Dragon Dawn (Dinosaurian Time Travel) Read online

  DRAGON DAWN

  Book One of the Dinosaurian Time Travel Series

  Deborah O’Neill Cordes

  DEDICATION

  For my mother, Gay O’Neill, and my late father, Charles Russell O’Neill.

  Thank you for my wonderful childhood, most especially for letting me roam and dream in the dinosaur halls in the Museum of Natural History in New York City, and for the endless hours spent with me as I trekked the forests, lava fields, and ancient ruins of Northern Arizona.

  ~ Deborah O’Neill Cordes

  What seest thou else

  In the dark backward and abysm of time.

  ~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest

  PROLOGUE

  I knew they would come, thus I waited.

  And watched.

  ~The Keeper

  One million years B.C.E. in an alternate universe, on the red planet, Moozrab.

  Shanash stood with her fellow astronauts. She felt her head feathers raise and push against her space helmet’s interior. The moment had arrived.

  The volcano before her beckoned, overwhelmed, its slopes so enormous she could glimpse but a fraction of its bulk, one nameless, eroded butte. She opened her mouth to speak, knowing everyone awaited her words, but in her excitement she could not utter a sound.

  She gathered herself and tried again. “Mission Control.” Her voice crackled in her headset. “We are standing on Moozrab.”

  She took a breath in relief, now free to imagine her message winging through outer space to her home world, the blue-water planet called Shurrr. Once heard, it would elicit the triumphant trills of a billion saurians. This was the culmination of ten years of intense work, the result of an alien laser signal sent from red planet to blue. The signal had flashed for three consecutive days and then ended as abruptly as it started, leaving the saurians with a mystery. Despite repeated attempts to answer back, they had received no response, only brooding silence. And yet, the signal had been undeniable proof they were not alone in the universe. Even if the aliens were long gone from the Solar System – or long dead – Shanash knew, everyone knew, there had been Others.

  A trembling rose inside her, an eagerness barely contained, and she set off toward the volcano’s great shadow. Bright chatter filled her headset, the other astronauts echoing her mood. Together, they moved past jumbled rocks of rust and gray, beyond the reach of the pale-pink sky. Shining their chemlights before them, they found the place where their digging drones had toiled, a lone stairwell of alien origin.

  Down, down they went, their footfalls soft on dust-draped steps. They passed through a vast chamber of glittering amber walls and stumbled upon a door. A handprint had been carved on it, the figure in bas-relief, three-fingered with long claws. Incredibly, the alien print nearly matched their own trio of digits.

  How is this possible? Shanash stood for a long moment. As a physician-scientist, she knew the enormous evolutionary odds against such a thing happening. Puzzled, she reached out and touched the handprint, but after barely grazing it with her gloved fingers, she pulled back. What lurked beyond the door?

  Or who––?

  The door shuddered and then swung wide, the space around it alive with whirling motes of dust. Mustering her courage, Shanash stepped into a vacant chamber and surmised it was an airlock. With a wave of her hand, she motioned for the others to follow. The door automatically closed, sealing the room tight for pressurization. Shanash heard a deep whoosh as air rushed in, yet she and her companions remained safe within their spacesuits, for the atmosphere here was surely alien and unbreathable.

  On the far side of the airlock, another door opened, revealing a chamber with a large, rectangular structure of polished red stone. It resembled a queen’s sarcophagus from Erraz, an ancient Shurrrian civilization. Could this possibly be an alien tomb? And if so, who was buried inside?

  Shanash stared at the tomb, transfixed, and then roused herself, beckoning everyone forward. Straining with the effort, they pushed and pulled on the heavy lid and forced it aside.

  An alien rested within, copper-skinned and perfectly preserved.

  Breathing deeply, Shanash willed herself to a semblance of calm, knowing she must examine the corpse with scientific detachment. The creature looked much like her species, the head containing sensory organs – eyes, nose, and mouth – the trunk broad and powerful, with paired appendages, two arms and two legs. Yet it retained a structure saurians no longer possessed, a long and well-muscled tail that she guessed the alien had once used to wield a mighty swipe.

