by Rick Cook
Shit! Jerry thought, right where we started. "The Paladin? Okay, thanks, Dr. Haverford. We’ll get in touch with him right away and set up a meeting with your folks later. Thanks again."
"We gotta do something nice for that company," Jerry said as he handed the phone back to the scalper.
"What now?" Bal-Simba asked. "I believe you told me that everyone is at the show all day and unreachable at their lodgings until evening."
"Most people are," Jerry corrected. "But it’s barely ten. If I know Taj he’s still asleep, especially after a relativistic Tetris tournament. So let’s pick up the truck, head for the Paladin and set up a meet."
"Why not call him from here?"
"Because," Jerry said grimly. "If he doesn’t agree to meet us, we’re going to waylay him in the lobby and kidnap him. I don’t want to take a chance on waking him up and letting him get away before we get there."
It took nearly fifteen rings for someone to answer the phone in the Bizarreware suite at the Paladin. All the while Jerry fidgeted and Bal-Simba merely waited.
"Hello," came a muzzy voice at the other end of the line.
"Is Taj there?’
"This is Taj. Whaddya want?"
"My name is Jerry Andrews, jerry thekeep.org, and I’ve got to see you right away."
"Hey, it’s not even noon yet."
"I know, but this is important."
Taj’s voice hardened. "And you’ll only take five minutes of my time, right?"
"Actually," Jerry said, "it’ll probably take a couple of weeks of your time, but you’ll hate yourself if you don’t meet me."
The voice sighed. "Well, that’s original anyway. Okay, I’ll tell you what. Let me get a shower and some breakfast and I’ll meet you in the lobby, by the bird cage, say, in an hour. Okay?"
"Fine. We’ll be there."
THIRTEEN
MAKING A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL
"It has been longer than an hour, has it not?" Bal-Simba asked nearly two hours later.
"Yeah, but don’t worry. If he said he was coming, he’s coming. Probably. It’s just that time doesn’t mean the same thing to him it does to you or me." Bal-Simba nodded. "Elven blood." Jerry didn’t have a chance to respond before someone called out "Mr. Andrews?" and Jerry turned to see the object of their quest.
Seeing him once again Jerry appreciated how he got the nickname Tajmanian Devil."
E.T. Tajikawa was rather over six feet tall and loose-limbed without being gangly. But it was the face that got you. It was thin, with an unusually aquiline nose, high cheekbones, narrow lips and topped by a pronounced widow’s peak of black hair. The only thing that kept him from looking positively satanic was the perpetual expression of bemused interest. "Jerry; please. And this is Bal-Simba." "Cool." Taj shook hands. "Now what’s this big deal?" "Come on out back Part of the problems in a truck." "What are you guys gonna do, kidnap me?"
"Only if we must," Bal-Simba said mildly. "No, no," Jerry put in hastily.
"Nothing like that, but there’s something out there you gotta see." Taj eyed them suspiciously. "Prototype hardware?" "Kinda. Ah, look, have you heard anything about a dragon at the show?"
"Is that you? I’ll say! You guys are causing more of a stir than anything on the show floor. Even Intel’s pre-announcement leak of the Octium-and-a-half."
"Octium-and-a-half?" Jerry asked as he held the door open for Taj.
"It’s a P8 with a couple of extra ALUs, a bigger look ahead cache and another pipeline. Even in simulation the original was a slug, barely 300 MIPS. Anyway," Taj went on without a break, "there are stories about that dragon all over the show. There’s also a bidding war going on for the video game rights. If you guys don’t have an agent:"
"Right now we’ve got bigger problems," Jerry said.
All through this Bal-Simba had been behind Tajikawa, studying his ears closely for signs of points.
"What’s with him?"
"He thinks you’re an elf."
Taj looked over his shoulder at the wizard. "I’ve got some friends who are Radical Faeries. Does that count?"
When they got to the truck, Jerry rolled up the back and Fluffy’s head jerked erect.
"My God!" Tajikawa said.
"Get on in. We don’t want too many people to see this." He and Bal-Simba followed the Tajmanian Devil into the truck and rolled down the back behind them.
