by Tom Holt
CHAPTER THREE
The rain played drums on the roof, rattled the gutters, pressed its nose hard against the window-panes like a starving man watching the diners in a fancy restaurant; it tapped on the glass like a young lover urging his beloved to elope with him, it hammered against the french windows like a bailiff, it pawed and butted like a cat demanding to be let in.
The goldfish couldn’t see or hear it, but he knew it was there; he could feel the presence of rain in the same way that you can wiggle your toes with your eyes shut. He could feel anger and frustration in its tempo, he could feel it searching for him and not being able to find him, as if he were King Richard and the rain was Blondel, singing under the castle walls. He tried to call to it, to summon it, command it (Heel! Sit! Good rain!), the way he’d done ever since he or anyone else could remember; but the water and the glass surrounding him insulated him from it completely, bouncing all his shouting and yelling back at him - and, since he was a goldfish, condemned by nature to hear with his whole body, he felt each sound crashing into him, like a misdirected trolley in a crowded supermarket.
It was ludicrous enough to be utterly humiliating; that he, adjutant-general to the dragon king of the north-west, should be trapped in a bowl of water. It was cruelty so delicately refined that he was amazed a dumb, blundering, tiny-brained mortal human had been able to think of it; a little pottering wingless biped, one of the tens of millions who scurry for cover at the first drop of rain, as if they were made of pure salt. Anger welled up inside him, radiated outwards and was dissipated entirely in the water, raising its temperature by five or so degrees. Having no other outlet for his wrath - no pondweed to shred with scything fin-strokes, no bits of rock to pound into dust with his tail - he hung motionless in the water and hyperventilated, the constant meaningless opening and closing of his mouth visible through the convex glass of the bowl making him look like a cabinet minister on TV with the sound muted.
Then the world went dark all around him, and his curved and bloated vision was filled with the huge, monstrous face of a human - the human, his jailer. An enormous eye, as big as he was, twinkled at him though the glass, making him flinch involuntarily and launch himself across the bowl with a ferocious tail-flick. Of course, he ended up exactly where he’d started.
The human was saying something, to him or at him, but the water mangled the sound and he couldn’t make out a word of it or even interpret the tone of voice. There was, of course, nowhere to hide in a circular glass bowl containing only water and himself. All he could do was—Nothing.
The human made a few noises, then moved. A moment or so later the goldfish felt small disturbances in the water around him, suggesting that something was showering down on the meniscus way above his head. Rain? Indoor rain? Improbable; it was unlikely that the secret of indoor rain, which had eluded generations of frustrated dragon alchemists, should have chosen to reveal itself to a scraggy little mortal during the time he’d spent trapped in the bowl. He looked up, and noticed that the water was full of slowly downwards-drifting brown things about the size of one of his eyes - ants’ eggs, falling like rain . . .
The human went away again, and the goldfish resumed his perpetual curved swimming. The worst part about his captivity, he told himself as he absent-mindedly gulped down an ant’s egg, was the goldfish brain he was having to use to process every thought that crossed his mind. Quite a lot of them, mainly the ones full of anger, were too big, and had to be cut and shaped, so that by the time they’d been digested and rebroadcast, his draconian wrath had been pruned down to pique, which in turn was somehow water-soluble, like aspirin.
No; belay that. The worst thing was remembering how he’d ended up here, because that really had been dumb . . .
On the very first day of his search for his errant daughter (and if ever he laid eyes on her again, he’d have something to say to her; no question about that whatsoever) he’d been walking through the streets of the city which, as far as he knew, she’d run off to, when he began to get the impression that someone was following him. A human - so, no big deal; even now that he was in human shape, humans didn’t frighten him in the least. He knew that stronger humans preyed on the weaker sort, beating them up and stealing their money and trinkets. If he hadn’t been busy with other things, he could easily have amused himself for a day or so by strolling about looking weak and helpless so as to provoke just such an attack and thereby rid the place of a few of its two-legged predators.