  Through her helmet’s headset, Shanash listened to her colleagues as they studied the creature: “It appears to be asleep – so well preserved.”

  “Yes, like someone in a nesting bed.”

  “Did you see that? Is it breathing?”

  “By the Goddess, it’s alive!”

  “What?” Shanash moved in closer, almost within touching distance of the alien. Unexpectedly, she detected a hum, faint at first, but steadily growing louder, until a great rum rum rum echoed in her ears, the sound traveling all the way back to Shurrr, or so it seemed.

  She reached into the sarcophagus and touched the shimmering cloth covering the alien’s lower torso. Through her gloves, she could feel a vibration. Was this a stasis-vault instead of a tomb?

  As if in response, the creature groaned and blinked its

  eyes – blue eyes. Stunned, Shanash fell back, bumping into the others, their startled hisses echoing within her helmet as they ran for the door.

  The cloth dropped away, revealing the alien’s bulging genital sac. A male? Kept in honored stasis?

  It could mean only one thing.

  Shanash fought her apprehension. “Courage,” she said, looking at her companions. “Think of what we have discovered. We should not fear him. If he is The One––”

  “You have come.”

  She jumped at the alien’s deep-throated voice.

  He sat up, carefully worked his jaw, and then bowed his head to her. “You are wise not to fear me. I wish you no harm.”

  The other saurian-astronauts crept back to stand beside Shanash. She could hear their heavy breathing, their fear, and heard her own gasps as well. She tried to ignore the alien-blue eyes, and gulped in more air. Panicked, she yearned to rid herself of her spacesuit, to break free. The creature lived and breathed in this place, but could she, could she?

  “Remove your helmets,” he said, as if reading her mind, “for the atmosphere here will not poison you. I evolved on a world much like your own.”

  “But you could have pathogens dangerous to us,” Shanash said. “Or we could infect you.”

  “My physiology at the molecular level is so different from yours that cross-species contamination cannot occur. Besides, why would I harm you?”

  Shanash considered his words and then looked at her comrades. The dark threat of contagion kept their gazes rapt upon her, yet she also sensed their desire to believe him, to make real contact.

  “Indeed, why would you harm us?” she asked as she broke the seal on her suit and took off her helmet. Air wafted over Shanash’s face. She took a tentative breath, surprised by the lack of odor.

  “Have no fear,” the alien reassured.

  As her companions removed their helmets, Shanash breathed deeply of the pure air. “Who are you?” she asked the alien. “Why have you summoned us?”

  “I am the Lord Keeper. I am the Guardian of All Knowledge, the protector of this world.”

  “How do you speak our language?”

  “There is a matrix of molecular computers hidden within the depths of this planet. It has monitored your civilization for many years. I h
ave been in stasis, but my cranial implant recorded your progress. From that device, I learned your language––”

  The Keeper fell silent, his skin now pale, his veins throbbing and blue as his eyes. Dropping back into his stasis-vault, he cried, “Help me!”

  “He is ill – move aside! – I must get my equipment,” Shanash shouted. She grabbed a wad of nano-meds from her medical kit, deciding to use the old method, the fastest way to deliver them, the so-called “mothering.” Despite his physiological differences, she knew the nanos would unfailingly adapt and heal. She placed the wad in her mouth, hastily chewed, and swallowed. Bending close to the Keeper, she parted his lips, pressed her mouth to his, and regurgitated.

  Oh, dear Mother Goddess, please help him! But then, she gritted her teeth and pushed aside the old beliefs, determined to use logic and the scientific method.

  She stood back and waited, still silently berating herself, yet the pull of the ancient ways proved too strong. The bittersweet aftertaste of the meds gave her hope and she prayed once more. Help me, She-Mother!

