Removing the ruby crystal from its neck chain, she inserted it into the security slot. Deep within the machinery, cybernetic systems hummed to life. She punched in the access codes and, seizing the rubber grips at the ends of the armrests, gave them a quarter turn. Twin needles slid almost painlessly into Caitlin’s wrists, and restraints wrapped themselves about her arms to hold them motionless. Then she closed her eyes and wordlessly breathed the dragon’s true name into the unending nothing of its consciousness: Zmeya-Gorynchna, of the line of Zmeya-Goryschena, of the line of Gorgon, awaken!
7708 awoke.
First came the stench of jet fuel and black malice. Then the dragon slid into Caitlin’s mind, heavy and fluid, like coil upon heavy coil of cold, serpentine flesh. The first time she had let this happen, Caitlin had choked and gagged with disgust and almost abandoned her dream of becoming a pilot on the spot. But long use had dulled the experience. Now it was merely unpleasant.
As the great Worm was forcing itself into her hindbrain, Caitlin projected an image of herself striding out of a dark wood and into the desolation of the dragon’s mind. She envisaged her avatar as a slim figure in silver armor, the sigil of House Sans Merci traced in green scrollwork on the breastplate. In her left hand she carried a thyrsus topped with a pinecone and in the right a chalice, to indicate that she had come to negotiate matters of great import. Ashes whispered underfoot and sifted down like snow from a gray, sunless sky.
The air congealed before her, and Zmeya-Gorynchna manifested itself in the form of a woman twice Caitlin’s height and heroically muscled. Her robes were the same red as her skin and she sat spraddle-legged upon a boulder, as if lounging on a throne. Small horns peeked from her hair.
“You wish to negotiate? With me?” the Titaness said in a lazily amused tone. “Have I slept away the aeons that the little girl who liked to play at dragon pilot is now grown to an age sufficient to deal with me as an equal? The air base is still here and the mountains about it are unchanged. That tells me no.”
“Peace, old Spite,” Caitlin said. “I came to find out why you perjured yourself against me.”
Ostentatiously looking away, the dragon lifted one buttock and scratched herself. She yawned like a cat, the interior of her mouth an abyss. At last, petulantly, when Caitlin said nothing, “Why shouldn’t I, if the notion to do so enters my head?”
“Out of mere self-esteem, I would have thought. Yet by swearing false testimony, you proved yourself without honor or nobility—and before a witness, too. Why?”
“Let me explain something you should have learned long ago,” the dragon said. “All those stories you read in the nursery where the mayfly confronts the North Wind or the farm-girl demands an explanation for his villainy from the giant? Lies, all of them. The mouse can pull all the splinters she likes from the lion’s paw but she’ll end up as a canapé regardless. Strength is its own justification. I owe you no explanation for anything.”
“I didn’t really expect one. But it was worth a try.” Caitlin removed herself from the imaginary world within 7708’s consciousness. She released the rubber grips. The needles slid from her wrists and the dragon disappeared from her mind. It could still hear her, however, for so long as the hexagonal shaft of ruby with a chromium flaw at its heart rested inside the security slot. She reached under the instrument console and isolated a pair of wires. Then, using wire cutters she had brought for this purpose, she severed them.
“What are you doing?” the dragon demanded. Only a pilot could have sensed the apprehension in its voice.
“Making sure the radio is inoperative.”
“Why would you want to do something as pointless as that?”
Caitlin popped the canopy. “You can’t move without a pilot,” she said. “Now you can’t communicate, either. It’s the only way I dare leave you awake.”
“Why do you want me awake?”
“You are great beyond human estate. It would be base of me to strike at you while you sleep.”
“What are you planning to do?” This time, there was no mistaking the fear in the dragon’s voice.
Halfway to the ground already, Caitlin said, “You gave me no answers when I asked—why should you expect me to respond any differently to you now?”
* * *
Wraith-slow, Caitlin drove the Kawasaki to the far end of the airfield, closest to the main gate. A sharp-eyed observer might have seen the air shimmering and warping in her passage. But no one was looking. All the eyes that mattered were out in the forest, searching for her.
