In this struggling-to-be-calm voice Dad said, still too loud, "Billy says — " and stopped, like it was also finally sinking in that there were other people around who might hear him. He stood aside and I stood up, cradling the invisibly peeping dragonlet in my hands, and went in. He closed the door and I sat down in the first chair that I came to, waiting to see if the dragonlet would quiet down or if I was going to have to whip it out immediately and feed it, which was usually the answer to everything in the dragonlet's case, feeding. (I was, of course, carrying a bottle. A bottle, unlike a camping pot, at least fits in your pocket.)
I was glad when it subsided. I thought my father needed a little more time before he saw it.
When I looked up again and saw the expression on my father's face. . . . In hindsight I think he was having a parental crisis moment. Traumatic experience or no traumatic experience I had Broken the Rules — I hadn't radioed Billy and I hadn't got back on time — and I was in huge amounts of trouble and should have been totally focused on finding out what kind of punishment my father was going to give me, or whether he was going to force me to go through the "let's discuss this like rational adults" lecture which I would have to go along with to prove that I could be treated like a rational adult although only a parent would ever think that a kid believes that's what's really happening. And instead I'd positively ignored him while I attended to this other responsibility that was not only mine but had nothing to do with him. At least when I used to shut him out by saying I had to take Snark for a walk, Snark was really his fault. My parents had bought and given me Snark. The first time a kid ignores a parent because something else is realio trulio more important, has to be hard on a dad, especially when the kid is only fourteen (and eleven months).
And that doesn't even touch the federal-prison-for-the-rest-of-our-lives, losing-Smokehill aspect of this case, which Dad had only just found out about this minute. And the eyes of the world were already on us, because of the dead guy. And I don't suppose Dad was sleeping too well either.
I didn't understand any of that at the time but I did see the expression on his face. The bits of it I understood were that he was furious and at a loss. I hadn't seen this expression before. I was pretty scared, but I didn't want to scare the dragonlet too, and . . . well, having that kind of responsibility does make a difference. All that crap parents give you about Learning to Take Responsibility . . . it's not crap. And what was happening wasn't even in the same universe as being "responsible" for Snark had been. I was probably having a son crisis to go with my dad's dad crisis. Things you can do without at the age of fourteen and eleven months.
"I've heard it from Billy," said my dad. "Now you tell me what happened."
So I told him. I don't think I told it as well as I'd told it the first time, even on no sleep, and in the first shock of everything. But when I'd told Billy I'd known he'd be sympathetic. Three years ago I'd've known — I think I'd've known — that my dad would be sympathetic too, but I didn't know that any more. The last three years had screwed up a lot of things. So I left out a lot. I didn't tell him about having to feed the dragonlet every half hour or about being so filthy I wanted a bath or about being so exhausted I was hallucinating and crazy. I wanted to sound a little bit remotely in control. And I didn't mention the headaches. Or the dreams. I hadn't even told Billy about crying when she died. I stopped when I got to Billy finding me.
My father didn't look at me while I talked. When I was done he sat down, heavily, in his desk chair, and Billy quietly took the remaining third chair.
"You realize that if anyone finds out, we'll all go to jail," was the first thing my father said. I had my mouth all open to reply — and while I don't know exactly what I would have said, I guarantee it would have been the wrong thing — when he raised his hand to stop me, even though he still hadn't looked at me. "No, you don't realize. You haven't thought about the fact that you'd be sent to a reformatory, and when they let you out you'd go to a foster family, they'd have their eyes on you all the time, and so would the media, and about half of them would think you were a hero and the other half would think you shouldn't ever be let out of reform school at all to corrupt the rest of our population with your depraved ideas, and while I'm not going to tell you your life would be ruined, it would certainly be complicated, and I am telling you they'd never let you within a mile of studying dragons. They'd probably bar you even from taking natural history or biology or ethology in college.
"Meanwhile, of course, we'd all go to jail too, and my guess is that any parole any of us got would be on the condition that we didn't try to make contact with each other." My father paused. I semi-registered that he hadn't bothered to mention that being sent to jail almost certainly would ruin his life, as well as Billy's and any other adult they decided to crucify.
At the same time I could feel stubbornness breaking out all over me like measles. "I won't give her up," I said, which is how I found out I thought it was a she. "If she dies then she dies, but I won't let her die. I'll go away in the park and hide till she gets big enough to fend for herself" — like I knew how to keep either of us alive till then, or that the social workers wouldn't prosecute Dad for making away with me if I disappeared — "but I won't just let her die."
"Yes." My father heaved a deep sigh, still not looking at me.
"Sir," said Billy. Billy only called my father "sir" when it was really serious. "We can do this. It will be difficult, but we can do this."
"You've kept my son hidden at Northcamp till you figured this out," said my father with a bitterness that scared me.
"I was really really tired," I said, before I thought whether this was wise or not. "I was spending all my time looking after her. She eats all the time. I couldn't've walked this far any sooner. And she'll only — she only — only I — " There was no way to say this without feeling like a complete jerk. "She thinks I'm her mom."
But I think blurting it out like that helped. My father looked at me, finally, as if registering the real problem, which was the dragonlet, instead of all the other problems, which were created by the fact that some morons in Washington had decided that a bill against saving dragons was good for their careers — plus the dead guy, which because of all the other moron laws against dragons no one would be able to think about in terms of "self defense" or "what was he doing in Smokehill after our dragons in the first place because pardon me he killed a dragon which is also you know illegal?" But he was dead, and wasn't going anywhere (except into the headlines). Which is what my dad would already have been coping with and been thinking was enough, thank you very much.
But the dragonlet was not only here, she was alive. And it was up to us to try to see that she stayed that way. Dad had to see that. It was, as I keep saying, what we — us and Smokehill — were for.
I tried to make myself get it that part of my dad's bitterness was that he knew he was going to be stuck with all the treacherous political stuff and Mom again had been the person who poured the most oil on the permanently troubled waters between the Institute and everybody else, chiefly Congress and the Federal Parks Commission, partly because she didn't start off all heavy and scowly and hyper the way Dad did. Which meant we were already in worse shape going into our little treason-and-insurrection dance around my adopted daughter because the FPC, goaded by Congress, was already looking for reasons to think the worst of us because Dad couldn't always remember that to a bureaucrat bureaucracy is important. Dad would be all on his own with not only the totally unrewarding admin stuff and the horribly dangerous new stuff about the dead poacher and the dead dragon . . . but hidden in the background there was a secret live dragon . . . and the Rangers and I got her.