGHTS OF Highwing were driven from her mind the next morning by a call from the spaceport police, followed by a meeting with one of the investigating officers and a representative of the spaceport shipping commission. At issue was the disposition of Mogurn's starship. There was no way for Jael to collect her pay until the cargo and ship were disposed of; and that couldn't be done until the ship's title was assigned—either to Mogurn's company, or his heirs, if any, or to the government of Lexis.

  What the officials wanted from Jael was more information about Mogurn. She had little to offer beyond what had been found in Mogurn's cabin, and none at all about the legal status of Mogurn's ship. Her own contract was of little help. There was no indication that he'd had a company or partnership other than his private ownership of Cassandra. Nevertheless, the officials kept her for the better part of the day, questioning her about the contract, as well as pursuing further details of Mogurn's death. She bore it all with stoic patience. What choice did she have?

  By the end of the day, however, she learned that no action was contemplated against her for Mogurn's death. This came as a considerable relief, even if she'd seen no reason for them to question her actions in the first place. But it was clear that she had no chance of receiving her flight pay anytime soon. And that meant that she was going to have to try to find work, which meant a rigging assignment. When she saw Commander Gordache and asked if she would be allowed to fly, he shrugged and said, "You have to eat, don't you?"

  She sighed, glad that if nothing else, they recognized that fact. But how she was going to get work, and with whom, she didn't know. She thought about what Ar had told her, that he was looking for rigging partners. She liked Ar, certainly, despite his frustrating obtuseness last night. But would she be able to rig with someone, knowing that such a gulf in understanding existed between them? Would anyone else be more likely to believe her? Ar, at least, didn't question her sanity; she wasn't sure if the same would be true of others.

  She returned to her quarters, weary and discouraged. There was a message from Ar, asking if they might meet later. She didn't bother to reply, assuming that she would find him at dinner. He wasn't there, however, and she ate her evening meal in lonely solitude, staring at some of the other riggers and thinking, Would you believe me if I told you about dragons on the mountain route—real dragons? When they looked at her, she wondered, did they see anything but a renegade, a captain-killer? Thoughts of the pallisp drifted into her mind, and she chased them away angrily. She was starting to feel the old despair creep back into her thoughts.

  After dinner, she paced through the lounges, looking for Ar. When she didn't find him she decided to pay a visit to Ed the cyber-parrot. She found a vacant Environment Alpha I/O, donned the helmet, and entered the psychetronic space of the system.

  She was horrified to find that the environment selection menu had changed: the desert-mesa scenario was gone, supplanted by a methane tide-pool, and the rainforest had been replaced by an ocean sunset. Ed! she shrieked silently to the holographic image. What have you done with Ed! Trembling, she tore off the helmet and sat upright in her seat, enraged, glaring around the gloomy lounge. "You bastards—how could you change it?" she whispered. How could they? She stalked out of the lounge, looking for someone in charge.

  It took a while, but eventually she found a red-eyed young man working in a back office who considered her question with some puzzlement and said that, yes, the scenarios in Environment Alpha were replaced periodically for variety. It was just a matter of swapping data grains in and out of the control console. He wasn't really supposed to, he said, scratching at the scrawniest beard Jael had ever seen, but he guessed it would be all right to put the rainforest back in as long as no one else complained. "Thank you," Jael breathed, surprised by the intensity of her own feelings. She realized now that her reaction had been a little extreme.

  "The thing is, though—they're getting ready to take those machines out and replace them with new hardware, and all new data grains," the young man remarked, as he rummaged through a drawer, looking for the rainforest element. "So enjoy it while you can, because in a few days it really will be gone. Here it is." He grinned and held up a small nodule between thumb and forefinger. "I'll stick it in. By the time you're back in the system, it'll be up and running."

