It took Mr Kortright’s brain three quarters of a second to pick up on the words this body and the other one, speculate on the significance and dismiss the whole as too much hassle. ‘So what did you used to do? Have an act then?’
The dragon nodded. ‘I flew about breathing fire, making rain, that style of thing.’
‘Dragon, huh?’
‘You’re very perceptive.’
After a moment’s hesitation Mr Kortright correctly
interpreted the dragon’s remark as a compliment. ‘Not much around at the moment for dragons,’ he said. ‘Endangered species regulations,’ he added.
‘Ah.’ This seemed to confirm what the dragon had assumed about a national dragon shortage. ‘So dragons are protected, are they?’
Mr Kortright grinned. ‘Dragons?’ he said. ‘No way. Nothing in the legislation about dragons. Now crocodiles, yes. Which means the supply of raw material for the handbag trade is down to last knockings. But if you’re good you can make dragon look like crocodile ... You get my meaning?’
A corner of the dragon’s mouth twitched. ‘I seem to remember you people have a saying,’ he said. ‘First catch your...
‘Been away a long time, have you?’ The Kortright grin widened, until it looked like the aftermath of seismic activity. ‘In which case, here’s a tip for you. If you’re flying along and you see something long and grey and kind of tube shaped with little fins coming straight at you, don’t try chaffing it up or asking it out to the movies. They call them wire-guided missiles, and—’
‘Yes, thanks,’ said the dragon. ‘I found out about those for myself. So there are still dragons about, then? People seem to react as if I’m extinct or something.’
‘In these parts,’ Mr Kortright explained, ‘you are. In this century, in fact. That doesn’t worry transtemporal poachers any; just means that by the time they market the goods, they’re also genuine antiques and therefore legal to sell.’
‘Ah.’ The dragon shrugged. ‘But so long as I’m now, I’m relatively safe?’
‘Safe.’ Mr Kortright savoured the word. ‘From poachers, maybe. I mean, chances are, if you stick around any year with nineteen on the front of it, you won’t suddenly find yourself full of powder compacts with a zip up your back. There are,’ he added, ‘other dangers.’
‘Thought that might be the case,’ the dragon replied. ‘Which is precisely why I’m in plain clothes and looking for a job. You see, I have things to do in the here and now. Once they’re done, I’m off somewhere and when a bit less paranoid. While I’m here, though, I thought a job’d help pass the time and help me blend in.’
‘Very wise. So,’ Mr Kortright went on, steepling his fingers, ‘where are we at? Ex-dragon. Ex-dragon. Now then, let me see.’
The dragon waited patiently while Mr Kortright played with his computer.
‘Any luck?’
Mr Kortright pursed his lips. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘like I say to all the kids just starting out in the business, when you’re trying to make your way, sometimes you’ve gotta do things you’d rather not. You sure about poltergeisting?’
‘Positive.’
‘Shucks. Hey, what’s this?’ He peered at the screen. ‘I can get you six weeks’ volcanic activity in Hawaii, covering for the local fire-god while he takes his kids to Disneyland. All you gotta do is lie on your back and blow up through a small hole.’
‘Sorry. Got to be in this country. Anyway, where’s Hawaii?’
‘Please yourself. Gonna be difficult, though. How do you feel about hallucinations?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Hallucinations. For health-conscious druggies. All the weird visions without actually taking the drug. Growth area, steady work.’
‘Not really me, somehow. I’d feel self-conscious. Besides, don’t you have to be a pink elephant?’
‘Boy, are you behind the times.’ Mr Kortright frowned, and tapped a few more keys. ‘Okay, okay, you’re gonna love this. This is really so you. Security guard.’
‘Security guard?’
‘It says here, traditional security guard needed for substantial art collection. Full board. The successful applicant will be at least fourteen feet long, green and covered in scales. No time wasters. There now, what can I say?’
‘Okay,’ said the dragon. ‘When can I start?’
George sailed through the air in a graceful arc and landed in a dustbin. Behind him came a voice, warmly recommending that he stay out. After a short pause for regrouping, he climbed out, brushed trash off his person and staggered away down the alley.
