If I carried him we’d be back in Hammerside in hours! Getting killed over a set of wheels is stupid. Men are stupid. I had a lovely dream, so why’d Kozi have to spoil it? I could’ve rescued a zillion other guys. At least he kept his hands to himself. Back to leapfrogging through the ranch lands.
The irrigator spewed out clouds, blocking the sun and retarding Melissa’s fire recharge. She and R.J. munched on bland roots she dug up on top of a hill. From the hill they watched the sea. It rolled like the sea. It had fluffy white tufts like sea foam and rippling blue green like waves, and moved like a mighty tide. It was a sea of torryxes, medium-sized, three meters tall, with bright plumage. They ran on two legs, and had two more for mischief, to go with their long rows of teeth. The bouncy tails and beady eyes said dinosaur, but the feathers said, “Hunh?”
The sea broke upon their hill. Most ran around, but the bold charged up, stared Melissa in the eye and hissed. She walloped them with her tail and sent them whimpering down the slope again. “I’m charged. Next hill’s a mile away, and it cuts across their path. I can carry you.”
“What?” said R.J. “I’m riding. If I get through this, I’m sure to win the motocross at Unadilla. ‘Flame on’ or whatever.”
Melissa took off, climbed high, and dove for her first strafing run. She spewed flame and set brush on fire. Like a school of fish, the torryxes dodged back and forth en masse. Slowly she opened a trail for R.J. A mile was too far to keep clear, so she advanced him in stages.
He revved his engine to startle the menaces out of his path and rumbled over rough ground with a club strapped to his back. A torryx bared its teeth at him. He whipped out the club. Whomp! Feathers flew and the bird-lizard went down, thrashing. Pretty soon it was a polo match with too many balls in play.
Two torryxes snuck up from behind and jumped at R.J. Melissa swooped down and grabbed one in each claw, coasted a dozen yards and dropped them in a heap.
Ugliest feather-balls I’ve ever seen. The first man to enter Kibota thought this would make a nice gift for his ladylove? Now I know where Shoroko gets his manners. Her flames were fading, so she landed and charged in front of the motorbike, body-slamming anything that came near. I thought Callyglip was joking when he told me the story, but it makes sense. We’re here because a clueless macho-man tried to impress a girl by catching a useless, ornery pet. A torryx roared at her, and Melissa roared back. When she gets upset, does he apologize? No, he goes and traps its mate! Oh, one of them stinks and tastes foul, but getting two just makes it right! Then, while his posse is busy frying up torryx eggs for breakfast, poof! The torryxes disappear, the girlfriend disappears, and Nimrod, the lousiest gift-giver on Earth, becomes the first Hand to enter Kibota. Oh, to see the look on his face when all the monsters he’d wiped out on Earth showed up here!
They swam through the sea of feathered furies until they made the next hill, rested, then started over again. One hill at a time they went until they made it all the way to Hammerside at dinnertime. Melissa got real fish, not metaphorical ones, and as for manners, Shoroko wasn’t the one with the problem.
When Melissa heard Shoroko headed south to herd an even bigger mass of animals, she grew anxious, but mostly missed him. Now all she had to look forward to was R.J. brag about his spy craft and try to wiggle his way into their group.
As Melissa sat in Makri’s backyard, Thedarra walked up holding a tray, smiling and quiet. She set out dinner and collected plates at the end. Every time she passed Melissa, she grinned. The olissair couldn’t take it any longer. “I don’t need a silver nose to tell you’ve got a secret, Thedarra. Spit it out.”
“Should I tell her, Cally?” said Thedarra.
“If you don’t, she’ll bite your arm off for real, Darra,” said Callyglip. “Or figure you for carrying twins.”
At that crack, she went red and punched Callyglip’s arm. “Fine. Before he left, Shoroko said to meet him at the Census Stone.”
“Is that all?” Melissa bared her teeth.
“Oh, yes. He said that if you show up, you two could continue where you left off in the back of the jeep. I don’t know what a jeep is, or where you can find one around here, but his eyes twinkled as he said it.” She put her hands on her hips, batted her eyes and showed her dimples. “You two have a secret language or something? And how does that size difference work?”
