Dragon Sword Read online

  Gandy, though, does use the Saurian endearment “moonleaf” with me, and has always made sure I’ve had warm bedding at night and plenty to eat. The Saurians are especially enamored of a stew made, I gather, from some of those scurrying mammals native to this planet, wrapped in broad green leaves and served hot. I’ve yet to develop a taste for it.

  But they have fed me in other ways: When K’lion sent me here in his time-vessel, he was able to rescue several scrolls from the flames of the library at Alexandria — where my mother, Hypatia, was the head librarian and principal lecturer. She was killed by a bloodthirsty mob, followers of a man named Brother Tiberius. He was a monk who feared the unauthorized knowledge to be found in our library. It was his fear that filled him with so much rage.

  Tiberius wanted to tell people what and how to think. Perhaps with the library gone he will have an easier time of it.

  Here on Saurius Prime, though, they’re avidly working on translating every manuscript sent back with me — one on pyramid building was a particular favorite. Each work is added to the library at K’lion’s school — the Middle Academy of Applied Science and Cognitive Order, where they’ve given me my own quarters for study and research. All they ask is that I allow classes to come in occasionally and observe me.

  The Saurians fancy themselves as very logical and professionally curious.

  “Well, dear chick, kk-kk-kh! I’ve been sent here to inform you that the players sk-tkt! are nervous, and they want your help for one more rehearsal. They want t-t-kh! everything to be perfect for you.”

  They’re very generous, these Saurians. I keep telling them things don’t have to be perfect. Just lively.

  They’re performing a play that was in the stack of scrolls K’lion saved. It’s an old one, composed a few hundred years before I was born, by the Greek writer Aristophanes. Called The Ditch Diggers, it’s a comedy about men who dig the ditches to bury all the dead left behind in war. Then the diggers get the idea to start burying the men — the generals and leaders — who are causing the war. Then the ditch diggers become leaders themselves and start their own war.

  It’s quite funny.

  They won’t be performing it in its original Greek, but in Saurian instead. I’ll be listening with the help of another of these lingo-spots: Like the scrolls, it is made with technology they call “plasmechanical,” which is half biology and half machinery.

  The lingo-spot rests behind the ear and manages to insinuate itself into one’s skin, one’s consciousness, allowing the wearer to “hear” a new language in his or her own words. I’m still not completely sure how it works, and though I use it, I find it a somewhat uncanny invention.

  But the reason they’re performing The Ditch Diggers in the school auditorium is quite touching: It’s all part of a farewell celebration held in my honor tonight.

  I’m scheduled to leave at dawn, in a new kind of time-vessel they’ve built. Somewhat at my insistence, I am being sent back to the Earth I come from. I want to make contact with Eli. But more important for the Saurians, I’m supposed to find out what happened to K’lion.

  Chapter Four

  Clyne: Lab Visit

  2019 C.E. November

  My friend Eli the boy is already gone. And now there’s fighting in his nest-house.

  I am on the roof, and know I shouldn’t be here. I am doing what they call “spying”— watching and listening to somebody, or a lot of somebodies, without them knowing it. It’s a skill I have picked up here on Earth Orange, during the time I’ve spent as an “outlaw.”

  Before becoming an outlaw, I was, of course, merely a middle school student en route to study one of the more familiar, parallel, Saurian Earths, as required by science class. But I was knocked from the charted time paths by Eli, and later Thea, and I now seem no closer to completing my course work than Saurius Prime is to its moon. On our planet, it was the renegade herbivore philosopher Melonokus who said, “Only an eggshell is predictable, but everything inside and out is subject to scrambling.”

  I’m beginning to feel scrambled.

  Yes, I know I wasn’t supposed to read Melonokus’s work until I was older.

  In my current situation, I am simply trying to record as much as I can of my experiences, and I hope that a detailed record of my time here will make up for much of my missed class work. I have even taken to using their Earth calendar to date my entries, as events tend to happen fast here, and I am attempting to calibrate chronology in the native way to keep track of them all.