Seems like old times, he said to himself, getting slung out of drinking establishments. Some things had changed, of course; for one thing, getting slung out was now a whole lot easier. Definitely a regrettable tendency to over-react.
His mind drifted back to the bars of his youth. Pendle’s, the roughest saints’ bar in Albion. The Caerllyr Grill. The Grendel’s Torso. What the hell was wrong with this goddamn country?
Half an hour’s slouching, lurching and bumping into things brought him back to Victoria Square, and he realised that he didn’t have anywhere to sleep for the night. He saw...
‘Immediately,’ said Mr Kortright. ‘Here’s the address. Do well.’
The dragon trotted down the stairs into the street and whistled. A moment later, a huge green shape, flying faster than the wind, descended on him and he vanished.
An empty plinth. He thought of his nice warm statue; good, solid marble that didn’t wobble about all over the place like this blasted cheapskate flesh-and-blood outfit did. Climbing the plinth, he sighed, closed his eyes and was stone once more.
‘I’m not saying,’ said Chubby Stevenson, his brain racing, ‘it’s impossible. Nothing’s impossible. All I’m saying is, it’s going to be tricky.’
Fifteen impassive Japanese faces regarded him, until he began to feel like asking for his blindfold and last cigarette. These people, he realised, don’t want to hear this. Pity.
‘It’s all to do,’ he continued, cramming charm into the meter of his smile, ‘with the fundamental nature of Time. Now, with my supplies of raw Time, I can prolong the present, no problem. In certain circumstances, I can sometimes recreate the past — not travel back in time, now that is impossible. Nobody can do that. What I sometimes do, for specially favoured customers, is make a synthetic recreation of a specific episode from the past, using a raw Time base and...’
They weren’t interested. He wasn’t answering the question they’d asked him. Jesus, these guys!
‘The future,’ he therefore said, ‘is something else entirely. Future’s different from past and present, see. Future hasn’t happened yet. If it hasn’t happened, we don’t know what it’s like. If you don’t know what it’s like, you can’t copy it. Now
One of the fifteen leaned forward and, terribly politely, cleared his throat. With respect, his expression said — his lips didn’t move and he didn’t make a noise, but there was no need, just as you don’t need to speak fluent Gun to know that when a .44 revolver stares at you with its one big eye it’s informing you that you are probably going to die — they
knew this already. What they didn’t know, and what they wanted him to tell them, was whether it was possible to arrange an artificial future, in which certain specified events would happen; and if so, how much would it cost? If he didn’t know the answer, the expression continued, then perhaps he would be good enough to say so.
Chubby sighed, and got a grip on himself. ‘It can be done,’ he said. ‘The principle is quite straightforward; simple, even. The practicalities...’
Please explain the practicalities.
‘Okay. It’s all relativity, right? Travel faster than light around the Earth to accelerate forward through Time. Once you’re there, or do I mean then, you set up whatever it is you want to happen in the future. Like, you want to bet heavily on the Superbowl, you fast forward to the day of the match, see who wins, now you can place your b
et —provided you can get back to your own time, or get a message back, anyhow; obviously, you can’t get back yourself, because pastside travel’s out, see above. Sending a message, though, that’s no problem.’
Really?
‘Trade secret,’ Chubby said. Normally he’d have winked as well, but there was something about the wall of stone-faced scrutiny opposite him that put him off the idea. ‘We can do it, anyhow. The technical problem, of course, is finding your faster-than-light courier.
A soluble problem?
‘I feel sure we can sort it out,’ Chubby lied. ‘Of course, if we knew we’d be successful, we’d just get the courier to report back from the future on how we’d managed it, the same time as he passes back the Superbowl results; but that’s a bit hit-and-miss so far as I’m concerned. Sloppy, you know?’
Indeed the fifteen did. Sloppiness, the expression gave him to understand, was anathema to them. Chubby painted a smile over the cracks in his composure and continued. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you boys are going to have to let our R & D people kick this one around for a day or two. As soon as we’ve got the ans—’
You will report back to us in forty-eight hours? Very well.
