THE ART OF THE DRAGON

by Sean McMullen

Sean McMullen’s most recent F&SF story was “The Spiral Briar” in our April/May 2009 issue. He says he is currently expanding that story into a novel. He is also collaborating with artist Grant Gittus on a children’s fantasy book called Lost Toys. His new story concerns a man who was in the right place at the right time. Or is that the wrong place at the wrong time?

I was there when the dragon first appeared—and ate the Eiffel Tower. I was standing on the Quai Branly, taking a video of the tower from beside one of its legs, when there was a great gust of wind and the dragon swept into the viewfinder. It began at the top, biting off sections and gulping them down. It made no attempt to attack people, but neither did it make any effort to spare them. Two hundred and ten were crushed beneath its feet and tail, and seventeen were killed by falling pieces of tower. Another ninety were never accounted for, and were presumed eaten.

I stayed as long as I did through sheer paralysis. My camera was on a tripod, and continued to record while I stood gaping upward in disbelief as wreckage crashed down all around me. Every so often the dragon would snort clouds of dust into the air, and this settled on me like a fine, black drizzle. I do not remember deciding to run, but having done so, I recall thinking that I was doing something incredibly stupid. Surely the dragon would notice me and swat me like an insect, but it did not happen. I eventually stopped when my legs jellied from the exertion, and I fell headlong.

Forcing myself to look back was not at all easy. Were I to see the Eiffel Tower intact, I would know I was insane. All around me I could hear shouting, however, and the word “dragon” was being used quite a lot. This made it easier to look back. The thing was eating delicately and methodically, and by now had consumed half of the tower. I looked down at my hands, then rubbed some of the black dust between my fingers. It was gritty, like a very fine abrasive. The dragon continued to munch on the tower as helicopters began to circle. One fired a pair of rockets that exploded against its head. It ignored the attack. There were more rockets and explosions, but none had any effect.

I cringed as the dragon reared up and looked about, but humans did not seem to interest it. As it turned, the tip of its tail swept through the air above me, yet I was crouching almost a mile from where the tower had stood. It crossed the river, followed the road—more or less—then began to eat the Louvre. I tried to stand up, but felt strangely weak. Someone grabbed me beneath my arms and began dragging me back.

“Monsieur, vous devez aller à l’hôpital!”

Hospital? Only now did I realize that something had gashed my left arm, and that I was losing a lot of blood. I had noticed no pain at all.

On a television in the hospital’s outpatients area I learned that the dragon had gone on to visit Notre Dame Cathedral, the Gardens of Luxembourg, and several other outstandingly beautiful places before flying away. Nobody on camera was talking about the fact that artwork was being eaten. I saw at least a minute of the dragon taken with my own camera. Gradually the picture deteriorated as dust settled on the lens, then the broadcast cut to an interview with one of the helicopter pilots. He was distraught, almost insulted, that the dragon had ignored his attempts to attack it. I asked about my camera, pointing out that a video I had shot was being shown on the television. A nurse promised to make inquiries. I tried to call my family in London to say I was all right, but the lines were jammed.

I discharged myself after another half hour. By now people with far worse injuries than mine were being brought in, and I doubted that I was likely to receive any more treatment for many hours. My arm had been sewn up, but they also had ideas about giving me a blood transfusion. Being a confirmed hypochondriac, that prospect had me close to panic. I had to stop to rest after every block, but eventually I reached the Gare du Nord. Even though I was expecting the worst, the trains were still running. I settled into my seat and watched Paris glide past beyond the window, ignoring the other passengers who were exchanging stories about the dragon. Apart from a large number of military helicopters in the air, all seemed normal. Beyond the city, the French farmlands were untouched.

On the British side of the Channel Tunnel everything seemed just as normal, but that did not last for long. The train stopped on the edge of Greater London, and there was an announcement that St. Pancras station had been eaten. Nobody seemed to know what to do with the passengers from my Eurostar train, which was meant to terminate there. After a dozen attempts to phone my brother, I finally got through.

“Scott, you’re alive!” he shouted into the mouthpiece.

“Alive, yes, and I don’t suppose I need to tell you about Paris?”

“No, course not. Big hero, you are, taking those vids from right under the dragon when it ate the Eiffel Tower. It’s been on the television. They even interviewed me.”

Someone must have found my name and email address etched on the underside of the camera, I realized.

“Charles, can you get on your scooter and pick me up?”

“You’re not in Paris?”

“No, I’m back in London, somewhere near the Orbital. There are no trains, the busses and cabs are crammed solid, and even if I could get onto something with a motor, the roads are gridlocked.”

“Why not just tell me where you are and they’ll send a helicopter.”

“A helicopter? And who are they?”

“Defense people, they’re here now, in the house.”

“What do they want with me?”

“You got the best close-up pictures of the dragon eating the Tower. That makes you an expert on it.”

* * * *

I was flown to some small, secure military base to the south of London, but was told nothing by those in the helicopter. Once on the ground I was taken straight to a briefing room. Here a team of interrogators questioned me very closely, going over the same questions again and again, each time phrasing them a little differently.

“So you arrived in Paris yesterday morning?”

“Yes, by train.”

“Why did you go there?”

“I got my doctorate in art history last week. I was going to spend a weekend in Paris, looking at art for fun instead of study for a change.”

“You have a Ph.D. in art history, yet you drive a delivery truck for a living?”

