Paint Your Dragon (21 page)

‘Sorry,' Chubby replied meekly. ‘It's just that, since it was us who killed all your people, stole your birthright—'

‘Not you,' the dragon said. Inside his skull he could hear the faint chip-chip of a headache hatching from the egg. ‘When the last of the people who wiped out the dragons died, there were still wolves wandering around the forests of Islington. And besides,' he added irritably, ‘the thing with George and me had nothing to do with the dragon clearances. It was purely personal.'

‘Because of the Big Fight, huh? Because he won, simple as that?'

The dragon shook his head. ‘He was
supposed
to win. It was killing me that I didn't hold with. And now that's all over and done with, so let's drop it. All right?'

‘Right.' Chubby folded his newspaper, drained his coffee cup and stood up. ‘So, as soon as you've done that little job—'

‘Who says I'm going to do the little job?' the dragon interrupted dangerously. ‘Fuck you and your nasty bloody schemes. If you want to beat up on your own species, be my guest, it's none of my business. But I'm off.'

Chubby shook his head. He didn't say anything, but he patted the underside of his chin with the tips of his fingers. The bomb.

‘You bastard,' the dragon said softly. ‘I ought to torch you right now.'

‘Inadvisable,' Chubby replied. ‘With all that inflammable liquor inside you, they'd be picking up bits of you in Tokyo. And like I said, what's it to you? Different species, right?'

The dragon said nothing. Not that he needed words, exactly. He'd have been sent home from a Gorgons' children's party for pulling faces.

‘Welcome to the Baddies,' Chubby said, and left.

 

The fire brigade had gone home, the police were brewing up in their big blue-and-white portakabin and even the journalists had given up and gone to the pub. Under a pile of rubble, something stirred.

‘Have they gone?'

‘I think so.'

The pile of rubble avalanched, half-bricks and chunks of concrete scudding downslope, stirring up dust. A head and shoulders poked out. Eyes blinked in the starlight.

‘About bloody time, too. I've got a crick in my neck like a letter S.'

‘Keep your voice down, Slitgrind. And for pity's sake, stop complaining.'

Gradually, and with much seismic activity, the demons emerged, all five of them. They were dusty and, after twelve hours under the rubble, stiff as all Shopfloor. Apart from that, no ill effects whatsoever.

A sixth pile shifted and turned into George. He wasn't in quite the same immaculate condition - he had a black eye, and his hair was all singed off - but otherwise he was intact. He dusted himself off, just like Oliver Hardy used to do in the films, and climbed out of the mess.

‘Now you see why we had to wear costumes,' he said.

Chardonay nodded. ‘Good stuff,' he acknowledged. ‘What did you call it?'

‘Asbestos,' George replied. ‘And the lining's Kevlar, which is like old-fashioned steel armour, only lighter and a hell of a lot stronger. I used the same stuff for the scenery, too. Just as well,' he admitted. ‘If we hadn't all ducked behind the flats the moment he materialised, I don't reckon the cozzies'd have been enough. Anyway, time we weren't here. Come on, you lot. The Padre'll be worried sick about us.'

Nobody had disturbed the rickety old Bedford van and soon they were on their way. Chardonay, sitting in the front with George, raised the obvious topic.

‘Well,' George replied, ‘he took the bait all right, you've got to admit that much. Maybe we should have spent a little more time thinking through how we were actually going to scrag the bugger, but we'll know better next time.'

‘Next time
!'

George nodded. ‘Of course next time,' he replied, faintly puzzled by the demon's tone. ‘Okay, so the first two attempts, we bombed. I mean, we didn't do so good. Third time lucky, eh? Think of Robert Bruce,' he added, ‘and the spider.'

‘No, thanks,' Chardonay replied, shuddering. ‘I'm scared of spiders. And now,' he added, with as much unpleasant overtone as he could muster, ‘I'm also scared of dragons.'

‘Funny you should say that,' George said, blithely overtaking on a blind corner, ‘because spiders have always terrified the shit out of me. But eventually I found a way to cope.'

‘Really?'

George nodded. ‘I squash 'em,' he said. ‘Helps put things in perspective when your mortal foe's looking like a raisin with hairs sticking in it. I think the same may hold true of dragons. Only one way to find out.'

Chardonay was about to say something, but wisely saved his breath. The way George was driving, he'd need it soon for horrified screaming.

‘Mind you,' George went on - he was definitely getting the hang of driving, because this time he remembered to brake with a full thousandth of a second to spare. ‘It's going to be harder decoying the creep a second time because he's going to assume we're dead. And we can't exactly publicise the fact we aren't, because of the low profile thing. Tricky one, that.'

‘Aaaaagh!'

‘What?
Watch where you're going, you senile old fool
! Sorry, you were saying?'

Chardonay opened his eyes. ‘I think,' he murmured, ‘in this country they drive on the left.'

‘Ah. That'd explain a lot. Well spotted. To be honest with you, I think from now on it's going to be up to us to look for him, rather than the other way around. Don't you? Of course, we could try this gig again, only next time we'd be a bit better prepared, maybe plant a bomb of our own in the auditorium so as to be sure of getting him first. What d'you reckon?'

A look of horrified disgust pitched camp on Chardonay's face. ‘You couldn't do that,' he gasped. ‘The audience. Innocent people.'

George shrugged. ‘Not people, Char,' he said mildly. ‘Potential customers, your lot's and mine. One stone, very many birds, huh?'

It's hard to stand on your dignity when you're horrified, petrified and covered from head to foot with brick dust. In Chardonay's case, he'd never had all that much dignity to start with; if he'd ever wanted to stand on it, he'd have had to master the knack of balancing on one foot. What little he had, however, he now used to good effect.

