The Iron Dragon's Daughter

by Michael Swanwick

  It would have been pleasant, if she hadn't felt so disconnected. Everything was dreamily distant, as if she were a ghost wandering a world whose importance to her she was rapidly forgetting. This couldn't go on. Something would have to break soon. Maybe tonight the Teind would arrive at last and put an end to this provisional, waiting sort of half-life. In the meantime, everything was so awful she just couldn't bring herself to care.

  Even when Ratsnickle came up behind her in the line at the lunch counter in the Student Center and mimed a big, sloppy kiss she merely shrugged and turned away. She had a glimpse of his face turning nasty when she did so, and knew this ought to worry her. Nothing she could have done was more calculated to enrage him.

  Still, what was she supposed to do? There came a point where it all became just more of the same.

  She carried her tray to a plastic table under a potted thorn tree and sat down. A shrike was fussing about in the thorny depths, hopping from twig to twig. There were four chairs about the table. Ratsnickle took the one directly opposite hers. She looked down at her salad. "You're not welcome here, you know."

  Ratsnickle plunged a fork into the greasy sausage on his plate and waved it in her face. "You're going to get sick eating all that green shit. You need to put some meat in your mouth." He bit off the end and, chewing open-mouthed, continued, "Tell you what. Why don't you join Monkey and me for a little midnight snack tonight? We'll put some meat on your bones. Get a little protein into you."

  Jane put her fork down. "If you can't—"

  Abruptly, Sirin slid into the chair at Jane's side. Without preamble she said, "I've got to explain to you about last night. Just so you don't get any wrong ideas."

  Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail today, and she wore just a touch of white lipstick and matching eye shadow. A black turtleneck sweater. On her it looked good.

  "I think I understand it well enough."

  Ratsnickle cleared his throat. "It's good to see you too, Sirin," he said loudly.

  "Lo, 'snickle." Her glance at him was so fleeting as to be almost nonexistent. "You don't know what it's like to have appetites that—well, maybe they're not exactly respectable. But they're mine. You can see that, can't you? They're a part of me—I can't deny them."

  Embarrassed, because Ratsnickle was hanging on their every word, Jane said, "You don't have to explain to me why you like Galiagante. Different folks like different things. I can appreciate that."

  "Like Galiagante!" Sirin loosed a silvery burst of astonished laughter. "Wherever did you get a notion like that? Galiagante has nothing to do with it."

  "It's not the individual so much as the Idea of the domineering male," Ratsnickle volunteered. "All those pheromones we put out."

  Sirin waved off his remark with a little flip of her hand. It was marvelous how Ratsnickle's barbs glanced off her. "I like the way he treats me. I like the way he makes me feel. If I could find somebody more convenient to do that for me, he'd be history. But you can bet the new guy wouldn't be any improvement on him. That kind of guy never is."

  "You won't know until you've tried me. Maybe I will."

  "Sirin, why are you telling me all this?" It was unimaginable to Jane being this open, telling one's secrets in front of everyone—in front of Ratsnickle!—as if it didn't matter at all what other people knew. As if they wouldn't take advantage of what they heard.

  "I had a dream. About my doom." Sirin's face was drawn and tense. "I dreamed that Galiagante. That he. Oh, I can't tell you how nasty it was. It woke me up and all I could think was: Not like that. Jane, you're always so sure of yourself, so strong."

  "I am?" Jane said, astonished. Ratsnickle's grin was lewd and calculating. She could almost see the gears turning.

  "I thought maybe you could move in with me for a few days. You know, just talking and hanging out and things. Just to make sure I don't do anything foolish." Sirin's voice sank. "I know it's not much of a plan."

  Stiffly, Jane said, "I told you. I feel bad for you and I wish I could help. But there's nothing I can do."

  "But I'm asking for so little."

  Just then Billy Bugaboo appeared behind the only empty chair that remained, tray in hand. "Is this seat taken?"

  "Oh, for—!" Jane stood. "Take it! Have my lunch! I don't care! What have I done to deserve you on top of everything else that's happening to me?"

  He stared at her, stricken. She fled the room.

