Dragon Sword Read online

  We’re standing outside the de Young, and the police are trying to interview everybody. The antlers are gone. When the lights went out, somebody stole the White Stag’s horns. So far nobody’s been able to tell the police anything — no one saw who it was. When the cops get to me, I might just tell them it was Dan the Oboe Man, on general principles. I notice he managed to slip away, too, so why not?

  A lot of people are shivering in their tuxedos and evening gowns. They’re anxious for the cops to hurry up and let them back in for their coats.

  I’m cold, too, but I’m not in any rush. After all, I’m standing next to a real live, famous, dead baseball player. In his pre-dead days, of course.

  “When you shut that music fella up, you did me a favor,” DiMaggio cracked when I finally met him a few minutes ago. It was dark, but the glow from his cigarette let me see his face. He was trying to stand as far away from the street lamps and the hanging lanterns around the museum as he could. “I didn’t want to give a big speech.”

  “How come?”

  “It wouldn’t be me doing it, it’d be ‘Joltin’ Joe,’ ‘the Yankee Clipper.’ See? Me, I really don’t have anything in particular to say.”

  “But, you are Joltin’ Joe.”

  “Nah, Joltin’ Joe’s just my disguise now. A character. If you ever get famous, you’ll know. What’d you say your name was again, kid?”

  He blew out more smoke, and I coughed. “Sorry. Guess you’re too young to puff ’em yourself. Let me get a couple more drags and I’ll snuff it out.”

  I’m standing next to DiMaggio thanks to that reporter, Caen.

  I was ushered outside with everybody else after the police got here. I figured maybe my best bet would be to find another cab, hope no one noticed the date on my future money, and go back to the hotel.

  But Caen found me first. “Some party, huh, kid? A little thin on Christmas spirit with that robbery at the end.”

  “I guess so.” I was starting to feel a little sorry for myself again.

  “Hey, what’s the matter? Stranded? Parents never made it?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, where are they?”

  Then it occurred to me — I didn’t necessarily have to go back to the hotel. Maybe I shouldn’t. With the Oboe Man missing, maybe I should try to find Mom first. Just in case.

  “My mom’s at a fort, I think.” If the Oboe creep was right.

  “A fort, huh? Come over here.” Caen motioned for me to follow, and I went with him right past the police — he nodded and waved to one of the officers — to a little area behind their squad cars, where a small handful of people were waiting around. A few yards away from them, a man stood by some trees, puffing a cigarette.

  “The VIP lounge, kiddo. The cops let the swellest of swells hang out back here. If they don’t question them soon, these people will send their butlers and maids up from Atherton and down from Pacific Heights to stand in for ’em.” We came up to the man near the trees. “Hey, Joe, know any good forts?”

  The man stepped out from the shadows.

  “Forts, huh? Well, there’s Fort Funston, out on the Army base.”

  It was him. Joe DiMaggio! He nodded toward me.

  “Nice cap, kid.”

  “It’s the Seals.”

  “I know.”

  “Kid”— this time it was Caen talking — “meet Joe DiMaggio.”

  DiMaggio nodded again. “I don’t like to give autographs, though. Just so you know.”

  I had my hand sticking out to shake his, but then put it back in my pocket.

  “What does your ma do?” Caen asks.

  How much should I tell them? I don’t want to keep lying about a situation I haven’t fig- ured out yet myself.

  “She’s ... she’s a scientist,” I said.

  “She working on the war effort?” Caen asked. “I think so.”

  DiMaggio shrugged. “Maybe she’s out at Fort Point.”

  “Where’s that?” I thought maybe I could walk.

  “Right under the Golden Gate Bridge, kid, but it’s sealed off. A lot of crazy rumors about top-secret war stuff going on there. I think you’ll just have to wait for your mom to get home.”

  “I’d like to try and get in anyway.”

