Paint Your Dragon (20 page)

Chubby let that pass. ‘So what's he doing in my computer?' he asked. ‘Or didn't you get around to catching up on life stories?'

‘No idea. I did ask him, but he didn't actually seem to answer. He was always good at that, too, specially when you were asking him to pay back a loan or something. Bright lad, Nosher, but you wouldn't trust him as far as you could sneeze him. Something tells me that hasn't changed terribly much.'

‘We're drifting,' Chubby pointed out, ‘away from the subject under review. Namely, when can you start?'

‘Not bothered,' the dragon replied. ‘It's more a case of where rather than when, isn't it? It's all very well to talk blithely about carbonising these goons, but I don't actually know where to find them. I'd have thought you, with all those resources and instruments and things ...'

Chubby looked embarrassed. ‘I was afraid you'd say that,' he replied through a mouthful of Stilton. ‘And it's bloody curious, I don't mind admitting. Look, every time I've tried taking the crones out to do a spot of rustling, it's been a complete washout because of diabolical interference. Static so thick you could spread it on bread. But can I pinpoint the wretched critters? Can I buggery. It's almost as if the negative vibes are being masked by something else.'

‘What, you mean like virtue?'

Chubby shook his head. ‘Not virtue, chum. That'd counteract it and there'd be no interference. No, it's like a very strong signal on an adjacent wavelength that sort ofblurs out the devils so you can't actually hear them.' He wanted to light a cigar, but thought better of it. ‘Which implies it's a very similar sort of signal, though different enough not to jam up my old biddies. It's a bugger, it really is.'

The nitrogen cylinder fizzed again, until the dragon's glass was replenished. ‘Not really,' he said. ‘That sounds to me like that bastard George. He's a saint, remember, so he's probably got vibes of his own. And he's an evil little sod but officially Good, which'd account for similar but not identical signals.' He scowled at the thought of George, and the glass shattered in his hand. He didn't notice. ‘Sounds to me like George and those demons of yours are still mobbed up together, presumably so that they can have another crack at me. I've got no idea, by the way, why a bunch of devils should wish me any harm. As far as I know I've never done anything to offend their outfit. In fact, since I'm officially Evil they should be on my side.'

Chubby wisely said nothing. A certain overtone crept into the dragon's voice when he spoke of George; the sort of nuance you'd observe in a conversation between authors about book reviewers. All to the good, as far as Chubby was concerned.

‘Funny bloke, by all accounts,' the dragon went on. ‘Oddly enough, I knew a man who was at school with him, that training college for saints they used to have out Glastonbury way.'

Chubby, who'd been doing his background reading, nodded. ‘You mean the old Alma Martyr?'

‘Right little tearaway he was, by all accounts. Bottom of the class in everything, failed all his Inquisitions, always in detention, doing lines. Never even turned up to heresy-detection classes. Nearly got expelled for refusing to shoot arrows at Saint Sebastian.'

‘Fancy,' Chubby said.

‘Always up to that sort of thing. You know, untying Catherine from her wheel, stuffing the lions in the Amphitheatre full of Whiskas so they wouldn't eat the Christians. Must've been a right pain in the neck.'

‘Absolutely,' Chubby agreed. But he was secretly thinking: Hey, what's so terrible about trying to stop people from getting shot, burnt and eaten? Well, different strokes and all that.

‘Be that as it may.' The dragon stood up, untucked his napkin from his collar and finished the last of the nitrogen. ‘Soon as you get a fix on these jokers, let me know and they're firelighters. See you at dinner.'

Chubby stayed where he was, waited for the extractor fans to clear the nitrogen fumes and lit his cigar.

So the genie of the PCW was a dragon. Well, that explained absolutely nothing at all. As a clue, it made
The Times
crossword seem like an exploded diagram. But that, surely, was because he was being too thick to see the point. If there was a point.

Probably all a coincidence.