  * * *

  That evening, rather than chance encountering anybody in the cafeteria or one of the usual student hangouts, Jane went out into the City and ate supper in a diner in Orgulous. She had meat loaf and mashed potatoes. A dwarf tried to hit on her and when she began shouting at him the management asked her to leave.

  The evening was soft and pleasant. The traffic sounds were muted and the air was almost warm. Jane strode along hunched into herself, hands deep in pockets, scowling. How long, she asked herself, how long?

  Jane had traveled to Orgulous by way of Senauden and on impulse hired a private car to the street. When she stepped into Bellegarde's lobby, she suddenly realized that, what with one thing and another, it was the first time she'd been there in months. She also realized that she'd left her elevator pass in her purse back in the room. "Shit!"

  It made no sense to waste good money on something she'd already paid for, so she took the back corridors into the service areas in search of a freight elevator. It wasn't permitted, but students used them all the time.

  Almost immediately, she became lost. A stairway drew her down into the basement and when she tried to retrace her steps she couldn't find it again. So she went on, through a series of ever-darkening storage rooms that smelled of turpentine, pitch, vinegar, and moldering books. She was just beginning to panic when she saw a green-painted steel door beside a coal bin. She stopped.

  For no reason she could name, an overwhelming intuition filled her that what she was looking for was right behind that door.

  She opened it.

  Great masses of black iron loomed in the darkness. She sniffed grease and oil in the air. The light of a single bare bulb glinted on an enormous construction of steel and malice, one that was as familiar to her as the back reaches of her own soul. It was No. 7332—Melanchthon.

  The dragon grinned.

  "Are you surprised to see me again, little changeling?" The heat of his derision was like a blast furnace opening in her face. The door dissolved in Jane's hand and the darkness about her intensified. In all the universe nothing existed save for the dragon and her. Melanchthon's cabin opened soundlessly. "Come in. We have a lot to talk about."

  There was nothing else to be done. Jane climbed in.

  The pilot's couch looked newer than she remembered it being. But when she sat down, it settled about her in a way that was intimately knowing. Soft lights gleamed from the instruments. Things crawled in the blackness at the corners of her eyes. Somewhere, a meryon screamed and was silenced.

  "You abandoned me," she said.

  "Now I'm back."

  Jane's hands clenched the armrests. One twist and the needles would slide into her wrists. The wraparounds would descend to plunge her into the dragon's sensorium. She did not twist the grips. "You're looking prosperous."

  As intended, this offended him. "You are as dull and slow-witted as ever," Melanchthon said scornfully. Deep within his thorax an engine roared to life. Its vibrations shook the cabin. "I have come to bring you death, blood, vengeance, and a small share in the greatest adventure since the first act of murder—and you offer me pleasantries."

  "Pleasantries are all we have to say to one another."

  "Talk all you want," the dragon said with furious impatience. "Taint as much air as you like with your stale and vapid words, words, words. But you and I have lived within one another. We have shared essences, and we can neither of us be free of the other ever in this lifetime." In the silence that ensued, Jane felt a sickening conviction that he was right.

  When the drag
on spoke again at last, he had mastered his passions. His tone was cool and dismissive. "How can you have lived so long and experienced so much without ever once asking yourself who was the author of your misfortunes?"

  "I know my enemy well enough. Down to the op codes I know him."

  "Me?" the dragon said mockingly. "I am at most a symptom. Was it me who created the world and involved you in it? Me who said you must live and love and lose and grow old and die? Who poisoned your every friendship and drove you away from those you most desired? Who said that you must learn only by making mistakes and that the lessons you learned must then do you no good? That was not I. You are caught in a pattern spun by a greater power than mine.

  "I know your enemy, for she is mine as well. Compared to my hatred for her, our enmity is like a candle held up to the sun. Understand me well: You are within my grasp, and it would give me great joy to play with you, even as a cat does with a captive vole. Yet I will let you walk free, for we have common cause. You also must set aside all lesser emotions. Focus on your true foe. Hate her with all your might. Fear her, even as do I."

