Their synchronous action disconcerted Rosacher nearly as much as an attack would have done. He imagined a controlling agency that might pose a more significant threat than that of the insects themselves, and he was half-persuaded to accept the view that Griaule was not simply a moribund lizard of Brobdingnagian proportions, but a fabulous presence whose potentials were myriad and in large part unknown. He resisted the impulse to discover what had commanded the insects’ attention, afraid of looking away from them, but after a second or two, he turned to the throat. At first he saw only darkness, but then he noticed movement, though not the sort of movement he might have expected. A clot of atramentous black had materialized from the lesser blackness and billowed toward him, as if it were an entity that possessed the qualities of a gaseous cloud, one evolving into a shape and acquiring solidity, growing increasingly compact and menacing in form. A lion, he thought. No, a bull…or a crocodile with aspects of both bull and lion. He backed away from the cloud and, as it closed the space between them with a sudden surge, developing into a towering column that trembled with energy, on the verge—he believed—of assuming some final, dreadful shape, fear overwhelmed him and he flung himself from the dragon’s lip and fell screaming into the brush below.
4
Rosacher’s second thought on waking the next morning was that someone must have happened upon him lying unconscious in the brush and carried him to their home and there tended to his injuries; yet he could not think of one of his acquaintance with access to such a splendid bedchamber. The ceiling was high and cream-colored, worked with designs of leaves and roses and other flowers from which cunning, childlike faces emerged (his initial presumption had been that he was the prisoner of malefic spirits). Paintings in gilt frames hung on the walls and all the furnishings—chairs, bureau, cabinets—were exquisitely carved and finished. He swung his legs off the side of the bed (wide enough for four; green silk sheets and a golden coverlet; pineapple posts of teak with ivory inlays) and was astounded to discover that he had no aches and pains whatsoever. Either he had been lucky in the extreme or else he had been unconscious for several days, sufficiently long for his scrapes and bruises to mend. He crossed to a window, flung open the drapes, and realized that he must be in one of the mansions that occupied the slopes of Haver’s Roost. Looking eastward across the sun-drenched town, he could make out the low, patchwork roofs of Morningshade a half-mile away and the dragon’s ribcage rising above them, its back mapped by dense thickets and a wood, the rude shanties of Hangtown shadowed by the sagittal crest. The view seemed familiar, yet he could have sworn he had never been at that window before. He wandered about the room, touching picture frames, a rosewood end table, the gold and green rug that simulated a pattern of dragon scales, a leather-covered jewelry box holding cufflinks and coins and a dozen things more, and each object he touched brought to mind a memory, a fleeting association baffling in its familiarity. He stopped in front of a mirror. His hair was no longer a mass of dark curls; it was trimmed to stubble. He wore a gold earring bearing a green gemstone. Touching it, he knew it had been a gift from Ludie. Above his right eye, a scar whitened a portion of his eyebrow, an injury received in his fall from the dragon’s lip four years ago…
This revelation, if revelation it were, if he were not lying unconscious beneath Griaule’s lip and having a dream, rooted him to the spot. He examined the memory, attempting to decide whether it had the heft of the actual, but other memories lurched into his mind, shoving one another aside in their haste to make themselves known, filling his brain to bursting with a flood of trivia (appointments to be kept, problems to be dealt with and so on), from which he distilled the undeniable fact that his plan had worked. He was wealthy. This was his house. Each and every day his factories produced a sufficient quantity of the drug in smoke-able form to supply the addicts of Teocinte and Port Chantay, and he planned to branch out, to export the drug to other towns and develop a pastille that would allow the drug to dissolve in the mouth, suitable for those who did not smoke. Dizzy with this influx of memory, Rosacher dropped into an easy chair and sought a star by which to steer through the sea of information. How was it possible that he could have these memories and yet never have experienced their reality? Was he to believe that he had been operating in a somnambulistic state for four years? There were cases in which a blow to the head caused a temporary condition similar to the one he seemed to have suffered, but in none of them had the patient prospered while enduring that condition. Four years! His memories relating to that time had little flavor or substance. It was as if he lived those years and yet had not lived them, as if he had riffled through the pages of that portion of his life, skipping ahead in his book of days to this particular day and hour. The memories were scraps, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—fitted together, they assembled a visual image and embodied a related comprehension in each of which a digest history resided…and yet they transmitted almost nothing of the emotional context.
The bedchamber door opened and Ludie walked in, a sheaf of papers in hand. She wore riding breeches, boots, and a loose linen shirt, belted at the waist, and looked scarcely a day older than he recalled, still lovely—but a mask of hard neutrality tempered her beauty. That look, the attitude it embodied, cued another trickle of memories. They had once been monogamous, but as he involved himself more deeply in business, they had drifted apart and now he had his women and she her horses, her daylong trips into the valley where she would rendezvous with lovers, men and women both, and Rosacher’s relationship with her had become a convenience, held together by a shred of reflex intimacy that disguised their fundamental indifference to one another—they were partners (Ludie had helped finance the early stages of the business) and they trusted each other in that way, but trust no longer extended into the emotional realm. Rosacher felt himself slipping into a suit of reactions that accommodated this state of affairs, yet he also regretted that things had reached this pass and struggled to sustain a nostalgic view of her.
She held out the papers to him. “Arthur’s downstairs.”
Rosacher continued to stare.
“It’s the figures you asked for,” she said. “The estimate of next year’s earnings. And the notes for the rest of your presentation.” When he did not take them, she shook the papers at him. “You should look these over before you leave.”
“What are you up to today?” he asked.
A flicker of displeasure—she tossed the papers onto an easy chair. “I’m going for a ride.”
“I’d like to see you this evening.”
“See me?”
“Spend some time with you.”