The Year's Best SF 22 # 2004

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  4

  Manmark was an endless talker, and most of his talk was senseless noise. Barrow treated the noise as just another kind of wind, taking no pleasure from it, nor feeling any insult. To be mannerly, he would nod on occasion and make some tiny comment that could mean anything, and, bolstered by this gesture, Manmark would press on, explaining how it was to grow up wealthy in the Old World, or why bear-dogs were the most foul creatures, or why the world danced around the sun, or how it felt to be a genius on that same world—a grand, deep, wondrous mind surrounded by millions of fools.

  It was amazing what a man would endure, particularly if he had been promised a heavy pile of platinum coins.

  There were five other men working with them. Four were youngsters—students of some type brought along to do the delicate digging. While the fifth fellow served as their protector, armed with a sleek modern rifle and enough ammunition to kill a thousand men. Some months ago, before he left for the wilderness, Manmark had hired the man to be their protector, keeping him on salary for a day such as this. He was said to be some species of professional killer, which was a bit of a surprise. A few times in conversation, Barrow had wormed honest answers out of the fellow. His credentials were less spectacular than he made them out to be, and even more alarming, the man was extraordinarily scared of things that would never present a problem. Bear-dogs were a source of much consternation, even though Barrow never had trouble with the beasts. And then there were the aborigines; those normally peaceful people brought nightmares of their own. “What if they come on us while we sleep?” the protector would ask, his voice low and haunted. “I am just one person. I have to sleep. What if I wake to find one of those miserable bastards slicing open my throat?”

  “They wouldn’t,” Barrow assured him. Then he laughed, adding, “They’ll cut into your chest first, since they’ll want to eat your heart.”

  That was a pure fiction—a grotesque rumor made real by a thousand cheap novels. But their protector seemed to know nothing about this country, his experience born from the novels and small-minded tales told in the slums and high-class restaurants left behind on the distant, unreachable coast.

  In his own fashion, Manmark was just as innocent and naive. But there were moments when what he knew proved to be not only interesting but also quite valuable.

  During their second night camped beside the dragon, Manmark topped off his tall glass of fancy pink liquor, and then he glanced at the exposed head of the great beast, remarking, “Life was so different in those old times.”

  There was nothing interesting in that. But Barrow nodded, as expected, muttering a few bland agreements.

  “The dragons were nothing like us,” the man continued.

  What could be more obvious? Barrow thought to himself.

  “The biology of these monsters,” said Manmark. Then he looked at Barrow, a wide grin flashing. “Do you know how they breathed?”

  It was just the two of them sitting before the fire. The students, exhausted by their day’s work, were tucked into their bedrolls, while the camp protector stood on a nearby ridge, scared of every darkness. “I know their lungs were peculiar affairs,” Barrow allowed. “Just like their hearts, and their spleens—”

  “Not just peculiar,” Manmark interrupted. “Unique.”

  Barrow leaned closer.

  “Like us, yes, they had a backbone. But it was not our backbone. There are important differences between the architectures—profound and telling differences. It is as if two separate spines had evolved along two separate but nearly parallel lineages.”

  The words made sense, to a point.

  “North of here,” said Manmark. “I have colleagues who have found ancient fossils set within a bed of fine black shale. Unlike most beds of that kind, the soft parts of the dead have been preserved along with their hard shells and teeth. Have you heard of this place? No? Well, its creatures expired long before the first dragon was born. The world was almost new, it was so long ago … and inside that beautiful black shale is a tiny wormlike creature that has the barest beginnings of a notochord. A spine. The first vertebrate, say some.”

  “Like us,” Barrow realized.

  “And lying beside that specimen is another. Very much the same, in its fashion. Wormlike and obscure. But in other ways, it is full of subtle, very beautiful differences.”

  “Different how?”

  “Well, for instance … there is a minuscule speck of metal located in the center of its simple body.”

  “Like a dragon’s spleen?”

  “But simpler, and made of ordinary metals. Iron and copper and such.” Manmark finished his drink and gazed into the fire. “This dragon’s lungs were very different, of course. Instead of sucking in a breath and then exhaling it out the same way, she took the air through her nostrils, into the lungs and out through a rectal orifice. We don’t know enough to be certain yet. But it seems reasonable to assume that our dragon did a much better job of wringing the oxygen out of her endless deep breath.”

  Barrow nodded, very much interested now.

  “And then there’s the famous spleen,” Manmark continued. “Have you ever wondered why these beasts needed to collect precious metals? What possible advantage could they have lent to the beasts?”

  “I’ve thought about it some,” he confessed.

  “Gold and platinum and sometimes silver,” said Manmark. “They are precious to us because they are rare, yes. But also because they barely rust in the presence of oxygen, which is why they retain their lovely sheen. And for the newest industries of our world, these elements are increasingly valuable. Were you aware? They can serve as enzymatic surfaces for all kinds of impressive chemical reactions. Perhaps our lady dragon would mix her breath and blood inside the spleen’s cavities, producing all kinds of spectacular products. Even fire, perhaps.”

  Barrow nodded as if he understood every word.

  “One day, we’ll decipher what happened inside these creatures. And I suspect that knowledge, when it arrives, will revolutionize our world.”

