to live a full term, and to balk him politically, so he fixed the schedule to eliminate you early! You shouldn't have to die at all!'
She turned quickly, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him on the lips. 'It is kind of you to tell me that, Zane. You press the case; maybe if you prove it, you can get my soul freed from Hell. I could join my father in Purgatory. That would be nice.' Then she broke and walked resolutely toward the approaching form that was the dragon.
Zane watched her go, helpless to prevent the disaster that had been scheduled. She was right; Satan had won this round, by whatever means. Luna had shed her tears and accepted her fate, and now was doing a singularly generous thing. She was a good woman, no matter what the official record said! He did love her — and partly because of that, he could not interfere. She had chosen her mode.
He looked at the Deathwatch. The countdown was now at four minutes. Soon he would have to break away to attend to his true client, whoever that was — but first he would watch what happened here, though it destroy his joy in life.
He still had time to do something to prevent what he least wanted to see. But he knew he would not. Luna had selected the manner of her termination, and it was a worthy manner. The kindest thing he could do for her, ironically, was to let her be roasted and chewed to pieces by the dragon.
The dragon loomed much larger as it circled the field, aligned itself, and swooped down for a landing. Hot Smokers were not large dragons, as this class of reptile went, but their fire-breathing made them formidable. This one was a dragoness, a female, whose scales were shades of gray. On her back, between her great leathery wings, was a single armored egg.
There was an exclamation from the baffle, and Zane saw the television cameraman mounting his zoom lens. An egg meant a potential baby dragon, perpetuating the species; of course the Dragoons were interested! They would be doing their best to track that egg, and the draglet who hatched from it. They might band it, so they could trace its migration route by radio. Of course, some illegal hunter would probably poach it long before it grew to maturity; that was another reason this was an endangered species. Zane would have had more sympathy for the plight of the Smokers, had it not been Luna this dragoness was about to feed on.
Luna came to a stop in the center of the desert valley, nervously holding her knife. Zane saw that she wore no jewelry, honoring the stricture against magic. There were surely stones in her house that could vaporize a dragon! But she was determined to fulfill her role properly. She had removed her cloak and was garbed in a flowing white dress, and her hair glowed coppery in the sunshine. She seemed like the most lovely creature imaginable. But Zane knew he was not objective; he loved her.
This was absolutely crazy! How could he watch the dragon slaughter her and not even try to rescue her? He knew why, objectively, but he could not accept it emotionally. There had to be another way.
Another way for what? If Luna did not die this way, she would die some other way — probably a worse demise. He realized, now, that Satan would never let the ten days till the hearing go by unchallenged; he would pre-empt the matter, presenting the hearing with a fait accompli.
What else was to be expected from the Father of Lies? Zane had never had a chance to settle this matter through channels. So the termination date had been moved up, probably because of Zane's appeal, and it had been up to Luna to choose the manner of her demise on this designated day. At least the dragons were not sadistic; they killed and fed efficiently. They were natural creatures, not given to waste, Zane contemplated the dragoness. She was about six meters long, with a wingspan the same amount, but her torso was serpentine rather than stout. Mass was sacrificed in the interest of flight. She had only one set of feet, and her head was small; in fact, she was birdlike in her fashion. But few birds were her size, or had teeth, or leather wings, or metallic scales. Both birds and dragons had evolved from the ancient reptiles, but the common ancestor had been perhaps a hundred million years back.
Maybe seventy million years ago the birds, mammals, and dragons had squeezed the dinosaurs into extinction. For a long time, all three had prospered, but now the mammals, mainly in the form of mankind, were dominant. All too soon the dragons would be shoved into oblivion.
If the death of a single person was hard, Zane thought, what, then, of the death of an entire species? He approved of the Dragoons' campaign to save the Smokers. He wished there were some other way to feed this dragoness.
The Smokeress rolled up her wings and folded them back against her torso. She inhaled, then puffed out a dense cloud of smoke. Zane realized that her burner was just warming up. Adventure stories depicting a dragon waking from a snooze and shooting instant flames were nonsense. It took a lot of energy to shoot flame, so it was never done carelessly. Dragons were cold-blooded, like other reptiles, and generally hibernated in winter or migrated south; their fires were strictly for fighting and feeding. The Hot Smokers were more smoky than most, but where there was dragonsmoke there was dragonfire.
The creature stalked Luna, who took an involuntary step back. Dragons were so constituted that they had to hunt and kill their own prey, so this was more than mere ritual. Why that prey had to be virginal was a mystery the experts had never fathomed, but there was no question it was true. A Hot Smoke dragon would literally starve to death before it would consume either prekilled or nonvirginal flesh. The most persuasive conjecture about the origin of this restricted diet was that there had been a bad epidemic of venereal disease a few million years back and that dragons who had consumed infected prey were damaged by the disease themselves, so it had become a matter of survival to eat only guaranteed clean meat. Thus virgins, very few of whom had contracted VD.
Now Zane saw that the dragoness was limping. One foot was weak, though he could not tell whether this was from physical or magical malaise. Sometimes cloddish people hurled curses at wild creatures, considering it great sport. It could take a curse months to wear off, and that could be an inconvenience at best and a fatality at worst. Other clods dumped the refuse of toxic spells in the wilderness, where innocent wildlife could stumble upon the dump and get hurt. No wonder this dragon had come to the feeding station; she could not forage effectively alone — not while burdened by the egg and handicapped by the foot.
Zane caught himself up short. What was he thinking of? It was Luna this beast intended to feed on! The more handicapped the dragoness was, the better! Maybe Luna could, after all, fend off the monster with the knife. If she did that, if she escaped this fate legitimately — No. Fate could not so readily be cheated. Luna's death would not be the fault of the dragoness. It would be the fault of — The dragoness pounced. Luna danced away, slashing in the air with the knife. She might know death was inevitable, but she was not resigned to it. She would fight to live a few extra seconds, as a drowning person gasped for air. She was not a trained knife fighter, though her artistic hands might be more clever than most; in any event, the dragonfire would negate her efforts. So this was a largely automatic and futile exercise.
The dragoness pumped up her bellows and oriented on the woman. The beast was hot now; she could send forth a searing blast. That would be the end. Of course Luna had no chance!
Zane could not help himself. He stepped in front of the monster. The flame shot out, but bounced off the Death cloak without hurting him.
'No!' Luna cried. 'Let me die this way, Zane! Don't make me gamble on whatever else Satan has in store!'
To make her gamble on a different death — that concept shook him, though he had thought of it earlier himself. He had gambled compulsively, in past years, and dug himself into a pit from which only Death had finally extricated him. He had no wish to plunge back into that morass! Why, then, should he gamble with Luna's manner of dying?
The Smokeress was eying him, trying to determine why he wasn't roasted. He stared back, and she blanched in almost the manner of a human being, beginning to perceive the nature of his office.
'Don't do it!' Luna cried.
Zane reluctantly moved aside. He knew he had no right to interfere. The dragoness shook her head, as if clearing it of the ashes of an unpleasant vision, and reoriented on Luna. Zane no longer seemed to exist for either of them; as Death, he tended to fade from the awareness of anyone who was not his client.
Yet the dragoness hesitated, for the specter of Death could not lightly be dismissed from the deepest imagination of any creature who spied it. Even the briefest vision of Death tended to make a person or creature conscious of its own mortality, and that was disquieting. Most creatures would go to some lengths to avoid or expunge such awareness, and in this they were generally more successful than was man. Man's great curse was to perceive his death more clearly than did any other creatures; he could see the end coming, so suffered longer.
The dragoness, shaken, began to unfurl her wings, as if about to depart. 'Don't change your mind now!' Luna