“Well, you try getting any other job with a Ph.D. in art history.”

“Why were you taking videos of the Eiffel Tower at the very moment that the dragon appeared?”

My patience snapped.

“Well, you know how it is. Don’t get to spend much quality time with the dragon, so I thought I’d vid some of those little domestic moments, like mealtimes.”

“Mister Carr—”

“Doctor Carr to you.”

“Your flippant attitude is not going to achieve anything.”

“Neither are your damn aggressive questions! Are you saying that I summoned a two-mile-long golden dragon with a silly grin from Dragonland, or wherever dragons come from?”

“Er ... well, did you?”

I was finally given a break, and was shown into a room where my brother was waiting. We were left alone, and I flopped into a chair and closed my eyes.

“Charles, just what happened in London, apart from St. Pancras?”

“You’re kidding! You don’t know?”

“I’ve been told nothing.”

“Well, a lot of stuff is gone. The station, the big museums and galleries, Tower Bridge, the Boadicea statue ... oh, and it scoffed Buckingham Palace, how could I forget? The British Library got pretty well trashed too, but they think that was an accident. You know, St. Pancras was so close.”

“Where is the dragon now?”

“Last saw it in Amsterdam on the telly, just before the spooks arrived and asked about you.”

We were being monitored, that was certain. Doubtless our conversation was a great disappointment to those listening.

“So what happens now?” asked Charles.

“The bad cop has had words with me, so I imagine it’s the turn of the good cop.”

“What are you going to say?”

“I’ll say what the bad cop did not give me a chance to say. I hope he gets a kick in the arse and a demotion.”

“Can you tell me?”

“Well, Charles, funny you should ask. The dragon is eating art.”

“Art? You’re daft. It’s just doing a Godzilla on the big cities. If it weren’t real, I’d say it was just a cheap movie. Did you see its silly grin? Spoils the whole effect.”

“It’s not only attacking works of art, it’s choosing those of the greatest symbolic value and highest visibility. Just you watch. In every city that it visits, only the great cathedrals, palaces, galleries, and monuments will go.”

“But why?”

“If I knew that, Charles, the spooks bugging this room would be treating me a lot more politely.”

As it happened, the treatment given to me improved anyway, and I soon realized that I had been declared someone important. The dragon was eating art, I was some sort of authority on art, and I had been closer to the dragon than any other art authority who was still alive. I was taken to an operations room, where I was given a very detailed briefing while real-time pictures of the dragon eating bits of Berlin played on large screens. In the days that followed I spent much of my time here, being briefed about the dragon’s position, and watching live coverage of what it was doing. The pattern was always the same. It arrived at a city, methodically munched its way through whatever prominent artistic works took its fancy, then flew on.

St. Petersburg suffered terribly, and there were tears on my cheeks as I watched the dragon devour the Church of the Saviour. From there it left for Moscow, and it was about halfway there and five miles above open farmland when it was struck by a missile with a one megaton warhead. The explosion had no effect whatsoever. By then I had been co-opted into a group of experts called the Dragon Advisory Committee, and within the hour we were shown coverage of the attack taken from a monitor jet that had been shadowing the dragon at a safe distance. Nobody tried to stop it after that.

Weeks passed, and I was astounded by how very quickly humanity adjusted to the idea of a two-mile-long dragon touring the world and eating artwork. Museums and galleries were avoided by everyone with any sense and general tourism dropped off as well, but airlines continued with reduced schedules. In some cities there were mass bonfires of paintings, while the prices of designer houses plunged. Martial arts academies were renamed martial skills academies, academies of fine arts just got their signs taken down, and universities expanded other faculties into empty arts buildings. Jackhammers were applied to pavement mosaics, murals were painted over, and public sculptures were either smashed or loaded onto dredging barges to be dumped at sea.

All the while the Dragon Advisory Committee studied the dragon, but the few facts that had been gathered together about it made little sense. All attempts to communicate, negotiate, or fight had been ignored. It was two miles long, with a wingspan of three. Measurements of the footprints put its weight at only a million tons. When the thing moved it made a metallic, booming sound. The conclusion was that it was both hollow and metal. The nature of the metal was a mystery. It looked like gold. If it were metal and hollow, then what was inside? Air, according to computer models. It was an immense shell over not very much. The dragon did not digest the debris of what it had eaten, it pulverized them, then exhaled the dust. This was determined by the way that its weight remained constant.

My next contribution was to compare our immense visitor to the dragon ships of the Vikings. During the centuries that politically correct historians no longer call the Dark Ages, the dragon ships brought fearsome Norse warriors to Britain. They looted treasures, took slaves, burned much of what could not be carried, then sailed home.

“So you think it’s a ship?” asked the secretary of the Dragon Advisory Committee. “A spaceship, perhaps, shaped like a dragon?”

“It could be.”

“Not a robot? Not a real dragon with metal armor?”

“You wanted theories, I am just giving you another theory.”

“A dragon full of alien Vikings, perhaps?” asked a sociologist named Glenda.

“I can’t say. It might be just an art-hating dragon.”

“Does that mean it will go away once all the art has been eaten?” asked a major from the Special Air Service who always wore sunglasses and was only known by a serial number.

“I don’t know. Some Vikings sailed away, but some settled here.”

“A dragon? On Earth? Forever?” he gasped.

