The Egg and the Dragon

A black dwarf stood in the doorway.

Stunned, Spencer half rose out of his chair, and gripped the edge of the desk. “Ramón! What are you doing here?”

Of Terrafrican origins, Ramón Boganda was a tough, smart little agent, a master of espionage techniques who was capable of penetrating the security of any adversary, and of setting up his own formidable defenses to keep the bad guys from getting to him and his fellow agents. The year before, he had supervised the armoring of Service Headquarters, and his efforts had undoubtedly saved the lives of Spencer and Plibix when the plasma bomb went off.

Though in his mid-thirties, Boganda was no taller than Spencer’s eldest son Todd, who was only three years old. The dwarf had been personally responsible for the safety of Carol Spencer and the two boys.

Looking downcast, Boganda said, “I lost them. They were with me one minute and I was talking to little Timmy. Then, right in front of my eyes, all three of them vanished into thin air.”

“Damn!” Spencer swept an arm across the desk, scattering documents and office supplies to the floor. He stood up, kicked the chair over with a loud crash, and came around the desk.

Eyes wide with fear, Boganda took a step backward. “Please believe me. I did everything I could.”

Spencer inhaled a deep breath, tried to calm himself. He paced the office. “You say they vanished. How could that be? Did Plibix have something to do with it?”

“No. I don’t think he was anywhere around. He’s been having his own troubles, has been acting strangely.”

“He’s always strange.”

“More than usual, I mean. Much more than usual. I’ll tell you all about it, but first I need some java. You got any around here? I’m feeling wiped out.”

“No idea where my family is? Are they safe?”

“I can’t answer any of that, but there’s a lot more I can tell you, and maybe we can figure it out together. Show me the nearest java station, OK?”

Spencer nodded. Ramón Boganda’s family had owned a large coffee plantation in Terrafrica, and the dwarf had been saturated with coffee from an early age, so that he needed the stuff a lot more than ordinary coffee addicts. His mother had probably given it to him in a baby bottle.

“There’s a cafeteria downstairs,” Spencer said. Leaning over his desk, he reached for an intercom button. “Patsy’s still in her office, and I want to bring her in on this,” he said.

“Sure. Whatever you say.” One of Boganda’s eyelids twitched nervously as he waited.

Spencer spoke over the intercom, and moments later Patsy joined them in the corridor. They caught a dropshaft to the ground floor, then made their way across the marble floor of a large, crowded lobby. Spencer had to keep slowing down to wait for the dwarf, whose stubby legs scuttled along, taking twice as many steps as the average person.

Patsy, a thin brunette barely five feet tall, looked like a giant next to the little man. The two of them engaged in small talk while they walked, but Spencer was not in the mood for such conversation. He was worried about his family, and hoped he had not done anything to place them in danger.

When Kendall Spencer participated in the five-year plan with his co-conspirators, he wanted revenge against Admiral Ktonga and the Space Intelligence Service, payback for all the years in which top management abused its space-agents, sending them on increasingly difficult and dangerous missions, not paying them well or protecting the agents and their families.

From injuries sustained on the job, Spencer had a prosthetic arm and leg, a cloned spleen, a cryoptic eye, and now a plastic plate in his head. For him, the final straw occurred when his first wife Laura was murdered, reportedly by an enemy agent. It all made him consider revenge against the Service, joining his professional peers who were already making plans to revolt. Some of the agents had suffered more than Spencer, especially Lindsey Parapara, whose injuries and collateral losses were voluminous. So much of her body had been replaced that she only had 22 percent of the original parts left, and all of those had been repaired at one time or another.

Under Parapara’s clandestine leadership, the maltreated agents soon developed a viable plan of action. In secret meetings they resolved to bring down the Space Intelligence Service, taking all of its wealth and replacing the agency with an entirely different, more altruistic organization. The new company, which they named SpaceOp, was owned and managed by the agents, the ones who took all the risks and deserved their fair share of the impounded assets of criminals and the proceeds of other investigative operations. Their coup against Ktonga’s organization would turn interplanetary espionage on its ear.

