Paint Your Dragon (31 page)

‘Is it?' Mike took advantage of the high level of dramatic tension to swipe some of Bianca's nan bread. ‘Go on then.'

Bianca frowned. ‘Well, the dragon, of course. Stands to reason.'

‘You reckon?'

‘Mike, that bastard stole your body. My statue. He tried to kill you.'

‘The other bugger succeeded in killing me. Or had you forgotten?'

‘But that was an accident!'

It was Mike's turn to frown. ‘Sixteen people, Bianca, one of them me. All right, it wasn't deliberate, but I don't think the bastard actually cared very much.'

‘But George killed all the dragons,' Bianca protested. ‘It was genocide. They were innocent people—'

‘Not people. Only humans are people. Innocent animals.'

‘Okay, okay. But they'd never done him any harm, and he killed them.'

‘Enjoying the lamb? My chicken's nice.'

‘That's
different
.'

Mike shrugged. ‘If you say so. Look, I'm not saying George is the good guy, either. Of course he's not. All I'm saying is, it's not precisely simple and straightforward. Most particularly, it's not the sort of thing where you can make up your mind on the basis of which contestant's cuddlier and has the nicest eyes.' Mike paused, partly for effect, mostly because his food was going cold and he knew his priorities. ‘Appearances count for fuck-all in this. Particularly,' he added, ‘since you made all the appearances.'

Bianca thought about that for a moment. ‘That's the point, though,' she said. ‘Surely. I mean, if anybody
knows
these guys, it must be me. It was me designed them. I made them what I wanted them to be. And I guess I always believed, deep down, that the dragon was somehow the good guy. I think I carved him that way.'

‘More fool you, then. You finished with the lentils? I'm hungrier than I thought.'

‘Mike,' Bianca said, ‘I can't explain it, I just know.'

‘I used to say that in exams, but they wouldn't believe me. And I did know, too,' he added. ‘Usually because I had the answers written on my shirt-cuff.'

‘Mike—'

‘Actually,' he went on, ‘that's amazingly profound. You see, my answers were right but they didn't count because I made them wrong by cheating. The same goes,' he added, with his mouth full, ‘for Life. And all that stuff.'

Bianca didn't say anything. She seemed to have lost her appetite, and Mike finished off her pilau rice. It's wicked, he explained, to waste good food.

‘All right,' she said eventually. ‘So what do you think we should do?'

‘Have some coffee.'

‘OK. And then?'

‘I'll know after I've had my coffee.'

‘Mike...'

He leaned back in his chair. ‘Bee,' he said. ‘Shut up.'

The dragon swooped.

He could smell the uranium; a nasty, chemical smell that made his mouth taste. And he could smell demons.

And then he could see them. They had humans all round them, which was a nuisance because he really didn't want to have to kill any more of them. It was the difference between stalking a man-eating lion in the long grass and running over a dazzled hedgehog.

Eggs and omelettes, he told himself. Omelettes and eggs.

Something like hail or sleet pinged off his scales and he realised that the humans were shooting at him. Bloody cheek. If they weren't careful, they could put his eye out. He opened his wings, climbed, banked and came in again; a steeper, faster approach, making himself a very difficult target indeed. He knew; he'd had the practice.

 

‘Snorkfrod,' pleaded Chardonay, ‘you'll break him if you do that.
Please
put him down.'

The she-devil scowled. ‘He aimed a gun at you. I'm going to pull his—'

‘No you're not. I'm responsible for all breakages. What you've done to their fence is bad enough.'

‘All right.' The sentry fell two feet, hit the ground, squirmed like an overturned woodlouse and ran. ‘I love it when you're masterful, Mr C,' the she-devil simpered. ‘You remind me ever so much of Kevin Costner.' Chardonay didn't know who Kevin Costner was, but sincerely hoped he wasn't litigiously minded. ‘Right,' he said. ‘I think we'd better head back to the van, this clearly isn't going to—'

‘Mr C.'

‘I know.' Chardonay, who had flung himself face down on the ground, picked himself up and stared at the huge, fast-moving shape hurtling through the sky. ‘It's him. That bastard...'

‘Do you want me to get him, Mr C?'

The expression on her face - eager, thrilled to bits at the chance of doing something to impress and please - was almost heartbreaking. She would, too, he realised, if only I said the word. And maybe she'd succeed. If she failed, it wouldn't be for want of extreme savagery. But he couldn't do it. The spirit was sufficiently psychotic, but the flesh was weak. She wouldn't stand a chance.

‘Don't be stupid. And get down before he sees you.'

‘Righty-ho, Mr C.'

‘Not on top of me, please. I can't breathe.'

‘Is this better?'

‘I can breathe, certainly. But would you mind just...?'

The slipstream from the dragon's passage hit them like a hammer, and for the first time Chardonay appreciated the extraordinary power and strength of the bloody thing. It was going to take a whole lot more than just the five of them to cope with it. In fact, it wouldn't be a foregone conclusion if the whole damn Department turned out against it. There was, quite simply, no way of telling how powerful the monster was, apart from picking a fight with it, of course. That's like saying there's one simple way of discovering what height you can drop a porcelain vase from before it breaks.

‘The Shopfloor with this,' Chardonay said. ‘Let's get out of...'

 

The dragon swooped.

Three of them, at least. The other two were bound to be around here somewhere. Besides, he reflected, I have this notion that if I go around letting off fireworks too close to this uranium stuff, pinpoint accuracy is going to be somewhat academic.

Hmm. Pity about that. Maybe it's not the prettiest country in the world, but I could see where you could easily get fond of it.

