Dragonhaven (38 page)

You're trying to be as objective as you can when you take notes. Mom and Dad—Mom in particular—had this whole rant about There Is No Such Thing as True Objectivity—but then she was a
very
Bad Scientist—and for ordinary lock-the-lab-and-go-home-at-night scientists, maybe how they are is not so important, but in my dragon notes I almost always start out by mentioning what sort of a state
I'm
in—which is something I learned from Mom. If you've been up all night feeding orphans, it shows, next day, in your work (she said) and it's just arrogant of you not to make note of it. Pretty much everything I ever wrote in the first year of Lois' life starts SOS, which stands for Short of Sleep. How can it
not
be important to how reliable my notes are when I'm so tired I'm hallucinating dragons hiding behind the trees around Billy and Grace's house?

My notes now start with H, HH, HHH, or, occasionally, HHHH, which is about headache intensity. XH is the new Bud headache. This that I'm writing now is headed XH, and I'll look over all the H headings when I get back to Farcamp or the Institute and probably try to even them out a little. And I have an increasing series of symbols for moods and feelings and stuff, although that's partly because I think some of the moods are actually dragon-language-background-layer and not me at all.

I have trouble reading some of my early notes about Lois because I was still trying to make up a shorthand that wouldn't get me slapped in jail and Smokehill turned over to developer piranhas if anyone found one of my notebooks, or broke the password on my computer (I am
not
a computer genius). I can read most of them, but not all of them. But everything, up till I started this, was still all notes, daily fragments and questions with no answers and unconnected details and ravings (lots of these). Dad's the one who told me that how I felt about all of it is valid too. Maybe our first conversation about it, when he started really leaning on me about writing this, went like this: “Valid for
what
?” I said. “Who cares? Lois is who's important—and now all the other dragons.”

Dad made scritchy noises running his fingers through his beard. (I don't think I'm just being whatever-my-old-man-is-I'm-not-going-to-be although maybe I am, since it's obvious that unless I'm kidnapped by aliens and even if I don't ever get any PhDs I'm going to be head of the Institute some day too, but I
shave
. Actually one of the reasons why I shave may be the scritchy noises Dad makes when he's thinking about something.)

“You're the human,” said Dad finally. “Sure, it's about our dragons, but most humans are mostly interested in other humans. You're a way for the ones who aren't so interested in dragons to get it. By tuning into
you
. And I know you don't want to hear this, but it's your story too.”

Actually this freaked me out. I can just about stand having Bud staring over my shoulder all the time and Lois glued to me (almost) all the time, but they're my
friends
. I don't want a lot of strange humans staring at
me
for a clue. Not me, boss.

But then I thought about what Dad had done, keeping the Institute going—have I reminded you recently that he's the real hero of this story?—and I thought about Eleanor on national TV…and then my mind did a sort of somersault and I thought about all those books I read when I was a kid about ordinary kids who lived in towns with streetlights and movie theaters, who went to school and played football and ate at McDonald's. The way I'd
sucked
them down, because I wanted to
know
. And okay, they were fiction, but they were real fiction, if you follow me, and how did the authors know how to make them up?

So then I thought about how I had felt about all of it. I thought about what had been going on behind the notes, as I reread my notes. And then I thought, okay, maybe I'll try it. And then I got the worst case of writer's block you can imagine, and I buried myself in dragons in the hopes that the Headache would hammer it all out of me. Either the writer's block or, preferably, this idea of Dad's (and, it turned out, Martha's too) about writing about how I
felt
.

And how I feel, here, in a cavern full of dragons, is that it's all so
interesting.
Which maybe you're thinking is an anticlimax, but in that case I feel sorry for you because that just means you don't really know about interesting. Interesting is as good as it gets—and no I'm not getting all
masculine
here, okay? I can say the word “love” and not throw up or turn blue. It if makes you happy, you can say that interesting is part of love—and if you'd like me to say I love my dragons, fine, here we go:
I love my dragons.

But it's turned out to be so much more than
just
(!) raising one baby critter no human has (probably) ever raised before. I'm still scared to death too—not
of
the dragons any more (except in terms of the fact that they're still BIG and I wouldn't survive being stood on, however accidentally, and however sorry they were afterward), but
for
them. Every now and then I heave this huge sigh like my lungs are going to burst before I get enough oxygen in and out of them, and it's
all about everything
.

