And have I mentioned recently that languages are not one of my talents?
But I think Bud was a lot clearer about one thing than I was. He’d got it that dragons were in danger, even if he hadn’t got it about Congress. (About dragon government: I don’t know, but I think maybe Bud is Congress.) Maybe the dragons have a long history of dragons failing to communicate with humans—surely they’d’ve tried when the Aussies first started wiping them out, for example? They wouldn’t be so bewildered they wouldn’t try to say “please stop, can we negotiate”? Or wouldn’t they recognize humans as intelligent any more than we recognized them as intelligent? Maybe they only saw us as a plague they couldn’t defeat—like a book or a movie about the planet being taken over by aliens or apes. Or germs. Or Yorkshire terriers. Maybe I was a big surprise to them too.
But—particularly if they’d thought about all this before—Bud would know that I wasn’t going to be able to go back to the Institute and say, “Hey! Dragons can talk in their heads and in mine too (sort of)!” Because I was going to prove this—how? Everything I could have—and, of course, eventually did—tell anyone could be seen as raving. Which a lot of people do see it as. Still. But some of the important people believe me. And part of the reason why is because of Bud the day the helicopters came.
The dragons all heard them long before I did. Lois heard them too and when I was puzzled she sent me a picture of a wider-than-tall blob with something funny going on at the top and going gup gup gup which I didn’t understand at all—although it was also yellow, and I’ve never seen a yellow helicopter—which may give you another tiny glimpse of how hard the learning process is, because a helicopter is something I know. (The dragon pictograph-with-nonsound for dragon doesn’t look or sound anything like the human idea of a dragon either, even after you’ve plugged in, and it varies from dragon to dragon, like some of it’s style, like some of them present Essential Dragon as wearing All Star high-tops and jeans, and some of them rhinestones and black velvet. Maybe Essential Helicopter is yellow?)
While I was still trying to figure it out, Zenobia and Gulp headed for the tunnel to the cavern. Gulp tried to take Lois, but she wouldn’t go; she came and hid behind me. Hiding behind something the size of me away from something the size of Gulp is pretty funny, but Gulp would have realized that the only way she’d nab Lois was by force and I also think I picked up something between Bud and Gulp which I think was Bud saying, Let her stay. So Gulp and Zenobia left. And Lois and I…and Bud…stayed where we were.
I was already worried, before I heard the choppers too. Even when I can’t pick up specifics I can sometimes pick up atmosphere—well, everybody (every human body) knows about that, it doesn’t have to be something esoteric about dragons. You walk into a room where there’s a perfectly ordinary conversation going on and your ears are telling you it’s a perfectly ordinary conversation and the hairs on the back of your neck are telling you it isn’t. There was some hairy atmosphere going on and not knowing was bad enough.
And then I heard it—whompwhompwhomp—and then I really panicked. I started shouting and waving my hands at Bud again—I got so crazy I actually grabbed one of the…the spiny wart-things on one of his front feet, like I could pull him toward the cavern door, like a dog on a lead. (I was pulling on a toe, you know, because that’s what I could reach.) And for the second time since I’d met my first dragon I burst into tears, for reasons not too dissimilar from that first time, and if you want to despise me, feel free, I don’t care. I didn’t want to see another dead dragon. Another dragon stupidly killed by humans. And by then Bud was also my friend.
The choppers found us all right. Bud would be pretty hard to miss if you were even half looking. Most chopper flights don’t see dragons only because dragons get out of the way as soon as they hear the chopper. I can imagine the guns trained on him and all that. But they saw me too, and they tried to get me out of the way first since I was (no doubt mysteriously) still alive. It was like something on a bad TV movie, the blast of the broadcast voice telling me to move slowly away from the dragon. It was almost funny. Like moving slowly away from something the size (and firepower) of a dragon meant anything.
