Nothing But Blue Skies (26 page)

‘I am not responsible for the misfortunes of my enemies,' the dragon said coldly. ‘Only for the trouble I cause my friends.' He snorted suddenly. ‘Shit a brick, call that a safety shot? Bloody fool's left a red straight into the left-hand centre pocket. Calls himself a professional . . .'

‘That's fine,' the scientist muttered, with a hint of bitterness in her voice that was at least forty per cent genuine. ‘My life is tumbling in little pieces all round my ears but you're watching the snooker - I know,
I
can't see it, but it's there - so that's all right. I'm just sorry my pitiful bleating's spoiling your enjoyment of the game.'

‘That's all right,' the dragon said, ‘you're not that difficult to ignore. Go on, you bastard, miss, miss, miss - Yes! Couldn't hit his own bum with a frying pan.'

The scientist scratched the tip of her nose thoughtfully. Maybe, at a very fundamental level, dragons and people weren't all that different. Male dragons and male people, anyhow.
Why is it
, she asked herself,
that it's easier for humans to communicate with dolphins than for women to get a simple, self-evident message through the Kevlar-armoured skulls of men?
Actually, it wasn't such a hard question, at that. Dolphins are quite intelligent.

She reviewed her other options, all none of them. She decided to try again.

‘It's not as if I'm asking you to do anything
bad
,' she said. ‘I'm not after military secrets or the design of some dragon superweapon, or anything that'll make life any harder for your lot or mine. All I want is a few scientific facts. The truth. Knowledge. Dammit, if we know a bit about you people, it'll help us understand you better, and surely understanding can only be a good thing, the first step on the road leading to peace, friendship, an ongoing mutual relationship of trust and brotherhood between Man and Dragon.'

No answer.

‘A few trivial little biological and biochemical details,' she ground on. ‘More along the lines of giving some helpful hints to a primitive but up-and-coming species that's desperate to improve itself. Drag itself up to
your
level of progress and development. Think of it as the sincerest form of flattery.'

No answer.

‘If you don't answer my fucking questions,' the scientist growled, ‘I'm gonna connect you up to the mains and fry your ass to charcoal, you goddamn' intercontinental ballistic newt.'

The dragon didn't look round. ‘Sorry? I missed that.'

‘Nothing. Doesn't matter, it was only me, blathering on.'

‘Something about the news.'

‘Not news. Newt.'

‘Ah.' The dragon nodded. ‘Quaint dialect sayings from your north-eastern region. Newt so queer as folk. I don't know,' he added doubtfully, ‘in his position I'd go for the pink. Screw back off the pack of reds and be perfect for the blue into the middle.'

The scientist looked away. It had been a good idea, but it had gone nowhere so many times it was probably eligible for citizenship. All the effort, all the pain, and she'd learned exactly one thing about dragons; namely, that the adult males don't bother listening to you when you're trying to have a serious conversation. Maybe her father had been a dragon. Wouldn't surprise her in the least.

‘All right,' she said, ‘you win. I'll stop asking.' She sat down behind her desk, pulled out the middle drawer and propped her feet on it. ‘I'll just sit here, wait for them to come and repossess my car, and you can lie there feeling smug and watching two men wearing evening dress in the middle of the day poking at plastic balls with overgrown cocktail sticks. Eventually one of us'll die - probably me, I suspect you guys live a whole lot longer than us, though of course I don't know that for a fact since you won't damn' well tell me - and when the smell gets into the air-conditioning system and all the guys in suits on the sixteenth floor start yelling blue murder, someone'll come along with one of those big dustbins on wheels and clear away my desiccated remains, and my sister in Boise can have my aunt's watch and my framed print of
Guernica
, and I seem to remember something about a death-in-service clause in the pension scheme which ought to cover the cost of the funeral, though that really shouldn't be a major item, hire of one JCB, one black plastic garbage sack—'

‘What on earth are you wittering about now?'

‘But there's just one thing I would like you to do for me,' the scientist went on. ‘That's if you're not too busy watching the crown green bowling or the sheepdog trials. I'd like my fiancé to have this locket.' She fished inside her lab coat and brought out a small gold heart on a chain. ‘It was a sort of pre-engagement present, with his picture in it and our initials on the back—'

‘I didn't know you were engaged,' the dragon said. ‘It only goes to show, there really is somebody out there for everyone, no matter how improbable it may seem. I mean, if
you
. . .'

‘I was, the scientist replied. ‘I broke it off.'

‘Really? Why?'

‘I got bored standing around outside the church. Anyway,' she said, her voice as brittle as a Chinese screwdriver blade, ‘if you could see to it that he gets it; his name's on the back, and if you look . . .'

‘The man in the picture?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘The picture inside the locket. There's a photo, it's either a small, thin man or a very large weasel. That's him, is it? Your ex-fiancé.'

The scientist thought about it for a moment. Third eye. Can see clean through a closed locket. Neat trick. ‘Yes, that's him,' she said, trying to sound unconcerned. ‘And he doesn't look like a weasel.'

‘Sorry, I didn't mean—'

‘Weasels have more like a point to their snouts. You're thinking of a polecat. He looks just like a polecat.'

‘Ah. What's a polecat?'

The scientist rubbed her eyes. ‘Forget it,' she said. ‘You were about to say something?'

‘What? Oh, yes. All I was going to ask was,' the dragon went on, ‘why don't you give it to him yourself?'

‘Well, for a start—'

‘I mean, now's as good a time as any, when he's only about a hundred yards away, as the armour-piercing bullet flies.'

‘What the hell are you talking about, dragon?'