  Regardless of the dating system used, however, I’ve had a lot of free time as an outlaw, since my main occupations have been hiding and looking for food. I found myself doing what many of the jobless and neglected sentient mammals do in this culture: I “Dumpster-dive,” which is to say, I have learned how to forage for food and supplies in what is often considered waste.

  With some of my newfound time, I’ve been able to tinker with the lingo-spot to record events, or at least my telling of them, which can be done with the barest whisper from me.

  To some degree, it justifies talking to myself, which is good, since I’ve been alone here. Now, though, if I don’t speak up, I may be drowned out by the shouting below, which is giving me cranial reverberations. Eli the boy’s nest-sire, Sandusky, is arguing with Mr. Howe, who always seems to misunderstand the nature of things.

  And yet, despite this ability — or is it an anti-ability? — Mr. Howe appears to work for the central authorities, whose security forces are looking for me.

  Mr. Howe is monitoring the progress that Sandusky the nest-“dad” (dad is peculiar mammalian shorthand for “sire,” but it pops off the tongue nicely) is making with his own time-vessel.

  Dad. I just like saying it. Certain Earth Orange words are like fizzy bubbles on your flavor nodes. Jazz. That’s another one. Howdy. They have much interesting language here.

  As for this vessel, that might be too ambitious a description. It’s not an object that moves or goes anywhere on its own, but simply a “time sphere.” The idea behind it is similar to Melonokus’s saying about the stages we pass through while young: “Your shell cracks, and the universe changes.” This sphere seems to be more of a crack, or a tear, in the fabric of time, one that Sandusky created in his laboratory. I believe it was an accident — at least the severity and extent of the rip suggest so.

  Eli was exposed to some of the energy released by the accident, and the atomic structure of his body seems to have changed, making him able to traverse the Fifth Dimension by himself, without an actual vessel. My skin gets all tar-pitty just thinking about it. Imagine the oral reports he could deliver at school!

  Below me, they’re still arguing about the power residing in the body of this young mammal. In some ways, I may be one of the causes of the current situation.

  “It wasn’t an accident, Sands! You let him go on purpose. You sent him. You don’t have any authority to send him on missions. I mean, my God, World War Two!”

  “I’m his father. I know that doesn’t count for much in your book, but do you think I would knowingly let him go back there?”

  I’m crouched next to a roof window — like a small piece of hothouse glass that lets light in during daytime — and can hear their voices coming up from below. This is a bad place for me to hide, but at least it’s dark now. My understanding of the rituals of some of Earth Orange’s most famous outlaws, however, is that they would often return to the scenes of their crimes, perhaps in order to be caught.

  But even though I have no desire to be famous, like a group elder or a top-stomper in Cacklaw, I would return to the lab when I was supposed to be hiding, and leave things for my friends.

  I was careful. I left items in places where I knew only Eli or “Dad” (My taste nodes again! Have I mentioned the word taco yet?) would find them. Mostly, I took bits and pieces of things I found in those Dumpsters, and I was able to fabricate a crude version of the time compasses we use in our vessels. If the mammals on Earth Orange were goin
g to start shredding the fabric of time, it seemed best to give them the means of controlling themselves, too. Or at least point them in the right direction.

  You’d be amazed what gets thrown away here. I’ve found computing machines, silicon chips, fluorescent tubing, simple electric engines, medical supplies, pieces of dwellings, various transportation devices, chemicals, paints and sprays, clothes, toys, and plenty of food.

  For the compass, though, all I needed was the copper wiring from one of the engines and a collection of highly polished sea stones.

  To those I added a battery, then ran the wire around the rocks, setting up a series of “stops” and “starts” for the electric impulse, to mimic crudely what is supposed to happen to light in the simplest of chrono-compasses. The stops and starts are like the basic ones and zeroes in simple computing devices, and I knew that Sandusky-sire’s knowledge would lead him in the right direction to fashion a prototype.

