The Better Mousetrap (39 page)

(But not, she remembered, unprecedented.)

So: if it wasn’t guarding precious metals or artwork, what was it doing here? Emily thought about that for a bit, but soon gave it up as too difficult and also irrelevant. More to the point: what was she doing here?

The logical assumption was that someone had brought her there so that the dragon could kill her. Furthermore, given her trade, death by dragon would be readily put down as an unfortunate industrial accident-her own fault, of course, since she’d somehow neglected to bring her tool kit. That fitted in quite neatly, since all Colin Gomez’s previous attempts on her life could equally have been passed off as death in the line of duty-the spider, the spectral warriors, not to mention rescuing old Mrs Thompson’s cat.

The second Door-now she remembered. Just as Frank had been about to go through, a second Door had opened in the wall. Emily had stopped to stare at it, it had opened, and that was as far as she could recall. Erskine, tortured by conscience and neglected duty? A Colin Gomez quadruple-cross? It could just as easily have been Amelia herself, or one of her many obedient servants. Didn’t matter, in any event. It was as obvious as a lorry in a salad bowl that she wasn’t getting out of this one, not unless Frank came and rescued her yet again; and in order to do that, he’d have to know where she was, and how, pray, was he supposed to find that out? Another advantage of death by dragon is that there’s no body. No corpse, no paperwork, no inquest, no insurance claim. She’d simply vanish in a puff of smoke, and the poor lamb wouldn’t have a clue where to start looking for her.

Her own stupid, stupid fault, needless to say. If she’d listened to Frank, they’d be in Vancouver right now, with a new life to look forward to. As it was; even if he somehow managed to find out what had happened to her— the picture was clear and sharp in her mind. Frank, stepping through the Door into the cavern, to be greeted by twin blasts of heat so murderous that Arctic pack ice thawed and the sea level rose a quarter-inch all round the world. It’d be mercifully quick, yes, but agonisingly final.

Oh well, she thought. That’s that, then.

Emily sorted and catalogued her regrets. They came in a wide variety of sizes and priorities, ranging from not having a child of her own some day down to never finding out if it was really true that dragons set their tails on fire every time they ate beans. Never getting to be a partner was in there, as she’d anticipated, but to her surprise it found its level about halfway down the list, sandwiched between never having been to India and not getting to discover whether Frank snored. So, she reflected, more wryly than bitterly, it really was nothing more than a means of earning a living to her, after all. That said, never landing her toe forcefully on Amelia Carrington’s designer-clad arse was in there too, so high up it was practically at the top.

Practically; but not quite. In fact, it had only just scraped bronze. Both the gold and silver medallists, she noted, were directly Frank-related, and Vancouver would’ve been as good a setting for them as any.

But then again, too few to mention. Now then: should she, out of pure professional pride, carry on hoping and improvising and hiding right to the bitter, fiery end? Or would it be far less hassle just to cough loudly and get it over with?

Then the dragon spoke.

All it actually said was ‘Gwmphmtm’, followed by a snort and a sharp contorted wriggle, for all the world as though it was trying to yank more than its fair share of a diamond-studded cloth-of-gold duvet. But what it also said was, She’s here.

Fine, Emily thought. Who’s she, then, the cat’s mother?

The dragon snuggled its muzzle under its left forepaw and grunted. It also said, You are here. Well, yes. I know that, thank you so much. Look, can we please just get on with it, before I get cramp?

No researcher has ever recorded an instance of a dragon talking in its sleep. By the same token, no researcher has conducted the relevant tests on a dragon born in a vat of green goo and raised to maturity in the time it takes to boil a kettle.

It’s all right, the dragon said, I don’t mind. You can only kill this body, which is more of a hindrance than a help. The essential part of me can never die, since it has already dreamed the dream. Please, carry on. In your own time.

Emily frowned. It struck her that the dragon was a wee bit confused about who was supposed to be killing who.

Oh, there can only be one possible outcome. I have seen it, after all, one single intersection on the circumference of the dream. You are Emily Spitzer. How could you possibly fail?

