Domesticating Dragons

by Dan Koboldt

  Hello, Reptilian Corporation.

  That sealed it, for me. Build-A-Dragon had no reason to own a second swath of land out in the desert. Certainly not one that the dragon handlers would visit.

  The location was going to be a problem, though. There was a single two-lane road going in and out. No real reason to be on that road unless you were headed to the facility. I couldn’t be sure that I’d tagged all the handlers’ vehicles, either. They were all dusty old trucks and jeeps. My red Tesla would stick out like a sore hallux. That’s a big toe, by the way.

  I didn’t love the idea of taking my baby on an unfinished road, either. If only I still had the jalopy. That thing would have blended in just fine. The thought gave me an idea. Two ideas, really. An excuse to call Summer, and a halfway-decent cover story for if we got caught.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  TECH SUPPORT

  Build-A-Dragon Support Chat Transcript

  Operator: Li-Huei Chang

  Date: May 17th

  System: We appreciate your patience. A support operator will be with you in one minute.

  Charles Smith (trainee): Hello and thank you for contacting Reptilian Corporation. May I have your name, please?

  Guest 1: Bill Middleton. I’m at the Mala Mala Game Reserve in South Africa.

  Charles Smith (trainee): Good afternoon, Mr. Middleton. How can I help you today?

  Guest 1: We’re having some trouble with the three dragons we bought for the park.

  Charles Smith (trainee): What seems to be the problem?

  Guest 1: We’ve advertised them as a sort of main attraction.

  Charles Smith (trainee): Excellent choice, sir.

  Guest 1: We thought so at first but turns out they’re extremely hard to find during daylight hours.

  Charles Smith (trainee): That’s true of most predators, sir.

  Guest 1: Well, the tours aren’t seeing them. We’ve fielded numerous complaints.

  Charles Smith (trainee): If I understand your problem, sir, you’d like your dragons to be seen more by the park visitors?

  Guest 1: Ideally, yeah.

  Charles Smith (trainee): You must have other apex predators in the reserve as well, do you not?

  Guest 1: Before the dragons arrived, most of our visitors came to see the lions.

  Charles Smith (trainee): And how do you lure them out to be seen?

  Guest 1: We used to tie a carcass on the back of a jeep and drive it past them. But that never works on the dragons.

  Charles Smith (trainee): I’m afraid they do prefer live prey, generally speaking. But perhaps the lions could serve as your main attraction until you’re better able to study the dragons’ habits.

  Guest 1: We don’t have any lions left. The dragons got ’em.

  Charles Smith (trainee): I’m sorry, sir, do you mean to say that the dragons killed your resident lions?

  Guest 1: That’s correct.

  Charles Smith (trainee): Surely your lions were aged. And sickly, perhaps?

  Guest 1: No, these were prime males and females. Four to seven years old.

  Charles Smith (trainee): How many lions did you have in the pride, if I may ask?

  Guest 1: Twelve.

  Charles Smith (trainee): I’m finding it difficult to believe that three juvenile dragons took on a pack of mature lions.

  Guest 1: Oh, they didn’t challenge the pack. That’d be suicide. They picked ’em off one at a time.

  Charles Smith (trainee): I see.

  Guest 1: The lions weren’t used to being hunted. They didn’t stand a chance.

  Charles Smith (trainee): So sorry for the inconvenience, sir. And you’re sure it was the dragons behind these killings?

  Guest 1: We never found the bodies, but Dr. Kandoth sure seemed to think so.

  Charles Smith (trainee): I presume you’re referring to Dr. Gaurav Kandoth? Our records show he’s your chief zoologist.

  Guest 1: Right. He was.

  Charles Smith (trainee): Is he no longer with you?

  Guest 1: He thought if he caught one of the dragons, it might draw the others out into the open. We never found his body, either.

  Charles Smith (trainee): I’m sorry to hear that, sir.

  Guest 1: Dr. Davis moved up to replace him. She was the assistant zoologist.

  Charles Smith (trainee): Perhaps I could speak to her?

  Guest 1: Well, one of the tours radioed that they saw a dragon and it looked injured, so she took a jeep out to investigate. The dragon must not have been hurt, because it mauled her pretty good.

  Charles Smith (trainee): Oh, no!

  Guest 1: Yep. Happened right in front of the tour group.

  Charles Smith (trainee): Well, at least they got their money’s worth. So, who’s heading up the zoology team now?

  Guest 1: I guess I am.

  Charles Smith (trainee): Ah. So you’re a zoologist as well?

  Guest 1: Eh, I’m kind of in a different branch.

  Charles Smith (trainee): Wildlife biology?

  Guest 1: Park security.

  Charles Smith (trainee): You’re a security guard?

  Guest 1: Not such a redundant job now, am I right?

