Nothing But Blue Skies (36 page)

Neville shook his head. ‘Don't be in such a hurry,' he said. ‘Think about it. The people who put us in here may be loonier than a skip full of chihuahuas, but I don't think they're so stupid they wouldn't figure it out the way you just did. There's got to be a reason why letting that fish out of that bowl is a really bad idea. Trust me on this; I'm an expert on really bad ideas these days.'

‘But—'

‘Hold on.' He got up, walked over to the goldfish bowl and peered at its inmate. ‘You know what?' he said. ‘This isn't the same goldfish.'

‘Excuse me?'

‘The goldfish I had in my tank,' Neville explained, ‘was more a sort of metallic tangerine. And he didn't have that little white fleck in his tail. It's a different fish.'

Zelda frowned. ‘Maybe that's just the way it is,' she said. ‘Each time they turn into fish, where does it say it has to be the same one?'

‘Where does it say it doesn't?' Neville growled back. ‘I don't think that fish is a dragon. I think it's just a fish. Which means,' he went on, ‘if we haul him out of there, we'll end up with one dead fish, and not even any chips and mushy peas to go with him.'

‘Why would they put a stunt goldfish in here?'

‘Their idea of a joke,' Neville suggested. ‘As bait to lure the real dragon down here. Because they thought we might appreciate the company. How the hell should I know? I've got a splitting headache, all that gas seems to have wiped out the third eye I spent all that time developing, and if I wasn't so incredibly brave and tough, I'd curl up on the floor and start howling for my mummy. Not that she'd be able to help much, she's ninety-two and lives on the Isle of Wight. All I know is, that's not the same goldfish. So; no dice. Sorry.'

If the fish really was talking, as opposed to just breathing and trawling for virtual ants' eggs, he was doing a lot of it. He was a headmaster making an end-of-term speech, or an Italian traffic policeman whose foot has just been run over by a truck. His mouth was opening and shutting faster than his gills.

‘I think he can hear us, and he's telling us to get him out of there.'

‘Or he's telling us on no account to try, because there's a bomb with a water-pressure-actuated fuse behind the wall-panel just to your right. If only I could speak fluent goldfish I could probably lip-read. But I can't. A shame, but never mind. We'll just have to stay right here where we are, not making any bother for anyone, and wait for someone to come and get us out.'

‘Resourceful, aren't you?' Zelda sneered.

‘So's the North Sea,' Neville replied. ‘And that's precisely why they started drilling holes in it. Resourceful is for losers. Still, quiet and scared shitless, on the other hand, has the full weight of thousands of years of trial and error to back it up.'

‘Coward.'

‘You know,' Neville said, staring at a cobweb in the corner of the ceiling, ‘for a scientist, you don't know jack about evolution. Thousands of generations of cowards have run like buggery at the first sign of danger and thereby survived to breed. Soon the gene pool will be completely surrounded by our deckchairs, and there'll be nobody here except us chickens. It's how nature gauges success.'

By way of reply, Zelda made an unladylike noise with her tongue. ‘You can stand back if you want to,' she said. ‘I'm gonna turn this boy loose and get out of here. And you can stay here and rot, if that's what you've set your heart on.'

She grabbed the goldfish bowl and twisted it sideways, sloshing its contents all over the floor. The goldfish hit the ground and wriggled convulsively, arching its back so that its tail thrashed against its own head, and for a moment Zelda's face was a study in Oh-fuck-what've-I-done? Then the goldfish, still bucking, turned into a dragon.

He made the other dragon look like a gecko. His scales were gold and orange-red, the colour of steel just before it's fit to be transferred from the forge to the anvil. Down his long spine, curved and sinuous as a mighty river, ran a double row of sharp white blades, as if some millionaire had burglar-proofed the top of his wall with razor-edged ivory instead of broken bottles. Each foot sported five long milk-white claws, most delicate of weapons; his wings were vast fans woven from peacock's feathers; his ears were long and pointed, muffled with dense thickets of blue and gold hair, and his jaws were fringed with long, trailing white whiskers, like those of a Victorian statesman.

