Dragon Space

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  The dragon wheeled slowly through the air, picking his way upward into a maze of ravines and passageways, all darkly foreboding in the night. Again Jael felt that curious twisting sensation of time shifting in her own mind, as though each turn through the maze moved the dragon and her backward or forward in time, compressing years or stretching seconds to infinity. She quickly became disoriented, and in the gleaming icy rock faces, she began to imagine that she saw human faces, or images of worlds she might have seen once, worlds she might have lived in, worlds that might have existed in another time and space. She glimpsed weeks and years of rigging experience compressed into a fantastic array of visions.

  Highwing, what are we—? And she could not finish the question. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the dizzying feeling of déjà vu.

  We're here to learn something, Highwing murmured. I don't know what we'll find, either.

  Even with her eyes closed, she was still aware of the dragon's wings beating slowly, or Highwing banking and turning and climbing ever higher and deeper into the maze. She was aware of a sprinkling of stars overhead, peering down at her; aware of the flat faces of rock passing by—some glistening with a sheen of ice, some dull and dark. And when she opened her eyes, it was all just as she'd been envisioning it.

  The dragon approached a sheer cliff face, with a narrow ledge across its middle and the cracked shape of a cave opening. He lighted upon the ledge, at the entrance to the cave. Shall we? he inquired.

  Jael swallowed. The cave looked black and forbidding. I don't know, she managed at last. I won't try to stop you, I guess.

  Highwing chuckled softly and crept forward into the cave. Jael's fingers whitened as she clutched his neck. A roof of shadow passed over them, and they were suddenly enveloped by darkness. She struggled not to tremble or cry out. He is not doing this to harm you, she thought. Trust him.

  Look ahead, Highwing murmured.

  She rose up cautiously and peered past his head. A pale glow was visible in the darkness. As Highwing moved forward, she became aware of the stone walls widening outward. They were entering a cavern, and it was filled with a pale silvery light that shone down through the ceiling. Far in the back, an enormous spiderweb shimmered, spanning the width of the cavern. It seemed alive. There was a brief sparkle of light across its strands, then a vertical rippling of cold fire.

  Jael watched without understanding, an uneasy feeling growing in the pit of her stomach. What is this? she whispered.

  A place where we will see . . . whatever we may see. From your thoughts, Jael, your deeper awareness . . .

  The web danced with ghostly quicksilver, and suddenly stilled. Jael found herself gazing into a living window.

  She was gazing into the past. Her past.

  Gazing at Mogurn.

  It was Mogurn at the spaceport, not on the ship. The background came slowly into focus: the dispatching room at the spaceport, the rigger lounge off to the right, the stewards' offices to the left. But large and clear in the foreground was Mogurn: Mogurn the businessman, the thief. Mogurn the trader in illegal and immoral goods. The image quivered momentarily, and then she saw that he was talking with someone, with the spaceport crew steward. The steward to whom Jael had complained. The steward who was to respond by selling her into bondage.

  This was not the scene as she recalled it. Was it possible that some part of her mind had seen this and remembered it without her conscious awareness? Hanging tightly onto Highwing's neck, she strained to hear what the two men were saying. She could hear nothing; they moved their lips in silence. Both men smiled meanly at something Mogurn said, and then the steward turned and pointed. A female rigger sat some distance beyond them, in the rigger lounge. Jael squinted, and trembled, recognizing herself. She was dozing in her seat. She was stunned to see the fright and the loneliness apparent on her own face, perhaps set loose in her sleep.

  Mogurn leaned toward the steward, grinning. He withdrew from a hip pouch—just far enough for the steward to see—the pallisp. The steward nodded, winking. The two men touched hands, and something twinkled between their fingers. A bribe. Then the steward called over another young female rigger, Toni Gilen, and whispered something to her. And Toni nodded and went to speak to Jael—who awoke and rose, bewildered.

  Jael clutched the dragon's neck in anger, as she watched herself approach the two men, conclude the transaction, and give up the one promise, the one vow she had made to herself—never to accept work from an unregistered shipper. Then she watched herself prepare, unknowing, to surrender to the pallisp.

