Paint Your Dragon (26 page)

‘All right, then,' Snorkfrod replied, ‘you go.'

‘Huh?' Slitgrind's face was a study in bewilderment. Imagine what God would look like if he opened his post one morning and found he'd got a tax rebate. As bewildered as that.

‘Go. Bugger off. Sling your hook. We'll see you back at the factory.'

‘But...' Slitgrind's expression added terror to its repertoire. ‘But we've got to stick together,' he whimpered. ‘We can't go wandering about on our own, it's not
safe.'

Snorkfrod gave him a stare you could have broken up and put in whisky. ‘Slitgrind, you nerk,' she said, ‘you're a demon from sodding Hell. You're twenty million years old. I think it's probably time you learned to cross the road on your own.'

‘We aren't splitting up.' Chardonay had spoken with - well, virtually with authority. Not a large-scale authority - something like the English Tourist Board - but enough to get him his colleagues' attention. ‘We've got work to do. Come on.'

He stood up, knees wobbly and calflike, head erect, and started to walk towards the van. The others had to trot to catch up with him.

‘Where're we going, Chiet?' Prodsnap asked, puffing.

Chief,
noted Chardonay's subconscious. ‘To find the dragon,' he replied. ‘And kill it.'

Three demons stopped dead in their tracks. A fourth used the delay to catch up - it's always hard to run in high heels, even when they're an integral part of your foot.

‘Are you crazy?'

‘No,' Chardonay replied. ‘I'm bruised, lost and very frightened. But it's our duty. We're peace officers, with a responsibility to maintain the Divine Order. That dragon has just killed Saint George, it's against all the rules. It's got to be sorted out. And,' he went on, swallowing, ‘since it's us here on the spot, we've got to do it. Is that clear?'

‘Stone me,' Prodsnap muttered. ‘He's serious.'

‘I'm with you all the way,' sighed Snorkfrod, passionately. ‘And I want you to know, I think that's the most moving thing I've ever heard.'

‘Thank you,' Chardonay replied. ‘That means a great deal to me. How about the rest of you lads?'

Prodsnap, Slitgrind and Holdall exchanged glances.

‘We're right behind you, Chief.'

‘Count me in.'

‘You can depend on us.'

For a moment, Chardonay was lost for words. He glowed and seemed to grow an extra inch or two. ‘Thanks, guys,' he said softly. ‘Right, here goes.'

He punched his left palm with right fist, turned and headed off towards the van, Snorkfrod's arm through his. The other three fell in behind them.

‘Men.' Chardonay settled himself in the driver's seat, put on his seat-belt and took off the handbrake. ‘I just want you to know, whatever happens from hereon in ...'

Words failed him, not because of any sudden access of emotion, but because at that moment the back-seat passengers clobbered him and Snorkfrod silly with the tyre iron.

 

Not even for old times' sake
?

The dragon shook his head. ‘No way, Nosher,' he replied. ‘Look, I really am grateful to you, saving my life and all that, but I've had enough. I've done what I came to do and now I'm off.'

‘No. Think about it, Nosher. I've got my whole life in front of me. I can go where I like, do what I want. Last thing I need is Hell putting a price on my head for snuffing five of their people. I'm more conspicuous than Salman Rush-die, Nosher. Longer. Harder to conceal. It'd be a confounded nuisance and I can do without it.'

The dragon laughed. ‘Sure you can, Nosh,' he replied. ‘I mean, twentieth-century Earth is positively teeming with dragons, I'd have no trouble whatsoever blending in with the crowd. Get real, pal. I'm out of here.'

Fred.
The letters on the screen grew dim, flickery, as if to suggest deep and sincere regret.
If you walk out on me - well, around your neck be it.

The dragon froze. ‘You bastard.'

Chubby, who'd been silent, nodded sagely. ‘Besides,' he added, ‘how'd they know it was you? I've been making enquiries. As far as Hell Central's concerned, those five idiots are with a coachload of other idiots over in Nashville, Tennessee. Nobody knows they're here. When they don't come back, I expect Hell will assume they've defected to the other side, something like that.'

‘Defect?'

The dragon growled ominously. ‘You're bastards, both of you,' he said. ‘All you care about is your stinking profits.'

Chubby clicked his tongue. ‘Why is it,' he demanded, ‘that people are always so rude about profits?'

‘Free enterprise,' Chubby went on, ‘is the life blood of commerce.'

‘Maybe,' the dragon snarled. ‘But I'd rather not have their free enterprise on my paws, if it's all the same to you.'

‘You'd do it, wouldn't you?'

The dragon sighed. His eyes, as he glowered at the screen, were case-hardened with contempt. ‘You know something, Nosher?' he said. ‘You're evil.'

‘I do.'

The screen flickered, by way of a dry chuckle.

 

With an effort, Mike stopped screaming and pulled himself together.

It took some doing. Sixty per cent of him was slowly drifting away through space. Forty per cent of him was slipping unobtrusively into the future. It was like trying to impose your will on seven over-excited Highland terriers.

Heel, Mike commanded. And toe. And leg. And arm. Oh Christ, and head too.

You know the bit in all the films where they've just found the suitcase full of the money from the big heist; and suddenly the wind gets up and the air is full of flying banknotes; and first they all caper frantically around trying to catch them; and then they realise it's hopeless and collapse laughing to the ground while the credits roll all round them? Well, it was rather like that, hold the laughter. All Mike could manage (particularly since his face was now thirty yards and four hours away from the majority of him) was a wry grin.