  Just to make sure they knew it was from me, I’d leave a sign. I find oranges, one of the sweetest gifts of their planet, and would place one next to my offering.

  The last time I visited the lab, there was an orange waiting for me, stuffed into the crevice of a nearby tree. There was a query written on it, in their language: Thanks, but how do I turn it off?

  I’m not sure if that message was from Eli or his father. I didn’t have time to find out; one of the shell-protectors posted by the central authorities was making his rounds, and I barely got away. Somebody has been getting glimpses of me, though. In one of the Dumpsters, I found a news tally, a paper one, printed on tree fiber — such an extravagant use of a tree! — called the National Weekly Truth. The headline read: DINO-MAN OF THE WOODS? There was a crude rendering next to it that looked vaguely like me.

  The snout was much too long, though, and the eyes too close together and dull.

  Still, it would seem that outlaws are sometimes famous in spite of themselves. As the saying goes, “All the eggs look the same, but some hatchlings make more noise.” Not only was I scrambled, I was getting noisier.

  This time, instead of a quick stop, I thought of climbing to the roof. If I could tap on the hothouse window and get Eli the boy’s attention, I could actually talk to him. We hadn’t spoken since Howe and his corps of shell-protectors tried to corner us at Wolf House. That’s when Thea escaped in my time-vessel and I fled into the woods.

  When I arrived at the lab, the squabble-roars between Howe and Sandusky-sire had already erupted. I pieced together that I had missed my friend Eli again: He’d gone back through the Fifth Dimension to find his nest-mother, who herself had become displaced in time due to an earlier lab accident.

  “You told me he agreed to let you keep that hat under lock and key! That you’d talked him out of using it by himself! I should have seized it! It’s a national-security asset!” Howe’s face gets damp and purple like a horned Saurian when he stays angry too long.

  “It’s a boy’s baseball cap,” Sandusky-sire says. “And you wanted me to keep testing his reactions to the particle charge. Anyway, I thought he had agreed to let me keep it locked up.” Eli’s dad isn’t squabble-roaring at all now. “He’d become obsessed with the note his mother sent.”

  “WHY WON’T ANYONE SHOW ME THIS NOTE!?” It was, apparently, a subject that caused Mr. Howe much agitation, among the many subjects that prompted such a response in him. A night-faring bird fluttered away, itself agitated by the noise from Mr. Howe.

  “He took it with him. It was written on Fairmont Hotel letterhead,” Sandusky-sire adds. “It was dated 1941. She’s been back there a long time.”

  “That’s the year we entered World War Two,” Howe says, looking a bit more scared than a moment ago. “We can’t have your boy back there changing things around.”

  “Why not? Maybe so many families won’t be blasted apart this time. The way I’ve lost mine.”

  Howe doesn’t respond to that. Not directly. “Why did Eli think he could even find her back there?”

  Sandusky-sire doesn’t say anything about the chrono-compass. I wonder if he perfected it. I wonder if he discovered the quantum trace-prints of matter yet, as a way of pinpointing times, beings, and places.

  “I was wrong to have been so lax.” Howe remains unquiet. “You should have told me about the note immediately. I shouldn’t have to hear these things from agents. I’m having you watched twenty-four hours a day now, Sands. We needed that boy for new missions. World War Two is already fought and done with.”

  “Is that why you came here tonight? To send my son on an errand of your own?”

  “No. No.” Howe becomes a little distracted, like he’d lost something in his pockets. “I came here because I really am having you watched, but not just with guards. We’ve been planning this for a while anyway — I didn’t realize how necessary it had become.”

  “More surveillance?” Sandusky-sire sounds like he doesn’t much care. “You already know I don’t say anything important into any of my phones or Comnet devices.”

  “Yes, well, speaking of Comnet, we’ve launched a couple of new satellites,” Howe says, damp and minimally purple. “We’ve trained one of them here on Moonglow, your lab, and the area around it. It monitors large, moving masses. Nothing can really hide from it. Everyone authorized to be in the zone will have their own transmitter. Here.” He holds out what looks to be a kind of lingo-spot to Eli’s father.