‘George,' he said, ‘when you die, be sure to go to Heaven. We can do without your sort where I come from.'

 

In order to sell newspapers, you have to get your priorities right, and an unexplained explosion with fatalities is clearly rather more important than a spate of thefts from art galleries. The lead stories in the next day's papers were, therefore, in order of headline size and column inches:

The statues - eight Berninis, three Donatellos, three Cellinis, a Canova and the Giambologna
Mercury
- all went missing from various locations in the space of about eight hours. No sign of forced entry, no arrests, no clues. No visible connection, either.

‘Okay, guys. Guys!' Kurt banged on the floor with the butt of his rifle, but nobody took any notice. They were all talking at once, at the tops of their voices, in Italian. With a weary gesture of resignation, Kurt sat down on a packing-chest and waited.

‘Finished?' he demanded, ten minutes later. ‘Good. Now, listen up.'

Sixteen pairs of malevolent eyes fixed on him. I don't need this, he reflected. I've got a nice cosy grave I could be in right now.

‘Now then,' he said. ‘I guess you're all wondering why—'

Marvellous language, Italian, for talking very fast in. They should insist all peace conferences should be in Italian; that way, nobody'd ever know what was going on long enough to start the war. ‘Shuttup!' he cried. Not a blind bit of notice.

Scuse me.'

He turned. ‘Well?'

‘Looks to me,' David said, ‘like they're upset about something.'

Kurt scowled. ‘What the fuck've they got to be upset about, for Chrissakes? I've just sprung the suckers, they should be goddamn
grateful.'

David made a small head gesture indicative of doubt. ‘Look at it this way,' he said. ‘They're all male figures, all of Italian origin. Maybe standing about all day being admired is what they like doing best.'

The proposition had merit, Kurt admitted, but that wasn't his affair. He was only, as the expression goes, obeying orders.
‘HEY
!
'
he said.

‘Thank you,' he went on. ‘All I can tell you is, my instructions said to get you out of those museums and galleries and bring you here. Which I've done. From now on, guys, you're on your...'

He stopped, puzzled. Instead of jabbering at him, shaking fists and waving arms, they were standing about like a lot of shop-window dummies.

Maybe that was it; knock off priceless works of art and punt them out at twelve dollars a head to the leading New York department stores. Or maybe not.

‘Guys?'

Long silence. Then a statue put its hand up.

‘Excuse me,' it said. And, Kurt noticed, in English.

‘Shoot,' he said.

‘Excuse me,' said the statue - shit, it was a
female
voice now - ‘but can you tell us what's going on, please?'

Kurt swallowed. Spooky no longer worried him. He felt comfortable around spooky. Weird was as familiar to him as a pair of well-worn slippers. But this was
strange.

‘Hey,' he said. ‘I just did.'

‘Only,' the voice bleated on. ‘I told my husband the play'd be over by ten and I'd be home in time to make him a late tea. And that was hours ago, and he gets all upset if his meals aren't when he expects them.'

Gradually, while Kurt was trying to get his larynx working again, the other fifteen joined in, a symphony of bleats and whines forming a baroque fugue around the same main theme.

‘I ...' Kurt had raised his hand for silence, and obtained it instantly. Thirty-two eyes were gazing at him. He could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks. It was
horrible.

‘I ...'

Thirty-two ears, hanging on his every word. Jesus, he told himself, now the suckers are all goddamn British.

He turned, grabbed David by the arm and dragged him forward. ‘My assistant will explain,' he said, and ran for it.

‘T
he job,' Chubby explained, ‘is basically very simple.'

It was, the dragon wanted to point out, perishing cold. The air was full of high-velocity snow which he could feel even through his scales. There was nothing to be seen in any direction except flat white. Chubby and the dragon stood alone in an albino wilderness, like the last two balls on a white snooker table.

‘That's not to say,' Chubby went on, ‘that it's easy. Easy and simple don't necessarily mean the same thing. What I want you to do is simple, as opposed to complicated, but very, very difficult. With me so far?'

The dragon couldn't speak because his teeth were chattering like a school party in a theatre, so he nodded instead.

‘All you have to do,' Chubby continued, ‘is fly, any direction you like, as fast as you possibly can. Direction doesn't matter 'cos we're at the North Pole. Speed, however, is of the essence.'

The dragon frowned. ‘Don't you mean time?' he queried. Chubby grinned.

‘That,' he said, ‘is either a naive remark or a very poor joke. Now then, here's your parcel, don't drop it. When I want you to stop, this little buzzer thing on your collar will bleep. Wonder of micro-electronics, that, cost me a fortune.' He paused, recited a check-list under his breath, and took five steps back. ‘When you're ready,' he said.

The dragon shrugged. ‘Now?'

‘Now.'

 

Theory: travel faster than light around the Earth and you can move forwards in Time.

A likely story. Like all great hypotheses, the theory of relativity relies on the basic assumption that nobody will ever be able to do the experiment which will prove it wrong; and anything that can't be disproved must be true. Garnish with fresh mathematics, heat and serve.

But supposing it's true, and feasible. Think, not of the fame, the glory and the Nobel prize, but of the commercial possibilities.

Correct; there are none. That's why it's a safe hypothesis. Nobody will ever try the experiment because there's nothing in it for the institutional investors. That's why there's a whole lot of scientific theories about the nature of the space/time continuum, and rather fewer about the medium-term acceleration of racehorses. It'd be different, of course, if you could then send a messenger from the future back to the present, notebook crammed with stock exchange results, football scores, winning lottery numbers and the like; but that's impossible, according to the theory. Guess why.