Nothing But Blue Skies (21 page)

Well
, Karen muttered sulkily,
I'm not having anything to do with it. And besides
, she added,
the rules don't apply to me. I'm human too
.

Karen opened her other eyes and stared at the back of the taxi driver's head. She felt cold, from her feet to the top of her head.

‘Yes, I am,' she said aloud. ‘I am now.'

 

When she finally got home, there wasn't much space on her doorstep. There were twelve bottles of something that had once been milk; a pile of junk mail, left outside because the letter box was jammed full with the stuff; and a human.

‘Hello,' the human said, and smiled.

Karen didn't recognise him and, since he was large, rather alarming in appearance and dressed in an old, shabby Burberry, she instinctively took a step back. Human instinct, naturally.

‘Who are you?' she asked.

‘What? Oh, for pity's sake, Grnztxyw.'

Her mouth fell open like the tailgate of the lorry that was carrying the cheap CD player you bought in a car boot sale last weekend. The last thing she'd been expecting at that precise moment was to be addressed by her childhood nickname—

—One that only three people knew. By a process of elimination—

‘Hpqzsxyzty?' she asked cautiously. ‘Is that you in there?' The human laughed. ‘Of course it is, dumbo,' he replied. ‘Who did you think it was?'

She could easily have burst into tears, except for a little lingering wisp of suspicion. Hpq; her oldest, dearest friend, whom she'd beaten up and chased all round the ozone layer and set fire to more times than she could remember when they were both little more than cubs together. Now she came to think of it, the person she'd be most likely to turn to in a mess like this, if only he wasn't still a dragon and a million miles away—

‘Prove it,' she said.

The human looked at her as if she'd just spat in his face. ‘Are you kidding?' he said. ‘Grnz, it's
me
. What the hell's come over you?'

She drew the tips of her fingers down her body, from cheeks to thighs. ‘This,' she said. ‘And it's ingrowing, like a bad claw. Prove you're really Hpq, or I'll tear you to pieces.'

‘All right.' He was staring, maintaining eye contact the way you'd want to do if you were facing a savage wild animal. ‘How about this? It was when we were kids together; come to think of it, I know exactly when it was, my two-thousand-seven-hundred-and-fifty-seventh birthday. Dad threw a party for our kindergarten class. You sneaked up behind me when I was raining on the candles on my birthday cake and tied a lump of burning sulphur to my tail. Hurt like hell, until my mum put it out.'

‘I remember that,' Karen admitted grudgingly. ‘But there were lots of us at that party. Try again.'

‘What about the time when you and I and your cousin Gndva-S'sssn skived off school to go cyclone-racing, and you dunked my head inside the magma layer of an active volcano when I wasn't looking? There was nobody else there to see us.'

‘Apart from my cousin.'

‘Yes, but she was helping you.'

‘Okay,' Karen admitted, ‘but you probably told your parents. All right, what about this one: what did I make you promise before I let you go?'

‘I had to promise to be your slave for ever and ever and give you my helping every time we had truffled snow for pudding at school dinner. You know,' he added, looking thoughtful, ‘when I think about it, I must be mad coming all this way to help you. You've done nothing but make my life a misery all the years I've known you.'

The lump in Karen's throat was getting so big, they'd have to draw it in the next time they revised the Ordnance Survey maps. ‘It
is
you, isn't it?' she whispered.

‘No, it's Norman Tebbitt. For crying out loud, Grnz, of course it's me. Who else'd be dumb enough to come all this way just to help you out of a spot of bother?'

It was almost more than she could bear; her friend, the one she'd known since before their eyes had opened. With a strangled yelp of joy she hurled herself at his chest, nearly knocking him flat on his back, and hugged him as if she was trying to squeeze his stomach out through his ears. As a final token of joy and love, she grabbed both his earlobes and twisted them savagely through a hundred and eighty degrees.

‘Aagh! For pity's sake, Grnz!'

‘Oops,' she said, letting go quickly. ‘Human ears. Forgot. Sorry.'

