The Emerald Forge (Pilgrennon's Children) (29 page)

Jananin walked a little distance away and seated herself on a metal container. The place they were keeping the wyvern in was a concrete-floored yard surrounded by a high fence, with a large locked gate at the end so lorries could back in and various bottles and pieces of equipment locked up in cages. “There’s something more to it than that. There are too many features on that wyvern that don’t seem to do anything. The part of it that bewilders me most is the helium.”

“I thought the helium was put in for lift,” Dana said. “To help it fly, like in a balloon. Osric said it didn’t work like that, though.”

“You would need a much larger volume of helium gas in comparison to the wyvern if that were the case. What it appears to have is a bottle of helium connected to a second pair of lungs. Any small advantage filling the lungs with helium would give to flight is rendered utterly pointless by the significantly heavier mass of the bottle with the compressed helium in.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the combination of the helium bottle and the additional lungs,
minus
weight from the buoyancy gained by the volume of helium when the lungs are full, gives the wyvern a greater weight than if none of these things had been included. Certainly it does use the lungs for ballast when it’s flying, but it would fly much better had all of this simply not been part of its design.”

Dana couldn’t think of an answer to this. After a rather longer pause, Jananin spoke again. “The only solution I can come up with is that flight buoyancy was not the main intention of the lungs, and in this case, the gas bottle must have originally been intended to be something else.”

Dana turned away from watching the wyvern to face Jananin. “What something else?”

Jananin pointed to the wyvern’s head. “You see those serrated edges on the back of the teeth?”

Dana studied the wyvern’s metal beak. There were two fangs, upper and lower, on either side of the head, their surfaces meeting when the mouth was in its closed position. Each contacting surface was marked with minute closely-spaced grooves cut into the metal.

“It almost looks like an ignition source, designed to spark when the mouth is opened. That means this construct was meant to function as a flamethrower, and the bottle inside it was intended to contain hydrogen and not helium. So then why did it not contain helium when we examined it?”

“Because it has to be true to the myth?” Dana suggested. “Eric said wyverns have four limbs, not six like dragons. Perhaps wyverns don’t breathe fire either.”

Jananin shook her head. “There is too much that doesn’t add up. It has metal valves inside it that essentially function as a voicebox, allowing it to make different tones. And why make the control for it removable, as a collar? Surely it would have been a better design if the control mechanism had been an integral part of the brain, as it was in the birds and rats that attacked the hospital. It’s almost as though it’s a prototype that was built over a long period of time, with functions removed and added to its purpose as development went on.”

Dana tried to query the wyvern. She visualised bright, orange stuff billowing out of its mouth, but this didn’t seem to stir any recognition. “Is there a way we could try to see if it actually
can
breathe fire? If it went wrong, would it hurt it?”

“I don’t see that it would. There are valves inside its throat to prevent it from inhaling while it’s exhaling through the other lungs, and other protective designs. It’s worth a try, but you need to be sure you can control it. I do not think it is dangerous by its own intents, but if it panics and swings its head around, people could be seriously injured.”

Dana considered the wyvern’s state of mind. It understood about replacing the cylinder accessed by the hatch in its back, but it didn’t really understand what it was they were trying to do, although it was curious about this image of glowing orange stuff coming out of its mouth that Dana had come up with.

“Let’s try it.”

Jananin and Dana undid the plate on the wyvern’s back. Jananin took the bottle out and set it down on the concrete.

“It doesn’t look very heavy,” said Dana.

“This one’s nearly empty. And these days they’re made of polymer alloy, so the actual container weighs very little despite having extremely strong walls. What we do need to know is if we have a hydrogen one in the same size.”

They examined the cages of bottles and cylinders until Dana found some a similar size. Jananin unlocked the cage and tilted a hydrogen bottle onto the edge of its base so it could be rolled out. She compared the circumference and the fitting to the empty helium bottle. “This looks suitable.”