  “Someday, maybe,” Barrow conceded.

  “In the distant future, you think?” Manmark grinned and took a long drink from his mostly drained glass. “But not in our lives, surely. Is that what you are thinking?”

  “Isn’t that the truth?”

  “The truth.” The self-described genius stared into the campfire, his gold eyes full of greed and a wild hope. “This isn’t well known. Outside of scientific circles, that is. But a few years ago, an immature egg was dug from the belly of a giant tree-eating dragon. Dead for perhaps a hundred million years, yet its color was still white. The oxygen that had fueled its parent had been kept away from the egg in death, and some kind of deep coma state had been achieved. Which is not too surprising. We know dragon eggs are exceptionally durable. It’s perhaps a relic trait from those days when their ancestors laid their eggs in sloppy piles and buried them under dirt and then left the nest, sometimes for decades, waiting for the proper conditions. Since these creatures had a very different biochemistry from ours I … a much superior physiology … they could afford to do such things—”

  “What are you saying?” Barrow interrupted. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand half your words.”

  “I’m saying that the dragons were exceptionally durable.”

  The dragon hunter glanced at the long, lovely skull and its cavernous eye sockets. “I have never heard this before. Is there some chance that those eggs over there … in that ground, after all of these years … ?”

  “Remember the immature egg that I mentioned?” Manmark was whispering, his voice a little sloppy and terribly pleased. “The egg from the tree-eater? Well, I have read the paper written about its dissection. A hundred times, I have read it. Diamond blades were used to cut through the shell, and despite everything that common and uncommon sense would tell you … yes, there was still fluid inside the egg, and a six-legged embryo that was dead but intact … dead, but that looked as if it had d
ied only yesterday, its burial lasting just a little too long …”

  5

  Three eggs became four, and then five, and quite suddenly there were seven of the treasures set on a bed of clean straw, enjoying the temporary shade of a brown canvas tarp. It was a sight that dwarfed Manmark’s great dreams, marvelous and lovely as they had been. Each egg was perfectly round, and each was the same size, their diameter equal to his forearm and extended hand. They were heavier than any bird egg would be, if a bird could lay such an enormous egg. But that was reasonable, since the thick white shell was woven partly from metal and strange compounds that were barely understood today—ceramics and odd proteins laid out in a painfully delicate pattern. The shell material itself contained enough mystery to make a great man famous. But Manmark could always imagine greater honors and even wilder successes, as he did now, touching the warm surface of the nearest egg, whispering to it, “Hello, you.”

  The students were standing together, waiting for orders. And behind them stood a freight wagon, its team of heavy camels ready to pull their precious cargo to town and the railhead.

  Barrow was perched on the wagon’s front end, leather reins held tight in both hands.

  Manmark took notice of him, and for a moment he wondered why the man was staring off into the distance. What did he see from that vantage point? Looking in the same general direction, Manmark saw nothing. There was a slope of gray clay punctuated with a few clusters of yucca, and the crest of the little ridge formed a neat line dividing the rainwashed earth from the intense blue of the sky.

  The dragon hunter was staring at nothing.

  How peculiar.

  Manmark felt a little uneasy, but for no clear reason. He turned to the students now, ready to order the wagon loaded. And then, too late by a long ways, he remembered that their very expensive security man had been walking that barren ridge, his long gun cradled in both arms, haunted eyes watching for trouble.

  So where is my protector? Manmark asked himself.

  An instant later, the clean crack of a bullet cut through the air, and one of the large camels decided to drop its head and then its massive body, settling with a strange urgency onto the hard pan of clay.

  Manmark knelt down between the great eggs. Otherwise, he was too startled to react.

  The students dropped low and stared at the sky.

  Barrow remained on the wagon, yanking at the reins and braking with his left foot, telling the surviving three camels, “Hold. Stay. Hold now. Stay.”

  Something about that voice steadied Manmark. Something in the man’s calmness allowed him to look up, shouting to Barrow, “What is this? What is happening?”

  Next came the sound of hooves striking dirt—many hooves in common motion—and he turned the other way, seeing six … no, eight camels calmly walking down the long draw, each built to race, each wearing a small saddle as well as a man dressed in shapeless clothes and heavy masks.

  Manmark’s first thought was to deny that this was happening. Hadn’t he taken a thousand precautions? Nobody should know the significance of this dig, which meant that this had to be some random bit of awful luck. These were raiders of some kind—simple thieves easily tricked. A few coins of debased gold would probably satisfy them. He started to calculate the proper figure, filling his head with nonsense until that moment when the lead rider lowered his fat rifle and fired.

  A fountain of pulverized earth slapped Manmark in the face.

  He backed away, stumbled and dropped onto his rump. Then in his panic, he began digging into his pockets, searching for the tiny pistol that he had carried from the Old World and never fired once.

  “Don’t,” said a strong, calming voice.

  Barrow’s voice.

  “Give them what they want,” said the dragon hunter, speaking to him as he would to a nervous camel.

  “I won’t,” Manmark sputtered. “They are mine!”

