I didn't talk to Lois anywhere near as much when Gulp was around as when she wasn't, but I still talked to her. For one thing, if Gulp was watching over our shoulders (brrrrr) while we played one of our learning games, I needed to hear myself talk about what we were doing to steady myself down. I just didn't chat. It also occurred to me, rather uncomfortably, that if I talked, Gulp might get the idea that Lois didn't talk because she was defective, but because I talked. This probably wouldn't make Gulp like me any better, but . . . well, like what if the Germanspeaking parent found out that the French family that had been raising his kid were all drug addicts or serial murderers or something? How do you balance the fact that your kid's alive at all because of them with the fact that they're really bad for her?

And the little rock in my head got all sort of warm and soft and glowy and gooey every time Lois left Gulp and came galumphing back toward me. I wasn't making it up. I wasn't.

So, this non-idyll had to end, one way or another, right? It ended a lot sooner and more dramatically than I might have guessed, although if I hadn't been so preoccupied with Gulp I would have picked up that something was going on back at the Institute. Among other things it should have occurred to me that there was no way I was keeping my own interesting new preoccupation to myself Anyone who had any spare brain for noticing anything except that I was still signing in like I should, should have noticed that I sounded funny. Distracted. Okay, more distracted. And they didn't.

I wasted some time trying to figure out some kind of code to get the idea of Gulp across to Martha, but I couldn't think of any. It wasn't anything we'd set up code for. "Hey, guess what, there's this big dragon who comes to visit Lois every day." We had a phrase ("good sunrise this morning") for having seen dragons, but I was afraid if I said that every day she'd get frightened, so I didn't. I didn't even say it once. It didn't occur to me to say it after Gulp's first visit, because there's a big difference between seeing a dragon or dragons flying gloriously silhouetted against the sky at a nice distance and having a close encounter of an almost fatal kind with a dragon.

I tried to remember if Billy had ever mentioned any close sightings of dragons on the ground — coming around an outcropping or out of a narrow pass or something "gee what's the funny smell, smells like dragon only stronger . . . oh" — and I couldn't remember any. I personally had never even seen one of the trees they used as scratching posts although Billy had — not till Gulp I mean: and watching her make a big pine tree shake like a sapling in a gale is another of those little awe-inspiring details of time spent in the company of a full-grown dragon. Mostly dragon sign like that is way far in (the scales blow in the wind, so you get them everywhere), farther than I've ever gone. Westcamp's on the edge. It wouldn't have been surprising if I'd, uh, had a good sunrise at Westcamp, but Gulp was cruising out of normal dragon range.

So I should have been worried when I didn't hear from Martha for three days. Martha checked in most days. But all I was, was disappointed — and a little worried that maybe she'd tried some time when my radio was pretending to be ornamental art. (Pretending badly. Our radios are not beautiful objects.) But since I hadn't figured out how to tell her about Gulp, I wasn't missing talking to her as much, if you follow me. I just wanted to hear her voice. Even radio-squeaky.

You can't really tell much from the voices over our two-ways; when they're clear they're clear enough but too clacky and mechanical to guess much about tone. One morning about twenty days after we saw Gulp for the first time, Dad said, "How are you doing for food?"

"Fine," I said, more or less truthfully. "Getting a little tired of beans, maybe."

"You need the meat for — " said Dad in one of those weird sentences that if anyone had been listening they should have thought suspicious. Maybe Dad just sounded like your usual nutty professor type, never finishing his sentences. Martha and I had a much better system.

"Well, I'm careful," I said, which was to say that Lois was getting the meat, and I was getting the beans. I didn't mind all that much because I was pretty tired of venison too and I didn't seem to have time to set rabbit snares any more. Not that I think they'd have caught anything. Everything cleared out once Gulp started visiting. We didn't even get as many noises at night.

Unfortunately during a slack moment (mine) Lois had made a dive for my plate and got a mouthful of ketchup and fallen instantly in love. So now she tried to climb in my lap and eat my beans once I put ketchup on them. Obviously I wasn't going to tell Dad this over the two-way. Or about what I was going to do if she got mad and squirted some fire at me the next time I pushed her away. (Do dragons have a Teenager from Hell phase? And if so, when? Before or after they get so big you can't push them away?) Or about wondering what ketchup would do to dragon physiology. I spent most of my life wondering what something or other was doing to dragon physiology. I hadn't realized till we got out here how much I'd left all the nutrition stuff up to Grace. But in theory I didn't let her eat anything with sugar in it, just like a good mom. Ketchup has sugar in it. (Do dragons get ADHD?)

"I'm okay," I said. "Really." Westcamp could hold six (humans) and was automatically kept provisioned for a siege. Weather around here can be pretty dramatic and it doesn't pay to take chances. Although Billy's deer was mostly gone by now, which is why I'd stopped eating it, even the way Lois ate we weren't going to get through all the rest in a hurry. And if we got desperate enough I suppose I'd get Billy's rifle down from the wall and put some shells in it. But with Gulp scaring the neighbors I'd have to go a long way to find anything to shoot (at). If Lois looked hungry, would Gulp bring her something?

There was silence on the two-way. A crackle-crackle-crackle silence, but Dad wasn't saying anything.

"Dad?"

"We have a . . . situation here," he said at last. "There appears to be some . . . question, in certain people's minds, whether we are . . . fulfilling . . . our trust."

Oh help. Has someone guessed about Lois???

"Not you. Exactly," Dad's voice continued, slowly, with its painful pauses. He sounded funny, even allowing for radio whimsy. If the pauses were to give me a chance to think about he was trying to tell me . . . they weren't working. They hadn't guessed about Lois but — ?

"They feel you might be in danger," said Dad. So they might try to come after me. Us.

"I'm not," I said, too quickly and for once not thinking about Gulp at all. "I call in twice a day like I'm supposed to and I'm always fine. You know that. The — er — dragon study is really interesting and I don't want to leave. And you're still short from the flu."

"I believe you," said Dad. "We all believe you. But there have been some . . . incongruities, which some . . . other . . . people have found . . . alarming."

Other people meant not Smokehill people. That was easy. Nothing else was easy. Did he mean more dragon sightings? Westcamp was well beyond visibility from the Institute; even if you had a telescope you'd have to be able to see through rock with it. So it can't have been Gulp herself that was making anyone (else) jumpy, and there wasn't anybody else in the park now. We were still turning everyone from outside away; and any stubborn investigators would have a Ranger on them. (Until this minute I'd forgotten all about my "study" since Gulp came, but what I said to Dad was, ahem, still true.) But I'd already worried about the fact that the reason Gulp found us was because she was flying where dragons didn't fly. If one dragon was going where they shouldn't . . . Was whatever it was so bad Dad couldn't even say the word "dragon"?