That did it.
N-yeh
, said the cat. With a twitch of itswhiskers, it turned and trotted away.
I followed it – or rather the tink of its
bell, for the cat itself was always too far ahead. All I saw now and then was a flash
of its tail. Doors opened up where they hadn’t done before. Walls changed colour. Lights came on. A pot plant with red and
green leaves appeared (‘KOLEUS’ written on a label in the soil). Tele:screen images flashed up on the walls. The first I saw was a stuttering lecture about the history of the planet Erth. I glanced sideways at it as I ran. A man in a plain white suit was explaining that a change of
timeline did not have to disrupt the advance of learning. In our particular history, for instance, a stroke of serendipity had brought the discovery of electricity and the invention of siliconbased circuitry much closer together. Since ‘our’ 17th century, technology had grown at a furious pace. Thanks to this, the Pearlygates Interactive Tele:computer was now a feature of every…
I ran on. I had almost lost the sound of
the bell.
The second time I saw a tele:screen, I
did.
It felt as if I’d been following the catfor hours. Yet the only time I could thinkof was ‘now’.
3:15:22
No bell. I paused for breath. In front ofme another tele:screen lit. A documentaryfeature about firebirds.
Likewise
, said a
slow voice-over,
every species on Erth has experienced a changed evolutionary path. Some for better. Some for worse. One of those that has come to major prominence, of course, is the firebird. Here we see three, in their natural eyrie. What draws them to structures such as
this isn’t clear
. An image of a giant building appeared. It had thousands of square-shaped windows, all identicallyspaced apart. I knew that I knew this place – but from where? The camera zoomed in
and came to rest on a cream-coloured
firebird with apricot ear tufts.
Females
, said the voice,
like this fine example, are
often attended by two or more males
. A grumpy-looking red one was in the window to her right; a mild-mannered green one in the window on her left.
Rrrh!
went the red one, making the female jump. She leaned forward and squinted – at the lens, or at me?
“Who are you?” I asked.
But the screen had cleared, and the next thing on it was a series of schematic diagrams, aiming to describe how the birds had evolved their strange ability to generate fire.
By filtering small quantities of hy:drogen from water and collecting it in tonsillar sacs in the throat, these highly intelligent birds are able to throw a jet of flame by rapidly expelling the stored gas. What benefit
this has is not entirely clear, for the birds appear to have no natural predators. And their extraordinary progress does not end there. Evidence has recently come to light of another remarkable physical development…
Up came another set of images, which appeared to predict that the next stage of firebird evolution might be a hardening of their feathers into scales.
Were we to
extrapolate from here
, said the voice, almost beside itself with scholarly
excitement,
who knows what magical
creature might result..
. The beak morphed into an extended jaw. The tail feathers coalesced into a kind of whip. The wings grew out into powerful canopies. Small arms emerged from the
breast. A glint pinged out of a jewelled eye. A burst of white fire clouded the
screen.
“Dragon,” I breathed.
Hrrr
, went a voice.
I jumped around.
In front of me was a tall white
refrigerator. Two doors, top and bottom, hinged to the right. On top of the fridge sat the thing I’d come to find: the listening dragon.
It was, as my mind had expected it to be, tall and green and spiky and cute. It had trumpet-shaped nostrils, large oval eyes, a wide curling tail and flattish back feet.
And the most enormous petal-like ears. It smiled, almost ruefully, and looked
down at the fridge.
“Should I open it?” I asked.
The dragon sniffed. It looked around
and drummed its claws.
I reached for the top door and pulled it
open.
On the middle shelf of three was a
small box.
Miaow
, said a voice from the floor.
I pushed the door half-closed andlooked down.
The cat I’d been following was sittingbeside an empty food bowl. It flicked itsears when it saw I’d noticed it.
I opened the door again and took out thebox. It didn’t look big enough to store anyfood. All I found inside was a folded
piece of paper.
It said, ‘
WRONG DOOR
’.
The listening dragon shrugged.
I put the box away and opened thebottom refrigerator door.
A blast of icy air swept out. As itcleared, I saw an amazing scene inside. Ayoung polar bear was sitting on a sheet ofice, with water lapping gently in front ofhim – an image more real than anything I’dwatched on a tele:screen. I felt that if I
climbed inside the fridge I would hear the crunch of ice underfoot. I shivered and
rubbed my arms. “Who are you? What is
this world?”
The ice bear tipped his head to oneside. His small brown eyes were packedwith wonder. “This is Ki:mera,” he said. His voice was gruff, but as sharp as the
pale blue sky around him. “My name is Avrel. I am The Teller of Ways.”
“Ways?” I asked.
“Legends,” he said.
I thought about this. “Are you here to tell a story?”
He tilted his head to the opposite side. “You
are
the story, Agawin. And we have been waiting for you.” A slight wind swept across him, tugging at his fur. A host of bears was behind him now, sitting, paws together, like the cat by his food bowl, as if they had an appointment with destiny.
“What do you want me to do?” I whispered. I feared this perfect image might crack if my voice was raised any louder than that.
Between his feet, a book appeared. Thepages flickered until the wind dropped. On one leaf was a beautiful sketch of the
listening dragon. I recognised the ears, even though the drawing was upside down to me. On the opposite page was what looked like a scorch mark. Avrel blew on
the book. It turned right around.
