Chasing the Dragon

by Justina Robson

  She reached out and grabbed a flare from Bentley's arms. She flipped open the end cap and put her finger in the trigger release. With the other hand she took the oxygen cylinder and flicked it around in her palm until it lay along her forearm, nozzle pointing forwards ready to spray. She moved forwards purposefully, towards the circle, then at the last moment turned, ignited the flare, and opened the oxygen valve.

  The water demon's head went up almost immediately in an explosion of steam and boiling liquids. It barely had time to scream its agony before the best part of its flesh was vaporised by the intense, unstoppable burn. Lila stood over it, her own arms lost to sight in clouds of billowing steam and filthy smoke, guiding the oxygen jet to ensure total consumption. The screaming of the humans and Bentley's cry momentarily drowned out the area alarms, but in a few seconds Vadrahazeen was dead and beginning to shrink. The stench of his cooking body filled the room. Lila cut off the oxygen as he began to decompose in the demon manner. She threw the cylinder at Bentley, who still caught it in spite of her shock, then jammed what was left of the flare into the smouldering eye socket of the demon's charred skull. Sparks and flame shot out of the mouth and nose. Around her legs the dress wraps shifted as they came close to the smouldering body, tiny tongues of thread darting forwards to close gaps and taste the foul smoke that was billowing around.

  With his death the circle he'd conjured evaporated and so did the glamour he had set upon the creature crouched on Zal's chest. It was small, no bigger than a cat, and halfway in physiology between cat and monkey. Its long, gibbonish arms were stretched out, hands on Zal's face, the overly lengthened and sharpened index fingers moving towards his closed eyes. Its body was wreathed in red, orange, and yellow fire that was so intense and brilliant it was hard to see any details, but here and there the fire could be seen blasting out of its body core through rents in flesh that was raw, suggestions of muscle and tendon holding bones together over a blast furnace. The blanket and everything near it was already catching light. On Zal's face the gel was spitting and boiling with snapping pops.

  Lila breathed out to clear her nose, took aim through the clouding air, and shot the demon with a cold iron full metal jacket. The impact flung it through the air and slammed it into the wall. It spun crazily, recoiling and using its long legs to rebound back towards the bed. Spatters of cooling metal trailed in its wake like blood, where the iron had melted and run harmlessly out of its body. It landed lightly, fixated on its task, and with one febrile leap landed on Zal's head and stabbed its clawed fingers down. Its tail coiled, and the spike tip drove into the side of the silver blanket. The body jolted with the force.

  Lila forgot the gun and reached for the pen. The heat in the room was well above a hundred and thirty and soaring rapidly. It made her faster, but she wasn't fast enough. She knew it but carried on with her swing anyway, watching the shift of slim fountain pen to sword take place in a time split too small to detect, the sword huge and curved in her hand, the blade a thin, razor-sharp crescent of ice that grew and grew in the arc until it was exactly the right size.

  The demon screamed with fury and leapt straight up, clutching its hands and tail into itself as it became a fireball. "Cheat!" she heard it say in the oldest form of demonic, a wailing, desperate, angry, and futile spasm of absolute hatred that cut short as the sword blade sliced into it. The blade shook in her hand as the monkey thing vanished into the splintering white of its surface. By the time it finished the swing and her hand returned to her side it was the pen once more, cool and undisturbed.

  Zal was dead.

  CHAPTER TWELUE

  ila walked forwards and looked down at the corpse. She was numb. The face was blackened now, gel turned to peeling, dried goo. It was hideous and silent. After a time she was aware of Bentley at her side. The android was holding a baton in her hand.

  "I tried to stop it," she said, and for the first time since Lila had met her she heard a hesitant, awkward human in the voice.

  "It's not your fault," Lila said. "Not even the demons' fault. It's my fault."

  "No," Bentley said. "Nobody would have been fast enough to stop that thing."

  Which wasn't true; Lila could think of one, but it didn't matter now. There was nothing here she recognised anymore. A terrible feeling was rising through her. For no reason she could understand the image of a doll kept coming to her mind. She recognised it as a toy she'd owned, never really loved, and one day "lost." It had floated relentlessly when she tried to swim it out to sea. It just kept coming back to the shore, the expression on its bland plastic face unfalteringly trusting.