By that time Taj was already examining the dragon. "Someone did a hell of a job on this skin," he said. Then he reached out and grabbed Fluffy’s foreleg just above the joint and kneaded the flesh experimentally. The dragon drew back its head and hissed, giving Taj a faceful of sulfurous breath and a close look at a dragon’s dental equipment.
Taj didn’t so much jump back as levitate retrograde. "My God!" he yelped. "It’s real!"
"I’m sorry, My Lord," Moira said contritely. "I am not always the master of this body’s reflexes."
"But you’re a real dragon!"
"Actually," Moira said sadly, "I am a witch, trapped in a dragon’s body."
"That’s part of the problem," Jerry said. "But only part of it."
"So? Don’t you need a wizard or something to handle this, not a programmer." Jerry jerked his head at Bal-Simba. "Actually he’s a wizard. But where we’re from a programmer is also a wizard. That’s part of the problem as well." Taj cocked his head and Jerry congratulated himself. The trick had always been to get Tajikawa to buy into the deal once they found him. So far that part was going nicely.
"I know you’ve been up to something," Taj said. "There are all kinds of rumors about you and Wiz Zumwalt flying around the net." He looked behind Jerry at the twenty-foot dragon. "But I guess the rumors didn’t have the half of it."
"We’ve got a really weird problem."
Taj looked at the dragon again. "I’ll bet."
"No, I mean really weird. And we need help."
"No kidding?" Taj sounded intrigued. "Tell me about it."
"It’s so weird I can’t even describe it to you. You’ve got to experience it."
"No kidding," Taj said again.
Jerry tried to keep a poker face but he was smiling inside. Gotcha! Blue eyes crying in the rain:
Michael Francis Xavier Gilligan concentrated on the way the neon lights reflected off the ice in his highball. It hadn’t been raining when they had parted, but Karin’s blue eyes had been full of tears. So had Gilligan’s. A smattering of computer chatter drifted over from the group in suits at the next table. That was the other thing. The whole damn town was full of computer types.
Lines were terrible, traffic was more than normally awful, there were no rental cars to be had and hotel rooms were at a premium.
It was too damn early to be drinking, he knew, but what the hell else was there to do in this place? What I get for volunteering to come in a week early, he thought sourly.
Gilligan was in Las Vegas on business as well. Next week, after the computer show ended, was the Western Air Show. The aerospace company he joined after leaving the Air Force had needed someone to come in early and get things set and ready. It seemed like a good idea at the time. An extra week in sunny, exciting Las Vegas at company expense plus an opportunity to visit some of his old Air Force buddies stationed at Nellis.
It hadn’t worked out that way. Not only was the town jammed, but it wasn’t as exciting as he remembered from his last tour here. Half the people he had known at Nellis were gone, assigned to other bases scattered halfway around the world. But worse than that was the gulf that had opened between him and the other pilots. Oh, they still liked him well enough, but he didn’t strap his ass into a high-performance jet every day and let it hang out. He wasn’t a member of the fraternity any more and that left an awkward hole in the relationship. After a couple of painfully clumsy visits, Gilligan had begun avoiding the base and his old friends.
Blue eyes cryin in the rain:
That left him nothing to do but drink, and brood Las Vegas was a great town for doing both, he wa
s discovering.
He hadn’t been much of either a drinker or a brooder before, not even when his marriage broke up. But then he’d drawn a mission out over the Bering Sea, come out on the short end of a dogfight with a dragon and met Karin. He couldn’t stay in mat world, but he had promised to return as soon as his tour in the Air Force was finished. The programmer/magicians there had even given him a phone number he could use to call them when he was ready.
Well, he got ready. Then the number hadn’t worked! When he tried to use it he got a visit from a couple of very serious FBI agents who questioned him about possible involvement in telephone fraud.
So here he was, left with nothing but memories. Nothing to do but remember, and drink. God, he hated himself when he got maudlin like this.
Blue eyes cryin’ in the rain:
The security guard wasn’t looking for dragons. In fact he was checking for people sleeping in their cars in the parking lot.
