ORFY

by Richard Chwedyk

Since Richard Chwedyk introduced the saurs to us in our Jan. 2001 issue, the sentient toys (rambunctious Axel, irascible Agnes, and the rest) have become one of our most popular series. It’s hard to believe the last one, “In Tibor’s Cardboard Castle,” appeared six years ago, but Richard Chwedyk says he has been busy teaching writing at Columbia College in Chicago while still serving as a newspaper managing editor. (He notes that bales of papers were shredded for confetti for the Blackhawks’ recent Stanley Cup victory parade; it was the best use of those newspapers he has seen lately.) We’ll do our best to make sure his next story doesn’t take another six years.

* * * *

“Last night we had a big storm!”

On the afternoon Diogenes died, Axel, the small blue theropod with the scar down his back, stood on the table next to the window of the former dining room, dictating another message to the “Space Guys,” somewhere out there, as he had done every week since the spring.

“There was lightning flashing and thunder and stuff!”

Reggie, as everyone called the Reggiesystem computer that helped run the house, dutifully recorded his words.

“Everybody got afraid and the walls were shaking and I thought the house was going to fly through the air all the way to space and land on Mars!”

He turned from the computer screen and looked out the window. “But the storm’s over now. The sky is clear and blue and everything’s bright, like the rain washed it or something! It’s all clean and—and alive! The flowers over there and the trees and the grass and everything!”

He bent forward, tiny forearms raised, almost touching the glass, his jaws opened wide: the yard had never looked more beautiful. As if he had never seen it before: a gift of his—a gift of discovery, of finding everything new.

“Everything’s ALIVE!”

Though he directed these words to the Space Guys, his voice alone broadcast them throughout the house. Axel may have stood no more than twenty-seven centimeters when he stretched fully upright, but his voice belonged to a saur three or four times his size.

He took a few steps over to the other end of the table and looked around the room. Directly below him, near the base of the plastic stairs he had used to get up onto the table, Baraboo Bob and some of the other “little ones” (saurs no bigger than hamsters or chipmunks) took pictures of themselves with a penpoint camera. The images appeared in squares on a flexible vinyl screen spread out on the floor like a quilt. They marveled at the close-ups of their smiling faces.

Axel told the Space Guys about them.

Rolling by just then, Ace led another group of little ones—each on a shoe-sized battery-powered “skate”—one behind the other, like a train or a parade, on their way to the library.

Axel told the Space Guys about them too.

And Axel told them about the saurs whisking checkers about the floor with their tails in a game that seemed to be a mating of croquet (without the wickets) and hockey (without the sticks). Axel explained the rules to the Space Guys, though he’d told them about the game several times before.

“And the Five Wise Buddhasaurs are sitting on the couch against the other wall! They’re blowing into their horns and that stuff coming out is supposed to be music!

“And in the middle of the room’s Alphonse! He’s listening to a radio! And next to him is Ross! He’s got a parsnip left over from lunch! And next to them is Doc! Hiya, Doc!”

Axel couldn’t help but wave to Doc, seated on a small plastic cube in the middle of the room. Doc smiled back and raised his small forearm in return like someone used to dipping into a great reserve of patience.

“And under the table here, Agnes is talking! She’s telling a bunch of the guys about what’s wrong with humans. She thinks their backs hurt too much because they don’t walk with four legs! But I don’t walk with four legs and I’m okay!”

“Tails!” The gray stegosaurus shouted from under the table. “You have a tail! And who says you’re okay? I don’t!”

“She’s got an eggling down there,” Axel said to the Space Guys. “His name is Leslie! And Rotomotoman helped to hatch him!”

Rotomotoman, the meter-and-a-half tall cylindrical robot with a hemispheric head, stationed near the table, raised his jointed metal arm at his mention and saluted, digits held out flat and straight above his large, perpetually startled eyes.

“And in the next room over here,” Axel turned his head to the right, “they’re watching a video! There’s a human guy in the video, and he’s climbing up the side of a big building! He’s got these things on his eyes called glasses that humans used to wear! And now he’s stuck on a big clock! And he’s hanging from the clock—and—and—”

For a moment, Axel fell silent watching the dark-suited man in the straw boater dangling from the clock. Then, remembering he was still talking to the Space Guys, he jerked his head to the left.

“Oh yeah! Over the other way is the library! That’s where they got all the books! And real ones too! Diogenes and Hubert keep them all in the right places! Bronte and Kara are going to be reading to Hetman in there! Hetman is the guy who got hurt real bad, so he can’t see or walk around now. But one day I’m gonna build him an EXO-CYBORG! That’s like robot legs and arms! And robot eyes, too! Doc says I shouldn’t talk about the Exo-Cyborg because it would cost a lot, and we may not be able to make it because the humans might not want us to make Exo-Cyborgs. But nobody said I can’t make an Exo-Cyborg. So when I figure out how to, I’ll make one!”

From below, Agnes shouted, “You can’t!” Axel could feel her voice vibrating the table beneath his feet. “You can’t make one because you’re an idiot!”

Axel looked upward, to the ceiling. “And there’s stuff upstairs, too! Preston is up there, writing a book! And Geraldine is up there, working in her lab! And Tibor! Tibor’s got his castle and it’s a box! But it’s got all sorts of universes inside!”

“Hey!” Agnes thumped her tail against one of the table legs. “Can you save it? Do you have to give them a complete inventory every week?”

“And Tom is up there! He’s the human who takes care of us! He’s up there now and he’s talking on a phone! He’s got a mother and there’s another human who used to be his mate! He’s gotta listen to them ‘cause they know what he’s supposed to be doing!”

Agnes grumbled and looked at the little group of saurs around her, gradually disbanding, and tried to remember where she had left off explaining why human lower back pain leads to aggressive behavior.

Her mate, Sluggo, who had heard the lecture enough times to give it himself (if he had believed any of it) whispered, “Counterweight.”

“Counterweight! Balance! Backs always parallel to the ground! Never perpendicular!”

“You know,” Axel said, “out there in the forest around the house, we got bad guys! They’re still there, but nobody’s seen them since Geraldine shot this bright thing at their van! They’re waiting out there because they want to know stuff about us! We got codes and stuff in our genes! And we’re made out of that stuff! So they keep watching us, but we don’t see them!”

Axel looked back at the computer, at the “Reggie” icon that resembled a baby sea serpent, though no one knew what Reggie really was. “The bad guys could come in here, but Reggie keeps them out. And Tom keeps them out, too. And Rotomotoman would help!”

Rotomotoman saluted again.

“And Geraldine too. Maybe. I called the bright thing she shot at the van a Death Ray, but Agnes says it isn’t a Death Ray if it didn’t kill anything. And then she said I’d be better off if I called it None of My Business. That’s because nobody knows what Geraldine is really doing. She’s sending stuff to a guy in the city, but we don’t know what she’s sending.”

He turned to the window again, staring out at everything until the breath from his nostrils condensed on the glass.

“Hey! There are birds out there! They got beaks and wings! That’s how they can fly up into those tree branches. And—and—there’s a whole world out there!”

Below, Agnes shut her eyes. It seemed for a moment as if she might start shouting again, but all she said—and very faintly, so not even Sluggo could hear her distinctly—was, “Really?”

“Axel discovers the world,” said Doc. He could see Axel as a bouncing silhouette against the afternoon sky. “Again.”

Doc had been thinking, and trying not to. It wasn’t what one expected of a beige-colored tyrannosaur no more than forty-five centimeters tall, with thick, heavy eyelids and a tricky left leg.

A beige tyrannosaur designed to be a toy (as all the saurs were: “bio-toys” and “life-toys” were the names used to market them many years ago).

A toy designed to be a child’s companion, to speak in pleasantries and sing a few childish songs.

Doc was never much of a singer, but he could listen—patiently. Thinking, if that’s what it was, came of its own volition. Nothing profound: no great syllogisms, statement following statement, like steps leading to—to what? Not “thinking” like that, but he’d had a thought.

All the distractions—Axel and Agnes and parades of saurs on skates—the thought was gone. Poof!

Doc, however, was patient. And hopeful, if a little on the melancholic side. The thought would return if it were worth remembering.

Alphonse nudged Doc gently and pointed to the radio. “You hear this?”

The radio was tuned to the “all-news” station, the one that offered trivia quizzes on the hour. Between the customary litany of crime reports, natural disasters, political deadlocks, and controlled releases of entrepreneurial propaganda, a few bits of real news broke through.

“Abby?” asked Ross, who listened to the radio only because he liked the voice of the afternoon traffic reporter, Abby Riley.

“Ssshh!” Alphonse held a forepaw digit to the tip of his snout. “Five minutes. Abby’s on in five minutes.”

“Oh-KAY!” Ross sucked on his parsnip. He was in no hurry to finish his snack. The parsnip had narrow lengthwise grooves cut into it by Ross’s teeth.

“Ssshh! Listen!”

“—A sudden rise in stock value of the SANI Corporation, attributed to its efforts at acquiring certain patented properties of Biomatia, formerly Toyco, to aid SANI’s continued research in the health and defense fields—”

“‘Certain patented properties.’” Alphonse looked at Doc. “That means us, doesn’t it?”

“It could,” said Doc. “That’s very possible.”

“They’ll try to take us back?”

“They’ve tried before,” Doc said softly. “They have an agreement with the Atherton Foundation, however, and legally they can do nothing.”

“Legally,” said Alphonse.

“Legally.” Doc added, even more softly, “No reason to spread this information around.”

Alphonse nodded, then repeated from the business report, “‘Health and defense.’ Is that two categories or one?”

“My friend, you frighten me at times.”

“And I hope you guys are all okay,” Axel said, “and no space armies or cosmic storms or stuff is going on out there!” He signed off the way Reggie had taught him when he first started sending the Space Guys messages: “Your friend, Axel.”

For a moment, Doc envied him his energy and, even more, his enthusiasm—his ecstasy, perhaps. There were “bad guys” out in the woods, but everything was “okay.” That world out there was filled with war and poverty and greed and tragedies—but there were birds flying from tree branch to tree branch in the rain-washed yard.

Doc wanted to see things that way—to see the day without regard to the following darkness.

There were “bad guys” out in the woods, watching.

And listening, perhaps.

“We’ll talk later, my friend,” he said to Alphonse and raised himself from his little plastic cube and tried to bear his weight on the tricky left leg—not that he felt much pain, but it didn’t always behave when he needed to walk.

He took the stairs in his usual slow, careful fashion, briefly becoming the object of Agnes’s lecture (“See? See how he bends forward and clutches the stairs with his forepaws? Even carnosaurs can walk on all fours!”) though most of her audience had by then wandered off to join the groups playing the game with the checkers or the ones taking pictures with the little camera. Only Sluggo and the eggling Leslie listened, and it looked to Doc, as he continued his ascent somewhat more self-consciously, that they did so in uneven measures of sympathy and duty.