  "Zombie," Lila said, turning away from the rotting body. "It's a zombie. Not really him. At least, not more than a partial copy. I just thought when I saw him ... it ... I thought it was. I wished it was. I'd still think it was if the demon hadn't said so. Did me a favour, really. Sorry." She moved her hand at the room, the stone figures lying on the floor. "Mess."

  How could she not have seen it was a fake? When the demon had screamed that he was cheated and leapt from his attack with the intent of doing some greater harm-that was the first time she'd even contemplated that this thing wasn't what it looked like. And it had even been cheated of its revenge for being promised an Ahriman to eat, because she'd already killed the double-crossing scum responsible.

  If it had been the real Zal, he would be gone. She would have been too late. She chose the wrong target first. It all left the question-if it was a zombie, then where was Zal? Was he actually dead or was it worse?

  Fabric moved quietly against her legs and she found she was wearing conventional trousers, with pockets. She put the pen inside and turned away, suddenly so nauseated by the stink of burnt flesh and demon skin that she retched and only the fact she hadn't eaten in a long time saved her from puking on the floor. At the door she almost blundered into someone, saw a black shirt, coat, the hint of a sparkle of dust.

  "Mal," she croaked.

  "I wish you'd wait for me before you have a party," he said with his trademark insouciance. "I missed seeing everyone's faces when hell exploded."

  "Yeah, they don't get out much around here," growled Greer's voice from just behind Malachi. He passed them both, grumbling and giving orders to the staff who now streamed into the room and started clearing up. "Gimme those paperweights."

  As he took the demons' remains away Malachi grasped Lila's elbow firmly and steered her out. She felt lightheaded with too many uppers, dazed, as if she were floating. She counteracted them with a heavy dose of tranquillizers.

  "The dead people on your ship aren't real," she said to him, slurring drunkenly.

  "Yeah, I figured," he said, walking slowly and calmly. They passed along the halls, took the elevator, and made the turns to his office. "Nice suit, by the way. Bit tight on the corset but the trousers are very smart."

  "I don't like the corset," she said, eyes rolling. The sudden shift from high to low made her feel like a hungover drunk who was still swallowing the last dregs of the jar. "Too tight. Like being a sausage."

  He snorted and manoeuvred her through the door into the courtyard.

  She pointed at the yurt. Even the Al part of her was struggling to keep her afloat. Her kidneys and other purification systems were overloaded. It was oddly pleasing. She felt warmly part of the human race, able to say with genuine sentiment, "Your house got trashed."

  "I saw that." He'd dragged out his furniture and made a room on the grass, with chairs and a blanket for a mat and his little cooler, still wired in and chugging away. "Siddown." He put her on the blanket.

  The corset laces hissed and let out several inches. Lila slumped sideways and lay on her side. It was rather comfortable except that the wool was a little scratchy on her cheek and the bare skin of her arms. How did sheep manage? It must be different from the other side, she thought. "I'm really tired."

  "Just fill me in; then you can sleep."

  "You went missing." She yawned and lifted a finger, waving it to conduct
her performance of the last few hours. "I found your office, searched it, found the sextant thingy, obviously Jones left it, gave it to Bentley, couldn't find you, went to my office, Zal was there-anyway I thought it was him-so I took him to medical, but he couldn't be revived, and then I thought I should use an elemental because they're like power and he needed power and it all seemed to add up and he's used to mainlining fire thingies, so Greer sent the water demon agent to get one, but he crossed me and brought someone to kill Zal and me instead so's he could have a shot at taking over the Ahriman dynastic line, but I had the sword so it didn't work out, though it would have got Zal if it had been Zal because I picked the wrong target first, I was so angry I just had to kill the scummy little sucker, but anyway it wasn't Zal, it was something off those ghost ships. Kinda lucky. What're they called? Zombie. I have to read up on those ... I ..." She trailed off, mind dissociating, the finger and its hand falling to the ground. There was a moment of quiet; then she snapped alert for a moment, startling Malachi and making him jump. "And Teazle is missing. In Demonia."