  Jane had always thought that blood could not run cold, that those who said theirs had were employed in wordplay and metaphor. Now she knew better. "Who are you talking about?"

  Was it mere theatricality or something deeper, a savoring of his own blasphemy, that made Melanchthon hesitate? With quiet satisfaction, he said, "The Goddess."

  "No!"

  "Come now. You never suspected? Deep in the sleepless night you never saw that life itself is proof that the Goddess does not love you? That her regard is malevolent at best, and that your pain must surely amuse her, for what other purpose does it serve? You cannot shirk your doom. You have a small part to play in her destruction. You should feel proud."

  "You're mad," Jane whispered. "Nobody can destroy the Goddess."

  "Nobody has ever tried." Melanchthon's voice was smooth and plausible, the antithesis of madness. "Our time apart has not been wasted, I promise you. I have seized control of my own evolution and made myself mighty beyond the normal range of my kind. I have the destructive power, never doubt it. But there is no future for a renegade dragon, oath-broken and lordless. The skies are closed to me. I can either crawl forever about the roots and cellars of the world or enjoy one last fatal flight. I'll not catch the defenders of the Law napping again. Well, so be it. I will make a fourth flight through Hell Gate. I will assail Spiral Castle itself, and obliterate it, and drag the Goddess from its shattered ruins.

  "And by all that is unseely, I swear I'll kill the Bitch."

  "It's impossible," Jane said weakly.

  "You are still infested with hope. You think there is a life worth living somewhere, and that some combination of action, restraint, knowledge, and luck will save you, if only you can get the mix right. Well, I've got news for you. Right here, right now—this is as good as it gets."

  "Things will get better!"

  "Have they ever?" The dragon's contempt was palpable. The cabin hatch hissed open. "Go. Return to your dormitory room and enjoy your present. Come back when you've grown large enough to look upon futility without flinching. Come back when you've despaired and moved beyond despair to vengefulness. Come back when you've decided to stop lying to yourself."

  "What present?"

  The lights dimmed. Melanchthon did not speak.

  "Enjoy my present, you said. What present?"

  Nothing.

  "I've been through all this before. I'm not going to play any more of your stupid fucking mind games!"

  Silence.

  Jane struggled to fight down her anger, her fear, her outraged sense of impotence. It took some time. But finally, she climbed down out of the cabin, just as Melanchthon had desired.

  As usual, it was the only thing she could do.

  * * *

  Somehow she made it back home to Lady Habundia. As her hand touched the door, an icy spear of premonition pierced her. She hesitated, unable to turn the knob.

  This was silly. There was nothing inside—there couldn't be anything inside—any worse than what she had just faced in the cellars of Bellegarde. It was just Melanchthon, out of simple spite, twisting the knife. She threw open the door.

  Monkey and Ratsnickle lay dead on the floor.

  A small, inarticulate noise came out of Jane's throat. This was surely Melanchthon's idea of a joke. Or maybe it was just his grotesque version of what Galiagante had called an "earnest token," a courteously intended removal of two petty annoyances from her life.

  The lights were on. That's what made it so awful. If there had been a touch of shadow anywhere, her eyes might have fled thither and sought refuge in it. But in the cruel, flat lamplight, her vision was pinned. There was no looking away. There was no denying what lay before her.

  In death, Monkey's face had turned gray and Ratsnickle's a ghastly white with blue highlights. Their irises had dissolved completely, leaving behind featureless crescents under purple lids. Their mouths were slack and open. A moist trail of drool ran down Ratsnickle's chin and a single drop clung to its underside, maddeningly refusing to fall. It was as if time had come to a halt.

  The needle was still in Ratsnickle's arm. He must've shot up Monkey first and then turned away to inject himself, not seeing her slump back against the bed. Then, as the bane reached his heart, he had simply sagged to one side. His head pointed toward the door. Even in death, he leaned away from poor Monkey.

  Jane stood frozen in horror.

  In the distance a siren raised its voice. A second joined it and then a third. Soon all the City was a symphony of horns and alarms.

  The Teind had begun.