At the top, Doc found Axel enthralled before the Reggiesystem screen, reviewing his animation of the Exo-Cyborg. With only a neutral blue background, the metallic, disembodied theropod limbs seemed to be running in place; the long, shiny tail stretched back, firmly horizontal (Agnes would be pleased, Doc imagined, if she hadn’t already declared the entire notion stupid); the gleaming forepaws, each shaped like a tipped-over letter S, appeared to have projectiles flaring from them (again with the machine-gun fingers, Doc noted, recalling that Axel’s original design for Rotomotoman included similar armaments); and bright yellow rays (non-lethal, Doc hoped) issued from the wild, glowing green eyes, perhaps inspired by the beam Geraldine had shot at the van parked out in the woods.

“Axel,” he said, just as the image of the racing Exo-Cyborg receded into a gridwork of moving pictures that may have been an animated scrapbook of Axel’s “projects”: vacuum ‘bots, space tractors, a flock of hinged-looking things gliding in spirals and blinking, an interlinked pair of perpetual motion machines, what looked like a rocket-powered storage shed—the screen afforded a glimpse into the mind of Axel.

Doc stared, jaws open, and shuddered. Either the old house felt much bigger, or he had grown very, very small.

“Hey! Doc!” The gridwork of images shrank to a corner of the screen as Axel pivoted and smiled. “I was waving to you when I was talking to the Space Guys! Did you see me waving to you?” He repeated the gesture to refresh Doc’s memory.

Doc, still a little stunned, slowly transferred his gaze from the screen to Axel. “Indeed I did. I just wanted to tell you—”

“I didn’t tell the Space Guys what you were doing because you looked like you were doing what Agnes calls goofing off, but I know you were doing what you told me was meditating—but I forgot that was what you were doing, so I didn’t tell that to the Space Guys.”

“I simply wanted to mention—”

He stopped, Axel’s words rebounding on him. “Do you tell your, your ‘Space Guys’—everything?”

“Everything I see and hear, so they know what’s happening on this planet.”

“Have they ever...replied?”

Axel stood completely still and took what for him was a long time to reply—about four seconds.

“The Space Guys are way out there! Reggie says they’re millions of millions of kilometers away! That’s really far! So Reggie thinks it might take a long time for my stuff to get to them.”

“I see. And you don’t mind?”

Axel shook his head. “Space Guys might be real busy. Besides, I like to tell them stuff because I have to think about what’s happening and a lot of times I don’t think about stuff enough.”

Doc tipped his head down in a brief nod. “It’s good to think about things sometimes.”

Axel leaned forward as if to confide something of importance in softer tones, but in his full voice announced, “It is! Thinking is good if you’re not doing other stuff!”

“Indeed. But speaking of ‘other stuff,’ I believe that Bronte and Kara are about to start reading to Hetman in the library.”

“Hey!” Axel brought himself upright, forearms outstretched, in a manner that would have met Agnes’s strongest reproval. “And I gotta ask Hetman something after they finish!”

“And you will wait this time until they’re really finished reading, won’t you?”

“Yes! Yes! I promise! Let’s go!” Axel was already on the second step of the plastic stairs.

“You go on, my friend. I’ll catch up with you momentarily.”

Axel charged down the plastic stairs like nothing either quadruped or biped, but more like some multi-limbed piece of stair-descending machinery whose sole purpose was to run down stairs as quickly as possible. At the bottom, he called out, “See you in a minute!” and instantly transformed into a piece of floor-running machinery, expertly balanced.

Doc glanced at him, knowing it would be more, much more, than a minute before he could catch up, and turned to the computer screen.

“Reggie, if I may beg a moment of your time.”

The Reggie icon on the screen shifted from profile to face-forward and increased in size until Doc could look into the serene, attentive black eyes of the green sea-serpent-whatever thing.

“Reggie is ready.”

“Thank you. I was wondering just now what the chances are, let’s say, of our friend Axel’s weekly messages to his space friends being—well, intercepted.” Doc didn’t ask by whom and he didn’t suggest why anyone would want to intercept a message from Axel. “I just want to know if it’s possible.”

“Axel’s messages are sent from Reggie in an encrypted form to the Mount Herrmann radio telescope. For security protocols, the Mount Herrmann team is required to see a decrypted message, but afterward they send the message as it was initially received.”

“That would be the weak link, then.”

“The decrypting of the message is not technically an interception,” Reggie reminded Doc. “It is merely a protocol. It is possible for a decrypted message to move through the Mount Herrmann system unviewed.”

“But if someone wished to view the message—”

“It could be viewed and read by any member of the Mount Herrmann staff.”

“I see.”

“Reggie needs to remind you that such a reading does not constitute an interception.”

“I understand, Reggie. But if an employee of this radio telescope were to be approached by someone, or by some organization—”

“That would, by your definition, constitute an interception.”

“So it is possible.”

“It is possible.”

“Thank you, my friend.”

“It is also possible that a person or persons would have the ability to decrypt the message en route to Mount Herrmann. It is also possible that a person or persons could intercept and decrypt the message while it is being sent to its destination.”

“Possible, but not probable, I venture to guess.”

“Reggiesystems encryptions have to this date not been decoded by anyone other than the acknowledged recipients.”

“To your knowledge.”

“To Reggie’s knowledge,” the computer confirmed.

“Many thanks to you, good Reggie.” He smiled at the icon and turned to the plastic stairs.

“Oh, one more thing.” Doc halted and looked at the screen with a reluctant, slightly embarrassed expression. “These financial matters are quite beyond me, but I’m sure you’re quite familiar with the share portfolio of the C. M. Willis Trust.”

The Reggie icon blipped away for no more than a fraction of an eyeblink, as if needing to disappear and retrieve the information Doc was requesting.

“The C. M. Willis Trust, managed by the firm of Moore and McCabe for the benefit of—”

“Yes, thank you. I would be very grateful if you could inform Moore and McCabe they have permission to acquire any loose shares of Biomatia currently on the market. They may use the funds set aside for such purposes in the Anatole Fortier index fund.”

“The message is on its way.”

Doc bowed graciously, dipping a little more to the left than he intended until he caught his balance.

“Again, my thanks. I am a cautious investor, but I like to think I’m something more than a commodity.”

He turned around to make the descent from the table in his usual slow, careful fashion and make his way to the library—except that a small brown sauropod stood between him and the stairs. A very small sauropod—small enough to fit into a human’s open hand.

Geraldine.

Doc’s weight seemed to shift all to his left side as he felt a jolt. His mouth opened, but the delay between the motion and any words escaping from him was extended.

“Good afternoon—I didn’t hear you—” But no one ever did. There were times Geraldine seemed to appear out of nowhere. Little ones insisted they had seen her levitate and Doc, though doubtful, never seriously disputed them.

Geraldine, as usual, smiled. Many found her smile at the least unsettling, at worst terrifying. It had an air of omniscience to it—a sense that its owner was always a few moves ahead of you.

In a voice so quiet you could never be certain you were really hearing it or only imagining you did, she exaggerated the space between each word, “Are you stupid?”

Doc took no offense. Geraldine said this to everyone, as much as if it were a greeting as an inquiry.

“Yes, Geraldine. At heart I am a profoundly stupid being. But were I any less stupid I wouldn’t know myself for what I am.”

Geraldine smiled but didn’t reply.

“Abby! Ab-by! Hi!” Ross shouted from the center of the room. He listened to the voice of the traffic reporter and sucked on his parsnip.

“Is there any way,” Doc asked Geraldine, “at the moment, I am being more stupid than usual?”

She said nothing but shifted her small head to stare at the screen. Doc glanced back to see if the Reggie icon was still there or had gone into hiding. Reggie was visible, slightly less inscrutable than the brown sauropod, but when Doc looked back to where Geraldine had been standing she was gone.

“Did you—?” Doc started to say to the Reggie icon, but to his relief he saw Geraldine quickly heading across the floor to the library.

“At least,” Doc whispered, taking careful notice of the rapid movement of Geraldine’s tiny legs, “she isn’t levitating.”

* * * *

“Axel, please!” Kara lowered her long neck and whispered sternly in Axel’s ear. Her first warning, a curt “Shhhh!” was briefly heeded, but as Bronte read a passage where the heroine of the story says, “‘I—I can’t help making up things,’” Axel had to say, “Yes!”

“Sorry sorry sorry!” He tried to squeeze his voice down to a whisper but the effort was about as successful as pushing a rock through a straw.

“Don’t interrupt!” Kara lowered her head as if preparing to send Axel out of the library with a strong nudge. A third warning would be all he would get.

Bronte, reading from the book propped up against a stool, paused only briefly to glance back, plaintive but insistent. Guinevere, the tiny eggling standing beside Bronte, also looked back, serene and curious.

Axel’s jaws remained far open, as if ready to whisper “Sorry!” again. Kara lowered her head and assumed a “butting” posture, successfully halting any further utterances. He shifted his weight impatiently from foot to foot, as if waiting to use the litter room, laboring to calm himself by staring at the walls of books.

The library was a large, well-lighted room furnished with a dark oak desk, a worktable, and several comfortable chairs. At one end was a set of tall French windows that faced out toward the front yard. Hetman liked to have his bassinet-sized bed rolled over to the window at that time of day. He couldn’t feel the heat of the sun, as he did in the morning (the windows faced eastward) but he claimed he could feel the light on a good afternoon.

Hetman’s condition—limbless, eyeless, his tail crushed and twisted—permitted him few pleasures. Time can be hard on a toy (though rarely as hard as a toy’s former owner, or the owner’s parents, or nature—when the toys were abandoned). Of those few, none meant more to him than to hear stories read aloud. Recorded books were certainly available, but to hear a real voice, coming from someone in the room—well, it was more immediate, more vital.

At first, Tom had done the reading. Bronte and Kara didn’t mind taking over for him. Not simply because they often, though not always, enjoyed the stories they read, but for them reading was an active pursuit. And it was communal—about two dozen saurs gathered around for every reading, sometimes more.

Diogenes selected the books and was the unofficial librarian, assisted by Hubert. The two tyrannosaurs each stood over a meter tall. With the aid of a stool and a stepladder they could reach even the highest shelves of the library.

Many saurs loved to look at the books, even the ones who might not have been able to read, or simply chose not to. Some liked the illustrations; some liked the smell of the paper and ink; some liked the colophons, historiated initials and typography; and some just liked to watch “Dio” and Hubert bring them the books, scaling the shelves like some sort of biblio-mountaineers, pulling out requested volumes and returning others. The two applied themselves industriously and without complaint.

