Dragon Book, The

by Gardner Dozois

  The dragon raised its head and favored him with a long, considering stare. “I don’t know. I like this place about as well as I like anyplace in this world, which is not at all. Why should I make things easier for you? Nobody ever cares about making anything easier for me, let me tell you.”

  Guerra’s greatest ambition in law enforcement was to become a hostage negotiator. He had been studying the technique on and off for most of his tenure on the force, both on-site and through attending lectures and reading everything he could find on the subject. The lecturers and the books had a good deal to say concerning hostage-takers’ tendency to self-pity. He said patiently to the dragon, “Well, I’m really trying to do exactly that. Let’s get acquainted, huh? I’m Officer Guerra—Michael Guerra, but people mostly call me Mike-O, I don’t know why. What’s your name?” Always get on a first-name basis, as early as possible. It makes you two human beings together—you’ll be amazed at the difference it makes. Now if only one of those books had ever covered the fine points of negotiating with a burping mythological predator.

  “You couldn’t pronounce it,” the dragon replied. “And if you tried, you’d hurt yourself.” But it rose to its feet with what seemed to Guerra an intense and even painful effort, and with some trepidation he led it away from the intersection to the side street where he had parked his blue-and-white patrol car. The traffic started up again before they were all the way across, and if people went on honking and cursing, still there were many who leaned out of their windows to applaud him. One driver shouted jovially, “Put the cuffs on him!” while another yelled, “Illegal parking—get the boot!” The dragon half lumbered, half slithered beside Guerra as sedately as though it were on a leash; but every so often it cocked a red eye sideways at him, like a wicked bird, and Guerra shivered with what felt like ancestral memory. These guys used to hunt us like rabbits. I know they did.

  The phone at his waist made an irritable sound and rattled against his belt buckle. He nodded to the dragon, grunted “My boss, I better take this,” and heard Lieutenant Kunkel’s nasal drone demanding, “Guerra, you there? Guerra, what the hell is going on up in Little Ethiopia?” Lieutenant Kunkel fully expected Eritrean rebels to stage shoot-outs in Oakland sometime within the week.

  “Big, nasty traffic jam, Lieutenant,” Guerra answered, consciously keeping his voice light and level, even with a dragon sniffing disdainfully at his patrol car. “All under control now, no problem.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve been getting a bunch of calls about I don’t know what, some sort of crazy dragon, UFO, whatever. You know anything about this shit?”

  “Uh,” Guerra said. “Uh, no, Lieutenant, it’s just the time of day, you know? Rush hour, traffic gets tied up, people get a little crazy, they start seeing stuff. Mass hysteria, shared hallucinations, it’s real common. They got books about it.”

  Lieutenant Kunkel’s reaction to the concept of shared hallucinations was not at first audible. Then it became audible, but not comprehensible. Finally coherent, he drew on a vocabulary that impressed Guerra so powerfully for its range and expressiveness that at a certain point, phone gripped between his ear and his shoulder, he dug out his notebook and started writing down the choicest words and phrases he caught. If anything, Guerra was a great believer in self-improvement.

  The lieutenant finally hung up, and Guerra put the book back in his pocket and said to the dragon, “Okay. He’s cool. You just go on away now, go on home, back wherever you … well, wherever, and we’ll say no more about it. And you have an extra-nice day, hear?”

  The dragon did not answer, but leaned against his car, considering him out of its strange red-and-yellow eyes. Huge as the creature was—Guerra had nothing but military vehicles for comparison—he thought it must be a very old dragon, for the scales on its body were a dull greenish black, and its front claws were worn and blunt, no sharper than a turtle’s. The long low purple crest running along its back from ears to tail tip was torn in several places, and lay limp and prideless. The spikes at the end of its tail were all broken off short; and in spite of the occasional wheeze of fire, there was a rattle in the dragon’s breath, as though it were rusty inside. He supposed the great purple wings worked: it was hard to see them clearly, folded back along the body as they were, but they too looked … ratty, for lack of a better word. Spontaneously, he blurted out, “You’ve had kind of a rough time, huh? I get that.”