  “No,” Barrow said from high on the wagon. “They aren’t yours anymore, if they ever were …”

  The riders didn’t speak, save to wave their weapons in the air, ordering him to back away from the eggs. Then each claimed a single white sphere, dismounting long enough to secure their prize inside a silk sling apparently woven for this single task.

  The final pair of riders was dressed as the others, yet they were different. One was small in build, while the other moved like a healthy but definitely older man. Manmark stared at both of them, and with an expertise garnered from years of imagining flesh upon ancient bone, he made two good guesses about who was beneath all those clothes.

  “Zephyr,” he muttered.

  How many candidates were there? In one little town, or even at this end of the territory, how many other men were there who could possibly appreciate the significance of this find?

  “And you,” he said to the whore, his voice tight and injured.

  She hesitated, if only for a moment.

  Through the slits about the eyes, Zephyr stared at his opponent, and then he made some decision, lifting a hand and glancing back at the lead rider. For what purpose? To order him shot, perhaps?

  The next blast of a gun startled everyone. The riders. Zephyr. And Manmark too. The concussion cut through the air, and while the roar was still ringing in their ears, Barrow said, “If we want to start killing, I’ll start with you. Whoever you are. Understand me, old man? Before they aim my way, I’ll hit your head and then your heart.”

  Barrow was standing on the back of the wagon now, holding his own rifle against his shoulder.

  “Hear me, stranger? The eggs are yours. Take them. And I’ll give you your life in the deal. Is that good enough?”

  “It is adequate,” said the accented voice.

  Under his breath, Manmark muttered grim curses. But he stood motionless while Zephyr claimed the last of his eggs, and he swallowed his rage while the riders turned and started back up the long draw, the final man riding backward in his saddle, ready to fire at anyone with a breath of courage.

  Manmark had none.

  When the thieves vanished, he collapsed, panting and sobbing in a shameless display.

  Barrow leaped off the wagon and walked toward him.

  The students were standing again, chattering among themselves. One and then another asked no one in particular, “Will we still get paid?”

  All was lost, Manmark believed.

  Then the dragon hunter knelt beside him, and with an almost amused voice, he said, “All right. Let’s discuss my terms.”

  “Your what?”

  “Terms,” he repeated. Then he outright laughed, adding, “When I get these eggs back to you, what will you pay me?”

  “But how can you recover them?”

  “I don’t know yet. But give me the right promises, and maybe I’ll think of something.”

  Manmark was utterly confused. “What do you mean? If there are six of them, and if they defeated my security man … what hope do you have?”

  “I fought in the war,” Barrow replied.

  “A lot of men fought.”

  “Not many did the kind of fighting that I did,” the dragon hunter replied. “And few of them fought half as well either.”

  Manmark stared at the hard dark eyes. Then, because he had no choice, none whatsoever, he blurted, “Yes. Whatever it costs. Yes!”

  6

  Here stood the best locomotive available on short notice—a soot-caked machine built of iron and fire, wet steam, and rhythmic noises not unlike the breathing of a great old beast. Since details mattered, Zephyr had hired workmen to paint dragon eyes on the front end and little red wings on its sides, and when the job wasn’t done with the proper accuracy, he commissioned others to fix what was wrong. Two engineers stoked the fire, while a third sat on top of the tender, ready to spell whomever tired first. Behind the locomotive was the armored car hired to move spleens and scales—a wheeled fortress encased in steel and nearly empty, carrying nothing but seven white eggs and six mercenaries armed with enough
munitions to hold off a regiment. And trailing behind was Zephyr’s private car, luxurious and open in appearance, except for the small windowless room at the rear that served as a bath.

  The original plan for the dragons’ spleens was to travel east. But the eggs were too precious to risk losing among the barbarians. Which was why Zephyr ordered his little train to head for the mountains and the Westlands beyond. A telegraph message dressed in code had been sent ahead. By the time he arrived at the Great Bay, a steamer would be waiting, ready to carry him back to the land of fables and childhood memories.

  “I haven’t been home for years,” he confessed to his companion.

  The young woman smiled at him, and once again, she said, “Thank you for taking me.”

  “It was the very least I could do,” Zephyr allowed. “You were wise to ask, in fact. If Manmark realized you were responsible—”

  “And for this,” she interrupted, letting her fat coin purse jingle in an agreeable fashion.

  “You have earned every mark. For what you have done to help me, madam, I will always be in your gratitude …”

  There was only one set of tracks, with the occasional sidings and rules of conduct between oncoming trains. But Zephyr had sprinkled the world before them with bribes, and for the time being, there might as well be no other train in the world. As they picked up speed—as the engine quickened its breathing and its pace—he looked through the thick window glass, watching a hand-painted sign pass on their right. “You are leaving Summer Gulch,” he read. “The fastest growing city between here and there.”

  What an odd, interesting thing to write. Zephyr laughed for a moment, and again mentioned, “I haven’t been home since I was a young man.”

  “I’d love to see the Great Continent,” the aboriginal girl reported.

  What would become of this creature? Zephyr was of several minds on the subject, but his happy mood steered him to the more benevolent courses.

  She slipped her purse out of sight.

  “Do you know why we call it the Dragon River?” he asked.