Hetman’s taste in books usually ran to tales of heroes and great deeds: Dumas, Ariosto, Sienkiewicz, Tolstoy, Hugo. Bronte and Kara had taken on Shakespeare several times, reading various parts between them, and they struggled but persevered once on a reading of Huckleberry Finn.

Not long before, Diogenes had chosen a book that he thought was a translation of Homer: Ulysses, by James Joyce.

The mistake was quickly discovered, but Hetman insisted that Bronte and Kara continue reading the book. Hetman said that something about young Mr. Stephen Dedalus, Mr. Leopold Bloom, and his wife Molly were effectively heroic in their own ways.

Heroically, in their own way, Bronte and Kara maneuvered through the novel and all its difficult passages.

When Bronte at last reached the final words, “...yes I said yes I will Yes,” the gathered saurs—some of whom had stayed with the story from the very first page in spite of finding most of it incomprehensible—shouted “Yes!” with her.

Hetman, in his deep, raspy voice, concluded their odyssey by saying, “Perhaps we should find something shorter to read next. And something a bit more—conventional.”

All the gathered saurs replied, “YES!”

Diogenes chose—thinking perhaps of Bronte’s eggling, Guinevere, the first saur ever to be hatched in the house—a book called A Little Princess. There were no battles in the story, no cavalry charges or stands at the barricades, but Hetman found the little girl, Sara Crewe, heroic: motherless, then fatherless, losing her status and descending into poverty.

The saurs who listened with him also liked Sara, which was unusual: they were not accustomed to sympathizing with human children in any story. But Sara and her friends struck them as different. It may have been that Sara seemed to have an innate sense of decency and justice, which they found at best uncommon.

Perhaps the reason was even simpler: Sara spoke to her doll, Emily. She was a human who respected her toys, and that was a quality that nearly any saur could appreciate.

Even Jean-Claude and Pierrot—two tyrannosaurs whose attention could rarely be diverted from the catalog of the Idaho Steak Ranch—sympathized with Sara’s hunger in her cold, dark attic room.

“If I had a hamburger,” Jean-Claude whispered as they listened to Bronte reading, “I’d give her some.”

“If I had a hamburger,” Pierrot replied, “I’d give her...well, the story says she likes buns.”

The saurs listened intently. Axel liked the name Sara had given the rat who lived in the walls, Melchisedec. Silently, he moved his jaws, trying out each syllable, closing them for the “em” sound, open for the vowel, tongue to the palate to make the “k,” pressing the air through the tiny passage he formed to make the little hiss—the further he got with the name the less he imagined the rat as a rat and more like a little one: hairy and dirty, with bigger and sharper teeth, but with a little one’s eyes.

Hubert picked up a great slab of a leather-bound atlas and slipped it back onto one of the lower shelves, so carefully Axel had to watch and marvel at the precision—and the silence.

Diogenes, close by, carried a volume of Tristram Shandy from the reading table and stopped, momentarily lost in Bronte’s reading.

She had reached the part where Sara explains to her friend that she is pretending she’s a prisoner in the Bastille, tapping on the wall to communicate with the occupant of the adjacent cell.

“‘Oh Sara!’ she whispered joyfully. ‘It is like a story!’” Bronte read, capturing the exhilaration of Sara’s companion.

“‘It is a story,’ said Sara. ‘Everything is a story. You are a story—I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.’”

“A story!” Axel whispered, just as Tristram Shandy slipped from Diogenes’s forepaw. It fell to the floor with a loud, sharp slap.

Fortunately, no little ones were beneath the fallen book. The few who stood close by squeaked and quickly backed away.

Axel didn’t notice that Bronte had stopped reading as Diogenes’s face twisted with a sudden spasm. All he could see was Dio and all he could hear was an agonized grunt.

Hubert raced over to him, but Dio’s left leg was already buckling.

“Get back!” Hubert shouted to the little ones as Diogenes made a vain effort to balance himself against the reading table before dropping to the floor on his right side.

The little ones squealed and called out Dio’s name as Hubert bent over him.

“Diogenes!” he whispered as he lifted his friend’s head. “What—?”

“Don’t—let the little ones see.” His gaze became very still.

Axel’s first impulse was to run up to Dio, but he couldn’t move—couldn’t stop watching.

“Run upstairs!” Bronte said to Axel. “Get Tom! Hurry!”

But Axel could only stand there, jaws open.

“Axel! Please!”

“Go!” Kara shifted her hind legs and smacked him with her tail.

He jumped into motion and ran for the stairs with all his considerable speed, shouting, “Tom! Tom! Dio is hurt!”

Tom must have heard the commotion. He was standing in the doorway to his office by the time Axel arrived upstairs.

“Tom! Tom!”

“What is it?”

“It’s Dio! He fell down! He dropped the book and then he fell down!”

Tom was already reaching for something in the closet. “I’ll be right down!” He took out what looked like a small pair of paddles and a slim plastic box, then tucked a metal canister under his arm.

“Is Dio sick?”

“I don’t know.” He took a cone-shaped piece of plastic from the closet.

“Can we help him?”

Tom dialed his phone. “We’re going to try.”

Axel kept outrunning Tom and running back, as if everything in the world were running too slowly.

“Margaret?” Tom spoke into the phone. “Can you get here right away? It’s Dio.”

Tom walked faster after he said, “She’s on the way,” but Axel still had to run back to him two more times, like he thought Tom might have lost his way and had to be shown where the library was.

Downstairs, the saurs were already gathered around in the library or making their way there. Bronte and Kara tried to keep them back as Hubert hunched over Diogenes, administering a sort of CPR, pressing his chest with the digits of his forepaws.

“Is he breathing?” Tom knelt down next to Dio and unraveled the wires of his portable defibrillator.

Hubert shook his head.

“Can you feel a pulse?”

“No.”

“Let’s try to get him on his back.”

These were no simple directions. A theropod has a very narrow back and is not easily balanced. But they worked at it as best they could.

They tried the CPR, then the canister of oxygen Tom had brought with him. He fitted the cone-shaped mask over Dio’s jaws but they still couldn’t get a pulse.

With defibrillation, Dio’s body jerked with the first two jolts, but the effect lessened after each try.

The two kept at it—the CPR, then the defibrillation—until both were visibly exhausted.

When Dr. Margaret arrived, Tom was soaked with his own perspiration. Hubert’s right leg trembled as he refitted the oxygen mask over Dio’s snout.

“Tom,” she said, but he kept working.

“Tom!”

Tom didn’t, couldn’t, hear.

Dr. Margaret put down her medical bag and knelt next to Tom and Hubert. She placed her hand on the oxygen mask, shook her head at Hubert, and removed it. She touched Tom’s shoulder gently and shook her head at him as well.

“He’s gone.”

A chunk of parsnip—with tiny lengthwise grooves—dropped to the floor and rolled until it came to rest against Baraboo Bob’s tail.

Axel saw all this, and with the doctor’s words felt himself falling as if the floor and the ceiling had at once disappeared and he was under no power but gravity’s. In another circumstance this would have been the greatest thrill to him, but at present gravity meant nothing but emptiness and coldness and an unrelentingly indifferent scrutiny.

The saurs broke their silence in one collective sob but it only added to Axel’s sense of being thrown to the winds.

Hermione, an apatosaur standing next to Hetman’s bed, whispered up to him, “Hetman! Diogenes! He’s—”

“I know,” said Hetman. “I think I felt the life flee the room. It’s darker now, isn’t it?”

A short while had passed since Bronte had stopped reading, but autumn light withdraws quickly. Everyone seemed to feel it, humans and saurs. The cries and sobs receded and the darkness moved in a little further.

Only Axel said anything then. He wasn’t falling anymore, but he wasn’t completely sure where he was, as if it had all been a long journey. He looked up at Dr. Margaret and asked, “We can’t give up, can we?”

Dr. Margaret looked down and gently placed her hand on his back. “We didn’t give up, Axel.” With a wearier voice she completed the thought: “But we lost.”

* * * *

It is a terribly empty feeling to be on the other side of a closed door, like the one to Tom Groverton’s office and quarters, where Tom and Dr. Margaret took Diogenes.

The saurs waited outside—all of them. They crowded the second-floor corridor from Tom’s door to the edge of the stairs. Hubert brought Hetman and his bed up on the lift. Hermione rode along with him.

There was nothing to do in the corridor, but they didn’t know where else to go, with Diogenes in there. They just wanted to be as close to him as possible.

Axel pressed his head to the door and tried to listen in.

“Maybe,” he broke the uncomfortable silence, “maybe they’re trying to bring him back!”

“Axel,” said Kara, with a long pause before she spoke again. “He can’t come back.”

“But—but—” Axel held out his forepaws to her. “There’s all this cool science stuff like I see on the video. Is there something they can use to bring Dio back?”

“Would that there were,” Doc said softly.

Agnes turned around sharply and stared straight at Axel. “Do you think they’d use something like that on a saur? No! Humans would use it for themselves and everyone else can go to hell!”

“Agnes,” Sluggo said with more than the usual alarm in his voice, “you can’t—say—not Tom! Not Dr. Margaret!”

“Humans can turn on you—at any time!”

“Stop it!” Kara lowered her neck until she could look Agnes straight on. “You’re upsetting the little ones! You’re upsetting everyone!”

“I don’t care!” She raised her tail over her head. “The little ones should know!”

“If I may point out the reason—” said Doc.

“You never shut up, do you?” Agnes brought her tail down hard against the floor. “You just go on and on! You inflated blowhard! You—”

“—the reason we are here.” Doc completed his sentence and sighed.

Kara stared at Agnes. “You have no respect!”

“Are you all idiots?” Agnes looked only more determined to continue. “Don’t any of you remember—”

“Please!”

The entreaty came from the direction of the little bed—raspy, but insistent, and clearly audible above the din. “This is not a time to fight!”

Agnes looked over at the bed and lowered her tail. No one but Hetman could ever make her relent. She glowered at Kara, at Doc—at all the saurs around her—jaw set tightly and brows curved downward.

“I...I just don’t like closed doors!” She turned away from them to stare at the door, her sides expanding and contracting with her slow, fierce breathing.

Axel stayed at the door, hoping to hear something.

Preston sat with him, legs straight out before him as if he were still working at his keyboard. It looked awkward but for Preston it was familiar and comfortable.

“I thought I heard them doing something in there,” Axel said, with his head to the door. “But they were just talking.”

“Sometimes talking is doing,” Preston said.

“Remember,” Axel said, pulling his head from the door, “in the Franky-stein videos, when they put the Franky-stein guy on the big table? And they put the lightning stuff through him so he’s alive again?”

Preston nodded.