“Not the ship, but its crew,” suggested the secretary.

“So where are they?” asked the major. “The dragon is empty.”

“They might be beings of disembodied data, who can experience artwork as its totality, not just form, color, texture, and whatever else,” I ventured.

“So they don’t hate art, they just do a bit of damage when they appreciate it?” asked the major.

“Perhaps,” I guessed.

“So where are they?” Glenda asked me.

“I don’t know.”

“Well how do you know they exist?”

“How do you know the dragon’s power plant exists?”

“It flies and eats,” said the secretary. “That takes a lot of energy.”

“Well something is choosing what it eats, whether it’s a crew or—or a dragon brain,” concluded the major.

True, aesthetic judgments were indeed being made. It had flown over Los Angeles, looked about, apparently decided that nothing was worth eating, then flown on without landing. Gradually it worked its way south in a zigzag spiral that encircled the Earth several times. Finally it stopped, settled itself on a beach in Australia’s southeast, and apparently went to sleep. Within a half hour of that news arriving, I had been put onto a jet for Melbourne with the rest of the Dragon Advisory Committee—which had been renamed the British Dragon Advisory Committee.

* * * *

The dragon was lying stretched out along a beach bordered by sheer cliffs near Cape Otway. It was one of those locations that would have been called wild and desolate until it became fashionable to call them beautiful and unspoiled. Boats that normally took tourists to watch whales were offering tours of the dragon, but the British Dragon Advisory Committee was taken to the beach by helicopter, where we joined several dozen other groups of experts. None of those with me had yet seen the dragon directly, and they were understandably nervous as we approached. We knew that it did not kill deliberately, but that was of little comfort to anyone who got under its feet. Fifteen hundred people had been killed by it, and two-thirds of those had died in Paris and London on the first day. After that, people learned to stay away from anything resembling art when the dragon was known to be approaching.

I stood on the beach beside an Australian military engineer, watching through binoculars as two men wearing camo balaclavas and overalls entered a nostril from a platform at the top of a mobile crane. They were trailing communications cables and carrying assault rifles.

“Dragon Team Recon,” said the engineer. “They’re wired for sound and visuals.”

“What do they hope to achieve?” I asked.

“Exploration. We know that the nostrils are not used for breathing. Our instruments show there’s no airflow in or out of them.”

“Except when it’s snorting out pulverized artwork.”

“It could be a robot, that’s my theory. If so, we might find a soft spot.”

“A soft spot? In a thing that survived a direct hit from a hydrogen bomb?”

“You don’t understand. If that dragon was built by engineers, there’s bound to be an access hatch somewhere for maintenance and repairs.”

I noticed that various teams of people were pointing equipment at the dragon, and through my binoculars I could see a woman who was pressing her forehead and fingertips against the immense curve of golden metal that was its jaw.

“Who is the woman standing beside the mouth?” I asked.

“She’s a psychic. She says she’s channeling the aliens who are the crew.”

“So what are they saying?”

“She doesn’t understand the language.”

“Do your instruments say anything more constructive?”

“Afraid not. Use whatever instrument you like, it’s like taking a sounding of deep space. I think we—smoke!”

I immediately looked back to the nostrils, where a cloud of dark smoke had been puffed out. Cursing softly, the engineer keyed his phone into life.

“Scope six, this is Major Dekker. What was that smoke?”

Back at the dragon, someone at the top of the crane was withdrawing the communications cables. The men were no longer attached to them.

“Well, what do your spectrographs say?” shouted the engineer into his phone.

I stood waiting as he listened. Presently he rang off.

“The spectrograph team has made a preliminary analysis of that puff of smoke,” he said, more to himself than me. “It was mainly steam mixed with carbon, with some iron and lead, and traces of other elements like chlorine, calcium, and silicon.”

“Was the estimated mass that of two humans, their weapons, and their surveillance gear?”

“He didn’t say. There was about ten meters of cable played out when ... when the team vanished.”

I caught myself just as my mouth opened to ask whether or not they were virgins. It was a stupid question, yet was it any sillier than the idea of a metal dragon two miles long that ate art? Were those two men the first human sacrifices that the dragon had accepted?

“I think anything that gets inside the dragon will be pulverized,” I said, musing aloud.

“What’s that you say?”

“We are like members of some Stone Age tribe, trying to enter a battleship by climbing down the funnels. Its insides are incomprehensible and dangerous to us. I think that if you tried to drill into the belly, you would probably find that the end of the drill has sheered off and vanished.”

“Funny you should say that.”

“How so?”

“We did try drilling into it, this morning. We were successful, after a fashion.”

“So not entirely?”

“No. The drill went straight in, but when it was withdrawn there was no hole. Most of the drill bit was missing as well.”

“Did you have the shavings analyzed?”

“There were no shavings. As I said, the drill went straight in.”

At this point he walked away to some people gathered around a truck bristling with equipment that I did not understand. I began to walk in the direction of the dragon. At first I thought one of the many guards with stubby assault rifles and helmets jammed full of communications gear would stop me, but I was allowed to keep walking. Distances can be deceptive when something as large as the dragon is involved, and my walk turned out to be half a mile.

Being the token expert from the arts, I had the rather contradictory title of generalist specialist. I was one of those people who had to devise theories for the utility specialists to check, and at this stage I was very short on theories. The one thing that I could do was touch the dragon. Why must humans touch? Before me was the most dangerous being ever to fly the skies or walk the Earth, yet I wanted to touch it.

