Nothing But Blue Skies (29 page)

Gordon shook his head. ‘No, it wasn't any of them,' he said. ‘I'm sure I'd have known if it was. Actually, I think they work for the government. Do
you
work for the government, Zelda?'

‘Certainly not. I work for Mr - never mind who I work for.' She scowled. ‘Don't change the subject. You were running away from Security, weren't you?'

‘If you say so. To be honest with you, I never got around to asking them for their job descriptions.'

‘I see.' Zelda gave him another of her special heavy-duty looks. ‘Well, in that case I'm going to call them right now and tell them to come and get you.' She reached across the desk for a buzzer. ‘And you owe me two hundred and sixty-four-pounds and seventeen pence, she added. ‘For the photographer,' she explained. ‘And then there's the brides-maid dresses and the caterer. You were going to pay half.'

Gordon tried to grab her hand, but she snatched it away. ‘I won't be able to pay you back if I'm dead,' he pointed out.

‘That's all right, I'll sue your estate. Besides,' she added, ‘they aren't going to kill you.'

‘You reckon?'

‘Not if I ask them nicely and tell them I've got a prior claim. They're very understanding people once you get to know them.'

‘Zelda—'

‘You never said your name was Zelda,' the dragon interrupted.

‘What?' She spun round, startled. The fact was, she'd forgotten all about the dragon. ‘Oh, right. Yes. Zelda Ehrlich.'

‘That's a nice name,' the dragon said gravely.

‘You think so? I mean, well, it's just my name, you know? Like, I didn't really have a lot to do with it.'

The dragon's brows tightened into something analogous to a frown. ‘You didn't?'

‘No,' Zelda replied. ‘My parents chose it for me.'

‘Oh. You don't strike me as particularly indecisive.'

Zelda shook her head. ‘No,' she said, ‘you don't understand. That's the way we do things. Your parents choose your name for you when you're born.'

‘They do?' The dragon didn't sound convinced. ‘What a strange way to go about it. How on earth can they know what to call you when you've only just been born, I wonder.'

‘I don't follow,' Zelda said. Her hand was nowhere near the buzzer now.

‘Your name tells people who you are,' the dragon replied. ‘For instance my name - I won't tell it you in the original, because you might try and repeat it and do yourself an injury, you need the proper jaw-muscles - my name means
alpha male dragon measuring twenty-seven c'kgnungs by eight kgnungs by five kgnungs by two hours and six minutes, with a pale yellow patch two speepokts in from the left fore armpit, administrative officer grade 2, widower with one daughter, inclined to be short-tempered when provoked and generally snotty to underlings but is all right really when you get to know him, hobbies include aquaplaning, collecting meteorite framents and Hsnioinggggg folk music
. Actually,' he added, ‘that's what my friends call me, for short. What does yours mean?'

Zelda blinked twice. ‘I don't know,' she said.

‘You don't - Oh, well, fair enough. Sorry, I interrupted you. You were threatening the mortal.'

‘Was I? Oh.' Zelda narrowed her brows, trying to concentrate; but her left foot had gone to sleep during the early stages of the dragon's name, and had just woken up with more pins and needles in it than you'd expect to find in Debenham's main warehouse. ‘Hang on, you said mortal. Does that mean—?'

‘Did I? Sorry, I meant human,' the dragon replied smoothly. ‘There you go, always the scientist. You were just about to hand over your ex-boyfriend to the guards. But I think you've probably decided not to.'

Zelda nodded. ‘He isn't worth it,' she replied. ‘I mean, I'd just feel bad about it afterwards, and I've done enough feeling bad about him to last me a while—'

‘Thank you,' Gordon said. ‘I think,' he added. ‘Be that as it may. If you aren't going to turn me in, you've got to help me escape.'

‘Excuse me?'

Gordon nodded. ‘One or the other,' he said. ‘This isn't an issue where you can be neutral. Think about it.'

‘He's right,' the dragon said.

‘Hey!' Zelda snapped. ‘Whose side are you on, anyway?'

‘Nobody's,' the dragon replied. ‘I just have a tidy mind, that's all. If he escapes and the guards find out he was in here and you didn't raise the alarm, they'll assume you helped him and you'll be in as much trouble as if you had. Likewise if he stays here and they catch him. Either way, you'll get the blame.'