“Maybe they got one of those machines like that. Maybe they can put the lightning stuff through Dio.”

“That’s just a story, I’m afraid,” said Preston. “When they really put the lightning—er, electricity—through someone, it kills them, except in small amounts, like the paddles Tom used.”

“But stories got real stuff in them too, don’t they? I mean, you write stories too. Don’t you have a lot of real stuff in your stories?”

“I do,” said Preston, looking at Axel sadly, “but the real stuff I put in is what’s inside the characters. All the gadgets and laboratories and space ships—I make that part up.”

“Oh.” Axel let his legs slip out from under him and sat down. “Oh.”

“I wish we did have a machine.”

“Me too,” Axel replied, but with little enthusiasm, and then his eyes lit up.

“We could build one!” He hopped up again. “We could go to Reggie!”

“But that would take a while, Axel. Maybe weeks. And by then it would be too late for Dio.”

“Oh,” Axel said again.

“Even if you could build a machine, that is.”

“Oh.”

“I think what we have to do now,” said Preston, “is prepare to say good-bye.”

“I—” Axel shook his head. “—I can’t!”

The door opened. Axel and Preston quickly moved out of the way as Dr. Margaret came out.

She looked very tired as she knelt down in front of the saurs—so she wouldn’t have to look quite so far down at them—at all those eyes staring back at her.

In all those eyes, she knew, were memory and consciousness. They knew what they were and they remembered what they had been.

“Is everyone here?” she asked.

“Yes,” Kara replied, looking back at the saurs gathered in the corridor.

“Dio’s not here,” Kincaid, a bright yellow corythosaur, added, then realized what he’d just said. “Oh!”

“How is Tom?” Bronte asked.

“Not good,” said Dr. Margaret. “He feels like he could have done more.”

“Hmmph!” said Agnes, eyeing the doctor suspiciously.

“We have to make plans,” said Dr. Margaret. Words like “funeral” and “burial” weren’t spoken.

She asked them, “Do you remember Bick? And Runyon?”

“Of course we remember them!” Agnes shouted. “You think we’re witless or something?”

Bick was a tiny triceratops who fell asleep under a chair one night and never awoke. Runyon, an iguanodon, was found by Hubert one day on a bookshelf, curled up and lifeless.

“We buried them outside,” said Sluggo, “under the crape myrtle tree. We thought they’d like the flowers in the summer.”

“Red rocket crape myrtles,” said Elliot, the orange stegosaur.

“That’s right,” Dr. Margaret said. “And now we have to do the same for Dio.”

“He always did like that crape myrtle tree,” Bronte said. “He took some little silk flowers to the graves, too. When the wind blew them away he’d run out and set them back.”

Veronica, next to Elliot, whispered, “He was always doing things like that.”

Dr. Margaret continued. “We talked to Susan Leahy at the Foundation. She’s coming out tomorrow for the—”

“The vegetation?” Axel offered.

“Visitation,” Dr. Margaret said.

“Better to get it done quick,” said Charlie the triceratops. His mate, Rosie, tapped him with her forefoot and shook her head.

“We’ll have a memorial service,” the doctor said. “The way you want to do it.”

“Will we see him?” asked Kara.

“If you’d like.”

“We can set up a site for him too,” said Preston. “Like we did for the others. We can post pictures and things.”

“That would be wonderful,” said Dr. Margaret.

“And we’ll pick some music he liked,” said Veronica.

The Five Wise Buddhasaurs nodded their approval.

“And everyone should have a chance to say a few words.” Bronte looked down at Guinevere. “To say what we feel. How we remember him.”

From somewhere, Ross had managed to find another chunk of parsnip, a morsel of which flew out of his mouth when he shouted, “Ab-by!”

“This isn’t the time to listen to the radio,” Alphonse told him. “Besides, I left it down—”

“No!” Ross said. “Send mail! Tell Abby!”

“Oh,” Alphonse said. “I’m not sure that’s her job, but we can find a station address, if you want to send her a mail.”

“Oh-KAY!”

“And can we have—?” Jean-Claude started, the digits of his forepaws knitted together plaintively.

“Yes?” Dr. Margaret tried to help him along. “What would you like?”

“Can we have—something—to eat?”

Agnes shouted, “Is that all you ever think about? What—you want them to cook up Dio on a spit or something?”

“Oh! Noooo!” Jean-Claude shook his head vigorously. “Nooo! We couldn’t eat someone we know!” Pierrot, standing next to him, nodded in agreement.

“Why not?” Agnes marched over to them. “They’ve probably already got him cut up and cooked in there already!”

“Agnes! You can’t say that!” Sluggo said, but Agnes nudged him away.

“For all we know,” she shouted, “Tom could have killed him! Beating on his chest! Trying to electrocute him! Maybe that canister had poison gas in it!”

Dr. Margaret stood up.

“Agnes! We need to talk! Now!”

She reached down and firmly picked the saur up between forelegs and hind legs.

Agnes didn’t resist but shouted to the others, “See? See? I told you they can turn on us! Saurians! Defend yourselves! The humans have gone berserk!”

The crowd parted as Dr. Margaret carried Agnes to the attic stairs.

“I feel sorry for her,” said Rosie, watching the two disappear upstairs.

“How can you?” said Kara. “After all those terrible things she said!”

“I meant Dr. Margaret.” Rosie shook her head.

As the saurs watched, Doc noticed the door of Tom’s office open a few centimeters. He pressed the door gently until it opened a little farther and stepped in. When he turned around to close it he found himself facing Axel.

“You’d better not come in,” Doc told him.

“I have to!” Axel pleaded. “I have to see Dio!”

“Perhaps—” Doc didn’t want to draw the attention of the others, which would surely occur if he left Axel outside. And then, as much as he wanted to spare him any greater distress—”Quietly,” he said, stepping to the side and allowing him entrance, then pushed the door back until he heard it softly click shut.

* * * *

Dr. Margaret took Agnes to the “museum,” which was what they called the attic space where the saurs kept all sorts of things they wanted to save and things that were sent to them. Shelves and cabinets were filled with plastic figurines, china dolls, cushions, dried flowers, model cars, a pair of reading glasses, boxes with photos, folders of greeting cards, little drawings sketched with unsteady child-fingers—all sorts of things. Saurs could come up here and remember, or pretend to.

A small table was placed in the center of the room, a set of plastic stairs leading up to the top and a couple of wooden chairs close by. Dr. Margaret placed Agnes on the center of the table, drew up a chair, and sat down, facing her.

Agnes looked back, silent and furious.

“I’m not going to tell you what you can or can’t say.”

“I don’t care,” said Agnes.

“I really need you to keep your head. We all need you to, to get through this.”

“I don’t care.”

“We’re all hurting—”

“I DON’T CARE!” She walked to the edge of the table, turning her back on Dr. Margaret.

“If you can just save your anger—”

“For what?” She pounded her tail against the table. “That’s all I have! All I have is anger!”

“That’s not true.”

“What do you know? I hate! I hate death! I hate life! All the rest of it is crap and fairytales. Even the fairytales I tell the little ones! It’s all crap and I hate it!”

“Tom did everything he could for Diogenes. Dio had a deformity in his right ventricle. He didn’t want anyone to know and he didn’t want anything done that would take funds away from the rest of you. Tom couldn’t do much more than he did when the time came. Agnes, there isn’t a human anywhere who cares more about you than Tom, and it is so—” for the first time she raised her voice, “—so unfair for you to jump on him like that!”

Agnes looked down over the edge of the table, still facing away from the doctor. “So what do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know.” The doctor stood up, lost between anger and fatigue. She walked to one of the shelves not far away, where she found a small wooden box. It had once been lined with a red fabric that was meant to resemble velvet, but most of its color and soft fuzziness had worn away over the years.

Agnes heard her at the shelf and turned to see what she had been looking for.

At the sight of the box she exploded. “What are you doing? Put that back!”

Dr. Margaret took it over to the table and set it down.

“PUT THAT BACK!”

The doctor opened the box. Inside was a chain with a gold-plated Star of David: a child’s piece of jewelry.

“Don’t touch it!” Agnes looked at the little star.

Without touching the contents, Dr. Margaret pushed the box a little closer. “Once there was a little girl who loved you very much. Is that a fairytale?”

“That’s different! She wasn’t like—she—”

“What do you think she would have wanted you to do?”

The jaw Agnes held stern and taut as a matter of course began to tremble. She shut her eyes as if against tears, which saurs cannot produce, but her face reflected all the agonies that accompany them. Her mouth opened as if she intended to wail, but no sound came out, not until she whispered the name “Molly,” bent her legs and lowered herself to the surface of the table.

The doctor stayed with her for a few minutes, then left her in the museum, promised she would never tell—not Tom, not anyone—about what happened here, and went down to help the other saurs with their planning for Diogenes.

* * * *

Tom had been sitting at his desk since Dr. Margaret left the room, eyes closed, hands together but not in a very prayerful way. It looked more like a tangle of fingers. His head rose and fell slightly with the rhythm of his heavy, slow breaths. It occurred to him that he was making himself breathe in a way that he hadn’t been able to do for Diogenes. That only tightened the knot of fingers on his desk.

He could barely bring himself to glance at Diogenes—his body, really. Dr. Margaret had covered him with a bed sheet, all but his head. On Dio’s face was no expression of repose, no “peace of death.” The face was constricted—the record of one last searing pain.

Tom remembered that same tightening of the facial muscles—that look of bewilderment—on his father’s face. He wasn’t supposed to see, but he had crept into the room where his father’s body had been found. He had wanted to give him one last hug, but instead recoiled in horror.

He made a vow back then, in his boyish way, that if he could ever vanquish death he would. “Death, thou shalt die,” went the old sonnet. But there wasn’t much about death in the poems he read that wasn’t contradicted in the world he experienced.

Tom’s desk phone chirped. He picked up the handset, thinking it was Susan Leahy, calling again with more directions, or it might have been the woman she had recommended for the funeral arrangements.

“The origin of this call cannot be traced,” Reggie informed him. “Do you wish to accept the call?”

Tom took a deep breath and said, “Accept.”

“Hello.”

On the other end was a trained, modulated male voice, like an actor or a newsreader, who said, “Tom, all we want to do is help.”

He had heard the voice before and pressed the button to disconnect the call.

Almost instantly the phone chirped again. He waited to pick it up until he was sick of hearing the noise. He looked out his window, at the woods surrounding the house, as if he could spy on the callers who were obviously spying on him.

How did they always know?

“The origin of this call—”

“Accept,” said Tom. He didn’t know why other than it might be seen as a sort of penance.