  Charles Smith (trainee): Bravo on the career choice, sir. So, there’s no one else with you?

  Guest 1: The guides ran off. Everyone else is missing.

  Charles Smith (trainee): Oh, my goodness. How did this happen?

  Guest 1: One at a time, just like the lions. Those are some clever dragons you sold us.

  Charles Smith (trainee): Very kind of you to say, Mr. Middleton. Would you mind staying put while I contact the South African authorities?

  Guest 1: I’m not going anywhere!

  Charles Smith (trainee): Sir, I’m pleased to report that four game wardens are en route to your location.

  Guest 1: I hope that’s enough.

  Charles Smith (trainee): To summarize, you had a problem getting your dragons to come out into the open, and it seems like we’ve solved that now. Thank you for choosing Reptilian Corporation.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Trespassing

  I met Summer in the parking lot for Big Mesa in early afternoon. I’d tucked my Tesla in the corner and activated the super-alarm. There were three parts to that: a verbal warning in a voice that sounded like Mr. T, followed by an ear-piercing alarm siren, and lastly an alert that went to my phone by satellite.

  I could pull up a live feed from the six cameras positioned around the car. None of this would stop a determined car thief from taking my Tesla, but I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Deterrence was the name of the game. With luck, we wouldn’t be gone more than a few hours.

  Summer rolled in at a good clip, and parked haphazardly—front wheels in the lot, back wheels on the median—even though there was plenty of room. The Jeep was badass. She was badass, and I found that very distracting.

  “You ready?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” I climbed into the passenger seat and beckoned to Octavius. “Come on, buddy!”

  He trilled at me with uncertain tones.

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  Come to think of it, he’d never ridden in a car other than mine before. No wonder he was nervous.

  “I’ll be right here the whole time.”

  Nothing.

  “We can stop for food,” I said, hoping that was all right with Summer. She’d probably insist on some Vegan artisanal crap that he wouldn’t touch, but I left that part unsaid.

  The promise of food enticed him enough to glide onto my lap. It took another minute and talk of dessert to coax him into the back seat. He folded his wings, all prim-and-proper, and edged as far from Riker as possible.

  He was probably afraid of getting licked again. Knowing Riker, that was a distinct possibility.

  “Thanks for doing this,” I told Summer.

  “Where are we headed?”

  “East on 60,” I told her.

  The Jeep rumbled to life. She didn’t b
ack up but made a U-turn and drove right back over the median.

  Like I said, badass.

  While she drove, I synced my GPS watch with her dash computer. It pulled up the route, about an hour and fifteen minutes.

  “That’s the middle of nowhere,” Summer said. “Are you taking me out there to kill me?”

  “You know, I was going to, but I could never drive this Jeep to get back.”

  “Seriously, there’s not a cache within fifty miles.”

  “There’s going to be.” I dug the plastic container out of my pocket and held it up so she could see. It was transparent and watertight, about the size of a PB&J sandwich. I’d already loaded it with paper, pencils, a G.I. Joe, an arrowhead, and the all-important microdrive.

  “Ooh, I’ve always wanted to make one,” she said.

  “Me, too. I thought we should do it before I pass you up and take first place.”

  She scoffed. “Never gonna happen.”

  “I should disclose that we have a second mission, too.”

  She gave me a side-eye. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  “Build-A-Dragon has a facility out there. I want to pay it an unofficial visit.”

  “Oh my God, you want to do work stuff? It’s fricking Saturday!”

  “It’s not work, not really at least. There’s just a dragon that I need to see. It’ll only take a second.”

  She sighed. “What kind of facility is this?”

  “We call it the Farm. It’s where they send the failed prototypes, the returns, all of that.”

  “Um, I don’t want to go anywhere near a place that’s crawling with defective dragons.”

  “They’ll be in fenced enclosures. Totally safe.” I’d dug up an old set of blueprints for The Farm on Build-A-Dragons intranet server. It looked like a high-end kennel, complete with roomy pens for each dragon and an exercise yard. Describing it that way made it sound vaguely like a prison. Best not to think about that. But I figured they wouldn’t have anyone working on the weekend, so I might be able to sneak close.

  “I don’t know.” Summer’s face had that scrunched-up look that she’d had when the rattlesnake was about to bite Riker.

  I had to give her something, and I really didn’t want to lie to her. I took a breath. “There’s this one dragon I need to see. A flying model that I designed.”

  “What, one flying dragon’s not enough?”

  “This was a prototype to replace the Pterodactyl.”

  “The terrible-dactyl?”

  I scowled. “I hate you.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Anyway, my prototype flies better than all of our mainline models. It’s awesome.”

  “Then why is it out in the desert?”

  “We’re not supposed to give any one dragon too many advantages.”