Absolutely. All a coincidence. Like the remarkable coincidence whereby whenever someone falls off the top of the Sears Tower they die shortly afterwards. You can get paranoid, thinking too hard about coincidences.

 

Mike looked at the address written on the back of his chequebook and then at the building in front of him.

Well, yes. It was the sort of place, by the looks of it, where you had to abandon all hope before entering. But a resort of demons? Surely not. If demons lived here, then Hell was a neat row of 1960s spec-built terraces, with open-plan front gardens and a Metro outside each one.

Good point. Yes. Muttering all he could remember of the Hail Mary (which was, as it happens, Hail Mary), he pushed the front door and went in.

‘Eeek!' he said.

The woman at the ticket desk gave him an impatient, Not-you-as-well look, held up a slip of paper with a seat number on it, and said, ‘Two pounds, please.' She was holding the piece of paper in what could only be described as a talon.

‘Er, you in the show?' he asked.

‘That's right,' she replied. ‘Costume startle you, did it?'

Mike nodded. ‘It's very, um, realistic.'

‘How would you know?'

‘All-right, I don't. Can I go in now, please?'

He found his seat (one of those bendy bucket-shaped plastic chairs which you're convinced is going to break when you sit on it, though it never does) and took a long look at the stage. There was no curtain. The usual amateur dramatics set, all black-painted hardboard, silver paper and things borrowed from people's homes. Mundane. Prosaic. Everyday. Like, in fact, the woman at the door had been, except that she was obviously a ...

Another look round, this time at the audience. There were fifteen or so people scattered about the hall, eating boiled sweets and reading the photocopied programme. Either they hadn't noticed that they'd just been sold their tickets by a ... or else they didn't care. Possible, Mike told himself; very tolerant people, Midlanders. But -
my God, those fangs
! - improbable.

He looked at the programme. Cast list, as follows:

Ah well, Mike said to himself, leaning back as far as he dared and opening his bag of Maltesers, I expect I've been to worse. Most of them, he remembered, at the Barbican.

The lights went down. The chattering almost stopped.

Play time.

 

‘Found them!' Chubby yelled.

The dragon looked up from the encyclopedia he'd been reading and grinned. ‘Splendid. Where?'

‘Wherever the hell this is.' Chubby handed him a creased playbill and a map. ‘Ready to go?'

The dragon grinned.

 

Anybody ever wondered, Mike asked himself a quarter of the way through the first half, why so much of medieval literature is anonymous? Answer, easy. Who'd want to own up to having written this?

At least there hadn't been Morris dancing. Not yet. That, he admitted to himself, was like saying that nuclear bombs are safe because the world's still in one piece. That aside, it had set his mind at rest on one score. No question but that these people were in the everlasting torment business; the cream, in fact, of their profession. Solemnly and with the utmost sincerity, Mike resolved that from now on he was going to be very, very good, for ever and ever.

So deep was he in silent repentance that he didn't notice that someone was now sitting in the seat next to him, until that person leaned across and whispered a request to look at his programme.

‘Sure,' Mike whispered back. He passed over the sheet. As he did so, he became aware of an oppressive heat and a smell like petrol. He glanced out of the corner of his eye.

Perfectly ordinary bloke. All his imagination. Except—

The bloke had yellow eyes. Round, golden eyeballs, with a narrow black slit for a pupil. And no eyelids.

Midlanders (see above) are tolerant folk, and Mike was from Brierley Hill where they don't care who you are or what you do so long as you leave the buildings still standing afterwards. Devils; no problem, after all, we're all God's creatures. But, as soon as he'd recovered the use of his momentarily paralysed limbs, he was out of his seat, through the door and running like a hare. Sensible chap.

Because, while he was still running, there was a horrible dull
bang
! followed by a whooshing noise, broken glass music and the very distinctive sound of fire. Instinct sent Mike sprawling on the ground, his head shielded by his elbows, as the first few bits of masonry and timber started to hit the ground all around him. And oh Christ, the smell ...