But the new enterprise wasn’t supposed to involve a plasma bomb and 800,000 deaths. It wasn’t supposed to involve the death of Admiral Ktonga, either, nor of the fanged, unnamed fairy who had been Plibix’s mother. Something had gone terribly wrong, and Spencer needed to find out if SpaceOp had any part in it, or if one of Ktonga’s other enemies had been responsible. Spencer wanted to assume the best, but Lindsey Parapara had a visible mean streak. Had she murdered all those people just to get to Ktonga?

They selected a table in a corner, where the dwarf seemed to drink more coffee than his body weight. Displaying a superhuman bladder, he held it all in and remained at the table, speaking between gulps of the steaming, dark liquid. Each table in the cafeteria had a built-in beverage dispenser mechanism, and Boganda kept refilling his cup.

Talking faster and faster as the caffeine took effect, he assumed control of the conversation. He had a lot to say, and disgorged information like a computer, downloading into his companions. Some of it Spencer already knew, but he listened while the dwarf recounted how the doppelganger Snorkin Mibble-11 had reportedly seen an avatar.

“That could be a reference to a three-dimensional image in cyberspace,” Boganda said, “assuming he was telling the truth.” Then the dwarf added something new. “An avatar could also mean a reincarnated Hindu deity, such as Krishna or Buddha.” He smiled thinly. “Or Vamana, the Dwarf. In any event, Mibble-11’s untimely death prevented further questions, and we all assumed he was talking about cyberspace. But what if he wasn’t?”

“I’m having trouble following you.” Patsy said.

“I think I know where you’re going with this,” Spencer said, leaning forward intently. “When Parapara showed the egg to Plibix and me, she said it was rumored to have supernatural powers. She also spoke of the Hindu myth in which Brahma … the Creator God … was hatched from a golden egg.”

“We’re not talking about Aesop’s Fables here, are we?” Patsy said, with a sardonic smile. “The Goose with the Golden Eggs?”

“I don’t think so,” Boganda said, humorlessly. He looked at Spencer, peering around the side of his coffee cup. “Our egg is golden, right? But you said it is inlaid with rubies and sapphires.”

“That’s right,” Spencer said, nodding. “When we asked for more information, Parapara refused to answer, and insisted that her orders were not to be questioned. She became quite upset with our curiosity, only said that the egg must be handled carefully and never opened.” He paused. “As you know, it has a tiny fastener and a hinge visible on one side.”

The others nodded, having already heard about the dangerous assignment from Parapara. Aside from the handling instructions, she gave specific orders about where the egg was to be taken, and exactly what Spencer and the dragon were to do with it.

“The minute we had the egg,” Spencer said, “Plibix got weirder than ever. It seemed to cast a spell over him. Sometimes I caught him staring at it, as if in a hypnotic state, with his lizard eyes glazed over. It frightened me.”

For a long moment, they fell silent at the table.

The operations led by Parapara were on multiple levels, which only added to the risks that Spencer faced. Simultaneous with bringing about the downfall of Ktonga and the Service, the conspirators had set in motion steps to continue essential, ongoing espionage operations. The threat to the galaxy could not have come at a worse time, but in such an urgent situation the new organization had to avoid missing a single beat. Spencer and his companions needed to focus on the problems involving Leonardo and MacDougal, and learn who the secret, very dangerous, champions of the Leonardoins were, and what that whole situation had to do with “the very foundations of the galaxy.” Not counting the added perils involved—which had to be dealt with carefully—the inevitable mission to Leonardo was the most dangerous operation any intelligence agents had ever attempted.

“Then Plibix took the egg and disappeared,” Patsy said.

“Not quite,” the dwarf said, with a scowl. “I’ve seen him, and he’s told me things.” He looked around, added, “I’m feeling a little antsy. What do you say we take a walk and continue this conversation?”