I suppose really they were not being that stupid—they could always try to kill the other end of him, which was a long way away, but I was stubbornly sticking by the fire-breathing end, and remember that dragons can breathe a lot of fire after they’re dead. I should say that Bud was now lying flat on the ground—he’d put his head down as soon as the choppers came into sight—the way Gulp had the day she met us, or when she was inviting us for transport—and all curled in on himself too, so maybe you couldn’t see quite how many miles of him there were. Well, it makes perfectly good any-old-species sense, doesn’t it? If you’re trying to look nonthreatening you try to look small and weak. It’s just very hard to do effectively if you’re a dragon (but proves they have, you know, imagination).
And I think they didn’t realize just how big Bud is. Or maybe Major Handley involuntarily found himself wondering what the hell he was seeing—because I was jumping up and down beside Bud’s nose screaming idiotic things like Don’t shoot, Don’t shoot! He’s okay! We’re all okay! Please don’t shoot! Although how, exactly, even a bright human at the head of a deliberate show of military force (to impress the dragons?) figured out that I wasn’t begging to be rescued I’m not sure. Maybe he didn’t know either and—since I’d survived this long—was waiting for clarification. The “extermination” order for our dragons hadn’t come yet—there was still room for doubt. Or negotiation.
I tried to talk to him about this, later. He just looked at me and shook his head. He’s still a career military guy and I’m still a bleeding heart dipstick. I’ll be sending him birthday cards for the rest of his life to thank him though.
Anyway. Lois was jumping up and down with me and shrieking—I think I’ve mentioned she had a very piercing shriek—and the poor major wouldn’t have known about her. Even if he thought Bud was not making any moves because he was dead, Lois was obviously alive, and big enough to do damage if she had the inclination. She even looked enough like a dragon by then that you might even guess she was one.
There were three of them, but it was the major’s helicopter that sank down a little lower as if for a better view. As I say, I think they didn’t really get how big Bud was. But there was a sudden, gentle picture in my mind not unlike a nudge with an elbow, and I turned around and flung myself up Bud’s shoulder a lot more enthusiastically than I’d ever climbed Gulp’s. But then I was even more desperate that day than when she’d flown us away from the first helicopter coming after me.
I galloped up all that neck, half bent over, scrabbling at the spinal plates with my hands—remember that dragons are slippery—but I didn’t perch on his neck. I climbed the rest of the way, on to his head. I could brace my feet against the nobbles and hold on to the smaller, less sharp-edged spikes. Lois, for once, remained where she was, although she stopped shrieking to peep at me, and there was a gust of something through my mind that I’m pretty sure was envy.
And Bud slowly uncurled. First he raised his head and neck, and then he stood up, and then he stood on his back legs and craned. And I found myself staring into the major’s helicopter at a lot of platter-sized eyes and wide-open mouths, and shouting over the helicopter din, It’s okay, see? He’s okay. I’m okay. This is Bud. We can talk to each other. Sort of.
CHAPTER TEN
The rest of the story everybody knows. The whole world knows. They ran that first TV news shot with a thirty-second delay because they weren’t sure they weren’t going to find themselves running live footage of a brainless seventeen-year-old boy being made into dragon canapes during prime time. The Searles actually did us a favor about this. They pulled all the stops out to get us off the air after that first live broadcast, and the head of NYN got so pissed off that he said nothing would prevent him running it—and ran it at the top of every hour as a news update on every one of h
is 1,000,000 local stations all that day, just to spite the Searles. It’s possible that what he was really pissed off about was the amount of money he’d been spending on having several of his camera guys at the Institute waiting for something to happen, but when Carol Domanski started transmitting what she was watching out of Major Handley’s helicopter all was forgiven in a really big way. (You probably know Carol later got a Pulitzer for what she’s done on dragons, but she’s actually done it well, so good for Carol. And the Pulitzer committee.)
If you saw it that first time, you know that it looks pretty bad—that’s our fence tangling up the transmission—and the beginning is a big grainy blur. (The picture would cut in at the worst possible moment in terms of me looking like a dangerous lunatic.) But they cleaned it all up later, so that the Searles couldn’t get anywhere claiming it was faked. Not that they didn’t try.