‘That's quite all right,' Hpq muttered, massaging the afflicted areas with the heels of his hands. ‘Just don't do it again, all right? I'm a good deal less flexible than I used to be, remember.'

‘Me too,' Karen sighed. ‘But Hpq, it's so good to see you! What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in North Dakota with your uncle Pvvcbdfgt?'

Hpq grinned. ‘Yes, is the short answer to that. I'm playing hookey. And, yes, I'm sure to get into the most desperate trouble when I show my face again back Home. But what the hell; somehow, I've always found that trouble, suffering, inconvenience and you go together like thunder and lightning. It'll be like old times,' he added. ‘Painful, and I'll wish I'd kept well clear.'

Karen could feel her eyes getting swollen and itchy, a symptom of a common human emotional disorder. It was one that had perplexed her more than most, since humans exhibited it both when extremely sad and extremely happy, as if they didn't really make a distinction between the two. ‘I'm really glad you're here,' she said awkwardly, hugging him again. ‘How did you know?'

‘About your dad, you mean? Oh come on, give me some credit. Remember, your father is my dad's quarter-brother. By the way,' he went on, ‘what on earth is that mustard-yellow stuff in all those glass bottles in front of your door, and why does it smell so revolting?'

‘Ah.' Karen let go of him and stepped back gingerly, taking care not to knock over any of the bottles. ‘That's milk. Or at least it was. It's stuff we put in drinks.'

There was palpable concern in Hpq's eyes as he replied. ‘No,' he said. ‘
We
don't put it in anything.
They
do.' His brows tightened. ‘How long did you say you've been down here, Grnz?'

Karen shook her head. ‘Let's go inside, shall we?'

‘Why?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Why is it preferable to have a conversation in a confined space than out in the open? If you can call a landing inside a tall building the open, that is. Sorry, I'm not trying to be difficult—'

‘It's all right,' Karen replied. ‘I know what you're doing. You're making me notice things I've been doing without thinking for rather too long. Human things.'

Hpq nodded. ‘Protective mimicry's all very well for insects,' he said gravely. ‘We're bigger than that. Why are you doing this to yourself, Grnz?'

‘Come inside.'

She unlocked the door, gave it a hearty shove to dislodge the maildrift behind it, and forced her way in. ‘Leave the milk,' she called out. ‘I'll do something about it later.'

The expression on Hpq's face as he looked round the flat was hilarious; likewise the way he instinctively ducked under a nine-foot ceiling as if he was afraid he was going to bang his head on it. Karen had done that, to begin with. ‘You live in this thing?' he asked.

Karen nodded. ‘When in Rome—'

‘When in Rome,' Hpq replied sternly, ‘leave immediately. Old dragon proverb, which you've obviously forgotten. And this isn't Rome, even. Grnz, what
are
you doing here?'

Karen sat down on the chair that didn't have dirty laundry piled up on it, and grinned sheepishly. ‘I fell in love,' she said.

‘You fell in what?'

‘Love. Oh come on, Hpq, you know what love is.'

‘I know what tuberculosis is, but I don't go out of my way to experience it. How do you mean, you fell in love? Who with? And why does falling in love mean you've got to dress up in
that
?'

‘With a human.'

To his credit, Hpq managed not to say anything for at least ten seconds, after which he said ‘Oh' in a completely expressionless voice. Of course, his sense of self-preservation might have had something to do with it.

‘Oh,' Karen repeated. ‘Thank you very much. I'd have thought you'd have understood, of all people.'

Hpq shook his head. ‘Understand? Don't be ridiculous. I couldn't understand something like that in a hundred thousand years, not if I went to evening classes. As you well know. What you mean is, you'd have thought that I of all people would stick by you and do what I can to help, even though it's painfully obvious to anybody that you've gone one-wing-flapping mad. And of course you'd be right,' he added, with a wry grin, ‘because I will. But understand—'

‘Hpq—' Karen tried to think of something to say, but couldn't; so she threw a cushion at him instead. ‘Thanks,' she added. ‘I'm really glad you're here, even if you are a mindless bigot with the imagination of a roof joist.'

