Paint Your Dragon (29 page)

‘Not at all, Miss Frobisher, not at all.' The Great Goat sighed. ‘As it happens, I think I'm busy that day, too. What about you, Barney?'

The thurifer was. about to explain that coincidentally, he'd probably be working late next Thursday, when all five of them became aware of a richer darkness, as some great shape interposed itself between them and the fleeting moon.

‘Go away!' snapped the Great Goat. ‘Can't you see we're closed?'

They ducked. As non-verbal responses go, a fiery tsunami unleashed about three feet over one's head is remarkably eloquent.

‘Won't keep you a tick,' said the dragon.

Kurt twitched impatiently. Moral philosophy had never interested him much, having as much relevance to his profession as a pipe-cleaner to the Mersey tunnel; if he'd wanted a lecture on ethics, however, his first choice wouldn't have been a word processor.

‘Hey,' he said, ‘save it for the customers, will you? I delivered the goods, just pay me and I'll split.'

Kurt made an exaggerated show of looking round. ‘Nope,' he said at last, ‘don't see any dragon in here, unless he's hiding in the drawer disguised as a pencil. Look, pal, you do your job and I'll do mine, okay?'

With a sigh, Kurt perched on the edge of the desk and folded his arms.

‘Shoot,' he said.

‘Huh?' Kurt thought for a minute. ‘Good what?'

Kurt's eyebrow lifted, Spock-like. ‘Dunno,' he said. ‘All depends on where you're at, I guess. Like,' he went on, ‘it's a good shot if you fire it and hit me, but from where I'm standing there ain't much that's good about it.'

The screen filled with glowing green ticks.
Very good, Mr Lundqvist, you're way ahead of me. Nevertheless, I'll explain further.

‘Why?'

‘More right than Franco, buster. What's this to do with—?'

‘Guess so.'

‘Yeah.'

‘Huh?'

Kurt nodded. ‘In his day,' he replied absently. ‘Lotta blood flowed under the bridge since then.'

‘A professional.'

A saint. And not just any old saint, but the patron saint of peaceful, law-abiding, animal-loving Albion. You know why that is
?

‘Never gave it any thought,' Kurt replied honestly.

Kurt shrugged. ‘So?'

So, with George as its patron, this poxy little cluster of islands built an empire, the biggest ever. Top nation for a time, this poxy little cluster; bigger than France or Italy or Germany, owned half of Africa, half of Asia. Remember Agincourt, Kurt? God for Harry, England and Saint George
?

‘I missed that game. I was working. Saw the highlights, but—'

‘Do me a favour,' Kurt protested. ‘All that time, the sucker was dead.'

Doesn't matter. When you're a saint, it's not what you
do
that really matters, it's what you are. George was the dragon-slayer. He won the Big Fight. He inspired generations
of
Englishmen to go out and beat the crap out of all foreigners. Name me a European country England hasn't beaten in a war. France? Twice. Germany? Twice. Italy, Spain, Russia, Norway, Austria ...

‘Greece,' Kurt interrupted. ‘Switzerland. Monaco...' He fell silent. ‘Okay, point taken,' he continued, ‘but so what? That don't prove nothing.'

‘Get to the point,' Kurt grunted awkwardly.

Simple. England prevailed because she was in the right, because George killed the dragon. How or why he did it doesn't matter a cold chip. Agreed
?

‘If I agree, will you pay me the money you owe me?'

But all that's changed now. England's finished. She's a suburb of Europe, the USA's poor relation, got about twenty-five per cent of the international stature of the Philippines. You could saw Europe off at Calais and it'd be a month before anybody noticed. So what happened
?

‘I have this dreary feeling you're gonna tell me.'

‘Kurt shrugged. ‘Okay,' he said. ‘If I was the kind of weirdo who went along with that kinda crap, maybe I'd buy that too. But you want me to kill this goddamn dragon, so—'

After the fight, Kurt, after the fight. The dragon wastes George, you waste the dragon. The United States conclusively defeats the personification of Evil, and under the patronage of Saint Kurt proceeds to manifest its destiny. Everybody lives happily ever after.
The screen filled with little wavy lines; cybernetic laughter.
That's why I've just arranged for George to be rescued. Can't very well go fighting dragons if he's doing three years for assault and battery.

Kurt thought it over for a while.

‘Once I've killed the dragon,' he asked, ‘do I get paid?'

Kurt nodded. ‘Okay,' he said. ‘That's my definition of a happy ending.'

 

You heard all that
?

Chubby nodded to his laptop and smiled. ‘You bet,' he said. ‘I thought you handled that very, um, adequately.'