This specimen, though, didn’t look like the sort (he could, of course, see him quite plainly with his third eye); any humans weak enough to be preyed on by something this small and scrawny wouldn’t be out and about on their own, they’d be in an oxygen tent in a hospital. The dragon found the thought mildly disturbing. If he was being stalked by something small and weedy, it wasn’t just a case of picking up fleas in the flea market. This individual was far more likely to be following him, specifically, for a reason, and the only reason he could think of was because he knew . . .
But the creature was human, whatever its motives might be, and all a dragon needed to do in order to clear the streets and send the humans scampering off in all directions was to rain a little. Not too much, of course; unscheduled raining was unfortunate if unavoidable, and criminally irresponsible in all other circumstances. He started off, therefore, with a light sprinkle of fine, soft drizzle, the sort that sits on top of a human’s hair like a spider in its web, rather than plastering it to the scalp. That sent a fair number of humans stampeding for shop doorways and awnings, but it didn’t seem to bother his shadow at all; the little man merely drew the collar of his raincoat tight around his neck and opened an umbrella. Irritated, the dragon opened the throttle a crack or two more, enough to make the car-drivers turn up their wiper speed to maximum; the little man shuddered at the feel of water on his skin, but kept up the pace. The dragon considered that to be downright offensive - after all, this was the good stuff, from his personal reserve, some of the eighty-per-cent proof wet he’d been saving for a rainy day. He jammed the faucets wide open, so that the gutters in the street filled, overloaded and flooded the roadway, creating instant lakes for the cars to aquaplane through. Sure enough, the little man received a direct hit from the tyres of a passing sixteen-wheeler and was instantly transformed into a self-propelled pond. He stopped and shook himself, just like a dog - and then, dammit, he kept on coming, quickening his pace to make up lost ground.
It was at this point that the dragon realised that he was getting wet, too . . .
The fact that it bothered him, bothered him. If someone had told him a week ago that a time would come when he’d feel uncomfortable standing in rain, he’d have laughed hard enough to dislocate his wing sockets. But humans were different. They didn’t have immaculately contoured coats of scales, designed by nature to shed water as efficiently as possible; instead they covered their unthatched hides with absorbent materials like cotton, wool and leather, as if they were deliberately trying to catch the rainwater and snuggle it close to them for the rest of the day. The dragon wondered about that, in passing; was it a genetic throwback to the days before they had bottles and jars to carry water about in? It seemed an extravagantly perverse way of going about it. The same could, however, be said for nearly everything they did, from reproduction to gardening.
Since it would take at least ten minutes for rain of this intensity to wind down to a full stop, he decided that it would be a good idea to find shelter; not only would he not get any wetter, he’d also put pressure on his shadow, who’d also have to stop. He would make it clear to the strange little man that he knew exactly what he was doing - humans often find embarrassment as intolerable as pain or fear, so he ought to be able to make the man feel so uncomfortable that he’d give up and go away. Failing that, of course, he’d have to scare him off by a more direct and traditional method.
He turned down a side street that looked ideal for what he had in mind; on both sides rose the sheer, mountainous
backs of large office buildings, and there was only one small archway that offered any kind of shelter. He darted under that, as swift and neat as a goldfish, and waited. Sure enough, his shadow was caught in the trap. His only options were to come in under the same arch and be shoulder to shoulder with his quarry, to stand out in the middle of the street, where pretty soon he’d be both painfully conspicuous and extremely wet, or to go away. To his credit, he stuck at the second option far longer than the dragon had thought he’d be able to, but in the end he turned his back and splashed through the puddles back the way he’d just come. The dragon smiled, carried on to the other end of the alley, and headed left.