  Her stomach knotted, as for the first time she actually saw the greed and the arrogance in Mogurn's face as he presented her with his proposal. Had she been too blind to notice it before—too desperately wanting to fly? It was so obvious that he had intended, from the very beginning, to enchain her with the pallisp!

  The dragon stirred as she struggled with her rising anger, as she admitted to herself the hatred that was growing, like a malignancy in her heart. She felt a profound humiliation welling up, so powerfully, she hardly heard Highwing whisper, This is how it began, then? May I see more? Without waiting for an answer, the dragon fell silent, and the image rippled and changed.

  It was Mogurn's cabin, and Mogurn was standing above her, smiling as he lowered the pallisp to the back of her neck for the first time—smiling, because despite his protestations of innocence, he knew what he was about to do.

  Her humiliation burned, became rage. You bastard! You lying bastard! she whispered. God, how I hate you!

  And beneath her, the dragon stirred and said softly, I begin to understand. Shall I burn him for you, Jael?

  Yes! she cried, blinking back tears, not even knowing what she was saying or thinking, just hating from the depths of her soul this man who had enslaved her. Dear God, yes! Burn him, Highwing! Burn him!

  Highwing lifted his head and breathed fire. His breath was a blowtorch, a leaping flame that engulfed the cavern. Jael drew back from the heat, shielding her eyes. The ghostly Jael in the spiderweb vanished, but the ghostly Mogurn whirled in surprise. He screamed, just once, before he died in the incinerating fury of the dragon's fire. Jael shuddered as the scream died away, shuddered at the sight of this man dying in hellfire at her command. She shook with rage and fear and remorse, but did not take her eyes from the fire, from the blazing tatters of the spiderweb that were all that remained of Mogurn. She thought she smelled burning flesh, and that only made her tremble even harder, choking. She wept, pressing the side of her face against Highwing's neck. What have I done? she whispered to herself. What have I done? And she felt a great poisonous cloud of hatred churn up out of her heart and leave her, joining the smoke and fury that filled the air.

  But when the fires died and the smoke cleared from the gutted cavern, from the place that had held the image of the man who had bought her and used her, she felt something else rise up inside her and release itself—a great breath of cold fresh air in her heart. She felt a cry of freedom bubbling up, rising—a rush of jubilation—and she wept again, but this time with joy instead of sorrow. And when the flood of emotion drained away at last, it was replaced by an enormous backwash of weariness.

  Do you feel better now, Jael? Highwing asked, in a whisper so quiet she almost didn't hear him.

  Yes, she thought, not answering aloud. Yes, I feel better. And she blinked and looked away as the dragon craned his head and gazed at her. His eyes glowed, and she sensed him peering into her, trying to probe what had just happened. She let him; she was too weary to try to understand it herself.

  She scarcely noticed as Highwing took her away. As they flew out of the cave, the cool night air of the mountains flowed past her cheeks, billowing her hair; but her thoughts were blurred, confused, leaden with weariness. Time strained against itself, shifted, and finally seemed to slip by unnoticed.

  Eventually her wits began to return to her, and her strength. What was happening in her ship, in the "real" world outside of the Flux, whil
e all of this was going on? she wondered. The real Mogurn had not died just now—at least, she didn't think so—but she knew that something had changed in her as a result of what Highwing had done. She realized she didn't really care what Mogurn was doing, or thinking. Or where his pallisp was.

  The dragon was flying her through a steep-walled and heavily misted vale; they were still climbing upward through the mountain maze. She felt a chill on her skin, but didn't feel cold. Absently, she stroked his scales, relishing the physical feeling, the sensation of touching another. She wondered, as they flew, why she should have feared this dragon—indeed, why the two of them should ever have thought themselves enemies. An image flashed in her thoughts, a memory she'd not known she possessed. It must have come from her soul-link with Highwing: a glimpse of a wave of power passing through this world like a seismic tremor from one end of the realm to the other. She had felt it before, but not understood it; she sensed that it had started when a dragon had befriended a rigger. She was puzzled by the image, but was too tired to speak to Highwing of it now.