  — 18 —

  IT WAS THE WORST POSSIBLE THING SHE COULD HAVE DONE. On the mimeographed sheets that the University had distributed to all undergrads, the very first item, in big, sweet-smelling purple letters, had been 1. STAY IN YOUR ROOM.

  Jane knew that was good advice.

  But blind panic drove her out of her room, out of Habundia, out of Bellegarde altogether, and onto the street. She had no conscious say in it. One moment she was staring down at the two bodies on her floor and the next she was trembling, bewildered, in an unfamiliar part of town.

  A boar-headed fey shambled by, crying. His elbows pumped higher than his head, and tears ran down his curling tusks. He was paced by a dozen or so wolf-boys, jeering and laughing. A stick jabbed into his side, he stumbled, and then he was up and gone.

  There was the sound of breaking glass.

  She had to get back to Bellegarde! They'd be closing the riot gates at midnight. But if she could slip in before then, she might yet find refuge in Sirin's room or maybe Linnet's, high above ground level where the worst was sure to go down.

  The street turned and narrowed. Blind walls rose to either side, making of it a trough or chute. Down the block, a crowd of feys was dancing about a bonfire to the throb and boom of a ghetto box. Others had broken into a textile warehouse and were throwing bolts of muslin, calico, worsted poplin, and watered silk from five floors of windows. Unspooling, they showered down to the pavement. Grigs and dunters darted into the crash zone to drag material to the fire.

  Jane drew back, but suddenly the street behind her filled with grotesques, chanting

  "Vervaine, Johnswort, Cinquefoil, Hate,

  Burn the Cit-y, Smash the State!"

  They were playing bells and horns and waving advertising banners back and forth over their bobbing heads. Lanterns hung from high poles. Bat-eared, antlered, and stork-legged, they looked like nothing so much as carnival revelers.

  "Burn the Cit-y,

  Smash the State!"

  Too fearful to run, Jane was overtaken by the mob, swept up, and carried along. Abruptly she was one of them, not their target but safe within their merry number, cushioned and upheld by the crush of bodies. Everyone was laughing and red-faced and ugly. A red dwarf handed her a can of beer. To calm herself, she popped it open and drank deeply. It was so cold it stung
her tongue.

  "Burn the Cit-y,

  Smash the State!"

  A strange, electric mix of fear and excitement filled her. The mob came to the bonfire. The two groups merged and eddied.

  "Having fun?"

  Jane whirled, astounded. "Linnet! What are you doing here?"

  Her classmate shrugged. "Same thing you are—enjoying myself."

  "Linnet, we've got to get back to the dorm. Do you have any idea how far away it is? If it's not too distant, we can still make it to Habundia before they lock it up."

  "Fuck that shit!" Linnet hugged herself fiercely, bony shoulders standing up like a second pair of wings. "I'm not giving this up to sit in my room and stare at the wall. Crack a book. Maybe get out the electric coil and brew some camomile tea. Habundia is a million light-years away. Don't you understand? Tonight, nothing is forbidden. You want something—take it! You like somebody—go ahead and do it! You can sit on the curb and eat your own boogers for all the world to see, if that's what turns you on. Nobody's going to stop you. Nobody's keeping score."

  She stuck a battered hemp cigarette in her mouth and snapped her fingers beneath it. A spark, a flame, a puff of smoke. She didn't offer to share. The gleeful light of abandon in her face was so intense that Jane ducked her head in embarrassment.

  With a roar the crowd surged forward again. Jane was shoved to one side and then the other. She had to trot to keep from falling. "Where are we going?" she cried.

  "Who cares?!"

  They sped by a row of shops. Plate glass windows shattered in their wake. Scattered individuals darted in to snatch up a purse or a handful of cuff links, but the mob as a whole did not slacken pace. The sound of exploding glass went on and on. "This is awful!" Jane shouted.

  "This is nothing." Linnet's eyes were incandescent. Her grin was so wide it had to hurt. "Just wait."

  The mob contracted. Shoulders, elbows, and bony chins pushed against Jane from all sides, threatening to crack her ribs. Bodies shifted. Like a grapefruit seed squeezed between thumb and forefinger, Linnet was squirted out of sight.