The Iron Dragon's Daughter (15 page)

"Be Silent!"

"I caaaaaan't heeeeear you."

"BE SILENT!"

"Good." He put his fingertips together. "Now, class. Children. Dear, dear little children. We are privileged today—most privileged—to have a distinguished visitor coming here to visit us in our class from the Board of Industrial Corrections. Do you know who he is?"

Nobody said anything.

"That is correct. You do not know. You must wait for me to tell you."

Now Strawwe slipped from the desk and began silently gliding between the rows of students. It took an effort not to cringe when he appeared suddenly in the periphery of vision, or when the shadow of his ruler fell across Jane's knuckles, hesitated, hovered, and finally moved on. She didn't dare look at him as he passed. For such inattention, a sharp blow to the ear was the least of what she might expect.

A board creaked underfoot just as he reached the front rows, and a head covered with tight red curls turned reflexively at the sound.

Whack
. The ruler slashed down, and Jane heard Hebog suck in his breath sharply. He didn't cry out, though. Dwarves were tough.

"Mis-ter Hebog. It appears you are a little
short
—" Grunt paused, to let a tiny smile blossom on his puffy lips. "—of attention today."

The tension broke and everyone roared with laughter, Jane included. Too late, she caught hold of herself and stopped. But even the other dwarves were laughing. Three of them were black dwarves, of course, but it was depressing even so.

When the laughter died down, Grunt said, "The Three Ins! Recite them!"

"In-dolence, In-solence, In-gratitude," they chanted dutifully.

"That is correct." A sense of Presence was building in the hall outside, an ominous pressure tinged with ozone, as if a storm cloud were gathering just over the horizon. "And when you are, despite my best efforts, indolent, insolent, and prone to ingratitude, you may then be required to answer to—" The proctor materialized by the door, opened it a crack, and nodded. "—the child catcher."

Strawwe flung open the door, and the child catcher stalked in.

He was an eerily handsome creature, artificially tanned, and wearing an imported silk suit. His strong hands were sheathed in black leather gloves. His hair was stiff and bristly—there must have been a touch of wolf in his blood—and his ears were aristocratically laminate. He smiled with square, even teeth. But he said nothing.

The class stirred uneasily.

Standing before the desk, the child catcher dominated vision. Grunt and Strawwe vanished in his presence. Above him the clock over the blackboard provided a secondary focus of attention, its disk the only curved line in a surround of right angles, the nervous once-a-second leap of its thin red hand the only movement in a universe where all motion had died long ago.

Now the child catcher took something from his pocket. It was a scrap of cloth, coarse and scratchy-looking, of a color somewhere between olive and brown. One black glove clenched it tight and raised it slowly to his long, lean nose. His eyes darted back and forth across the class.

Slowly, deeply, he inhaled.

Memory flooded Jane.

She was back in the dormitory in Building 5 of the steam dragon works. This was one of her earliest memories, and one that had always puzzled her. It was morning, and the forges were going full blast as they had for the past two weeks, their roar a constant in the background. She stood by her bed, folding her blanket. All the children were bustling about, preparing for Blugg's morning inspection and eager for breakfast.

Suddenly her vision blurred and doubled. Simultaneously she was standing here by the bed and sitting in the back row of what she did not then recognize as a classroom. Strangers were all about her. A tall, dark creature was staring at her from across the room, his eyes two pinpricks punched in reality.

Her hand froze on the blanket, its material coarse and scratchy, of a color somewhere between olive and brown. It seemed infused with some terrible significance. In all the world only it seemed truly real, an anchor to reality; if she let go of it, she would fall headlong into her vision and be lost forever.

Rooster punched her shoulder. "Yo, droopyhead. What's with you?"

She shrugged, and was back in the classroom. The child catcher was lowering the scrap of cloth from his nose and staring straight back at her. He raised a long arm, cuff links sliding smoothly into view, pointing toward the back row, and for the first time spoke.