  She rode the dragon in silence, content not to think or to speak.

  After a time, Highwing banked suddenly to the right. He dropped through a shallow layer of mist and descended rapidly. He swooped into a bowl-shaped dell, flared his wings, and landed. Jael rose up on his shoulders and looked around wonderingly. The dell was a small, wooded place, a tiny grotto of life in the midst of starkness. The flow of time had indeed shifted during their flight, because twilight was just fading here, the sky a patch of deepening blue. Highwing and Jael sat in silence, watching night settle in around them and among the trees. As the darkness deepened, hundreds of gnat-sized fireflies appeared, darting and corkscrewing through the air like so many fiery atoms. At first, Jael found them amusing. But hundreds more continued to stream in from the surrounding darkness, until a cloud of whirling sparks filled a large open space between two of the largest trees. What now? What are we going to see? she asked.

  Highwing hesitated, before admitting, I'm not sure.

  Jael felt a tingling at the edges of her mind. She was about to speak again, when the whirling sparks coalesced into a blurred nimbus of light. And from that pale light stepped a young man. Someone she recognized.

  It was Dap.

  Jael's breath stopped in mid-exhalation. She tried to suppress a shuddering confusion of anger and happiness. Dap looked exactly as Dap always had, handsome and mild-mannered and gentle. But—in the shimmering light of the dragon magic, she saw something else, something astonishing. Dap was frightened. Not of anything visibly near, and not so frightened that one would see it immediately; but beneath his calm and gentle exterior, illumined somehow by the power that brought this image, there was a simmering anxiety. Dap's brave expression disguised a terrible fear.

  He was standing near the dreamlink machine, the sunglow of the dreamlink field warming him. Nearby, she imagined, an invisible Jael was being warmed, as well. She felt her humiliation rising again like bile as she recalled the experience. But as the dreamlink field grew, Dap's anxiety became even stronger, though thinly veiled by his cheerful exterior. How could she have failed to see it before? Had she been so self-absorbed? Images of Dap's flights danced around him like tiny sunbursts: the rigging, the companionship with Deira, the sheer joy of the net. But was it such a single-minded joy as he had portrayed it to Jael? There shone the warmth of his companionship with Deira, and there smoldered his sorrow, his hurt at her leaving again, leaving him behind. How had Jael failed to notice that hurt? Because he had hidden it so well? Or because of her own blindness? Dap, she began—and then stopped, because she knew he could not hear her.

  And then her own memories sprang to life in the field, crowding out Dap's—her memories dancing and bursting about Dap's head: images of her father opaquing doors behind him, leaving Jael in openmouthed pain as he retired with his women and his boys; and her brother, before the groundcar accident that took his life—bitter with the rejection and disillusionment that he never allowed expression, though it tore him apart; and Jael's frustration at their father's careless neglect, shutting out all of their pain, teaching them how to make walls but never windows.

  All this Dap caught—without warning—in a tidal wave among Jael's other memories, or fantasies of memories: flights and friendships and loves that might have been, desperately lonely fantasies, unfulfilled rigger fantasies. They were all suspended in the dreamlink, where Jael had let them free. Jael, it doesn't have to be that way! he whispered aloud, frightened by the enormity of her pain. And she remembered her answer, all too well. Just fantasies, she'd lied, even as she tried desperately to sweep them away, to hide them where Dap couldn't see them, where no one would see them again. But Dap had known better—the truth could not be hidden from the dreamlink, once it was out—and she saw it now on Dap's face as he drew back from his unseen cousin sharing the field with him. And Jael started to hate him all over again now, as she saw the horror on his face, and she felt again the betrayal and abandonment as Dap shrank away from her.

  Why is he drawing back? she heard, and it was the dragon whispering the question.

  Why? Because he thinks I'm . . . because he's a lousy . . .

