The Girl Who Heard Dragons

Cinderella Switch

Deagan, Fenn, and Cordane were standing on the top level of the broad terraced steps above the ballroom of Fomalhaut V's Official Residence, commenting on the costumed dancers swirling to the exotic music of the android musicians. Having identified everyone there, they were bored. But their location and mood put them in an excellent position to see the girl sweep in through the open garden doors. Her sparkling mist of a gown scintillated against the darkness behind her.

"Fardles! What a party crasher!" Cordane exclaimed, his eyes widening appreciatively.

"What a costume!" said Deagan, wondering just how that shifting mist of pastel light was generated. The new arrival was covered from neck to ankle, shoulder to wrist, with a haze hiding all but her eyes and her streaming black hair. Furthermore, whatever the mechanism, it was quite sophisticated. As the shades shifted from opacity to transparency in a tantalizing random fashion, even the most casual observer realized she wore absolutely nothing under her hazy attire.

Before the three observers could move toward her, a tall man in the garb of an ancient Terran diplomat - his black-and-white an excellent foil for her pale shimmers - bowed formally and led her to the center of the dance in progress.

"Wouldn't you know Walteron would be on the prowl and in the right place?" Cordane was disgusted. "He's the, only one ever wears such a confining rig, isn't he, Deagan?"

"But what's he doing here?" Fenn asked. Then, without giving Deagan a chance to answer, Fenn went on. "I heard he had trouble at his mines: cave-ins and a massive displacement."

"He came in to apply to Father," said Deagan, son of the planetary manager, "for permission to import a soil-mechanics expert from Aldebaran."

"And nabs the only interesting female here? Usually he takes to the Streets as soon as he's done his duty dance with your mother."

"He's always had good timing," Deagan said, sounding amused.

"And bad intentions." Cordane glowered. "If he tries to Street her…"

This was Touch-Down Time, when the citizens of the bustling, prosperous planet of Fomalhaut V - rich in the transuranics, the actinides, so vital as the energy fuels needed to extend the surge of colonization to every habitable planet in the spiral of the Milky Way - relaxed industry and inhibitions in a three-day spectacular of day-long contests, night-long dancing, and eating and carousing.

The Official Residence, a sprawling complex of domes, residential, diplomatic, and business, was the traditional site of the special festivities to which the descendants of the original First Landing Families congregated from their distant domains. The more important off-world visitors and city and spaceport officials were added to this exclusive gathering. Conducted as it was along rather sedate lines, the festival held little glamour for those wanting to sample exotic and erotic pleasures available in the Streets' celebrations. Occasionally a brash young male newcomer, hoping to impress a Domain Family daughter favorably, took advantage of the Celebration's license and appeared at the Residence. As long as the person behaved with propriety acceptable to the Residence, he was permitted to stay. A few nights' dancing was hardly sufficient time in which to form a lasting alliance with the shrewdly raised young women of Fomalhaut. Even so, it was rare indeed for a young woman to put herself in such an equivocal position.

"Could she be from one of the newer Domains? They work so hard there, they don't usually attend Touch-Down," said Fenn.

"Newcomer?" Cordane suggested, turning to Deagan, who was studying the girl as she and her partner moved past them.

Deagan was the highly trained security manager for all imports, exports, and applicants seeking short or permanent residence. "I could check again, but she doesn't match my recollections of any of the three female IDs we processed last week."

"She couldn't be a newcomer," said Cordane, now flatly contradicting himself. "How would she know there's only a minimal guard at the Residence tonight? And that she could scale the garden wall because it's no longer powered?"

"She's no Streetie, or Walteron would have tried to ooze her off the floor by now," said Deagan. "I wonder how she's operating that haze she wears in place of a gown. Fascinating use of refracted light for those random opaques and transparencies." He jiggled his hand as if the movement would generate the answer. "Must be a net, but where does she get so much power?"

"We're not going to let old Walteron get her, are we? Lovely creature like that," Cordane asked in a tone that made his friends regard him with some amusement.

"If Deagan's right and she's in a circuit-protected dress, what could Walteron do?" asked Fenn.

"Short the circuits in a dark comer," Deagan replied. "If he can. I'd like a dance with her if only to see how the haze is engineered." '

The other two glared at him whereupon Deagan chuckled and gestured toward other parts of the vast room where the majority did seem to be staring at Walteron and his shimmering partner.