With hotel rooms completely unavailable it wasn’t unknown for Comdex-goers to live out of their cars. Cars were fairly easy to spot on regular rounds, as were motorhomes. Vans were special objects of attention.
As the guard came closer he heard several voices coming from the back of the rental truck. So naturally he jumped to the obvious, and wrong, conclusion.
"Hotel security. Open up in there."
He yanked the back of the truck up and was promptly trampled by a panicked dragon.
"Ah, Mick."
Gilligan looked up from the remains of his drink to see Ivan Kuznetsov standing at his table. He didn’t really feel like company, but he waved the Russian to a seat anyway.
Kuznetsov was a bit of a character. According to rumor he had defected from the Soviet Union a couple of years before it fell apart. Now he was using his connections in both the former Soviet republics and the West to put together aviation-related "deals" of much import but vague content Their paths crossed repeatedly on the air show circuit and Mick had found him a more congenial drinking partner than most of the executives he met.
"You have an interest in dragons, yes?" Gilligan nodded, vaguely recalling a drunken conversation one night in Brussels.
"Then you might want to look out front. Police are chasing a dragon around the building."
Jerry, Taj, Bal-Simba and the dragon had ducked through the first open door they could find. Unfortunately that led right into the main casino.
"Oh, shit," Jerry breathed. "Just act natural and head out the other side." As casually as they could, the three men and the dragon strolled across the casino floor. The slot players paid no attention, of course, but the guards started grabbing for their radios and moving toward them.
The magic field that kept Fluffy alive had some rather interesting effects on the laws of probability. The dragon waddled through the casino leaving a string of jackpots in his wake. In fact every slot machine he passed suddenly started paying off.
The effect was as instantaneous and predictable as gravity. The machines were mobbed by slot players determined to cash in on the sudden bounty. Since in Las Vegas "monomaniacal slot player" is a redundancy, not one of the converging crowd was willing to let a little thing like a dozen cops stand between them and riches.
The leading guard nearly fell over a tiny blue-haired woman in pink shorts who was making for a dollar slot still pouring out coins. She didn’t even look as she elbowed him expertly and sidestepped his falling body to beat out a Chinese man for the machine by perhaps one pace.
The guards behind fared even worse as the crowd congealed, blindly determined to reach those machines.
The police weren’t so much thrown back by the determined gamblers as they simply bounced off the writhing mass of humanity. One officer shouted into his walkie-talkie, trying to make himself heard above the din of the suddenly bountiful slot machines.
Never ones to question the dictates of fortune, Jerry, Bal-Simba, Taj and Moira made for a side door. They had barely turned the corner when they found themselves face-to-face with a wall of casino security guards, all looking very determined.
"Stand aside," commanded the guard in the lead and the phalanx swung around them without a second glance, intent on reaching the chaos on the casino floor. Jerry looked at Bal-Simba and Taj and shrugged. Then the four bolted out the door and dashed for their truck. In the distance the sirens were getting louder. Moira and her companions had barely gotten out the door when a mob of police erupted around the corner. The group did a fast 180 and ran the other way, cut off from the truck in the parking lot.
"Hey! Over here," a voice called as they rounded the corner ahead of their pursuers.
Jerry saw a man holding a side door open and beckoning them.
What the heck? Any port in a storm. The group made a mad dash for the door and Fluffy’s tail disappeared through it just as the first police were coming around the corner.
"Quick, this way," Gilligan said to the oddly assorted group. He led them down a corridor and stopped at one of the hotel’s freight elevators. Taking a key from his pocket he used it to summon the elevator. As soon as the door opened he piled them all in.
"We’re setting up exhibits on the third floor and I tipped a little extra for my own key," he explained to the others. "Once we get there we u make for the passenger elevators. You can hide in my room for a while."
There were several workmen in the exhibition area, preparing for the next show. They stared incuriously at the four men and the dragon who emerged from the freight elevator and headed down the hall.
With most of the rooms taken by show attendees and almost all of them at the show, the hotel corridors and elevators were deserted. It took two cars to get the parry up to the twentieth floor where Mick’s room was, but they met no one on the way.
