Ghosts of Engines Past (13 page)

“I don't know. Some Vikings sailed away, but some settled here.”

“A dragon? On Earth? Forever?” he gasped.

“Not the ship, but its crew,” suggested the secretary.

“So where are they?” asked the major. “The dragon is empty.”

“They might be beings of disembodied data, who can experience artwork as its totality, not just form, colour, texture, and whatever else,” I ventured.

“So they don't hate art, they just do a bit of damage when they appreciate it?” asked the major.

“Perhaps,” I guessed.

“So where are they?” Glenda asked me.

“I don't know.”

“Well how do you know they exist?”

“How do you know the dragon's power plant exists?”

“It flies and eats,” said the secretary. “That takes a lot of energy.”

“Well
something
is choosing what it eats, whether it's a crew or—or a dragon brain,” concluded the major.

True, aesthetic judgements were indeed being made. It had flown over Los Angeles, looked about, apparently decided that nothing was worth eating, then flown on without landing. Gradually it worked its way south in a zig-zag spiral that encircled the earth several times. Finally it stopped, settled itself on a beach in Australia's southeast, and apparently went to sleep. Within a half hour of that news arriving, I had been put onto a jet for Melbourne with the rest of the Dragon Advisory Committee—which had been renamed the British Dragon Advisory Committee.

The dragon was lying stretched out along a beach bordered by sheer cliffs near Cape Otway. It was one of those locations that would have been called wild and desolate until it became fashionable to call them beautiful and unspoiled. Boats that normally took tourists to watch whales were offering tours of the dragon, but the British Dragon Advisory Committee was taken to the beach by helicopter, where we joined several dozen other groups of experts. None of those with me had yet seen the dragon directly, and they were understandably nervous as we approached. We knew that it did not kill deliberately, but that was of little comfort to anyone who got under its feet. Fifteen hundred people had been killed by the dragon. Two thirds of those had died in Paris and London on the first day, and after that, people learned to stay away from anything resembling art when the dragon was known to be approaching.

I stood on the beach beside an Australian military engineer, watching through binoculars as two men wearing camo balaclavas and overalls entered a nostril from a platform at the top of a mobile crane. They were trailing communications cables and carrying assault rifles.

“Dragon Team Reccon,” said the engineer. “They're wired for sound and visuals.”

“What do they hope to achieve?” I asked.

“Exploration. We know that the nostrils are not used for breathing. Our instruments show there's no airflow in or out of them.”

“Except when it's snorting out pulverised artwork.”

“It could be a robot, that's my theory. If so, we might find a soft spot.”

“A soft spot? In a thing that survived a direct hit from a hydrogen bomb?”

“You don't understand. If that dragon was built by engineers, there's bound to be an access hatch somewhere for maintenance and repairs.”

I noticed that various teams of people were pointing equipment at the dragon, and through my binoculars I could see a woman who was pressing her forehead and fingertips against the immense curve of golden metal that was its jaw.

“Who is the woman standing beside the mouth?” I asked.

“She's a psychic. She says she's channelling the aliens who are the crew.”

“So what are they saying?”

“She doesn't understand the language.”

“Do your instruments say anything more constructive?”

“Afraid not. Use whatever instrument you like, it's like taking a sounding of deep space. I think we—smoke!”

I immediately looked back to the nostrils, where a cloud of dark smoke had been puffed out. Cursing softly, the engineer keyed his phone into life.

“Scope 6, this is Major Dekker. What was that smoke?”

I looked back to the dragon, where someone at the top of the crane was withdrawing the communications cables. The men were no longer attached to them.

“Well what do your spectrographs say?” shouted the engineer into his phone.

I stood waiting as he listened. Presently he rang off.

“The spectrograph team has made a preliminary analysis of that puff of smoke,” he said, more to himself than me. “It was mainly steam mixed with carbon, with some iron and lead, and traces of other elements like chlorine, calcium and silicon.”

“Was the estimated mass that of two humans, their weapons, and their surveillance gear?”

“He didn't say. There was about ten metres of cable played out when—when the team vanished.”

I caught myself just as my mouth opened to ask whether or not they were virgins. It was a stupid question, yet was it any sillier than the idea of a metal dragon two miles long that ate art? Were those two men the first human sacrifices that the dragon had accepted?

“I think anything that gets inside the dragon will be pulverised,” I said, thinking aloud.

“What's that you say?”

“We are like members of some stone age tribe, trying to enter a battleship by climbing down the funnels. Its insides are incomprehensible to us. I think that if you tried to drill into the belly, you would probably find that the end of the drill has sheered off and vanished.”

“Funny you should say that.”

“How so?”

“We did try drilling into it, this morning. We were successful, after a fashion.”

“So not entirely?”

“No. The drill went straight in, but when it was withdrawn there was no hole. Most of the drill bit was missing as well.”

“Did you have the shavings analysed?”

“There were no shavings. As I said, the drill went straight in.”

At this point he walked away to some people gathered around a truck bristling with equipment that I did not understand. I began to walk in the direction of the dragon. At first I thought one of the many guards with stubby assault rifles and helmets jammed full of communications gear would stop me, but I was allowed to keep walking. Distances can be deceptive where something as large as the dragon is involved, and my walk turned out to be half a mile.

Being the token expert from the arts, I had the rather contradictory title of generalist specialist. I was one of those people who had to devise theories for the utility specialists to check, and at this stage I was very short on theories. The one thing that I could do was touch the dragon. Why must humans touch? Before me was the most dangerous being ever to fly the skies or walk the earth, yet I wanted to touch it.

The last few steps were the hardest. About fifty feet to the left, the medium was still alive and well, pressing her head and hands against the dragon. What would it make of me? The dragon ate art, and while I was no artist, I was an art historian with qualifications to prove it. Was I the first art historian to touch it? Could it read minds?