"You've got to admit it's a bloody clever costume. Pure hatred gleams from half the female eyes. Just look at your mother's disapproving glare, Fenn. And you know that your sister Maria spent all year dreaming up that rather fetching concoction of Verulean lace she's wearing. But it doesn't compare with our crasher's effort."

"If she's from Outback, she might not know she's at risk with old Walteron," said Cordane, sounding a bit anxious. He was a considerate and responsible young man. "The gavotte's not easy to master. She's obviously danced it before and often. They don't do that sort of thing in the Streets!"

"Dance with her next then, Cordane. You know the Street accents," urged Deagan. Before his friends could vacillate, he took them both by the elbows and propelled them through the onlookers to the point where the girl and Walteron were likely to finish the gavotte. "If she's not Street, you take the next dance, Fenn. You range enough in the Outback to identify their twang."

"Then you'll dance with her and short out her dress," said Cordane, indignantly pulling his arm from his friend's grasp.

"Short her dress? Here in the Residence?" Deagan grinned sardonically and jerked his head toward his father, who was laughing affably with some ranking outworld guests. The PM's moods could change to implacable sternness when necessary, and all three young men knew it. "Besides, shorting would bum her between the contact points. My interest is purely theoretical. The creation is ingenious."

"Expensive, too, I'd say," added Fenn. "She's like a lovely double-moon mist."

Cordane blinked in surprise, for the young Domainer was not usually given to metaphors.

"Under that face veil, she could be ugly as a roake, but right now, what a fillip to a dull dance," said Deagan. "Quickly, Corrie. The dance is ending!" He gave his friend a push forward onto the dance area so that the slick surface all but catapulted Cordane against Walteron.

"Look, the old lecher won't relinquish," said Deagan, irritated, as he and Fenn watched the exchange between the two would-be partners. "Let's reinforce before Corrie muffs it." Deagan, clutching Fenn unobtrusively at the elbow, strode quickly over to the trio. "Oh, lovely maiden of the double-moon mists," he opened, with a click of this heels and a smart salute in keeping with his elegant formal Space uniform, "my friend here" - he gestured to Fenn, since names were never exchanged at a costumed Touch-Down dance - "is a shy and gentle youth who, like myself, is all admiration for your raiment. My sincerest compliments on your originality."

"Accepted, good sir," the girl said with such composure and in such pure Standard accents that Deagan knew that she was neither Streetie, newcomer, nor Outback Domainer.

"Since he is so shy, may I request that you favor him with the next dance?" Deagan continued, subtly changing his position to form, with his two friends, a circle in front of the girl that excluded Walteron.

"The dance after the one I am claiming by right of first request," said Cordane, with a smart clap of his boot heels and a mock glare at Deagan and Fenn.

One could just perceive her smile through the coruscating mist of her face veil, but her eyes, a clear, intelligent green emphasized by the shifting shades of her attire, gleamed with amusement. A flick of her green gaze told Deagan that she was aware of Walteron, fuming at the deft exclusion and the man's obvious keen intention to extend his acquaintance with her.

"I put in my most humble bid for the third dance, lovely lady," said Deagan, "and each third one afterward."

"You mean to monopolize my dances?" She looked from one importuning costumed officer to the next, avoiding Walteron's attempts to reclaim her attention.

"Three doesn't constitute a monopoly," said Fenn, who tended to be literal.

"But assuredly offers protection," added Deagan.

"Mutual protection?" She tilted her head sideways just slightly in Walteron's direction. Her eyes lingered on Deagan's face, and he knew she had taken the warning,

"Please say yes," Cordane urged, with just the right note of petition in his voice so that she could be swayed to compliance without appearing to offend the other whilom partners. She nodded assent to Cordane.

"May I have the dance after his?" Fenn asked eagerly, inspired by Cordane's success. The two were oblivious, as Deagan was not, to Walteron's set mouth and angry eyes.

Fortunately the music began just at that moment and Cordane triumphantly swung the girl onto the floor, taking their position in one of the faststeps at which Cordane was very adept.

"Didn't think you'd be able to join us tonight, Walteron" said Deagan politely as he, Fenn, and the older man left the dance floor.

"Sorry about that subsidence, Walteron. Trust no one was killed," Fenn added ingenuously. "That Aldebaran Specialist'll soon sort it out, they've had so much experience in the same sort of thing."

Walteron's eyes blazed at Deagan, and with a disgusted snort toward Fenn, he stalked away to the refreshment room.

"What did I say to put him in such a temper?" Perplexed, the young Domainer peered at the departing man.