Omelettes and eggs, boy. Omelettes and eggs. He focused and put his wings back. The soldiers dropped their guns and ran for it; the demons stayed where they were. For some reason.

 

‘Trust me,' Prodsnap yelled. ‘He knows that if he flames off here, he'll risk blowing up the power station, and then it'd be goodbye Europe. He won't do that.'

‘You reckon?'

‘Of course.' Prodsnap closed his eyes. ‘He's the good guy.'

‘How'd you figure that out?'

‘Easy. George tried to kill him and couldn't. Speaks for itself. So all we have to do is keep perfectly still and the bugger'll peel off and fly away.'

‘Is that a promise?'

Prodsnap nodded. ‘Trust me.'

 

Job done.

The dragon banked again. Where the three demons had been, there was now just a big scorch-mark, a little molten rock. And a nuclear reactor going badly wrong.

Pity about that.

Never mind.

Omelettes and eggs.

‘O
h said Chardonay.

‘At least it didn't see us,' Snorkfrod replied, emerging from behind a pile of used tyres. ‘Just as well, really, because if it had, we'd be—'

‘Yes. Quite.' Odd, he reflected. Given that he was now a naturalised citizen of Hell, he hadn't expected to be terrified by the sight of fire ever again. Quite nostalgic, really.

‘Mr C.'

‘Huh.'

‘I don't want to worry you at all, but I think this whole complex is about to blow up.'

Why is it, Chardonay caught himself thinking, that whenever there's a truly awful crisis, humans set off a ghastly, shrieking alarm? Mood music? Muzak? Even now, with the sky boiling and waves of heat you could bake cakes in, there were still humans busying about with clipboards and brown cardboard folders, convincing themselves it was all just a drill. Why do we wear our fingers to the bone trying to torment these people? They do a far better job of it left to their own devices.

‘We'd better be going, Mr C,' Snorkfrod urged. ‘Come
on
.'

She tried to pull his sleeve, but he shook his arm free. ‘No,' he said; and then looked round, trying to spot the smart-arse ventriloquist who'd hijacked his body to make such a damnfood remark. ‘No, we can't just run. We've got to stop it happening. It's our
duty.'

Snorkfrod's eyes were as large and round as manhole covers. ‘Mr C,' she hissed, ‘this whole place, this whole
country,
is about to blow up. There's nothing we can do. We'll be—'

‘Yes there is. There must be.'

Snorkfrod's talons closed round his shoulder, nearly ripping it off. ‘Don't be bloody stupid,' she shrieked. ‘We're demons, we're from bloody
Hell,
it's not our responsibility.'

‘Yes it is.' Chardonay carefully prised her talons apart and lifted them off him. ‘We're officers of the central administration. And we're here, now, where it's happening.' He heard himself saying it; otherwise he'd never have believed he could say anything like it. Stark staring...

‘All right, Mr C. What can we do?'

He stared at her. Leadership? Love? Both of them daft as brushes? She was smiling at him. God, it was like being followed round by a great big stupid dog. If she had a lead in her mouth it wouldn't look out of place.

‘You sure?' he asked.

‘Of course I'm sure, Mr C. Where you go, I go.'

In which case, Chardonay reflected, it serves the silly bitch right.

‘Um,' he said. ‘Okay. Yes. Er, follow me.'

 

From safe to critical in four and a half minutes; too fast. Even a direct hit from an ICBM shouldn't have made it all happen so quickly. There was absolutely nothing anybody could do. Even running away would be a waste of energy.

Two minutes.

Chardonay's instinct told him to go by the heat; where it was hottest, that's where the heart of the problem would be. Heat in itself didn't worry him at all—

- Except this was not hot. Back on Shopfloor, the accountants'd have forty fits if they found anywhere as hot as this.
Turn it down,
they'd shriek,
have you any idea what last quarter's fuel bill came to?

‘Are we going the right way, Mr C?'

‘Getting warmer, definitely. Dear God, how can they get it as hot as this?'

Ninety-eight seconds later, Snorkfrod shoulder-charged a massive lead-lined chrome steel door. When she collided with it, she found it was red hot and
soft
...

‘Bingo!' Chardonay blinked, found he had to look away.. ‘Oh shit, now what?'

Seventeen seconds to go. Chardonay's brain raced, performing feats of pure maths he'd never have believed himself capable of. Pointless in any event. There was only one thing that might conceivably work, and they were to all intents and purposes dead already, so why waste time doing the sums?

Chardonay turned to Snorkfrod. She was glowing bright orange and on her face was an expression of part horror, part rapture.

‘Oh, Mr C,' she said, in that gushing, cloying, Black-Forest-gateau-with-extra-cream voice of hers. ‘It's all rather grand, isn't it? Being together at the end, I mean.'

Gawd help us. For a moment he wondered if Snorkfrod's unconquerable soppiness might be the only thing in Creation wet enough to put out the fire. On balance, probably not.

‘I love you, Mr C.'

‘Er, yes. Super. Now, when I give the word...'

And, even as the two of them hurled themselves down onto the core and were reduced instantaneously into atoms, Chardonay did catch himself thinking,
Well, yes, if things had worked out different...

There's nothing like bizarre and absolute annihilation to bring out the romantic streak in people.

 

Chardonay's last, pathetically futile idea was that the physical bodies of demons are the most heat-resistant material in the known cosmos. Throw two demons onto the fire, like an asbestos blanket onto a burning chip-pan, and there's a very slight chance you might put it out.

He was, of course, wrong. A whole brigade of spectral warriors might have done the trick if they'd parachuted in about eighty seconds earlier, before the meltdown entered its final phase. Two little devils leaping in at the last moment were always going to be as effective as an eggcupful of water thrown into a blast furnace.