Chubby’s Adam’s apple bobbed like a Formula One lift. ‘When I said a day or two, I didn’t actually mean two days, I meant—’
You are already suggesting a postponement. Seventy-two hours, then.
‘How would it be,’ Chubby croaked, ‘if we call you when we’re ready to roll? We’ll be as quick as we can, naturally.’
You are asking for an indefinite postponement while you attempt to find a way to do this?
‘Yes.’
We would prefer, said fifteen expressions simultaneously, a specified time limit. That is the way we do business. We trust you can accommodate us on this point.
‘Just give me a week, will you?’ Chubby’s tone suggested that he was Faust offering the Devil double or quits, and even as he spoke a small, rather naïve part of his brain demanded Why are you so scared of these guys? ‘By then, I’ll have definite plans, costings, all that kind of stuff ready for you to see. Agreed?’
Long pause. It was like the moment of thoughtful hesitation on the Seventh Day just before Man, having been assured by God that it was a nice little runner, genuine low mileage, normally you only get oceans of this quality on the top-of-the-range models, said, Okay, we’ll take it. Then fifteen heads nodded. A moment later, the conference room was empty, and a helicopter engine started up somewhere on the roof.
‘Hooray,’ said Chubby wretchedly to himself. ‘I guess I’ve landed this really big contract.’
It was a dirty, rotten job...
Plink! A tiny globe of lime-rich water dripped from cavern roof to floor.
... But someone’s got to do it. Apparently. Ouch! Jesus, but this stuffs uncomfortable.
Traditional security guard, substantial art collection. Whoever drafted that advertisement had probably spent some time in the estate agency business, learning in the process the art of making statements that are almost but not quite downright untrue.
The art collection was housed in a cave two hundred feet below the Pennine Hills and consisted of about three hundred tons’ weight of gold tableware; very old, very vulgar and extremely unpleasant to lie on. Cold. Hard. Lots of handles and knobs and scutcheons to dig into you.
Plus, of course, the alluring prospect of being woken up just as soon as you’ve dropped off by some amateur hero with weapons, desperate courage and a fleet of lorries outside the cave mouth with their engines running. It was as bad as being a guard dog, and he didn’t even have a little bowl with his name on it. The job, the dragon decided, sucks.
‘Hello?’
The voice was still some way off; high-pitched, almost feminine. A ploy, thought the dragon, and a piss-poor one at that. Pound to a penny it’s some muscular git in tin overalls making his voice sound funny to put me off my guard. He breathed in, savouring the mellow warmth of his own breath.
‘Anybody home?’
Only one way he can come and that’s straight through that hole there. Just let him poke his head through, and his mates’ll have to carry him home in an asbestos bag.
‘Here you are.’ The head, as he’d predicted, appeared. But it was female. There was no helmet, no nodding white plume. The dragon was so surprised he swallowed his breath and got hiccups. Nasty...
‘Are you,’ said the female, ‘Mr Wayne Popper?’
The dragon looked at her.
‘My name,’ she went on, ‘is Marjorie Evans. Inland Revenue.’
A tiny flare of green fire spurted from the dragon’s right ear, evidence of the rather complex and horrible ear-nose-and-throat difficulties he was currently experiencing. ‘Is that so?’ he croaked. ‘Look, I do have a certain discretion in these matters, so I’m going to count up to five and then —Oops, ah, shit, do excuse me, please.’ For a few moments, the darkness of the cavern was illuminated by the sort of firework display you generally only get to see when there’s an important Royal wedding.
‘Bless you,’ said Miss Evans, instinctively fumbling in her bag for a tissue. ‘Sorry, you did say you are Mr Popper?’
‘I didn’t say anything,’ replied the dragon, confused. ‘Now get the hell out of here, before I incinerate you.’
‘I’ll take that,’ replied Miss Evans briskly, ‘as a Yes.’ She straightened her back, took out a notebook and looked around, miming seeing the gold for the first time. ‘Well then,’ she said. ‘What have we here?’
