Dragon Book, The

by Gardner Dozois

  The radio worked, which Karadjian hadn’t been sure about. He’d bet the one in the other jeep was fried, but that’s why they had two, that was the Army way, only you could never be sure if the gear was any good in the first place, so often you had two pieces of crap that didn’t work instead of just one.

  He called in a contact report, not that it was like any normal contact report. He could tell they thought he was drunk or heatstruck or something, so he put Anderson on, the college boy, and they thought he was drunk too, and there was a stupid little dance with every guy taking turns on the radio to tell the looie, then the captain, then the colonel, all telling the same story over and over again, while the f—ing superman guy was walking in towards the test site without anybody doing anything about it.

  The radio died while the colonel was still asking dumb questions. Karadjian put it down, and they backed up from the jeeps again, till they were three hundred yards away, and he wondered if that was enough. He put the men into all-round defence, a little circle of green on the rocky desert ground, and they propped there and smoked and watched. He didn’t let them talk. It wouldn’t help and would only crystallize the fear that they were all keeping a lid on.

  Half an hour later, a helicopter went over pretty low, a CH-21 Shawnee, heading towards the test site. A couple of minutes later, they heard its machine guns firing. Karadjian stood up with his binoculars and watched the bird do a figure eight and come back into a slight backwards hover, the guns still firing.

  Then its engine cut out. It was too low to auto-rotate and just smacked into the ground and blew up. The gunners kept firing pretty much till it hit; it happened so quickly they probably hardly knew what was going on.

  An hour after the helicopter crash, when the oily column of smoke from the impact was hardly more than a crematory wisp, Karadjian saw a convoy coming up the road, five jeeps, two with .50 cal mounts, and four deuce-and-a-half trucks loaded with what looked to be everyone who could carry a rifle from the base, including the cooks and the laboratory techs.

  Half a mile in front of the military vehicles, Karadjian was more pleased to see the blue ’57 Chevy Bel Air convertible of Professor Aaron Weiss, the chief scientist. It would be quicker explaining everything to him than to the White Streak of Shit, which was what everyone called Colonel White behind his back, or very occasionally just “Streak” when he could overhear. He thought it meant like lightning and indicated speed and power, and the healthy respect of the men.

  Karadjian waved Weiss down well before the jeeps. The professor must have heard the radio traffic, because when he got out, he had his gloves and overshoes on and was carrying one of the Geiger counters with the long probe. He stretched it out and ran it over Karadjian at four inches away, watching the dial.

  “You’re somewhat hot, Sergeant,” said Weiss. “Not too hot. Portable decontamination’s coming up, you might as well do stage one here. Strip and pile everything over there, and I mean everything, from dog tags out, it’ll all have to be buried. You say this man in the robe walked over there—past your jeep? You fired at him to no effect?”

  “Yes sir, the jeep behind. He just walked in a straight line, in from the desert and on towards the test site. I put six shots into him myself, and the boys at least fifty, maybe sixty rounds. We saw the tracer going through, but he just went on walking. He just went on!”

  Karadjian could feel the hysteria rising and fought to hold it back. Only now could he recognize that he had survived something that might have killed him, or maybe not survived it, because “not too hot” might be a kindness, not a real accurate appraisal.

  “Stay away from everyone but the decontamination team,” said Weiss. “I’ll make sure the colonel understands. When did this all happen?”

  “Seven oh eight,” said Karadjian.

  “And he was walking at a normal speed?”

  “I guess so. Steady. He never slowed down, or speeded up.”

  “He’ll almost be at the site by now,” said Weiss. “Presuming he continued on.”

  There was a moment of silence between them. They both knew that the test was scheduled for noon. Everything was set for it to fire, normally the only delay would be if the wind changed direction and blew hard towards civilization.

  “Bullets couldn’t hurt him,” said Karadjian. “They went straight through. His skin was dark red, like dried blood, oh mother of Christ it was—”

  “That’s enough, Sergeant!” snapped Weiss. He looked over his shoulder. The convoy was close now, and the White Streak would soon be exerting his military authority all over the place, without pausing to think first.