I have to kind of get up and give myself a shake every now and then, like a snoozing dog, or one of those cartoon characters rattling himself back into shape after a piano or a brontosaurus falls on him, if the dragons and I are in the caverns. But if we're outdoors and we've started early and it's a nice day, I'll suddenly wonder why it's getting dark and why I'm so hungry and I'll realize we've been at it for twelve hours or more. (Dragons eat about every third day, I think.) Part of this is the headaches—they're confusing—Martha calls it
fuzzying
, and she's right, it's like they rub up your brain till it looks like a sweater a cat's been clawing—it's not just that they hurt, although pain can make you stupid too, even if it's a pain you're used to. I wish I could figure out what Bud isn't telling me about not getting headaches.

And I guess I've grown up strange, probably as strange as Lois, in my own way. But I was already strange four years ago when I met her, when she wasn't quite as long as my hand. But—if you're asking—I wouldn't have any other life. (There. That's how I
feel
.) I wanted to work with dragons, and you can't get any more working with dragons than this. Some of the old lifers here are about the only people who still treat me like I'm normal—without thinking about it, I mean. Even a lot of the Rangers are a little, I don't know how to put it, awkward. Wary maybe. I should be a freshman at some college this year, hanging out at the student union and drinking beer. I was too young to drink beer much when I met Lois, and I can't now, because of the headaches. You could say that while Lois has finally got to return to her people, my reward has been to leave mine. But it
is
a reward, even if it's a little complicated.

Hey, it's late. The fire's dying and I think my battery is too. Even Bud's eyes are almost closed: just a glint where the lids meet in the middle. I'm going to shut up now and get some sleep myself.

I wrote all that five years ago. (So, yeah. I've got all old and gross and legal-adult and everything. Deal with it.)

It's taken that long to get it through the Searles' lawyers. When I wrote it I hadn't even thought about the Searles'-lawyers aspect. I was only worried about trying to tell the story as well as I could without looking like any more of a moron than I had to—plus what people like Dad and Eric would think when they read about themselves. I wasn't trying to hurt anyone's feelings (although I admit hurting the Searles' feelings didn't bother me a lot) but where do you start, or where do you
stop
, telling the truth?

But it's the Searles that were the real problem. Somebody told me what I'd written was going to have to go through some legal stuff and I said “whatever” and went back to my dragons. Then it took months to hear any more—but I'd never been
happy
about trying to write the story of Lois' early life so I wasn't sorry that it went away for a while. Then we started getting legal letters. At first I thought, Drop dead, I'm not changing anything, and then I thought, Hey, great, it's not going to get published after all and go out into the world and be read by strangers…and then
Dragon Drivel
came out, or whatever dumb thing they finally called it, which is the “sensitive” version I mentioned on the first page, and it was even more gruesome than I'd expected. So then I thought, Well, okay, I'll have a try at changing what the Searles don't like—or I'll try to change some of it. Our lawyers had helpfully highlighted what they thought were the most controversial bits.

And I did try. But then I thought, I'm supposed to be nice about the Searles and their psychopath son when I'm not being nice about my own family? And if I start being nice about everybody all that's left is the me looking like a moron part. So then I went stubborn all over again and said “drop dead” officially, and our lawyers translated that into legal speak and…

So it's been five years. And I didn't change anything after all. Our Friends got involved and it was all going against the Searles—even I felt a little sorry for them—a little—they're stuck in their own reality warp which they have to make everyone else agree with, except almost nobody does any more, however much money they spend. But I suppose it's hard saying “yes okay our son was a rotten evil creep.”

Rereading it now—now that we've finally got the go-ahead, which gives me the grisly opportunity to have a fresh attack of second, or two-hundred-and-sixty-fourth, thoughts about doing it—what I remember most was how OVERWHELMINGLY shut in and squashed and paranoid it was, Lois' first two years. Even “claustrophobic” sounds kind of loose and easy, compared to what it really was. I know, I said this at the beginning, I said I didn't want to go back there, back to that tiny cramped heavy scared space, I didn't want to have to live through it again to write about it. But it gets worse with time, not better. I can feel the walls leaning on my elbows and my head is suddenly the only thing keeping the ceiling up as I reread what I wrote. Even though mostly things
didn't
happen, you know? Mostly they were still just days…
and
oh-by-the-way the crazy, appalling obsessiveness of every one of those days. Necessary? Sure. Fascinating? You bet. A fun time?
No cheezing way.