Inside the dragon’s brain, a debate was raging. The traditionalists were saying, You fool, here’s a blasted hero, well, all right, heroine, come to nick the goodies, so why the hell don’t you just torch her PDQ and have done with it? In another part of his brain, his loyal opposition was arguing that actually she’d given no indication that she was here to steal anything, she wasn’t armed, she’d even offered a tissue
when he sneezed. So what? retorted the traditionalists. So I don’t want to carbonise her, replied the opposition. She hasn’t done me any harm. Chicken, taunted the old guard. No, replied the other lot, dragon; same number of wings, but bigger and twice the legs.
‘It’s a pile of gold,’ replied the dragon, in the meantime.
‘Is it really?’ Miss Evans was writing in the book. ‘Could you possibly explain to me how you came by it?’
‘Um,’ said the dragon. ‘I’m, er, looking after it for somebody else.’
As the woman looked at him, non-aggressive, pacific, even smiling slightly in a mildly cynical way through thick-lensed spectacles, the dragon was aware of a feeling he hadn’t had for so long he could only just put a name to it. It disconcerted him, no end.
He felt like he was in trouble.
‘Really,’ said the woman. ‘And might I ask who this other person might be?’
This, said the ruling majority in the dragon’s brain, is crazy. One little puff and she’s ash. No sword. No armour. And it isn’t even my treasure. So why do I feel as if I’ve just been caught with my talon in the biscuit tin?
‘A friend,’ the dragon mumbled, not sure where the words he was saying were coming from. ‘Or rather, a bloke I met in a pub, didn’t catch his name. Just look after this lot for me, he said, won’t be a tick.’
‘I see.’
That was all she said. I see. In the old days, when the dragon took to the air, the roads leading in the opposite direction were clogged with nose-to-tail handcarts. He hiccupped again. ‘Gesundheit,’ said the woman.
‘Um,’ said the dragon, his vocal chords sandpaper. ‘Is there a problem?’
The woman closed her notebook, clicked her biro and put them both away. ‘Mr Popper,’ she said, ‘let me be frank with you. I have to say I’m not really very happy with your story. I don’t have to tell you, defrauding the Revenue is no laughing matter.’
For some reason he couldn’t account for at all — the unfamiliarity of the concept, perhaps, or the bewildering lack of terror o
n the woman’s part — the last three words she’d spoken were perhaps the most unnerving things he’d ever heard a mortal say. When you consider that they were competing against such strong contenders as Take your ten thousand archers round the back of the hill, we’ll attack from here with our twenty thousand cavalry and If he had any idea what we’d just put in there, he wouldn’t be drinking it, maybe you can get a vague glimpse at the dragon’s complete bewilderment.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m not Mr Popper. I just work for him.’
The woman smiled. It was, actually, quite a pleasant smile. In her spare time, she probably made fur-fabric mouse bookmarks. ‘I had already guessed that, Mr...’
‘Dragon.’
‘Mister Dragon.’ She pulled out the notebook again. ‘But there is such a thing as being an accessory, you know. I really would urge you to co-operate with us.’
‘Sure.’ A minor seismic event, last echo of the hiccups, wafted blue flame out of the dragon’s left ear; if only, snarled his subconscious, I could accidentally sneeze at her, all they’d ever find would be charcoal. And I wouldn’t even have done it on purpose.
But no sneeze came, and the dragon had to suffer the indignity of listening to himself telling the woman everything he knew about the job — Mr Popper’s enormous property deals, payments made in gold for, what had he called it, fiscal convenience, all kinds of things he scarcely understood himself— while she wrote carefully, nodded and
mhm’d, then closed her notebook, thanked him very politely and left the way she’d come.
A moment after that, he inflated both lungs and blew the biggest flare of extra-hot red fire he’d ever managed in his life. It melted the walls of the cavern, but it didn’t reach Miss Evans; he could hear her inch-and-a-half heels still clippety-clopping along the winding tunnel. Thanks to his belated efforts, however, the hole in the wall was now almost sealed off and he couldn’t get through to press home the attack.
‘Shit!’ he roared. ‘What’s happening to me?’
Nobody said anything, but his deranged imagination made him believe that, in the dying echoes of his own roar, he heard a mocking voice asking him whose side he was on.
Paint Your Dragon Tom Holt Page 4