She took a deep breath in and let it out.
She placed her hands over her ears.
She breathed a word to liberate the lux aeterna frozen within the magnesium flares in 7708’s fuel tanks.
There was an instant in which nothing happened. Then, the merest breath later, all the jet fuel 7708 held ignited at once. Flames pillared into the sky. A hot, hard hand pushed against Caitlin’s face and body, throwing her to the ground and sending her motorcycle tumbling. A roar as great as what might be made by a dying god slamming into the mountain passed through her hands as if they didn’t exist.
Ears ringing, Caitlin pulled the motorcycle up and mounted it. Where her dragon had been was a scorched black smear of burnt concrete. But there were large hunks of the great machine scattered in the air, still falling, still burning. Trails of smoke rose up and arced downward with them, and where they fell, they started new fires.
Sirens began to scream from every quarter of the compass.
That was Caitlin’s cue. As the thunder of secondary explosions washed over the base, she tugged the tarp of invisibility about her, leaned low over the Kawasaki, gunned its engine, and was past the sentries while they were still gawking up at the sky.
The traffic was light on the highway leading down to the coast, and Caitlin took advantage of that to open out the Kawasaki and let it run. The wind in her face and hair, she flew down the highway and into the night.
She had escaped! An indescribable mixture of triumph and elation filled her mind and body. But Caitlin let the moment pass, eased up on the throttle, and settled down to a safer, if not exactly sedate, speed. Then she looked within herself and said, “All right. Not that I don’t appreciate the warning. But who are you and what are you doing in my head?”
“Well, dear,” Helen said, “that’s a long story…”
The Sky is low—the Clouds are mean.
A Travelling Flake of Snow
Across a Barn or through a Rut
Debates if it will go—
—Emily Dickinson
Caitlin and Helen did not make good skullmates. They traveled east and then south, bickering often. The money they got by pawning the Cartier watch, though a fraction of its true value, was enough to bring them to the port city of Alqualondë. There they sold the Kawasaki to a chop shop and bought a forged set of seawoman’s papers so that Caitlin could sign on to a steamer headed for Europa. The trip was uneventful until, one quiet evening off the Bohemian coast, when Caitlin was lying in her berth, feeling lonely and a little afraid, a voice sounded weakly in her ear. “Are you awake? Are you naked? Are you touching yourself?”
“Hello, Rabbit. It’s been a while.”
“Talking like this isn’t as easy as I make it seem. Listen—”
“How’s everything back at the base? What’s the hot gossip?”
“It’s … not good, actually. Saoirse’s up for court-martial. Fiona, too. They’ve been charged with aiding and abetting your escape.”
A single short laugh burst from Caitlin’s mouth. “Oh, that’s rich,” she said. Then, “Serves them right.”
“That’s only the beginning. Everyone’s under investigation. All the female pilots have been grounded, and some of the men as well. There are the craziest rumors. Conspiracies. Tantric sex clubs. Treason and revolution. But that’s not why I’m talking to you. Pay attention, this is important. The authorities know where you are.”
Caitlin felt her face go numb. “Ho
w?”
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that they’ll be waiting for you when your ship puts in at Gdansk. You really don’t want them to catch you. Jump overboard if you have to. Drown if you must. But don’t let them get their mitts on you.”
In her calmest possible voice, Caitlin said, “What happens if they do?”
“It’s complicated. Just trust me on this one.”
“Rabbit? There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you…”
But the familiar warmth of Rabbit’s presence was gone from her ear, leaving Caitlin to lie alone in the dark and think and wonder.
* * *
Luckily, the captain had (or so the scuttlebutt went) a sideline in smuggling moondust and the Wędrowiec Zmroku made an unscheduled stop in Perdita. So Caitlin jumped ship and found herself broke and friendless in a strange land. Rejecting Helen’s suggestions for ways to earn money, she left on foot, duffel bag over one shoulder, following a railroad track out of the city.
With nothing else to do, Caitlin and Helen resumed the argument that by now had grown familiar with repetition.
