by Tad Williams
“You’re late,” said Jude Modesto. The fat man was trying to sound like an important fellow who’d been kept waiting, but he wasn’t very convincing. Stillman and his two bodyguards stood by the copter, the same two huge men who were only a couple of bad haircuts and two pairs of Lycra shorts away from looking like professional wrestlers.
“You changed the meeting time,” Colin said flatly. “It wasn’t easy for me to rearrange things.” Unlike Modesto, Colin knew that the less emotion you put into your voice, the less you had to worry about giving away how you really felt. Which, in his case, was nervous. He’d just noticed that both of the bodyguards were wearing holsters over their dark shirts. Holsters with guns in them.
Well, Needle, he reminded himself, you wanted to play with the big boys.
“And this must be… your client,” Colin said out loud, remembering that he wasn’t supposed to know what Ed Stillman looked like. But before Modesto could reply, the silver-haired man in polo shirt, shorts, and hiking boots pushed himself away from the steep side of the helicopter-it looked even bigger from up close, like a flying battleship-and stepped forward. He looked as though he was coming to shake Colin’s hand, but his own hands never left his pocket.
“And this must be the enterprising young man you told me about, Jude,” said Stillman. “He reminds me a little bit of myself when I was that age, I must say.” He smiled, showing perfect white teeth. “I’m very interested in what you claim to have to offer.” Up close, in the light from the chopper, he looked older than on first impression. Colin found himself wondering whether despite his easy, graceful movements, Stillman might be older than Gideon. “And I’m just as interested to know where you got it.”
“Uh-uh,” Colin said, trying to sound calm but tough. “I don’t claim, I don’t explain. That was part of the deal-no questions. I know you checked out that sample or you wouldn’t be here. Where that sample and the sale item both came from is a secret. Put it this way-it came back from a very special expedition.”
“And where is… the sale item?” asked Ed Stillman, as if he’d seen all the same movies and read the same books.
“Where’s the money?”
The client laughed. “Deuce-the suitcase?”
One of the bodyguards reached into the helicopter and produced a briefcase. He snapped it open and held it out. Colin could see nothing but rows of Ben Franklin’s face-one-hundred-dollar bills in bound piles.
“Five hundred thousand, right?” said Stillman.
“Please, Mr. St… I mean, please, sir, let me handle this!” Jude Modesto flapped his hands in frustration. “It’s my job.”
“Your job is done,” said Stillman, then he turned to Colin with a wide smile. “So do we have a deal? You can count the money if you want.”
Colin reached out and lifted up a bundle at random, fanned it as he’d seen in many films, then put it down and tested another. His heart was beating so fast he thought he might not be able to speak, so at first he just nodded. “Looks fine,” he said at last, gruffly.
“Then take it. Where’s my… sale item?”
“I’ll go get it.” Colin closed the briefcase, gripped its handle tight, and started toward the trees. “I’m not going to run off with the money,” he told Stillman. “I promise.”
The man in the polo shirt laughed again, as if this was turning out to be far more entertaining and enjoyable than he’d ever hoped. “No tricks, then? All right, I’m glad to hear it. And if you give me what’s promised, you’ll get to keep that suitcase and the money in it. After all, that’s how men like us do business.”
Colin hurried to the trees, trying to remember if he’d done everything right. He’d held back the egg until he’d seen the money. He’d checked the briefcase to make sure it wasn’t just a few real bills on top of bundles of cut-up newspaper or something-and here it was in his hands! Half a million bucks! All he had to do now was get the money into the bank. He wasn’t sure how he was going to explain it to his mother and Gideon when he suddenly produced enough money to save the farm, but he didn’t have to come up with an explanation right away. He could always claim he’d won the lottery. His mother might not believe it, but she’d know better than to start making a fuss about it, and Gideon would be too grateful to ask many questions.
Take that, Jenkins kids! he thought as he counted his way to the tree where the backpack hung. One in the eye for you, eh! Maybe he’d even let them come visit sometimes once Gideon was gone and the farm was his. After all, it was better to keep your enemies close-and quiet. Tyler and Lucinda Jenkins were now part of a very elite group, the tiny number of people who knew the important secrets of Ordinary Farm.