‘Oh, come on, it isn't exactly difficult. The man whose photograph you carry around in that little gold box is here in this building. Right now, he and some other man are running down a corridor, headed in this direction. If you open the door in, let's see, twelve point nine six seconds, he'll run straight into it and probably break his nose. That would undoubtedly be an improvement, aesthetically speaking. '

The scientist scowled horribly, then relaxed. ‘Nice try,' she muttered, ‘but I'm not that dumb. I'm not opening that door for—'

‘Sshh!'

She shushed; and heard the sound of heavy footsteps thundering past in the corridor outside. She jumped to her feet, hesitated and sat down again.

‘Very nice try,' she said. ‘You heard someone coming down the corridor with your super-sharp dragon hearing and made up this dippy story to make me open the door so you could escape—'

The dragon sighed. ‘It's remarkable,' he said, ‘how the same species can be both insanely suspicious and tragically gullible. You won't believe me when I tell you, out of the kindness of my heart, that your long-lost true love is just outside the door—'

‘He is
not
—'

‘But still you read newspapers, watch the television news and vote in elections. I suppose it's endearing in a way, but hardly what I'd call a survival trait. Still, I'm only a visitor here, it's not my place to criticise.'

‘He is not,' the scientist repeated, ‘my long-lost true love. He's the jerk who left me standing in a church porch wearing a six hundred pound non-returnable dress. The only possible reason for seeing him again is that you can't very well rip a person's lungs out with a blunt spoon if you don't know where they are. Since I don't happen to have a blunt spoon with me right now—'

The dragon shook his head. ‘Bullshit,' he said. ‘You aren't fooling me. Third eye.'

‘What, you mean you can read my—?' The scientist goggled at him in panic. ‘You can't, can you? You're kidding.'

‘Yes,' the dragon admitted. ‘And you've just admitted I was right all along.'

‘No way.
No
way.'

‘You're more than welcome to lie to me if it makes you feel better. After all, it's none of my business. Just think of me as a fellow scientist carrying out a few gentle, non-invasive experiments on a specimen. Nothing personal.'

If the scientist was furiously angry, she didn't stay that way for long. ‘It's lucky for you I left my blunt spoon at home,' she said. ‘So, all right, who's winning?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘In the snooker match. Who's in the lead now?'

The dragon lifted his head a little. ‘Do you know,' he said, ‘I'd forgotten all about it. Let's see. Oh. It's finished.'

‘You missed the end? You don't know who's won?'

‘Apparently.' The dragon frowned. ‘Annoying,' he said. ‘But my own fault, for letting myself get distracted. And yours, for making such an interesting lab rat.'

The scientist wasn't sure what to make of that.

CHAPTER NINE

‘A
ll right,'said Hpq, ‘we've tried that. Now what?' Karen, who'd been dozing in her chair, looked up and blinked at him. ‘Whu?'

‘You said, the best thing we can do right now is nothing at all. That was several hours ago.' He frowned. ‘I don't want to sound negative, but I don't think it's working.'

‘Patience,' Karen replied, tentatively flexing her seriously cricked neck. ‘With humans, everything takes much longer than you're used to.'

‘Fair enough,' Hpq replied. ‘Excuse me if this is a personal question, but what were you doing just now?'

‘I wasn't doing anything,' Karen told him. ‘In fact, I think I nodded off to sleep for a bit.'

‘Sleep,' Hpq said. ‘That's what it's called. I've heard about it from time to time, but that's the first time I've ever seen it happen. Weird.'

‘What? Oh.' Karen remembered. Once upon a time, when she hadn't been human, she had never slept at all. It was hard to imagine that - God, you'd be
exhausted
. ‘I suppose I've got used to it,' she said, a little self-consciously.

‘For a while there I thought you'd died or something,' Hpq said, stretching out on his back on the floor, with his hands behind his head. ‘Then I saw you were breathing, so I guessed it couldn't be anything too deadly serious. So what do you do when you're—'

‘Asleep?' Karen laughed. ‘You don't do anything. You just are.'

‘Really. Why?'

Karen closed her eyes, then opened them again. ‘It's so the body can rest and recuperate,' she said. ‘It's a human thing.'

‘Oh. And how often do you have to do it? Once a year, something like that?'

‘Eight hours a day. Well,' she qualified, ‘some humans can get by on less, but not me. I mean, not me when I'm being a human. Of course.'

Hpq was looking at her oddly. ‘Eight hours a day,' he repeated. ‘That's, what, twenty-four divided by . . . That's a third of their lives.' He looked mildly shocked. ‘Remarkable,' he said. ‘There I was, thinking what a swizzle it must be only living ninety years; and now you tell me that in real money, they only live sixty.' He squinted into the air for a moment, then relaxed. ‘You know,' he said, ‘humans seem to do that a lot - take great chunks of what little they've got and throw it away, I mean. Sleep and taxes. Bloody funny way to carry on, if you ask me.'

‘I didn't,' Karen replied. ‘Look, I wish you wouldn't keep harping on all the time about how strange and inferior humans are. It's getting on my nerves.';

‘But—' He paused. Usually, dragons have a use for tact the way a battleship needs a raincoat. Hpq was, however, fairly quick on the uptake. ‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘But anyway, like I was saying. What are we going to do now?'

Karen yawned. ‘I suppose we ought to do something,' she said, feeling slightly guilty. ‘Trouble is, I can't think of anything that wouldn't make matters worse than they already are.'

Hpq grinned. ‘I can,' he said. ‘As soon as it gets dark, let's slip into something more comfortable, fly over to this Canberra place and smash up some of Mr Willis's things - office buildings, radio masts, TV stations, that sort of thing. Or tell you what; if its being conspicuous that's bothering you, we could round up a few of his satellites. I gather they're quite expensive, it'd give us something to bargain with.'