N’Doch knows what he’s seen. He’s been watching the silver one since she did her growing taller thing right in front of him, and then—in a moment shorter than an eye blink—the big guy is there beside her. Three-D and substantial. Definitely not a hologram. N’Doch notes that the white girl can actually lean her whole weight against the critter’s scaly brown shoulder.
The problem is, he can’t believe it. He wants to, but he just can’t. He’s always told himself those vid people can do anything. Hire them to put men on Mars, he’s always said. They’d get it done soon enough, and make a good show out of it, too.
But here, in the dusty shadow and light of his favorite hiding place, his own secret kingdom, this officers’ gymnasium, his credulity is tempered by the still, sane presence of the space. Here—safe, relaxed, clearheaded—he finally has to admit that he’s been making up most of his explanations for the events of the last half hour, or at least stretching what he’s heard to fit what he’s been seeing. He’s never seen a real cybercritter, only the infoshows about the cutting edge developments in special effects, shows he realizes are no more reliable than your everyday newscast. Because he wants them to be true, somehow they become true when he needs them to. But right now, in this calm room, away from the constant hype and hustle of his daily life, those stories are no longer working.
But he’s never been without a story, so what should the new story be? The big guy was on the beach, and now he’s here. Apparently translated through steel and plastic and wood within the space of a breath. Not an easy thing to explain in the world as N’Doch knows it. In fact, it’s a bigger stretch than cybercritters.
And then there’s the silver one with her head-invading music. The right music. His music.
N’Doch finds himself weak at the knees again. He’s dimly aware that his arm is hurting where the short brother slashed him. He knows he should be paying more attention to the wound, getting it cleaned and covered before any one of a billion bugs take up residence. But this other matter has him too distracted.
“This is all a setup, right?” he asks the girl, one last chance at a rational explanation. “You know, for the vid?” If she’s not an actress, if she’s making this up as she goes along, just like he is—and her look of innocent bewilderment is almost enough to convince him she is—then what are these critters?
If not a vid-tech special effect, then . . . what?
To stave off the upswelling panic, he resorts to an exercise of logic. Either they’re real, these critters, or they’re not. Fine. If they’re not real, he’s seeing things. If he’s seeing things, he’s either sick or crazy. Or—he remembers the tomato—he’s been drugged.
But he doesn’t think he’s crazy, and he doesn’t feel drugged, at least not the usual way. And except for the growing heat in his arm, he feels healthy enough. He’d managed not to drink any of the sea water drenching him, and he’d spotted both critters within moments of being cut. No bug goes to work that quick. Anyhow, the brothers saw them, too. That’s what saved his life.
Which means they’re real, the conclusion he’d already reached and explained away with invented technology. But if they’re real and not cybercritters, then what the hell are they?
This time the panic will not be kept down. Rising up with it comes a notion that defies all his attempts at logic. N’Doch tries to ignore it, but he knows where it comes from. It’s the same part of him he goes to when he writes his music, where the answers have nothing to do with logic, they just appear out of his soul like magic.
Appear like magic. That was it. That was the notion he was trying to avoid. Magic.
N’Doch meets the great golden gaze of the larger critter and gives in. His knees buckle.
* * *
Erde saw the fear rush into his eyes just before he collapsed. It was like watching black water flood a ditch. Earth’s sudden arrival must have frightened him. The dragon was big, after all, though not nearly as big as she’d thought a dragon should be. And he could look terrifying if you didn’t know him. But why was Endoch scared now, when he hadn’t been before, back on the beach? Must be he was better at covering it up than she was.
Then she noticed there was blood on the floor where he’d fallen, and recalled the vicious swipe the man with the club had delivered. She relayed the reminder to Earth, but it was Water who went to him, lowering her sleek head to nose at him, crooning gently. Endoch yelped and scrambled backward on ankles and elbows as if terrified. Erde thought Water was the least sort of dragon to be frightened of, but Endoch’s terror rang in the air like a hammered bell. Erde found herself gripping Earth’s neck crest in sympathy. She could sense the dragon’s bemused surprise.
—He is frightened. He does not know what she is.
Erde nodded, remembering.
—I didn’t know who you were either, when I first saw you. I thought you were going to eat me.
A graver negative than usual washed across her mind.
—What, not who. He does not know what a dragon is.