  “Do you?” The dragon’s black lips twitched, and for a moment Guerra thought absurdly that it was going to cry. “Do you indeed, Mike-O? Do you get that my back’s killing me—that it aches all the time, right there, behind the hump, because of the beating it takes walking the black iron roads of this world? Do you get that the smell of your streets—even your streams, your rivers, your bay—is more than I can bear? That your people taste like clocks and coal oil, and your children are bitter as silver? The children used to be the best eating of all, better than antelope, better than wild geese, but now I just can’t bring myself to touch another one of them. Oh, it’s been dogs and cats and mangy little squirrels for months, years— and when you think how I used to dine off steamed knight, knight on the half shell, broiled in his own armor with all the natural juices, oh … excuse me, excuse me, I’m sorry …”

  And, rather to Guerra’s horror, the dragon did begin to cry. He wept very softly, with his eyes closed and his head lowered, his emerald-green tears smelling faintly like gunpowder. Guerra said, “Hey. Hey, listen, don’t do that. Please. Don’t cry, okay?”

  The dragon sniffled, but it lifted its head again to regard him in some wonder. Surprisingly severe, it said, “You are a witness to the rarest sight in the world—a dragon in tears—and all you can say is don’t do that? I don’t get you people at all.” But it did stop crying; it even made a sound like rustling ashes, which Guerra thought might be a chuckle. It said, “Or did I embarrass you, Mike-O?”

  “Listen,” Guerra said again. “Listen, you’ve got to get out of here. There’s going to be rumors for days, but I’ll cover with the lieutenant, whoever, whatever I have to say. Just go, okay?” He hesitated for a moment, and then added, “Please?”

  The dragon licked forlornly at its own tears with its broad forked tongue. “I’m tired, Mike-O. You have no idea how tired I am. I have one task to complete in this desolate world of yours, and then I’m done with it forever. And since I’ll never, never find my way back to my own world again, what difference does anything make? Afterward … afterward, you and your boss can shoot me, take me to prison, put me in a zoo … what wretched difference? I just don’t care anymore.”

  “No,” Guerra said. “Look, I’ll tell you the truth, I do not want to be the guy who brings you in. For starters, it’ll mean more reports, more damn bookkeeping than I’ve ever seen in my life. I hate writing reports. And besides that … yeah, I guess I’d be famous for a while—fifteen minutes, like they say. The cop who caught the dragon … newspapers, big TV shows, fine and dandy, maybe I’d even meet some girls that way. But once it all died down, that’s all I’d ever be, the guy who had the thing on the street with the dragon. You think that’s a résumé for somebody wants to be a hostage negotiator? I don’t think so.”

  The dragon was listening to him attentively, though with a slightly puzzled air. Guerra said, “Anyway, what’s this about finding your way back to your own world? How’d you get here in the first place?”

  “How did I get here?” To Guerra’s astonishment and alarm, the dragon rumbled croupily, deep in its chest, and the ragged crest stood up as best it could, while the head seemed to cock back on its neck like the hammer on a pistol. A brief burst of fire shot from the fang-studded mouth, making Guerra scramble aside.

  “That’s easy,” it said, tapping its claws on the asphalt. “I got written here.”

  Guerra was not at all sure that he had heard correctly. “You got … written?”

  “Written and written out,” the dragon rasped bitterly. “The author put me in his book rig
ht at the beginning, and then he changed his mind. Went back, redid the whole book, and phhffttt.” More fire. Guerra ducked again, barely in time. “Gone, just like that. Not one line left—and I had some good ones, whole paragraphs. All gone.”