I also keep thinking about all the stuff I left out. Maybe I left the wrong things out, you know? Too late now. I can get back there even less now than I could five years ago, and I'm not going to try.

Which reminds me of the conversation I had with Eric after I'd given what I'd written to him to read. He didn't say anything immediately when he gave it back, although that wasn't necessarily a good sign. Eric's got human lately, by the way. He's got a boyfriend. Yup. Boyfriend. He says himself (I told you he'd got human) that it hadn't ever occurred to him that he was
gay
. He knew he wasn't very interested in girls and then just didn't think about it any more—maybe he was just 100 percent animal oriented—and Smokehill or any place where you're dealing with tourists all the time is not going to improve your opinion of the human race. Then one day Dan kissed him and (he says) it was like…oh.

He looked at me and I waited for the blast. It's not like he's not Eric any more, although the expression on his face was a lot more sardonic and a lot less toxic than it would have been before Dan. I tried not to shuffle my feet.

“Yeah, okay,” Eric said finally. “Fair's fair. I was pretty much a bastard in those days and I was more of a bastard to you than to most people. But you were…bless your little pointed head, you were such a lightning rod for it.

“I don't deny anything you've said in here”—and he gave my manuscript a flap—“but there is other stuff. Like that your self-absorption was way beyond spectacular long before Lois.” He brooded, continuing to give the big wodge of manuscript little jerky flips. The middle pages were starting to stick out from the rest. I probably wanted to be mesmerized by this because I didn't want to listen to what he was saying, but I did think about what was going to happen when those middle pages finished slithering out and you know how the harder you grab on to the outside the more of the middle waterfalls out. Maybe Eric and I could bond some more over putting them back in order. I don't think so.

“The best thing about you when you were a kid was that dog,” he said. “That was a really nice dog and you did a really good job with him. So there was that in your favor. Outside of that…you were so convinced you were the center of the universe—and the worst thing was you were right. You were the only child of the directors of the Institute, and the directors of the Institute were the rulers of the only universe that mattered. You bled arrogance like a slug leaves a slime trail.”

Eric's way with words.

“Jake, stop staring at your manuscript and look at me,” he said, testily. That sounded so much like the old Eric I had to smile. I also looked up. He smiled back, sort of, but it was a pretty steely smile. “I was the grown-up, so I admit it was my fault, and my responsibility, and I didn't do it very well. All right, I did it
lousy.
And it maybe needed someone like you, someone catastrophically self-absorbed, and someone furthermore who doesn't have a clue about anything but his own strange little world—have you ever had a McDonald's hamburger, for chrissake?”

“Once. I didn't like it.”

Eric snorted one of his laughter-substitute snorts. “Well, come to that, I don't like McDonald's food either. But I was twenty-six when I applied for the job here. I'd spent twenty-six years living in cities. Where there are always people everywhere—their noise, their buildings, their garbage—even if you're out in what passes for the country there's a permanent light haze at night from the nearest city and you're still smelling car exhaust. And you can always hear a car on a road somewhere, or your neighbors' TV through the common wall—and your electricity comes on wires from the power station. It may have taken someone like you to raise Lois—to raise a Lois. Someone far enough out of what passes for normal experience to connect with a dragon. That didn't make you a joy to have around.”

“A misfit,” I said, half involuntarily. I didn't really want to encourage him to keep talking about this, but I couldn't help myself. “A mutant.”

“Nothing wrong with your genes,” he said, and I remembered that my father was his staunchest supporter and Mom had actually liked him. “But a misfit, if you like. Just as Lois is. And the
mis-fit
the two of you have made together is changing the world. And yes, I was jealous, when I got here, watching you. That's the part Martha's got right. If a fairy godmother had offered me the chance to be a misfit like you—to grow up in Smokehill, to know it as the only world there is—I'd have been all over her.”

“I do—I don't—I read the news—” I started to say, I started to try to say with some kind of dignity.

