NABC Book 5: Chapter 42: Flying Around
Book 5: Chapter 42: Flying Around
Book 5: Chapter 42: Flying Around
Howard
September 2343
Jabberwocky
Iopened my eyes to find myself still entwined with Bridget’s dranny. I was contemplating the situation and feeling my dranny’s sleepiness slowly dissipate when Bridget opened her eyes. Vertical pupils, it turns out. I hadn’t actually noticed before.
“So what shall we do with our day?” I asked her.
“Coffee.”
“Uh, we just had coffee. Back home. No coffee here.”
“Not quite true, Howard. Dragons don’t have caffeine as such. They use alcohol instead. A hot drink, mostly ethanol, with some spices for flavor. It’s called tuev.”
“Seriously? Isn’t flying under the influence kind of a problem?”
Bridget sat up and stretched, sort of like a cat—extended forelimbs, then arching her back until the stretch worked its way back to her, uh ...
Apparently, flight wasn’t the only thing that worked on male dragons. Bridget’s gaze trailed downward, and she smiled.
*****
Sometime later, I stretched and said, “So tell me about tuev?”
“The dragons metabolize alcohol. It doesn’t make them drunk. It’s like sugar in this biosystem, only more so.”
“Huh. So a good stiff martini in the morning gets you ready for the day?”
“Uh-huh. Just like back home, sort of.” She chuckled. “Let’s get some breakfast.”
We stepped out onto the “porch,” which was really just a horizontal pole attached to the pod. I had a momentary image of myself as a parakeet in a cage, and I had to suppress the urge to ask for a cracker. Bridget would have killed me, and no one would prosecute.
A short hop with only a couple of wingbeats got us onto the main branch, and we joined a procession of dragons, many looking like they also needed that first cup of wake-me-up. We ended up in front of an open-air kiosk where a harried-looking vendor was trading coins for a cup of something. I looked down at the coins in my hand and realized that they were copper and iron. Interesting. Just like Heaven’s River. Apparently, it wasn’t just biology that tended to stick to a theme. řАŊổBЁš
Baseless, I remembered, was what you were if you got tossed overboard. It meant not having a home, which technically included Bridget and me. Foreigners.
“Rumor has it they’ve set fire to floaters that defied them,” she continued. “That seems far-fetched, though. No one would be that stupid.”
I could see the shocked look on Bridget’s face and quickly checked my briefing notes. I’d been thinking of the floaters in an overly casual context, apparently. Dragons had an almost religious reverence for them, and burning one would be like ... like sacking the capital city of your enemy. Something humans had done with casual abandon all throughout history. Except that floaters were living, breathing beings, not just a patch of ground.
“Doesn’t that just create a whole tribe of committed enemies?” Bridget asked.
“If they live. Word is the Alexandrians surround the floater and kill anyone trying to escape.” Our companion gave us a skeptical look and a slight tip of her cup before moving on.
“Well, that sucks,” I commented.
“It more than sucks. Floaters have very low reproduction rates, which is typical for a species that is large, long-lived, and doesn’t have much in the way of natural enemies. And they aren’t useful as villages until they reach a certain size. This Alexander character could single-handedly change the ecology of Jabberwocky.”
“Want to hit him with a buster?”
She smiled at me. “Did I accidentally call you civilized? But no. Chances are, one of his lieutenants or children would just take over. We’d have to obliterate a good fraction of the army to stop it, and I think that’s more than even the most warlike Bobs could stomach.”
“So we’re going to ... ”
“I don’t know, Howard. Wing it?”
I nodded, then realized she was giving me an expectant look. I replayed what she’d said, then groaned and got a smile in response.
*****
We took to the air from one of the outer branches, then circled around to glide below the floater. It was slowly drifting eastward with the slight wind from the hills. As we came over a lake, the floater dipped its tendrils and dragged them through the water. Bridget circled, with me following.
As we came to the far edge of the lake, the tendrils retracted, and Bridget moved in. Dragons weren’t birds, but they did have a lot of the same talents, such as the ability to grab a vertical perch and hang off sideways. Bridget inched her way down the tendril, then began pulling up the remaining length. I circled and watched her work.
After another minute, Bridget dropped off the vine and caught air. I pulled up beside her as she described an arc that would take us back to the town. “And?” I said.
“Later. I have to think about this.”
That meant she’d found something interesting. The wait would be frustrating, but worth it.