“Tom, your employers are withholding a vast storehouse of knowledge—research of great potential. The world can be a healthier place. A happier place. A better place. Why are they preventing this? Tom, we know you’re a good man. If we—”

He hit the “disconnect” button again, this time with more force. There were limits even to penance.

He looked down at his desk, placed his elbows upon it, and covered his head with his hands.

“Forgive me for disturbing you, Tom.”

Tom’s head rose with a start. He looked toward the door and there stood Doc and Axel.

“Have you been here long?” Tom turned his chair to face them.

“A few moments.”

“Is there something you need?”

Doc shook his head. “Not precisely.”

“I need a little time to be alone, if you don’t—”

“That’s why I’m here.” He took a step forward. “I feared you’d wish to be alone. I understand the need for solitude. But grief and solitude do not always meet to advantage. Like a couple of drunken companions, they can get themselves into trouble.”

Axel tapped him on the side, just above his hip. “Can I see now?”

Doc looked at the table across the room, the bed sheet and the shape of the figure beneath.

“Patience,” he whispered. “A few moments.”

“You know my history well enough,” he said to Tom. “I was purchased for a little boy. A bright little boy, with a splendid imagination. And good—unlike many of the former owners of my friends here. But he was a very sick little boy, who spent much time in the hospital. Consequently, so did I. My job was to be his companion and—to some degree—his protector.”

He took another step forward, his tricky leg a little trickier than usual. Tom bent down, picked him up, and gently placed him on the desk.

“I thank you. It’s easier to talk at this level. I was designed, as you can see, to approximate, with some license, the great tyrannosaurus rex, once considered the fiercest predator to ever walk the earth. True or not, it would be hard to convince any little boy that it was otherwise. That’s how the little boy thought of me.

“He frequently had nightmares. His disease, in these dreams, manifested itself as something he first called ‘the gray man.’ Later on he called it the ‘shadow man’ and ‘the shadow thing.’ Its nature changed a little from dream to dream, but the shadow thing’s purpose never altered. It was there to take him away.”

Doc looked over and saw Axel at the foot of the table where Dio lay. Tom noticed, turning around to retrieve Axel before he attempted to climb up onto the table on his own.

“But, but—I gotta see!” Axel said as Tom placed him on the desk next to Doc.

“My good friend,” Doc said, “we’d better see him together. You’ll understand. Just be patient.”

Doc went on with his story.

“The boy would awake from his nightmare and hold me tightly. ‘Doc! Doc! The shadow man is here!’”

Axel, staring at the table, whispered “Shadow guy!”

“And I would tell him not to be afraid, that I would keep the shadow man away.”

Doc looked up at Tom. “It was a lie, but a lie I wanted to believe. And I know, had there been some way to trade my life for his I might have done so. But the ‘fiercest predator ever to have walked the earth’ is no match for a degenerative disease.”

“The Shadow Guy got him?” Axel turned to Doc, whose heavy eyelids rose enough to reveal the deep auburn color of his irises.

“His last words were, ‘Doc! Help! They’re coming!’ They are coming, he said—the shadow thing apparently brought reinforcements.” He lowered his brows and took a deep breath. “I told you the child had a good imagination.

“But I told him—promised him—I would protect him. And I was helpless. The boy’s grandmother took me on afterward and again, as she grew ill, I was helpless.”

“The Shadow Guy again,” said Axel.

Doc nodded. “At least I made no promises to her. She knew I could barely protect myself.”

Doc held out his forepaw to Tom. “Forgive me for burdening you with this tedious memoir. It’s by way of saying—”

Tom nodded and took the offered forepaw between his index finger and thumb.

The phone chirped again. Its suddenness and volume shook all three.

Axel, frozen in a startled posture, looked at the phone and asked, “The Shadow Guy doesn’t, you know, call, does he?”

Tom wouldn’t answer at first, but Doc pointed to the phone and said, “Perhaps—”

Tom picked up the handset.

“The origin of this call—”

“Accept.” He pressed the button for “speaker” so they all could hear the man with the professional voice, now somewhat more insistent, starting in without “hello” or introduction.

“It’s not as if you wouldn’t be handsomely compensated, Tom. You could go anywhere. Do anything. Be anything. Is this any kind of life you have now? All day, all night, with little human contact. Spending your days with—with toys.”

“He sounds like my mother,” Tom whispered.

“A tissue sample,” the voice continued. “A few drops of blood, or any fluid. And from that sample might come the cure for a fatal disease. Or we might increase human longevity twenty, thirty years. Isn’t it worth those few little drops to make the world a better place?”

Tom looked at Doc, and Doc looked up at him, then at the phone, extending a digit of his forepaw to the phone speaker.

“Shall I?”

“Be my guest.”

“My dear sir,” Doc said into the phone, “I too would like to make the world a better place.”

The voice at the other end did not reply.

“Not that I am interested in compensation,” Doc continued. “Nor are you, I’m certain. Nor the corporation you represent. I know that for the benefit of humanity your cures and vaccines would be distributed to all the corners of the world, and to all its creatures without regard to profit or even price.”

At the other end—no reply.

“And in the pursuit of such noble goals, my dear sir, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to negotiate with the donors themselves? Here I am, sir. Will you ask me if I wish to contribute my tissue, a few drops of my blood, or any other fluid?”

They heard the loud click of the phone disconnecting.

Doc smiled sadly at Tom. “They never want to speak to us, do they?”

Tom took Doc’s forepaw again. “Thanks.”

“Thank you, my friend. I think I enjoyed that.”

But then Doc looked at Axel, who couldn’t stop looking at the table, and Dio.

Doc sighed again. “Do you really want to see him?”

Axel nodded.

Doc looked at Tom. “Forgive my poor judgment. For a moment I thought—or perhaps I didn’t—”

“We’re here,” said Tom. “I don’t think we can turn him back now.”

“Very well.” Doc put his forepaw on Axel’s back.

Tom picked them up gently and carried them over to the table. He could feel Axel tremble, and as he set them down he looked at the long scar down Axel’s back. It was long healed but, he thought, how can you say a scar is ever healed?

All three of them looked at the still body—more still, it seemed, than anything they had ever seen.

They each looked at the stricken, frozen face of Diogenes, each reminded of previous encounters, each for the moment overwhelmed by the frailty of living things, like little paper boats lost in a storm.

It may be that no one felt the storm more than Axel. He was the only one of the three who spoke. He looked into Dio’s eyes and said, “Lancelot!” as if it were something he’d forgotten in the normal rush of things—until now.

And when he couldn’t look anymore he put his head down, so the word came out muffled when he spoke it.

He said, “No!”

* * * *

A Miss Christine Wonderleigh arrived in an unmarked van. She was short and pear-shaped, with close-cropped graying hair betraying a youthful face. She dressed with no funereal formality, in canvas slacks and a flannel shirt. And she carried with her a satchel that resembled a plumber’s toolcase.

When she saw Diogenes on the table, she made a soft moan-like sound of exclamation, then quickly apologized to Tom.

“I loved dinosaurs when I was a kid,” she said.

She reached for a spot just under Dio’s neck and worked her fingers like a masseuse until the pained expression on the saur’s visage relaxed. She pressed his eyelids down and closed his jaws firmly, so that Dio looked much more in repose.

“That looks better, doesn’t it?”

Tom nodded. “I suppose Susan Leahy already explained to you—”

“That he can’t be moved from the premises? Yes, my partner and I understand all about that.”

“There are people—”

“I’ve already been approached by those ‘people,’” Miss Wonderleigh told him. “And yes, they did offer us money. No, we weren’t interested.”

She put her hands on her hips and looked at Dio again. “I have a child’s coffin that would suit him perfectly. We can place him on his right side, just as he is now. We’ll need to curl his tail a bit and we’ll bring those forepaws up to his chest before the rigor sets in any further.”

She explained to Tom that there was a process currently in use where a body could be prepared for a funeral service without the ordeals of embalming and elaborate cosmetology. They used a kind of fixative, sprayed over the body. She could conduct the procedure right there, within a little airtight tent. Even so, Tom would have to vacate the room for a few hours. The chemicals used in the process were pretty strong.

“I know it sounds like we’re glazing him. I guess we are, in a way. But it suits your needs and under these circumstances, I can’t think of a better way. Can you?”

In the morning, she said, her partner would dig the grave with a backhoe and cover it after the service. They could have a stone in a few days, once he let her know what the inscription would be.

Tom, betraying for once a token of relief, thanked her.

“I have to go down to the van and bring back some equipment,” she said.

“You turned down the offer of money.” Tom opened the door for her. “I wonder why that was.”

Miss Wonderleigh looked up at Tom and pressed her lips together in a thoughtful way. “I can’t say. I can’t even say why I do this at all. Can you tell me why you do what you’re doing?”

Tom bowed his head. “What I do I don’t do very well.”

“Not from what Sue Leahy tells me.”

Miss Wonderleigh stepped out of the office and carefully made her way through the crowd of saurs gathered in the hallway. She looked at them all looking up at her and turned back to Tom.

“She’s right, Sue Leahy.”

“About what?”

“About you.” Then, looking back at the saurs: “And she’s right about you, too.”

She bent down and said to the closest saurs, “My partner and I will do the best job we can. We’re very sorry for your loss.”

As Miss Wonderleigh made her way to the stairs, Axel looked up at her. He was hoping she was another doctor, like Dr. Margaret, but a doctor who specialized in bringing guys back—who could bring Dio back. As she walked down to the first floor, the light from downstairs cast a long silhouette along the staircase wall—not the silhouette of a small, pear-shaped, short-haired woman. It was something taller, thinner, with exaggerated features in the profile.

Axel recognized it instantly. “The Shadow Guy!” he whispered.

The little ones nearby repeated it as if they understood exactly who the Shadow Guy was. They gathered close together until the silhouette disappeared down the stairs.

* * * *

Dinner was a disaster. Few of the saurs could eat, and those who did ate very little.

After dinner wasn’t much better. No games. No music. No video. Preston sat at his screen with Elliot and Veronica, putting together a site, with images and videos and whatever pieces of evidence they could find that their friend had existed here. He was supposed to write a little tribute to go at the top, but all he could manage was, “We have lost our dear friend, Diogenes.” It was still too soon to write any more than that.

Kara glanced ahead at the copy of A Little Princess, still open on the floor by the library window. It wasn’t a good idea. A few pages ahead of where she and Bronte left off reading—when Diogenes collapsed—Sara, in her frustration and misery, throws her doll to the floor, breaking its nose. Kara read: “‘You are stuffed with sawdust. You never had a heart. Nothing could ever make you feel. You are a doll!’”

Perhaps they should just put the book back on the shelf, Kara thought, unless Hetman—

Hubert, who had been silently standing over her, bent down and retrieved the book, taking it up carefully in his forepaws. He moved so quietly and deliberately—the big saurs always did.