The last few steps were the hardest. About fifty feet to the left, the medium was still alive and well, pressing her head and hands against the dragon. What would it make of me? The dragon ate art, and while I was no artist, I was an art historian with qualifications to prove it. Was I the first art historian to touch it? Could it read minds?

Trying to hold my mind blank, so that my better judgment would not be aware of what I was doing, I approached the immense jaw, extended my hand, and ran my fingers along the surface. It was like touching the hull of a large ship. The impression was not at all rational; it was as if I had decided that it would feel that way, and that I had been right. I rapped at it with my knuckles, but there was only the slightest suggestion of an echo. I stepped back, looked up, and tried to ... to appreciate the monster, as if it were a work of art. I failed. As I walked away from the dragon I was met by a group of several dozen people. They were dressed in assault camos, suits, lab coats, and even parade uniforms. Most of the British Dragon Advisory Committee was with them.

“What was it like?” asked the SAS major.

“Like a huge ship: hard, cool, absolutely unyielding.”

Because I had not been reduced to a cloud of my component elements, most of the others now walked forward to touch the dragon for themselves. I had become friendly with Glenda, the sociologist, by now. She had a hard, pragmatic bearing, and a tendency to stand apart from other people as if determined not to follow the herd. Thus it was that we stood back together, watching the others having their photographs taken in front of the jaw.

“Just what is so special about art?” she asked, sounding as if she were tired of asking questions without answers.

“It can move people by being beautiful or confrontational,” I replied. “It can make our surroundings more pleasant, it can even be enjoyable to create. Sometimes it’s inspirational, but often it’s manipulative.”

“That tells me nothing. Why is it special?”

“Well ... only humans produce it.”

“Some birds decorate their nests with bright and colorful things like broken glass and plastic bottle caps.”

I had not known that. I thought about it for a while.

“But is that art or decoration? Some apes use broad leaves to keep the rain off, but is that clothing? Birds use twigs to tease insects out of holes, apes and sea otters use rocks to break things open for food, but you can hardly say they make tools. Monkeys throw stones: does that mean they have invented projectile weapons?”

“Well, you’re the expert in art history. When did humans invent art?”

“Necklaces go back about a hundred thousand years, but they are just ornaments. Cave paintings and sculptures have only been around for half that time.”

“So that’s real art?”

“Yes. I’d say art either evolved or was invented around forty thousand years ago.”

“Then art is relatively new—no, wait! Chimps, birds, even elephants can learn to paint.”

“They are taught to paint, they do not do it spontaneously.”

“Neanderthals had art. They were not quite human.”

“The Neanderthals did not produce artwork and decoration until they copied what humans were doing. Art did not exist until we humans invented it.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“With another clue that we do not understand. Has the dragon destroyed any fashion houses yet?”

“No.”

“Then it’s drawing a distinction between art and decoration.”

“We already knew that.”

“Ah, but now it has been phrased in a different way.”

At this point I noticed that people were descending from the top of the cliffs on rope ladders. They were all naked, except for a few wearing backpacks. Having assembled themselves into neat rows, they began to march toward the dragon. The guards did not challenge them.

“Do those guards stop anyone from doing anything?” I asked.

“They are only here to give the impression that the authorities are in charge,” said Glenda.

“How very Australian. So who are the nudists?”

“They are from one of the Dragonist cults. Their nudity symbolizes the rejection of art in general, and artistically inspired clothing in particular.”

The Dragonists stopped not far from where we were standing, and their leader began a diatribe against art in all its forms through a bullhorn. He then took his followers through an oath in which they swore to wear only blankets for the remainder of their lives, and to destroy artworks wherever they could be found. Glenda and I hurriedly backed away when he exhorted the dragon to strike them down if their actions displeased it. The dragon did nothing. This led to scenes of relief and rejoicing. Those with backpacks began to distribute blankets.

“I almost expected them to sacrifice a virgin,” I said as the Dragonists prostrated themselves and sang an adoration hymn at the immense head.

“Adult virgins are not very common in this day and age,” said Glenda.

“Oh, I don’t know. They turn up occasionally.”

“Show me one.”

“Not in public.”

As lighthearted banter goes it was harmless enough, yet I would eventually learn that where religion is concerned, there is no such thing as harmless banter.

* * * *

We stayed in tents for a few days while more tests were conducted on the dragon, but nothing significant was learned. For my part, I thought there was something familiar about the monstrous creature. Every morning I would stand before it, staring up at its golden, polished immensity and doing what I did best: grasping for impressions. It reminded me of the steampunk devices of late-twentieth-century fiction and film: intricate Victorianesque machines built of iron and driven by steam. They were enchanting in concept, impossible in practice, yet strangely alluring—like much art.

It was as I stood contemplating the dragon that Glenda approached me on the morning of the fourth day.

“The committee is moving to Melbourne,” she announced.

“But the dragon is here,” I said without turning.

“We study Mars without being aboard the Mars probes.”

“True, but we would study Mars better by being there.”

“If you want to stay, an exception can be made.”

“On second thought, an apartment would be much nicer than the tent.”

“You come here every morning and stare at the dragon’s face. Are you trying to make telepathic contact?”