  “Get your men ready for decon,” he ordered, and walked towards the second jeep, holding out the Geiger counter’s probe and watching the dial. The needle edged up as he approached, then jumped as far across as it would go when he got near the rear wheels. A year ago, he would have scurried back like a cockroach caught in the light, but since he was on borrowed time following the accident in Lindstrom’s lab, he didn’t bother.

  He crossed backwards and forwards a few times, confirming that it was indeed the track of the man that was still intensely radioactive some hours after he passed. The actual footprints were hotter still, impossibly so; it was as if a chunk of pure uranium was buried in every faint indentation of the ground.

  Weiss got back in the Chevy convertible as Colonel White’s jeep pulled in behind. The White Streak jumped out before the jeep stopped rolling and ran up to the window as Weiss gently moved his foot over the accelerator, but he didn’t press it down.

  “Professor!” shouted the Colonel. “Where are you going?”

  “The test site.” Weiss smiled. “Keep everyone back. There’s a trail of very high radiation. Run a phone line to the nearest junction, and I’ll call in from the site.”

  “What? You can’t go in alone! We’ve lost a helicopter, we don’t know what that thing is. Those morons at Groom Lake won’t say if it’s something of theirs, but I tell you, whatever it is, we’ll finish it off with that goddamned A-bomb if we have—”

  “Good-bye, Colonel,” said Weiss. He let his foot pivot forward from the heel, and the Chevy accelerated away, TurboGlide smooth through the gears. Weiss jinked the car around the jeeps and off the road, plumes of dust spurting up as the rear wheels spun for a moment in the loose roadside gravel before getting traction on the stony desert floor.

  Weiss sang as he drove, Puccini’s “E lucevan le stelle.” In his head, he could hear the clarinet solo, repeating over and over again, no matter what part he sang. He did not want to die, but it could not be helped. It was only a matter of time. Perhaps in the next few hours, if not, then in the next few weeks, a horrible and painful death.

  There was no obvious gap in the inner fence, no way for the walker to have got through. Weiss swung the car around and reversed through, wincing as the barbed wire scratched the beautiful blue paintwork and shredded the folded-back roof. He ducked down and avoided being scratched himself, only to wince again as a thick strand of triple-barb scraped across the hood.

  Closer to the test site, he let himself wonder what he was following. Before the first test, way back in ’45, he had been an atheist. Since then, he was not sure what he believed, but it certainly included things that could not be immediately measured or similarly known. He knew of no scientific reason for how a man could be immune to bullets, or would leave a radioactive trail, but that did not mean that no scientific reason existed. He was quite curious to find out … anything, really.

  Colonel White obviously thought that it was an alien, for there were inexplicable and possibly alien artifacts under study over at Groom Lake, but they were sad remnants for the most part and did not include anything alive. Unless the Air Force had been hiding them from the atomic scientists who had assisted in some of the early investigations, which was possible.

  Weiss saw the robed man shortly thereafter. He was climbing the tower that held the Pascal-F device. A ten-kiloton bomb, suspe
nded in place and fully prepared to fire in … Weiss glanced at his watch … forty-nine minutes. Unless he called in to stop it, he supposed.

  The professor backed the Chevy in by one of the instrument stands. He left the engine running. With the car pointed west, he could reach one of the observation bunkers in ten minutes, or the trenches dug by the Marines who’d been the subject of last month’s test.

  Not that he was entirely sure he’d bother. He took one last look at the Geiger counter. The walker’s path was more radioactive than before. Getting closer to the cause of that trail would in all probability be lethal, particularly the way the dust was kicking up, carrying the radiation into his lungs.

  “Hello there!” Weiss called up when he reached the foot of the tower. He didn’t suppose the fellow would feel like talking after being shot at so much, but as it hadn’t stopped him, perhaps he wouldn’t mind. At least he had evidently reached his destination. “Mind if I come up?”

  There was a moment when Weiss thought there would be no answer. Then an answer came, in a harsh, guttural, and strangely accented voice.

  “Come if you wish. You are aware my nature is antithetical to your own?”

