Nothing But Blue Skies by Tom Holt Read Free Book Online Page A

screen changed.
    WHAT ARE DRAGONS?
    Completely potty , Gordon muttered to himself; still, he could always use a good laugh. He continued reading;
    Modern scientists, assessing the ancient Chinese myth of the rain-bringing dragon, have argued an entirely plausible case for regarding the dragon as the prehistoric forerunner of the UFO. All the traditional dragon attributes - fiery objects hurtling across the sky, disturbed weather patterns and the like - almost exactly mirror the sights and sounds reported by present-day UFO spotters. From this they conclude that both phenomena represent the layman’s misinterpretation of natural, easily explained occurrences such as meteorite showers and swamp gas. There are, they assure us, no such things as dragons .
    Bullshit .
    We, of course, know different. We know that the world is divided up into four spheres of dragon influence, roughly matching the cardinal points of the compass, each presided over by a dragon king supported by a complex and well-organised hierarchy of adjutants, marshals, signifers, lightning conductors and masters-at-arms. We have a pretty good idea of how dragons go about summoning clouds, precipitating rain at will out of a clear blue sky, and targeting rainfall to cause maximum disruption and embarrassment to the members of our profession. Make no mistake: those scaly bastards are out to get YOU, because you represent a significant threat to the veil of secrecy, superstition and ignorance behind which they’ve successfully cloaked their activities for countless centuries. By sabotaging our work and discrediting our members, dragons are seeking to undermine public confidence in weather forecasting in general, leading to the cutting of research and operational funding, marginalisation of weather broadcasting slots and the irreversible decline and demise of our trade. With us out of the way, dragons will once again be able to rule the skies without fear of detection and opposition .
    We at MAD feel it’s time we stopped these uppity critters from raining on our parade. We believe that it’s not just a matter of our jobs and vocation being put on the line by a posse of overgrown iguanas. There are more public health and safety issues at stake here than you can shake a stick at; but so long as the Surgeon General, the military and the Federal Aviation Authority continue to stand by, sit back and do nothing, we get the feeling it’s up to us to make sure something gets done, before homo sapiens is forced back into the dark ages of fiddling with seaweed and watching cows lying down .
    To see what MAD action is planned for your region in the short and middle term, click HERE .
    The icon referred to, a colourful thumbnail sketch of a dragon hanging by the neck from a lamp-post, seemed to be urging him personally to continue with the briefing. Shaking his head for as long as he could bear to do so, Gordon clicked, and was presented with a pie chart of the world, neatly divided into four quadrants. Clicking on ‘North-West’ brought up something that looked like a family tree, only it wasn’t. Instead, it was a schematic diagram of the dragon chain of command for the north-western sector. Regarded purely as a work of art, it was quite something, with its rainbow colour-coding and elegant traceries of connecting lines and dots; if only he’d had a colour printer, he’d have run off a sheaf of copies and wallpapered the toilet with them.
    Under the diagram was another block of text, headed What YOU can do. Well, Gordon said to himself, indeed ; then he yawned and glanced up at the clock. If he wanted to spend more time asleep than it’d take him to brush his teeth and put his pyjamas on, he needed to go to bed now. Before hitting the kill button, however, he took the time to bookmark the page under the file name KOOKS -
    - Because, he decided, he could do worse than come back to this site the next time he was filled with rage and