“You must lead us to Ingavar,” he said.
I looked at the mark. On the page, it was just a simple squiggle: a wavy line with a shorter line through it, thicker at one end, finished in a slight triangular spike. It looked like it might have been a signature. The longer I looked the more structured it appeared, until I could see real depth in it and something began to trigger in me. A memory of a language.
Dragontongue
.
“Agawin, where are you?” Elizabeth’svoice. She sounded close. Very slightlyconcerned.
I closed the fridge door, shutting out thebears. The cat’s food bowl vanished. The
cat himself was twizzling his ears, trying to locate where the voice was coming from. He scuttled away, low down, looking guilty. Likewise, the listening dragon gulped, as if he should not have been a party to this. He dibbled a paw and disappeared in a blink. The fridge he’d been sitting on disappeared with him.
“Ah, there you are.” Elizabeth slipped her hand around my shoulder. We were back in a plain square room again. Warm pink walls. Friendly. Soothing. The kind
of place where an active mind might put away any worrying thoughts and drift on an ocean of eternal calm. I smiled at
Elizabeth and she at me. The firebird, Gryffen, landed on her shoulder. He pokedhis inquisitive gaze here and there, but Iwas fairly sure he had seen nothing. Already, my memories of the bears werefading, but I was clinging to that mark asthough my life depended on it – orsomeone else’s did. For in that very thinslice of time, that tiny shudder in the unityof ‘now’, I had managed to find atranslation. With it came a whole new raft
of meaning. I had unwrapped a very great secret. I had seen the name of the listening dragon. I held Elizabeth’s hand and repeated the name over and over in my
mind.
Ganzfeld
.
Ganzfeld
.
Ganzfeld
.
7. The Illumination of
Gwilanna
“You look surprised,” Zanna said, squaring up to David. “Or do my Gothic roots still make you cringe? Suits me, don’t you think? The dark. The Shadow.”
He stared at the crusted scales on her
cheeks. The coils at her temples. The row of thorns on the back of each hand. In
some ways, she did look strangely alluring. But the Ix in her would always be repellent to the Fain in him. “You’re not her,” he said quietly. “You’re not Zanna.”
She flicked a spiteful glance at Rosa, who could do little more than gulp and shy
away. “Am I beautiful, Commander?”
“Yes,” said Tam.
“Would you die for me and give me
your
shade
?”
“I would.” He touched a hand to his
darkling heart.
Zanna stepped forward, dabbing a finger at the trickle of blood on David’s cheek. “Would you desert me in the heat of a battle?”
“Never, Pri:magon.”
David tried to look away, but she caught his chin and applied enough sideways pressure to make him face her again. “Hear that, David? He wouldn’t run away.” She angled her dark lips close to his. “He wouldn’t disappear across a huge time nexus leaving me and my friends to
fend for ourselves.”
“I warned you things would be different,” he said, trying not to flinch as her nails dug in.
Burying a snort in the back of her throat, she brought her mouth up close to his ear. “Don’t try to be brave. The war is won. The Shadow controls this part of the nexus. Very soon we’ll have the rest – and more.” He heard the slither of her darkling tongue. “Now, be a good Fain and tell me what you’ve done with Alexa… ”
He thought about this, then whispered back, “Shouldn’t you be asking Gwilanna that… ? Where is she, by the way?”
“Pri:magon, the dragon is rising,” said Lucy.
Zanna pulled away and turned towards
the crater. “Behold, David, the last dragon
on Earth!”
“Hhh!” gasped Rosa, as Gawain’s studded head emerged from the lava pool, followed by his wings and the rest of his body. Lava ran away in runnels down his breast, making crowns of fire where it dripped into the pool. He was an adult now, as wild and impressive as a dragon could be. He was showing no obvious darkling mutations, but the green had leached from his scales and wings and there was no hint of violet in his tortured
eyes. He was the antithesis of all his kind.
A black dragon.
He stared at the newcomers in the
chamber. When he saw David, his optical triggers contracted in a rush and he reared
back, flaring his smoking nostrils. A jet of fire burst from his gaping mouth and was split into forks by his enormous fangs. Even David must have feared being turned to ash. But the blast hit an unseen barrier
between them and dispersed in harmless scribbles of flame. Gawain extended his
wings to their fullest and with a whip of his tail went spiralling around his invisible cell.
“Impressive,” David said, blowing out the air his lungs had been grasping. He brushed Rosa’s hand to check how she
was. Her auma was off the scale. “Not
only infected but imprisoned as well.”
“Better for you that he is,” growled Zanna. “Oh, and in case you were thinking of trying, you can’t commingle with him
through the field.”
“What have you done to him?” Rosa demanded. “Why is he in that…place?”
“Like you care,” said Lucy, showing her teeth. “He’s nothing but a myth in your imagineered world.”
“Better a myth than a servant to
you
.”
“He’s digging,” David put in quickly, trying to defuse any further conflict. He raised his hands in mock surrender and
stepped up to the point where the fire had petered out. He prodded the force field, making it dent. Gawain put his dark head forward and roared.
I know, I know,
David said in histhoughts.
I will get you out of there. Butwhy are you so very angry with me? Andhow have they gained control of you…?