I’m not sure they aren’t still running all our live programs with a delay, in case of accidents. There haven’t been any accidents and Gulp has got quite blasé about all the people and lights and wires and fuss that TV programs create—especially a lot of fuss, because of what our fence does to the equipment, and the Wilsonville garage isn’t a plausible alternative if you want to film a dragon. Although even if you really desperately want to film a dragon and have the best fence-resistant gear going, you still have big problems because you have to get it to the dragon. We go to them.
Dad flatly refuses to let more road be cut into Smokehill—and some suggestion about motocross-type bikes or three-wheelers made him apoplectic. Noises have been made about pack ponies, which Dad would consider, but first they have to come up with a solution to the fact that every pony, horse, burro, donkey, and whatever else they’ve tried so far has instantly lost its training at the first whiff of dragon. (They haven’t tried camels yet.) Sometimes they go nuts before they’re even taken off the truck. Horse van drives through gate, sound of meltdown in back of van, van drives back out through gate. Meanwhile the sky would be black with helicopters—if Dad would allow that either, which he won’t. Fortunately Smokehill’s Friends tend to the eco-loony fringe, so Dad’s got some help.
Gulp was our first star, more than Bud or even Lois, although Lois is a close second, and anybody who even half understands what all this has been about loves Lois best (I’m not partial, of course not)—but fifty feet (plus tail) of Gulp is impressive. Gulp, of all the big dragons, is the only one who really cooperates with being filmed, although there are snaps and crackles of several of the others. Gulp doesn’t really get it, about people being fascinated by her. As far as she’s concerned—at least this is how I read it—she’s just doing her penance for almost frying me, that day we met. Want to imagine how fast a dragon holding a human baby would have got itself killed (supposing someone just happened to have a lightning rifle in his back pocket)? Especially if the kid’s mom had recently been made into kabobs?
Lois, I swear, was made to go on TV though. She is interested in everything, and as long as I’m still somewhere relatively nearby, she is a shameless flirt with everything else human, or that’s how it comes over. She figures that humans are her family, and she’s just thrilled any time another of her strangely shaped relatives wants to meet her. For some reason people carrying blinding lights and trailing leads and yelling are included—even the ones whose first reaction, on seeing a great scaly lump on little bent legs lolloping briskly toward them while making extraordinary noises that allow a too-clear view of teeth several inches long, is to run away. Lois has a very generous heart as well as a lot of energy.
Anyway, Gulp didn’t fry me that first day and she hasn’t fried anyone since and she’s not going to, but even I, who spends, and who has already spent, more intensive time with dragons than any other human ever has, I’ve still never got over how big they are, so I can hardly blame the TV crews—as well as what are now our rivers of visiting scientists—for being a little jumpy. Gulp, fortunately, doesn’t run at people the way Lois does. I suspect even some of the TV people pick up her fatalistic stoicism, even if they don’t know that’s what they’re picking up. They’re probably just telling themselves that anything that large is kind of oppressive by definition.
Maybe that’s why they usually end up liking Lois so much. She’s still small, comparatively, and she seems to have the gene or the pheromone or something for being fetching. It can’t be her big deep soft brown shining long-lashed eyes because she has small poppy greeny-reddy eyes increasingly surrounded by knobbly spikes and eyelashes like stilettos. There is just no way to make out a baby dragon as cute. Lois is cute anyway, and her energy level, if you don’t have to live with her, is pretty appealing. You know how charming it is when some dog you’ve never met before comes rushing up to you like you’re his long-lost best friend. The enthusiasm is contagious. For a few minutes you think maybe you are best friends. Then you begin to wonder what the dog must be like at home. I don’t think most of the TV people ever get this far thinking about Lois because she is, you know, a dragon. I suppose I can’t have it both ways, expecting people who’ve never met a dragon to get it about dragons and then feeling crabby (or superior) when they don’t.