The hell with it. Why bother? He was just about to relax and finally let go when ...

Look gift horses in the mouth if you must, but when confronted with a wholly unlooked-for, vacant, unlocked, fully furnished statue just when you're on the point of dissolving into space and time, you look for the little hatch between the shoulder-blades, you grab as much of you as you can reach, and you jump.

 

‘And this,' said the Council spokesman, ‘is where the fountain was to have gone, and here's where we would have put the floral clock, and here's where we'd planned to have the big brass plaque recording the munificent generosity of Kawaguchiya Integrated Circuits (UK) plc.' He paused and drew breath. ‘And here ...'

Five pairs of impassive Japanese eyes followed his pointing finger and fixed on another part of the bomb crater.

‘Here,' continued the spokesman, ‘we intended to have the centrepiece of Kawaguchiya Integrated Circuits Plaza, the staggeringly impressive statue of Saint George and the Dragon, by possibly the world's most talented living sculptress, Bianca Wilson.' Time for another breath; a deep one. ‘Instead...'

He stopped. He blinked, rubbed his eyes. It was still there. ‘Excuse me,' he said.

He touched it; solid. As a rock, you might say. Just to be sure, he kicked it, hard.
Ouch!

‘Instead,' he went on, ‘we have no dragon, but now we do seem to have got St George back. About three seconds ago, to be precise. Don't ask me how we did it, but we did it.' He sat down and removed his shoe. ‘Clever old us, eh?'

If the KIC people had noticed anything odd, they didn't let it show. Two of the younger ones whispered to the grey-haired type who seemed to be the delegation leader. He nodded and whispered something back.

‘Very big statue,' he said.

‘It is, yes,' the spokesman agreed. ‘And, um, solid. Made of solid stone, all the way through. Yessiree, this baby's here to stay.'

The Council spokesman pulled his shoe back on, stood up and assumed a didactic pose. ‘You will observe,' he said, ‘the remarkable use of line which Ms Wilson has managed to achieve; the dynamic tension implicit in the composition of this masterpiece; the impression she conveys of desperate, headlong motion frozen for all time in the ...'

Slowly, as if it had the cramp in its left leg, the statue got up, winced, swore and hobbled away down Colmore Row.

 

Yes, Bianca said, she'd accept the charges. ‘Mike, where the hell...?'

‘In a call-box just off Pinfold Street,' Mike replied. ‘Can you come and pick me up? Only ...'

‘Well?'

Mike glanced over his shoulder. Because it was only an ordinary-sized call-box, he was on his knees with his nose pressed right up against the glass. People outside were staring.

‘Just hurry, will you? And bring a lorry.'

He put the receiver down, breathed out hard. Someone was hammering on the door. Edging round carefully, he opened it and scowled.

‘What's the matter, you daft bitch?' he growled. ‘You never seen a statue before?'

 

By coincidence, at precisely that moment another lorryload of statuary chugged round junction four of the M42, taking the exit signposted to Birmingham. In the back were eight Berninis, three Donatellos, three Cellinis, a Canova and the Giambologna
Mercury.
Michaelangelo's
David
sat next to a harassed-looking man in a black jump-suit in the cab.

‘Sorry,' David admitted. ‘I've never been much good at map-reading. Well,' he amended, ‘this is actually my first attempt, but if I'd ever tried it before, I don't suppose I'd have made much of a fist of it then, either.'

Kurt muttered something under his breath. ‘We're on the right road now, huh?'

‘I think so. We want to go to the big sprawly grey blob, looks like a squashed spider, name of Birmingham, right?'

Kurt swore and hauled on the wheel. ‘Okay,' he said, ‘I've turned right. Now what?'

David bit his lip. ‘Sorry,' he said, ‘I meant right as in okay, not right the opposite of left. I think actually we wanted to go straight on.'

‘Oh, for Christ's sake!' Kurt had strong views on the subject of suffering fools gladly. It made him glad if fools suffered a
lot.
‘Now we've gotta go miles out of our way. Concentrate, dammit.'

‘Sorry.'

They drove on in silence for a while; Kurt sulking, David feeling guilty. When they were safely back on the right road, however, David turned to Kurt and said, ‘Excuse me.'

‘Well?'

Difficult to find a tactful way of putting this. ‘What are we, like, doing here exactly?' David asked.

‘The job,' Kurt replied. ‘You realise they drive on the wrong side of the road in this faggot-ridden country?'

‘What job?'

‘The
job. Deliver the statues, snuff the dragon, and then we're outta here. Not the weirdest thing I ever got hired to do,' Kurt added. ‘In the top twenty, maybe even the top ten, but not in at number one. Still, it ain't exactly difficult. And it sure beats what I was doing before.'

‘Which was?'

‘Being dead.'

‘Ah. Right.'

Kurt frowned, detecting a certain lack of awe in his companion. After all, not many people come back from the dead. Even fewer come back from the dead and walk straight into a plum job in their chosen profession, as though they'd never been away. Jesus Christ and maybe Sherlock Holmes—Kurt, who'd been around and heard a thing or two, knew all that stuff about surviving the Reichenbach Falls was just a tax dodge - but that was it.

‘You ever been dead, son?' he queried:

‘Not to the best of my knowledge.'

‘Give it a miss,' Kurt advised. ‘Don't get you anywhere.'

‘Who're we working for, then?'

Kurt's spasm of impatience nearly caused an accident. ‘You don't ask questions like that in this man's business, boy. You can come to harm asking questions like that.'