Ancient Fire by Mark London Williams Read Free Book Online

and
reality were immediately apparent. And easily known.
    But as we know, the universe is more like a
Cacklaw field than anything else, with its nooks, crannies,
confusions, and unexpected connections.
    The arrival of the Eli boy in my time-ship
was proof of that. He appeared quite suddenly, and he was
frightened — he had no idea where we were.
    After his first long scream, he spoke. My
lingo-spot took a moment to adjust. He spoke a kind of crude,
guttural language filled with long, wheezy breathing sounds like heeee and ahhh and wehhh, with occasional tongue clicking
thrown in to stop all the gasping. But at last some sense was made
of all the noise.
    “Where am I?”
    “What are you?” I thought that was a
reasonable question, since he was in my vessel. But he just stared
at me as if I was speaking with a mouth full of petrified
eggshells. Which, from his standpoint, I was. He couldn’t
understand me. I peeled off a little of my lingo-spot and dabbed it
behind his ear. I hoped that, because of its plasmechanical
properties, the substance would adapt to my guest’s nervous system
and biology in short order so that we could converse.
    The boy looked scared when I reached out to
him. “Don’t be afraid. I’m just out on a field trip.”
    “I can understand you,” he said, staring at
me in disbelief. “But you’re a dinosaur! Where is this? What’s
happening?”
    A dinosaur . That’s
what we’d be called on Earth Orange. “You’re in my vessel!” I told
him. “I’m supposed to be doing schoolwork. We’re in the Fifth
Dimension, moving through time.”
    “Time . . .” He looked a little nauseous,
then stared at a piece of blue cloth in his hands. I would later
learn to call it a “cap.” For now, he was transfixed by it. “Oh,
no,” he went on. “The Wompers.” I still have not found out who the
Wompers are.
    Meanwhile, as we found out later, Hypatia,
perhaps the senior female in her city of great learning, was
creating a time beacon that was pulling us toward her, and toward
the light- house — just like a water-ship heading for a beacon.
    “Where are we going?” the boy asked.
    I looked at my chrono-compass, which was
spinning around wildly. Perhaps things hadn’t stopped going wrong
on this field trip after all. “I have no idea. You’ve upset all the
controls.”
    “How come I understand you?”
    I tapped the side of my head to indicate the
lingo-spot. “School supplies.”
     
    2. Were the Saurians on
the other Earth helpful? Why or why not?
    There are no living Saurians on Earth Orange!
Scanners do show traces of one or two “dinosaurs” — evolutionary
cousins of ours — in a lake called Ness in a region called
Scotland, and a couple of other places. But that’s it.
    There are no living Saurian species . By and large, they all became… extinct!
    I expect I will lose points for this answer,
as if I stayed home and made all this up, rather than going on my
trip and doing actual research, but it’s true. I shudder at the
thought of a planet without Saurian culture, too. But I am
attaching several history texts — translated from the rough
languages of their planet — to show what they believe to be the
truth: That one time, long ago, a comet collided with their Earth,
causing a disaster that stopped Saurian evolution completely, like
a dragonfly hitting a tar pit.
    It’s horrible to think about, and maybe it’s
just a crazy local myth. But could this event correspond to the
same comet sighting in our own prehistory — and the prehistories of
several other parallel Saurian Earths? — the nest-tale of the Great
Sky Hammer? It was said to be a near miss with some kind of
asteroid.
    You will have a harder time believing what
happened after this presumed extinction, though
    I have digitized much visual and aural
evidence and attached it to this homework. I hope to prove my
thesis that on Earth Orange, in the absence of Saurians, mammals evolved.
    Yes, mammals! Those little