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Tea with the Black Dragon

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Long told the story. He told it not from the viewpoint of his own involvement, but chronologically, beginning with the affair of Carlo Peccolo and Liz Macnamara and her subsequent disillusionment, and leading up to the finding of the smashed tape recorder and the circle on the wall of the bathroom. He spoke so that Frisch should know the sort of trouble he was purchasing, but in his words the explanation became a tale of blood and betrayal.

Frisch sat gaping when Long was done. “Jeezus. What made Liz do such a stupid thing?”

Long grunted and licked his cracked lips. “I believe she wanted to become a wizard. That is what she said, at least.”

“Oof!” Frisch stretched in his seat and cracked his knuckles behind his head. “Everyone wants to be a wizard. Every engineer, that is. Goes with unicorns and dragons: but with technical people it’s particularly wizards—a secret fantasy that lies behind all the pin diagrams. It’s really silly, don’t you know? Wizards! But engineers can be really naive about themselves; they think because they can design a pc board and it’s right and it works, that everything they do or believe is going to be just that right. Better than what the nerd on the street does or believes. That’s where wizards come in. Secret ways. Secret knowledge. Not bound by ordinary rules. Liz is a little bit like that, isn’t she?”

Long smiled ruefully. “She did want to be a wizard,” he admitted. “So unlike her mother.”

Fred nodded his understanding. “I myself try not to… not to take myself too seriously, you know? But I get into it too: working at night, with all the colored lights blinkin’, and the machine responding to my commands.

“It’s all a power trip, man.” Frisch settled into himself, chewing on his moustache as the car sped on. The moon was now directly overhead.

Long’s voice broke the stillness. “I see. That explains wizards. What about unicorns?”

This question was not easy for the engineer to answer. “I dunno. I heard they were symbols of virginity, hundreds of years ago. Nobody I know goes in for virginity.”

Long laughed, and bright wheels of pain formed in his shoulder. His mind was clouding over. He sought to keep Frisch talking. “Dragons?”

“Power.” Frisch spoke with decision. “Raw power.”

“Is that all?” asked Mayland Long. “Is that all there is to dragons?”

“Isn’t that enough? Terror on bat wings. Fire and cold stone. Gold and jewels in heaps. Raw power!” He paused for only a moment. “Watch out when you meet a guy on a dragon trip!”

Mr. Long spared a moment from the road to glance at Fred Frisch, who sat, hands laced behind his neck, pale hair waving to his shoulders.

That rosy face shone like an angel’s in the moonlight. He was no more than a boy. Long felt himself buffeted by the cruelties of time. He spoke.

“In China, it was different. I think. Chinese dragons were not always such brutes. They lived for centuries, and had a certain reputation for wisdom.”

Frisch brought his hands down. “Didn’t they eat people?”

Long grinned. “At times. And at times people ate dragons. Powdered dragon’s blood has been known to bring a man back from the edge of death.”

Frisch looked doubtfully at Mr. Long. “Are you… Chinese?” he asked.

“More or less.” Long strangled a yawn, afraid how the movement would affect his shoulder. His face was hot and dry. His lip was bleeding.

“The Chinese imperial dragon has five toes to a foot. All others have three or four.”

“Why’s that such a difference?”

“It makes it much easier for him to turn the pages of books. To write letters to his friends,” answered Mayland Long. “Don’t laugh. It is true.”

To their surprise the building which housed RasTech was lit and open. A small circle of men squatted on the front stoop, drinking soda and tossing pennies. Long and Frisch hesitated at the foot of the walk.

“This is an additional complication,” whispered Long.

“I guess somebody in there works three shifts. Can’t believe it’s RasTech. Those guys look like Mexicans. Probably they do parts assembly.”

“One of them is Mexican born.” The sick man spoke absently “The rest seem to be from the Central Valley, by their accent. But their presence, and that of the guard in the lobby, forces me to rethink our strategy I’d planned to break the lock.”

“Well, now we won’t have to,” replied Fred Frisch, and he skipped buoyantly toward the door.

Mr. Long followed.

The guard was tan faced, portly and balding. As the two entered he put down a Harlequin romance. Fred was a vision of blond innocence. He sailed to a stop before the guard and, leaned over the desk.