  “Of course not. Why would you want to give dragons advantages?” she asked dryly.

  “I know, right? But those are the rules, and I broke them. So Greaves canceled the design before I could get a sample.” A sample that I’ve invested years into.

  “What do you think a sample of a dragon is going to tell you?” she asked.

  “You can tell a lot from looking at the muscle fibers under a microscope.” I knew, because I’d seen Connor’s biopsy results several times. Muscle fibers were similar across the animal kingdom, so it should be easy to tell if the dragon’s looked like his.

  “So you just want to stop by and perform a brief surgery on a wild reptile.”

  “They’re not wild, they’re domesticated.” Thanks to me. “And it won’t be surgery.” I dug the slim metal case from my pocket and flipped it open. Inside lay a steel-and-glass cylinder about the size of a cigar. “This is a robotic biopsy arm. Quick, painless, and automatically seals the sample in an airtight container.”

  “Will it hurt the dragon?”

  “There’s a local anesthetic included.” Which did not quite answer her question, but I hoped would be good enough.

  “You have this all planned out, don’t you?”

  “Just the black-market equipment part of it. I’m a sucker for high-tech gear.”

  My obsession failed to impress her. She just shook her head. “Why did you even call me for this?”

  My first thought was that I didn’t want to go in my own car, but if I said that, I was pretty sure I’d be walking home. I was too chicken to tell her that I’d wanted to an excuse to see her. So I settled for a middle road. “I don’t know what the terrain is going to be like, and . . .”

  “And what?”

  For a second, I almost glimpsed the old Summer coming back. Yikes. I spread out my arms in desperation. “And you’re the best hiker I know.”

  She bit back what was probably a cuss word followed by you. “I don’t want to get arrested again.”

  “Again?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  Oh, I was going to have to ask. But that could wait. I shrugged and looked out my window. “It is a fair hike into the desert. I’ll understand if you’re, you know, not up for it.”

  She snorted. “Anything you can do, I can do.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Probably faster, too.”

  “Ha! Well, now you can prove it.”

  She didn’t protest, so we got to talking about other things. She caught me up on the last year or so of her life which was far more interesting than mine. After moving out from Jane’s place, she’d gone to Costa Rica for a few months. Supposedly the mission trip was to teach kids English, but it sounded like there was a lot of beach time involved.

  I figured Octavius had fallen asleep, but every time I looked back, I found him staring at up at the open sky as if hypnotized. I’d never taken him in a car with an open top before. His bright eyes never wavered. He wanted to be up there, flying free.

  And I probably couldn’t blame him.

  “So. What does one do for a living, after a long Costa Rican vacation?” I asked.

  “As I keep telling you, it was a mission trip!”

  “Right, mission trip,” I said, in the most dubious tone I could muster.

  “I work for an architecture firm in Paradise Valley.”

  “Oh, bullshit.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Wow.” I tried not to show how much that impressed me. Architecture had a lot in common with engineering. I’d considered going into that myself, except Connor didn’t have a broken house.

  “What did you think I did for a living?” she asked.

  “Hemp fashion design.”

  “Oh!” She glared at me. “Only you would say that.”

  I held up my hands in mock surrender. “All right, fine. You’re an architect. What do you design?”

  “Mostly green projects, like energy-efficient condos. Things you’d hate, in other words.”

  “Actually, I live in one of those.”

  “Which one?”

  “Scottsdale,” I said.

  She looked at me sidelong for a second, then shook her head. “And here I thought you didn’t care about the planet.”

  “Hey, I drive an electric car!”

  “A Tesla.” She made it sound like an accusation.

  “Well, they make the best ones. Better than this gas-guzzler.”

  “It’s biodiesel, thank you very much.”

  My mouth fell open. “Are you serious?”

  “I converted it myself. Well, my dad and I did.”

  I shook my head. The more I learned about her, the more she impressed me. But there was still tension between us, from way back, and I wanted it gone.

  “You know, I . . . I’m not sure why we didn’t get along, before,” I said.

  “When you were with Jane?”

  “Right. I wasn’t very nice to you.”

  “No, you weren’t.” She said it so fast, so readily, that I felt like the biggest jackass ever.

  “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m really sorry about that,” I said. And I meant it.

&nb
sp; She nodded, and we rode in silence for a second. I knew that one apology might not be enough. Why did I have to be such a jerk?

  “I had my own issues, back then,” she said. “Jane and I used to feed off each other, you know?”

  Toxicity by association. I knew it too well. “We did that, too. It wasn’t healthy.”

  Summer cleared her throat. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but she was, um, not well.”

  I laughed. It felt good. “You’re kidding!”

  “Crazy as a loon.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “I know enough,” I said. “But I’m still sorry.”