  “Well, kid, you’ll still need to take a cab. Here.” Caen handed me a five-dollar bill. “Buy yourself a milk shake later on, too. I’d tell Joe to take ya, but he never brings his car anywhere.” DiMaggio gave us a kind of panicked look as Caen continued. “Sorry I can’t stay. Gotta talk to a couple folks here and buzz down to the paper to write this up before the Call Bulletin scoops us. Merry Christmas, kid!” He tipped his hat and was gone. DiMaggio stood there, smoking, and nodded at me but didn’t say anything else. I realized I was get- ting pretty hungry. I’d only eaten a couple of those crepe things. So I asked him about his restaurant. I read once that he had one.

  “You own a spaghetti place, right?”

  His look wasn’t panic this time, but more like puzzlement, like why the heck was I bothering him about noodles at a time like this. “A fish place. Joe DiMaggio’s Grotto. Down in North Beach. But you can get a good plate of pasta there.”

  “Do you eat there all the time?”

  “It’s too crowded for me. To tell you the truth, kid, in the off-season, I try to avoid crowds.”

  He goes silent again, and it’s kind of weird that I have to keep the conversation going, since I’m the one they all keep calling “kid.”

  “Well, you had a really great year, right?” I ask. In the ’41 season, he had a record hitting streak.

  “Yeah, they’re celebrating it over at the Grotto,” he answers. “Put on a party for me. I hit in fifty-six consecutive games this past season. Helluva thing. It’s a record.”

  “Yeah, and it’s never —” I catch myself. I’ve really got to watch it. “I bet it’ll never be broken. You must be proud of yourself.”

  “Yeah, sure, but like I said, it’s almost like someone else did it. I can’t just play baseball anymore. I can’t just play. I have to be him. It’s just not fun anymore.”

  Wow, if playing baseball for a living isn’t fun, grownups must have really depressing lives. “I should tell you about Barnstormers.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A game. Like —” I don’t want to mess up another detail here and seem any more po-like than I have to. Let’s see, before games were electronic they were mostly —“a board game. Where you manage your own baseball team. The whole squad is made up of these really messed-up monsters who go around from town to town, playing exhibition games, pickup games, whatever they can. Because they love it. Of course, after each game, they get chased away and have to go somewhere else.”

  “Messed-up monsters? Sounds like some Red Sox fans I’ve seen.”

  “On my team, Wolfman plays your position. Center field.”

  Even in the dark, I can see DiMaggio looking at me a moment. “Center field, huh? Does he have a hitting streak?”

  “He’s not bad.”

  He reaches into a pocket and hands me a piece of paper. It’s some kind of flyer or pamphlet.

  “What’s this?”

  “Read it. I figure a guy who manages werewolves might be able to make sense of it.”

  DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE HOLY GRAIL IS?

  THE GERMAN HIGH COMMAND DOES!

  THE NAZIS ARE COLLECTING

  — POWERFUL OBJECTS—

  Such as the Spear of Destiny, the Holy Grail, and Excalibur — King Arthur’s Dragon Sword!

  “The Dragon Sword,” I tell him, tapping my finger on the word Excalibur. “They had a fake one inside the museum.”

  “Keep reading, kid. It gets worse.”

  The possessor of these objects could wield

  GREAT POWER!!

  No government should be allowed to own them!

  No government should be asleep!

  Demand an investigation!

  Demand ACTION!!

  “Cor
ny stuff, huh?” DiMaggio’s shifting around from foot to foot, like he’s getting colder. Or maybe having a conversation just makes him nervous.

  “What does it mean?”

  “Well, if you don’t know, kid, ask him.” He jerks his head in the direction of a man standing by the steps of the museum, holding a sign with big letters saying WAKE UP! You could see him trying to give handouts to people who were standing outside, but nearly everyone was pretending to ignore him.

  “Who knows?” DiMaggio says. “That guy marches around my restaurant, trying to get people to take his flyers.”

  “Why?”

  “Hollywood people go there. Sports people. He wants to get noticed. That’s why he came to the museum. Figured this is where the action was tonight.” He shook his head as if the sign man had done something wrong. “Everyone wants to get noticed.”

  “You got noticed, Mr. DiMaggio,” I point out to him.

  “And you know what, kid? All I wanted was to play ball well enough so I could avoid putting in all those hours on my old man’s fishing boat. Here’s what they used to say to me when I was starting out…”

  And then, to my surprise, he grabs the hat off my head. He turns it around in his hands. “Why is it all sticky like this?”

