A Dragon-Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic

by Margaret Weis

  I turned and hurried along the path. If they’d seen me throw they’d have had time to dodge. It was an old schoolboy trick, but it worked.

  The implications, though, were sobering. If Rhiang felt this way, my new job might not last long.

  I was bagging berries in the cavernous Paramount Lair when the warning buzzer in my pocket went off. A Dragon was coming in. I still had time, but not much. I decided to finish this particular bag rather than abandon the bagging-pistol. The last bit of fluid sprayed over the heap of berries and began to congeal instantly, its tremendously high surface tension drawing it around the irregular pile and sealing perfectly. I holstered the gun, leaving the bag for later. I turned—

  A slow flapping boom. Outside, a wrinkled brown wall.

  Well, I’d fooled around long enough—now I dived for safety. The Dragon’s Lair was carpeted with a thick collection of nesting materials. None were very pleasant to burrow through, but I didn’t have any choice. Behind me I could hear the Dragon moving around; if I didn’t move out of his way in a hurry I might get stepped on. The emergency chute on my back tangled in a branch, just as the stench in the Lair intensified. I hurried out of it and went on. I’d just have to be sure not to fall from any great heights. I didn’t worry about it, because my skimmer was parked on the ledge just outside the Lair.

  I stuck my head up through the nest to judge my position. The bulk of the Dragon was silhouetted against the glare of the sky, which was clear of fog today. The beast seemed to be preening itself. That was something I never thought they did outside of the mating season—which was six months away.

  I scrambled backward into the nest. The buzzer in my pocket went off again, though it was supposed to signal just once, for ten seconds. I figured the thing must have broken. It quieted and I moved on, thinking. For one thing, the Dragon that occupied this Lair was supposed to have been far from home right now—which meant that my guest didn’t really belong here. Dragons never used the wrong Lair unless it was the mating season.

  I frowned. Why did that keep coming up?

  Suddenly there was a rush of wind and a low, thrumming sound. The light from outside was cut off. I poked my head into the open.

  Another Dragon was lumbering into the Lair. This was really impossible. Two Dragons sharing a Lair—and the wrong one at that! Whatever their reasons for being here, I was sure they were going to start fighting pretty soon, so I burrowed deeper, moving toward the nearest wall.

  My elbow caught on something. Cloth. I brushed it away, then looked again. A Dragonrobber uniform like my own. It was directly beneath me, half-buried in the nesting material. I caught my breath, then poked at the uniform. Something glittered near one empty sleeve: an identification bracelet. I picked it up, shifted it in the light, and read the name on it: Lorn Kramer.

  Lorn Kramer! So he had been in Leopold’s group after all. But that still didn’t explain why he’d left his clothes here.

  I tugged at the uniform, dragging it toward me. It was limp, but tangled in the nest. I jerked harder and some long, pale things rattled out of the sleeve.

  Bones.

  I winced. I was suddenly aware that my present situation must be somewhat like the one that had brought him here.

  I looked into the Lair again. One of the Dragons was prodding its snout at the other, making low, whuffling sounds. It didn’t look like a hostile gesture to me. In fact, it looked like they were playing. The other Dragon wheeled about and headed for the entrance. The first one followed, and in a minute both of them had left the Lair again—as abruptly and inexplicably as they had entered it.

  I saw my chance. I ran across the Lair, grabbed my skimmer, and took off. I moved out, pedaling furiously away from the Dragons, and glanced down.

  For a minute I thought I was seeing things. The landscape below me was blurred, though the day had been clear and crisp when I’d flown into the Lair. I blinked. It didn’t go away, but got clearer. There was a cloud of yellowish dust spreading high above the forest, billowing up and around the Lairs I could see. Where had it come from?

  I sneezed, passing through a high plume of the dust. Then my eyes began to sting and I sneezed again. I brought the skimmer out of the cloud, but by this time my vision was distorted with tears. I began to cough and choke all at once, until the skimmer faltered as I fought to stay in control, my eyes streaming.

  I knew what that dust was.

  Nothing affected me as fiercely as puffbush pollen: it was the only thing I was really allergic to.

