Cruel Zinc Melodies

92

It was like Dean felt me coming. He had supper ready. Singe had me a spot set up in the Dead Man’s room. The beer was perfect and plentiful. The downside was, Dean had made stuffed cabbage.

I’m not a cooked cabbage fan. A raw cabbage heart can be tasty.

John Stretch’s efforts today proved gratifying. We have fulfilled that part of our commitment. No bugs were found. A handful of live grubs and pupea were, too few to mean anything negative. No viable eggs were discovered.

‘‘None?’’

The dragon appears capable of protecting itself from the younger forms. John Stretch’s rat encountered their ghost counterparts doing the same work while ignoring the nutritionalopportunities.

‘‘Ghost rats wouldn’t need to eat a lot. You’re sure?’’

They had no odor.

Which would mean a lot to the rats.

Miss Penny made herself invaluable again today, too. She acquired a great deal more information on the previous awakenings.

‘‘The little witch seems able to charm her way in anywhere.’’ Sourly. That was my specialty. ‘‘She identify any eyewitnesses? Or find out what became of the dragons after they broke out?’’

No eyewitnesses. But a lot about the sort of places where dragon awakenings happen. And about what happens once they do.

I forced cabbage down. I wouldn’t taste it now. But, for sure, I’d be tasting it later.

Because of their restrictions on information, what we can learn about the Venageti incidents is limited. But Penny did determine that the Venageti sites resembled those in Oatman Hwy and Florissant. All four lay beside broad bends in wide, slow rivers where there are vast deposits of deep, rich silt laid down atop limestone. Each roll-up exposed rich metals deposits. Silver in the more recent Venageti incident. Tin that they’re still exploiting in Oatman Hwy, where they also had traces of silver, copper, and lead. In Florissant they got lead with traces of tin and silver. The first Venageti roll-up probablyincluded a lot of copper with some silver and gold.

I can make some remarkable connections sometimes. ‘‘Given that, maybe they caused the Great Roll-Up on purpose.’’

Old Bones closed in on himself. I ate cabbage and tried to smile when Dean came to see how I was doing.

Given the essential tropes of the dragon hoard story, that could well be the case.

Close your eyes. I need the use of your mind briefly. And I need it undistracted by outside visuals.

I didn’t get a chance to argue.

My eyes closed, like it or not. A frighteningly detailed three-dimensional picture of the world beneath the World coalesced inside my head. I don’t know how I managed to grasp it. It took all his minds to shape it. It was built of everything he had been able to dig out of John Stretch. Which was an amazing lot.

This is still little more than speculation. Rats are not good on time, distance, or shapes. They are better on temperature, taste, and smell. Smell especially. I could not put that togetherinside my own head because I needed the full capacitiesof all my minds to translate rat sensory inputs into data a human mind could understand.

I had to take his word for all that.

I have built the picture now but can make nothing of it. Where is the dragon?

My head filled with a three-dimensional hundred-gallon ink splash sprawl in saffron. Without knowing how I knew, I understood that this was a fragment of a larger whole. This was all that John Stretch had been able to see within short rat range of the World.

This is all within the silt deposit. The bottom of that restson limestone, which lies far deeper here than it does down under the brewing district. The dragon must be in a cavern beneath the silt.

‘‘You’re losing me, Old Bones. You might even be losing yourself.’’

Sarcasm is a sign of—

‘‘A sign of impatience with those who won’t admit that they don’t know what they’re talking about.’’

As you will, then. Go play the hand you have dealt yourself.When you return we will begin developing a new strategy.

I sensed impatience with my failure to subscribe to the dragon theory.

Might be interesting, someday, to dig around in the old records and see if a Loghyr wasn’t somehow connected to one of the old-time roll-ups.

Though I doubted strongly that this Loghyr had been.

Singe joined me in the hallway as I shrugged me into my new royal beaver coat. ‘‘You are going out again? At night?»

‘‘I need to do something at the World. When nobody else is around.’’

‘‘Really?’’

‘‘Yes. Why?’’

‘‘I was hoping to ask you about some things. I could go along.’’

‘‘I have to do this without anyone else being there. Maybe tomorrow night.’’ I opened the door and went outside.

The door chunked shut behind me, anger-driven.

Old Bones didn’t clue me. I guessed it had to do with her book. She kept bringing that up, tentatively.