Well, knew some of the important secrets. Colin grinned.
He almost left the briefcase with the money in it back in the trees, but couldn’t bear to think of it being out of his hands that long. Instead he dangled it awkwardly from his fingers as he struggled to carry it and the heavy backpack to the helicopter.
“Here it is,” he said as he reached Stillman, who took the egg from him. The helicopter’s blades were turning a little less lazily now, as if the great crouching thing were waking up.
Stillman looked inside the backpack. “Good,” he said. “Now, get in.”
Colin stood waiting for Modesto and the client’s bodyguards to do as their boss had ordered, then realized that the billionaire in the khaki shorts was looking at him. The smile was still there, but it didn’t come close to reaching the man’s eyes.
“I said, get in.”
“What are you talking about?” Colin took a few steps back, but a huge hand curled around his bicep. One of the bodyguards had moved in behind him. “What’s going on?”
“ We’re going on,” said the billionaire. “And you’re coming with us. I’ve got lots of questions to ask about your pal Gideon Goldring and what he’s been doing here all these years in the middle of nowhere-and you’ve got lots of answers you’re going to give me.” Stillman chuckled and patted the side of the helicopter. “Besides, wouldn’t you like to ride on this baby, Colin? It’s a LePage S-99, you know. Top of the line-they make basically the same model for the military. You’ve heard of a Thunderbird gunship, haven’t you?”
“But you said no tricks!”
The billionaire rolled his eyes. “Come now, Colin-you’re a big boy. What kind of crap is that, ‘no tricks’? Since when do people dealing in illegally smuggled dinosaur eggs-and of an undiscovered saurian, to boot!-since when do people doing things like that trust each other? Give me a break! Haven’t you ever heard the old saying, ‘There’s no honor among thieves’?”
“But you’re a businessman!”
“I take back what I said earlier-you don’t remind me of myself at all. I don’t think I was ever that naive, even when I was in elementary school.”
Jude Modesto came forward, his face beaded with sweat that gleamed in the light spilling from the helicopter’s interior. “Sir, you never said anything about this. This is… this is kidnapping.”
“Only if our friend here wants to file charges. But I’m betting that one way or another, he won’t. Either he’ll like the deal I’m going to offer him-and it’s a good deal, one where he’ll get to keep at least that half a million-or something will happen to him and no one will ever find out where he went. Make sense?” He nodded to the man behind Colin. “Let’s go.”
The briefcase was taken gently from his hand, then Colin Needle was shoved, stumbling, toward the open door of the helicopter.
Chapter 28
Hot Wings
I t might have been an interesting sight in another place and time-the rolling hills at the edge of Standard Valley laid out in blanket folds, glowing gray in the moonlight and rushing away beneath her like the current of a river. As it was, though, she was dangling upside-down, held only by the ankle on the shredded restraint straps of a dragon, and whipped by the speed of their passage like a spider in a gale, so Lucinda was too busy screaming to appreciate t
he view.
“Go down! Go down! Meseret, put me down! ”
But all that came back from the dragon was a jumble of heated, dark thoughts, storm clouds full of lightning-anger and fear and something deeper Lucinda could not put a name to, especially not when she was spinning and swinging two hundred feet above certain death.
The dragon banked down, clearing a stand of trees by so little that Lucinda felt the topmost branches whip past her head, then leveled out, following the curve of the land as she headed toward the far side of Standard Valley. If it was Colin she was after-if he actually had Meseret’s egg-then the boy was as good as dead. Many thousands of pounds of dragon were going to drop on him like an eagle on a field mouse, if Meseret didn’t just burn him to ashes first.