  Jael hurried back to the lounge and donned the I/O helmet again. As promised, the rainforest selection was once more on the menu. This time she materialized walking, or floating, along a footpath under a canopy of dense greenery. There were blossoms everywhere: in purples, oranges, yellows, whites, and pinks. She glimpsed, darting through the tree branches, several birds and one snake. She didn't see Ed.

  Gliding along the path, she spotted a pair of monkeylike creatures swinging from branch to branch, speeding through the forest. A long, bushy-tailed rodent peeked out of the underbrush and chittered up at her. It scratched at the ground, insistently, peering up hungrily. Peanuts or death! she imagined it threatening. With a frown, she checked her pockets and found an assortment of nuts. She tossed them toward the animal, which scrabbled about, gathering them up. Three more of the rodents dived out of adjoining bushes, and they began quarreling over the nuts. Jael walked on.

  The ground underfoot was springy. She stooped for a closer look and discovered that the path was carpeted by a thick, spongy moss. As she pressed her fingers into it, a small purple-blossomed plant near her hand drew away, leaves rustling nervously. "What's the matter?" she asked, instinctively reaching out to touch it. She stopped herself when the plant rustled again, and with a shrug she stood up. As she walked away, she heard a tiny sigh. Behind her, the plant was tiptoeing across the path. Noticing her glance, it scuttled quickly into the brush. There were some awfully curious beasts here, she decided.

  Moving on, she noticed a large cluster of leaves nestled in the center of a short broad-leafed plant. The cluster was shaped like a large blossom, the color of dark cinnamon. At her approach, it broke apart into a dozen fluttering insects. Startled, she stepped back. The insects took wing straight toward her, then swerved away. Flashing apart, they flew to a nearby tree and converged on a branch like a reversed holo of an explosion. Rising onto her tiptoes, Jael peered up at them. They looked just as they had before; like a dark, heavy flower.

  "Rawk! Bugs! Bugs!"

  Jael spun, looking for the source of the voice. She couldn't see him. "Ed! Is that you?"

  "Yawp!"

  "Where are you?"

  "Up here! Up here!"

  She craned her neck, twisting around. She saw a tree with slender branches minus leaves, but with a skirt of hairlike tendrils that looked like fine rootlets. The parrot was perched near the top of the tree, peering down at her. He fluttered his green and scarlet wings in greeting, "Ed! I was looking for you!"

  "Always here! Always here!" The bird cocked his head, surveying the land.

  "Come on down?"

  "Aarrwwk! Sure." Ed swooped. He landed with a dazzling flutter on a branch near Jael's hand. "Hi, Jayl!" he squawked.

  "What have you been up to?" She held out her hand to let him rub the side of his beak against her knuckles.

  "Rawk. Who, me?" He turned his head to look around.

  "No—your cousin Ned. Of course I mean you!"

  Ed opened his beak, as though considering what to say. His tongue twitched. He made a stuttering hiss, which might have been laughter. "But Ed not reel! You say Ed not reel! How can poor, not-reel Ed be up to any—"

  "Ed, stop that!" she scolded.

  He clacked his beak shut and gazed at her silently. "S-sorry."

  "Good." She took a breath. "Hey, let's be friends, okay? No smart remarks about what's real or not, at least between you and me. Okay? We're both real. Right?"

  Ed sneezed. "Arr-right!"

  "Good." She frowned, remembering suddenly what the attendant had told her—that Ed might not be around much longer. She shivered, trying to put the thought out of her mind.
She'd just made a friend; she didn't want to think about losing him. "Ed," she sighed, "half the time I don't even know what's real anymore. You know, with all of these worlds, and this stuff in here"—she waved a hand around the landscape, which was difficult to think of as an artifice—"sometimes it's hard to keep track."

  "Yawp. Ed knows."

  "Do you?" She squinted at the brilliantly colored bird, who was now preening himself. "Do you, Ed? Tell me something. Do you know about riggers?"

  Ed stopped preening. "You rigger," he stated.