‘You stupid fucking cow,' he shrieked, in a voice like fire-works going off inside a huge bronze bell. ‘What the hell do you think you're playing at? I could have choked.' He lashed out instinctively with his tail, like a vast bejewelled strimmer, missing Zelda's head by the thickness of a sheet of paper.

‘Told you,' Neville murmured from the corner where he was cowering. ‘Different dragon.' Zelda, who'd recovered from her perfectly natural terror remarkably quickly, was staring at the big crack in the wall where the dragon's tail had smacked into it. ‘Do that again,' she said.

‘Piss off,' the dragon said. ‘What d'you think I am, a jackhammer? '

‘No,' Zelda replied, ‘but you'll have to do for now.' She frowned. ‘Or would you prefer to stay coiled up like a Hoover flex for the rest of your life?'

Her tone made the dragon even angrier, but he was too shrewd not to take her point, so he took his anger out on the wall, which pretty soon wasn't there any more. Quick as a running rope burning your hands, the dragon flipped over and shot his head through the hole like a harpoon. ‘Ouch,' he reported back, as his skull impacted with the wall of the adjoining room. ‘Snot. Shit. Buggery,' he elaborated, as he head-butted the wall into masonry dust. ‘That's better.'

‘Are you through? Out of the building?'

‘No,' the dragon's voice floated back, ‘but at least there's room to swing my tail in. Could be some sort of hall or audience chamber.'

Zelda scrambled to her feet. ‘Wait for us,' she shouted.

‘Why?'

‘Because,' she improvised desperately, ‘we know what's going on.'

The dragon stayed where he was, the last four feet of his tail still inside the cell. ‘Pleased to meet you,' he said, his voice suddenly candied in charm. ‘I'm Xyxxzpltyssxz, crown prince of . . .' For some reason he stopped and giggled, as if at some private joke. ‘Dragon king of the north-west,' he went on. ‘And you are—?'

‘I'm Zelda and he's Neville. We've all been captured by a man called Willis. He's an evil overlord type who owns newspapers. '

‘Right,' the dragon said. ‘With you so far.'

‘And he knows about dragons,' Neville put in. ‘So do we, come to that.'

(‘Speak for yourself,' Zelda muttered grimly, but too quietly for anybody to hear.)

‘But,' Neville went on, ‘he's planning to use dragons to take over the world, or some shit like that. He kidnapped one of your people,' Neville added, showing a flair for the truth that'd have earned him a speechwriting job with the politician of his choice, ‘but he helped us escape. Then we got captured again. She thought you were him.'

‘Got you,' the dragon said. ‘I suppose one goldfish does look pretty much like another.'

‘Not to me,' Neville said with a smirk. ‘I spotted the difference. But she wouldn't listen.'

‘Which is probably just as well,' the dragon replied. ‘What a force for good in the world human ignorance is, to be sure. By the way, you don't happen to know how he managed to trigger the morphic shift, do you? A human who can make dragons change shape whenever he wants to could prove something of a nuisance.'

‘Sorry,' Neville said. ‘You could ask her, I suppose. She's one of his dragon experts.'

The dragon made a purring sound. ‘Is that right?'

‘Was,' Zelda said quickly. ‘Now I'm one of the good guys.'

‘Really.' The dragon didn't seem particularly interested in her any more. ‘Well, I think it'd probably be in order to proceed with a certain amount of caution, unless I want to find myself turned into a goldfish again. That would be extremely tiresome, especially if it happens when there's no water handy for me to be one in.' His tail slithered out of the cell. Zelda and Neville followed.

The adjoining room was just another cell, like the one they'd just left, so they went through the dragon-shaped hole in the far wall and found themselves in the space they'd just been told about. It was certainly big; an enthusiastic Zeppelin collector could have shown off his prize specimens in elegant comfort without crowding the place out at all. The ceiling was as high as the room was long and wide, and apart from some bunches of ironmongery that reminded Zelda of theatrical lighting, hanging from brackets in the corners, it was completely empty.

Except for one shortish middle-aged man, who was standing in the middle of the floor with his hands in his pockets. There was a little black box the size and shape of an old-fashioned light meter on a string around his neck. His tie didn't go with his suit, either.

