The Dragon Men

Chapter Fifteen

The man carried a small book and wore a long blue tunic over loose white trousers. He laid the book on a small table set with Oriental tea things next to the door and picked up a cup. The brass nightingale fluttered down to perch on his shoulder. “I was reading when you arrived, but now I think it’s time for tea. It’s a nice night to sit outside.”

Gavin took a step forward, then another. He couldn’t stop staring. He stared so hard, his vision seemed to double, creating two men, one surrounded by water, the other reading by candlelight. The man was taller, but he and Gavin had the same white-blond hair, the same sky blue eyes. The nose and chin were different, and the man was broader in the chest and shoulders. His face was unlined, and he didn’t look more than thirty. Still, Gavin knew without a doubt this was his father.

The soft rush of the streams flowed all around them. Gavin abruptly thought of the tarot card at the circus in Kiev. The card had shown a pale-haired man surrounded by water. The man on the card wore blue robes, and in one hand he held a chalice.

“The King of Cups,” Gavin said. “You’re the King of Cups. From the card. Linda flipped you over like a paired particle, and now the pathways cross.”

The man nodded, understanding. “I can see the clockwork plague got you. So yeah, we’re connected like pairs of particles. What slaps you slaps me, yep, yep. Nice to see you, kid. I guess I should say all the father things-how you’ve grown, how much a man you’ve become, how-”

Gavin hit him. Or he tried to. His fist flicked out of its own accord, and the man moved aside just enough for the blow to miss. The little bird clung tightly to his shoulder. Fully angry now, Gavin punched again, a hammer blow to the chest, but the man blocked it with his forearm, again with just enough speed and movement. His cup shattered on the stones. Gavin followed with more blows-left, right, hook, chop. The man dodged or blocked each one. His face remained expressionless. The balanced fight went on for some time, until Gavin backed away, panting. The cloak that was his wings dragged at his back.

“Sorry,” the man said. His voice was low and serene.

“Damn you,” Gavin said, and his voice was equal parts rage and anger.

“You’re pissed at me. You should be, kid. But maybe when you understand-”

“You’re a fuck.” Gavin was spewing venom he hadn’t known he was carrying. “You abandoned me and everyone else, and why? So you could be a monk in China? I grew up missing you and hating and wondering what I did to make you leave. I don’t even know your name because Mom wouldn’t even say it. Understand? I understand. You’re lower than shit on a sewer snail.”

He nodded. “Maybe we can grab a seat. The edge of the porch here is real nice for sittin’ and drinkin’ a little tea at night.”

“What for?” He turned his back and looked out across the dark valley. Stars hard as jewels shone in a black ocean that threatened to swallow them. “Maybe I should just leave. I don’t think anything you say could make me happy.”

“I’m sorry. Really.” The man came up behind Gavin and put a hand on his shoulder. At his touch, liquid gold flowed through Gavin. Warmth bathed him in a delicate river, carrying away fear and anger like so much flotsam and leaving his soul clear as glass. The man dropped his hand, and the feeling receded. The stones came back under his feet and the darkness pressed in, carrying the breath of trees and water. Gavin faced the man again. His wings flared.

“What was that?” he asked, his voice low.

“Qin Lung,” said the man.

“I don’t understand.”

“My name here is Qin Lung. Means-”

“Azure dragon.” Here Gavin did sit down, though it was because his legs went weak. The wings clinked, hanging over the edge of the porch. “All the Dragon Men are named Lung.”

“Yep, yep. They-we-ain’t members of our own families anymore and get the family name Lung. Dragon. The people here don’t see a lot o’ blue eyes, and I came from across the water before I found my balance, so they called me Azure Dragon. My name in America”-he said the word as if he hadn’t spoken it in a long time-“was Henry Uriel Ennock. But I don’t go by Henry. Call me Uri. Or Dad. Whatever floats your airship.”

“Uriel? Your name is Uri?” The revelations were coming thick and fast, which was probably why Gavin couldn’t help but focus on small, foolish details.

“Yep.”

“All right.”

Heavy silence dropped over them. There was so much to say, so much to ask, and Gavin didn’t know where to start. His entire life was a tangle of threads, and he couldn’t find an end to pull. He felt tense and strange. Uri, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at ease. The quiet, serene expression never left his face.

“So,” Uri said, “I’ve sorta lost track of time. How old are you now?”

“I turned nineteen this last summer.” Gavin held up the Impossible Cube. “Though if you look at it another way, you could say I’m twenty-two.”

Uri let that pass. “How’s your ma? And your brothers and sisters?”