"Don't worry about it." They both turned to spot Cordane and the girl twirling amid the other enthusiastic dancers.

She could, Deagan thought, be a trained mimic or actress, contracted for the Celebrations, but she hadn't faltered in her pure accent of the well-bred and highly educated. She had been quick to take advantage of their protection from someone like Walteron, who would have been the obvious choice of a Streetie. Of more interest to Deagan were the tiny sparkling green nodes she wore like jewels as ear, finger, and toe rings. Two slightly larger ones were attached as pendants on the fire circlet about her neck and on her browband. Earring and browband set up the circuit for the face veil and the gown was generated between the other nodes. The resultant haze of light refraction was more of an engineering feat than a fabric maker's.

When Cordane's dance ended, Deagan and Fenn quickly joined the trio, edging out two new contenders for her company. They chatted with her on inconsequential topics until the music of a slow patterned dance started, whereupon Fenn had the privilege of handing the girl in to a space in the decorous circle.

"She's got style," Cordane said enthusiastically as he and Deagan watched from the sidelines. "She's not a Streetie or a new-come Outbacker. Say, could she be one of that new lot of technicians landed a few months back?"

"I thought of that possibility, too, but I handle all identity programming, and I'd swear she couldn't be one of them."

"Oh!" Cordane sounded deflated. "Private adventurer here on a visit? Lots of 'em come for Touch-Down."

"If she had any planetary standing elsewhere, she'd've been on the official list."

"We don't know that she isn't, do we? I only assumed she was party-crashing because we first saw her near the garden entrance."

"A good point. I'll check the guard console."

Deagan's progress around the perimeter was hampered by envious questions, subtle or blatant, about the identity of the lovely girl in gauze.

The nearest console, located in the men's room, provided him with a list of all official invitations as well as a quick view-through of the costumed figures as they arrived, passing the guard-eye at the main door of the Residence. As he suspected, she had not entered formally.

He returned to the ballroom just as the music came to its stately climax, with dancers bowing or curtsying to their partners.

"During my dance with her," Deagan told Cordane, "you and Fenn check the garden. She didn't come in past the guard-eye. But keep your ear on the music. We don't want them in on our time," he added, flicking his fingers at other young men poised at the edge of the dance floor, just waiting a chance to cut in on the mystery girl. Then, turning his glance back to the girl, he noticed that, as she rose from her deep curtsy, she glanced at the crystal timepiece suspended above the main entrance to the dancing hall. An odd concern for a girl enjoying enviable popularity.

He tried, during that interval, to turn the conversation to her arrival at Fomalhaut City, or her family, or anything that would give clues as to her identity, but she deftly avoided answering him by flirting with Cordane and Fenn. As the strains of the next dance emanated from the android musicians, Cordane gave a disgusted laugh. "You timed that well, Deagan," he said, for his pavane had not allowed much contact and Deagan would obviously make the most of this waltz.

Even as Deagan laughed at Cordane's discomfort, his phrase lingered oddly. Deagan had almost made the connection as he offered his arms to the misty maiden. Then he forgot the half-formed thought as he placed his right hand about her waist, grasped her right hand firmly in his, and swept her out in perfect rhythm to the lovely ancient melody. She also knew the waltz exceedingly well.

Holding her close, he could not miss the delicate scent she wore, but it wasn't the sort used by a woman wishing to seduce a susceptible male. Her body, under the silky envelope of the generated haze, was lithe and fit and her hand grip in his firm - this was no indolent social lass. Her left hand, traditionally placed on the peak of his shoulder, did not, as he had half expected, curl provocatively toward his neck.

"It's an interesting game you play, lovely lady! My compliments on your campaign."

"Campaign, Captain?" Her teasing tone was half reproof.

"A clever penetration of the sacred precincts of the Residence, and its most prestigious gathering."

"Penetration, sir? But all restrictions are lifted during Touch-Down." Her eyes danced up at him, offering challenge, then slid, fleetingly, once again toward the timepiece as they glided past it.

That action confirmed Deagan's previously half-formed notion. But she was regarding him again and her eyes widened inquiringly, so he masked his expression and casually smiled down at her. "True enough, and a costume as magnificent as yours would be wasted on the Streets - though that is where the true adventurer would seek excitement."

"In the Streets?" Haughty amusement rippled in her voice as well as dislike for his suggestion. " 'Adventurer' could be apt. So is the adjective, for merit accomplished on one's own resources is infinitely more satisfying. Don't you agree?"

