Dragon Sword by Mark London Williams

human
keepers.
    They brought me here after
capturing me on the roof of Sandusky-sire’s lab. I rode in the
cold, dark hold of one of their air machines.
    Like the animals in a zoo, they
have a species name for me, too: Troodon.
    I looked it up on one of their
computing devices. A troodon is a type of Saurian — a “dinosaur”—
that used to live on this Earth. Their theory is that I am an
evolved version of one. Or more likely, the Earth Orange humans
think, I am a “space alien,” even though it is they, of course, who
live in the far reaches of space and time.
    “ Are you invading us?” the female
known as Thirty asked me.
    “ Invade? Kkkk…taa! ” She had
it all wrong. “I simply wish to get back home before the school
year is terminated and final marks are handed in.”
    “ This can be like a school, too. We
can learn from each other. I want you to trust me.” She smiled at
me. “I’ve read the reports of what happened out at the Sandses’
lab, with Eli and the girl you were traveling with. I want to help
get your friends back.”
    She wanted to help me, yet she was
still called by her number. Thirty. On Saurius Prime, we are
numbered only until we leave our community nests to undergo our
Passage Calls, in which we get our life-names.
    If she didn’t qualify for a real
name yet, she was probably still much too young to be out by
herself. Perhaps she was being given some kind of test, and I
should humor her to help her win high marks. “Back from ting! where?”
    “ From wherever they’ve gone in
time. Your friend Eli is supposed to be working for us.”
    “ Who is ‘us’?”
    “ I’m part of the government here.
That’s all you need to know.”
    “ In truth, young friend, there is
much more I would love sktt! to know. Can you k-kk tell me what happened to the Saurian race here? And can you
ascertain, please, whether I am still pk-pan! an
outlaw?”
    “ Why do you think you’re an outlaw,
Mr.”— she glanced down at a screen where she appeared to keep some
notes —“Klein. That’s an Earth name, too. Is it one you picked up
here?”
    She said it wrong, not quite with a
Saurian pronunciation. “Clyne,” I corrected her, as gently as I
could.
    “ Klein. Yes.” She nodded. “How did
you pick that name? Did you meet someone named Klein?”
    “ Yes, well. I would meet ‘Clyne’ tk-bng! in the Fifth Dimension only if I passed myself t-t-kh! coming while I was going. Or versa vice. And that
would result from sloppy piloting and deduct points off pk-pk-pk! my final marks.”
    “ The Fifth Dimension? Is that how
you got here?”
    “ Why, yes! How else kt! could I find an Earth so full of k-pt-chk! surprises?”
    “ Were you trying to surprise us,
Mr. Klein?” Here the one called Thirty leaned over to peer at me
closely, as if I were a project in science class. “Were you here to
arrange a sneak attack?”
    “ Sneak attack?” It was a type of
Earth Orange phrase I hadn’t heard before. Then I figured it out.
“Oh! p-p-pw! A shadow move! Like in Cacklaw!”
    Then Thirty appeared to grow very
frustrated. She put down her stylus and stopped taking notes. “Like
in war, Mr. Klein. When you’re done with your games, perhaps we’ll
talk again.
    She exited the room, and I was
escorted back to the quarters where they kept me locked up. Why did
she get so upset if she knew that Cacklaw was a game? I was
actually quite impressed — few mammals on Earth Orange appear to
have heard of it.
    One time, she and the one called
Howe gave me a bio-reconnoiter. I was tied to a table, with my eyes
propped open. They poked my hide, clipped off bits of my claws and
put them in sample jars, measured my tail, and looked at my
tongue.
    Apparently Saurian medicine was a
mystery to them, and I was their training ground.
    “ We think,” Howe said, “that you are a troodon. One that evolved to be like us, with two legs
for standing upright and a large brain. You would have been us, would have kept right