The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet (14 page)

“You doin’ okay, then?” he asks Paia. He’s trying to be business-as-usual, but this hard lump of rage in his gut is as indigestible as spoiled lard. Things don’t usually get the best of him, but this is real brand new, knowing your mama’s been murdered and there ain’t jackshit you can do about it. “Never thought I’d be
wishing
for dragon transport,” he grumbles.

Paia takes two steps for each of his long ones, sticking close beside him. No dawdling now. “Are you surprised the dragons haven’t come to find us?”

“Yeah, a little. You’d think Dolph would’ve made ’em come, for your sake.”

“Something might be keeping them. Something might have gone wrong up there.”

“Don’t even think about it, girl.” He doesn’t mention the anxious emptiness he feels, in the inside places that grew to make room for the dragon. She probably feels exactly the same.

A vehicle approaches from intown. N’Doch turns, his thumb already out. A battered pickup roars past, churning up a moving envelope of dust. He turns forward again, blinking away grit. A huge explosion rattles the shutters along the wall beside them. Maybe they’re bringing in the artillery. He tries to set a slick pace, but it’s hot as blazes and they’ve got a long way to go. He can’t afford to use Paia up within the first five klicks. He should’ve thought to bring water from his mama’s house, if there was any. Should’ve looked around, at least, if he’d been thinking straight. He knows where water used to be, along the way to Papa Dja’s, the shops and water-sellers’ carts. But that
was then. Who knows where he could find it now. Lots more has changed than the beachside
bidonville
. He’d like to get a look at a newsfax or just a calendar, to tell him what month it is, what year? Some very serious shit has obviously gone down here, stuff that’d take a lot longer than the two weeks that have passed for him, real-time. Two weeks! He can’t fathom it. It feels like half his life.

Or is it just that he never noticed how bad it was, when he was living here day to day, intent on his own gigs and his own survival? He never saw how played out the people are, abject and sick, and stuck in a landscape that no longer supports them.

Doesn’t matter, really. N’Doch knows now what it’s all leading up to. He’s seen the result, been there in person at endgame. Maybe it was too late already, by his time. But what if the right world leaders had seen what he’s seen, had really faced the truth—could they,
would
they take the right steps to stop the downward spiral toward the end? If they’d known the truth, if they’d
believed
it, would they still have let the planet die?

You could test it, he muses, if the rules of dragon travel were more flexible. If only the big dragon could go anywhere in Time, not just to places he can see or that can be immaculately imaged in the mind of a dragon guide. It wouldn’t be too hard to figure out when the irreversible decline began, then just go there and warn them. Snatch the key people forward, like he was snatched, and shove their noses in the inevitable results of their greed and shortsightedness.

But it ain’t gonna work that way, is it. That would take hope, and in this part of the world at least, hope is obviously dead. Besides, we’d rather have everything we want, now, now, now, and to hell with future generations!

“What?” Paia asks gently, walking beside him.

N’Doch realizes he’s been muttering. His fists are clenched again, so tightly that his wrists ache and his fingernails are boring holes in his palms. He shakes his head. When did he get to be such a raging bleeding heart?

“Nothing. Sorry.” One day, he’ll write a big angry song about it, for all the good it’ll do. Make him feel better, maybe, but that’s for later. Right now, he doesn’t feel much like singing.

She peers up at him compassionately. He can see this priestess woman has a talent for empathy. Probably she needed it in the Temple, for dealing with her flock.

“I’m fine,” he says, trying to sound less irritable. He considers turning back for the water, back to his mama’s house, but then he’d have to look at her dead face again, so full of reproach. Instead, he speeds up, paying more attention to the rubble on the street than to what street he’s on. He glances up finally to check his bearings, and sees he’s nearly run them into yet another roadblock.

Idiot!
He’s been thinking about Baraga again.

This checkpoint’s at the edge of town. Luckily, there’s a line waiting in front of it. N’Doch yanks Paia behind a trio of anxious women whose heavily loaded baskets are balanced neatly on their heads. Should he try to bluster his way through? He wishes Paia was better dressed to blend in. Her plain, pale clothing stands out among the bright and busy patterns worn by the women ahead of them. The soldiers have a big APC blocking the street. They’re checking papers, and matching faces against data relayed on their handhelds. The old people and kids, he notices, are being waved right through.