  I stopped pedaling.

  It affected Dragons, too. It set off their mating urges.

  But where was the damned stuff coming from? It was six months out of season. I started pedaling again, legs straining. I turned to get a better view.

  A flash of light needled past my head, and I knew. Three skimmers shot into view from around the spire of Paramount Lair. The tip of one of my wings was seared away by a blaser. My skimmer lurched wildly, but I held on and brought it up just as the fist skimmer came toward me. Its pilot was wearing a filtermask. Attached to the skimmer were some empty bags that must have held the puffbush pollen. But what I was looking at was the guy’s blaser. It was aimed at me.

  I reeled into an updraft, pulling over my attacker, grabbing for my own blaser. The skimmer soared beneath me, then careened into a sharp turn. It was too sharp. The guy turned straight into the path of his companion. The two skimmers crashed together with a satisfying sound, then the scattered parts and pilots fell slowly toward the tree-tops. Seconds later, the forest swallowed them up.

  I looked for the third man, just as he came up beside me. The bastard was grinning, and I recognized that grin. It was Kwalan Rhiang’s.

  He nodded once, affably, and before I could remember to use my blaser, Rhiang took a single, precise shot at the chainguard of my skimmer. The pedals rolled uselessly. I was out of control. Rhiang lifted away and cruised out of sight, leaving me flailing at the air in a ruined skimmer.

  I had exactly one chance, and this was to get back to the Lair I’d just abandoned. I was slightly higher than the opening, so I glided in, backpedaled for the drop—and crashed straight into the wall, thanks to my ruined pedals. But I made it in alive, still able to stand up and brush the dirt from my uniform. I stood at the mouth of the Lair, staring out over the forest, considering the long climb that lay below me.

  And just then the Dragons returned.

  Not one, this time—not even two. Five shadows wheeled overhead; five huge beasts headed toward the Lair where I was standing. And finally, five Dragons dropped right on top of me.

  I leaped back just in time, scrambling into the blue shadows as the first Dragon thumped to the ledge. It waddled inside, reeking. I moved back farther. Its four friends were right behind. I kept moving back.

  Well, at least now I knew why they were doing this. Kwalan Rhiang had been setting off their mating urges by dusting the Dragons with puffbush pollen, messing up their whole life cycle, fooling with their already nasty tempers. It made sense. Anything less subtle might have gotten Rhiang into a lot of trouble. As it was, he’d doubtless fly safely home, waiting for Leopold’s Dragons to kill off Leopold’s men.

  Out in the cavernous Lair, the Dragons began to move around, prodding at each other like scramblemice, hooting their airy courting sounds. The ground shook with their movement. Two seemed to be females, which suggested that I might look forward to some fighting between the other three. Great.

  I fumbled at my pockets for something that might be of help. My warning buzzer had shattered in my rough landing; I threw it away. I still had my bagging-gun, but it wouldn’t do me a lot of good. My blaser seemed okay. I unholstered it and began to move along the wall. If I went carefully, I might be able to get onto the outer ledge.

  Two of the males were fighting now, lunging, the sounds of their efforts thundering around me. I made a short run and gained a bit of ground. One of the Dragons retreated from the battle—apparently the loser. I groan
ed. He had moved directly into my path.

  A huge tail pounded at the ground near me and a female started backing my way, not looking at me. There was no place to go. And I was getting tired of this. I decided to warn her off. I made a quick shot at her back, nipping her in the hydrogen dome. She squawked and shuffled away, confused. I went on.

  I stopped. There was a hissing sound behind me. Turning, I could see nothing but the Dragon I’d just shot. She didn’t appear to be making the sound, but it was coming from her direction. I peered closer, through the blue gloom, and then saw where the noise was coming from.

  Her hydrogen dome was deflating.

  I nearly laughed aloud. Here was the answer to my problem. I could deflate the Dragons, leaving them stranded, unable to fly, while I climbed down this spire without fear of pursuit. I lifted my blaser and aimed at the male nearest the rear of the Lair. A near miss, then a hit. Hydrogen hissed out of his dome as well. Then I got the second female, and another male who was directly across from me.

