Paint Your Dragon Read Online Free Page B

‘there’s no point standing here like trainee lamp-posts. Help me cover the dratted thing up, what’s left of it, and I’ll get on to the wholesalers for some more white Carrera. I only hope they can match the grain.’
    Mike nodded. ‘What about him?’ he added, jerking a thumb at Saint George. ‘Want me to put a padlock on him or something?’
    Bianca gave him the last in a succession of withering looks; if the Americans had had looks like that in 1972, the Viet Cong would never have stood a chance. ‘Get real,’ she sighed. ‘Who the hell is going to steal a statue?’
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    Chug, chug, chug; an elderly coach, the sort of vehicle that can still call itself a charabanc and get away with it, burbles slowly and cheerfully like a relaxed bumble-bee along a winding Oxfordshire lane.
    On either side of the road, Cotswold sheep, as self-consciously picturesque as the most highly paid super-model, ruminate and regurgitate in timeless serenity. Thatched cottages, tile-roofed golden-stone farmhouses, evocatively falling-down old barns and the last surviving old-fashioned telephone boxes in Albion are the only footprints left here by the long march of Humanity; and if these works of his hand were all you had to go by, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Man wasn’t a bad old stick after all. For this is the rural Thames Valley, the land that Time forgot, scenery pickled in formaldehyde. If England was Dorian Grey, this would be the watercolour landscape he keeps in his attic.
    Inevitably and on schedule, there to the left of the coach is a village cricket match, and the big, red-faced man toiling up to the crease is, ineluctably, the village blacksmith. For a slice of living palaeontology, forget Jurassic Park and come to North Oxon.
    And here is the village, and here is the village green, and here are the ducks. The coach pulls up, wheezing humorously, and the passengers spill out; fifteen elderly ladies with flasks and sandwiches, deck chairs and knitting. It’s all so sweet you could use it to flavour tea.
    Thirty seconds later, a black transit van with tinted windows purrs noiselessly up and parks at the back of the green. The doors do not open. It lurks.
    The old ladies have laid out their tartan rugs and, after much comical by-play and merry laughter, put up their deck chairs. The sun is shining. Tea flows. Sandwiches are eaten.
    Time is, of course, not a constant. Science would have you believe that it potters along at a fixed, unalterable speed, never accelerating, never slowing down; rather like a milk float. Big joke. Time has a gearbox; it can dawdle and it can race. This, in turn, can result in absolute chaos.
    Supply and demand, twin pillars of the cosmos, apply to all things, and Time is no exception. In some places, such as this sleepy and idyllic village, they scarcely use any of the stuff. In Los Angeles, Tokyo and the City of London, where Time is Money, they burn it off at a furious rate. And, try as they might to wring every last drop of value out of each passing second, their officially allotted ration is pitifully inadequate.
    Sceptical? Here’s concrete evidence. Think how much time twenty pence buys you in a car park in Chipping Norton and the equivalent figure in Central London. Where there is supply and demand, wherever there are unfulfilled shortages, there are always entrepreneurs ready and willing to step in and sort things out. There are no exceptions to this rule. The black market in Time is probably the biggest growth area in the whole of the unofficial economy. It’s also the most antisocial, which is why it’s such a closely guarded secret.
    The sandwiches have been eaten. Jam tarts appear. Someone produces, as if from thin air, a wind-up gramophone.
    Something truly horrible is about to happen.
    It works like this. Time proverbially flies when you’re enjoying yourself; or, put rather more scientifically, pleasure