  The alien did not move.

  “Swallow,” she commanded him. “You must swallow.”

  His eyes fixed on hers. He started to choke, but managed to ingest the meds and keep them down. In relief, she watched the twitching start beneath his skin, as strength returned to his corrupted organs and bones.

  When he sat again, he looked about and said, “As I now breathe, so too may you breathe. As I now live, so too may you live. For saving my life, I will reward you with unparalleled knowledge, with a gift for the ages. You have brought new hope to me.”

  “Oh, it is you who have given us hope,” Shanash countered. She threw back her head and trilled. “The high priestess of Azinor foretold the coming of one such as you. You are the Savior who shall lead us to enlightenment. Long have we awaited The One!”

  ***

  All of the saurians went down, groveling before the Keeper, as though he had always been their master, as though he had always been supreme in their lives.

  Mindful of the effect his presence had on them, on the influence he had over the ancient, reptilian parts of their brains, the Keeper recalled a wisp of memory from another universe, where evolution had taken a different path. There, alien creatures called humans ruled a blue-water world implausibly called Earth. Like the saurians, their brainstems also betrayed a remote reptilian past, but some humans were not enslaved by it, with the ability to rise above the primordial pull and think on their own. Troublemakers. Revolutionaries. May such humans be damned.

  But here, things were different, weren’t they? He felt confident few, if any, saurians had the ability to question authority.

  He gazed at the saurian astronauts again and decided this was the best universe.

  With a wry chortle, the Keeper remembered something more about humans. He flashed his teeth and then he said, “Take me to your leader.”

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Think of the religions that have risen, in all the far-flung realms, a universe awash in religions! And they are all wrong.

  ~The Keeper

  Thirty years later in the depths of the Keeper’s lair, in the Royal City of Moozrab.

  Tima kept her gaze on the hatchling-clone’s sweet face, not trusting herself to look at the Keeper. She waited a moment as Shanash, the Alpha-Nu Dracon, raised the hatchling before the Court of the One. The Ceremony of the Soul-catcher had begun, and Tima nervously waited to fulfill her role.

  “Behold, the Royal Consort!” Shanash intoned.

  But not the first. Tima fought the urge to howl in agony. The last little hatchling had died less than two years ago, a precious four-year-old whom Tima had lovingly raised, the one before that only three years old and darling, too. The Alpha-Nu had personally conducted the autopsies, and her findings indicated both had succumbed to deadly mutations as a result of complications of the cloning process. Yet, as time wore on, Tima had grown uneasy about these conclusions, her instincts teetering toward her worst fears, until she could think of little else.

  She hazarded a glance at the Keeper, whose face betrayed nothing but the gloat of satisfaction. From the moment he had assumed power, he’d used the ancient ways of her race, even the most hallowed ceremonies, to further his aim.

  Murderer. The thought came from nowhere, her mind seizing the dark possibility of what might have been. You murdered those innocents.

  Shaken, Tima watched as Shanash turned to the Keeper.

  “My lord, what name have you chosen?” Shanash asked.

  He looked out over the awaiting saurians, his eyes narrowing for an instant, before he said, “Dawann-dracon.”

  The same name, always the same. Tima shuddered as Shanash affixed the soul-catcher to the hatchling’s brow. The baby would now receive the spirit of someone else: her temperament, the essence of her mind, perhaps a few stray memories. Tima had always assumed it was from the Keeper’s former love, a way for him to recapture something of his own kind, a race which had died out so long ago. But now, she wondered...

  Murderer.

  She remembered the two precious hatchlings, now dead. They had gone back to the Eternal Silence. She could do nothing more for them.

  She looked at the baby again.

  This time I’ll be ready, she told herself.

  The hatchling gave a yawn as she was placed in Tima’s sheltering arms. The baby-scent was as clean and sweet as a nest of softest down. A surge of love swept over Tima as she moved away from the crowd and toward the royal nursery. She swooped into the light-filled room, pink as the Moozrabian dawn-sky, and dismissed the other attendants with orders for fresh baby food.