‘Good day,' he said, in a fairly dilute Australian accent. ‘I'm Paddy Willis; short for Paddington, but if you're wise you won't ever mention that again. You found your way here all right, I see.'

The dragon made a low growling sound, like a cornered Harley Davidson, and crouched, ready to spring. Then he stayed crouched.

‘Don't bother trying to move,' Mr Willis said. ‘Something my R & D people slapped together - a pain in the trouser seat, scientists, but just occasionally they come in handy, like Irish money. There's some technical stuff about morphogenic fields they tried to make me listen to, but if you ask me they just copied out some stuff from Star Trek and pretended it was real science. As far as I'm concemed it's magic; anyhow, it works. Bloody well should, it cost me enough. Bottom line is, if I don't want you to move, you don't move. If I want to turn you into a bloke, or a goldfish, suddenly that's what you are. I think it'll help us relate to each other on a more level playing field; me completely in control, you paralysed and helpless. It's the way I've always done business, and it generally seems to work.' He appeared to notice Neville and Zelda for the first time. ‘As for you two,' he said, ‘you're getting to be a nuisance. Still, I'm not a vindictive bastard, and besides, I'm running a bit short of storage areas with four walls and a roof. You can stay here till I decide what to do with you. Oh yes,' he added. ‘You. What's your name.'

‘Me?' Zelda asked.

‘On the tip of my tongue,' Mr Willis said. ‘I'm proud of the fact that I know all my employees' first names. Couldn't give a toss about their surnames, mind you, I've got personnel officers to handle all that crap. Zelda,' he said, snapping his fingers. ‘Begins with a Z, sounds like zebra.'

‘That' s right,' Zelda said, impressed in spite of herself.

‘Zelda, love,' Mr Willis said, ‘you're sacked. Right, don't go away, any of you. There'll be some blokes along shortly wth some electronics shit - transformers and power cables, that sort of thing. They'll see to you.'

Zelda was puzzled, but too smart to attract attention to herself again. Neville wasn't.

‘Excuse me,' he said, ‘but what's that for?'

‘What? Oh.' Mr Willis chuckled. ‘Of course, you don't know, do you? And of course Zelda doesn't, because all the time she thought she was doing research on that other dragon, it was just to distract the bugger's attention so the other blokes - the real scientists - could do their scanning and what have you without it noticing. It's what I wanted dragons for in the first place.'

‘Well?' Neville asked impatiently.

‘Or at least,' Mr Willis said, ‘bits of dragons. Zelda was way off line,' he went on, ‘when you lot were nattering back in there. Evil overlord my arse,' he added with a chuckle. ‘That's no way to rule the world, young lady, as you'd know if you had a brain. You rule the world by owning newspapers and TV stations; bloody sight less fuss, and they pay you for the privilege. Own enough newspapers and you get to own governments absolutely free, it's like those special offers where you send away so many box tops. And you don't do it so you can sit on a throne and do silly hysterical laughter. You do it for the money.'

‘Oh,' Zelda said. That, she decided, was her told.

‘No,' Mr Willis said, ‘what I want dragons for is so I can save a bloody fortune on communications satellites, broadcast relay stations, cables, DVD, the lot. Who needs all that Japanese crap when all you've got to do is put your fist down inside some animal's skull and pull out its third eye?'

 

He looked up and stared at her for a moment before he said anything.

‘Karen?'

She looked back at him, just as the door slammed and a key ground in the lock. ‘Hello, Paul,' she replied, in a small, tired voice.

‘Karen? What are you doing here?' he said. He sounded completely bewildered - which, if anything, overlaid the present crisis with a deceptively specious coating of apparent normality. Chances were that Paul had been born bewildered; it was easy to imagine him looking up at the midwife with a dazed expression on his puckered little face, as if asking, ‘Nurse, what's this silver spoon doing in my mouth?' A wave of fondness enveloped her, like locusts when they fly so thick they blot out the sun.

‘More to the point,' she said, ‘what are
you
doing here? Do you know?'

‘Haven't a clue,' Paul replied sadly. ‘Some men grabbed me from the office, gave me an injection to put me to sleep; when I woke up, I was here. That was a long time ago,' he added mournfully.