  One Dragon to go. The others were roaring and waddling. The Lair was full of the hissing sound.

  I turned to my last opponent. He wasn’t looking my way, but he was blocking my exit. I moved in closer and lifted my blaser.

  Then he saw me.

  I flung myself aside just as he bellowed and pounded forward, filling the entrance to the Lair, blocking out the sunlight. I rolled into the thorny nest. I fired once, hitting him in the snout. He swung his head toward me, pushing me around toward the outer ledge, bellowing. I fired again, and once more missed his hydrogen dome. I made a dash around his rump just as he spun my way, tail lashing against me. His dark little eyes narrowed as he sighted me, and his throat began to ripple.

  My time was up. He was about to blast me with his throat flame.

  The Dragon opened his mouth, belched hydrogen, and ignited it by striking a spark from his molars—

  That was the wrong thing to do.

  I saw it coming and ducked.

  The cavern shuddered and blew up. The orange explosion rumbled out, catching the Dragons in a huge rolling flame. I buried myself in the nesting strands and grabbed onto the lashing tail of my attacker. Terrified by the blast, he took off. My eyebrows were singed, my wrists burned.

  The world spun beneath me. A tendril of smoke drifted into view just below, mingled with flaming bits of nesting material and the leathery hide of Dragons. Then my view spun again and I was looking at the sky. It gradually dawned on me that I was clinging to a Dragon’s tail.

  It occurred to the Dragon at the same time. I saw his head swing toward me, snapping angrily. His belly was flashing purple. Every now and then he let out a tongue of flame, but he couldn’t quite get at me. Meanwhile, I held on for my life.

  The Dragon flew on, but my weight seemed to be too much for it. We were dropping slowly toward the trees, as easily as if I’d punctured his bony dome with my blaser. But it would be a rough landing. And I’d have to deal with the Dragon afterward.

  I spied something rising from the trees below us. It shot swiftly into the air after a high-flying bulletbird, its transparent sheet rippling beneath its blimplike body. It was a huge snagger—as big as my own skimmer. I kicked on the Dragon’s tail, dragging it sideways. The Dragon lurched and spun and then we were directly over the snagger.

  I let go of the tail and dropped, my eyes closed.

  In a second, something soft rumpled beneath me. I had landed safely atop the snagger. I opened my eyes as the Dragon—having lost my weight—shot suddenly upward. I watched it glide away, then looked down at the snagger, my savior. I patted its wide, rubbery body. My weight was pushing it slowly down, as if I were riding the balloons in the Angis Tavern. I looked forward to a comfortable trip to the ground.

  “I like your style, kid.”

  I jumped, nearly losing my place on the snagger. The voice had come out of midair. Literally.

  “You,” I said. No more was necessary. He was banking around behind me.

  Kwalan Rhiang had returned in his skimmer. He circled easily about me as I fell toward the treetops. He came in close, smiling, his huge legs pedaling him on a gentle course. I had to turn my head to keep an eye on him.

  “I said before I’d top what Leopold was paying you,” he shouted, his thick voice cutting the high air. “After today, I think I’d pay double. I could use someone like you.”

  I felt my face harden. “You bastard. You’re responsible for what just happened. Why would I work for someone who’s tried to kill me?”

  He shrugged. “Gave you a chance to prove yourself. Come on, you’re wasting your time with Leopold.”

  “And you’re wasting your time with me.”

  He shrugged again, utterly sure of himself. “As you wish. I gave you a chance.”

  I nodded. “Now just go away.”

  “And leave you to tell Leopold about all this? You don’t think I’m going to let you back alive, do you?”

  I froze. Rhiang slid a blaser from its holster at his waist and aimed it at my head. His grin widened. The muzzle dropped a fraction, and I breathed a little easier.

  “No,” he said distantly, “why kill you straight off? Slow deaths are more interesting, I think. And harder to trace.”

  He aimed at the snagger. If he punctured it I’d drop into the trees. It was a long fall. I wouldn’t make it.