  “I’m having a very hard time with this,” Guerra said. “So you’re in a book—”

  “Was. I was in a book—”

  “—and now you’re not. But you’re real all the same, blocking traffic, breathing fire—”

  “Art is a remarkable creative force,” the dragon said. “I exist because a man made up a story.” It mentioned the writer’s name, which was not one Guerra knew. “I’m stranded here, loose and wandering in his world because he decided not to write about me after all.” It bared double rows of worn but quite serviceable teeth in a highly unpleasant grin. “But I’m real, I’m here, and I’m looking for him. Followed him from one place to another for years—the man does move around—and finally tracked him to this Oakland. I don’t know exactly where he lives, but I’ll find him. And when I do he is going to be one crispy author, believe me.” It snorted in anticipation, but Guerra had already taken refuge behind the patrol car. The dragon said, “I told you, after that I don’t care what happens to me. I can’t ever get home, so what does it matter?”

  Its voice trembled a little on the last words, and Guerra worried that it might be about to start weeping again. He edged cautiously out from the shelter of the car and said, “Well, you sure as hell won’t get back home if you fry up the one guy who maybe can help you. You ever think about that?”

  The long neck swiveled, and the dragon stared at him, its eyes red and yellow, like hunters’ moons. Guerra said, “He lives in Oakland, this writer? Okay, I’ll find out the address—that’s one thing cops are really good at, tracing people’s addresses—”

  “And you’ll tell me?” The dragon’s whole vast body was quivering with eagerness. “You would do that?”

  “No,” Guerra said flatly. “Not for a minute. Because you’d zip right off after him, and be picking your teeth by the time I got off my shift. So you’re going to wait until I’m done here, and we’ll find him together. Deal?” The dragon was clearly dubious. Guerra said, “Deal—or I won’t give you his address, but I will tell him you’re looking for him. And he’ll move again, sure as hell—I would. Think about it.”

  The dragon thought. At last it sighed deeply, exhaling tear-damp ashes, and rumbled, “Very well. I’ll wait for you on that sign.” Guerra watched in fascination as the shabby purple wings unfolded. Worn claws scrabbling on the sidewalk, the beast took a few running steps before it lifted into the air. A moment later it landed neatly on the top frame of a billboard advertising a movie that apparently had a mermaid, a vampire and a giant octopus in the cast. The dragon posed there all during Guerra’s shift, looking like part of the promotion, and if it moved even an inch he never saw it.

  The road crew was back at work, and the intersection was in serious need of a patrolman. Both streets were torn up, the traffic lights were all off, and Guerra had his hands full beckoning cars forward and holding them up, keeping drivers away from closed-off lanes and guiding them around potholes. It kept his mind, as nothing else could have, almost completely off the dragon; although he did manage, during a comparative lull, to call in for the current address of the writer who had carelessly created the creature and then forgotten about it. Like God, maybe, Guerra thought, then decided he might not mention that notion to Father Fabros on Sunday.

  His shift ended in twilight; the traffic had noticeably thinned by then, and he felt comfortable turning the intersection over to Officer Colasanto, who was barely in his second year. Walking to his car, Guerra gestured to the dragon, and it promptly took off from the billboard, climbing toward the night clouds with a speed and elegance he had never imagined from those ragged wings and age-tarnished body. Once again the bone-image came to him of such creatures stooping from the sky at speeds his ancestors could not have comprehended before it was too late. He shivered, and hurriedly got into the patrol car.

  He checked in at the police station, joking amiably with friends about the morning’s dragon alarm—neither Lieutenant Kunkel nor Officer Levinsky was present—changed into civilian clothes, and hurried back out, anxious lest the dragon should become anxious. But he saw no sign of it, and had to assume that it was following him beyond his sight, hungry enough for revenge that it was not likely to lose track of him. Not for the first time, Guerra wondered what had possessed him to take sides in this mess, and what side he was actually on.

  The dragon’s author lived in North Berkeley, past the chic restaurants of the Gourmet Ghetto, and on out into the classic older houses, “full of character,” as the real-estate agents liked to put it, if a little short on reliable plumbing. Guerra found the house easily enough—it had two stories, a slightly threadbare lawn and a tentative garden—and pulled into the driveway, expecting the dragon, in its fury and fervency, to land beside him before he was out of the car. But he only glimpsed it once, far above him, circling with chilling patience between the clouds. A motion-detector floodlight came on as Guerra walked up the driveway and rang the bell.

