Structophis Read online

  “Whoa, hey. I’m not ready to be raising a two-thousand-pound daughter. Great Uncle Dimitrios has been taking care of her for the last few years. Surely he’ll fit the daddy role.”

  “Sure, maybe. Where is he, anyway? He’s got a lot to answer for.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then that doesn’t really help you much, does it? Plus, there’s still the other issue.”

  “Which is?”

  “That flakey golden crust and the stunted growth are still evidence of mishandling and mistreatment, even if she seems to be fairly healthy. We’re talking about an endangered species, Mark. If the authorities see what she looks like before she’s old enough to fend for herself, you’re looking at jail time, and might I remind you that you being locked up means she won’t get the proper care she needs.”

  “… This keeps getting better,” Markus said, eyes wide and distant.

  Blodgette, apparently feeling Markus needed some comforting, plopped her chin onto his shoulder, nearly knocking him over.

  “Hey, look at the bright side,” Gale said, raising the camera and snapping a picture.

  “There’s a bright side?”

  “Sure.” Gale admired the preview on the DSLR’s screen. “Auntie Gale is going to have one hell of a great thesis when this is all over.”

  Chapter 3

  Markus was swiftly learning a few things about being Blodgette’s caretaker. She was very, very clingy, particularly with Gale about. Even after the overt terror of a hyperactive and critically fascinated aspiring large-animal veterinarian had faded, the dragon was still unwilling to leave Markus alone long enough to get anything done. She had one pudgy mitt wrapped around his. Her other hand held an old deliveryboy jacket, and whenever Gale came close enough to touch her, Blodgette would huddle a little closer to Markus.

  The endless sequence of Gale’s investigations and Blodgette’s retreats had pinned Markus into the corner of the dining room, trying to use his free hand to juggle both a stack of old-fashioned address books and his cell phone.

  “Uh-huh. Yes. This is his nephew. Well, a few levels further removed than that but—no. … No, I don’t need more vinyl repair kits. The booth chairs are fine. I’m just wondering if maybe Dimitrios told you where he was going, because the business is sort of falling to pieces without him. … Okay. Thanks for your help. Yes, I’ll make sure I tell him hello when I find him.”

  Markus ended the call and tried to look past Blodgette, whose bulky form almost entirely filled his vision.

  “Gale, are you still here?” he asked, standing on his tiptoes to look over Blodgette’s shoulder.

  The creature released a concerned warble and took a half step back, flattening Markus against the wall. A moment later there was the flash of a camera and the furious scratching of pen on paper.

  “Yeah, you’re still here. Could you move back a bit? I feel like a knickknack that slid down behind the armoire and was never heard from again.”

  She must have done so, because Markus could feel Blodgette become less tense. With a gentle nudge, which for a behemoth like Blodgette nearly needed to be delivered with a baseball bat, he coaxed her out of the way and led her to the center of the room.

  “Well, that’s it. He didn’t cancel any deliveries, didn’t reroute any mail, and he hasn’t told anyone where he’s going.”

  “Shouldn’t you be worried?” Gale asked, snapping another picture as Blodgette shuffled behind Markus and plopped down.

  “A normal person doing that would worry me, but Dimitrios is the guy who decided three days into his honeymoon that he wanted to find out what buffalo mozzarella tasted like, so he went to Germany for two weeks.”

  “… Why Germany?”

  “He thought that’s where buffalo mozzarella came from. How’s Blodgette doing?”

  “It’s kind of hard to tell; she’s really skittish. Traditionally, Structophis gastrignae are raised as sort of a community project. Everyone takes turns shoveling coal, and when the true emergence begins the whole town gathers to witness it. If you and your great uncle are the only ones who ever fed her, and she emerged alone or maybe with just Dimitrios to see it, she might take a while to adjust to new faces. But her health is very good, considering. Which reminds me. I found this in the kitchen. See if you can get her to open wide for me.”

  Gale held up a digital fry thermometer with a long probe.