“C’mon,” he mutters. “This ain’t gonna work.”

Turning aside, he hurries Paia through another maze of back streets, his stomping grounds from his bad old days. Who knew his sneak thief’s knowledge would come in so handy? But the next road out of town is also guarded, and the houses and walled courtyards form a solid barrier in between. Just as it’s occurring to N’Doch that they might be trapped, he hears the one sound he’s been listening for all along, the one he truly fears: the thwock, thwock of ’copter blades. Paia hears it, too. She glances up, then quickly at him. He nods, and instinctively, they both shrink against the nearest wall.

“Coming in low and slow,” he says. “Observational speed.”

So it’s not a troop transport. He could tell that by the sound of it anyway. In times past when he was chased by police ’copters, N’Doch would head for the market, to lose himself under the cover of the stall canopies. But the market is a burned-out mess.

He urges Paia into one doorway and he takes the next, as the bird makes its pass. He risks an upward glance as it glides by. It’s small and sleek and white, not the olive drab of the military ’copters. Its engine noise fades a bit, then N’Doch hears it turn and head back in their direction. He gestures Paia to stay in her doorway for the second pass, which is slightly more toward the center of town. When it’s gone, he waves Paia forward.

“He’s gridding,” he explains, pointing upward. “Search pattern.”

“For us,” she remarks quietly.

This time, N’Doch doesn’t tell her she’s paranoid. He vows silently to listen harder when she talks about Fire. “We’ll go doorway to doorway. It’s our only chance, till we find a way outa town.”

The ’copter thwocks past on a third run, low enough for its rotors to stir up the dust in the gutters. N’Doch can just make out the insignia on its side: MediaRex Enterprises. He glares after it as if his furious stare was weapon enough to bring it crashing to the ground.

Paia tugs at his sleeve. “If we stay in the alleys, there’ll never be a place big enough for it to land.”

“Yeah, but if it spots us, it can radio the ground troops to close off whatever street we’re in. C’mon, let’s move.”

They’ve just turned the next corner when the ’copter heads back their way again. But this alley has no doorways, not even a window, just tall, faceless walls all the way to the end, where it empties into a little square. N’Doch listens to the approach, and decides to make a run for it. But the ’copter swoops past sooner than he’s expected. By the way it pulls up sharp and wheels around, he knows it’s seen something interesting enough to investigate. Suddenly the sky between the walls seems very close.

“Quick! We gotta get outa this slot!”

He’s tried not to drag Paia around too much, so he doesn’t have to get physical. But now he’s got no choice. He grabs her arm and sprints for the little square, praying for some sort of rabbit hole they can dive into. As they streak past the first few houses fronting the square, N’Doch’s head swivels. He pounds to an abrupt halt. Paia slams into him. He’s got to catch her in his arms to keep
her from sprawling flat on the pavement. Her body feels great, pressed against his, but he hasn’t time for that right now. He’s just seen the weirdest thing.

The ’copter is nearing. N’Doch lets Paia go and backs up several steps. She watches in confusion. The square is lined with the older-style houses, with little high-walled courtyards out in front, entered through tall wrought-iron gates. A few of these gates are still fastened tight. Most have been beaten in or wrenched entirely off their hinges. But one orange stucco archway is closed with a pair of wooden doors, old paneled doors with flaking blue paint. It’s amazing that the wood is still intact, and that’s what caught his eye, but it’s not what stopped him cold. One more back step, and he’s in front of it.

One of the doors is slightly ajar. The courtyard inside must be catching some rogue patch of sun, because hot light streams outward through the crack like water from a bilge leak.

“What is it?” Paia glances from the noisy sky to his face and back again. “What?”

N’Doch puts the end of his tire iron to the unlatched door and shoves it open. “Omigod.”

“What?”

“Omigod,” he says again.

Paia hurries up beside him to stare through the doorway. “Ohh . . .!”

“Someone’s sure got us on their radar, and it ain’t only that ’copter.”