‘Indeed.'

Chubby sighed. Whenever the blasted box of tricks went all parenthetical on him and started ending sentences with three dots, he knew he was in for something more than usually shitty. ‘Hm?'

‘W
ith respect.' Lin Kortright whitened his knuckles around the telephone, swivelled his chair, bit the end off a cigar and spat it into the ashtray. ‘With respect,' he repeated, ‘you guys are obviously experts in the recycled Time business, but you don't know the fight game from
nothing.
Otherwise ...'

Traditionally, sudden explosions of devastating elemental power have to be heralded by fair warning. Civil wars and the deaths of princes, therefore, are announced by comets and portents. Cyclones and tempests are preceded by gathering clouds and torrential rain. And Lin Kortright says, ‘With respect.'

And then something extremely peculiar happened.

Mr Kortright
listened.

Which is a bit like opening your daily paper and seeing that because of hitherto undetected design faults God has just issued a recall notice on the human race. You don't expect it. Large chunks of the fabric of reality start to come away from the joists.

‘Yeah,' he said, eventually. ‘Yeah, you're right, we could do that. Say, that's a pretty neat idea. Only wish I'd thought of that myself.'

No sooner had the words left his mouth than six lifeboatloads of rats lowered themselves over the side of The Universe As We Know It and started to row like buggery. For Lin Kortright to say, ‘You're right' in a room containing no mirror was utterly, absolutely...

‘Brilliant,' he added. ‘Hey, man, I'm beginning to wonder if you need me in on this at all. Seems to me you got it all sewn up already.'

Distant thunder rumbled. Eagles towering in their pride of place beat a hasty retreat, while mousing owls exchanged evil glances, rubbed their talons together and said, ‘Right, let's get the bastards.' The air crackled with static.

‘No, really,' Mr Kortright went on, ‘in the circumstances I couldn't possibly accept ten per cent. The most I'd feel justified in taking would be five, and even then...'

Normality flung a few things in a suitcase and emigrated.

To hype a big fight, you have to follow set procedures. First, you must find a few toothless old duffers for the contenders to massacre, by way of setting the scene. Then you book the chat-show appearances so that the Boys can glower at each other over the presenter's shoulder. Then you hire a hall and start printing tickets.

In this case, however, the rules were there to be broken. For a start, there could be no warm-up fights for fear of irreparable damage to the Earth's crust. No late-show appearances for the contestants; the whole point of finding George was to make sure he'd be safely out of the dragon's way until the bell went for the first round. As for the venue, that couldn't be rushed; it had to be the Gobi desert, or the whole fight was off. Above all, the fight couldn't be advertised in case the two contestants found out that a fight was being organised.

Nevertheless, it seemed unlikely they'd have any trouble getting rid of the tickets, seeing that on the same morning both Nostradamus and Mother Shipton called almost simultaneously to point out that they'd predicted the fight and booked seats four hundred years ago. That just left the venue; a bit like saying,
We've made the sandwiches and filled the thermos, that just leaves turning the water into wine, plenty of time to do that after we've been to the supermarket.

Cue Lin Kortright ...

 

Furtively, guiltily, five shadowy figures crept along the wire perimeter fence, wirecutters in hand.

They were about to commit burglary. That's theft, and a sin.

They were about to burgle the nuclear power station at Sellafield. That's just plain
stupid.

One of the five demons was considerably more relaxed about the proceedings than his colleagues, it must be said. When Chardonay came round and Prodsnap explained to him that there'd been a mutiny and he was now talking to
Captain
Prodsnap, his abiding reaction had been amazed, delighted joy. No more decisions. No more responsibility to the other members of the team. No more getting the blame for such mistakes on his part as the weather, the alignment of the moon with Mercury or the battle of Salamis.

The other four weren't so cheerful.

‘Quit snivelling,' Prodsnap muttered sharply. ‘Nothing to be afraid of. Home from home. Only danger I can foresee is, you'll all like it so much you won't want to leave.'

His followers exchanged glances. The mood of the meeting was that if he'd just taken out a correspondence course in dynamic leadership techniques, he'd be justified in asking for his money back.

‘Run through it again,' Slitgrind said. ‘Go on, one more time.'

‘I've explained five times already.'

‘I wasn't listening.'

Prodsnap sighed. ‘Okay,' he said, ‘listen up, people.' He'd heard the expression somewhere - the extremely nasty part of Hell reserved for Europeans who try to play American football, probably - and guessed it might be worth a try. Right now,
anything
was worth trying. ‘In order to get home we really need that uranium, right?'