youâre right,â she said. âIâll do what I can.â
âOh joy,â the voice said unpleasantly, âoh bliss. Oh yes; when all this is over, remind me to skin you alive and use your hide for a doormat, would you?â
âOf course,â Karen replied.
âThatâs all right, then,â the voice said. âGoodbye.â
Karen put the phone down and leaned back a little in her chair. Damn , she thought. If thereâs one thing that gets in the way of overcoming an obsessive guilt complex, itâs finding out that everything really is your fault after all.
Something else for her to do; more duty. Itâd mean having to take time off from this job (leaving him alone with her ), probably packing it in altogether; and by the time she got back (assuming she got back and wasnât immediately whisked off Home by the DIA) they would probably be living together, possibly even married, and everything sheâd hoped for would have come to nothing, leaving her to face the dreadful consequencesâ
Indeed. And the hell with that - what on earth could have happened to her father? Dragons donât just vanish. More to the point, dragons canât just vanish - not unless they want to; but her father wouldnât want to, there was no conceivable reason why he should want to disappear, especially if heâd come Down on purpose to look for her. The only possible explanation was that something really, really terrible had happened to him, something so dreadful and unspeakable that it had made him impossible to locate Such asâ
She could only think of one such-as likely to have that effect.
Karen thought about that. She thought about it for quite some time; and, because (in spite of everything sheâd done and everything sheâd been responsible for) she was still a dragon, when her tears began, they trickled hard and hot down every window-pane in the city.
CHAPTER THREE
T he rain played drums on the roof, rattled the gutters, pressed its nose hard against the window-panes like a starving man watching the diners in a fancy restaurant; it tapped on the glass like a young lover urging his beloved to elope with him, it hammered against the french windows like a bailiff, it pawed and butted like a cat demanding to be let in.
The goldfish couldnât see or hear it, but he knew it was there; he could feel the presence of rain in the same way that you can wiggle your toes with your eyes shut. He could feel anger and frustration in its tempo, he could feel it searching for him and not being able to find him, as if he were King Richard and the rain was Blondel, singing under the castle walls. He tried to call to it, to summon it, command it ( Heel! Sit! Good rain! ), the way heâd done ever since he or anyone else could remember; but the water and the glass surrounding him insulated him from it completely, bouncing all his shouting and yelling back at him - and, since he was a goldfish, condemned by nature to hear with his whole body, he felt each sound crashing into him, like a misdirected trolley in a crowded supermarket.
It was ludicrous enough to be utterly humiliating; that he, adjutant-general to the dragon king of the north-west, should be trapped in a bowl of water . It was cruelty so delicately refined that he was amazed a dumb, blundering, tiny-brained mortal human had been able to think of it; a little pottering wingless biped, one of the tens of millions who scurry for cover at the first drop of rain, as if they were made of pure salt. Anger welled up inside him, radiated outwards and was dissipated entirely in the water, raising its temperature by five or so degrees. Having no other outlet for his wrath - no pondweed to shred with scything fin-strokes, no bits of rock to pound into dust with his tail - he hung motionless in the water and hyperventilated, the constant meaningless opening and closing of his mouth visible through the convex glass of the bowl
âOh joy,â the voice said unpleasantly, âoh bliss. Oh yes; when all this is over, remind me to skin you alive and use your hide for a doormat, would you?â
âOf course,â Karen replied.
âThatâs all right, then,â the voice said. âGoodbye.â
Karen put the phone down and leaned back a little in her chair. Damn , she thought. If thereâs one thing that gets in the way of overcoming an obsessive guilt complex, itâs finding out that everything really is your fault after all.
Something else for her to do; more duty. Itâd mean having to take time off from this job (leaving him alone with her ), probably packing it in altogether; and by the time she got back (assuming she got back and wasnât immediately whisked off Home by the DIA) they would probably be living together, possibly even married, and everything sheâd hoped for would have come to nothing, leaving her to face the dreadful consequencesâ
Indeed. And the hell with that - what on earth could have happened to her father? Dragons donât just vanish. More to the point, dragons canât just vanish - not unless they want to; but her father wouldnât want to, there was no conceivable reason why he should want to disappear, especially if heâd come Down on purpose to look for her. The only possible explanation was that something really, really terrible had happened to him, something so dreadful and unspeakable that it had made him impossible to locate Such asâ
She could only think of one such-as likely to have that effect.
Karen thought about that. She thought about it for quite some time; and, because (in spite of everything sheâd done and everything sheâd been responsible for) she was still a dragon, when her tears began, they trickled hard and hot down every window-pane in the city.
CHAPTER THREE
T he rain played drums on the roof, rattled the gutters, pressed its nose hard against the window-panes like a starving man watching the diners in a fancy restaurant; it tapped on the glass like a young lover urging his beloved to elope with him, it hammered against the french windows like a bailiff, it pawed and butted like a cat demanding to be let in.
The goldfish couldnât see or hear it, but he knew it was there; he could feel the presence of rain in the same way that you can wiggle your toes with your eyes shut. He could feel anger and frustration in its tempo, he could feel it searching for him and not being able to find him, as if he were King Richard and the rain was Blondel, singing under the castle walls. He tried to call to it, to summon it, command it ( Heel! Sit! Good rain! ), the way heâd done ever since he or anyone else could remember; but the water and the glass surrounding him insulated him from it completely, bouncing all his shouting and yelling back at him - and, since he was a goldfish, condemned by nature to hear with his whole body, he felt each sound crashing into him, like a misdirected trolley in a crowded supermarket.
It was ludicrous enough to be utterly humiliating; that he, adjutant-general to the dragon king of the north-west, should be trapped in a bowl of water . It was cruelty so delicately refined that he was amazed a dumb, blundering, tiny-brained mortal human had been able to think of it; a little pottering wingless biped, one of the tens of millions who scurry for cover at the first drop of rain, as if they were made of pure salt. Anger welled up inside him, radiated outwards and was dissipated entirely in the water, raising its temperature by five or so degrees. Having no other outlet for his wrath - no pondweed to shred with scything fin-strokes, no bits of rock to pound into dust with his tail - he hung motionless in the water and hyperventilated, the constant meaningless opening and closing of his mouth visible through the convex glass of the bowl
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