  She fell unconscious.

  Malachi sat down on his best remaining chair and took a beer out of the cooler. The early morning was almost fresh, with air coming in off the sea over the city. There was no moon, just the stars and the office lights. He leaned back, opened the bottle, and took a drink, looking up at the constellations. They were different to the ones in Faery. He'd always looked for similarities but never found any. Faeries weren't such keen observers of these things as humans and demons and elves, but he felt sure that some of those stars were the same ones he could see at home. Just not in the same places. Perhaps, he thought, Faery was round to the left some more. A turn could make all the difference.

  At his feet Lila started to snore softly. Slowly, the purple fabric of the corset stole up over her chest and shoulders, then down her arms. Tiny silver motes, like the stars he'd been watching, came on in the depths of the cloth nap and drew out the familiar shapes of Tigris and the Boghopper. He tipped the bottle at the clothes in a half cheer, thanking it for giving him a friendly sky. "Tatter."

  As he watched the coat become a thick cloak-the sewn stars never moved, just the cloth grew around them-he saw a shape drawn in it by slightly lighter threads. It moved, rolling over, a huge circle, no, a spiral. In the sky of the cloak it was a planet revolving, a mandala in the shape of a dragon coiled on itself tightly, wings furled, claws closed, eyes shut. It slept, but restlessly. Its handfeet twitched and the end of its tail shivered. Ripples ran beneath its armour.

  "Yeah," he said to it quietly. "Yeah that's what's going on."

  The picture on the cloak faded, leaving the constellations.

  Malachi put his hand into his jacket pocket and found the warm, rounded shapes of hazelnuts. They were Madrigal's gift. He felt very lonely and took one out, shelled it carefully, and ate it. Immediately his spirits lifted a little and he was able to relax.

  At that moment he heard steps and the door opened from the buildings. Temple Greer shambled across the path and over the grass slowly.

  "Pull one up." Malachi gestured at his spare chair-a large chest covered in a half carpet and a cushion. He pointed with the neck of his bottle at the cooler.

  Greer organised himself a couple of feet away next to Malachi and sat down, twisting the cap off his drink slowly. "I missed the end of the game," he said. "The Pirates won. Can you believe it? We were two six up at the half. I swear, you take your eyes off these things for a second and it all shoots to shit."

  Malachi shrugged. He didn't follow human sports. They were too dull and the rules never changed.

  Greer sniffed and turned the bottle, pretending to read the label with all its disclaimers. "So, was she right? Was it him?"

  "Yes. No. Sort of." Malachi said. "Difficult to answer. Zombies share a spirit with the person from whom they were called, but it can be a piece without memory or feeling or awareness just as easily as a major chunk of soul. They're like elementals in that way. Elemental fragments. They can be put into corpses of the person, or other people's corpses, or any vehicle, even dolls and constructs and mechanical devices, but the last parts are hard. Mostly if there's no body to hand a master will make one out of some elemental substance and cause it to copy the physical memory of the fragment, so you get something that looks a lot like the original. But it isn't. Chop it up and you'll see."

  "It's being autopsied right now. I'll go hassle them in a minute, when I get my breath back." He took a long drink. "Ghosts, zombies," Greer said. "Not something we've seen much of so far."

  "You'll see a lot more," Mal sighed.

  "Oh yeah?" The words sounded light enough. Malachi wasn't fooled.

  "That cracking that's been going on since the Bomb ... well, it wasn't the Bomb," Malachi said. He tried his best not to fidget as he revealed his suspicions, but it was very hard, the urge to confound, convolute, dissemble, weasel, and defraud was strong, as strong as the information was important. If he couldn't do it verbally, it expressed itself in his limbs as a manic need to get up and dance or run away. "The Bomb was just a product of the same thing as the cracks. And this is just the same. Fifty years went by here, you got bigger cracks in reality, you got more and more leakage off the other realms, more instability all over. Cosmic shattering. In that perspective it was only ever a matter of time until the most distant worlds crept up on you and invaded your space because all the worlds are starting to infiltrate each other, like coloured lights crossing and making new colours." He hesitated. He was not a great theorist but he was very convinced by this. Humbly he added. "Actually, it coulda been the Bomb. You know that'd make sense. But also, it coulda just been going to happen anyway."