“Oh, the
news,
” Eric said, like you might say, Oh, the
cat
threw up, or Oh, that's
chewing gum
on the bottom of my shoe. He shook his head. “You've changed. Or I wouldn't be bothering to tell you any of this.” He did his laugh-substitute again. “Hell, I admire you now—I wouldn't want to be Jake Mendoza, hero of the universe—anybody designed the logo for your cape yet? Only time I've ever seen anyone with his head that far up his ass just keep on going and come out into the sunlight after all. Wouldn't have said it was possible. All part of the new physics I guess. I'm just saying…you were a damned annoying little bastard.”

Only half to change the subject, because I also really wanted to know, I said, “When did you figure it out—about Lois?”

Eric looked away—up, down, sideways, as if he was looking for an answer like a lost tool that he must have left around here somewhere. “I can't remember not knowing. But I can't remember some kind of blazing moment of
Eureka! It must be that Jake's raising a dragonlet!
either. It's such a long time ago. Thank god it's all a long time ago.” He went silent and broody again, but this time he wasn't looking at my manuscript, but at me, and worse, he seemed to see what he was looking at. More not-shuffling-feet from Jake. “Do you find it hard to remember, now? To believe that it was as bad as it was?”

I nodded. “Yeah. And I
like
finding it hard to remember.”

“Yeah. Worst for you—for you and for Frank, and maybe Billy. It still sucked for all the rest of us. First the dead dragon and the son of a bitch who'd killed her, and—that was enough. And all those assholes wandering around, with their cheap suits and cheaper attitudes, demanding to know
everything,
including a lot of stuff they wouldn't be able to get their heads around anyway, but especially not when they'd already decided we were guilty and couldn't prove ourselves innocent. You couldn't turn around without another asshole wanting to know what you were turning around for. And we were guilty of course—just not of what they thought they knew.

“Slowly we all realized we hadn't lost the plot, there
was
something else going on, besides trying to save Smokehill. It wasn't just we'd made something up because we wanted it so badly. We all knew by the time you went off to Westcamp, I think. But saying it out loud might make it true somehow the assholes could catch us at. We saw it in each other's faces—and jerked our eyes away.

“It's funny now. But the thing—the
only
clue—that something was going on besides major damage control and the likelihood that we would lose Smokehill—the one thing anyone could actually point to, that didn't look like desperate wish-fulfillment—was the way you were behaving. You weren't even on the planet—which in your case, Jake, is saying a lot. There was this crazy wired intensity about you—but what could be more important than the havoc over the dead dragon, the havoc that might cost us Smokehill? And the way you'd always hated the poor damn lizards in the zoo and the poor stupid fools who wanted to believe they were dragons because at least they were
there
and you could look at them—jeez, chill out—and suddenly all that went away? What else could it be but that you had got yourself a real dragon? And if you could hide it in a Ranger's cabin, it had to be a very small dragon. Baby dragon. So the one that got killed was a mom dragon. Simple. Simple when we knew you.”

I took a deep breath and said firmly, “Eric, I always thought
you
were pretty arrogant.”

Eric really did smile at that, a long, slow, glinty-eyed smile, like nothing I'd ever seen on his face before. “Takes one to know one, kiddo,” he said. “And I dare you to put that in your story.”

So I have.

Eric still cleans
odorata
's cage, if nobody volunteers. What head zookeeper cleans his own cages? Eric's even got staff now. Mind you, I don't think—Dan or no Dan—Eric's doing it to spare anyone. He just doesn't want anyone being mean to
odorata.
So I suppose I have to say he's not only
not
the kind of bully who likes to assign the worst jobs to the people he hates most, that he
let
me clean
odorata
means that even if he did think I was a pain in the ass, I was a responsible, conscientious pain in the ass. I suppose this should make me feel better.

 

But a tremendous lot has happened in these five years, besides most of us lifers being able to start to
forget.
And if you've got this far in my dragon adventures and have learned to survive (or skip over) my philosophical blather and general rant you might like to hear about some more of it. Help make up for the five years you've been waiting. Ha ha. And if you
have
been waiting, the first thing on your last-five-years list is the story about how Bud almost flew through the front gate—at least according to the mail we, especially me, gets, that's the first thing on your list. (I get a lot of lists. People seem to think I'm going to find them helpful.) But if this is all really a soap opera with dragons—as it is, according to the mail—you might want to hear some of the rest of it too.