  “Why…?”

  “Internal temperature is very important. We can’t risk her getting overheated, it could be fatal. She’s gone long enough since her last drink that she’s probably at about equilibrium, so this will give us a good idea of where she is in her development.”

  Markus turned to the creature. She turned happily to him and grinned, an expression that was mostly visible in the angle of her mask and the sliver of lip exposed on either side.

  “Okay, Blodgette. I need you to open your mouth.”

  Blodgette cocked her head to the side.

  “She’s smart, Markus, but she’s not going to understand the whole language just yet. You’re going to have to demonstrate,” Gale said.

  “Like this. Ahhh. See? Do this. Ahhh,” he said, pointing eagerly at his mouth.

  Blodgette squinted, then climbed to her feet and shuffled toward the kitchen, taking him by the hand and tugging him after her.

  “Okay, what did I say? Where are we going?” Markus said.

  She stopped at the doorway and merely reached inside, snagging a stick of pepperoni and turning to hand it to him.

  “What? … Oh. No, that wasn’t a baby-bird ‘feed me’ ahh. That was a ‘you do this’ ahh.”

  He gestured with his hands and demonstrated repeatedly, Gale doing the same, until Blodgette finally followed suit.

  “Ahhhhhhhhh,” she said, that particular vocalization within her range.

  The “voice,” such as it was, certainly had a very distinctive quality. It was a bit like a parrot’s imitation of speech, closer to a tweet that had been extended and smoothed out than something someone would confuse for a legitimate human. It was also several octaves deeper, putting one in mind of the sound a tugboat would make.

  Far more distinctive, however, was the breath. It had all the same scents as a brick-oven pizzeria working at full bore: the tomatoes, seasonings, crust, and coal all contributing to a pleasant, rustic aroma. It was also incredibly hot, akin to the rush of hot air one gets when checking on a Thanksgiving turkey.

  Gale placed the tip of the probe under Blodgette’s tongue and watched the number start to tick up.

  “See if you can get her to close her mouth but not bite down,” Gale said.

  Markus shrugged and mimed the required motion with both his mouth and his hand, closing each slowly until she began to imitate. When it was closed enough, he stopped and held up his hands. She stopped and held up hers as well.

  “Yeah!” Markus crowed, high-fiving one of Blodgette’s raised hands.

  The creature looked curiously at him, then returned the gesture. With all her size and weight behind it, the blow knocked him to the ground. Blodgette’s eyes shot open, and she chirped in dismay, crouching to pull him to his feet and wrapping him in an almost-but-not-quite-too-tight hug.

  “It’s okay, pal,” he groaned. “No harm, no foul. … Please let go. I have to breathe.”

  While the dragon reluctantly loosened her grip on Markus, Gale took the thermometer from where it had fallen and checked the peak value.

  “Yeah… We’re up near eight hundred degrees. I’d say we’ve got about three days before a spritz with a sprinkler isn’t going to cut it anymore. We’ve got to get Blodgette someplace better suited to her needs, and we’ve got to start her on better eating habits. Decent hardwood, good ores. If she gets onto good nutrition now, over the course of her growth, she’ll incorporate all of this into her body and hopefully grow beyond it. She’ll be smaller than she should be, but she can still recover a bit.”r />
  Markus blew an exasperated breath and stepped back from the clingy creature.

  “Okay, okay. Let me think. Water and wood are easy enough to get. Ore is the tricky one. Where do you get ore?”

  “Quarries,” Gale said absently, digging through her bag.

  “Well yeah, but you don’t just sign up and take a crate of unprocessed iron.”

  “She won’t need much. It isn’t as if she digests it; it just works its way into her body where she needs it and stays there. Stuff they discard from commercial quarries is more than rich enough.”

  “So an exhausted quarry would work? Because my Aunt Beeni used to take us to this quarry lake when I was little. There was a campground. Should be pretty easy to get wood. I forget why we stopped going.”