“No, I’m treating it like a painting or sculpture. There is an art to interpreting art, so I am practicing the art of the dragon. Nothing else has worked.”

“You can’t mean it’s a work of art, can you?” She laughed.

“It could have aesthetic worth, even if it’s meant to be something else. My master’s degree dissertation was on war machines as art: the ornate Spanish war galleons of the Armada, the elaborate body armor of the renaissance knights, the Spitfire fighter planes of World War Two. They all have artistic merit of one sort or another, yet they were designed to fight and destroy.”

“That can’t be relevant. The dragon destroyed a lot of art, but only a high-profile sample. It’s teaching humans to destroy art.”

This was a common view among the Dragonists.

“But why art? Does it have alien masters who are planning to invade, and they don’t like art?”

“Not aliens,” said Glenda. “Something greater.”

We stood in silence for a while, both contemplating the dragon in our own ways.

“Nobody actually saw it approaching from space,” I said, wondering if this was significant. “Could humans have dreamed it up?”

“Humans?” exclaimed Glenda. “Humans could never build a thing like that.”

“Not human technology as we know it, yet that silly grin looks like an oddly human touch.”

“Do you think it’s from the future?”

“I don’t know what to think, but I keep asking myself why a dragon? Most human societies have legends about them. Dragons are huge. They inspire awe.”

“But dragons were never real—until now.”

“Oh, they were real in our stories and imaginations. Anyway, what about dinosaurs? We only know them by their bones, yet they still have a very similar allure because they were enormous. A human can only cower before something of that size.”

“A human with a hunting rifle could kill the biggest dinosaur.”

“True, but now comes a dragon, and a dragon so big and powerful that no weapons of ours can kill it. We can’t reason with it, and it’s not been open to negotiations about anything. Again we cower, just as we did in ... in fairy tales.”

For a moment the wisp of an impression floated before me, then it vanished. I had been close to a very good guess about the dragon. It was meant to provoke a reaction from humans. Go back a million years, I thought. Lions, crocodiles, and cave bears were dragons to the defenseless protohumans. As we became better masters of our circumstances, the things needed to frighten us just became a lot bigger. Surely that dragon is a parallel, a lesson, an allegory....

The dragon’s face loomed above me, still too large for my mind to encompass.

“Humans are great at winning, but what if the idea is not to win?” asked Glenda.

“There’s no alternative, is there?” I replied. “If we surrender, the dragon wins. If the dragon surrenders, we win.”

“We may be meant to worship it. Humans have always worshipped.”

“I don’t think it wants worship.”

“You can’t know that.”

“The dragon destroys art, which is universally thought of as worthwhile. An invader would destroy our weapons, to demonstrate that resistance is useless. Instead this thing destroys the best and most famous of our artworks. It must be trying to tell us something about art.”

“It might be an angel, sent by God.”

“Are you serious?”

“Why not? The dragon is not part of reality as we know it. How else could it survive a hydrogen bomb?”

“A Neanderthal hunter might say the same thing after breaking his spear on a panzer, but that does not make the tank an angel or god.”

“Look, just as an exercise, think of the dragon as a god. Would a god just say, ‘Hey, guys, I’ve got an important announcement’? Gods are above that sort of thing, and the dragon is above words. I think we could no more understand its agenda than the termites eating your floorboards could understand a request to move out or else you’ll call an exterminator.”

“But why art? Art is harmless, it’s pleasing, it has value, it’s good, it helps make us what we are.”

“Well, it’s obvious that the dragon does not like what we are,” said Glenda with the sort of absolute conviction that makes me shiver.

* * * *

The British Dragon Advisory Committee moved to Melbourne that afternoon, but we continued to have little to do, other than discuss what we did not understand. Instead of watching the dragon on the beach, I watched a great deal of television in the weeks that followed. All across the world there were people moving out of ornate mansions and into the most ugly accommodation available. A number of projects were launched to record images of artwork before the dragon destroyed the originals, but Dragonist cults were destroying most artwork before it could be scanned. Other Dragonists were writing computer viruses to corrupt the databases of artwork scans that had already been done. Attempts to hide artwork generally met with failure, because there were big rewards on offer from the Dragonists to reveal where the art hordes were located.

As a member of the British Dragon Advisory Committee, I was given a serviced apartment in a building patrolled by security guards. I had broadband Internet, satellite television, and high-level communications links to realtime cameras trained on the dragon, along with terabytes of images of its earlier rampage. Every few days we would meet at Melbourne University. We did little else other than cover the same ground, but we did manage to look busy and write lots of reports. We also spent a lot of time in bars, getting drunk and hoping for inspiration.

“If I wanted to knock out an enemy, I’d knock out his communications, infrastructure, and surveillance capability,” sighed the SAS major as he nursed his drink. “The dragon’s actions make no sense. It’s left all our military smarts intact.”

“Except for a few communications towers that were a little too aesthetically pleasing,” Glenda pointed out.

“But this is no way to fight an enemy.”

“It’s not our enemy,” I suggested, and not for the first time.

“It might be trying to intimidate us,” continued the major. “You know, destroy art, which is not useful, but leave the world’s economy and defenses intact. That lets us know that fighting back is not an option, but the economy is okay and nobody gets hurt.”

“Apart from a few art lovers who could not run fast enough,” I reminded him.