This raised some hackles again. “I haven’t heard from them in a while. Jenny’s married and probably has a kid by now. Harry works as a drover, but he drinks. Ma was able to send Patrick to school some with the money I sent her after I joined the Third Ward, but that was a while ago, so I don’t know what he’s up to now. Violet’s working in a factory, I think. You’d know all this if you were home.”

“But I ain’t home, so I don’t know. That’s the way it is.”

It was on the tip of Gavin’s tongue to ask why, but the words wouldn’t come. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

Uri set his hands on his knees. “Your feelings are jumbled up. You wanna talk to me, but you don’t know how.”

“How do I talk to a father who was never there?” Gavin shot back.

“I’m here now. Or maybe you’re here now.” Uri stroked the bird on his shoulder. “It wasn’t easy to make that happen, kid.”

“Yeah? How did you make it happen?”

“Those birds. I invented them a long time ago, when I first got to China,” Uri said in his quiet, absent voice. “They grabbed the emperor’s attention, and he wanted a whole flock of them for a weapon. The Jade Hand ordered me to make them, so I did.”

Uri pointed to his ear, and for the first time, Gavin noticed the salamander curled around it. A strange hope swirled inside him.

“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.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Gavin scoffed. “It’s a disease. You can’t become ‘one’ with it or cure it by. . by thinking hard.”

“But here I am, kid,” Uri replied with a quiet smile. “You felt it when I touched you. And there are more than a dozen like me. Almost ageless, like the dragons.”

“Ageless? That’s why you look so young?”

“We age slowly. I figure I’ll live another three hundred years. You can find it, too, Gavin.”

“Find what?”

“I told you: acceptance. Serenity. It’s all part of the balance.”

“Now I’m confused again.”

“Yeah, it’s hard to explain. The balance is all one piece, like time. You need to understand it, all at once. And when you do, nothing else will matter.”

Nothing else will matter. Gavin remembered his first flight, how nearly perfect everything had felt, and how nothing else had mattered-until the giant squid had come for Alice.

Uri nodded at the Impossible Cube. “That’s a real piece of work. What is it?”

“Dr. Clef-a friend of mine-made it. I don’t understand it completely. I brought it along because. . I don’t know why, actually.”

“What’s it do?”

“It twists the universe around itself. It transforms energy from one form into another and fires it. And it probably has a few dozen other uses we haven’t figured out yet.”

“How’s it do that?”

“It’s unique in all the universes,” Gavin said. “It-”

“No.” Uri held up a finger to interrupt. “It ain’t. Nothing’s unique. Nothing. The Dao teaches that everything has to balance. Everything has an opposite, and the opposite holds a seed of the original.”

“Why are we talking about this?”

“It’s important, Gavin. You gotta understand.” From beneath his tunic he extracted a medallion. Two fishlike designs swirled around it in black and white. The white half had a black dot in it, and the black half had a white dot in it. When Gavin looked closer, he realized the two dots were actually the overall design done in miniature. He had never seen the design before, but it was compelling. He felt another fugue coming on, and he pushed hard to keep it at bay.

“The yin and the yang,” Uri said. “Female and male, water and fire, light and dark, mountain and valley, death and life, plague and cure. They can’t exist without each other. Sometimes one gets to be more powerful than the other for a while, but eventually the universe finds the balance. Plop a stone in a pool, and you create waves, highs and lows, but finally the pond becomes calm and smooth like the silk on an envelope.”

Gavin tore his eyes away from the medallion. “What does this have to do with Impossible Cube?”

“That Cube of yours can’t exist on its own any more than light can exist without darkness or joy can exist without sorrow. You said the Cube fires energy and twists the universe in weird ways. It’s unstable. So its opposite must absorb, take things in and hold them, make everything more stable. Those two things will find each other, pull together eventually to create a balance.”

Gavin almost protested again-Uri almost seemed to be attacking the uniqueness of Dr. Clef’s work, and even after everything the man had done, Gavin still felt a loyalty to Dr. Clef-but then he knew what the answer was, and it sent a little thrill through him.

“The Ebony Chamber,” he breathed. “It’s an infinite set that opens into an infinite number of universes. The Cube is a fixed point across the universe. They’re opposites. Why didn’t I see that when I started to put the two of them together?”

“You did what?” A tremor crossed the serenity on Uri’s face. “God’s balls, Gavin! What possessed you to do something like that? Yin and yang need each other, but they’re still separate. Together, they destroy each other completely.”