Just past the doorway, the dry bush country stretches to the horizon and the blue, blue sky in all directions. A dry yellow landscape dotted with scrub, pursued by dust devils, hammered by the sun. They’re at the edge of an abandoned peanut field, scattered brown weeds still marking out the rows. To the left, a faint red trace of a road leads off and behind a distant straggle of brush, crowned by an unlikely stand of trees. Tucked in its shade is a patch of mustard-colored stucco.

N’Doch has to shout over the scream of the rotors as the ’copter settles in to hover right over their heads. “See that, under that taller bunch of trees? That’s Papa Dja’s homestead.” He wonders what the ’copter sees.

Paia pushes the other door wide, flat against the inside wall. Except there isn’t any inside of the wall. Her hair is blowing loose from her thick braid in the ’copter’s down-draft. “We’re going in, right?”

“Oh, yeah. This is gonna save our asses!” N’Doch has given up resisting the bizarre things that keep happening to him, but he can’t give up being amazed. Could the old man have done this himself? Or the dragons? Maybe they’re in there, waiting in Papa Dja’s courtyard.

A bullhorn blares intimidations at them from overhead. N’Doch quick-scans the sky inside the doorway. Baraga could have his birds out looking here, too. Once they’re in, the portal will close behind them and they’ll be stuck in the middle of an open field until they reach the scrub around Djawara’s house.

It must be something about being home. He’s seeing himself as a vid character again. Like where the hero takes the beautiful girl by the hand and steps calmly out the door into certain danger. Or in this case, from one danger to another, and this hero doesn’t feel anything like calm. Conjuring a ghost of his old rakish grin, N’Doch glances up and waves to the ’copter pilot. “See ya ’round!”

The rust-hued bush wind slaps them full in the face as they duck through the archway. Curious, N’Doch holds on to the doorjamb, and looks back. The wooden doors and their framing arch are there, and through them, the rubbled square whirling with flying grit and rotor roar. Elsewhere, for 360 degrees, nothing but red dirt and scrub, and the windy silence of the bush.

He lets go of the door. The portal vanishes. He and Paia stand breathless for a moment, absorbing the sudden change in their surroundings. N’Doch waits for that filling up of the empty spaces inside him that’ll tell him the blue dragon’s around. But the ache remains. He swears softly and strikes out across the empty peanut field. “Better not hang here in the open for too long.”

He sees nothing moving around the distant compound or in the fields around. Not surprising, as it is pretty much midday, when anyone with a brain in his head gets out of the sun. Probably some of the mutts will be lying around the gate, though, just keeping an eye on things.

But no mangy critters leap up to confront them as they round the corner of the yellow wall. No flocks of blackbirds explode from the trees.

“Look,” says Paia. “The gate is wide open.”

“He always leaves it like that.” But this is not strictly accurate. Papa Dja leaves it
unlocked
, not all bent askew and off its hinges, just like the big gates back in town. The tire iron hits the dry roadway with a dull clatter. N’Doch bolts for the opening, then sags against the gatepost, clutching the bent ironwork. He shuts his eyes, murmuring a prayer he didn’t even know he knew.

When he looks again, the trees are still there, gathered in a green and inviting corner of the yard. And there’s the neat little garden plot. But his grandfather’s house is a pile of rubble. It looks like giants have stomped it into chalk and gravel. N’Doch feels like howling, madly, inarticulately, but even in the grip of fury, he’s aware this might alert pursuers. He wishes he could just puke up the bile and blind rage tearing his gut apart like a school of sharks. His distant third choice is to push off the gatepost and slam his fist against the peeling stucco. Pound, pound. Loose paint and plaster fly like shrapnel. Pound. Pound. Again. Again. Where is the damn dragon when he really needs her?

Paia wraps both hands around his forearm. “Stop that! Stop that right now!”

The momentum of his strike swings her around and smacks her against the wall. N’Doch doesn’t notice. “I fucked up again!”

“It’s not your fault!”

“I should’ve been here!”

“You didn’t know!”

“I did! We all did! The bastard told us what he was gonna do, and he went and did it while we stood around and fucking
talked
about it!” He lifts his fist for another pound, but she’s on him again, grabbing at his arms. N’Doch shoves her aside and tears into the ruined compound.

Paia chases after him. She catches up as he stops to stare at the rows of wilting tomatoes. This time, she keeps her hands to herself.