“And quite a few religious worshippers,” said Glenda. “That must be significant.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “A lot of famous churches, mosques, cathedrals, temples, and shrines were attacked and pulverized, yet only the worshippers who tried to be human shields were killed. It’s letting us know that worshipping is okay, as long as we don’t let a lot of art get in the way.”

“In that sense the dragon is telling us quite a lot,” said the major. “We just don’t understand it yet.”

“I disagree,” said Glenda. “A lot of people already have the dragon’s message. All around the world there are bonfires of art books, paintings, religious art, art archive tapes, computer graphics software, and even blank sketch pads. In the past people worshipped on the basis of faith in holy writ, but now we have two miles of invincible dragon that anyone can watch and learn from. There are already twenty-three thousand Dragonists living in tents along the cliffs, worshipping it continually. Some even sacrifice themselves by leaping from the cliffs and smashing against its body.”

“They are going to look rather silly if it moves on.” I laughed.

“The faithful are sure that it will stay,” said Glenda emphatically. “It’s a matter of symmetry: the dragon started in Paris with the Eiffel Tower, and it finished in Melbourne by eating the spire of the Victorian Arts Centre. Melbourne was once known as the Paris of the South.”

“Is that true?” exclaimed the major.

“About a century ago, yes,” I agreed, standing up. “My round, who is drinking what?”

“Scotch, with ice,” said the major.

“White rum, with a dash of Coke,” said Glenda.

“I’ve been reading folklore stuff,” said the major. “Why all the business of sacrificing virgins to dragons? Why are virgins special?”

“I think you will find it’s virgin girls,” I explained. “It’s all symbolism. Fathers, brothers, suitors, all the warrior types are very protective about young and innocent girls. If a dragon can demand them as a sacrifice, it’s won the ultimate symbolic victory over warriors. The dragon has not moved since the art-burning movements got going, so maybe it prefers art to virgins.”

“Virgins are irrelevant,” Glenda agreed. “The dragon could be a religious oracle with a message about the waste and futility of art.”

“That’s hardly a sharing, caring religion,” I said as I waved for the barman.

“All religions sound extreme when they begin,” said Glenda.

“You sound like a believer yourself,” I observed.

“I’m just a method sociologist, don’t worry.” She laughed, her expression suddenly changing as rapidly as a computer image being morphed. “You know, get right into the minds of those you study.”

“The SAS has a similar approach,” said the major. “It’s the only way to infiltrate convincingly.”

“Now come on, confess, I had you fooled, didn’t I?” she asked.

“Well, yes and no. I must admit I was getting a bit nervous about you, so I checked your background. You had a fine career in acting for about five years.”

“I only went into acting so that I could do some fieldwork in method sociology.”

In my experience, that sort of banter is a play for a night’s entertainment in bed, so I pulled back from the conversation. On the bar’s television I watched a news item about an artist being beaten to death in public while riot police stood by and watched. Such incidents were becoming ever more common. Artists were dying, either by mob violence or at the hands of individual murderers. The civil and military authorities could do little. It was like watching old videos of the Berlin Wall being demolished. The old Communist regime had lost power, yet nobody had been ordered to clean out their offices and leave, so they just watched. Many government opportunists even joined the Dragonists. The screen switched to a purification rally where artists were marching through a city square, beating themselves with whips while a pile of paintings from some gallery burned fiercely.

“Scott, you’re still here.”

Glenda sat down beside me, swayed slightly, then drained her glass.

“I am the genuine, original, non-virtual Scott,” I replied. “Accept no substitutes, they are all very inferior.”

“The bar’s about to close.”

“Is it as late as that?” I said as I looked around. “Where’s Mr. Special Air Service?”

“Already gone. He has to get up at dawn and run ten miles or something. What are your plans?”

“Go home, go to bed, think about dragons, go to sleep. Yourself?”

“Well, I’m a bit tired of trying to get into the heads of Dragonists. How are you with the dragon?”

“I’m a bit short on inspiration, as usual.”

“Then we have something in common. How do you feel about some company at your place tonight? We’ll declare it a dragon-free zone.”

In a way I was rather flattered that I had something the SAS major did not, but I was not interested.

“Look ... don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not comfortable with that sort of thing.”

“You mean you’re gay?”

“No, no, it’s just human contact that worries me.”

“Human contact?”

“I’m ... squeamish. No offense, but ... like, it’s about germs.”

“Ah, I see! You wear gloves all the time, and only drink from bottles you unseal yourself. You go to meals in restaurants with the rest of us, but never eat. You’re a hypochondriac, aren’t you? A really extreme hypochondriac.”

“It keeps me healthy.”

“How fascinating,” she said with a very odd intonation.

What I had told her was true, but there was more. Much, much more. I returned to my apartment, changed into overalls, then went out again, this time to a municipal sanitary services depot. I had set up a double life. Three years earlier, a less than stable artist in London had paid me back for a bad review of his exhibition by hurling a beer bottle filled with petrol through my window. Fortunately the burning rag had come off in mid-flight, but ever since then I had been very careful about letting people know where I really live. Now I had a feeling that I might need to vanish into a new identity, and what more unlikely identity for a hypochondriac artist than one who drives garbage trucks?