This, Erde could not imagine.
—You mean, he doesn’t believe in dragons?
She’d met people like that, though they were rare. They usually didn’t believe in witchcraft either, until someone laid a proper spell on them. But most people thought witches and dragons were the minions of Satan, which was why Fra Guill’s campaign against them roused such fervor throughout the countryside. But Erde knew better, about both dragons and witches.
The question was, how to convince Endoch?
* * *
N’Doch’s whole world is turning upside down.
He’s too old to believe in magic, or maybe too young. His weird grandfather believes in magic, for God’s sake, and he’s so uncool and old-fashioned, it’s an embarrassment to have him in the family. Not that you ever saw anything of him, living all alone out in the bush like he does. The old man once told him towns were bad for his health. Well, yeah, N’Doch recalls replying, but so is being a hermit.
N’Doch’s fear retreats a bit before a vivid rush of childhood memories, rising like a flight of birds to distract him: the heat and red dust of the bush, the stillness at midday, the scent of parched vegetation. His mama often sent him out to stay with Papa Djawara after his father took off and she was so busy working. Jeez, the man was old even then. And weird. N’Doch feels his mouth curl in an involuntary grin. The old man did tell great stories. Sang them, really. Probably what got me started, N’Doch realizes, listening to all those long songs that went on verse after verse, late into the night, unbelievable yarns about powerful shamans and evil curses and spirits of the dead that enter the bodies of men and animals in order to work their will among the living. The usual old tribal stuff.
But there was that one long tale, N’Doch recalls, one that was different from the rest and the old man’s special favorite. He always reworked it so it was about the adventures of a young man named Water. As N’Doch roots around trying to retrieve it from faded memory, he finds himself gazing up into a pair of liquid dark eyes that are focused on him with alarming intensity. He reads concern there, yes, but also rebuke and impatience. He remembers the song now, and the memory takes his breath away: a young man named Water meets up with a monster from the sea. Only she’s not a monster, she’s a magical creature, a dragon, and the whole long song is about the quest they embark on to save the world. He doesn’t recall ever hearing the ending. He always fell asleep first.
A dragon?
No.
The silvery-blue critter nudges him, showing just the faintest trace of irritation. N’Doch backs away in horror.
A dragon?
He blinks, he coughs, he shakes his head. He does all the requisite things, even pinches himself, but he’s been looking at this critter for over an hour and he knows she’s not going away that easy. He’s not dreaming, he’s wide awake, his arm hurts like hell and there’s a dragon in his hidey-hole.
Two dragons. And a weird white girl who acts like she’s dropped in from some other planet. Who knows? Maybe she has. Why should things start getting any saner? Meanwhile, he’s flat on his ass and elbows, and bleeding all over his beautiful wooden floor, the only thing in his life that’s whole and perfect. N’Doch grasps at logic again: what do you do when something you can’t believe is happening, actually is? Hey, you go with it. Like the first bars of a new melody, you just follow it out, see where it leads you.
So he tries to get up, but his legs won’t work. And it’s hot in the gym, so much hotter than usual. He’s bathed in sweat and slipping in his own blood as he struggles to rise. The blue critter puts her forehead to his chest and presses him back to the floor. He’s surprised how gentle she is, since she’s looking so irascible. There’s music in his head again, and N’Doch decides to lie there and listen, while the blue critter noses at his arm. Her inspection hurts despite her gentleness, but the pain is somehow past the edge of his current awareness, which is filled with the music. He understands now that the bugs are in his wound, the worst bugs, the really fast-acting kind, and that means he’s got to act even faster. He’s got to get serious about moving to his stash of antibiotics, though who knows if he’s got anything here that’s recent enough to kill this bug—they all mutate so fast and his pill source is not exactly over-the-counter yesterday’s formula.
His breath is getting short, a bad sign. He draws his knees up to his chest and turns over onto his side. Again, the blue critter stops him. N’Doch is amazed by the strength in that seemingly delicate neck. He struggles a bit, but the music swells in his head and then he can’t recall why he’s resisting so hard. Her voice is so soothing, her warm breath on his cheek so familiar, his mama’s of course, why didn’t he see that? She’ll take him into her arms and make his hurt go away. His grip on consciousness is tenuous. N’Doch forgets why he’s holding on at all, and lets go.