Helen began. “The diner you walked past this morning had an opening for a waitress. You could go back, save up a stake and—”
“I’m going to find Fingolfinrhod and clear my name,” Caitlin replied. “Period.”
“Forget your name. Forge a new one. You’re free of your mother, of the military, of your past. And you’re young! You can fail at whatever you do and fail again and there’ll still be time enough to become a success at whatever you do after that. Make a fresh life for yourself. Be honest now, the one you’ve got sucks.”
“You are a vile, wicked creature and I am going to have you exorcised just as soon as I can afford it. What do you know of honor?”
“Same thing I know of herpes. You’re better off without it.”
As they argued, apartment buildings gave way to suburbs and suburbs to abandoned factories with broken windows and overlapping graffiti. The factories were just giving way to countryside when an ogre stepped out of a stand of scrub birch and fell in step with Caitlin. She did not look his way but she could feel the gloat on his face. He was a burly brute, and by his smell had been sleeping rough for some time.
Casually sliding her free hand in her jeans pocket, still staring straight ahead, Caitlin said, “I only know a little bit about ogres. But I hear you guys can smell fear. Is that right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Can you smell fear now?”
A half skip, almost a stumble in his gait, told Caitlin that the ogre was thinking. In a puzzled tone, he said, “No.”
“Then maybe you ought to reflect on that before you try something.”
The ogre stopped in his tracks and Caitlin kept on walking. She could feel his eyes burning into her back. When enough time had passed that it was obvious he wasn’t going to come after her, she let go of the rope knife in her pocket.
“That was a close call,” Helen observed.
“I’ve had combat training. I could have killed him with my bare hands.”
“Have you ever actually killed someone, though?”
“Well … no.”
“Some things are easier in theory than in practice.”
“Thanks loads, Mother Sunshine. That’s a lot of help.”
A train came by and Caitlin faded into the foliage. When it was gone, she continued on her way.
Hours later, as the sun was setting and her legs were beginning to ache, Caitlin came upon a hobo jungle. It was set in a small clearing in the woods near the top of a long rise and from the rails looked at first like a midnight trash dump: plastic bags tangled in tree branches, old clothes draped over bushes, candy bar wrappers and muddied cardboard trodden into the weeds, streamers of toilet paper everywhere. Then it resolved itself into a loose affiliation of tarps and tents, with here blue plastic lashed over a packing crate to rainproof it and there a rope-and-blanket lean-to. A campfire smoldered at the center of the encampment.
Caitlin left the tracks. The closer she got, the worse the place stank of urine and excrement and woodsmoke and burnt garbage, all mingled with the sweet smell of honeysuckle.
“This may not be wise,” Helen observed.
“That ogre’s still out there—and if he’s not, others like him are. Safety in numbers.”
“As always, the inexperienced young lady knows best.”
“Damn straight I do.”
On her approach, a nagini slithered out of a culvert to her left. Another emerged from behind a large boulder to her right. They both assumed the form of stocky, broad-shouldered women but their odor remained snakish. They looked dangerous enough that Caitlin kept her hands out of her pockets. “You ssseek ssshelter?” one asked.
Without waiting for a reply, the other said, “You mussst be ssshown to the inner sssircle.”
“I’m in your hands, lead the way,” Caitlin said.
“Mossst wisssse.”
“Yessss.”
The naginis escorted her to a cookfire at the center of the camp. A battered old kettle hung from a tripod over the coals; by the smell, it contained stew. Half a dozen logs had been placed around the fire in a rough circle to sit upon, but save for two figures they were empty. A bullbeggar sat on one, keeping an eye on the kettle. A chain connected his leather collar to a large metal staple hammered into the log. Opposite him, a little girl sat, playing Satie’s Gnossiennes on a silver flute.
At Caitlin’s approach, the bullbeggar put his ladle aside. He was a scrawny creature in comparison to most of his kind, and the faded residue of red and blue painted swirls lingered in the cracks and whorls of his horns. Laying a finger alongside his nose, he turned his head to one side and shot a long stream of snot into the weeds. “There ain’t nobody here just now. But it’s getting on towards grub, so they’ll be congregating soon. You can leave the new meat here and I’ll look after her.”