Trying to hold my mind blank, so that my better judgement would not be aware of what I was doing, I approached the immense jaw, extended my hand and ran my fingers along the surface. It was like touching the hull of a large ship. The impression was not at all rational, it was as if I had decided that it would feel that way, and that I had been right. I rapped at it with my knuckles, but there was only the slightest suggestion of an echo. I stepped back, looked up, and tried to... to appreciate the monster, as if it were a work of art. I failed. As I walked away from the dragon I was met by a group of several dozen people. They were dressed in assault fatigues, suits, lab coats, and even parade uniforms. Most of the British Dragon Advisory Committee was with them.

“What was it like?” asked the SAS major.

“Like a huge ship: hard, cool, absolutely unyielding.”

Because I had not been reduced to a cloud of my component elements, most of the others now walked forward to touch the dragon for themselves. I had become friendly with Glenda, the sociologist, by now. She had a hard, pragmatic bearing, and a tendency to stand apart from other people as if determined not to follow the herd. Thus it was that we stood back together, watching the others having their photographs taken in front of the jaw.

“Just what is so special about art?” she asked, sounding as if she were tired of asking questions without answers.

“It can move people by being beautiful or confrontational,” I replied. “It can make our surroundings more pleasant, it can even be enjoyable to create. Sometimes it's inspirational, but often it's manipulative.”

“That tells me nothing. Why is it special?

“Well... only humans produce it.”

“Some birds decorate their nests with bright and colourful things like broken glass and plastic bottle caps.”

I had not known that. I thought about it for a while.

“But is that art or decoration? Some apes use broad leaves to keep the rain off, but is that clothing? Birds use twigs to tease insects out of holes, apes and sea otters use rocks to break things open for food, but you can hardly say they make tools. Monkeys throw stones: does that mean they have invented projectile weapons?”

“Well, you're the expert in art history.
When
did humans invent art?”

“Necklaces go back about a hundred thousand years, but they are just ornaments. Cave paintings and sculptures have only been around for half that time.”

“So that's real art?”

“Yes. I'd say art either evolved or was invented around forty thousand years ago.”

“Then art is relatively new—no, wait! Chimps, birds, even elephants can learn to paint.”

“They are
taught
to paint, they do not do it spontaneously.”

“Neanderthals had art. They were not quite human.”

“The Neanderthals did not produce artwork and decoration until they copied what humans were doing. Art did not exist until we humans invented it.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“With another clue that we do not understand. Has the dragon destroyed any fashion houses yet?”

“No.”

“Then it's drawing a distinction between art and decoration.”

“We already knew that.”

“Ah, but now it has been phrased in a different way.”

At this point I noticed that people were descending from the top of the cliffs on rope ladders. They were all naked, except for a few wearing backpacks. Having assembled themselves into neat rows, they began to march toward the dragon. The guards did not challenge them.

“Do those guards stop
anyone
from doing
anything?”
I asked.

“They are only here to give the impression that the authorities are in charge,” said Glenda.

“How very Australian. So who are the nudists?”

“They are from one of the Dragonist cults. Their nudity symbolises the rejection of art in general, and artistically inspired clothing in particular.”

The Dragonists stopped not far from where we were standing, and their leader began a diatribe against art in all its forms through a loud-hailer. He then took his followers through an oath in which they swore to wear only blankets for the remainder of their lives, and to destroy artworks wherever they could be found. Glenda and I hurriedly backed away when he exhorted the dragon to strike them down if their actions displeased it. The dragon did nothing. This led to scenes of relief and rejoicing. Those with backpacks began to distribute blankets.

“I almost expected them to sacrifice a virgin,” I said as the Dragonists prostrated themselves and sang an adoration hymn at the immense head.

“Adult virgins are not very common in this day and age,” said Glenda.

“Oh, I don't know. They turn up occasionally.”

“Show me one.”

“Not in public.”

As lighthearted banter goes it was harmless enough, yet I would eventually learn that where religion is concerned, there is no such thing as harmless banter.

We stayed in tents for a few days while more tests were conducted on the dragon, but nothing significant was learned. For my part, I thought there was something familiar about the monstrous creature. Every morning I would stand before it, staring up at its golden, polished immensity and doing what I did best: grasping for impressions. It reminded me of the steampunk devices of late Twentieth Century fiction and film: intricate Victorianesque machines built of iron and driven by steam. They were enchanting in concept, impossible in practise, yet strangely alluring—like much art.

It was as I stood contemplating the dragon that Glenda approached me on the morning of the fourth day.

“The committee is moving to Melbourne,” she announced.

“But the dragon is here,” I said without turning.

“We study Mars without being aboard the Mars probes.”

“True, but we would study Mars better by being there.”

“If you want to stay, an exception can be made.”

“On second thought, an apartment would be much nicer than the tent.”

“You come here every morning and stare at the dragon's face. Are you trying to make telepathic contact?”

“No, I'm treating it like a painting or sculpture. There is an art to interpreting art, so I am practising the art of the dragon. Nothing else has worked.”

“You can't mean it's a work of art, can you?” she laughed.

“It could have aesthetic worth, even if it's meant to be something else. My master's dissertation was on war machines as art: the ornate Spanish war galleons of the armada, the elaborate body armour of the renaissance knights, the Spitfire fighter planes of World War Two. They all have artistic merit of one sort or another, yet they were designed to fight and destroy.”

“That can't be relevant. The dragon destroyed a lot of art, but only a high-profile sample. It's teaching humans to destroy art.”

This was a common view among the Dragonists.

“But why art? Does it have alien masters who are planning to invade, and they don't like art?”

“Not aliens,” said Glenda. “Something greater.”

We stood in silence for a while, both contemplating the dragon in our own ways.