Spencer nodded. Boganda had overdosed on coffee, and now he needed to work it out of his system. Later, when he began to feel rundown, he would want more caffeine again. No one Spencer knew had ever seen him eat anything, and it was rumored that he lived entirely on java. If he was a homeless person lying in the park, he would find a way to mainline the stuff.

They made their way out of the building, into the humid evening. SpaceOp’s unmarked headquarters was situated on what the locals called “The Strand,” a strip of offices, restaurants, and shops along the seashore. Humans and aliens strolled by casually, but Spencer hardly noticed them as he and his companions headed for the white-sand beach, where they could get away and have a private conversation. A warm breeze blew in from the ocean.

Spencer knew that Plibix could slip in and out of dimensions, virtually disappearing from view. The little dragon was feared, because he could blindside opponents by emerging out of nowhere and pouncing on them with his sharp talons or other weapons. He called the ability “spectering,” taking cover inside an alternate dimension and then returning to attack. The fairy who had been Plibix’s mother had possessed a similar ability, except in her case it had been called “bansheeing.” Essentially it was the same thing, with a few variations in technique.

During his career, Plibix had developed a reputation as the toughest of the tough, an agent with amazing fighting abilities. Outsiders thought he was faster than the eye could see, but his skills were altogether different from that, and only known to members of the Space Intelligence Service.

Under its five-year plan, the new SpaceOp company incorporated the dragon’s unique talents, including his handy ability to take people and objects with him into alternate realms. It was in this manner that Plibix made vehicles and people seem to disappear.

In addition, Plibix, unlike his deceased mother, had another very important talent. He could shape shift into virtually any appearance that he wanted. But, inexplicably, he found himself unable to assume the form of a blue-skinned Leonardoin, thus preventing him (or any of his companions) from engaging in covert operations against that alien race. The immense size of the Leonardoins was not in itself a problem, since Plibix could make himself appear to be quite large, or quite small, by expanding or compressing his cellular structures.

He could also change the sizes of his own body parts at will, thus creating a heavy claw if he wanted one for effect—but always scrupulously refusing to employ the talent for any sexual enhancement purposes. He prided himself as a heroic figure in the history of espionage, and from such a lofty pedestal he held that such behavior would be prurient, fraudulent, and unbecoming of the legacy he wanted to leave.

The trio made their way toward a black rock formation on the beach, where they could conduct a private conversation. On a peninsula in the distance, a shuttle landed, transporting passengers down from one of the orbital stations.

“Patsy and I need to get to Parapara,” Spencer said, “and find out why she shunted us to low-level tasks involving Wolfe-Dexter IV. We’re on MacDougal, the only source in the galaxy of the blue bellflower. At the very minimum, we should be trying to find out how one of those flowers—which should not be able to travel across space—found its way to Leonardo, and into the grip of a dead Service officer.”

“They’ve got somebody working on that,” Patsy said. “The guy in the office next to mine.”

The agents stopped walking and stood together gazing out to sea, with their hair blowing in the warm breeze.

“I hate to say this,” the dwarf finally said, looking up at Spencer, “but Carol might have been a plant, placed by Ktonga or even Parapara.”

“What?” Spencer felt a flush of anger.

“If I’m right, Carol carried out her assignment so completely that she even bore your children.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Spencer said. “You’re just trying to make excuses for losing my family!” But he fell silent, as distressing possibilities sank in. Patsy had made a similar suggestion while they were making love, and Spencer had not wanted to believe it, thinking she was only trying to win his affections. Of course, Patsy shouldn’t have worried, since his relationship with her went back for more than a decade, long before he ever met Carol and she became pregnant.

Now, Patsy held her silence.

“I hope I’m wrong,” Boganda said. “Originally I thought Plibix, with his inter-dimensional travel skills, might be able to shed light on Carol’s status. The dragon always insisted that only rarely could he remain in an adjacent dimension and eavesdrop on another, but he never elaborated on any of that. So I thought there might be a chance.”

