by Tom Clancy
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, Dad.”
“Good. Meanwhile, you can read what I’m doing when it’s done. Next week sometime.” He turned away, smiling. “Learning patience is good for you.”
“I’m going to hack into your machine.”
“You’re welcome to try,” he said with an evil grin, and went off to investigate the omelettes.
Megan headed off to where Leif was standing, looking out the window. “Want to go up the tower?”
“Sure, everybody else has been up there by now.”
They made for the elevator. At the top of its run, it came out on a small, circular room with no apparent support between it and the pointed candle-snuffer roof on top. The last of the sunset was dying away westward. To the east, over Sarxos, the moon was coming up fat and full. The second moon came up off to one side, in the “passing lane,” as it were, and crept steadily past the first one, heading upwards fast across the sky.
Far away, the moonlight glinted on the snows of the northeastern mountains. Above them, in the sky, the stars started to go off like fireworks.
There were oohs and aahs from downstairs. “Hey,” said a casual voice from way down the stairwell, “they’re my stars. I can blow them up if I want to. They grow back in the morning, anyway.”
Far eastward, a winged shape came soaring. It grew bigger, and bigger, and impossibly bigger. “What is that?” Megan said.
Leif shook his head, and stared.
It came on, the huge shape, closer and closer, its great blackwebbed wings like thunderclouds against the darkening night. Right past the tower it banked, looking at them, an experience like being looked at by a low-space transport. The wind of its passing was a storm.
Those huge wings spread in a stall, flapped. The wind got worse for a moment, then settled as the king-basilisk lowered itself carefully to the peak of the mountain on which the House of Rod was built, made sure of its grip, and folded its wings down. It wrapped its long slender tail around the mountaintop for extra grip, and leaned its twenty-foot-long head right down to gaze thoughtfully at Leif and Megan out of sun-core eyes.
Down in the water, a sea monster put its head up on its long slender neck, followed by the requisite number of multiple loops, and bellowed defiance at the interloper. Lost in astonishment and admiration, Megan and Leif could only stare from one to the other.
“Welcome to my world,” said the voice of Rod behind them, “where cheaters never prosper.”
This time, Megan thought…and held her peace.
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