Now that they were flying more steadily, Lucinda finally stopped swinging like a yo-yo. She grabbed the strap around her ankle and tried to pull herself up, but at first she could not even get her head up to the height of her own knee. All those horrible exercises in gym class, knotted ropes and obstacle courses-why hadn’t she worked at them harder? All those times she’d run to the wall, clambered up a few feet, then slid down to the ground and walked away, ignoring her gym teacher shouting that she knew Lucinda could do better if she only tried.
But this time she was going to die if she didn’t make it. Her foot was going to come loose and she’d fall, or she’d get her head smashed into a tree, or, perhaps worst of all, get dragged a hundred yards across rocks and brambles when the dragon finally landed. And then what? Colin incinerated. Not that he was blameless, but still… Tyler and Steven stuck in the mirror, wherever that might lead, and the Carrillo girls helplessly waiting. Their mother, receiving a phone call from someone-probably Mrs. Needle: “So sorry to tell you this, but your children aren’t coming back home…”
“No!” She couldn’t even hear herself shout against the whistle of wind in her ears, but she felt a tiny twinge of recognition from Meseret, as if despite the fury that filled the she-dragon like a hive of bees, she dimly heard Lucinda’s voice. But it wasn’t enough to make her slow down or stop.
Lucinda grabbed at her ankle again and began to pull herself upright. It was hard, hard going, and once, terrifyingly, the knot on the strap gave a little and she lost her grip and fell away, banging her back and head against the dragon’s rough, leathery hide, but the tangle tightened again and held. Laboriously she pulled herself back up until at last she was able to get her other hand onto the knot of canvas above her ankle. She clung to it, the wind bumping her rapidly against Meseret’s side, until she had caught her breath and didn’t feel quite so strong a need to scream. Already, though, her muscles were exhausted and burning. But what choice did she have?
“Meseret! Can you hear me-can you understand me? Put me down! I’ll get killed if you don’t put me down!”
But the dragon didn’t seem to be listening either to Lucinda’s words or her thoughts. Meseret kept flying steadily south, following the slope of the land through every change so that every beat of the batlike wings seemed to carry them higher or lower. Lucinda clenched her teeth until her ears rang and began to pull herself up.
Her gym teacher would never have recognized her. First one hand, then the other on top of it, pull up a few inches, then change hands. Her fingers felt like bony hooks, cramped and agonizing from holding her weight as the wind kept trying to pull her off, to throw her into space, but she knew she didn’t have the strength to start over again if she lost her grip. She tasted salt in her mouth: she had bitten her lip until it bled. She couldn’t even see because the wind and her own pain had made her eyes fill with blurring tears.
One hand. The other hand. Pull up. Change hands. One hand. The other. Pull.
The wind was full on the back of her head now, her hair whipping the sides of her face and trailing behind her so that at first she could not tell the difference between it and the dragon’s long tail, switching from side to side as she banked through the sky.
I’m up! She was all the way above the knot on her ankle, and with one last tug she was able to lift herself upright, clinging tightly to Meseret’s broad flank. She was standing in the knot as though it was a stirrup, facing backward toward the dragon’s tail end. Lucinda put her free foot on top of the knot and rested there for a long moment, but she knew she wasn’t safe yet-as if there was any position that could be called “safe” when she was riding on top of a five-ton dragon gone insane with anger. Nevertheless, she mustered what seemed like the very last of her strength and pulled herself up, using both feet now to keep the restraint rope taut, until she was finally up onto the relative safety of Meseret’s broad, scaly back. Lucinda left the knot around her ankle just in case, then clung to the hummock where the top of the dragon’s massive hip joint met her pelvis, where the wind was a little less fierce.
Meseret abruptly stooped. Lucinda’s heart leaped in fright. Had the creature seen Colin? Was she going to shred him while Lucinda watched helplessly-eat him, maybe? What did the stupid boy want the egg for, anyway? Had he really stolen it, or was it all some kind of misunderstanding between him and Haneb? Did it even matter? Despite the species difference, Lucinda knew that Meseret felt perfectly certain of the boy’s guilt and that she would destroy him in an instant to get to her egg.
