Free Ancient Fire by Mark London Williams

the
scholar Hypatia (and a scholar in her own right), but many other
strange creatures with equally strange names: rhinos, monkeys,
tigers. They have “birds,” too. These birds even resemble our own
winged Saurians.
    I met many of these firsthand, when they
tried to overrun my vessel in the middle of something called a
“zoo.” The human mammals evidently keep other mammals imprisoned,
like the Ring of No Escape in Cacklaw. And, like Cacklaw, it’s for
entertainment. But not for a few mere sun-cycles as in our own
sporting events, with the gates open after the game. No, these zoos
are permanent. Does this mean, for mammals, that their games don’t end? It seems more serious for the
ones behind bars. I will continue to investigate.
    My introduction to the culture, of course,
was when Eli the Boy wound up in my ship as a result of a poorly
plotted experiment on time dynamics. Their mature beings, called
“grownups” or “adults,” possess roughly the scientific knowledge of
a Saurian in secondary studies. As a result of this rough science,
my settings were thrown completely off.
    We know from our own studies that certain
beings can potentially act as “lightning poles,” magnets if you
will, for time energy—with the slightest disturbance in spacetime
focused on and channeled through them. As the saying goes, “Some
hatch differently.” The boy is like that. Apparently, his unique
reactions are triggered by the wearing of headgear, or a “cap”.
    As a living time particle himself, Eli the
Boy was drawn to another time experiment in Alexandria, a place
that was “ancient” for him, since it reached the height of its
glory some sixteen hundred years before he was born. Thea’s female
parent, Hypatia, had retreated to a lighthouse after solving
several equations about the composition of light and time, and how
each measures and affects the other. She was trying to demonstrate
the results for the whole city, perhaps because she thought some
citizens might appreciate what would be a great forward stomp in
mammalian knowledge.
    Hypatia’s experiment acted as a kind of
homing beacon for us. Since I found myself back in a fairly normal,
compressed atmosphere, I stuck my head out of the ship’s portal to
get a better view of our surroundings, and to bring the standard
time-traveler’s greeting to the crowd below: “A good time to
meet!”
    But I never got that far. They began throwing
projectiles and chanting at us. Apparently, they were not fond of
Hypatia or her experiments.
    As the ship was still wobbly, Eli the Boy and
I looked for a place to put down. When we found open space in this
“zoo,” we were attacked first by the rhino, and then by other
creatures, who presumably thought, as had the humans, that their
territory was being invaded.
    After getting out of the ship, I just stood
there transfixed, watching these amazing creatures come at us. The
rhino might’ve speared me dead center in my abdo-bilious if Eli the
Boy hadn’t shoved me away. A rude gesture for a kind purpose.
    In their own way, these Earth Orange animals
are wondrous. Like creatures you might find in a hatchling’s tale.
But they also have appetites — and tempers.
    “I think we made him mad,” Eli the Boy said
as the rhino turned around to face us again.
    Now it was my turn to help. Holding the boy,
I jumped to safety, hearing behind me the distressing thud of the rhino colliding with my ship. My leaping
seemed to amaze the other humans scrambling for safety around us.
Apparently, human legs are slow and spindly.
    I leaped across the great grounds of these
Royal Quarters, over fountains, pillars, and arches, trying to keep
ahead of the strange riot that was brewing between the interplay of
mammals—the animals who were loose, and the various humans running
from them in panic. Even in this confusion, I had time to notice
that Alexandria, in all its pink, sandy tones, is very much like a
Saurian city!
    But our first task was