Melissa wasn’t listening. She knew what a jeep was, but how did Shoroko? She tried picturing him in the back seat of one. Then she remembered the rest of her dream. The kissing was nice, but only one thing mattered. He’d refused to give up on them, and found a way, however brief, for them to be together. Together. Not alone. Happy. Suddenly, she beheld him standing on a grassy plain, surrounded by his own sea of creatures taller than Orokolga. And she wasn’t with him.
You found a way to give me hope, then left. It would’ve been better to forget. She refused to cry, but could not restrain her tears. They were salty like the sea, and once they flowed down her face and rejoined it, they would be lost forever.
* * *
If revealing their plans to R.J. was supposed to convince him of their foresight and ingenuity and sway him to join them wholeheartedly, the evening telegraph didn’t help. The marine migration was peaking by Sky Port on the seacoast, and ten fishing ships didn’t make harbor in time. Worse, the nets laid against the mouth of the Silverthorn had been breached, and lebyatans were swimming upstream. A coiling serpent fastened itself to the barge carrying an oshtukamat to Sky Port for use by the Greens. It snapped the vessel in two and drowned one of Callyglip’s friends. Now all river traffic east of Redbridge was suspended while Claws trawled with hooks to force the monsters back downstream.
No one had heard from K'Pinkelek, Olsurrodot was off conferring with Genereef, and Soorararas was flitting about Rampart. This left Jessnee, Mirrorwing, Makri, and Melissa to interrogate R.J., while Callyglip and Thedarra prepared to head to the docks to ship out another oshtukamat.
“Darra, Could you fetch me zaff-berries from the market?” said Makri. “And pieweed? My Kadisha needs them to make pie tonight. Make sure the weed is sweet. I made that mistake once.”
Thedarra pulled down the money box from atop a cabinet. “We’re short.”
“No rest,” said Makri. “Time to make the money. Knew that coinage contract would come in handy. Cally, fetch two horns and one small silver ingot from the locker and stoke the fire. I’ll get the saw. Thedarra, you know what to do.”
Melissa recalled med school tuition, sleepless nights during residency, and malpractice insurance bills. How much easier if you can print the money.
Jessnee looked up from the bench outside where he was working on a circuit board and saw Melissa’s head peeping through the window. “I know what you’re thinking, green eyes. On Kibota the currency is hard.”
“Not much markup over wholesale?” said Melissa.
“That’s one type of hard currency.” Jessnee picked up his soldering gun and resumed his work. “Ours is hard in a different way.”
Callyglip came from the storeroom carrying two long, slender, silver cones with spiral ridges and a rainbow sheen. Makri clamped them to his bench, took up a hacksaw, and sliced thin disks from the first cone, while Callyglip walked outside to operate the bellows on the small furnace.
“I can help.” Melissa walked over, exhaled enriched oxygen and fanned it into the air intake for the furnace with her wings. They soon had it up to temperature. Callyglip placed solid silver in a vessel, grasped it with tongs and slid it into the fire. Meanwhile, Makri spread the disks cut from the cylinder onto a wooden tray on the bench outside. He and Thedarra donned thick gloves and waited.
The disks looked to Melissa like sections with small pockets cut from a chambered nautilus. Each disk had an intricate pattern of solid and void. “When you said silver, I thought the whole coin would be silver.”
“What’s the point of that? Anyone can make that kind of coin. Bring it over, Cally. Get ready Thedarra.” M
akri took the receptacle and poured molten silver into the holes in the center of each disk. “Watch carefully, Melissa, and you’ll see how we make unicoins.”
Callyglip grabbed a squirt bottle and followed behind Makri. After the silver had enough time to seep into the holes, he sprayed water on each finished coin. Hiss.
Thedarra followed him with an open drawstring purse. She picked the first coin up with her gloved fingers and dropped it in the purse. When she reached for the second, it skittered across the table. “No, you don't.” She swatted the coin with her left hand to pin it and pried it up with her right. Plop. Two in the bag. The third coin hopped a foot into the air. Thedarra swooped in, opened the purse and snatched it from the air. “Need a hand here, Cally.”