  Of course I can’t tell about the Thickskin, the synthetic coating that prevents direct contact with the cap, which has become some kind of supercharged, backward-traveling time particle. When I touch the cap, I get tangled up in time, heading off somewhere usually not of my own choosing.

  “It’s to protect it,” I tell him. “It’s valuable.”

  “We just sweat in ’em. Here.” He takes a pen out of his coat, looks under the cap, and rubs away some of the Thickskin with his fingers. He writes on the band. Two initials: a D and a B.

  “That stands for ‘DiMaggio, buon.’ That’s how the old-timers wish me good luck.” He hands the cap back to me, then walks over to where the squad cars are parked and taps one of the policemen on the shoulder.

  “In a minute, mister, I’m still with — oh, it’s you, Mr. DiMaggio.”

  “I really have to go now.”

  “Uh, did we get your statement?”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you guys. I didn’t see anything. I got here late.”

  The cop makes a note. “Well, okay. We just want to make sure they weren’t targeting any of the celebrities.”

  DiMaggio makes a show of patting himself down. “I’m not missing a thing. But hey”— he nods toward me —“make sure that kid gets a ride wherever he wants to go.”

  “He lost?”

  DiMaggio looks at me, then back at the cop. “I don’t think so. Just misplaced.”

  Boy, I’ll say!

  “Okay, Mr. DiMaggio,” the cop says. “Happy holidays.”

  “You, too.” DiMaggio looks at me. “And you, too, kid.”

  I tap my Seals cap. “Thanks for the autograph.”

  He starts walking away, then pauses in the shadows. “Thanks for not asking for it.”

  I look at my cap a moment. Then I take a little wad of Thickskin from my pocket — I’m running low, I have to be careful — and smear it over the signed letters. I can’t let any part of the cap come into contact with my skin — not until I’m ready to go.

  D.B.

  Danger Boy.

  “DiMaggio! Joe DiMaggio!”

  Someone’s shouting, and I turn. It’s Sign Man, who’s being held by the cop DiMaggio had just talked to. Apparently he just realized Joe was here and is trying to follow him.

  “Look, back off, mister.”

  But Sign Man ignores the cop and continues to yell after DiMaggio, even though he’s disappeared from view. “Time is short! We’re in bigger trouble than we know! Wake up!”

  “Knock it off, buddy. I mean it.”

  “See for yourself!” He holds out one of the flyers, but the cop won’t take it.

  And then I recognize him: The bristly haircut on top of two intense eyes behind a pair of wire-rim glasses.

  Andrew Jackson Williams. Who I met — meet — one night in Vinita, Oklahoma, when my dad and I were — are — driving cross-country.

  To this day, I don’t know what year that night took place in.

  Chapter Ten

  Thea: Flight and Fire

  2019 C.E.

  “Thea! A good time to meet!” K’lion was so excited after I crashed into his prison that he gave me what I believe to be the Saurian equivalent of a kiss — a tongue dragged up the nose toward the eyes. It leaves you a bit damp.

  I told him I’d been sent to rescue him. “And you did!” he replied. “Passing grade! Skt! But how did you find me?”

  “The ship ... the vessel found you, K’lion. This is a prototype, a test model.”

  “Oh, very dangerous. Snk! Could be a sneak test. Or might just not work.”

  “I volunteered to pilot it. I wanted to return to Earth, to this time, to find you and Eli.”

  “Was this your science project?”

  “It is science, but even its inventors, such as Gennt, aren’t sure whose anymore: They’ve made the ship mostly plasmechanical now, like the lingo-spots. It feels. It reacts. It belongs, more and more, to itself. When I was in the Fifth Dimension, the vessel began anticipating my piloting moves, as if it were coming to…to understand me. At one point, space was stretched out so far around me and I seemed to be moving so slowly, that I fell asleep briefly. When I awoke, the ship was humming.”

  “Humming?”

  “Making music.”

  “A rousing Cacklaw grind march?”

  “No, a lullaby my mother used to sing to me. I’d been dreaming of it. But how did the ship know?”