  “Yes,” called up Weiss. He set his foot on the ladder and reached for a rung. “I am. I don’t suppose you know how swiftly it will kill me?”

  “Should we touch, you would die instanter,” said the man. “But stay beyond arm’s reach, and you may live to see another season.”

  “My name is Weiss,” said the professor as he gained the platform. He took care to stay as far away from the walking man as possible, and kept the bulk of the bomb between them. “Professor Weiss. May I ask who you are?”

  “A sinner,” said the man. “Who seeks to make up his last accounts.”

  He stood and pushed back his hood. Weiss stared at the dark red, large-scaled flesh and the blue, human-seeming eyes that were set so strangely in their reptilian sockets.

  “I see. Ah, what planet … what distant star have you come from?”

  “No star, no far planet,” muttered the man. “Yet from the far side of this world, I have come.”

  “From the far side of this world,” repeated Weiss. He kept looking at the man. Was he some sort of mutant? But it was not biologically possible to be so radioactive and continue to live.

  “I have sought such a thing as this for many, many centuries,” said the man. He indicated the bomb. “Yearning for it as I once yearned for love, or wine. Yet even now, I delay, when at a touch I might have release …”

  “You know what this is?” asked Weiss. “An atom bomb. It is set to explode soon and it will kill—”

  “Aye,” interrupted the man. “It is a hope made real. I learned of it from a woman who came to my cave in Cappadocia, as so many have done, seeking the healing power of my inner fires. She died, but it was a slow death, and she told me many things, and taught me more of this tongue we speak. I had learned it once before, a long time past, but had forgot it.”

  “Cappadocia?” asked Weiss. “In Turkey? You come from Turkey?”

  He couldn’t help but smile a little, as he thought of the strangeness of this interview. Perhaps his mind was already affected, maybe this was all a morphine dream, the result of treatment begun to ease him through the horrors of death by plutonium poisoning.

  “As it is now called,” said the man. He licked the dust from his lips with a long, forked tongue, and sighed. “But I am no Turk. I was a good Christian, long ago, in the service of my Emperor. Ah, how I long to shed this vile form, that I may join him in heaven!”

  “Your … vile form,” said Weiss. “You were not always—”

  “Always thus? I was not. Once I was as well set up a fellow as any might see … but so long ago. My own face is lost to me, gone so long I cannot see it, even in my mind’s eye …”

  “How did you become … whatever you have become?” asked Weiss. He looked at his watch. Thirty-three minutes to detonation. Perhaps he had given up on life too early. It was not too late for him to have a genuine and great discovery to his credit, something truly remarkable, not just an accretion on top of the work of other, more gifted scientists. If he could study this altered man, learn the secret of radioactive life … others would have to continue the work, but if he could publish even the preliminary findings, it would be a famous memorial of … or perhaps … perhaps he might even learn how he could live, learn some secret to purge the plutonium residue from his blood and bone …

  “How did I become what I am?” said the man. “I have told the story before, but perhaps none lived to repeat it.”

  “I think I would remember hearing about someone like you,” said Weiss. “Maybe we would be more comfortable down on the ground? I mean if it’s a long story—”

  “The story is long, but I shall tell it short, and as the end lies here, it would not be meet to leave it.”

  “Sure,” said Weiss. He looked at his watch again. Eleven twenty-nine. “Go on.”

  “I was an officer of the Empire, a high commander,” said the man. “Of a good family, loyal to the Emperor, successful in war. This was in the reign of … you would say … Heraclitus. I was a simple fellow, wishing only to do my duty, raise a family, have sons to rise to even greater glory … but it was not to be. It is strange, that this I am to tell you was so long ago, yet it is ever clear to me, when more recent times are but clouded mud, and I could not tell you what I did for a hundred years …”

  The minute hand on Weiss’s watch moved to the six.