Dana helped her lift it up onto the wyvern’s back. Jananin eased it down into the space and connected the hose that ran down through the thick plastic sheeting protecting the wyvern’s organs. The hose stiffened with a faint hissing sound. The two of them fastened the panel back down.

“Now, let’s get out before we try anything.” Jananin headed back for the gate. Once she and Dana were both outside the yard, she closed it. “Make it turn away from us before it tries.”

Dana got the wyvern to turn around. She tried to think of exhaling hard and opening her mouth quickly. The wyvern jerked its neck and made a snorting noise. Nothing happened.

“It’s just breathing out. Wait a minute.” Dana closed her eyes and concentrated on the sensory feedback she was getting from the wyvern. She tried to think of her chest, and the muscles in it that moved when she breathed, and now here she could sense other parts that didn’t match up with anything she was familiar with. The wyvern coughed again, the sensation alien to her. She thought of when they’d risen from the roof of the Emerald Forge, chest expanding with lifting force. The wyvern exhaled and something gave way with the feeling of an enormous breath rushing up her throat, and something blinding bright startled her eyes open, and a jet of flame shot out in front of the wyvern. It let out a discordant bagpipe squeal and hopped backwards, flapping its wings with a sound like a cutlery drawer slamming.

An exclamation came from behind; a soldier on the path there was beckoning to Jananin. “Wait here,” she said.

Dana went back to the wyvern while Jananin and the soldier disappeared from sight. The wyvern’s fire breathing attempt had left a blackened deposit on the concrete, a dark smear with a long tail, and it reminded her of something she’d seen at the destruction site, at the hospital. The buildings had been on fire, but rats and starlings wouldn’t know how to start a fire, would they? Even with chips implanted in their brains? If the wyvern
was
a prototype as Jananin thought, and a prototype was a simplified, scaled-down version of what it was ultimately intended to be, what might
this
construct look like?

When she tried to pry into the wyvern’s thoughts, all she got from it was a mingled sense of confusion and alarm. It had never expected that sort of thing to happen. If it did have an animal brain, as Jananin presumed, didn’t most animals fear fire by instinct? Perhaps that was why it had been fitted with a helium cylinder in place of hydrogen, because the brain and senses of a real living animal turned out not to be compatible with breathing fire.

Dana thought of the mildly suggestive idea of having another attempt, and the wyvern responded with a horrified balk.

Jananin reappeared behind the gate and entered once more, mouth set grimly and face inscrutable as ever.

“Some more information has come to light. The construct from the hospital, the phoenix, has just exploded.”

Dana swallowed. “It
exploded
?”

Jananin nodded. “As it turns out, it was what’s called a dirty bomb, designed to scatter radioactive contamination over an area. It was guided by some kind of organic brain that had been reprogrammed to seek out signals. Fortunately at the time it was still inside the car in a metal crate, securely contained in a hangar. The crate contained most of the blast. A few people were injured, but no-one was killed. The Spokesmen have voted that the Emerald Forge is a threat and that immediate action must be taken, without holding a public referendum.”

“So what’s going to happen?”

“It has been decided that sending military personnel into the Emerald Forge in an attempt to gain control of it would be too great a risk. The
Stormcaller
will be deployed at once, with instructions to Compton bomb the area.”

“What? What about Peter? Did you tell them Peter was there?”

“I told them they had a hostage, and that the hostage was a boy with no family, and developmental difficulties that meant he would be impossible to rehabilitate or live in normal society.”

“What do you mean, he doesn’t have a family? He’s my half brother! Ivor was his father!”

“You have seen the sorts of weapons they are fighting with. If we send military personnel in there and try to retrieve the prisoner, there is a strong chance we will suffer heavy losses — the loss of life of those military personnel — on the intention of rescuing one hostage and arresting three people. And Peter, if he is recovered, will have to go into a care home or even a secure institute.”

“Someone might adopt him, like someone did me and Cale!”

“It’s unlikely.”

“Cale and I were in foster care and homes for years, but one day Pauline and Graeme came along, and we got to go and live with them, and—”

Jananin interrupted. “The only reason you weren’t adopted sooner is because they couldn’t separate you from your brother.”