Thanks," Jerry panted as soon as they were inside and the door was locked. "But why: ?"
"Let’s say I have an interest in dragons," Gilligan told him. "And the people who associate with them."
"Hey, Mick, open up," came a Slavic-accented voice. The others started, but Gilligan motioned them to be calm and opened the door. There, in addition to Kuznetsov, was his friend and business associate, Vasily.
"How’d you know where to find us?"
"You are not very good at this game," Kuznetsov told him. "Too predictable."
"Great," Gilligan muttered
"You had better think of something fast," the Russian added. "They are already starting to search the hotel."
Gilligan looked around "I don’t suppose that dragon can fly?"
Too young," Jerry said.
Before Gilligan could think of anything else there was another knock on the door. "Hotel security," a voice called. "Open up, please."
Like most Las Vegas hotel rooms the bathroom and dressing area were next to the door, forming a short corridor and shielding the beds from direct view of the door. While everyone else crowded around the corner, Gilligan pulled his shut from his pants, kicked off his shoes and went to the door, rumpling his hair as he went
"Yes?" he said trying to sound sleepy, as he opened the door a crack There was a man in a hotel blazer and two armed guards on the other side.
"I’m Mr. Masterson, the assistant manager," the man in the blazer said. "Have you seen anything, ah, unusual in the last few minutes?
"I’ve been asleep."
"Yes sir. Do you mind if we come in and check things out? Just as a precaution you understand."
"What’s wrong?"
"Please open the door, sir," one of the guards said firmly.
"Who is it, honey?" came a sleepy female voice from inside the room. An amazing voice, oozing sex and promise.
"Ah, it’s the hotel," Gilligan said, managing to keep his wits about him.
"Oh, what do they want?" Now there was a note of sultry disappointment. "Can’t you get rid of them and come back to bed?"
Gilligan looked at the manager and shrugged. "This is really inconvenient, you know. My wife, she’s just joined me, and:"<
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"Oh come on, honey," came the steam-heated voice. "Just tell them to go away." The manager, who didn’t believe this stuff about a dragon anyway, jerked his head. "Sorry to disturb you, sir. If you see anything please call the desk." The guard glowered, but moved back from the door.
"Sure, sure," Gilligan said as he shut the door. Then he leaned against it and let out a deep, heart-felt sigh.
"Okay people, they’re gone."
"Thank you for rescuing us, My Lord," the dragon said in an everyday version of the voice that had gotten rid of the searchers.
"Uh, you’re quite welcome," Gilligan said. A talking dragon, he thought numbly, a talking dragon with a voice made for phone sex. Of course.
The dragon’s eyelids dipped demurely. "I did not think they would be so base as to disturb a couple intimately engaged."
"Ah, right," was all Gilligan could manage. "By the way, I’m Mick Gilligan." He looked closely at Jerry. "I think we met once before, just briefly. Ah, someplace else."
Jerry looked at him and his mouth dropped open. The fighter pilot! Right, I remember you."
"And I am Ivan Kuznetsov."
From somewhere Gilligan remembered that "Kuznetsov" meant "Smith," so the Russian’s name translated as "John Smith"-a fact which reinforced Gilligan’s speculations about the man’s background. Jerry didn’t seem to notice. He shook the man’s hand vigorously. "Pleased to meet you."
The other Russian was older and leaner, with the leathery skin of someone who had spent most of his life outdoors and the studied, unobtrusive manner of someone who preferred not to be noticed. For some reason he reminded Gilligan of the instructors at Air Force survival school.
"This is Vasily Gregorivich, my associate."
Jerry put out his hand. "Pleased to meet you Mr. Gregorivich."
"Vasily," the man corrected, taking it.
"Gregor is his father’s name, so Gregorivich is his patronymic," Kuznetsov explained. Gilligan realized he had never heard Vasily’s last name. He wondered what it was, but Vasily didn’t seem inclined to volunteer the information and besides, he suspected it would probably turn out to be the Russian equivalent of