  But the expression on Dap's face was not revulsion, she realized suddenly, though it had been staring her in the face all along. It was fear. Fear and shame: fear of his own needs, so terrifyingly like hers, and shame for his utter helplessness in the face of hers. Just as she had tried to hide her terrible desperation from him, so had he hidden his own.

  And so afraid of the pure naked hurt was he that even now, in the sight of Jael and Highwing, he fled. And as he ran, back into that nimbus of ethereal light between the trees, Jael heard Highwing's voice, asking softly. Shall I burn him, like the other? The dragon drew a deep breath.

  No! she cried, startled by her own vehemence. Don't hurt him! I didn't know—I never realized! And suddenly she was quaking with shame, shame at her own anger. She should have seen that Dap had abandoned her out of . . . cowardice, perhaps, or inadequacy—but not out of malice, or in judgment. She'd thought him steady as a rock, unshakable, older than she and wiser. But he was not a rock, he was just a rigger, her cousin. No better than she; no worse.

  Highwing sighed, and the image of Dap and the pale light vanished in a cloud of sparks. Highwing's nostrils glowed a dull red. Did you remember it that way? he asked, rumbling throatily.

  No, Jael whispered. No, I didn't. And she fell mute, remembering the abandonment she had felt, thinking that Dap loathed her as everyone else did, for things that weren't her fault, and remembering how she had vowed never to let anyone touch her soul that way again.

  But that came from your own memory, Highwing murmured. A part of you knew the truth. You do not always see clearly in your memory, do you?

  Why no, I . . . she began, and hesitated, because she had no idea how to explain.

  Well, then, Jael—look up. I see something else happening. The dragon lifted his head and snorted sparks into the air.

  Reluctantly she lifted her gaze. For a moment she couldn't see anything except the dark shape of a cliff overlooking the glade. And then, high atop the cliff, in a sheltered aerie, illuminated by she knew not what, she saw the dark figure of another man.

  Who is that? she hissed. Highwing didn't answer at once, but a suspicion was already growing in the pit of her stomach. There was something familiar about the shape.

  Don't you know? Highwing asked finally. Without waiting for an answer, he sprang aloft and beat into the wind toward the aerie. Rather than flying directly to it, however, he veered to one side and alighted upon a high ledge from which they could look across and see the place clearly.

  But Jael already knew. The man was her father. He was a cold-eyed, stiff-limbed man, exactly as she remembered him. He looked perhaps a little older, a little wearier, a little more dour. He was gazing outward from the aerie, as though expecting a caller; but the manner of his stance suggested defensivenes
s, retreat, as though he feared to leave this shelter. His eyes stared, his mouth curled with distaste, as they had on other occasions, when he'd wondered aloud why he had saddled himself with two former wives, an unhappy son, and a self-pitying daughter. His eyes shifted then, and seemed to light upon Highwing and Jael. Upon Jael. And that gaze was the same look of contempt he'd lavished upon her for as long as she could remember. She remembered her own rage, which had been building for years.

  Kill him, she said softly, loathing rising out of the depths of her heart. Burn him!

  She waited for the explosion of fire from Highwing's throat, the lance of flame that would destroy her father as it had destroyed Mogurn. But the dragon made no move to carry out her command. Highwing?

  And then she knew why the dragon hesitated. He'd seen the answer in her soul. It was not because he was protecting her father, but because her father was already dead. He'd died three years ago, at the hands of a slighted lover, while Jael was still in rigger school. What point was there in burning him now? Jael cursed futilely, squinting across to the aerie where this man stood, hopelessly cold and desperately alone, this man who had turned his shipping company into a den of thievery and abuse, who had turned two wives against him and taught a son and daughter how not to feel. Jael pressed her forehead against the dragon's scaled neck, weeping inwardly. And then she felt something . . .

  She looked up and saw a change in the light that illumined her father's face, a deeper, softer glow. And she realized that he had changed, too. She was seeing him at an earlier time, a happier time. Behind him, she glimpsed her mother's face, just for an instant, but it was long enough to see that she was gazing at him with genuine love. Love, but pain too. Was it a happier time? His mouth was tight with indecision. But about what?