‘Wonderful,' Zelda muttered. ‘I should have known he'd still be trouble.'

‘You didn't have any choice in the matter,' the dragon pointed out, ‘so you can't blame yourself. You're just unlucky, that's all. But the fact remains, unless you hand him over, not only do you have to help him escape, you have to escape yourself as well. Because you can't stay here now, can you?'

Zelda thought it over; then closed her eyes and made a loud snarling noise. ‘God, I hate this,' she complained. ‘Oh, if only I'd listened to my mother. She never liked you, you know.'

‘Really? I'm devastated. Listen,' Gordon went on, ‘I don't know if your scaly friend over there is for real or not. I don't care much, either. But whoever or whatever he is, he's right.'

‘Big of you to say so,' the dragon muttered. ‘Still, a human being who can be in a confined space with a fully grown dragon and apparently not give a damn - there may be hope for your species yet.'

Gordon grinned, a little crazily. ‘At last,' he said, ‘somebody who likes me.'

‘I wouldn't go quite that far,' the dragon replied. ‘But you make a refreshing change, I'll grant you. By the way,' he added, ‘haven't we met before? I was a goldfish at the time, but your voice sounds familiar.'

‘So it was you in that tank - I mean, yes. Fine. Later. How'd it be if
you
helped me to escape? Somehow I get the impression it's more in your line of work than hers.'

‘With pleasure,' purred the dragon. ‘Of coure, you'll have to untie me first.'

‘Over my dead—'

‘Sure,' Gordon replied. ‘No skin off my nose. And anyhow, isn't there some old gag about my enemy being your enemy?'

Zelda stalked over and stood between him and the dragon. ‘Don't you dare,' she said. ‘You even think about it and I'll scream the place down'

‘Don't listen to her,' the dragon urged softly. ‘All she cares about is her ridiculous science.'

‘It's not ridiculous,' Zelda growled.

The dragon laughed. ‘It is, too,' he said. ‘Don't forget, with my third eye I can read all sorts of your communications - television signals, Internet pages, radio broadcasts. I read your science a short while ago, during a commercial break in the snooker—'

‘All of it? Don't be—'

‘While simultaneously learning and evaluating most of your languages,' the dragon went on. ‘Talking of which, your surname means
honorable
. It's German. Where was I? Oh, yes. What you people think of as science - well, it's interesting. Not to mention quite amusing at times. All that stuff about equal and opposite reactions. Crazy. But that's not the point,' the dragon went on. ‘The point is, you need to get out of here quickly. I can help you. But not if I'm stuck here like a climbing rose on a trellis.'

‘Good enough for me,' Gordon said. ‘Sorry, Zelda.'

‘I'm not going to let you.'

‘Oh, for—' Gordon scowled. ‘Just because we may have had our differences in the past—'

‘Differences!' Zelda screeched. ‘You bastard, you stood me up on my wedding day.'

‘Yes,' Gordon replied patiently. ‘Admitted. Guilty as charged. But I don't think it actually carries the death penalty. Not even in Singapore. Zelda, there are crazy people out there who want to kill me. Really kill me. As in death. Could you please make an effort and try to understand what that means?'

Zelda was one of those people who calm down visibly, like a piece of hot metal gradually fading from orange to grey. ‘Probably,' she said, ‘you did me a favour anyhow. If we had gotten married, we'd only have spent all the time fighting. I mean, how could anybody live with you and not fight? All right,' she said, ‘here's the deal.' She turned to face the dragon. ‘It's up to you. If I let you go so you can help him escape - God knows why you want to, but anyway you've got to promise me, on your word of honour as a dragon, that you'll answer all my questions. Agreed?'

The dragon made a snorting noise, half annoyance, half amusement. ‘Now just a moment,' he said. ‘The only reason I was going to help this imbecile was so he'd untie me and I could get out of here. If you're going to - Oh, never mind. I suppose it'll have to be my good deed for the day. Just think about this, will you? If you'd made me that offer a day or so ago, I'd have agreed, and you wouldn't have had to sit through hours and hours of black-and-white snooker.'

