We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 5: Chapter 42: Flying Around

Book 5: Chapter 42: Flying Around

Howard

September 2343

Jabberwocky

Iopened my eyes to find myself still entwined with Bridget’s dranny. I was contemplating the situation and feeling my dranny’s sleepiness slowly dissipate when Bridget opened her eyes. Vertical pupils, it turns out. I hadn’t actually noticed before.

“So what shall we do with our day?” I asked her.

“Coffee.”

“Uh, we just had coffee. Back home. No coffee here.”

“Not quite true, Howard. Dragons don’t have caffeine as such. They use alcohol instead. A hot drink, mostly ethanol, with some spices for flavor. It’s called tuev.”

“Seriously? Isn’t flying under the influence kind of a problem?”

Bridget sat up and stretched, sort of like a cat—extended forelimbs, then arching her back until the stretch worked its way back to her, uh …

Apparently, flight wasn’t the only thing that worked on male dragons. Bridget’s gaze trailed downward, and she smiled.

*****

Sometime later, I stretched and said, “So tell me about tuev?”

“The dragons metabolize alcohol. It doesn’t make them drunk. It’s like sugar in this biosystem, only more so.”

“Huh. So a good stiff martini in the morning gets you ready for the day?”

“Uh-huh. Just like back home, sort of.” She chuckled. “Let’s get some breakfast.”

We stepped out onto the “porch,” which was really just a horizontal pole attached to the pod. I had a momentary image of myself as a parakeet in a cage, and I had to suppress the urge to ask for a cracker. Bridget would have killed me, and no one would prosecute.

A short hop with only a couple of wingbeats got us onto the main branch, and we joined a procession of dragons, many looking like they also needed that first cup of wake-me-up. We ended up in front of an open-air kiosk where a harried-looking vendor was trading coins for a cup of something. I looked down at the coins in my hand and realized that they were copper and iron. Interesting. Just like Heaven’s River. Apparently, it wasn’t just biology that tended to stick to a theme. ????B?š

When my cup of life arrived, I took a tentative sniff, then a small sip. “Jesus,” I muttered, “what is this stuff? Everclear?”

“Almost pure ethanol, like I said,” Bridget replied via intercom. “And keep your voice down. You just spoke in English.”

I ignored the admonishment but switched to intercom. “This stuff is safe?”

“For dragons, yes. One cup of it would melt a human liver into a green sludge.”

We hopped up onto a convenient log and perched, slowly sipping our morning tuev. I had to admit, it did seem to produce the same effect as coffee, assuming Bridget had gotten the biology of the drannies right.

Just one of many things I would never, ever say out loud.

We were interrupted by a commotion at ground level, near the base of the first tree. A crowd was swiftly gathering around two groups of dragons who seemed to be having a disagreement. Lots of pushing and yelling were involved. Instead of swooping down with the masses, we stayed put and swiveled our ears forward. Dragons had good hearing to begin with, and we had the enhanced android version, so we had as good a seat as if we’d joined the onlookers on the ground.

Dragon insults and cursing weren’t particularly inventive, depending more on volume and repetition to get the point across, but from the few coherent words that occasionally got uttered almost by accident, I was able to determine that one group was Alexander sympathizers who were trying to drum up grassroots support, with the endgame of peacefully joining up. They weren’t getting a lot of chance to talk, though.

I glanced sideways at Bridget and saw she was as surprised as I was. “This wasn’t in the briefing materials?” I asked.

“The Alexander thing is a developing story, apparently. This is new. Up until now, he’s just been attacking and taking over the occasional floater.”

“For what? What’s the point?”

Bridget gave me a hard look. “Poor Howard. And Bobs in general. You’re so civilized and empathetic toward others that you just can’t understand that some people are just assholes. This is no different from any number of tin-pot dictators in Earth history. Little men, mostly, who measure their worth by the number of people and amount of resources they control.”

I shook my head, feeling suddenly combative. “And again, to what end?”

“This isn’t an instrumental goal, Howard. The control is the endgame. It’s not for anything.”

I sighed and silently conceded the argument. There was simply too much evidence from history that she was right.

Meanwhile, the argument had ended with the Alexander sympathizers being physically hoisted into the air and tossed over the side. While they could have just circled around and come back, it probably would have resulted in a repeat performance but with more spear action. Anyway, there was something in the briefing about how being tossed over the side had broader social implications. Like being branded or discarded.

We continued to sip our morning booze while the crowd slowly dispersed. People started filtering back up the tree, including back to the kiosk. I buttonholed one individual as she bought a tuev and some kind of breakfast wrap.

She gave us the once-over, and a faint look of distaste came over her features. “Foreigners,” she muttered. Then she shrugged and said, “Alexander’s conquest keeps getting bigger, and it’s getting closer. He calls it a nation, apparently. A lot of people are nervous, and some have decided that a preemptive surrender is a good strategy. Maybe they can fly to his nation and join up directly, now that they’re baseless.”

Baseless, I remembered, was what you were if you got tossed overboard. It meant not having a home, which technically included Bridget and me. Foreigners.

“Rumor has it they’ve set fire to floaters that defied them,” she continued. “That seems far-fetched, though. No one would be that stupid.”

I could see the shocked look on Bridget’s face and quickly checked my briefing notes. I’d been thinking of the floaters in an overly casual context, apparently. Dragons had an almost religious reverence for them, and burning one would be like … like sacking the capital city of your enemy. Something humans had done with casual abandon all throughout history. Except that floaters were living, breathing beings, not just a patch of ground.

“Doesn’t that just create a whole tribe of committed enemies?” Bridget asked.

“If they live. Word is the Alexandrians surround the floater and kill anyone trying to escape.” Our companion gave us a skeptical look and a slight tip of her cup before moving on.

“Well, that sucks,” I commented.

“It more than sucks. Floaters have very low reproduction rates, which is typical for a species that is large, long-lived, and doesn’t have much in the way of natural enemies. And they aren’t useful as villages until they reach a certain size. This Alexander character could single-handedly change the ecology of Jabberwocky.”

“Want to hit him with a buster?”

She smiled at me. “Did I accidentally call you civilized? But no. Chances are, one of his lieutenants or children would just take over. We’d have to obliterate a good fraction of the army to stop it, and I think that’s more than even the most warlike Bobs could stomach.”

“So we’re going to … ”

“I don’t know, Howard. Wing it?”

I nodded, then realized she was giving me an expectant look. I replayed what she’d said, then groaned and got a smile in response.

*****

We took to the air from one of the outer branches, then circled around to glide below the floater. It was slowly drifting eastward with the slight wind from the hills. As we came over a lake, the floater dipped its tendrils and dragged them through the water. Bridget circled, with me following.

As we came to the far edge of the lake, the tendrils retracted, and Bridget moved in. Dragons weren’t birds, but they did have a lot of the same talents, such as the ability to grab a vertical perch and hang off sideways. Bridget inched her way down the tendril, then began pulling up the remaining length. I circled and watched her work.

After another minute, Bridget dropped off the vine and caught air. I pulled up beside her as she described an arc that would take us back to the town. “And?” I said.

“Later. I have to think about this.”

That meant she’d found something interesting. The wait would be frustrating, but worth it.