Steven Harper - The Dragon Men

“You’ve lived a long time as a Dragon Man,” he said in a tight voice. “I don’t understand how.”

“Nah. You wouldn’t. Not yet.” Uri rose and got two cups of tea from the table. He gave one to Gavin. “But I’m telling this story out of order, aren’t I? It’s because time means somethin’. . different in this place.”

Gavin accepted the cup but twisted it in his fingers, too distracted to think of drinking. Everything was so damned strange. He wanted to hate his father, but he also wanted to please him. He was caught on the edge of a square, unable to tell which way he would tip.

“I was an airman, you know,” Uri said.

“Yeah. Me, too.” He paused, still hanging on the edge of the square. “Are you glad?” Proud?

Uri waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. Your own path has to make you glad or not. Another guy’s opinion matters much as wind matters to a mountain. But,” he added thoughtfully, “being an airman is a damned good path.”

It was the right thing to say, and Gavin felt himself relax a bit. “So how did you end up in China?”

“I was on a run to San Francisco, and I pulled down the clockwork plague.”

Gavin breathed out. He knew this was the case, but it was hard to hear it said aloud. “And?”

“I thought I was going to die. I was sick bad, but no one would help me or even let me come close to them. One night I fell asleep in a stinking alley, and my fever broke. I still remember how it felt, like something snapped inside me. It jerked me awake, and the entire universe swallowed me. It was incredible. I was a clockworker, and I wasn’t sick anymore.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Gavin demanded, angry again. “Why didn’t you write or telegram? Or come home?”

Uri remained serene. “I was a different man then, Gav. I didn’t always think right. That’s not an excuse. It just is. Maybe I thought I was sparing you the pain of hearing I was sick. And later, I was sparing you the pain of having a clockworker in the family.”

“Yeah, well, you were wrong.”

“Can’t argue with you. There’s no way to make up for it. I would if I could. All I can do is say I’m sorry.”

Gavin shifted on the hard stone. Suddenly he realized that he hadn’t touched this man, his father, except to hit him. He set the cold cup down and reached out to put a hand on Uri’s shoulder. It was heavy and warm. Gavin’s throat thickened, and he dropped his hand.

“Anyway,” Uri said, “I woke up in Peking after a fugue. Looked like I’d stolen a boat, fitted it with a new engine I built, and zipped all the way across the Pacific just for the hell of it. The Chinese realized I was a clockworker-Dragon Man-and they brought me to the Forbidden City. In there, the eunuchs stuck me with a salamander like yours, and for months I invented for the emperor. I built birds. Wings. I was always good at wings.”

Gavin flexed his own. “It runs in the family.”

“Those,” Uri said, “are fucking genius, and I want to look at them. I was never able to fly myself.”

“Not enough lift, right?”

“Yep, yep. Even Chinese kites don’t give enough.”

“It’s the alloy. The wings push against-” He stopped. “No. I want to hear about you. What happened then?”

“I invented birds that recorded messages and flew to the last person they touched. The emperor loved them, and he gave them to his family. Later, they became the big thing for running messages between lovers.”

Dad had built the silver nightingale that recorded voices? Gavin felt in his pocket, but it was empty. Alice still had theirs.

“Then the emperor told me to make my birds into weapons because he wanted something that would patrol the borders. I didn’t want to, but when the Jade Hand talks, you listen. I made two, just enough to shut the Hand up. But what the emperor didn’t know was that I also had added somethin’ to the design. Somethin’ the Hand didn’t ask for. It didn’t say I couldn’t, you know? See, I added a bit that put the birds on the lookout for my kids. They all look for you kids, just in case you might come to China.”

“How the hell would they do that?”

“We’re all made up of tiny bits that copy themselves over and over, and half of those bits come from our moms and half from our dads. Maybe one day we’ll be able to tell exactly who is born to who, and the emperor won’t need to hide his concubines behind red walls. But my birds look for people who are half like me. My kids. My son.”

“Why?”

His gaze went far away again. “Time is all one piece, Gavin. It’s a river with a beginning and an end, but it’s still all one piece, and everything happens all at once. You can be sucked into it, or you can stand outside it, but it all stays one piece.”

“So you’re saying you saw that I was going to come, and you arranged for the bird to tell you when I crossed the border.”

“Kind of. I knew about you because it was also happening when I first arrived. And it’s still happening now. I couldn’t avoid creating the bird to find you, and you can’t avoid singing the moon song. It had already happened, and it was happening, and it will happen again. That’s why you came, you know. You couldn’t avoid it any more than I could avoid sending the bird. Yep, yep.”

“So we have no choice?” Gavin interrupted. “We’re little automatons that follow the rules?”

“Not what I said. You’ve already made all the choices, the ones that make the river’s course. Us guys who step outside the river can see them; that’s all. It’s better to accept what has happened and what will happen.”

Gavin’s head was beginning to swim. “How does it all end, then? Can you see that?”

Uri ignored the question. “Once I finished the emperor’s command, I was. . unhappy. I didn’t want to create more weapons, no sir. But I heard rumors about a place where Dragon Men could go, a place where they could invent and study in peace until their time came. A place called the Blessed Monastery of the Azure Water. When I finished the two birds, the Jade Hand stopped commanding me, so I created a spinning device that mesmerized the eunuchs. That let me sneak out of the Forbidden City. Took me a few weeks of searching, but I found this place. It looks like an ordinary monastery, and the emperor leaves it alone, but there’s a lot more to it than he knows.”

“That must have been years ago. How are you still alive?” Gavin leaned forward. A hope he had been hiding, not daring to show, slipped out into the moonlight. His voice was small. “Dad, do you have a cure?”

“Ah. That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Uri touched his salamander again. “There’s a cure, but it’s not the one you’re thinking of.”

Gavin’s breath caught with excitement. “Can you cure me?”

“No.”

The hope died, and he felt the wings dragging at his back again, pulling at the scar tissue under his black shirt. He looked away, not wanting Uri to see him upset.

“But,” Uri continued, “you can damned well cure yourself.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yeah. That’s why you still carry the plague.” Uri set his cup on the stones with a soft click. “See, the reason we clockworkers die so fast is that the plague makes us look the universe straight in the eye. Trouble is, we have a strong sense of self, so we try to stay separate from the universe even when the plague makes us look at the whole damn thing. We’re part of the universe, not separate from it. Means we can’t hold ourselves apart while we’re looking at the whole. The paradox burns your mind out, like a candle dropped into a bonfire.”

“Then how-?”

“The candle can’t hold its shape in the bonfire. It has to become one with the fire. If it does that, it still exists, but in a new form. You gotta accept yourself as a clockworker, accept everything the universe is trying to show you, become one with it. The universe can’t harm itself, you see. Become one with it, and you become immune to it. Serene. Balanced.”