“Plibix doesn’t like to answer questions,” Patsy said. “As an agent, he insists he’s in the business of asking questions. It always sounded like a convenient excuse, and made me wonder what important details he might be hiding from the rest of us.”

Spencer pursed his lips, and resisted adding to the conversation.

“Now I’m going to say something that may sound absurd at first,” Boganda said, “but I want both of you to hear me out. Do you agree?”

He looked at each of them and waited until they nodded, then continued.

“Just before Carol and the boys disappeared, Plibix came to me. He was talking about you, Patsy.”

“Me?”

“He told me your name was originally Patsy Kelvin, and now it’s Patsy Klein. You aren’t married, so what is the explanation?”

Perplexed, Spencer scowled. He felt a sharp lance of pain in the back of his skull.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Patsy said. “I’ve never been named Kelvin.”

“Au contraire, according to Plibix. He said he observed you closely as he traveled through dimensions. According to him, until only a few weeks ago, you were Patsy Suzette Kelvin.”

“Klein,” she insisted.

“He says it’s one of the strange occurrences in the galaxy. Your original surname vanished, and all memories of it.”

“My name vanished?”

The dwarf nodded. “Apparently.”

“And all memories of it?”

“That’s what he says.”

“Plibix is getting really weird,” Patsy said.

“No denying that,” Boganda agreed. “But he says he’s not a creature of this dimension, or of any other. Like his mother used to do, he rides the edges of the galaxy, between light and shadow, between matter and antimatter.”

Spencer felt a shudder course his spine, as he continued to listen.

“Plibix’s abilities made him a renowned intelligence agent, almost unstoppable when he got on a case. His genetic structure includes fairy traits, enabling him to follow the aural trails left by a variety of life forms, and if anyone tries to kill him, he can slip away into other dimensions. We know that’s true, so his comments about your name might not be so crazy after all. A lot of people have been having bizarre dreams, too, and Plibix says there have been more vanishings than he’s caused, like a chain reaction has been set in motion, and things are slipping out of balance.”

Spencer thought of his own strange dreams, of imagining he was with Patsy Klein, then with Meloria Wambugu, and then with Patsy again. Meloria had demanded to know what he had been dreaming. Why had that been of such intense interest to her? He also recalled feeling that he had never really traveled with Patsy at all, or with anyone else for that matter, and that his sexual experiences with her had been overly sedate, almost unreal.

Abruptly, Spencer’s mind filled with the peculiar, disturbing images of the organ and organ player he and Patsy had seen, before it all disappeared. As if in an eerie vacuum, the organ had not made a sound, and the tall creature playing it had seemed to grow and shed limbs during certain passages.

It was all very, very unsettling.

“Plibix says he’s been having increasing trouble traveling between dimensions,” the dwarf said. “He thinks they’re rubbing against each other like continental plates, causing the contents of each dimension to leak into others, where they don’t belong. The vanishings, the strange dreams, the disappearance of Patsy’s surname and Spencer’s family. Maybe Plibix is right, and things are getting jumbled. Maybe that’s what the agent meant when he transmitted from Leonardo that he had discovered a threat to the very foundations of the galaxy.”

“This is mind boggling,” Spencer said. He felt a mounting headache, centered on the plastic plate embedded in the back of his skull. He envisioned plots wrapped within plots, crashing into one another, merging and fading, leaving chaos in their wake as dimensions shifted wildly back and forth and entire worlds tumbled into oblivion. One man’s reality was another’s dream, and vice versa. Doppelgängers and avatars, eggs, dragons, and fairies.

In the background, the black dwarf continued to speak, only making Spencer’s uneasiness worse.

“Assuming Plibix is right,” Boganda said, “you were originally Patsy Kelvin, and you became Patsy Klein, pronounced the same way as the famous singer Patsy Cline. C-l-i-n-e.”

This was too much. Spencer wanted to tune it all out, but couldn’t. Fascinated, he listened. It seemed like an odd dream filled with puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit together.