* * * *

More weeks passed, during which public order did not so much break down as modify itself to purge society of anything that the dragon might not like. That included certain people, and I was highly qualified in fine arts. On the day that Glenda left the British Dragon Advisory Committee and declared herself a Dragonist, I abandoned my government-sponsored apartment, broke all contact with the BDAC, and became a garbage truck driver with no artistic interests at all. There was always a lot of wreckage to clean off the streets of Melbourne, what with the ongoing art purges, so I had found a job easily. I worked night shifts, because it made me less conspicuous. My work involved collecting an ever-increasing number of bodies, and from time to time I recognized a famous face or Australian colleague.

Concentration camps, supposedly for the protection of artists, were established in the countryside near where the dragon lay dormant. Each of these had Protective Enclave for Artists written prominently on every roof and above the gates. Nobody said as much, but this was clearly to encourage the dragon to have a country picnic rather than cause destruction in the cities, should it decide to go on the rampage again. Pictures of the camps and large maps were projected onto huge screens before its face, but it did not so much as twitch. The reputations of some senior Dragonists in the government were beginning to look a little insecure. To maintain their authority, they needed the dragon’s sanction, yet the dragon was putting its seal of approval on nothing. Soon they would resort to even more extreme measures, I was sure of that.

Every morning, after my night-shift ended, I would slump in front of the television and watch the news shows. Nearly every one started with a few seconds of live coverage of the unmoving dragon, then crossed to the latest anti-art riot, beating, or rally.

“Our minds are trapped by what we desire,” I said to the screen, which was displaying a bonfire of paintings in some anonymous-looking city square. “We prize memories, images, artifacts, and beautiful things, and art gives us all those. What else? Experiences, I suppose: we love the thrill of one’s football team winning, the rush from seducing someone desirable, the satisfaction of owning the most stylish car on the block. Beyond that, security, wealth, and reputation, but where does all that lead?”

The screen had no answer, and neither did I. No matter how hard I tried to distract myself and let my subconscious produce a brilliant insight, my subconscious remained in bed with a pillow over its head. I made a salad washed in antiseptic for what was a sort of morning dinner, and arranged the individual pieces as the mosaic of a dragon eating an artist. It gave me no inspiration, so I in turn ate the image.

Having made a mug of coffee, I turned my attention back to the television. It was now showing a comedy skit set on the beach in front of the dragon. A man wearing the stylized badge of three brushes in an A shape that was now imposed on artists was being tied to a pole that had been erected in front of a wall of sandbags. The camera panned across to a firing squad of people dressed only in blankets. It returned to the artist, who was shouting and struggling, condemning all art and swearing that he had never touched a paintbrush in his life. The commentator read out his name, principal works, awards, and Arts Council grants. Somebody shouted, “Fire!” No special effects could replicate what I saw next.

“This is real,” I said aloud, numb with shock.

The camera panned to a queue of artists waiting their turn near the sandbags. Some were on their knees, praying, others struggled with their guards, and a few actually managed a display of dignity. Two guards untied the body of the late artist from the pole and dragged him away. Another artist was dragged forward. The sandbags behind the pole had been so badly flayed by bullets that the sand had mostly leaked out and the wall was sagging in the middle. The commentator asked us to stand by for an important announcement.

Suddenly my door was smashed in.

The strangest thing about the raid was that nobody spoke to me directly. Someone called out, “That’s him!” and I was seized and secured by hands that had evidently become well practiced at this sort of thing. Every twist and wriggle that I attempted was easily countered. People with cameras and sound booms crowded into my apartment.

“Not only is he a highly qualified art critic and academic, he is also a virgin!” cried a journalist wearing a microphone headset who was bracketed by at least a dozen others with cameras.

On my own television I could see myself being held down and bound. I was symbolic, according to the journalist. I held the very last Ph.D. in art history to be issued before what was now being called the Age of the Dragon. He also kept saying I was a virgin, and from this I deduced that Glenda was involved. After that evening in the bar, she probably followed me for the whole night, learning about my secret identity’s job and apartment.

“A virgin artist, ladies and gentlemen, I know it sounds like a contradiction in terms, but there you have it,” babbled the commentator. “He is to be sacrificed to the dragon itself as proof of—”

The one sure way to have the sound killed on a lunchtime TV show is to shout obscenities, and I now did precisely this.

* * * *

I have little shame when it comes to staying alive. I was dragged struggling and screaming from my apartment, and continued to make an undignified fool of myself in front of several dozen cameras on the street outside as I was held down by eight men and strapped onto a medevac stretcher. I screamed and shouted myself hoarse with some very nasty language until one of my guards inserted a roll of bandage into my mouth. This allowed the television coverage to broadcast sound again, so the journalists returned and explained repeatedly about me being a virgin. Relief from the humiliation came when one of the helicopters hovering above let down a cable which was attached to my stretcher. I was winched up while other helicopters circled, doubtless transmitting high-definition images of everything to the television screens of everyone with an inclination to watch.

Being unable to struggle or scream, I now lay limp. The irony was that I was actually not a virgin. I had experienced a single sexual encounter at the age of seventeen, from which I had contracted NSU. Being a person with a phobia of contracting anything at all, this had put me off further sexual encounters. Obviously the prospects of getting a sworn statement that I was not a virgin were not good, however. I could not even remember the girl’s name, only that she had been the nude model for a painting class.

On the other hand, distract yourself by screaming hysterically for long enough and your subconscious gets a chance to do some serious thinking. Perhaps my subconscious was just as averse to firing squads as I was, for I suddenly realized that I had the answer to the whole question of the dragon.