At this juncture, Emily felt constrained to point out that she’d taken the same attitude to her Biology GCSE and therefore done no revision, with the result that she’d barely scraped a C. Once bitten, no pun intended—

Don’t you know? The voice inside the sleepy, grumbling noises sounded faintly amused. Everybody knows. I’ve only been alive for a week, and I know.

Know what, for crying out loud?

The prophecy.

Sorry, you’ve lost me. What pro—?

Not, perhaps, the right word. Prophecy is a vague, unreliable glimpse through the keyhole of sequential Time. In the dream, it’s simply another solidly historical event, something we have known about ever since the day in the mid-Cretaceous period when a reckessly whimsical time traveller fed steroids to a pterodactyl and dragonkind was born. We have preserved it, analysed it, looked back on it in both sorrow and anger. Surely humans know it too.

Some humans, maybe. Not this one.

It is recorded in the dream, the dragon said, that the greatest dragon of all shall be born not of dragon but of a vat of something a bit like undercooked pea soup; that it shall never see the sun but shall live out its brief span in a cavern, guarding the avatar of wealth known as bauxite; that its dream came to be only because a woman whose name is too unimportant to be remembered wanted to— Here the words faltered, and instead Emily saw in her mind’s eye a complex diagram, colour-coded and plotted on five axis, annotated with notes of commodity prices, hostile takeovers and sine-waves representing mining stocks on the Hang Seng. Anybody else would’ve assumed it was Damien Hirst trying to be funny with a pack of felt tips, but Emily saw it and understood.

‘The bitch,’ she said aloud.

Mistake. The dragon quivered, lifted its head, opened one eye and shut it again. By the red glare of its accelerated breathing, Emily watched as it slowly relaxed back into sleep.

Where was I?

The diagram. Amelia Carrington cornering the bauxite market.

Oh yes. It is also recorded in the dream that Emily Spitzer will face the greatest of all dragons in a dark place, and when they fight, she will win. There is no more, since the circle of the dream curves away.

That’s, um, fascinating. Does the dream also record how Emily Spitzer manages to kill the greatest dragon of all time armed only with a mobile phone and a roll of peppermints?

Of course.

Well?

The dream also ordains. Don’t spoon-feed the lazy cow, make her figure it out for herself.

Ah. The dream sounds suspiciously like my mother.

The dream is all our mothers, and our daughters, and ourselves. How perceptive of you, as a mere human, to have worked that out for yourself.

‘Thank you,’ Emily said, not really knowing what she was thanking the dragon for, but politeness never does any harm. ‘Look, can I have a moment to think about this? It’s—’

Of course. Oddly enough, I am in no hurry to be killed. Take all the time you need.

Prophecy, she thought. Well, there were two schools of thought in the profession about prophesy. One held that it was effectively impossible, since nobody could get information from the future without going there, and that could only be done with a Portable Door. The other school replied, Don’t ask how, but we just knew you were going to say that.

But supposing there really was a prophecy, clawed down from generation to generation of dragons, and that she was the Emily Spitzer referred to in it, and this was the dragon. If so, she was going to have to fight the bloody thing, and somehow or other she’d win—

No, rewind. What had it actually said? When they fight, she will win.

Maybe just sloppy wording, garbled in oral transmission; but— Excuse me, she thought.

What? Oh, you again. I was circling.

Yes, well, sorry to be a nuisance, only—

I was turning inside the circle of the dream, revolution and evolution within a closed system. Has it never occurred to you that nature abhors a straight line? Throw a stone into the air, and it will rise and fall in a curve, modified by gravity. Is it not mere sloppy thinking to believe that time runs in straight lines, when nothing else in nature does?

Only, Emily interrupted grimly, I was thinking. About the prophecy.

Time runs rings around us all, so that the precise moment of death is also the instant of birth. Can it be a coincidence that we are born screaming? Surely the newborn’s howl is nothing but a reaction to the terror of the previous moment, the closing of the diaphragm that will open again a mere moment later

Yes, Emily insisted, quite, but about this wretched prophecy. You’re sure it said when they fight, not if?