“I was in a clockwork fugue.” For a moment Gavin felt like a little boy who had been caught throwing rocks at windows. “I wasn’t thinking right. But Alice stopped me.”

“Alice?”

“Oh.” He felt flustered again. “She’s my. . we’re getting married.”

“She a clockworker?”

It wasn’t the reaction Gavin had been expecting. This entire conversation wasn’t anything he’d been expecting. “What? No. She cures the plague. But not in clockworkers.”

“Yin and yang,” Uri said with a nod. “One is earth and water, the other air and fire. They always find each other.”

“That’s not-I don’t-”

“Listen, Gavin, does the universe speak to you? Do you see what no one else does? What not even other clockworkers see? Tiny things?”

Here Gavin stared at him again. “Yes. Particles that move one another. I’ve never been able to explain it.” He began to grow excited. It was the first time someone else seemed to have experienced such things. “They have colors and. . flavors. Sort of. No, that isn’t right, but we don’t have words for what they are or what they look like. Maybe you can’t even give a name to something so small. Some of them affect each other without touching, in pairs. .”

He stopped. Uri’s serene expression remained.

“You’re going to say yin and yang, aren’t you?” Gavin said.

“I don’t need to.”

“But what does it all mean?”

“Why don’t you know how they all work?” Uri countered. He held up the medallion, swirling and enticing. Gavin couldn’t take his eyes from it, and he found answers sliding out of him like water from a sieve. “Why don’t you understand these tiny particles of yours?”

“I’ve tried, but something always seems to get in the way.”

“What, exactly, gets in the way?”

“Alice,” Gavin replied without thinking.

“How does she stop you?”

“She calls me back every time I go too deep.”

“Why does she do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Why?”

“Because she loves me.”

“But if she loved you, she’d want you to be happy and find what you need to find.”

“She’s afraid I won’t come back. She won’t. .” He trailed off, and the rhythm faded.

“Won’t what?”

“She won’t let me go,” he whispered.

“Is that important?”

“Very.” He sat up straighter, and his wings clinked. “Those particles are the key to understanding everything, aren’t they?”

Uri merely gave the serene smile. He set the medallion aside, breaking the half fugue.

“If I understand the particles,” Gavin said slowly, “I’ll understand the universe. Become ‘one’ with it. And that’ll cure me because the secrets won’t burn out my mind anymore.”

“Yep, yep.”

Gavin blinked, surprised. “No mysterious questions? No strange double-talk?”

“Nope. You nailed it.”

“Let me see that amulet again.” Gavin took it from Uri’s proffered hand. The design was a snowflake frozen in metal and paint. The two dots of black and white that were themselves designs contained two dots of black and white that were designs, which contained two dots of black and white. They pulled him in and down, farther and farther down. The crystalline lattice that made up the medallion’s structure repeated itself, shapes within shapes, patterns within patterns. The tiniest particles hovered there, dancing in pairs. And what were they made out of? He reached for one of them, and it turned. So did its partner. Incredible. He could go farther down, pry the particle apart, and peer inside. Secrets whispered inside his head, scratching at his mind like an infinite number of cats in their infinite boxes. An overwhelming, endless field of infinitesimal boxes lay before him. It was too much, too powerful. The little bits pulled him in an infinite number of directions, and he had to keep himself together, had to. .

But that wasn’t it. Dad had said he needed to let go, let it flow, accept it. His heart pounded. He was facing his own obliteration. If he let himself fall apart, he would never find himself. Was this what Dad had seen?

The thought of his father brought a slash of anger. He was putting his trust in the man who had turned his back on his family. Sure, the plague had made Gavin do strange things, but he was fine now. Nothing was stopping him from writing-or even coming home. The anger tightened his chest, and Gavin became aware of his breathing, of the cold stones under his backside, of the wing harness dragging at his back, and then he was sitting in front of Uri, the medallion clenched in his fist.

“I can’t do this,” he said.

“I think you were close,” Uri observed.

“No.”

“You’re angry again.”

“I haven’t stopped being angry. I’ve just been hiding it.”

“Your anger is your own.” Uri shrugged. “You can let it go, or let it run your life. That’s your choice, kid.”

“I’m supposed to be helping Alice sneak into the Forbidden City. I shouldn’t even be here.” Gavin rose, stood with one foot over the edge of the porch with darkness below him. “Your bird put me in a fugue, or I wouldn’t have come.”

“So why don’t you leave?”

“I should.” But he hung there.

“Maybe you need to learn something here,” Uri said. “And once you learn it, you’ll be able to help Alice the way you want to.” He held up the medallion again. It was compelling, almost hypnotic.