The helicopter landed. From the television, I already knew to expect the pole, the wall of sandbags, the line of men and women wearing blankets and holding automatic rifles, the man holding a ceremonial officer’s saber, the naked Dragonist high priests, the television cameras, and the fluffy sound booms. Glenda was with the Dragonist priests, as naked as all the others but standing in front of them in some position of honor. Dragonist theology had now decreed that only those in the totally natural state could become saints of the dragon. I struggled as the guards began unfastening me. The camera crews crowded in: evidently this was good television.

My academic record and achievements in art history were read out, it was announced yet again that I was a virgin, then I was invited to confess my sins to the dragon. The roll of bandage was removed from my mouth. Now I had the undivided attention of the world’s media, but I did not give them inane babble, abuse, or pleas for mercy. Hoping that my voice would carry, and hoping that the dragon was paying attention, I looked straight up into the enormous face and blank, black eyes.

“I know you,” I said with the defiance of one with nothing left to lose. “I know what you are. You are all of us. You have come from the combined subconscious of all humanity. We created you without knowing it. Our superconsciousness created you to tell us that art is a mistake. Humanity is on the wrong path! The glories of human art, everything artistic, all that we hold most dear, all of it is a terrible mistake.”

I paused for breath. The man with the saber looked to the Dragonist priests. Glenda frowned, then nodded. The saber began to rise and the members of the firing squad released their safety catches.

“Forty thousand years ago we started painting on cave walls, but we were on the wrong path!” I screamed desperately. “For a third of humanity’s existence we’ve been building an enormous playground. Now it’s time to start again, to get it right.”

“Take aim!” cried the man with the saber as I paused to try to remember what else I had thought of.

I remember a brilliant flash of light and a blast of heat. For some moments I was convinced that I was dead and having an enforced out-of-body experience, then I saw the patches of melted sand and metal where the Dragonist priests, guards, helicopter, firing squad, and man with the saber had been. Those with the cameras and boom microphones had been spared, along with myself.

There was a great, deep rumbling, akin to some giant ship grinding against a reef. The dragon’s head began to rise, the neck extended, and its face approached me. For an eternity it loomed larger and larger, then it stopped. Had my hands been free I could have touched its lower jaw, yet its eyes were hundreds of feet above me. Moments passed. I remained alive. I had made a claim, I recalled. It was showing that it was interested.

“What do we do?” squealed one of the camera operators.

“Keep covering all this,” I advised. “I think the dragon wants the world to hear what I have to say.”

Every camera turned away from the dragon’s head and onto me. I collected my thoughts as best I could and took a deep breath.

“Why are humans special? Rats outnumber us. The krill have a greater biomass. Termites have survived at least a thousand times longer than humans.”

Again I paused for breath, and the entire world watched me breathing. I had only one key point, and I had no idea whether it was enough.

“Our brains did not evolve specifically so that we could build a space station or hunt for microbes in the Martian permafrost. We can do those things, but we don’t exist to do those things. We can produce beautiful art, but we don’t exist to do that, either. We’re like children who became so good at playing in the sandpit that we never left it. Now we’re teenagers, and an adult has come along, kicked over our wonderful sand sculptures, and told us to get a life. Of course we’re upset, of course we’re confused, but that’s tough.”

I had no more to say, yet still the head the size of an office block loomed over me. For what? Was it waiting for me to tell the world what to do? If so, I was dead. Nothing was left to me but the truth, and the truth was that I knew nothing else. I prepared as best I could for vaporization.

“I don’t know what the dragon wants us to do,” I confessed. “Maybe the dragon doesn’t know either. Certainly the guy who throws the teenagers out of the sandpit doesn’t know what they are destined to achieve, but sure as hell it’s going to be way more than building sandcastles.”

At these words the great rumbling began again as the head drew back and lowered itself to the sand.

“Someone really ought to release me,” I suggested.

There was an enthusiastic scramble to untie me. I walked to the patch of melted glass where Glenda had stood.

“This is what the dragon thinks of Dragonists,” I said, facing the cameras and pointing to the melted sand. “Stop the killing, disband your Dragonist cults, and find some proper clothes.”

The authority of the dragon was behind me, so the carnage stopped that very hour.

* * * *

Since then, the dragon has not moved. Every few weeks I make a pronouncement in front of it, and everyone decides that my words are true because I remain alive. I am a modern oracle, with all the advantages that come with such a position. Those who visit the dragon now are mostly tourists, although a few scientists still try to probe it with their instruments. Nobody has learned anything new, and I often wonder if they really expect to. Humanity has had some of its most cherished certainties shattered, yet people now seem oddly purposeful. Values cannot help but change while a two-mile-long, invincible dragon is monitoring what one does.

Nevertheless, in the privacy of my study I often gaze at photographs of the Eiffel Tower as if it were a dead lover. This may sound strange, coming from the dragon’s oracle, but understanding what the dragon wants is not the same as agreeing with it. In a century or so there will be no more people like me, however, so nobody will miss what has been lost. Nevertheless, I think it will still be a recognizably human world because our superconsciousness chose to secure our attention and declare its message using a two-mile-long, invincible dragon with an annoyingly smug grin. That comforts me, because even though that vast collective mind cares nothing for our petty agendas and values, and is above even using language, at least it retains a very human sense of humor.