"You. Young lady. Please stand."

Paralyzed with fear, Jane watched as the girl to her immediate left tremblingly stood. It was Salome.

The child catcher stared at her. One eyebrow rose quizzically, and his nostrils flared ever so slightly, as if there were something about the situation he did not entirely understand, but was sure he could puzzle out. He started to take a step forward.

Out of nowhere, somebody farted.

It was a horrifyingly drawn-out monster of a fart, one that brought all eyes to the front row. It smelled of methane and wild onions slathered over a base of boiled cabbage, with a nose-pinching tang of sulfur to give it depth. The air took on a distinctly greenish hue as it slowly expanded to fill the room. Several of the girls giggled nervously and clapped hands to mouths. The ruder feys held their noses.

"Mister Hebog!" Grunt cried, aghast.

Strawwe, returned to existence, had already reached the front row and yanked the struggling dwarf from his seat. Grunt seized the opposite arm and the two of them ran him full tilt at the blackboard. His skull hit the slate with a resounding crack, and a thin line zigzagged crazily away from the point of impact.

The child catcher watched it all with a politely detached smile.

Grunt stepped back, and Strawwe hauled the dwarf to his feet by the back of his collar. He held him so that Hebog stood on tiptoe, red-faced and choking. In a trice he had been whisked out the door, toward the detention hall.

Jane felt a soft touch on her wrist. She whirled, and no one was there.

At a frantic gesture from Ratsnickle, meanwhile, Salome had slipped back into her seat. It was exactly the sort of opportunity Ratsnickle would spot first, the chance to sit down and be forgotten. Salome appeared dazed. Softly, wonderingly, she said, "Hey. I didn't think he'd… Hey."

The child catcher cleared his throat. "Now where was I?" His shrewd eyes studied the last row, lingering this time on Jane. "Ah, yes."

Again, he drew the scrap of cloth from his pocket.

When he inhaled, Jane felt a shuddering wind blow through her insides. She shivered with cold and a strange sense of violation. The child catcher was still staring at her. His eyes narrowed.

Slowly the scrap of her old blanket came down from his nose.

The sounds and smells of the classroom faded away, like noise from a dying radio. Jane felt a panicky inability to catch her breath. The room was still and airless. Her classmates sat as motionless as so many brightly printed cut-out figures.

The child catcher turned to Grunt and took him between thumb and forefinger. He gave the pedant a shake, then laid him flat across his own desk.

Unhurriedly the child catcher went down each row, plucking the children from their seats and draping them across one arm. When the stack grew thick, he would return to the front of the room and set it down atop their teacher. He saved the back row for last, taking up everyone but Jane herself and carrying them to the front. Jane trembled and tried to avoid his eye. The last child to go was Ratsnickle, still smirking. The child catcher put Strawwe down atop him, bug-eyed and indignant.

He pulled a chair from back of the desk, and sat down.

"Come." The child catcher gestured to Jane. "Sit on my lap, and we'll talk."

Jane had no choice but to obey.

His legs were hard and bony under her; Jane felt awkward perched upon them. She stared at the back wall. One gloved hand squeezed and massaged her shoulder. "I have the power to seize you here and now and take you away by force. Do you doubt me?"

Jane shook her head, unable to speak.

"I am an agent of Law, Jane, and it is important that you understand and acknowledge my authority over you. A compact was made when you were small, a binding contract whose terms you have unlawfully tried to escape. You will say that this was your right because you had suffered an injustice, and that it was an injustice because it was not your signature on the deed of indenture." He shrugged. "But you were—you still are—a minor, and legally your signature would mean nothing. If an injustice exists, it is rooted too deeply in the past for you to do anything about it." He took her chin in his hand and turned her face to his. His eyebrows were dark and thorny. His eyes were as flat and calm as two mirrors.

"You can see that, can't you?"

Jane squirmed, but said nothing. He could kill her, he could send her back to the dragon works to labor forever. He could never make her agree it was right.