A pointless quibble, since there is no If, in an infinite universe. If implies that something may or may not happen, but in Infinity every possibility is realised, and therefore sooner or later, everything happens. If, therefore, is just another way of saying When, and accordingly—

Whatever. Look, Emily insisted, if it says when, then we don’t have to fight at all, which means I don’t have to find a way of killing you, and you don’t have to die. Wouldn’t that be better all round, don’t you think?

You assert that you may not be my foreordained doom after all? You would contradict that which is established in the patterns of the circle?

Well, I suppose so, yes.

Dream on, girlfriend. It’s established, there’s nothing anybody can do—

Bullshit. It doesn’t say, Emily Spitzer will face the greatest of all dragons in a dark place, they will fight and she will win. It says when they fight. Difference, see?

Pause; then - You are suggesting a postponement?

No. Well, yes, I suppose I am. An indefinite one. A bit like the difference between saying ‘You’ll die tomorrow’ and ‘You’ll die eventually.’

Thoughtful silence. There’s a difference?

Oh for crying out— To me, yes. You can please yourself. Only, I’d quite like to get out of here, and I’d much prefer not to have to wake you up and fight you, because I don’t particularly want to kill you, and I really don’t want you to kill me, so if there’s any sort of compromise we can reach—

Why don’t you want to kill me? You’re a dragon-slayer.

Yes, but—

Spiders. The word dragon-slayer fills your mind with images of spiders. You crush them because they are-intolerable. Therefore, by the same token…

No. Well, it’s not the same. I mean, here I am talking to you, it wouldn’t feel right. It’d be like, I don’t know, murder.

Because we have talked to each other.

(Put like that—)

I guess so, Emily replied awkwardly. I don’t know, it’s just a silly irrational feeling. Look, you don’t want me to kill you, do you?

I take no interest.

What? But you can’t—

As far as I’m concerned, it has already happened. And it wasn’t so bad. The circle turns. I am still here.

Oh be quiet, you stupid bloody reptile. If I’m not killing you, I’m not killing you. Understood?

If you say so. I was just pointing out an inconsistency—

Then don’t.

Fine, as you wish. I have to say, though, that for a dominant species, you have a rather lackadaisical approach to maintaining your dominance. I don’t want to kill you because you can talk to me. What kind of attitude is that?

(On the other hand, Emily thought, if I could come up with a way if killing it, at least that’d make it shut up.) Here’s the deal, she proposed confidently. Tell me how I can get out of here. I’ll go away and promise never to come back. You stay here, snuggle up with your manganese—

Bauxite.

All right, bauxite. Be happy. Live long and prosper, I don’t care. I just want to get out of here and carry on with my life.

Do you really?

Yes.

Forgive me for saying so, but that’s rather like me asking you what you want for your twelfth birthday, and you replying that you want to be twelve. Your life will carry on regardless of me. Until it stops, of course. In the dream, on the other hand—

For a moment, Emily felt like giving up. If the stupid creature couldn’t be bothered to stop talking drivel and co-operate when she was trying to save both their lives— It would’ve been very different, she admitted, if she’d had a bucketful of industrial-strength SlayMore with her. But she hadn’t; and she was stuck in there with it, and from various things it had said she’d got the impression that if it woke up there’d be a little less conversation and a little more action, with consequences that she’d prefer to avoid, even if this daft prophecy thing was true—

Besides, the dragon said, you can’t get out. There’s no exit.

What did you just—?

When they brought you here, they collapsed the only tunnel with explosives. You’d have to dig through I don’t know how much rock and rubble, and I don’t think you’d be up to the task, not without heavy machinery.

Oh.

Or a whatsitsname.

Portable Door?

Sorry, I don’t know what that means. Sort of a bit of rubber mat, rolled up inside a cardboard tube. Is that what you had in mind?

Yes. But I haven’t got one.

I haven’t, either, not any more. A great shame. It would have solved your problem for you. A remarkable invention, I must say, particularly for a species that doesn’t know about the dream. I can’t imagine how your people came up with it. Rather like a blind man inventing the camera.

Just a minute. Did you say you haven’t got one any more?

Yes.

A sharp, stabbing pain started up in the front of Emily’s head. So you did have one once.