Carver shrugged. ‘Just wondered,’ he said.
‘You’re thinking about getting them out, aren’t you?’ he asked. He wagged a finger at Carver — You’re a naughty boy! — but he didn’t actually look pissed.
Carver shrugged again. Maybe this guy wasn’t a complete fuckhead after all. Crazy, yes, but maybe not actually bad all the way through. Probably not actually stupid, either. Maybe just misunderstood, like Carver himself. Maybe he could be reasoned with. Carver wondered passingly what the dragon-man’s eyes would taste like. He imagined biting down on one of them, maybe bursting it. ‘I just wondered,’ he repeated.
‘It’s all right,’ the man said. ‘The dragon told me you would.’
And there it was again. Just when Carver had thought he might be able to make some progress with the guy, there it was again. The bloody dragon. How could you reason with a man who listened, first and foremost, to the voices in his head? And what if — when — they dug as far as they could into this fucking rock, and the man found nothing there? What then? He sounded polite and almost human at times, but Carver didn’t kid himself that there wasn’t something badly wrong with the crazy dragon-man. Even if he could be reasoned with, he surely couldn’t be trusted. Would he try to murder Carver when his little dig turned up nothing at all? Carver, despite having mercilessly butchered innocent people himself, feared his own demise as much as anybody.
‘This. . . dragon. . .’ Carver began cautiously, watching the man’s face for any change in expression at the broaching of this touchy subject. ‘. . . You really think we’re gonna find it? Like, buried in this asteroid?’ He tipped more chemically-flavoured sugar onto his tongue and washed it down with the warm water.
‘I know you think I’m insane,’ said the man earnestly. ‘But it is here.’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Carver, knowing that he was edging increasingly further out onto thin ice.
‘It told me,’ said the man simply, as if this constituted undeniable evidence.
Carver nodded, trying to look understanding. ‘What, exactly, is it?’ he asked, not really wanting to hear the answer but unable to stop himself.
‘I’m not sure,’ said the man thoughtfully. ‘Maybe it’s some ancient alien that was buried here; maybe some sort of sentinel to guard the belt; maybe. . .’ he trailed off, turning to look out of the window again. ‘It doesn’t really like to be asked,’ he said at last.
‘Why can only you hear it, do you think?’ Carver asked. When the man turned back to him his face was trembling and twitching, as if tears were threatening to overcome him. Carver realised that he had pushed it too far. That was, if anything, his major character flaw. That had been the problem with the woman on Aitama — he’d just gone a little too far. And now he’d done it again. Never question the delusions of a madman, he scolded himself.
‘What does it matter?’ the man asked emotionally. ‘What does it matter when you don’t even believe me?’ His mood had switched again, and now he sounded like a sulky three-year-old, full of indignant anger. He stared at Carver for a moment, trembling, then looked down at his knees. He shook his head once, smartly, as if to clear it.
‘Sorry,’ said Carver experimentally. It was a word he had little experience with, but he’d noticed that it could be effective with people sometimes.
There was a long and uncomfortable silence while the man sat that way, head bowed and hands squeezed together in his lap. When he looked up again, though, his face wore its previous expression of indulgent good humour. ‘Oh, it’s okay,’ he said. ‘You’ll see, I suppose. In time.’
‘Maybe I will,’ Carver agreed diplomatically. Crisis averted, he thought, grateful that he apparently wouldn’t be getting shocked again. He looked around the cockpit, trying to think of a way to change the subject. At last, his mind snagged on something, and the question was out of his mouth before he could stop it: ‘So where’s the pilot, then?’
The man grinned in a slightly embarrassed way. ‘Ah. . .’ he said, holding up one finger as if to say Now that’s the question! He released himself from the pilot’s seat, pushed off, and floated across the room to the navigator’s station. Carver watched him, hypnotised. The man braced himself against the far wall and spun the seat around.
In the navigator’s seat sat the shattered wreckage of what had once, undeniably, been a human being. It was dressed in a one-piece flight suit, the original colour of which had probably been blue, but which was now slathered almost entirely in dried blood. The person’s skull (it was impossible to tell if it had been a man or a woman) was not just caved in but almost completely obliterated, and a large spanner lay across the figure’s lap, matted with clumps of flesh and hair. This tool had clearly been utilised in an excessive manner: the pilot had been not just killed, but deliberately destroyed. Carver felt a lump in his throat. He imagined this gently-smiling madman beating the already-dead pilot again and again and again — as many times as the voice in his head instructed, Carver supposed. He sat, staring and stunned. Contradictory emotions bloomed within him: awe; shock; excitement; sick pleasure; fear for his own safety. Mainly the latter.
The man’s sheepish grin extended slowly into something more sharklike — predatory and primal — and he turned the seat away again as if suggesting that maybe they should just forget about it. Carver sat staring, his mouth open and a thin trail of food particles drifting out of it like exhaled smoke.
‘Yeah,’ said the man, as if Carver had asked him a question. His eyes looked as if they were focused on something on the distant horizon. ‘About that. . .’
Chapter Twenty-One
The man worked hard, as was expected of him. The dragon had never claimed that his work as its emissary would be easy. In fact, it had warned him that sometimes he might find his tasks difficult, even unsavoury to carry out. And hadn’t that been the case already? It would be worth it in the end, though, he knew. Good medicine always tasted bad, right? He mentally shrugged and released one of his rock pins, holding the cutter by one handle behind his back, out of the way. He moved the pin to a new position, moved the other one, then fired up the cutter again.
‘You are doing well,’ said the dragon suddenly. This was the first time it had spoken to him for some hours now. Oddly, despite the noise of the cutter, he didn’t have any trouble hearing it. In fact, he thought its voice was a little louder than it had been before. He supposed that now that there was less material between him and it. He might have been imagining it — maybe it was just wishful thinking — but he certainly thought it was louder. And that must mean that he was making progress.
‘Thank you,’ replied the man quietly, concentrating on inscribing a cone shape with the plasma beam. It occurred to him how easy it would be to have an accident with the thing, an accident that could be as tragic as Sal’s accident had been. Yeah, a little voice in his head told him, but that wasn’t exactly an accident, was it? He ignored the voice — after all, you were crazy if you listened to voices in your head, right? — and applied himself anew to the task at hand.