“When we’re ready,” he whispered in his rough, unpracticed voice and walked back to the shelves.

Sleep time was the worst.

The saurs always slept in a pile in the center of the room. Dio and Hubert would remove the blankets from the chest next to the window, cover everyone, and take their places in the pile.

Now, someone was missing. The little ones who slept on Dio, or next to his tail, or his back—they didn’t know where to go. The ones who slept next to the ones who slept next to Dio, and the ones who slept next to them....

As much as there was no formal arrangement for where the saurs would sleep, someone was missing. They scattered into little groups around the room. They looked at each other, at the place where the sleep pile should be—where Tom and Hubert had brought the blankets—but they couldn’t bring themselves to sleep.

Tom brought a blanket and some cushions. He stayed in the sleep room that night. So did Dr. Margaret.

“I remember my mom telling me, ‘Say your prayers,’” Dr. Margaret said. “That was her answer for everything. ‘Say your prayers, sweetheart.’ And I prayed and I prayed until there were so many things to pray for I couldn’t sleep.”

Tom nodded. “I took my mother out to my father’s grave once. She’s a pious woman. Never misses church. Always talks about my dad ‘where he is now, watching us.’ We got to the grave, and she looked at the little stone and the plastic flowers she’d placed there before. I could see a patch of dried yellow grass down at the foot of the grave. It was a dry summer. She looked at all of that, trembled, and said—not to me, just out loud—’You’re born. You work all your life and you die and it’s for nothing! Like you were never there!’”

Axel, deep in thought, heard the humans talking, even whispered “Never there!” as he paced back and forth across the room. He blocked out the words with the refrain, “Gotta help Dio! Gotta think! Gotta do something!”—as if Diogenes were a captive, and it was Axel’s job to spring him.

But Diogenes wasn’t in a prison cell or a dungeon. He was in Tom’s room, in a little coffin, covered with his favorite blanket, in an airtight plastic glaze.

It was a fact not lost on the egglings, somewhat puzzled by the behavior of the others not sleeping, not gathered in a pile, looking upset and afraid.

“It’s because we’ve lost our friend and we’re very sad,” Bronte told them.

“Diogenes?” asked Leslie. “He isn’t lost. He’s in Tom’s room.”

“Maybe ‘lost’ isn’t the best word. What I mean—”

“What she means is that he’s dead,” Agnes said, putting a hard emphasis on the last word. She turned her head and addressed the egglings directly. “You’ve heard us say ‘dead’ before, this afternoon. It means Dio can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t think. It’s all stopped! He can’t come back. What’s left in Tom’s room is just dead matter. He can’t come back!”

For a moment Axel stopped pacing. He’d heard the words but tried to keep them from moving any further into his head than his ears. He bent his head down and tried to cover his ears with his forepaws. “Gotta help Dio! Gotta think! Gotta do something!”

Some of the little ones who heard Agnes—and no one ever had any difficulty hearing her—started to wail.

She looked into the eyes of Leslie, Guinevere, and the other egglings, and saw how frightened her words had made them—not so much afraid of death as of her, or at least of her anger.

She shut her eyes and sighed until her back plates clicked against each other. “Forget it. Forget I ever said a thing.”

She looked around the room for a distraction. Sluggo stared at her, in shock, it seemed, at hearing Agnes tell anyone to forget something she had said.

Half a meter away, a ceratopsian little one named Ludwig was standing over a little puddle, his mouth open as if holding back a sob.

“Hey!” Agnes walked up to him. “You’d better clean that up! What’s the matter? Why didn’t you go to the litter room before sleep time?”

“I’m sorry,” Ludwig said. “I—I tried to hold it, but—”

“Why hold it? What do you think the litter room’s for? You think it’s some sort of damn art gallery or something?”

“I didn’t want—I—was afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?” Agnes grumbled. “You’re not afraid of Dio, are you? He can’t hurt you—this isn’t one of those stupid human videos with corpses crawling around—”

“I—I don’t know. I’m just afraid. Maybe it’s, it’s—”

“What?” Her voice became sharper. “What is it?”

Kara was about to intercede when the little one burst out and cried, “The Shadow Guy!”

“Shadow—” Agnes reared back a little. “What the hell are you—”

She looked at Axel, still pacing the room. She opened her mouth, ready to tear into him with his crazy talk and idiocies and Shadow Guys and his refusal to accept the facts, damn it! The facts!

“Agnes,” Sluggo said softly, “please.”

The back plates clicked again.

“Okay,” she said. “Who else didn’t go to the litter room because they were afraid? Come on! I’m not taking you down more than once and I don’t want to see a dozen puddles around here in the morning. Come on!”

Slowly, a group of nine saurs, mostly little ones but including one mid-sized theropod named Oliver, gathered around Ludwig, their expressions bearing equal measures of fear, embarrassment and urgency.

“Okay, that it? This is your last chance until morning! Let’s go!”

Tom went off to get a towel. “I’ll clean it up.”

“Big help!” Agnes grumbled. She led the way out of the sleep room until she heard two of the little ones whispering behind her.

“What’s that?” She eyed the little ones fiercely. “What are you on about now?”

“Nothing,” said Ludwig. “Just—thank you.”

“Shut up,” said Agnes, turning back toward the hallway.

Axel, still pacing, watched them leave. Maybe he should go with them. Maybe he should say he was going to follow them and dart over to Tom’s room and check on Dio again.

Maybe—

He didn’t know what to do, except keep pacing.

“Gotta help Dio! Gotta think! Gotta do something!”

If he couldn’t build a machine to shoot the lightning-stuff into him or spring him from the prison of death, was there some way he could intercede? Was there someplace he could go, like a court? He’d seen a video once about a guy named—Opie? No. Orfy. Yes! The Orfy Guy, who spoke in a funny language that made words appear down on the bottom of the screen. Everyone in the video talked that way, and Alphonse, who said he could understand what they were all saying, said the words at the bottom of the screen didn’t match what they were really saying (they were cursing more)—but that wasn’t important. Axel could still understand the story, even though there was strange stuff going on with funny-looking human guys, in goggles and helmets, riding around on motorcycles.

The Orfy Guy’s wife gets hit by one of the motorcyclists. She has to go to the land of the dead and she has to walk through a mirror to get there. So the Orfy Guy has to walk through the mirror too to get her back.

Axel thought: are there any mirrors in the house? He looked at the walls and saw only a picture in a frame—a landscape with a big mountain. Agnes once told the little ones it was a picture of Sauria, the land where saurs run everything. Axel tried to remember if there were any mirrors downstairs. Funny, but he never really looked at the walls, or the pictures. He couldn’t remember any of them, and he couldn’t remember any mirrors.

There were other things in the story—all sorts of other things, like The Shadow Guy was a female, with scary dark eyes, and the Orfy Guy was sitting in a limousine copying down words he heard over the radio. But something else, something special—what was it? There were guys walking backwards, and sometimes they pressed to the walls like...like gravity was coming in sideways. And one guy was selling glass in the land of the dead, which was a place that looked all dark and broken-up and ruined—like a suburb. What else?

Oh! The Orfy Guy got to bring his wife back—but he wasn’t allowed to look at her!

But it doesn’t work. He sees her through a mirror in the car and she disappears.

Maybe it was good that there weren’t any mirrors in the house.

But there was more to the story. Things work out—he tried to remember how, but there was so much other stuff—and he was too excited by the idea that Dio could be brought back. He could!

Axel kept pacing. He reached the end of the room, turned around, and paced back the other way. He remembered how Dio helped him put together Rotomotoman, how he let Axel ride on his back, picked him up and let him look through all the books on all the topmost shelves.

“Gotta help Dio! Gotta think! Gotta do something!”

As he reached the far end of the room, near the door, for what might have been the hundredth time, he found someone waiting there for him.

Geraldine.

She was smiling, but not in her usual way. Usually, she smiled as if she were plotting something you sincerely didn’t want to know about. Now, her smile seemed to convey a kind of sad serenity. It was a smile held to the face of very harsh realities.

Axel waited for her usual greeting, but she didn’t ask him, “Are you stupid?” She just kept looking at him with those tiny eyes and that tiny smile.

“Geraldine,” said Axel, “are you sad too? About Dio?”

She nodded.

“Do you miss him too?”

She nodded again.

“We’ve gotta help Dio!” Axel gestured outward with his forepaws. “You gotta know something we can do to bring him back!”

Geraldine, her smile a little sadder, simply shook her head.

“But—you know all sorts of stuff about time and space and shooting Death Rays at the bad guys outside.” Axel held out his forepaws as if waiting to catch something falling from the ceiling. “You can do stuff! When Guinevere walked into Tibor’s castle and I got my head caught in the doorway, she came out of your lab!”

Geraldine nodded.

“And—and there’s nothing you can do?”

She nodded again.

“But—”

“Time doesn’t die,” she said.

“Ohhh.”

Axel nodded slowly, straightening to a posture Agnes would have found highly unsatisfactory. He looked upward, eyes moving from left to right as if he might see some clue flying around like a moth. Then he looked at Geraldine again.

“Are you going to tell me what that means?”

Geraldine shook her head.

“You mean, I’ve to figure it out for myself?”

She nodded, then repeated, “Time doesn’t die.”

“But—but time is like part of space, and space is what the universe is in. It’s all—it’s all together. Like Reggie taught me once: ‘Space and Time and Time and Space. The universe is one big place!’”

She nodded and said it one more time: “Time doesn’t die,” then quickly moved off on her little legs, disappearing into one of the darker corners of the sleep room.

As Geraldine slipped away, Agnes returned with the little ones and Oliver from the litter room. With them was Tibor, looking somewhat flustered and embarrassed, with his green hat tilted on his head.

“Kincaid thought he saw something,” Oliver said to Axel. “He screamed, and suddenly Tibor ran out.”

“Tibor did not run!” said Tibor, who always referred to himself in the third person.

“He must have been really frightened,” said Oliver. “He ran straight into Agnes. She nearly bopped him with her tail.”

“Tibor was not afraid!” His expression returned to its usual Beethovian scowl. “Tibor was in deep contemplation and startled by the screams. Tibor raced to the rescue of Kincaid!”

“You were running the other way.”

“Tibor was mistaken.”

“Oh, shut up!” Agnes said. She must have been tired—her back plates were drooping. “Just—forget it! Try to sleep!”

“Agnes wasn’t afraid,” Kincaid whispered to Axel, holding his forepaws to his light blue chest. “I thought I saw the Shadow Guy but Agnes wasn’t afraid.”

“There’s no Shadow Guy,” Agnes said wearily. “If there was a Shadow Guy it wouldn’t look like a piss-yellow sauropod in a stupid hat!”

