Any two people can make love if they want to.

VARIATION H: DRAGON

(SCHERZANDO MA CON FUOCO)

(PLAYFULLY, BUT WITH FIRE)

CONTACT: JULY 2076

Sacred Daughter of the Sun,

Forgive an old woman's presumption for writing to You, Honored Child, and forgive the many tricks I have used to smuggle this message past Your Regents. The Regents are all fine people, yes, but they are not the Empress. Some things are meant for Your August Ears alone.

I am Mariko Naruki, wife to Yushio Naruki, who is chief executive of Laughing Dragon Entertainment Industries Company Limited. He is a dear man because he is mostly a child. He has invented many games in his life, not to mention many fine rides in Laughing Dragon Entertainment Parks throughout the Inner Planets; but I have never trusted him with the grocery money. Never mind. A good man, and good at building fun and happiness. Not so good at building strong fiscal structures. So—and I pray it will be forgotten by the time You reach Your Majority and are given this letter—my dear Yushio led Laughing Dragon to the brink of ruin.

One day he phoned from work and asked me to make a large withdrawal from our savings account. Why? I asked. He needed the money to buy something. What did he want to buy? He wouldn't say. So I did what a good wife should: I gave him the money, then followed him when he left the office.

He bought a sword. A very fine sword of strong bright steel, with a hilt covered in real leather and a fine embroidered sheath. A good choice for a decoration hanging in the living room, but I knew he wanted it for a different reason. What a child he was! I confronted him there in the store, berated him about what he was up to, attracted a big crowd, never mind. In the end, I let him make a down payment on the sword—it really was excellent, and the price quite reasonable—but I made him leave it in the store on layaway.

Still, that was not the end of it. He could see disaster looming for the company and wanted to pay the honorable price of failure. Which meant he just wanted to run away. We women know many men are just little boys whose swagger has become convincing.

Finally I suggested flying into the sun. It was the kind of gesture that appealed to Yushio: a flamboyant idea, but austere in execution. It appealed to me too because the flight would give him time to reconsider his rash decision. I thought I could persuade him to start a new life instead of ending the old one: perhaps becoming a Flare-Fisher on Mercury, which would suit Yushio's sense of romance while paying very well.

We set off secretly in the executive yacht, well provisioned and weighted down with our life savings converted to platinum. (We had no children to whom we could leave an inheritance…my fallopian tubes had growths, I nearly died at fifteen, never mind.) Soon Yushio was treating our trip as an adventure. He had never been in space, though he had designed entertainments for all the colonies and for many spacefaring vessels. Long hours at a time, he forgot himself and scribbled designs on paper: new games, new rides, new adventure areas. But then suddenly he would remember the reason he was in space, the catastrophe facing his company, and he would sink into gloom.

Then the hand of the gods. Just outside the orbit of Venus, we encountered a dragon.

It didn't look like a dragon. More like a dragon's egg: black with shimmers, huge and beautiful. Silent and serene as space, but when you looked at it, you felt a million eyes looking back.

Almost everywhere, its hide was smooth as a girl's cheek; but in one spot, on its back, the skin rose in the shape of the sacred mountain (I do not lie) with a small hole at the top. Like the sacred mountain's cone.

Except that this opening was an airlock. Inside, there was fresh air, sunlight, gravity, and a reproduction of the Musubi Shrine to Amaterasu O-mikami, Your Own Celestial Ancestress.

I swear this is true.

"We have found Heaven," I said to Yushio.

"Nonsense," he answered. "We have found an Environment my company built for a Mars freighter. The Edo Maru. I wonder what it's doing here."

"The gods put it here."

He looked around. "The gods haven't been taking very good care of it, have they?"

It was true—the shrine was in a shambles. Vandals had hacked off much of the foliage. Inside the torii gate, where Your Majesty knows there should only be peace and serenity, there were instead a few broken lawn chairs and some playing cards bearing pictures of hairy people in rut. And the altar…I cannot describe the altar, but it needed a very good cleaning.

I insisted on resanctifying the shrine. Yushio argued it hadn't been a real shrine and he shouldn't delay his death-trip into the sun, but he knew he was on shaky theological ground. How could his death be true to the Way when he would not trouble himself to repair the desecration of such a holy place?

Yushio is a dear man, but whenever he argues with me he is always wrong.

So we cleaned the shrine and put it to rights. Yushio had packed some incense with the intention of burning it as we sailed into the sun; but I convinced him the gods would be happier if we used it at the shrine in a purification ceremony.

While we worked, we discussed what we thought this dragon really was. I knew in my heart it was a true dragon sent by the gods…but I pretended to agree with Yushio that most likely it was a secret super-project that had been abandoned for some reason. Maybe the builders had gone bankrupt and just left the thing here. (Going bankrupt was ever-present in Yushio's mind.)

Finally I said, "Why speculate? You know this Environment once belonged to the Edo Maru. Radio your company and get them to find out who owns the Environment now."

Yushio refused. He said his decision to die had cut all ties with the business world…but that just meant he was afraid to talk to people. Finally I made the call myself after he had fallen asleep on rice wine. Our closest branch office was on Venus-Wheel, only a few radio-seconds away. They were glad to know we were still alive, worried the creditors were growing more insistent every day. I cut short that line of conversation, saying "I want to know who owns a freighter called the Edo Maru."

After a few minutes, the answer came back: "Petrozowski Energy."

"Yushio wants you to buy it."

"Buy it? I don't think we can afford…"

"Get a loan."

"I don't think any bank would…"

"Tell the banks," I said, "Laughing Dragon is about to announce its largest Entertainment Park ever. Tell them we have kept it a great secret because it is a brand new idea. Tell them this park is where all the company's capital went, and it will repay everyone a millionfold. You hear?"

"Is this true?"

"Yes, it's all true. Very secret. Very big. In space."

"In space?"

"Yes, it's a whole new idea. You'll see. Get the board of directors. I'll turn on a tracking beacon so they can find us. They can come and see the marvel Yushio has built. But you must buy the Edo Maru."

"Perhaps it would be possible…"

"And the Edo Maru's Environment, and all attached chattels. That is most important. And it is most important Petrozowski Energy does not think this is anything special. You hear?"

"Yes." And it was done. We purchased the Edo Maru, its Environment, and all attached chattels. The dragon was attached and therefore ours…if humans can claim to own such a beast.

When Yushio awoke, I was looking over his plans for new games and rides. "It would be a shame if these were never built," I said. He agreed.

By the time the board of directors arrived, Yushio had mapped out two thirds of the Laughing Dragon of Heaven Entertainment World: the Christian Heaven, where adults and children would be given their own wings to play bumpem; Allah's Heaven with many nimble dancers; Valhalla, filled with much carousing and ax fights against hologram opponents; and many other fine heavens, including a reproduction of the real Heaven centered around the Musubi Shrine.