‘You say the sweetest things,' Hpq replied. ‘What's a roof joist?'

Karen made a dismissive gesture. ‘Forget it,' she said. ‘Now you're here, let's think what you can do to make yourself useful. Any ideas?'

‘It's your adopted habitat, you tell me,' he said. ‘It's as much as I can do to keep from treading on the wriggly little buggers. Even,' he added with a grimace, ‘the ones who are taller than me. How the devil do you cope with that, by the way? The scale thing, I mean.'

‘It just sorts itself out, after a while. Like the claustrophobia. '

‘The what?'

‘Fear of confined spaces. Not liking being inside buildings, stuff like that.'

‘You make it sound like it's an illness.'

‘It—' Karen sighed. ‘For them,' she explained, ‘it is.'

‘At least you said
them
that time, not
us.
So,' Hpq went on, ‘tell me about him. Mr Wonderful. What's the deal?'

Karen stood up and walked across the room to the window, the one with the panoramic view of a courtyard and some dustbins. ‘I don't know,' she said. ‘It's love, you can't rationalise it.'

‘Since when? Of course you can. What is it about this joker? Smooth, shiny scales across his back and shoulders? Nice big hooked, rounded claws? Snout hairs like some ponce in a scale cream advert?'

‘Nothing like that, silly. He isn't a dragon, remember.'

‘I'm having no trouble at all remembering that,' Hpq said. ‘You're the one with the fishnet memory. So; obviously it's not a physical thing. Or are you about to tell me this - this
anthropomorph
has a beautiful smile?'

‘Actually, he does,' Karen replied stiffly. ‘And it doesn't look like a guided tour of a sawmill every time he opens his mouth, either.'

‘So? The sucker hasn't got any teeth to speak of. That's supposed to be a good thing?'

Karen shook her head violently. ‘I don't know,' she said. ‘Really, I don't. I just know I love him, that's all. Enough to leave home. Enough to want to be human—'

‘Oh, for crying out loud.'

‘All right, all right.' Karen looked away. ‘So I know I'm going to have to make a few compromises—'

‘As the pig said to the sausage machine. But,' Hpq added, holding up a hand, ‘the bottom line is, that's your business and not mine. It's not even why I'm here, so let's just leave it be, before we fall out over it. Agreed?'

Karen's face melted into a grin. ‘Agreed,' she said. ‘Anyway, now you know what brought me here. And it's obvious that me being here's what made Daddy come looking for me. If you want to say
it's all your fault
, please do it now and get it over with.'

‘Nah.' Hpq shrugged. ‘What good would that do? What matters is, we're going to find him. And then I'm going to enjoy myself watching as he kicks your bum from here to Mercury.'

‘As well he might,' Karen admitted. ‘Do you really think we can find him, Hpq?'

Her friend, her oldest and dearest and most aggravating friend of all, grinned enormously, a reaction so typical that for a split second she almost thought she could see his face through the pink human flesh. ‘We're
dragons
, Grnz. We can do anything. Well,' he added, ‘we're capable of anything, which amounts to the same thing, I guess. Don't worry about it, everything's going to be just fine. I promise you.'

Karen giggled. ‘That's supposed to make me believe, is it? You promise?'

‘Of course.' Hpq looked at her sternly. ‘When have I ever failed to keep a promise?'

‘Well.' Karen started counting on her fingers. ‘What about the time you promised
faithfully
that you were going to take me to the Stormtrotters' Ball; and who did you end up going with?'

‘My sister,' Hpq replied stiffly. ‘Duty called. But as soon as we got there I danced with you.'

‘And Gndva-S'sssn,' Karen reminded him, ‘In fact, “danced” isn't quite the word I'd have chosen. When I gave up and went home, you were trying to climb up her back like ivy on a tree.'

‘She'd pulled a muscle in her wing-case,' Hpq muttered. I was giving her a back-rub. What's a gentleman supposed to do?'

‘Not be so damned blatant about it. You know I can't stand her.'

Hpq looked genuinely surprised. ‘What, your cousin Gndva-S'sssn? You're kidding. I always thought you two were inseparable.'