He chuckled appreciatively, for that clever shaft was aimed at his inherited position in Fomalhaut society, although she would not know that his particular job was no sinecure. "Life can be a true adventure in many ways, my lovely lady, and you've made this night adventurous for me… and my friends," he added generously. But then he pulled her closer to him and heard her laugh in his ear as her cheek touched his lightly.

"Close tactics will avail you nothing. Captain. My costume is foolproof."

"Mysterious one" - his tone was indignant - "I wouldn't breach your security. I enjoy too much the come-and-go of your dazzlement."

He loosened his tight hold because he was half afraid she would sense his growing excitement. Then he swung her in the wide circles of the dance, enjoying himself as he had never expected to do this Touch-Down night. When he courteously surrendered her to Cordane for his next dance, Fenn told her that they had found nothing to indicate that she had scaled the four-meter wall.

Deagan left Fenn to watch and did a few rapid calculations on the men's-room console, checked the time, and smiled. An hour to go at the most - nor would she leave the way she'd arrived. She'd surely have noticed the position of the side gates. Getting into the Residence was more of a problem than leaving it on Touch-Down night. He made his plans.

But first he would enjoy his other dance with her, enjoy sparring in conversation, for she had a lively wit as well as a keen intelligence. Fenn and Cordane were utterly smitten and were hard to convince that she intended to leave the ball as unexpectedly as she had arrived. He finally did convince them that, should she excuse herself from their company on any pretext, they'd never see her again. They were to let her go with good grace and then dash into the gardens to prevent her escaping that way.

At that, Deagan nearly missed his chance. But she gave herself away, her eyes betraying a faint apprehension as she glanced with apparent negligence toward the crystal chronometer.

Deagan excused himself, saying that his father had beckoned. He was careful to pause by the PM.

"Not fair of you to pull rank and monopolize that lovely creature, Deagan," his father said.

"I haven't. Fenn and Cordane dance with her, too."

The planetary manager gave a derisive snort. "Do we know her?"

"We will!"

"Oh?" The PM raised his eyebrows in surprise at so em-hatic a reply from his generally unimpressionable son.

Deagan left the hall as if on an urgent errand. He was - he wanted to program all gates on inner lock. The action ought not to discommode anyone for the short time he'd require. As he slipped out the main door, he caught a glimpse of shimmer entering the women's room. He also saw Fenn and Cordane striding out the garden doors.

From where he stood by the main gate in the shadows, Deagan could see the slope of the dome and the misty glow of her gown as she eased herself over the sill of the women's-room window. Jut as he had guessed. She moved quickly for the side gate in a half crouch, so he gave her full marks for caution. As she pulled vainly at the locked gate, he heard not only a frustrated moan but a concerned note in her low exclamation. He glanced at his wrist chrono - she'd precious little time to try other side gates: she'd have to chance that the main one remained open.

At one instant she was a swiftly moving mist, the next a slender, white-bodied nymph trailing notes of sparkling fire that wafted to the garden sand behind her. She stumbled with a cry of pain, then uttered a round space oath just as he emerged from the shadow of the bushes. Courteously keeping his eyes on hers, he flung the cloak he had brought with him about her body. She did not resist as he encircled her with his arms.

"My apologies. I computed the possible energy in your jewel generators and… here I am."

"Fair enough." Her body did not yield.

"Is it unfair to outthink a true adventurer?"

He had meant to tease her further but something in her proud look made him forbear. Without a veil, her face had character, and the fine features of a noble background. Nor had her manner lost its innate self-confidence. He liked her even more as her true self than as a mysterious mist. So he kissed her lips lightly. After the briefest hesitation, she responded and her body relaxed in his grip. He did not press his advantage but stepped back.

"Suppose we find another costume for you for the remainder of the evening, if you'll do us the honor, my lady…?"

"Dacia Cormel of Aldebaran IV" she said, filling in the blank.

"The soil-mechanics engineer?" His doubled surprise made her laugh. "But you weren't due to arrive for another week or more." Deagan had never thought to check anticipated visitors and couldn't express the ruefulness he felt at that oversight. But it was no wonder she could create such a costume. "Fardles, do you realize that it was Walteron who danced with you first.?"

"I do now, but he'll never connect that me with his precious specialist. Let's go. I've clothes outside the gate you locked on me." She bent suddenly, feeling with both hands about the dark garden sand. "But first, help me find my other slipper?"