Late change to the cast as advertised. Whoever was playing the dragon tonight had just brought the house down.

 

The dragon opened his eyes.

There was, he observed, a large steel girder lying across his back. He shook himself like a wet dog, sending it spinning off into the rubble.

He appeared to have made rather a mess.

The drip-drip-dripping noise was still-molten steel; wire reinforcements in the concrete. The groaning sound was material contracting as it cooked, rather than an indication that there was still anything else even temporarily alive in the ruined building. No chance of that, whatsoever.

In the distance, the mechanical wailing noise the dragon had come to associate with impending public attention. He spread his wings, flapped them and rose in a cloud of dust and sparks. Job done, time to go home. Five wingbeats lifted him into the upper air; five more and he was cruising through the sound barrier, heading west.

As he flew, he couldn't help reflecting that, in exacting his entirely justifiable revenge on George, he'd also killed five demons - well, so what? The worst that can happen to anything mortal is that it dies and goes to Hell; he'd saved them a bus fare - and fifteen or so innocent human beings who happened to be there. Hmm.

No, the hell with that, it was a matter of omelettes and eggs. They belonged to a different species altogether and were none of his concern. To feed those fifteen, and all the others like them in this city alone, a million chickens a day ride to their deaths on a conveyer belt. And, emotive reactions aside, there was nothing wrong with that either because of a hard but fair rule of Nature called Survival of the Fittest. It was a rule he'd never really had a problem with, even when he'd been hiding in the rocks watching all the rest of his kind being exterminated by these people's great-to-the-power-of-twenty-grandfathers. Plenty more where those came from; and who's the endangered species around here, anyway?

As he flew, feeling the almost infinite power of his body, acknowledging the potential of his lazy but undoubtedly superior intellect, he sensed that maybe the jury was still out on that one.

 

They brought the woman down from intensive care at about half past three that morning and put her in the bed next to Bianca. Superficial burns, light concussion, shock. She'd live. She'd been lucky, the ward sister explained. She'd only been passing outside the Sadley Grange Civic Centre when it blew up. Those poor souls inside never stood a chance.

What caused it? Nobody knew, as yet. They'd said on the news that the whole building suddenly burst into flames; not like an ordinary fire, which starts somewhere and gets steadily hotter, more like a firebomb attack, except who'd want to firebomb amateur dramatics?

‘Nurse,' Bianca said, ‘I think I'm going to be—'

And she was right.

 

‘They're saying it was the Libyans,' Chubby reported, topping up the dragon's cup with lighter fuel, ‘God only knows why. I s'pose they've got to blame somebody, or what are foreigners for?'

‘Don't go on about it,' the dragon said. The bread was stale. He breathed gently on it and had toast, instead.

‘Don't see why not,' Chubby replied. ‘You did good. Neat job, in and out, nobody saw you; or if they did, they've got too much common sense to stand in front of a microphone and say they've been seeing dragons. You could make a good living if you ... Sorry, I'll shut up. Pass the marmalade, there's a good fellow.'

‘Were there any survivors?'

Chubby laughed. ‘Sure,' he said. ‘Just not within a two-hundred-yard radius. Actually, there's an interesting side-light to the story, because that whole area's up for redevelopment, except that there was that tatty old hall bang in the middle of it and absolutely no way of getting rid of it. Now, of course, bulldozers may safely graze. In fact, we could get seriously rich if ever you felt—'

‘Chubby,' said the dragon quietly, ‘I'd change the subject if I were you.'

‘Huh? Suit yourself.' Chubby spread marmalade, drank coffee. ‘Sorry to harp on,' he said, ‘but what exactly is bothering you? I thought you hated humans.'

‘Me?' the dragon looked at him. ‘Whatever gave you that idea? As of nine twenty-seven pm yesterday, there's nobody and nothing left alive in this world that I hate, or even strongly dislike, although,' he added, with a slight twitch of his nostrils, ‘this may change if a certain topic of conversation doesn't get shelved pretty damn quick.'