  “It was summer, the end of a long, dry summer. I had gone to the mountains, to escape the heat, and hunt. The days were very long, and the evenings were of a gentleness that I never felt again … with the wind coming soft and cool from the snowy heights and the earth still warm from the sun. On such an evening, I saw a star fall, and it seemed to me to have fallen close, beyond the lake where my summer house stood on its oaken piles. I had my house slaves ready a boat, and they rowed me to the far shore, or almost to it, for there amidst the burning reeds was a great boat of shining silver. The slaves were frightened and backed their oars. Startled, I fell into the water. I called to them, but they were too afraid, and their fear made me angry, and braver than I should otherwise have been. I swam ashore, and seeing a hinged door open in the side of the silver ship, I went inside.

  “It was cold inside that metal ship. Colder than the nights on the high plateau, when the ice storms blow sideways and no shelter is ever enough, and no fire can adequately warm you. But I was still angry, and I thought to see the glow of lamplight upon golden plate. Greed overcame me, and I struck deeper into the craft.”

  “What did you find?” asked Weiss anxiously. There were only twenty-eight minutes left now, and he would need five minutes at least to reach a fixed phone. Now that death was so imminent, he wanted to do more to postpone it, and this strange, cursed, voluble creature might be the means of doing so.

  “Not gold. I found a creature. A great shining lizard-thing, trapped in the wreckage of its chamber. Longer than this tower, it was, and only one vast clawed arm free, but that was enough. It was quick, as quick as the small lizards that dart across the stones. Even as I drew back, it gripped me and took me in. Its grasp burned and my flesh boiled away at its touch, and the pain … the pain was mercifully cut short, as I lost my senses and fell into a swoon. It was while I was insensible that it tried to do its work—”

  “Hold that thought!” cried Weiss, unable to listen to any more, his eyes fixed upon his watch and the inexorable circling of the minute hand. “I must … I must send a message from below. I’ll be back.”

  He had his feet over the edge of the platform and was feeling for a rung when he felt a terrible, burning pain across his forearms and was dragged bodily back up. The walking man set him down in the corner and quietened his screams with a firm but final tap to the middle of his forehead.

  “Tried to do its work,” he continued, speaking, as he had done so often, to a corpse. “
To make me into what it was, to serve its purpose. But I did not wish to be a dragon, and with the grace of God, it could not complete its foul purpose, and so I have remained at least half a man.”

  He bent down and kissed Weiss on both cheeks, his lips leaving a burning brand. “Half a man, who cannot touch a lover, and who cannot be slain, nor drown, nor die at all. Or so I thought, until at last Mrs. Harrison told me that my prayers were answered, and that there is a way to slay my dragon.”

  Weiss’s watch said sixteen minutes to twelve, and the detonation was set for noon, as set by a bank of electric clocks and three separate control cables. But when the dragon embraced the bomb and tightened his grip, it was enough.

  Nine miles away, as he stood mute while being scrubbed in the decontamination showers, Karadjian felt the floor shake for several seconds, and the flow of water from the shower head slowed, stopped, then restarted. It was a much bigger shock and a heavier ground wave than for a mere ten-kiloton test.

  “Hey, Sarge,” called out Anderson. “Reckon that guy went up then, with the bomb?”

  “What guy?” asked Karadjian. “There never was no guy.”

  He was right. Five minutes later, still wet from the showers, they signed the forms that said so, while the mushroom cloud fell into itself in the middle distance.

  Ungentle Fire

  SEAN WILLIAMS

  Sean Williams is best known internationally for his award-winning space opera series and novels set in the Star Wars universe, many cowritten with Shane Dix. These include the Astropolis, Evergence, Orphans, and Geodesica series, and the #1 New York Times bestselling computer-game tie-in The Force Unleashed. His stories have been gathered in several collections, including New Adventures in Sci-Fi, Light Bodies Falling, and Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams. He is also the author of ten linked fantasy novels inspired by the landscapes of his childhood: the dry, flat lands of South Australia, where he still lives with his wife and family. These include the Books of the Change (The Stone Mage & the Sea, The Sky Warden & the Sun, and The Storm Weaver & the Sand) and the Books of the Cataclysm (The Crooked Letter—the first fantasy novel to win both the Aurealis and Ditmar awards—The Blood Debt, The Hanging Mountains, and The Devoured Earth). His most recent series in this world is The Broken Land (The Changeling, The Dust Devils, and The Scarecrow), to which this story is closely connected.