The naginis looked at each other. One shrugged, and they reassumed their serpent forms and slithered away.
The bullbeggar grinned in a way that was obviously supposed to be ingratiating, exposing red gums, black gaps, broken yellow teeth. “Welcome to the jungle, kiddo. Name’s Loosh. What’s yours?”
“I … It’s Cat.” Almost, she had given her real name. She felt Helen’s wordless nod of approval when she did not.
Loosh snorted. “That’s rich.”
“I’m afraid I don’t get the joke,” Cat said.
Loosh wiped his nose on his forearm. “This is a pussy camp. So you’ll fit right in, I’m guessing. What’s your story? You’re not an alky, and if you’re on drugs, it ain’t been long. Skin’s as smooth as baby butt! Plus, you don’t look particularly crazy to me, though, granted, that’s only my opinion. So you’re on the run from somebody. Maybe a boyfriend, maybe the law. Which is it?” Then, when Cat said nothing, “All right, all right, I wouldn’t trust me neither. Sit your tushie down and I’ll tell you my own personal origin myth. That’ll put us on a better footing.”
Warily, Cat chose a seat equidistant with Loosh and the girl.
“I wasn’t always the way you see me now. I used to be a big shot in the city. Held down a job on the docks, tipped large in the bars, won every brawl I was in, which was many. Had me a steady girlfriend who let me crash in her apartment and a backup gal who took me in whenever the first one threw me out. I tell you, I had it made.
“Funny thing happened, though. I was hot railing a line of nightmare one evening and just as the rush hits, I hear this … sound. Like the fucking horns of Elfland, y’know? Like sirens singing somewhere over the hills and far away. I stood up from the table so fast I knocked the chair over, and hurried to the window with the butane torch still in my hand. The curtains caught fire and I had to tear them down and stomp them out. Almost set the kitchen on fire!” Loosh laughed so hard he hawked up bloody phlegm. “But I could still hear that sound echoing over and over again in my brain. I followed it out the door and down the stairs
. My girlfriend was screaming at me and something bounced off my back. Still don’t know what it was that she threw and couldn’t care less. I was just … focused, see? It was like some great Power had summoned me. I knew there wasn’t no getting that voice out of my head, then nor never. I get out on the street and that sound is still there, only fading, dwindling, in the distance. But clear enough that I can follow it. So I did. I started to run. I chased that sound clean out of the city and out of my old life and out of all rational sense, and I been chasing it ever since.”
“It was a train whistle.” An albino hag hitched up her jeans and sat down next to Cat. Her face was hard and heavily scarred on one cheek. She could have been any age from eighteen to forty-eight. “That’s what catches ’em. Always. It’s an old, old story, Loosh, and not a very interesting one neither.” She tapped Cat on the knee. “Lemme give you the best advice you’ve ever heard: Stay away from the rails. You listen to the trains too long and you can’t never go back. Maybe it looks like fun and freedom to you now, but it sure as sorrow don’t feel that way to me.”
“Don’t you listen to Bessie Long Gone,” Loosh said. “I’ve rode the rails to yonder and back and all the best times I’ve ever had was on a rattler. Ain’t nothing like it.”
A haint materialized next to Bessie and said, “New girl, huh? Has she been told the rules?”
Bessie Long Gone shook her head. “I’ll do it now. Pay attention, girlie: Any food you may have with you has to be shared. Anything male has got to be kept on a leash. All newcomers must provide entertainment for the camp after we eat.”
“Entertainment?” Cat had a handful of energy bars in her duffel. She handed them to Bessie Long Gone, who gave them to Loosh. “What kind of entertainment are you talking about?”
Bessie spread her hands. “Oh, it can be anything. A song, a dance, synchronized flight—though I don’t see any wings on you, so I’m guessing not. Card tricks, if you know any and if they’re good enough.”
“What if I don’t have any talents?”
The Iron Dragon’s Mother Page 7