Unfortunately the manoeuvre had taken him a little out of his way, and he wasn’t quite sure where he was in relation to the main thoroughfare he’d been following. Trying to maintain a sense of direction in two dimensions when all your life you’ve been used to navigating in three can be awkward at the best of times, and the plain fact was that having to walk round the buildings instead of floating majestically over them at a height of several tens of thousands of feet made him feel dizzy and a little claustrophobic, as if he was lost in a maze. He was sorely tempted to morph back into his true shape, spread his wings and simply lift out of there, back to where there was room to breathe and perspective enough to see by. But he didn’t want to do that unless he absolutely had to - not in broad daylight, in the middle of a crowded city.
The rain stopped and the sun came out; and the smell of drying cloth all around his body made him feel slightly sick. After wandering somewhat aimlessly for quite some time, he decided the simplest thing to do would be to head due south; because the river that bisected the city lay in that direction, so eventually he’d end up somewhere identifiable, even if he failed to connect with the main street he was looking for. The trouble was that it all took so long, with nothing faster than two feet to carry him, and it was also unexpectedly tiring. He’d only been walking for - what, seven hours? Eight at the very most - and already he was starting to feel distinctly weary.
South was easy enough to find; he could close his eyes and find south, thanks to the rich, dank smell of the river. Taking a direct line was out of the question because of all the masonry in the way, but ultimately it didn’t matter; no more than an hour later, he found himself back where he’d started, almost exactly to the inch—
—And there was the little man, leaning against a lamp-post and grinning at him. Now that was annoying. The dragon scowled horribly and marched over to him.
‘You took your time,’ the man said.
‘Why are you following me?’
‘Is that a serious question, or are you just trying to scare me off?’
That wasn’t the attitude he’d been expecting, not by a long way, and for a moment or two the dragon felt as if he’d just walked into an unscheduled plate-glass window. ‘Why are you following me?’ he repeated.
‘Because I want to find out what you’re up to.’
Perfectly reasonable reply for a biped; he hadn’t realised they were capable of such a straightforward approach. ‘Why?’ he said.
‘You really want me to tell you?’
‘Humour me.’
The man shook his head. ‘You don’t scare me,’ he said. ‘We both know perfectly well that you won’t lay a finger on me. Or a claw, come to that; and a fin I could probably deal with.’
‘I don’t know what you’re . . .’
‘If you stay human and thump me,’ the man went on, with a cocky grin on his face, ‘you’ll get arrested; and they’ll find out that you aren’t in any of their records and don’t actually exist, and that’ll be really embarrassing for you. And you wouldn’t dare turn back into what you really are, because that’d give the game away for sure. Either way, you’d be helping me achieve my objective. So, feel free.’
The dragon breathed out heavily through his nose, which seemed to worry the human a lot. ‘And what would this objective of yours be?’ he said.
‘Oh, please.’ The man smiled sardonically. ‘Use your imagination, can’t you? Or don’t you people have them? I want to expose you, and all the rest of you goddamn’ flying sprinklers. I want the world to know whose fault it really is when it rains, so that they’ll start taking us seriously and do something about you. Preferably,’ he added harshly, ‘with cruise missiles. Or would they just bounce off those high-tensile bums of yours? I’m game to find out if you are.’
Suddenly, the penny crash-landed. ‘I know who you are,’ the dragon said. ‘It was that nonsense you said about who’s really to blame for the weather. You’re one of those television people, aren’t you?’
The man grinned. ‘Fancy you knowing about television,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised. I wouldn’t have thought you took that much of an interest.’
‘I don’t. But it’s hard to ignore. I have to live in the air you people send it through.’ He tightened his expression up a click or two. ‘If anybody’s got a right to be angry about something, it’s us. How would you like it if your living quarters were constantly being saturated with other people’s mindless burbling?’ He took a deep breath. ‘But I’m not going to have an argument with you about it,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got the time or the energy. If you insist on trailing round after me, fine. But, if I remember correctly, you humans have got laws against that sort of thing. How’d it be if I had you arrested?’
‘Be my guest.’
‘You mean you’d use it as an opportunity to - what was that quaint expression you used just now? Expose me? They’d lock you up in a lunatic asylum for the rest of your life.’