  "Right. But do you know what we do? When we're working, I mean?"

  The bird seemed to squint at her, considering. "F-fly," he said hesitantly. "You fly. Yawp?"

  "That's right, we fly. But it's a little different from the way you, well . . ." She paused, trying to think how to explain it to Ed, who lived in a world that in certain ways resembled the Flux. He probably had no understanding of the difference between his reality and hers. But she could think of no way to explain it, so she changed the subject. "Anyway, I was talking to Ar yesterday—you remember Ar, don't you?"

  "Ar. Sure."

  "Well, we were talking about someone I met a while back, someone who was a terribly good friend to me while I was with him—"

  "Awk? Parrot?" Ed interrupted, stretching his neck.

  Jael laughed. "No—no, he wasn't a parrot. Actually he was a dragon."

  Ed cocked his head. "Graggon?"

  "Dragon. Sort of a great giant lizard, except that he flies, like you."

  "Arrwwk. Glizzard—yokk." Ed tilted his head this way and that, as though trying to picture it.

  Jael continued impatiently. "Yes, well anyway, the point is that I was telling Ar about this dragon, and Ar couldn't believe me when I told him that the dragon was real. It was as though I couldn't believe it when you told me that you were real."

  The parrot flexed his wings vigorously. "Ed reel!"

  "Yes, I know. I made a mistake before, when I said that you weren't. And that's what I'm trying to tell you. I'm sorry and I wish I hadn't said it. I understand now how you feel, because of the way Ar reacted when I told him about my dragon friend."

  Ed pushed his beak toward her and nuzzled it into the crook of her elbow. She murmured and gently stroked the top of his head. He suddenly hopped up onto her shoulder and began to nibble at her hair.

  Jael laughed self-consciously. She hadn't meant to bare her soul to the parrot. And now that she thought about it, was it even true, what she had said? She'd implied that Ed was real in the same way that Highwing was, and vice versa. But Highwing lived and breathed, in the world of the Flux. He was not a construct; he was objectively real. That was what she had struggled to convince Ar of. But what about Ed? He lived—and breathed, she supposed—here in this cyber-reality. He learned and changed—and thought, apparently. And hadn't Ar said that he was based on a real parrot?

  Ed stopped nuzzling her hair and announced, "Glizzards."

  Jael's heart almost stopped, as an image of flying dragons crossed her mind. An instant later, she realized that Ed wasn't talking about dragons. Perched on a boulder nearby, half shrouded by overhanging branches, were three bright green, ruby-throated lizards, each the size of her forearm. They appeared to be doing pushups, rising and sinking on their front legs as they breathed. "They're very pretty," she murmured. "A bit different from what I was talking about, though—different from the dragons."

  "Aww?" Ed rustled on her shoulder. "Ed would like—awwk!"

  "What, Ed?"

  "Like see graggons—dragons!"

  Jael turned her head until she was practically eyeball to eyeball with the parrot on her shoulder. "What's that?" She laughed. "You'd like to see dragons?"

  Ed squawked, deafening her. "Yep. Ed like see dragons." He twisted his head one way and then the other. "You take Ed? Go see dragons?"

  "Ah—" Her voice caught as she remembered what the young attendant had said.

  "Yes? Awww." He nuzzled his beak in her hair. "Ed like Jayl."

  "Well, I wish I could, Ed. I'd like to."

  "Yes? Yes?" The bird hopped about excitedly on her shoulder, then jumped to the nearest branch and began prancing in front of her. "Good! Good! Ed happy! Rawwwk!"

  "Ed, wait a minute!" She thought furiously, heart pounding. How could she explain her way out of this? "Ed, stop that a minute. Please!" The parrot became still, except for his darting eyes. Jael drew a breath and exhaled noisily. "Look, Ed. I said I'd like to take you with me to see the dragons. I didn't say I could do it."

  "What? No?" Ed's feathers ruffled, a blaze of scarlet and green, and slowly drooped. His eyes turned down.