“What do you mean? How do you even
know
? You didn’t have anything to do with me and Cale! You didn’t even know we were born!”

Her mouth was tense. She mustn’t have meant to say that, and when she continued her voice was low and uneasy. “I saw the records. You wouldn’t be apart from him. When they separated you, you screamed. When you were large enough to move about by yourself, you sought him out. You would have been far more appealing as a child for adoption. You did have clear problems, but you were much higher-functioning than Cale. Because they couldn’t separate you and because of the high interdependence, the social services insisted you be placed together.”

Dana couldn’t look at Jananin. Although something ached inside of her, she couldn’t say what it was. All the feelings she had about this matter were tangled up together. She couldn’t understand why someone wouldn’t want Cale, Cale who was quiet and calm and, on the other hand, she couldn’t accept that it might have been Cale holding her back all the time when they’d been shunted around foster homes constantly. And she couldn’t imagine what life would have been like without Cale in it, and how anyone could even have thought they had the right to take her brother away from her. She couldn’t work out if she resented Cale, or she resented herself, or she resented all the people who’d disapproved of Cale. She wanted to shut everything out and build Airfix models until this ache went away, but there were no Airfix models and this was not her home, and there were things going on in real life that were more important. Finally she said, “Cale never spoke. He still never speaks, unless he really has to. I’ve always been able to tell what he feels, and I can speak for him. He’s never felt he needed to speak. Cale isn’t stupid... it’s just when you understand the world like Cale does, a lot of the stuff that matters to other people just
isn’t
important.”

“It must have been the signals you gave out that allowed you to identify each other. You were the one constant in each other’s lives.”

When Dana did not add anything further, Jananin continued. “Peter functions at a level closer to Cale’s than yours. He’s also much older than you and Cale were when you were adopted, and has a tendency towards violence. It’s extremely unlikely an adoptive home could be found for him.”

Dana stared at Jananin, and then a realisation came upon her. “If he does go into care, they might find out what he can do. They might find out he was one of Pilgrennon’s experiments, and that he has the synapse that you invented in his blood! That’s why you want him to die! It would be convenient for you!”

“I don’t want anyone to die. I’m a Spokesman. It’s my job to enforce the will of the Meritocracy, or to act on behalf of the Meritocracy in instances like this. The other Spokesmen agree that the risk involved in storming the Emerald Forge is not worth it for the sake of rescuing one hostage who has no family to miss him. You are allowing your emotions to dictate your reaction to this situation! Surely you must see the sense in this if you think about it rationally?”

A faint signal had just become noticeable, a signal with a primal quality to it that Dana recognised very well. “My brother.”

“Your brother?”

“
My brother!
Cale!”

Dana sprang upright. She had sensed Cale’s signal somewhere not far away, and there was another signal too, and this she also recognised. It was the griffin. She had known Gamma was sending the griffin to Coventry. It had never even occurred to Dana that it would go after Cale. The significance that he too was one of Pilgrennon’s children had utterly eluded her. She’d never thought of him as having anything to do with Jananin or what had happened during the Information Terrorism attack.

“It’s the griffin!” Dana pointed to a distant object flying in the blue sky above the base. “It’s got Cale and it’s taking him back to the Emerald Forge!
Do
something!”

Cale’s signal was utter panic and terror. Dana couldn’t get any visual information from him, just a sense of a horrible stench from the griffin’s rotting flesh. His eyes must have been closed. The wyvern raised its head to examine the objects the signal came from. Jananin went back to the gate and called a soldier in. She pointed to the object in the sky.

“No, don’t shoot!” Dana shouted. “You’ll hit him, or he’ll fall! You have to fly a plane or something and catch him!”

“Dana, I am nearly forty,” said Jananin severely. “I am not a stunt pilot and nor have I ever been one.”

“But you have to stop it and get Cale back!” She faced the wyvern, and its head turned on its long neck to face her in turn, and the same thought passed through both their minds. “If you won’t do something, I will!”