We don’t have mere rivers of ordinary tourists, of course, we have oceans of them—galaxies—Avogadro’s numbers of tourists. They still rarely see any dragons but it doesn’t stop them coming, and we now have loops of some of Gulp’s and Lois’ finest video moments on big screens in the tourist center, as well as the one of me being spastic on Bud’s head. I can’t risk just going into the tourist center any more myself, it’s like being a pop star or something, and don’t laugh, because it’s ghastly.
Lois and I hide out in this fortress a little beyond where the Rangers’ cottages all are. When we first came back to the Institute we were guarded twenty-four hours a day by some of Major Handley’s guys—from our new fans, sure, but also from the Searles and their goons, who were not good losers—and then the fortress got built. I didn’t know anything could go up that fast—it was like watching time-lapse photography. It was amazing. It also must have cost a fortune. Dad is still pretty protective about me in some, sometimes weird, ways, and he seems to think it would blight me or something if I knew what it cost. With everything else that’s happened I think this is pretty funny. Maybe it’s just something he can protect me from.
And where’s the fortune coming from, you’re asking, or maybe you’re not. After all, the galaxies of tourists not only buy tickets but they now all buy ye olde genuine Smokehill souvenirs by the barrowload—most of ’em stagger out of here now carrying shopping bags like they’ve just bought the week’s groceries for a family of eight. It’s mostly just the usual souvenir junk too, only with dragons on it, plus a few Smokehill specials, like real dragon scales, and the only place you can buy our dragons’ scales is at our tourist center gift shop, and while a dragon scale is only sold as a dragon scale, I’m sure a lot of tourists go home telling themselves that really theirs is one of Gulp’s or Bud’s (Lois doesn’t shed proper scales yet). This isn’t necessarily tourists being blind and stupid either—dragon scales are all the same color after they’ve been off the dragon for a little while, whatever color they were on the dragon, so why not imagine yours is from your favorite dragon?
Everybody wants scales though, so it’s a good thing we now have lots of dragons to provide them. I mean, we’ve always had lots of dragons, but after I collected a few bagfuls at Dragon Central and went through a really amazingly silly nonconversation with Bud about whether it was all right if I took them away, the dragons started collecting them for me. I don’t think anyone has a clue what I want them for; it’s just another of those inexplicable peculiarities of humans.
It’s funny about the scales. Dad always said it was a bad idea, our Rangers have better things to do with their time than haul trash for tourists, tourists are just fine with coffee mugs and mouse mats that say GREETINGS FROM SMOKEHILL. And I remember the flap when Mom and Katie and the latest noise of
consultants (okay, what’s the collective noun for consultants—a fire sale of consultants? ha ha ha) brought him around, saying that it was something tangible about our australiensis that visitors could not only see but touch and take home with them. Not to mention scales being about the only things attached to dragons that don’t disintegrate within a few months: Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that scales don’t actually stay on the dragon long. Dad did have to admit they made us money—and even a big bag of them doesn’t weigh much, so they’re not a burden to carry back to the Institute. Since Lois the sanctuaries in Kenya and Australia have started selling scales too, but all their scales are just from any old dragons, and they don’t do anything like the business we do.
Then the postcard from that first TV documentary—filmed at the Westcamp meadow, so there is a lot of hushed, dopey voiceover narration of the and this is where IT FIRST HAPPENED variety—of Gulp prostrate at my feet sold like nearly enough for a down payment on Smokehill II. You can’t see most of her, of course, just a bit of her neck and her head, with her face tipped down enough for her nearer eye to be looking straight at me, very much like the first afternoon, when she was apologizing. The panorama version—where you can see all of her—sold even better. And then there’s our patent on Dragon Dolls. And Dragon Squadron was last Christmas’ biggest seller—in both its computer and its board game formats—the sort of scene where parents were pulling each other’s hair out in front of FAO Schwarz. They had to call in some kind of riot police in Denver, I think it was, when a shipment got hijacked to somewhere else.
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