  “Not sure either,” he replied. “Stranded here myself bt! bt! being an outlaw and a troodon. I’m badly behind with science and engineering journals. How does the new kp! kp! compass work?”

  “It’s no longer based only on known coordinates. After what happened to you, they realized that sticking only to the known was too limiting. It allowed them no room for surprises.”

  “They’re courting surprise? Kww! What an eruption! Normally, our teachers wish to save us from true surprises until the upper-grade curriculum. And even then snkt! it’s all kept within limits.”

  “Well,” I told K’lion, “when you get back home, you may find that I have disrupted several syllabi and course descriptions. As for the compass…Gennt showed me how it works. Though I wonder if he was completely sure himself. You begin by agitating the plasma, get it to focus on the object or location being sought.”

  “But how?”

  “Atomic structure, I believe, K’lion. The ship knew to seek you out. You put in…tissue from the person or place you seek.”

  “The vibrations!”

  “What?”

  “Vibrations!” K’lion repeated. “Pwwt!” He was excited. “Gennt always had a theory about vibrations humming through the universe — that each being, each planet had a different…t-t-tnh! hum. So if you had a sample of someone’s atomic structure, you would have a sample of their personal…music.”

  “The ship finds people by listening to their music?”

  “Can’t say. I’m not the pilot. But it seems to have adapted p-chw! to you. Tk-tk-tk! What did you use for my atomic structure, since most of my atoms were here with me?”

  “A bit of the eggshell that hatched you.” And here he seemed to grow nostalgic.

  “Ah, yes. They always save our shells. Do you have anything klng! of Eli’s?”

  It was that question that led us to Eli’s father. We thought the laboratory would be a logical place to start the search for our missing friend. Until K’lion modified his position.

  “Sandusky-sire won’t be there,” he said. “They keep driving him out of his nest.”

  “Then how will we find Eli if we can’t find his father?”

  “We can find the sire,” K’lion said. “He’s not lost kww! in time. Just in sorrow. Pop us into Dimension F
ive, Thea. We should skip-jump through and arrive at night.”

  “Arrive where?”

  “I hazard guesses.” And he set the controls for some terrestrial coordinates.

  We disappeared briefly into the Fifth Dimension — so quickly that there was no napping or ship music. When we reappeared, the moon was out.

  We were above a low range of mountains. It was cold, but there was a campfire burning. Eli’s father, Sandusky, sat next to it.

  He looked up at us and smiled a little. “You got out, K’lion. That’s good. And you, Thea.” He stood up and took my hands in his. “You’re back.”

  “I don’t know if I am back,” I told him. “I might just be visiting.” Then I realized he had no lingo-spot and couldn’t understand me. K’lion would have to speak for us both.

  “How’d you find me?” Sandusky asked.

  “Factored in the heart,” K’lion said. “Knew about the satelli-T-T-T-e overhead. Knew you’d want to stay away from the lab awhile, even Wolf House, if they could monitor you. But knew too you would not want to forget. Charted perimeter of the satellite’s surveillance grid. And decided you would be just outside it, unseen but seeing.” K’lion pointed down the ridge, and there below, in the distance, in the Valley of the Moon, was a glimpse of the Wolf House ruins.

  Sandusky sipped something from a round, metallic cup. “Eli’s gone, K’lion.”

  “I know.”

  “Back in time someplace, like his mother. He thought he could find her and bring her back home. It’s been almost a month, and there’s no sign.”

  “Me and Thea wish to fetch-get him.”

  “How?”

  “Tell us when he is.”

  Eli’s father smiled at this. Momentarily. “I have reason to believe Eli’s mother might be in the city of San Francisco, during a period of one of our worst Earth wars. Eli tried to go back to find her. I hope…he’s someplace safe.”

  Then he looked at me. I believe he knew I could understand him. “The slow pox is getting worse here. They’re talking about quarantines soon. …I hope we haven’t done something terrible by breaking apart time like this. Not just ‘we’ as in all people. But ‘we’ as in my family, specifically. As in me. Specifically.” He sipped again from his cup. “It doesn’t feel like anything…can be controlled anymore.”