‘Not me.’ The man’s smile was starting to get on the dragon’s nerves. ‘I’m one of those television people, remember? A TV weatherman. Anything I do is news, particularly if I get arrested. That’s how we humans are, you see; we love reading about the people we love getting humiliated and destroyed. Short of setting fire to New York, I can’t think of a surer way of drawing attention to yourself than that.’
It was time, the dragon decided, to go away. The temptation simply to spread his wings and rise above the whole thing, like a cloisonnéd Harrier, was almost too strong to resist - but how could he be sure this odious creature didn’t have one of his camera crews lurking round a corner or poised up on a roof somewhere? Other, stronger instincts urged him to find out by methodical experiment just how flat a human can become when jumped on repeatedly by a huge lizard; fortunately, he was able to resist them, too.
‘I’m getting to you, aren’t I?’ the human taunted. ‘You’re about to lose your temper, I can feel it.’
‘Certainly not.’ The dragon crushed his fingernails into the palms of his soft, flabby human paws. ‘In fact, I’m just starting to like you. Why don’t we go and have something to eat?’
‘I’d be delighted. Let’s go somewhere crowded, where there’s lots and lots of people. I’d really like that.’
A passer-by stopped for a moment and peered at the little weedy man, as if trying to read him upside down. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you’re on telly.’
The weedy man smiled graciously. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Thanks for watching.’
‘You do the weather, don’t you? After News at Eight.’
‘That’s me.’
The passer-by nodded. ‘We used to watch you all the time,’ he said. ‘But not any more. We watch the weather on ITV now. There’s less rain on ITV.’
‘Ah.’ The weedy man nodded gravely. ‘You noticed. It’s all to do with the cuts, you see. They’ve got the money, they can afford more sunshine than we can.’
The passer-by shook his head. ‘It isn’t right,’ he said. ‘I pay enough for the licence fee, God knows. Weren’t you on that Celebrity Squares that time?’
‘Which time?’
‘I don’t know, do I? I wasn’t the one who was on.’
‘Yes.’ The weedy man dipped his head graciously. ‘It was me.’
‘There you are, then. Thought it was you.’
‘All who like what?’
‘Your public. The people you forecast the weather for.’
The weedy man shook his head. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Most of them aren’t nearly as perceptive. Judging by the quality of insight displayed by his questions, I’d guess he was either the managing director of a major bank or the Regius Professor of Logic at Oxford. But that’s not the point,’ he went on, taking a step closer to the dragon, as if about to fit him with a saddle and bridle. ‘They are the People, and they have a Right to Know. And I’m the one who’s going to tell them.’
For the first time in his long and complicated life, the dragon felt panic starting to take hold. Mostly it was the incongruity - this pathetic specimen of a puny breed, advancing on him with a contemptuous grin on his ridiculous face, as if he was the one who could call down millimetre-perfect lightning strikes without even lifting a finger; in the face of such assurance, he couldn’t help wondering if there wasn’t more to all this than met any of his three eyes. He resolved on a controlled strategic withdrawal, with strategic running like buggery held in reserve as a contingency plan. The question was how—
And then he happened to look down and see, right there under his foot, a grating in the gutter. Some iron slats, a short drop, and below that a smart current of water running-off the recent heavy rain; too small for a human, let alone a dragon, but easily one small tail-flick for a goldfish.
He smiled. ‘Goodbye,’ he said; then he turned himself into a fish, slid through the bars and went plop! into the water—
—Right into the keepnet installed there by the little weedy man an hour before. Before the dragon realised what was happening to him he’d been scooped up out of the water and dumped, wriggling and thrashing, into a jam jar full of water. At once he tried to revert to his proper shape, but he couldn’t; in order to make the change he needed clear, empty space around him to grow into during that all-important first three milliseconds of the process. Trapped like this in water, with the walls of the jar hemming him in, he couldn’t do anything to free himself.