  The author answered with surprising quickness. He was a middle-sized, undistinguished-looking man: bearded, wearing glasses, and clad in jeans, an old sweatshirt, and sneakers that had clearly been through two or three major civil conflicts. He blinked at Guerra and said “Hi? What can I do for you?”

  Guerra showed his badge. “Sir, I’m Officer Michael Guerra, Oakland Police, and I need to speak with you for a moment.” He felt himself blushing absurdly, and was glad that the light was gone.

  The author was sensibly wary, checking Guerra’s badge carefully before answering. “I’ve paid that Jack London Square parking ticket.”

  Guerra had just started to say, “This isn’t exactly a police matter,” when, with a terrifyingly silent rush—the only sound was the soft whistle of wind through the folded wings—the dragon landed in the tentative garden and hissed, “Remember me, storyteller? Scribe, singer, sorcerer—remember me?”

  The author froze where he stood in the doorway, neither able to come forward nor run back into his house. He whispered, “No. You can’t be here … you can’t be…” He did not seem able to close his mouth, and he was hugging himself, as though for protection.

  The dragon sneered foul-smelling flames. “Come closer, you hairy hot pocket. I’d rather not singe your nice house when I incinerate you.”

  Guerra said, “Wait a minute now, just a minute. We didn’t talk about any incineration. No incineration here.”

  The dragon looked at him for the first time since it had landed. It said, “Stop me.”

  Guerra’s gun was in the car, but even if he could have reached it, it would have been no more practical use than a spitball. His mouth was dry, and his throat hurt.

  Remarkably, the author stood his ground. He spoke directly to the dragon, saying, “I didn’t write you out of the book. I dropped the damn book altogether—I didn’t know how to write it, and I was making an unholy mess out of it. So I dropped a lot of people, not just you. How come you’re the only one hunting me down and threatening my life? Why is this all about you?”

  The dragon’s head swooped low enough to be almost on a level with the writer’s, and so close that a bit of his beard did get singed. But its voice was colder than Guerra had ever heard it when it said, “Because you wrote enough life into me that I deserved more. I deserved a resolution—even if you killed me off in the end, that would have been something— and when I didn’t get it, I still had this leftover life, and no world to live it in. So of course, of course I have been trapped in your world ever since—miserable dungheap that it is, there is no other place for me to exist. And no other emotion, out of all I might have had … but revenge.”

  Its head and neck cocked back then, as Guerra had seen them do before, and he turned and sprinted for his car and the useless gun. But he tripped over a loose bri
ck from the garden border, fell full length, and lay half-stunned, hearing—to his dazed surprise—the voice of the author saying commandingly, “Hold it, just hold the phone here, before you go sautéing people. You’re angry because I didn’t create a suitable world for you, is that it?”

  The dragon did not answer immediately. Guerra struggled wearily to his feet, looking back and forth between the house and his car. A family across the street—a man in a bathrobe, his small Indian wife in a sari, and a young boy wearing Spider-Man pajamas—were standing barefoot on their own lawn, clearly staring at the dragon. The man called out, loudly but hesitantly, “Hey, you okay over there?”

  Guerra was still trying to decide on his response, when he heard the dragon say in a different tone, “No, I’m angry because you did. You made up a fairy tale that I belonged in, and then you destroyed it and left me outside, in this terrible, terrible place that I can’t escape. And I never will escape it, I know, except by dying, and we dragons live such a long time. But if I avenge myself now, as you deserve”—it swung its head briefly toward Guerra—“then policemen like him will in turn kill me, sooner or later. And it will be over.”

  “SWAT teams,” Guerra said, trying to sound stern and ominous. “Whole patrols. Divisions. Bomb Squad, FBI, the Air Force—”

  “Hold it!” The author was very nearly shouting. “That’s it? That’s your problem with me?” He held his hands up, palms out, looked at them, and began rubbing them together. “Give me five minutes—three minutes—I’ll be right back, I’ll just get something. Right back.”