“Tibor’s hat is not stupid!” said Tibor.

“It fell in the litter hole,” said the orange theropod named Buster.

“Tibor rinsed his hat!”

“Will you—” Agnes raised her voice, then let it go and slowly walked over to Sluggo. “Try to sleep.”

“If there is a Shadow Guy,” Kincaid whispered, even more softly than before, “he’d be afraid of Agnes.”

Axel nodded, then turned around and paced back to the other side of the room, near the big bay window. He was still thinking about what Geraldine had said.

Time doesn’t die, he thought. Why doesn’t time die? Does that mean space doesn’t die? Or the universe? And what does it matter if time can’t die but Diogenes can? He still couldn’t understand what Geraldine meant.

He looked to his right and saw Hetman’s bed. It was usually placed near the sleep pile, but with no sleep pile to speak of it looked lonely and forlorn, just sitting there. He climbed up the side, bent his head over the railing, and looked at Hetman. He lay on his back, his eyeless head directed upward.

“Hetman! Hetman!” Axel whispered. “You asleep?”

“No one is asleep,” he said in his hoarse, gentle voice. “I can hear everyone’s breathing and it hasn’t slowed down. I don’t think the night has ever been more restless.”

“I think everybody’s afraid of the Shadow Guy.” Axel pulled himself over the railing and sat down next to him.

“Shadow Guy? Oh. Yes. The Shadow Guy.”

“Are you afraid of the Shadow Guy, Hetman?”

“The Shadow Guy and I have been too close for me to be really afraid of him, Axel. Though I can’t say I care much for him.”

“Geraldine was saying something funny to me just now, and I don’t know what it means. She said, ‘Time doesn’t die.’ Do you know what she’s talking about?”

Axel listened carefully, but Hetman didn’t reply right away. He shifted a little under his blanket and made a rasping, humming sound as if clearing his throat.

“Perhaps,” he said, “she means that all of time is like a big book—all the words are there, bound together from first page to last page, but we can only read one word at a time. All of time is here—from the beginning to the end, eternal—but we can only experience it from minute to minute and second to second. The limitation is ours. That may be what she means.”

“Then—it’s all there!” Axel stood up, excited, straining to keep his voice at a whisper. “It doesn’t go. We go. Time isn’t moving—we’re moving!”

“But only in one direction,” Hetman said, “and at a pace which time sets for us. Which may be just as well.”

“Why?”

“Some moments you may never want to relive. Other moments you may never want to leave. If you could choose to remain in just one moment, how would you ever finish designing your Exo-Cyborg creation?”

“Yeah!” Axel’s voice rose with excitement. “That’s right! The Exo-Cyborg! I was going tell you all about this new stuff Reggie was showing me, with all these things that could hook up with optical nerves and you could get, like, super-sight and see in all sorts of ways better than with regular eyes! But then Dio—Dio—”

“Maybe our purpose,” said Hetman, “if we can presume to have any, is to fill time with marvels and stories—to make the universe the greatest adventure of all.”

“Yeah!” Axel lay down next to Hetman and stared up at the ceiling. “The greatest adventure!”

But as he closed his eyes, imagining himself riding on Hetman’s back as he trotted along on titanium legs, tail raised, forearms outstretched, gazing miles ahead with his super-sight, he thought of Dio, trapped within the boundaries of his temporal existence, and how he would have wanted to see his old friend moving again and able to see—to read—for himself. Axel and Hetman were moving on where Dio couldn’t follow, the distance between them growing farther.

And Axel wanted—wanted so much it hurt—to go back.

* * * *

Breakfast was ruined by the sound of the backhoe outside, operated by Miss Wonderleigh’s partner, digging deeply into the earth before the crape myrtle tree.

Tom and Dr. Margaret brought the saurs back to the sleep room while the coffin was moved down to the library. They didn’t want the saurs to see, but they heard everything. Tom brought a portable video upstairs, and though nearly everyone watched the gray and white images darting across the screen, no one could really pay attention.

Agnes slipped out and watched as Miss Wonderleigh and her partner carried the coffin down the stairs.

“Hey!” she called out, her voice making them jump. “Watch what you’re doing!”

Miss Wonderleigh’s partner, Carolyn, shouted back, “Who the hell are you?”

“None of your business. Just watch what you’re doing! That’s my friend you’ve got there!”

“Listen, you almost made us—” Carolyn shouted back, but Miss Wonderleigh interrupted her.

“We know. We’ll be careful. I promise.”

“Well, you better be!” She peered at them as they cleared the bottom of the stairs and was about to follow them down when Tex, one of the saurs who had been listening to her lecture the day before, pointed to the humans.

“They’re using two legs.”

“Yeah. So?” Agnes looked at the blue-green parasaurolophus.

“That’s how they carry the coffin.”

“I can see that!”

“Not on four legs.”

“Of course not! If they had it on their backs it might slip off.”

“You couldn’t carry a coffin.”

“What are you—?” A growling noise came from deep in her throat. “I don’t have to carry a coffin! That’s what humans are for!”

“You couldn’t carry a coffin.”

“Shut up! Go back to the sleep room! I’m busy!”

Instead of waiting for the lift to take her downstairs, Agnes took the steps hastily, grumbling all the way down about idiots not understanding anything.

In the sleep room, Axel looked out the window at the hole dug by the backhoe, and the pile of earth next to it.

Preston joined him on the window ledge. He looked up at a small patch of white clouds and said, “It’s going to be a beautiful day.”

“Why are they going to put him in the ground?” Axel asked, still looking down.

“It’s a human thing, really. They’re creatures of nature and the earth represents nature. They came from the earth, in a way, and so they return to it. Not that they all do it like this.”

Axel shifted his head slightly, taking in the backhoe more than the grave. “We don’t come from nature. We come from a lab.”

“Well, we come from nature, once removed. Everything in the universe is nature.”

“I wish we came from space.” Axel looked up. “I wish we came from the Space Guys.”

“The Space Guys are part of nature too.” Preston smiled a little, as he did every time he found himself saying “Space Guys.” He had no idea what they looked like—he couldn’t get past wondering what they looked like to Axel.

“They are!” He looked at Preston as if he were also hearing something in the distance, something he hadn’t heard in a long time. “We’re in space! So space is nature. And we do come from space! Everything does! Space—and time! Like Reggie said—Space and time and time and space! The universe—”

“—is one big place.” Preston knew the words almost as well as Axel did.

“Wait!” Axel bent his head down so that his forepaws could embrace it, just at the base of his lower jaw. “Wait wait wait wait wait wait! I know! I know what I can do!”

He paced to one end of the window ledge, then paced back to Preston. “Can I use your computer?”

“Of course you can. What do you want to do?”

“I gotta talk to the Space Guys again!”

Preston was about to ask him why, but Axel had already hopped down from the window ledge and was running to the door of the sleep room.

* * * *

By the time Susan Leahy arrived, the coffin had been placed in the center of the library on a very short portable stand. In front of the stand was a ramp, set up for any saurs who wanted to take a last look at their friend.

Tom placed a video screen next to the coffin. It displayed the site Preston had put together, with still and video images of Diogenes. Most prominent was a picture taken of Dio wearing the sort of paper hat that employees of fast-food restaurants used to wear years ago. The hat had come free with a box of steaks Jean-Claude and Pierrot ordered from the Idaho Steak Ranch. Tom made them send the steaks back, but they kept the hat. Dio wore it for a week, then he put it in a narrow drawer of the library worktable.

The hat was now placed in the coffin, along with several other things the saurs thought of putting in with him: a favorite blanket and pillow, some game pieces, plastic figures, a picture of the house and some other pictures the saurs had taken of themselves.

Hubert suggested they place with him a copy of his favorite book: a sturdy leather-bound edition of Les Misérables. Tom at first wondered if Dio might want the book kept in circulation but decided he could find another copy without too much trouble.

Dr. Margaret helped Bronte and Kara pick some mums and asters from the garden in the front yard. They weren’t much at that time of year, but they added some bright yellows and oranges to counteract the austerity that any coffin brings to a room.

Ms. Leahy wore a dark blue dress and black armband. She greeted all the saurs, many of whom she had known for years, warmly and respectfully.

Tom said, “You really didn’t have to come all this way.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” She looked around the library. “Dio was starved and half-crazed when we found him. He had marks on his neck from the chains his owners used on him. And through it all he had the sweetest disposition. When we brought him here I remember how he couldn’t stop looking through the books.”

She stood before the coffin and bent her knee as if to curtsey as she looked down, placed the two fingers of her right hand to her forehead, then her heart, then to her right shoulder, then her left shoulder.

“Sorry. Old habit. Haven’t been in a church in over twenty-five years.”

She looked around the room again and asked, “Where’s Axel?”

“He’s up at my computer,” said Preston. “Sending another message to his Space Guys.”

“Space Guys again.” Ms. Leahy took off her shoes and knelt next to Preston. “I was worried this would hit him hard.”

“When he sends his weekly messages to them, it’s usually a public performance.” Preston stared upward. “But he’s there now, talking so quietly you can hardly hear him.”

“I won’t bother him until he’s finished. It must be ‘important stuff.’”

She hugged him and moved off to where Doc sat on his plastic cube.

“It’s good to see you,” said Doc, “in spite of the circumstances. I hope you are well.”

“It’s all of you I’m worried about.” She took his forepaw and embraced him gently.

“We’re a sad lot here, aren’t we?” Doc looked up at her. “We are wounded, but healing.”

He pointed to Ross, holding a sheet of paper and sitting by Alphonse’s radio. “He received a mail this morning from the traffic reporter he listens to every day. ‘Thanks for listening to my reports. You must be on the road a lot. I’m so sorry to hear of the passing of your friend. My prayers are with you both. Best, Abby.’ I have it memorized because he’s shown it to me ten times already. I suggested he print it out if for no other reason than to free up a computer screen.”

“That reminds me,” Ms. Leahy said, raising her head and looking at Doc askance. “You wouldn’t happen to follow the stock market, would you?”

Doc betrayed an embarrassed smile. “The dear woman who last owned me left a small trust to cover my expenses. I think it included a few stocks, but I know little about such things.”

“Not even with a little coaching from Reggie?”

Doc cleared his throat. “Good Reggie keeps me in touch with the firm of Moore and McCabe, but he’s been quite unsuccessful in teaching me much in the ways of finance.”

“Then I suppose it wouldn’t interest you to know that the SANI Corporation’s bid to purchase Biomatia fell through early this morning.” She inclined her head and gave him her complete scrutiny. “A few small interests managed to buy up enough shares to block a takeover.”

“A temporary block, I’m afraid.”

“So you do know about it.”