  Gale found what she was looking for. It was one of those bizarre infrared thermometers with the laser dot that looked as if it should be used to maintain equipment on the USS Enterprise. While Markus started to dial his aunt, she angled it at Blodgette, who eyed it with a suitable level of distrust.

  “Get her to lift her arm. I want to see what the surface temperature is in the armpit.”

  “Blodgette, look at me. Go like this now,” Markus whispered, briefly holding the phone away from his ear and angling his arm out.

  Blodgette swung her arm out. She knocked over a chair but didn’t pay any mind to that or the strange woman pointing a bizarre device at her armpit. All she seemed to care about was matching his position and watching him for approval.

  “Okay, got it,” Gale said, checking the readout and marking it down.

  “Good job!” Markus whispered, holding his hand out for a high five again.

  She reared back for a good hard slap.

  “No, no, no!” Markus said with a cringe.

  Blodgette froze for a moment, then looked at her hand and, with a wave of understanding, delivered a light pat rather than a devastating blow.

  “Good job!” Markus said again. “Oh! Uh, no, I wasn’t talking to you, Aunt Beeni. … Yes, I’m taking care of things at the bistro. No, I haven’t heard from Uncle Dimitrios. … Yes, I remember him…”

  #

  A rather ragged and frayed rental car rattled its way down a narrow street, and out from inside stumbled an equally ragged and frayed man. He was spry for his age, which was probably into his eighties, but had made the distinctive fashion choices of a man who either didn’t know or didn’t care how ridiculous he looked. He was wearing a pair of sunglasses still sporting the price tag. They had the sleek design and accent of glitter that suggested he may have selected a woman’s design, but that fact didn’t faze him in the slightest. They actually went rather well with his similarly fresh-from-the-store shorts and shirt, each with a flamboyant design. The overall look was that of a man who was either trying to blend in and failing miserably or attempting to stand out and succeeding brilliantly.

  He brushed his fingers through an unkempt mane of white hair and slid his sunglasses down his short, stubby nose to peer over them. This revealed a set of eyebrows thick enough to lose a comb in and a pair of mischievous brown eyes. Satisfied with whatever he’d been looking for, he restored the glasses and grinned. He had a bushy beard and mustache, as unruly as the rest of the hair on his head, and his teeth had the pristine whiteness and unnatural straightness of a well-made set of dentures.

  After patting every individual pocket of his outfit twice, he revealed an ancient billfold and flipped it open. The inside was stuffed to bursting with everything but money. There were receipts, coupons, hotel keys, ticket stubs, and a thick stack of business cards. From behind a badly expired Colorado driver’s license issued to “Dimitrios A. Spiros” he pulled a worn card.

  “Seven-four-four Sorrento…” he muttered, raising an eyebrow and glancing at the nearest doors.

  The street had seen better days. Once part of a thriving downtown, now most of the shops were vacant, condemned, or on their way to such a fate. The address he was after was only a short walk away. It was a good solid door, faded paint suggesting a formerly elegant appearance that now underscored its lack of upkeep. Grime-encrusted windows revealed mostly emptied shelves. A few lingering knickknacks and curiosities suggested the store had once been a treasure trove of antiques.

  “I could swear this place was a tourist hot spot last time I was here. Leave a place for a decade and look what happens,” Dimitrios said.

  He pushed his sunglasses down again and fumbled in his pocket for a prepaid flip-style cell phone. Tapping out the number on the business card earned him little more than a voice informing him in Italian that the number was no longer in service.

  “Now that’s some fine customer service. No wonder they went out of business, not offering support for their products. Oh… What’s this?”

  Dimitrios leaned low and brushed the curled edge of an old flyer that had been pasted on the door. It was nearly as faded as the paint, but the message was still readable.

  “‘This property has been acquired by Hearst L-T-D,’” he read aloud. “‘Direct all inquiries to our home offices.’ Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  He punched the provided number into his phone. It barely had a chance to ring before it was answered by a man with crisp German diction.