  Greer rubbed his face roughly with his free hand, snorting and snuffling not unlike a warthog trying to wake up. He finished and smoothed his moustache with a swipe of his index finger. "Skip to it. It's getting early."

  "S'probably dragons," Malachi said, very quietly. He knew how statements like this went down with the scientific and by-theirfingernails-material-rationalist humans. If you didn't quickly provide a scaffolding that allowed them to scramble safely from an atheist world in which no invisible agents or aetheric powers existed across to a point in which invisible agents could exist as parts of a psychological intentionalist stance et cetera, then you could enjoy a suspicious, contemptuous, and frosted-over life as That Faery You Met at the Party, Mad Like All of Them but Doesn't He Dress Well? He waited, but Greer made no sudden moves. "Either they started stirring around a while back and lots of old things started to surface everywhere, inside and outs, a result of that you were able to tune to the Signal well enough to figure out how to build the bomb, set it off, and et cetera, the rest is history. Or, you built the bomb all by your clever selves, set it off, and that started to give them nightmares and wake them up. Either way, don't feel responsible. They move around every so often by themselves. And you weren't to know, were you?"

  Greer stared down the neck of his bottle morosely. "Every so often?"

  "Every few thousand years, maybe as few as two, maybe as much as a hundred thousand. Or a million. Or a billion. Now and then."

  "Doing what?"

  Malachi shrugged. He never understood the need humans had to try and find the reason behind everything. Surely it was just an infinite cascade of reasons that led back whimsically into the first moments of time itself? What were they going to do, go back there and fix things? The basics of the situation as it was were always more than enough for him to react to. He supposed they fancied that knowing how a thing happened meant they'd manage circumstances better the next time, but there never was a next time; there was only the one time for everything. Why did a dragon? Why did a cat? It made no sense. He struggled and, because no answer wouldn't do, said all he could think of. "Being."

  "Who are ... What do ... Are you talking about cosmic scales of being, no pun intended?"

  "Can be," Malachi said, floundering and searching for any footi
ng he could find to get out of the question. "Or could be quantum scale. Usually on all scales. The thing you call dragon that looks like a winged lizard with claws and teeth is just a form. They like that shape. I don't know why. Probably because it looks impressive and mystic and keeps most people well away. But they don't look like anything left to themselves. They're not anchored to dimensions. Like angels. Only angels aren't anchored to time either and dragons kinda are. They're almost like manifestations of time, I guess. It's like you and god. So the aetheric and the dragon." He stopped his mouth with a fierce chug of faery lite and hoped that would be sufficient, but of course it wasn't.

  "God?"

  "Yeah. They're as far over the average aetheric being as god is to you." He cursed himself for carelessly putting that in and added, "Not that there is a god, of course, but if there were then that's how it would be. So don't ask me about them because I don't know. They aren't something ever bothered with me. Some people claim to channel them and speak for them, but they might just be mad."

  "People like Sancha Azevedo."

  Malachi rolled his beer bottle in his hands. "I knew you were going to mention her."

  "Then don't act all coy about it."

  "I guess she's on her way here?"

  "She wouldn't come. Not even though Sarah promised her a limo and a month's pay. Mountains and Muhammad and all that jazz. Said it wasn't worth it for a zombie nobody would want revived anyway and would we please not call her until after ten in the morning about the other one because she had to do her T'ai Chi."

  "She said it was a zombie?"

  "Yeah, and she didn't sound pleased. In fact, she sounded rather like Mrs. Greer when I call her at three in the morning to ask her when the hell she's coming home. I gave that up, by the way. It hasn't been as much fun recently as it was for the first few years."

  Malachi sighed. He took a drink and surrendered to the inevitable. "What other one?"