Callyglip stowed his squirt bottle and stood wide-legged in front of the table. Three coins popped up on edge and rolled left. He lunged, scooped them up and dropped them in Thedarra’s purse, but one hopped back out and crawled up his sleeve, slithered about his midsection and headed for… “Oh, no you don’t!” He scooped it out of his pants at the cost of showing something that made Thedarra blush. After that dozens of the dastardly disks ran circles around the table at once. A dozen went airborne and clattered to the floor. Makri joined in, running about stomping them into submission and prying them out from under the heel of his shoe. “Get back here! I made you, so you belong to me!”
Makri’s wife heard the racket and rushed in with her broom. She faced a team of eight determined discs. Broom left, broom right, swish. Into the dustpan and into the purse.
The room degenerated into sweeping, stomping, grabbing and the inevitable. A sneaky set of six stacked themselves, held together and slid in front of Callyglip’s foot. He tripped and collided with a barrel of liosh, which split open and sloshed about. Whoop, whoop, whoop, down. Callyglip’s legs shot out and took out Thedarra.
“Not my new skirt!” She skidded across the oily mess and dropped the purse. The next ten minutes consisted in chasing unctuous unicoins on all fours and trying to deny them passage to the cracks in the fence and freedom.
Callyglip found a collection employing the sticky properties of the oily mess to slink up the side of the wall. As he went to dislodge them with a stick, two valorous specimens of the mint of mayhem launched themselves from the wall and fixed upon his eye sockets. “Get 'em off me! I’m blind!” Wrestling with the miniature menaces, he collided with Jessnee’s table, sending his tools and components flying.
“No! It’ll take hours to redo this wiring. Grrrr!” Jessnee grabbed his toolbox and rescued his precious parts before they could get soiled by the liosh. Then he set himself up at a table inside.
When the madness subsided, Thedarra peered into her purse and took inventory. “Stop wriggling so I can count you!” When the tally was complete she frowned. “We lost half of them. Fan out, everyone, we’re not finished.”
Melissa began to giggle, which coming from a Lissai could be confused with the death throes of a green-tufted wandermutt.
Thedarra walked up to the olissair, made a fist and threw a mock punch at her snout. “It’s not funny!”
“Sorry. Hey, that tickles! Who’s hiding back there?” Melissa lifted her tail and swung it forward. “Hey, look everyone, I’m a Silver today.” Glued to the underside of her scaly appendage were the missing unicoins. “You had your fun. Go to Thedarra or it’s back into the furnace for the lot of you.”
One by one the coins dropped from her tail, rolled somberly in single file up to Thedarra, spun slowly about and fell flat. When they were all safely in the sack, she pulled the drawstring tight. “Hurry, Cally. Before we go shopping, I’ve got to change and you need a swim in the Faithful.”
“I don’t need a bath to be true to you, love.” They walked off hand in greasy hand.
“That was fun to watch,” said Melissa. “Do it again. Honestly, whose deranged mind decided to make currency from unicorn horns?”
“They settle down after a few days,” said Makri. “Impossible to counterfeit.”
“But the poor unicorns…” said Melissa.
“…shed their horns every year,” said Makri. “I know what you’ll ask next. Poachers learn fast. Waking in the middle of the night with a severed horn drilling holes through sundry body parts is an experience no one forgets.”
“Still seems inconvenient.”
Jessnee snickered from inside the shop and looked out the window. “Ever heard the saying, ‘bad money drives out good’?”
“Yes.”
“In Kibota, good money drives out bad people. Thieves and greedy people find that the money in their purse has a habit of slipping away.”
“And many a poor person,” said Makri, “will walk along the road and see a lost unicoin roll onto the path before them. The love of money may be the root of evil, but here even the money has a way of showing love. That is, once it forgets having molten metal poured down its throat.”
* * *
Jessnee pushed away the circuit board he was soldering and turned his gas-powered generator to idle so the rhythmic sputter-pop wouldn’t drown out their conversation, but would deter eavesdropping. Extracting gasoline from liosh was useful, but Melissa wondered where he’d gotten his capacitors and transistors from. As for the generator, toying with valves and pistons was never a skill of Jessnee’s, but within the ability of an avid cyclist.