  “A leash. I’m not wearing it.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to. If you want to enter or leave the zone. Stay inside the lab, though,” Howe says with a shrug, “and suit yourself.”

  “How nice that I have a choice.”

  “Well, that’s just it. We want you to think of this as something that protects you. And will protect Eli, when he returns. It will all be complete when the final link is turned on.” Howe now holds out a small control pad to Sandusky-sire, who won’t take it. “I thought I would come over and make a celebration of it.”

  “Yippee.” It’s not a happy sound.

  “I would’ve thought you’d like the extra security, given the high-level work you’re doing here.”

  “I’ll feel secure when my family’s together, Howe. And when you leave us alone.”

  “Well, we’ll see what we can do about the ‘left alone’ part.” Howe takes the controls and pushes one with his thumb. “There, that signal turns on the link to the satellite, which should already be focused—”

  But he doesn’t finish the sentence. I experience immediate tympanic distress as alarms go off, while a bright light explodes overhead, like a small sun going supernova.

  “What’s that!?” Sandusky-sire yells.

  “That,” Howe shouts back, “is what happens when there’s an intruder!”

  I leap away, hoping not to be discovered. But I don’t get far at all before I hear the whirring motors of flying machines coming in my direction.

  Chapter Five

  Eli: Po

  December 24, 1941 C.E.

  “You Dan?”

  The cab driver looks up at me. I guess not. He doesn’t match the picture.

  “No, I’m Dang.” He draws out the g. “Charlie Dang. You’re not”— he looks down at a slip of paper —“Margarite?”

  “I’m her…one of her students. I’m Eli.” “Well, I’m supposed to take her”— another glance at the paper —“to Golden Gate Park.”

  “What?” I didn’t like the sound of that. “Why would she want to go to the park?”

  “To the museum there. The de Young. For the fundraiser. The party, you know.” He gives me a quizzical look. “Why do you care what your teacher is doing on Christmas Eve? Where are your parents?”

  “They’re…out of town. She’s looking after me. Wants me to meet her there.”

  I stand there, shivering. An actor from One Man’s Family strolls out of the hotel, smoking a pipe and waving at someone across the street.

  “So you getting in or what?” It’s cold, and I don’t know wh
at else to do, so I slide in the back. “I’m confused, kid. So this Margarite isn’t coming?”

  “No. I’ll catch up with her.”

  “All right.” Charlie Dang throws the car in gear. “A kid oughtta be with his family on Christmas Eve, though. Are your parents gone because of something to do with the war?” He’s looking at me in the rear-view mirror.

  “Pretty much.”

  We drive through the fog awhile, and I don’t feel like talking. What am I supposed to say, really? That neither I nor my parents have even been born yet, and I’ve come back in time almost eighty years to try and find my mom?

  We’re stopped at a red light. I hear the clanging of what must be a cable car, but I can’t see anything in the mist.

  “Po.”

  He says it so suddenly, I almost jump out of the seat.

  “What?”

  “Po.” The cab is moving again, almost gliding, since we can’t see anything around us, and Charlie Dang is pointing out the window. “On nights like these, I always think they’re out there.”

  “Who’s out there?”

  “Po. In Hawaii, where I grew up, po was the underworld. But in China, where my parents are from, po are souls. Spirits. And sometimes those spirits turn into Marchers of the Night, or tapping ghosts.”

  “Tapping ghosts?” I must have sounded surprised — they have tapping ghosts in Barnstormer games. How did he know? You use them for pinch-hitting. Mostly bunts.

  “Tapping ghosts are folk who won’t stay buried. Something bad happened to them, and they just can’t rest.”

  Again, just like Barnstormers. The monsters on your team can’t stop. They have to move on to the next town, to the next game, before they’re caught. And once more, I’m starting to feel that way, too.

  I haven’t had a normal conversation with anyone since Dad and I drove to California in our truck. And with my mom already gone, even that wasn’t too normal.