‘And I'd have lost my job,' Zelda sighed. ‘Just like I'm about to do now.' She dipped her head in the direction of Neville, who was still fast asleep on the floor. ‘What about him?' she said.

‘What about him?' Gordon replied.

‘You're proposing to leave him there, are you?'

‘Well, yes. No. I bloody well ought to, since he got me into this mess. But,' he added quickly, ‘being a delusional moron isn't a capital offence either, so I suppose we'd better take him along too.'

‘Besides,' the dragon chipped in, ‘he wasn't delusional at all. Everything he told you was perfectly true.'

Gordon made a soft, whimpering noise. ‘All right,' he said, ‘don't rub it in. Just because it happens to be true doesn't make him any less of a nutcase for believing it. I mean to say,' he added, ‘dragons. And talking goldfish. The whole idea is utterly ridiculous.'

Dragon laughter sounded unsettlingly like a bandsaw meeting a stray nail in the middle of a log of wood, but Gordon was getting used to it by now. ‘You know,' the dragon said, ‘I can't help but admire your attitude. It's people like you who've made the human race so . . .'

‘What?'

‘Convenient.' The dragon's eyes sparkled. ‘If you didn't exist, it'd have been necessary to invent you, as the old dragon saying has it.'

For some reason he couldn't really fathom, Gordon found this extremely annoying. ‘Convenient? Necessary? What for?'

‘Straight men,' the dragon replied. ‘After all, where would the fun be in raining if there was nobody underneath? Now then, somebody did mention something about undoing these confounded straps.'

‘All right,' Zelda said. ‘But you've got to promise to be nice.'

This time the dragon's laughter made the floor shake. ‘Young human female,' he said, ‘I wouldn't know where to start.'

Zelda shrugged. ‘I don't believe you,' she said. ‘Actually, I think you're kinda cute. Like a cross between a four-year-old kid and a tyrannosaurus. A cuddly tyrannosaurus, naturally. All right, here goes.' She released the straps, then jumped back quickly as if she'd just lit a fuse.

For three seconds the dragon didn't move at all. Then, with a flick and a wriggle that was so fast as to be practically invisible, he flipped over from his back to his legs, hopped in the air like a frog off the table onto the floor, and bobbed up into the air like a balloon. ‘That's better,' he murmured, hovering three feet or so off the ground. ‘You have no idea how wearing resting your weight on something solid can be when you aren't used to it. In case you're wondering,' he added, ‘it's done by manipulating the effect of the Earth's gravitational pull by means of a bioelectrical magnetic field generated by my central nervous system. In your science, it'd take forty pages of equations to describe it. Of course, the same goes for all the electrical impulses you have to send along your nerves to operate all the cogs and wheels and bits of sinew it takes for you to scratch your ear.' He breathed in and out slowly. ‘The difference is,' he said, ‘I know how I work. Which is what makes it possible for me to do this.'

Suddenly, he wasn't a dragon any more. This time, there was no movement at all for the eye to struggle to follow. One moment there'd been a dragon, floating in the air; the next, it'd gone, and in its place was a tall, fat man with a bald, pointed head and thick tufty sideburns ending level with his ear lobes. He was wearing the uniform of a lieutenant colonel in the Coldstream Guards, and holding a machine gun.

‘I know what you're thinking,' the ex-dragon said. ‘You're thinking I'm going back on our deal. Certainly not. It's just that if I break you out of here by bashing the wall down with my tail, then carry you on my back across the Atlantic to Bogota, there's a risk I might make myself conspicuous. I wouldn't want that. So I've decided to be you for a while.'

‘Fine,' Gordon muttered. ‘Only, if you've dragged yourself down to our level, would you mind explaining just how you were planning to get us past all those locked doors and stuff?'

‘Ah.' The dragon nodded seriously. ‘I was wondering about that. Fortunately, right here I've got a very precise, very specific tool that'll have us out of here in no time. Interested?'

‘Well, of course.'

‘Here you are, then.'

The dragon moved, and there was something sort of round and sort of clunky lying on the flat of his outstretched hand. The humans gazed at it for quite some time.