There were three of them, but it was the major's helicopter that sank down a little lower as if for a better view. As I say, I think they didn't really get how big Bud was. But there was a sudden, gentle picture in my mind not unlike a nudge with an elbow, and I turned around and flung myself up Bud's shoulder a lot more enthusiastically than I'd ever climbed Gulp's. But then I was even more desperate that day than when she'd flown us away from the first helicopter coming after me.
I galloped up all that neck, half bent over, scrabbling at the spinal plates with my hands — remember that dragons are slippery — but I didn't perch on his neck. I climbed the rest of the war, on to his head. I could brace my feet against the nobbles and hold on to the smaller, less sharp-edged spikes. Lois, for once, remained where she was, although she stopped shrieking to peep at me, and there was a gust of something through my mind that I'm pretty sure was envy.
And Bud slowly uncurled. First he raised his head and neck, and then he stood up, and then he stood on his back legs and craned. And I found myself staring into the major's helicopter at a lot of platter-sized eyes and wide-open mouths, and shouting over the helicopter din, It's okay, see? He's okay. I'm okay. This is Bud. We can talk to each other. Sort of.
CHAPTER TEN
The rest of the story everybody knows. The whole world knows. They ran that first TV news shot with a thirty-second delay because they weren't sure they weren't going to find themselves running live footage of a brainless seventeen-year-old boy being made into dragon canapes during prime time. The Searles actually did us a favor about this. They pulled all the stops out to get us off the air after that first live broadcast, and the head of NYN got so pissed off that he said nothing would prevent him running it — and ran it at the top of every hour as a news update on every one of his 1,000,000 local stations all that day, just to spite the Searles. It's possible that what he was really pissed off about was the amount of money he'd been spending on having several of his camera guys at the Institute waiting for something to happen, but when Carol Domanski started transmitting what she was watching out of Major Handley's helicopter all was forgiven in a really big way. (You probably know Carol later got a Pulitzer for what she's done on dragons, but she's actually done it well, so good for Carol. And the Pulitzer committee.)
If you saw it that first time, you know that it looks pretty bad that's our fence tangling up the transmission — and the beginning is a big grainy blur. (The picture would cut in at the worst possible moment in terms of me looking like a deranged lunatic.) But they cleaned it all up later, so that the Searles couldn't get anywhere claiming it was faked. Not that they didn't try.
I'm not sure they aren't still running all our live programs with delay, in case of accidents. There haven't been any accidents and Gulp has got quite blasé about all the people and lights and wires and fuss that TV programs create — especially a lot of fuss, because of what our fence does to the equipment, and the Wilsonville garage isn't a plausible alternative if you want to film a dragon. Although even if you really desperately want to film a dragon and have the best fence-resistant gear going, you still have big problems because you have to get it to the dragon. We go to them.
Dad flatly refuses to let more road be cut into Smokehill — and some suggestion about motocross-type bikes or three-wheelers made him apoplectic. Noises have been made about pack ponies, which Dad would consider, but first they have to come up with a solution to the fact that every pony, horse, burro, donkey, and whatever else they've tried so far has instantly lost its training at the first whiff of dragon. (They haven't tried camels yet.) Sometimes they go nuts before they're even taken off the truck. Horse van drives through gate, sound of meltdown in back of van, van drives back out through gate. Meanwhile the sky would be black with helicopters — if Dad would allow that either, which he won't. Fortunately Smokehill's Friends tend to the eco-loony fringe, so Dad's got some help.
Gulp was our first star, more than Bud or even Lois, although Lois is a close second, and anybody who even half understands what all this has been about loves Lois best (I'm not partial, of course not) — but fifty feet (plus tail) of Gulp is impressive. Gulp, of all the big dragons, is the only one who really cooperates with being filmed, although there are snaps and crackles of several of the others. Gulp doesn't really get it, about people being fascinated by her. As far as she's concerned — at least this is how I read it — she's just doing her penance for almost frying me, that day we met. Want to imagine how fast a dragon holding a human baby would have got itself killed (supposing someone just happened to have a lightning rifle in his back pocket)? Especially if the kid's mom had recently been made into kabobs?
Lois, I swear, was made to go on TV though. She is interested in everything, and as long as I'm still somewhere relatively nearby, she is a shameless flirt with everything else human, or that's how it comes over. She figures that humans are her family, and she's just thrilled any time another of her strangely shaped relatives wants to meet her. For some reason people carrying blinding lights and trailing leads and yelling are included — even the ones whose first reaction, on seeing a great scaly lump on little bent legs lolloping briskly toward them while making extraordinary noises that allow a too-clear view of teeth several inches long, is to run away. Lois has a very generous heart as well as a lot of energy.
Anyway Gulp didn't fry me that first day and she hasn't fried anyone since and she's not going to, but even I, who spends, and who has already spent, more intensive time with dragons than any other human ever has, I've still never got over how big they are, so I can hardly blame the TV crews — as well as what are now our rivers of visiting scientists — for being a little jumpy. Gulp, fortunately, doesn't run at people the way Lois does. I suspect even some of the TV people pick up her fatalistic stoicism, even if they don't know that's what they're picking up. They're probably just telling themselves that anything that large is kind of oppressive by definition.
Maybe that's why they usually end up liking Lois so much. She's still small, comparatively, and she seems to have the gene or the pheromone or something for being fetching. It can't be her big deep soft brown shining long-lashed eyes because she has small poppy greeny-reddy eyes increasingly surrounded by knobbly spikes and eyelashes like stilettos. There is just no way to make out a baby dragon as cute. Lois is cute anyway, and her energy level, if you don't have to live with her, is pretty appealing. You know how charming it is when some dog you've never met before comes rushing up to you like you're his long-lost best friend. The enthusiasm is contagious. For a few minutes you think maybe you are best friends. Then you begin to wonder what the dog must be like at home. I don't think most of the TV people ever get this far thinking about Lois because she is, you know, a dragon. I suppose I can't have it both ways, expecting people who've never met a dragon to get it about dragons and then feeling crabby (or superior) when they don't.
We don't have mere rivers of ordinary tourists, of course, we have oceans of them — galaxies — Avogadro's numbers of tourists. They still rarely see any dragons but it doesn't stop them coming, and we now have loops of some of Gulp's and Lois' finest video moments on big screens in the tourist center, as well as the one of me being spastic on Bud's head. I can't risk just going into the tourist center any more myself, it's like being a pop star or something, and don't laugh, because it's ghastly.