  Satisfied she was finally alone, she placed Dawann in her nest-bed and whispered, “You are dear to me, little one.”

  The baby looked straight into her eyes, her gaze sparkling – and too bright – and then she opened her mouth a little, moving her jaw and fussing. “Da... da,” she repeated. “Da... da.”

  “Da... wann?” Tima whispered, startled a hatchling should make such sounds.

  “Dawn,” the baby said.

  Tima took a step backward and stared.

  Almost immediately, the light went out of the tiny gaze, the baby returning to innocence.

  And Tima watched her for a long time, but, to her relief, the sparkle was absent that night, nor did it come back in the years afterward.

  The baby grew and thrived, never again uttering the name Tima believed had sealed the fate of the others.

  And because of that, the hatchling survived.

  Chapter 2

  Time bears all things away, even our minds.

  ~Virgil, Ecloges

  Fifteen years later, in Moozrab’s Royal City.

  Tasha. Earth. Harry. NASA. Kris.

  Sometimes, at the oddest moments, the unintelligible words of a strange language filled the head of Dawann-dracon. Some words were even pronounced with a blunt “s” rather than a proper hiss. Never in her life had she heard anyone utter such sounds.

  Puzzled, she looked around her bed-nest chamber, then into her hand mirror, and studied her reflection. A lovely face, pale green with finely wrought features, stared back. Feathery black lashes framed her green eyes, while long feathers cascaded off her head, black with a rainbow sheen. She had been told she was the fairest saurian in the Solar System, yet she found herself out of sorts, for the image in the mirror brought no satisfaction. Waves of uncertainty coursed through her.

  Tasha. Earth. Harry. NASA. Kris.

  What is happening to me? she thought. Why do I seem to remember the words of a foreign tongue? Or is it merely gibberish? Am I losing my mind to madness?

  Last week, she recalled awakening in her bed-nest, her head tucked beneath her arm, warm and safe, yet feeling strangely discomfited, like a lost soul staring out of alien eyes. Since then, her mind had been possessed by unfamiliar speech and fleeting images, some so bizarre they seemed impossible to comprehend.

&n
bsp; Dawann closed her eyes and let her imagination roam. Like her quick, episodic dreams, a mystifying vision flittered through her brain. She took a breath and concentrated on the image. What had she just seen?

  Then, quite unexpectedly, she knew. Eyes closed against the world, she saw a face unlike any she had envisioned or even imagined: intelligent hazel eyes stared out of tanned flesh, the pupils round, large – and so different from her own vertically slit ones – the features tightly sculpted with a square jaw and a prominent nose, the head covered with thick, yellow hair.

  Hair? Her heart beat wildly as she visualized the small, furred rat-mammals, the preferred food of the worker drones and other slaves. Mammals were the only things that possessed hair, weren’t they? How could the face of her imagination have hair on the top of its head? How? It wasn’t natural. In fact, in the world of the saurians, she knew it would be viewed as a terrifying apparition.

  Dawann sat still as she fought down the feeling of dread, but, to her amazement, her imagination blazed forth in the next moment. She watched as the creature’s face took on varied facial expressions. First, the brow furrowed, and then the lips pursed. Finally, with amazement, she watched as it leaned forward and bared its teeth to her.

  Oh, what could it mean? Bared teeth? It was the darkest of images, the stuff of deepest nightmares.

  And yet, on impulse, Dawann imagined herself baring her own teeth to the creature and this took her by surprise. In response, the mammal’s toothy expression expanded until it seemed to fill its face. Was it making a friendly gesture? Suddenly, she felt warmth toward it, as if it were one of her own kind, as if it were special. Indeed, unbelievably, she realized this strange being had once been very important to her.

  A question, full-blown and all consuming, surged to mind. Had she loved this human – yes, the word was human – in another place and time?