But that egg isn’t even alive! Why was the dragon so angry? Why was she so crazy to protect a failed egg? Lucinda could feel it clearly, though, that mysterious emotion that throbbed behind all the others like a bass note in a complicated song, hard to hear unless you found the trick of separating it out from the other, brighter, showier notes.
Lucinda clung to the dragon’s back, hurtling through the air, trying desperately to make sense out of the swirl of alien emotions.
Alien. Maybe that was the problem-she’d been trying to make the dragon’s thoughts into human thoughts-but maybe the only way was to think more like a dragon. But how?
She buried her face against the rough hide and spread her arms and legs wide so that she was touching as much of Meseret as possible. She could feel the massive shoulder muscles pulling back and forth even from several feet behind them. What must it be like to be so strong, to be able to fly, to be able to lift that vast bulk into the air and break through the misty clouds? To dive like a bird and to glide silently? To feel fire in your belly and your throat and know that you could spit it out of your mouth, destroying all before you?
Thinking about the fire, trying her best to think dragon thoughts, Lucinda suddenly felt herself sinking into Meseret’s thoughts. She was Meseret, although a bit of Lucinda remained.
Fire! She could feel it now-not in her stomach, but waiting in sacs on either side of her throat, although she didn’t think of it as anything so foreign as “fire.” It was a part of her like her wing tips or her teeth, a bright, hot fan of defense and display she could spread in front of herself with only a thought-defense, display, and one even more important task, one she had not been able to complete and that gnawed at her like a wound. But she was not really thinking of the fire right now, just feeling it, as she could feel her pinions driving, as she could feel her heart beating thunderously in her breast. She was thinking only of her egg.
Her eyes roved over the landscape, looking for anything. She saw figures moving-antlike pale blobs scurrying below, the heat of their existence as plain as the light of the stars overhead. She stooped, anger rushing up inside her again…
Lucinda was startled back into her own thoughts by the steepness of the dive, the finality of the intent.
“No!” she screamed. “No! Don’t!”
But Lucinda’s objections, her piping human voice meant nothing. It was Meseret herself who realized that the running shapes beneath her had nothing to do with her lost offspring. She could smell their… egglessness from hundreds of feet above them. She abruptly lost interest and banked upward. They did not have what she was seeking.
The dragon’s thoughts now pulled Lucinda down again.
Her
egg. It was not a thought, even, so much as a feeling. Her egg. A glowing ball of light, of… possibility. But so many things had gone wrong since she had begun preparing to birth it-it gave her so much pain! First there had been none of the just-right-smelling earth to eat and the shell had not felt right. Because of that she had not been able to quicken it with her breath, and it had lain soundless and warmthless long beyond the time it should have come to life-dead, just like all the others. But unlike all the others, this one had not fully succumbed. Somewhere inside it the spark still lived, although it was growing faint.
Then it had been stolen, and now it was being taken even farther away, and despite the sleepiness and foolishness that made her head so heavy and her thoughts so slow, someone would pay for that.
A joyful fantasy of shredding human flesh like lettuce, tearing and throwing and swallowing, made Lucinda shudder back into her own thoughts.
I felt her-I really felt her! That was Meseret!
The dragon stooped again. Something stood on the ground in the near distance-something bigger than any of the two-legged rat-monkeys, something much bigger. In Meseret’s mind’s eye, and in Lucinda’s now, too, it looked something like a giant dragonfly, glowing near the circling wings with the heat of its building energy. More little blobs of light stood around it like eggs, like lice, like maggots, and one of them had her egg. All the rat-monkeys that held her and restrained her, and now that had stolen from her. Meseret hated them with a bright, white-hot hatred…
The helicopter, Lucinda thought. It’s just like Carmen and Alma said. That must be where Colin’s going-but why?
The death-dealing urge throbbed through Meseret like a single, high-pitched note of song. Her wings creaked as she accelerated, the increased wind almost yanking Lucinda up off the creature’s back.
No! Lucinda did her best to find that feeling again, the feeling the dragon herself felt. Don’t-you’ll kill them all, and your egg too! Let me help you!