Gavin sat back down again. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You don’t need to know. Let the universe tell you.” He paused, then reached into a shadow and came up with, of all things, a fiddle case. He opened it. “Do you still play?”

The unexpected question made Gavin feel self-conscious. “Of course I play. I earned money on street corners, bought bread with it because you weren’t there.”

“Play for me.”

“No.”

“If you didn’t want to play, why did you say you still know how? This is a great fiddle. I bought it in San Francisco. Or maybe I stole it. My memory of that time isn’t very good.” He ran the bow over the strings in liquid notes that shot old memories down Gavin’s back. “My old fiddle was better, though.”

“The old one isn’t your fiddle anymore. It’s mine. You left it behind, just as you left everything else behind.”

“Yeah.” His eyes took on a faraway look. “Still, it sure would be nice to hear you play again. It’s been so long. Yep, sure would be nice.”

Gavin hesitated, then relented. He took the fiddle from his father and, still seated, began to play with the moon hanging over his shoulder and turning his wings to mercury.

I see the moon, the moon sees me.

It turns all the forest soft and silvery.

The moon picked you from all the rest,

For I loved you best.

His hands shook as he played. He couldn’t make a mistake, not in front of his father on his father’s instrument. It had never occurred to him that he might one day play for Dad, the man who had admonished him not to make mistakes. He slowed the song, but that only made things more difficult.

I have a ship, my ship must flee,

Sailing o’er the clouds and on the silver sea.

The moon picked you from all the rest,

For I loved you-

His left hand twitched on the final note. The fiddle squawked, and there was no way to recover. Gavin corrected and replayed the note, but the damage was done. He stopped playing and felt the heat rise to his face. He wanted to fall backward off the edge of the porch and let himself crash to the rocks below. But he sat with his head bowed instead, waiting for the inevitable harsh words.

Uri sighed. Of course. The terrible playing deserved that exact reaction.

“I remember that song so well,” he said. “Your mother loved it.”

Gavin’s head came up. “I messed it up at the end. It was awful.”

“Perfection doesn’t exist, kid. One mistake doesn’t ruin the whole song any more than a single ripple ruins an entire stream.” Uri touched Gavin’s arm. “You play it better than I ever did. No wonder that Alice girl fell in love with you.”

Something broke inside Gavin at those words, something he couldn’t define. Chains he hadn’t known he was carrying fell away, and he wanted to weep for the lightness.

“Maybe I should try again,” he said hoarsely. “Where’s that medallion?”

But as he was reaching for it, a familiar silver nightingale encrusted with jewels zipped under the overhang. It landed on Gavin’s shoulder. He clapped a hand over it, and it was as if Alice were standing next to him. He missed her with a deep intensity that made this place feel all the more foreign. Uri cocked his head and touched the brass bird on his own shoulder.

“Is that one of mine?” he said.

“Probably. It belonged to the emperor’s nephew.” He pressed the bird’s right eye.

“Gavin, where did you go? We need you!” Short pause. “I need you.”

The nightingale fell silent.

“She has a pretty voice,” Uri said. “Reminds me of your-”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Gavin warned. “Not even in your head. I need to go.”

“You coming back?”

Gavin, who had already gotten to his feet with the Impossible Cube, paused and said, “Do you want me to come back?”

“The Dao teaches us that once you become one with the universe, there are no needs, no wants, no desires. Everyone has to follow his own path, and it doesn’t always travel where we-”

“Fuck the Dao, Dad. Do you want me to come back or not?”

Uri fell silent. He took the fiddle into his lap. Gavin watched him, trying to stay dispassionate. The two Dragon Men stood on the mountainside, surrounded by flowing water; one with wings and one without; one with a fiddle, one with the Impossible Cube; one older, one younger. The universe hung balanced between them. Gavin held his breath, and even the water seemed to slow.

At last Uri said, “You need to find your own self, Son, wherever that is.”

“Fine, Dad,” Gavin said tiredly. “You have your life, and I have-”

“But,” Uri interrupted, “I think the universe would smile if your path and mine traveled side by side again.”

Gavin gave a short bark of a laugh at that. “And maybe that’s the best I can hope for. All right, Dad. Maybe I’ll come back. But think about this-maybe you’ll come back.”

They embraced, a gesture made clumsy by Gavin’s wing harness, and for a small moment Gavin let himself be a small boy again. Then he turned and leaped off the edge of the porch. His wings left a blue trail as he followed the silver nightingale back to Alice, the Impossible Cube clutched in his hands.