“Consider this as well, Patsy. You seem to have your own ‘ear,’ an ability to learn virtually any language in existence. Put these facts together with the organ that makes no sound.”

“You know about that?” she said.

“Plibix told me. He thinks the music leaked into another dimension … or dimensions.”

“That must be where lost socks go, too,” Patsy said.

“Don’t be facetious,” Boganda said, in a scolding tone.

“But what do a dead singer and a woman with a facility for languages have to do with it?”

“I don’t know, but keep in mind, too, that your original surname, Kelvin, refers to a system of measuring temperature.”

“What?”

“Symbol K, a unit of absolute temperature. Plibix didn’t say so, but it occurs to me now that we might need to follow a trail involving the five human senses. The vanishings involve our sense of sight. Sounds, even disappearing ones, involve our tympanic sensors, while tactile sensations—such as temperature—form a third.” From his mounting excitement, and the humidity, the dwarf began to perspire.

His dark face glistened as he continued. “In my travels, I have noticed increasingly odd odors, and many that are stronger than normal. Remember how Snorkin Mibble-11 smelled when we had to meet with him—he reeked of stale food, bad teeth, and unwashed flesh, and he insisted that the condition had come over him suddenly. He was about to tell us something more, how it happened to him, when he …”

Spencer grimaced. “Don’t remind us.”

Ignoring him, Boganda said, “I’ll never forget the terrible image of Snorkin’s body ripping apart, as if unseen forces were pulling him from several directions at once.”

“Different dimensions pulling?” Spencer asked.

“Sounds like a torture rack,” Patsy said.

Boganda shot her a disapproving glance, then said, “Based on what Plibix told me, the dimensions are leaking into each other. Maybe—he didn’t say so—but maybe forces from each dimension are also capable of exerting powerful pulling forces. These are realms that we can hardly conceive, or find the words to describe.”

“We’re still missing one of the human senses,” Patsy said. “Taste. Do you suppose someone is supposed to eat the egg?”

Taking a deep, exasperated breath, Boganda said, “A golden egg is not edible.”

“Are we supposed to follow a trail of senses?” Spencer asked. “Are senses the foundations of the galaxy … are perceptions reality? Or could that be a false trail left for us?”

“You’re thinking like an investigator,” the dwarf said, with a tight smile.

The pain in the back of Spencer’s skull intensified, and he thought he heard a distant voice, as if calling to him from afar. New thoughts forced their way into his mind, and he felt compelled to voice them. Grimacing, he said, “We humans have a parochial habit of looking at things in terms of our own experiences and perceptions, of filtering out the unfamiliar and denying the possibility of its existence. Maybe we need to think in terms of more than five senses.”

“You sense that, do you?” Patsy asked. “I thought women were supposed to have a monopoly on the sixth sense.”

Suddenly Spencer cried out and dropped to his knees on the sand. The back of his skull felt as if it was about to explode.

Patsy and the dwarf tried to comfort him.

“I, I have this terrible feeling,” Spencer said, “that we have a ticking time bomb on our hands, and if we don’t figure it out quickly the entire galaxy will crumble … or vanish.”

From out on the sea, he saw something approaching, getting larger. His companions saw it, too, and they fell silent. The image of a dragon man came into view, but it was not entirely clear, more like a ghost than a corporeal being.

“Plibix?” Spencer called out. The pain in his head diminished, leaving a dull throb.

“Listen to me all of you,” the apparition said. “I can’t sustain this transmission much longer. I tried to investigate Leonardo, but the sentinels entangled me … the champions … my powers are fading.”

Unmistakably, this was Plibix. He sounded and looked like a bad videophone connection, with the signal breaking up. Hovering just above the sand, he held the egg-shaped parcel open in his quivering talons, revealing a glittering golden egg, inlaid with tiny rubies and sapphires.

“Some realities are true, while others are not,” Plibix said. “Nothing is random, and nothing is an accident. Master intelligence. Scrambled eggs.”

He tried to say something more, but faded, and disappeared.