The child catcher sighed then, as if profoundly disappointed in her. "I come from the North. We hunt monkeys there with a widemouthed bottle and a stick. Do you know how that's done?"

"No," she squeaked.

"It's very amusing. We drop a single sweet cherry into the jar and then withdraw a distance. The monkey comes along. He sees the succulent in the jar, reaches within, and grasps it in his fist. But the jar is so shaped and sized that he cannot withdraw his hand when it is clenched. He could easily escape the jar by letting go of the cherry, but he wants that little treat too dearly. He cannot bring himself to let go. Even when the hunter approaches whistling and twirling the stick, he cannot bring himself to surrender his prize.

"So up comes the hunter and bashes his brains out with the stick."

The child catcher drew an ostrich-hide memorandum book from an inside jacket pocket. He handed her a piece of chalk. "Now, Jane, I want you to write in your very best hand the words I tell you. Write them in five even columns as straight and neat as you can." He waited until she was in place. "Recurvor," he said. "Recusable. Recusacao. Recusadora."

Jane was so frightened that she was halfway down the board before she recognized the words she was printing as the operational lock-codes for Moloch-class dragons.

Trying hard not to show she knew what they were, Jane printed out the words as he gave them. Maybe, she thought, they wouldn't work. The landfill was a good quarter-mile from the school after all.

When she reached the bottom, she looked at what she had made:

Recurvor

Recusable

Recusacao

Recusadora

Recusamor

Recusancy

Recusative

Recusaturi

Recusavel

Recuser

Recuserati

Recussion

Recussus

Recutio

Recutionis

Recutitos

Recutitum

Redaccao

Redaccendo

Redactadas

Redactamos

Redactaron

Redadim

Redadinar

Redambules

Redamnavit

Redendum

Redibitar

Redictor

Redivamat

Redocculla

Redoctar

Redoctamos

Redombulas

Redorradio

"That's a good start," the child catcher said over her shoulder. His breath was sweet and tickled her ear. "Now take up the eraser."

His hand closed about hers and gently guided the eraser over the blackboard, like the planchette of a Ouija board. It glided above the surface, not touching, then abruptly dipped down to erase a word. Up and down the board their merged hands moved, seemingly at random, wiping out the lock-codes one at a time.

Finally the child catcher released her hand. "There," he said in a pleased voice.

Recurvor

Recussus

Recusadora

Recusamor

Redaccendo

Redactamos

Redadim

Redambules

Redamnavit

The temperature in the room dropped. A tremendous sense of presence darkened the air, like an iron cloud passing before the sun. Voiceless words said,
What do you want
?

It was Melanchthon.

Jane tried to turn around, but could not. Her neck muscles seized up tight and unswiveling as if she were held in steel claws. Nor would her legs respond. She stared at the blackboard while the child catcher said, "Your name."

What does it matter what my name is, little doggie?
The dragon sounded gentle, almost sad.
You can call me Death, if you wish. I killed your kind by the thousands in Avalon.

The floor creaked as the child catcher walked to Grunt's desk, slid open the drawer and removed something. A second later, he held that something sharp and slim against her throat. It was Grunt's silver letter opener. "Did you want to discuss death?"

Paralyzed, Jane felt like an egg held in the grasp of two hands and contested for by each. Melanchthon's presence was overwhelming, like the gravitational tug of a mountain that had suddenly materialized in the schoolyard.

"A hostage." The child catcher removed the letter opener from Jane's throat. She felt a dreadful itch where its point had pricked her. "You like riddles, do you? Try this one: Johnny-a-locket hides in my pocket. Yet when he shouts, whole armies turn out."

The forces holding Jane captive weakened, and she turned to see the child catcher grimly confronting an empty room. For all that the dragon's aura was everywhere, a cold reptilian understench of malice, he was not physically present. He was waging this fight entirely by electronic countermeasure technology.