“Apart from the cooking, which was excellent, seems you need me more than I need you.” R.J.’s smirk was back. Melissa’s fiery balm not only knit his wrist wound, but made his crew cut sprout two inches in as many days.
Melissa rapped her claws on the table. “It’s not a matter of need, but of speed. Together we can accomplish our goals faster. I told Anspark we intend to open the door, find Silverthorn and stop the hlisskan maker. He intends to do the opposite. He would’ve detained us if he thought we had any chance of succeeding. He believes he can stop us any time, which means we have little left.”
“It’s also a matter of people,” said Jessnee. “If you’re working with a group on Earth to establish a beachhead on Kibota, you need a way to blend in and persuade Hands to help you. This migration is shaping up to be the worst in centuries. If our defenses fail, I estimate a minimum of thirty percent dead. Such a large-scale depopulation will set this culture back fifty years. Rampant disease will wreck any plans you and your friends have. Your lives will be imperiled, and no Hands will trust you. We have two weeks to turn this around.”
“Speaking of trust,” said Mirrorwing. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply and faced first R.J. and then Jessnee. He opened his eyes and studied the expression on R.J.’s face when he looked at Jessnee, and vice versa. “I have no doubt where this Hand’s loyalties lie, and understand clearly what is required to change them. He will tell us what we want to know, but changing his allegiance is not at issue. There is only one person whose allegiance must be secured for us to succeed. Melissa, I defer to you, but the time for questions is now.”
The first drops of rain fell. Makri’s wife hurried over from her kitchen next door, unrolled a red canvas awning, and slipped wooden poles into the straps to make it taught. The patter on the canvas drowned their voices, and the exhaust fumes were making Makri cough, so Jessnee switched off his generator.
Melissa expected ominous thunder to complete the mood, but it was only her heart within her chest. Jessnee hasn’t been straight with us, but why? According to what his reasons are, I should be hard or easy on him. Medicine for his family was my first idea, but what else could it be? Money? Power? Scientific glory? Or like R.J. here, a trip home? And is it good to have R.J. here while we question Jessnee? If only one goes along with us, the other can rat on him to the Chinese. She reflected on Mirrorwing’s ability to smell trouble. I’m the Rainbow Bride. I should be able to do that too. She inhaled, closed her eyes, and cleared her mind. The first thing that came across was sweat. Jessnee was fried from pulling all-nighters building gadgets. Next she smelled anxiety, and an i
mage of his family popped into her head. Then she was assaulted by a barrage of subtle overtones of sweet and sour and salt and bitter and clothes that needed washing and a stressed liver and a minor thyroid condition. The parade of odors presented itself in the raw until it reached a crescendo– and stopped.
An intuitive chemical calculus ensued, until she was inside the heart of Jason Grew. He was a boy who wanted to dazzle everyone with his scientific genius. He was a man with the weight of government on his shoulders, entrusted with safeguarding his community. He was a loyal friend to R.J. and Ren Fa. He was a loving husband and father. He was an industrial planner tasked with helping his new country leap forward, a regular Connecticut Yankee. And he was… She pushed that thought aside and blushed. Jason. You came and worked hard to make friends and serve this new world with all your heart, and now you are being pulled apart. Everyone needs something from you, and we are asking you to surrender more than we have a right to ask.
She opened her eyes and looked at Jessnee. On the outside, he projected strength. But inside… At that moment she knew. Mirrorwing is wrong. I was wrong. We don’t need Jessnee, he needs us. She recalled the voice’s request, the one she refused, her unwillingness to die and be planted like a seed. Even after she said no, the voice continued to give. It is better to give than to receive. What can I give Jessnee? She addressed the voice. Who are you?
The voice answered. You know who I am. The question is, who am I to you?
Melissa thought about all the Hands and Claws on whom she was leaning for help. Already Shoroko was out on a suicide mission, trying to save the world. What price would these others pay? Didn’t Silverthorn try the same? Why did he fail? She addressed the voice again. Are you the one the Claws call the Grantor?
That is what I do. It is a good title, but it is not who I am. Yet you are making progress.
A Most Refined Dragon Page 29