  I growled and grabbed for the gun at my waist, bringing it up before Rhiang could move. He stared at me for a moment, then started laughing. I looked at what I was holding.

  “What’re you going to do with that?” he said. “Bag me?”

  It was my bagging-pistol, all right. I’d dropped the blaser back in the Lair. But it would still serve a purpose.

  “Exactly,” I said, and fired.

  The gray fluid squirted across the narrow gap between us, sealing instantly over Rhiang’s hands. He fired the blaser but succeeded only in melting the bag enough to let the weapon break away. It fell out of sight.

  His eyes were wide. He was considering death by suffocation.

  “No,” he choked.

  But I didn’t fire at his head. I put the next bag right over his feet, sealing the pedal mechanism tight. His legs jerked convulsively. They slowed. Rhiang began to whimper, and then he was out of control. His skimmer turned and glided away as he hurried to catch any updraft he could. He vanished behind Paramount Lair, and was gone.

  I turned back to observe the treetops. Rhiang might be back, but I doubted it. First he’d have a long walk ahead of him, over unpleasant terrain, back to his base…if he could maneuver his skimmer well enough to land in the treetops, and make the long, painful climb down.

  But I didn’t worry about it. I watched the thorntrees rise about me, and presently the snagger brought me gently to the ground. I dismounted, leaving the snagger to bob back into the air, and began to walk gingerly across the inhospitable ground, avoiding the spines. A daggerbush snapped at me. I danced away. It was going to be a rough walk out. Somewhere behind me, Rhiang might be facing the same problem. And he wanted me dead.

  But I didn’t have as far to go.

  A PLAGUE OF BUTTERFLIES

  Orson Scott Card

  The butterflies awoke him. Amasa felt them before he saw them, the faint pressure of hundreds of half-dozens of feet, weighting his rough wool sheet so that he dreamed of a shower of warm snow. Then he opened his eyes and there they were, in the shaft of sunlight like a hundred stained-glass windows, on the floor like a carpet woven by an inspired lunatic, delicately in the air like leaves falling upward in a wind.

  At last, he said silently.

  He watched them awhile, then gently lifted his covers. The butterflies arose with the blanket. Carefully he swung his feet to the floor; they eddied away from his footfall, then swarmed back to cover him. He waded through them like the shallow water on the edge of the sea, endlessly charging and then retreating quickly. He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day. You have come to me at last
, he said, and then he shuddered, for this was the change in his life that he had waited for, and now he wasn’t sure he wanted it after all.

  They swarmed around him all morning as he prepared for his journey. His last journey, he knew, the last of many. He had begun his life in wealth, on the verge of power, in Sennabris, the greatest of the oil-burning cities of the coast. He had grown up watching the vast ships slide into and out of the quays to void their bowels into the sink of the city. When his first journey began, he did not follow the tankers out to sea. Instead, he took what seemed the cleaner way, inland.

  He lived in splendor in the hanging city of Besara on the cliffs of Carmel; he worked for a time as a governor in Kafr Katnei on the plain of Esdraelon until the Megiddo War; he built the Ladder of Ekdippa through solid rock, where a thousand men died in the building and it was considered a cheap price.

  And in every journey he mislaid something. His taste for luxury stayed in Besara; his love of power was sated and forgotten in Kafr Katnei; his desire to build for the ages was shed like a cloak in Ekdippa; and at last he had found himself here, in a desperately poor dirt farm on the edge of the Desert of Machaerus, with a tractor that had to be bribed to work and harvests barely large enough to pay for food for himself and petrol for the machines. He hadn’t even enough to pay for light in the darkness, and sunset ended every day with imperturbable night. Yet even here, he knew that there was one more journey, for he had not yet lost everything: still when he worked in the fields he would reach down and press his fingers into the soil; still he would bathe his feet in the rush of water from the muddy ditch; still he would sit for hours in the heat of the afternoon and watch the grain standing bright gold and motionless as rock, drinking sun and expelling it as dry, hard grain. This last love, the love of life itself—it, too, would have to leave, Amasa knew, before his life would have completed its course and he would have consent to die.

  The butterflies, they called him.