  "I just don't know how, Ed. I don't even know if I can ever see the dragons again." Her throat tightened as she said that, as she thought of Highwing. She kept talking, more rapidly. "Even if I could—the thing is, Ed, I wouldn't know any way to take you along with me. You live here, in this world. And I can't take it with me." But even as she said that, she realized that, in principle, at least, what she'd said was untrue. This was a cyber-world and Ed a cyber-bird, and in theory there was no reason why it couldn't all be carried in a tiny software nodule that could be tied into the rigger-net. But she had no idea how, in practice, she could obtain a nodule containing Ed.

  She gazed at the parrot. With head bent and neck feathers askew, he looked about as dejected as a parrot could look. Her heart sank for him, and for herself. She'd certainly miss him. "Maybe there's a way," she murmured. "Maybe. I'm not sure. I'm not even sure when or if I'll be flying again. But if there's a way . . . if there's a way . . ."

  Ed's head came up a fraction of an inch.

  She sighed. "I'll see what I can do, okay? That's the best I can offer. Will you accept that?"

  Ed hopped back onto her shoulder and pecked affectionately at her hair. "Ed happy. Happy as can be," he said—not quite with the same joy as before, but with hope, at least, in his voice.

  "Good." She stroked the side of his head with a finger. "And now, old friend, I think perhaps I should see if I can find my other friend, Ar. Be here when I come back?"

  "R-r-right here! Right here! B-bye!" With a flash of color, Ed launched himself up into the thick tree cover.

  Jael waved, and then the rainforest dissolved around her.

  * * *

  She didn't have to look far to find Ar. He was sitting at a nearby station, playing with a screen-display game that flickered shifting colors onto his face. He looked up, crinkle-mouthed, as she approached. "Jael," he said.

  "Am I interrupting you?"

  He passed a hand over the display screen and it went dark. "I was just waiting for you. I thought you were probably—well, that maybe you'd rather not be interrupted." His luminous eyes met hers.

  She blinked. "It would have been okay. Actually I was looking for you earlier."

  "Oh? Do you have news?"

  "Me? No, not particularly. I just thought maybe—"

  "I have news," Ar said brightly. He gestured to the seat beside his.

  Startled, she sat. "What is it?"

  "That depends somewhat on whether you are free to take a rigging job. And whether you want to."

  Jael opened her mouth, dumbfounded.

  One corner of Ar's mouth went up; the other corner went down. "Does that mean that you are? That you do?"

  "Well, I—yes—I mean, of course, I'd have to apply for clearance." She stammered, only half sure of what she was saying, because she was trying to absorb all of the possible implications of his question. "There's that whole legal thing." Still, she remembered, Commander Gordache had implied that they'd allow her to work.

  "I understand," Ar said. "But if they're willing to let you go, there's an opening on a flight coming up, for a two-crew." He hesitated. "I know this is awfully quick. But would you be interested in rigging with me?"

  The rush of thoughts made her dizzy. "Yes—that is, I think so. Yes. But . . . Ar? There's one other thing I have to ask you." This was going to s
ound ridiculous, but she had to say it. "Do you remember Ed, the parrot? in the rainforest environment?" Ar's eyes glimmered as he nodded. "Well . . . Ed sort of asked to come along with me the next time I flew."

  Something funny happened in Ar's eyes. They brightened, then darkened. "He what?" The left corner of Ar's mouth formed a zigzag.

  "He, uh—he wants to see dragons, he said."

  "Dragons!"

  She raised a hand hastily. "Okay, okay, don't say it! I know. I told him I didn't know any way to do it. But I . . . well, I promised to try to find a way. And—I just found out that they're taking him out of the system soon. The whole rainforest. He's going to be—" she swallowed "—terminated."

  Ar made a soft wheezing sound, which might have been a laugh, or a sign of distress. "Ed? Dragons?"