  Halfway through the greeting, Dimitrios stopped him. “That’s enough of that. If we’re going to be doing business, we’ll be doing it in English, thank you very much.”

  “Ah. My apologies,” the man said.

  It is said that Germans are extremely efficient, and there must be some truth to that, because he managed to communicate his instant and undying disdain for Dimitrios utilizing nothing more than the tone of his otherwise mannerly reply.

  “You have reached Hearst Limited. My name is Hans. How may I be of help to you?” said Hans.

  “I’m standing here in front of Carlos’s Antiques in Naples, Italy, and I’ve got some care-and-feeding questions for something I purchased a few years back.”

  “One moment, sir… Would that be Antiquariato di Carlo?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Yes, I see that the establishment was indeed added to our holdings some time ago. I’m afraid… one moment…” Hans’s voice became a degree more serious. “What precisely is the product you require help with today, sir?”

  “That’s between me and Carlos.”

  “The former proprietor’s name was Carlo, not Carlos, and I am afraid I cannot help you with your purchase if you will not offer at least a description.”

  “Let’s just say it was an investment. It has matured. I had this big book he gave me with instructions on how to… maintain the investment after maturity. But it got set on fire. So I need to know the short version of how to keep this thing fed and watered and such.”

  “So you purchased a creature from this shop.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Then why do you require instruction regarding food?”

  “Look, the damn thing is walking around now, and I just need some rules.”

  “Hold please, sir.”

  A few clicks and secondary dials, and a short period of listening to German hold music ended with a new voice on the phone.

  “Hello, sir,” said the new man.

  His voice was quite different. There was no trace of an accent. Not German, not English, not any flavor of American. It was the most sterile, clinical phrasing Dimitrios had ever heard, as if the person had learned the language by simply uploading the dictionary into his brain.

  “Are you the man who can tell me about how to care for my investment?” Dimitrios asked.

  “That would depend upon how you answer the next question. The item you purchased. Was it a small lump of oddly rounded charcoal?”

  “That’s what it looked like, sure. It hasn’t looked that way in a while. Now that it’s up and about, I’ve got to get the thing figured out before it goes belly up.”

  “I see. I’m go
ing to ask you to go to my local offices. Hans will have a car sent for you, if you like. I’ll be stepping on my personal jet directly. I’ll be there in three hours. You and I have some matters to discuss in person. Until I arrive, I will leave instructions for my people to provide you with whatever it is you might require. We have much to discuss.”

  “Now that’s more like it. I’ll make sure Carlos knows you’re doing a good job for him.”

  “Thank you, sir. I look forward to our meeting.”

  Dimitrios nodded, not seeming to mind that such a gesture wasn’t terribly useful in a telephone conversation, then hung up. He pocketed the phone and rubbed his hands together enthusiastically.

  “This is it, Dimitrios. Your ship is finally coming in. That thing is going to be a gold mine…”

  Chapter 4

  “Okay. … Okay, Aunt Beeni. Thanks. Yes. … No. … I—… You said that already. … I’ve… I’ve got to go, Aunt Beeni. Love you too. Bye.”

  Markus hastily hung up the phone before his aunt could work her way through another cycle of irrelevant anecdotes. Blodgette chirruped happily at the sight of the phone being tucked away again.

  “Sorry for the wait, buddy,” he said, offering a pat on the head as consolation.

  “Find anything out?” Gale asked, underlining some of her notes and then fetching a tape measure from her things.

  “That quarry lake is a nature reserve. No more camping or swimming there. She says the state barely even patrols it anymore and that’s a ‘darn shame.’”

  “Well that’s some good news. Blodgette is nature, and she needs preserving, so that lake is just the thing.”

  “Yeah, assuming we can get her there. How about you, find anything out?”

  “The vital statistics are all on the low end of acceptable. I’d like to get some X-rays of her neck and tail to make sure they’re not too bad. But the most fascinating stuff is the social aspect. You’re sure you never worked with her at all post-emergence?”