Dragonfire: A Gulliver Swift Adventure

Flagged Lab Note, Chronos Clinical Trial 261

 

Dr. Felix Caravalho, MS, MPhil, PhD, Columbia University School of Physics; Fermi Fellow, American Physical Society 

James Hawtree is dead, and it's my fault. 

I should never have had him step through the portal.  Better to have sent a robotic camcorder to survey the terrain beforehand—but Jim was as enthusiastic as I was.  The country we were about to enter was till now no more than a palimpsest embossed in stone, and if my brilliant post-grad protégé wanted to tie the safety line around his waist and be the first to cross the threshold it was no skin off my ass.  There'd be enough acclaim to go around; so, fine, no big deal, let him take the "one small step, one giant leap," yada, yada. 

"Go for it," I said.

Damn right he went for it—and you should have seen the hunger shining in his eyes only moments before the honor cost him his life.  What could I do other than watch in helpless horror as an enormous humanoid like no humanoid anyone now alive has ever seen—half again as tall as an average six-footer—loomed up out of a cave hidden behind an aggregate of boulders, eyes blazing, drool spraying off an array of crocodilian teeth, enormous sharp-pointed tusk gripped in a three-fingered fist.  Feathers sprouted from the top of a head that with each step poked forward on its neck like a pigeon's, but I didn't see that or the iridescent down of its coat as much as assimilate it on the fly, too busy shrinking back from the rage evident on its face.  

I may have caught a glimpse of a frightened female and a terrified child behind him, but you couldn't prove it by me.  The hands at the ends of the creature's long arms were closing down in a vice-like grip no human could break, my defenseless protégé torn limb from limb in front of my eyes, the tether snapping as the fang ripped like a box-cutter into his abdomen. 

Amber eyes blazing, it disemboweled Jim with one savage stroke, tearing him limb from limb and engulfing his corpse in a jet of flame so superheated it turned his body into charcoal in seconds.

When it was over, when I finally managed to lunge at the kill switch on the console, I could only collapse into the chair beside the mainframe trembling and hyperventilating and thrilled.  James Hawtree's death was a tragedy, to be sure, but it was not in vain.  Sacrificing his life to unveil one of the last great secrets of creation guaranteed him a premiere place in the mythos.  His name would go down in legend alongside Isaac Newton and the apple, Archimedes in his bath.  Picture it: me in Stockholm accepting the Nobel in physics, graciously telling the white-tie gathering I couldn't have done it had James not thrown himself onto the double-edged sword of human progress— 

—Except, wait, why do I have to share the triumph?  Who needs to know he had anything to do with it, or that his death was anything but glorious?  Who has to say he's dead at all? 

What if he couldn't cut it; couldn't take the pressure?  What if he'd suddenly thrown his hands in the air and dropped out of the program—resigned from the University—and, I don't know, went off to travel the back roads of the country in his Volkswagen bus?  I mean, his body would be moldering away a million years BCE.  I'd like to see the police unearth it—much less identify it.

Something would have to be done about the VW, of course—but, like Jim, it never has to be seen again.  I can keep it right here in my little off-campus facility protected by the Top Secret Defense Department classification that keeps my research safe from prying eyes.  

Hawtree conundrum solved.  Dr. Tate next.

Oh, didn't I tell you about Cy?