“I’m supposed to meet Floyd Rasmussen here,” he said. “I’m a little late.”

The fat man blinked. His English was not too good.

“No Mister Rasmussen here. Not in the night. Come back tomorrow.”

Fred ran his hand through his hair. “We have to boot up the system. Comprende? Boot up the system?”

“Do you want me to translate?” murmured Long in Fred’s ear.

“No,” answered Fred in the same tones. “I want him to stay confused.”

The guard cleared his throat and glanced wistfully at his book. “Booting is not my business. Come back” tomorrow.”

“But if we don’t boot the system right now, it’s going to get hot for us. Overheat. Muy caliente and a lot of money.”

The guard’s pudgy face creased with worry, but he shrugged. “I cannot boot; What can I do?”

“You have the keys, I know. Let us in so we can do it.”

The guard blinked resentfully. “I cannot do that,” he stated. “It is not permitted.”

Fred ran both his hands through his hair and his moustache bristled like a live thing. “Have you ever seen a computer crash?” he demanded. “It’s horrible. All over the floor! It will put Rasmussen out of business.”

Unhappily, the guard stood. He looked vaguely around, as though the corners of the lobby could give him some advice. He put his hand into his baggy uniform pocket and pulled out a ring of keys.

“You come,” he commanded, with great bitterness. “When you leave, I have to search you.”

“Fair enough,” said Fred, as the private door opened before them. Long withheld comment.

Chapter 13

In Rasmussen’s office, lit only by window light, the model of the ship cast complex shadows on the floor. Fred bent to marvel at the miniature while May land Long perused the wall of yellowed comic strips, studying the tastes of this man who had come so near to killing him.

He liked Hagar the Horrible, evidently, and a strip titled Garfield. Anything by Kliban. Anything with cats.

Long remembered the wretched cry of the white cat in the bathroom. The cat had betrayed him to Rasmussen—by accident, of course. He had, in turn, caused the cat’s death.

Also by accident.

Rasmussen’s taste was pedestrian—nothing in the decoration of this wall exposed the humorist as a murderer. Rut then, Mayland Long could also laugh. And kill men.

He leaned against the wall, waiting for Frisch to be done. It was hard to stand. Swallowing, too, was becoming difficult.

“This is a beauty. You like boats?” called Fred.

“No.”

The weariness expressed in a single syllable brought the young man out of his reverie.

“Sorry,” he said, peering through the dark. “I’ll look for the system now.”

Mr. Long followed Fred Frisch from room to room, searching for anything which resembled a microprocessor with printer connections. It was not easily found. After a few minutes. Long realized his efforts were hindering the search. He returned to the reception room and sank into the secretary’s swivel chair.

At least with the lights out one did not notice that the walls were orange. The flat telephone console was green, however, as was the terminal screen at the secretary’s desk. Evidently this was a “paperless” office, such as Long had read about in the pages of EDN magazine. That meant that all correspondence was stored on disk and sent to the printer as copies were desired.

He tried to call Fred; his voice failed him. On the second try he succeeded.

Frisch appeared. Long pointed to the box in front of him. “Is this a microprocessor?”

Fred smote his forehead with the heel of his hand. “What a jerk I am! Here I am, clawing my way through the back labs looking for something esoteric and here it is.

“Sure. The box is a Vector—that’s 8080 all right, and the rest of the system… well I don’t know.”

Long eased out of the chair. “I had hoped you would know.”

“Nope.” Fred explored the desk with nimble fingers, searching for the various power switches.

“Will you be able to use it?”

“Dunno that either,” grunted Fred, offhand. A fan began to whirr. After five minutes he succeeded in lighting the screen with gibberish.

A harsh, rattling sigh reached Fred’s ears. He swiveled in the chair.

What he saw broke through his concentration. Long was crouching on the carpet behind the desk. His knees were up and his head rested between them. His usable arm encircled his legs and his left hand hung limp, trembling visibly.

With a squeal of chair wheels, Fred got up. He stepped awkwardly over to Long and laid his own hand on the glossy black hair. “Don’t worry,” he said. “When I said I didn’t know how, that didn’t mean I couldn’t learn. I’m pretty good at this impromptu kind of thing. And you know what they say. ‘If you know what you’re doing, it isn’t research.’ ”