Doc thoughtfully touched his chin with the two digits of his right forepaw. “Reggie informs me whenever the firm of Moore and McCabe are mentioned in the news, and it appears they were one of the interests involved. But—as the mysterious gentleman who called Tom yesterday pointed out—I am a mere toy. What can I know of such matters?”

Ms. Leahy seemed to smile in spite of herself—a chuckle would have been inappropriate in a house of mourning. But she put her hand on Doc’s head and gave it a gentle caress.

“You are good,” she said in a quiet but firm voice.

“When it comes to my friends, I do what I can.”

* * * *

The “service” began with some music Doc had chosen: a Chopin étude, the Debussy “Nocturnes” and the adagietto from the Mahler Five. They reflected Doc’s tastes more than those of Diogenes, but they provided an appropriate backdrop for the saurs who wanted to view their friend for the last time.

The “glazing” Miss Wonderleigh had performed was discreet. If anything, Diogenes looked almost too natural for many of the little ones, who shuddered and fled from the open coffin.

Others were puzzled but impressed. The caskets for Bick and Runyon had been much less elaborate and were closed. But then, this was Diogenes, whom everyone knew and relied upon. They viewed him in the coffin, some making quiet remarks to their companions—some to Dio himself—and moved on.

When Charlie the beige triceratops hobbled up, with Rosie at his side, to view Dio, he turned to Tom, who was standing nearby.

“When I go,” he said, “I want you to get this lady who did the job on Dio. She’s all right.”

Rosie nudged him away, fiercely whispering in his ear that this wasn’t the time, wasn’t the place, and when had he ever spoken about such a thing to her.

The Five Wise Buddhasaurs took over from Mahler. It was difficult to figure which songs Diogenes favored; he never claimed one or another to be his favorite. But they noticed that his head bobbed a little more, his smile brightened, when he heard “The Sugar Foot Strut,” and another old tune, “Everything’s Made for Love.” With the help of a little sampling, the five of them on their tiny plastic instruments carried the tunes and even managed to interpret the harmonies with a minimum of their customary dissonance.

For the eulogies, most of the saurs wanted Preston to go first, but he deferred to Doc. Dr. Margaret had already insisted that the humans would speak only after all the saurs had their chance.

Doc walked slowly to the front of the assembly, his tricky left leg proving more tricky than usual.

“And keep it short!” Agnes bellowed from the back of the room.

“When we came into the world,” Doc began, “our meaning was assigned to us by our makers and our owners. When we were no longer needed our meaning evaporated—until we came here. Now we live for ourselves and for each other. No one typified this better than our friend Diogenes. It may be too much to ask that we should all live like he did, but at least we can honor how he lived, and that he lived, and keep our love for him alive. And by doing so we can keep his love for us alive as well.”

Bronte looked around the room and nudged Kara with her tail.

“Where’s Axel?” she whispered.

Kara shook her head. “Is he still upstairs?”

“He must be.”

“Doesn’t he know we’ve started?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to come down. This might all be too much for him.”

“I’ll check on him,” Ms. Leahy whispered back to them. “I don’t want you to miss anything.” She stood and quickly went upstairs.

The eulogies continued. No one wished to say too much or speak for too long. Many of the little ones were too embarrassed to know what to say or to say anything at all, but as some made the effort others followed. Mostly, they said, “We love you, Dio,” or, “We miss you.”

Tibor came up in his hat and a white ribbon around his neck.

“On behalf of the consolidated worlds of the Tiborean Realm, Tibor wishes to express their great sorrow at this loss.”

Hubert pushed Hetman’s bed up before the coffin.

“Perhaps his heart failed him, but it never failed us.”

Sluggo mentioned the extra care he took when handling the eggs and the egglings.

Preston recalled how, when he was working on a novel, Dio would often show him a book, or even a passage somewhere, that related to what he was writing. “How he knew what I was working on, I’ll never know.”

Jean-Claude and Pierrot remembered the time they ordered the box of steaks from the Idaho Steak Ranch and hid it under the big atlas. “And he didn’t get mad!”

Ross put down his parsnip, came up and sang “I’m An Old Cowhand.” No one knew why but no one stopped him, though Agnes turned away for the duration of the song. When he finished the song he said, “Good-bye, Dio,” and went back to his parsnip.

Bronte and Kara came up with Guinevere between them.

“I know it’s Diogenes we’re here for,” said Bronte, “but I think we should thank Tom and Dr. Margaret for everything they’ve done.”

In the back of the room, a spiked tail thumped against the floor.

“And I think it would be a good idea,” said Kara, “if we name the next eggling Diogenes, in honor of our friend.”

Most of the saurs nodded or voiced their approval.

As Agnes moved to the front of the room, Ms. Leahy came in with Axel on her shoulder. When she placed him on the floor he started to run toward the coffin.

She grabbed him gently and placed a finger in front of her lips. “Ssshh. Wait until Agnes is finished.”

Agnes looked around the room at all the gathered saurs and stopped as she reached Axel, who bobbed impatiently, waiting for his turn.

“Humans always talk about the ‘next world’ and the ‘afterlife,’” Agnes said. “They also say that ‘animals’ can’t go there, that only humans can. Well, it’s a crock! And if there is such a thing, they can keep their damn afterlife! There’s plenty more who deserve it than a bunch of stupid humans! Dio doesn’t deserve this. It’s just...it’s...just wrong!”

She stormed off to the back of the room, not facing the coffin. Sluggo tried to touch his head against hers but she nudged him away.

When Agnes finished, Axel looked up at Ms. Leahy as if to make sure it was okay to speak now, but hardly waited for any nod from her before running up before the coffin, turning around and raising his forearms.

“Hey guys! I gotta tell you about what Geraldine told me last night!”

The saurs looked at Axel more attentively, as if they felt a sudden surge of energy. It had been a long afternoon, with everyone talking and everyone sitting. Only Agnes seemed to resist, though she slowly swung her tail around and turned her head back to look.

“Geraldine said, ‘Time doesn’t die,’ and I didn’t know what she meant until Hetman explained it to me.” Axel pointed to Hetman’s bed. “It means that time is like—space! You can see space—like stars and galaxies way, way out there—but you can’t see time. Like, Hetman can’t see us, but we’re here. We can’t see time, but it’s there! So Diogenes is still alive, back there in time! And maybe we can’t see him anymore, but he’s still there!”

The assembly looked at Axel. And every mouth, for whatever reason, seemed open—wide.

But not as wide as Axel’s.

“We can’t go out to the stars because we don’t have the spaceships yet. Someday we’ll make them and go out to the stars. Maybe someday we’ll make time ships, too! And we can go back and see Dio and tell him all the stuff we wanted to tell him. And maybe we can take Dio in the time ship and bring him back here! And we can go back and forward—all the way to the future!”

Ross took his parsnip and held it horizontally. While making a “Zzzzzz-ing” sound, he held out the parsnip and said, “Time ship! Woooohh!”

“A time ship!”

Little ones like Symphony Sid and Arthur Rackham Rex muttered, “Time ship!” A few more squeaked, “Time ship! Time ship!” until it became a kind of chant that filled the room.

“I sent a message to the Space Guys! I asked them to help me build a time ship because Space Guys know all about that! When they travel through space they go faster than time! I saw it on the video!”

The “Time ship!” chant grew louder. Leslie, Guinevere, and the two other egglings ran up to Axel as if he might pull out a time ship from somewhere behind him.

Doc made a sort of worried gasp of a sound and looked around at those he thought of as the “saner” elements of the saurs: at Preston, Bronte, Kara, Alphonse—several others. They looked back at Doc the same way: as if to ask, “Should we...say something?”

Preston shook his head. “Let the moment be.”

“But—” Kara looked at the little ones bobbing their heads with the “Time ship!” chant. “—it’s a kind of madness, isn’t it?”

“So is hope.”

Agnes didn’t bother to look at anyone else or weigh the issue of what constituted what. She slowly, directly, marched up to Axel, brows down and tail up.

“The only space your Space Guys occupy is in your head!” She turned around and faced the assembled saurs. “He’s been sending his damn messages to these Space Guys for months! Has he once—ever!—gotten a message back? Have they left so much as a mail on the computer, saying, ‘Oh, sorry. We’ve been on vacation in Bermuda. So nice to hear from you.’ Has anyone ever seen a Space Guy?”

Axel, drooping a little under the barrage, mumbled, “Yes. Maybe. But it could have been a frog, too.”

“A frog!”

“But, like that storm the other night—we knew it was there even if we were all hiding under the blankets. Except when I got up and saw the lights flashing in the window. And I saw you with your head under Sluggo.”

The little ones giggled.

“It was the noise from the thunder!” Agnes looked at them indignantly and raised her tail. “That has nothing to do with it!”

“The Space Guys are there like the storm was there!”

The “Time ship!” chant rose up again, if a little more restrained. Ross tapped Agnes on the snout with the tip of his parsnip.

“Time ship!”

She batted it away but relented, muttering, “Lunatics! Idiots!” all the way to the back of the room.

The Five Wise Buddhasaurs, eyes shut tightly as they played, launched into “West End Blues.” Even with the aid of their synthesizers and sampling, the trumpet introduction sounded a little more like a fall down a flight of stairs than a stirring ascent and descent through a scale dappled with blue notes. But the steady tempo shifted the mood back to a sober, but not solemn, median.

Rotomotoman rolled to the front of the room. At first he faced the coffin, saluted and turned around. The display screen on his cylindrical torso displayed two words: Diogenes. Good-bye.

“Sometimes,” Ms. Leahy said to Tom, “I envy your job. Other times—I don’t know how you manage it.”

“I don’t know if I manage it.” The words were self-deprecating but his expression, to Ms. Leahy, was grateful.

“More often it manages you,” said Dr. Margaret. “And me. All of us. I don’t know why.”

“It’s because,” said Ms. Leahy, “much as we don’t want to admit it, we’re waiting for the Space Guys too.”

Tom, Dr. Margaret, Ms. Leahy, and Miss Wonderleigh took the coffin outside. The Buddhasaurs played their version of “West End Blues” again as the saurs filed out behind them.

The coffin rested on a strange metal gadget Miss Wonderleigh had brought. The gadget would slowly and smoothly lower the coffin down into the grave, then retract and be pulled up by Miss Wonderleigh.

Tom looked around at the gathered saurs and humans. The silence at that moment seemed awkward. Everything that anyone wanted to say had been said inside. But there they all were, outside, before the grave, waiting for what came next—and there was no way to get to what came next.

Until Bronte sang: “Yar-wooo!”

The saurs turned to her. A few of them immediately replied, “Yar-wooo!” while others hesitated, or started with the first note, or couldn’t bring themselves to sing at all.

“It’s a song,” Bronte explained to Guinevere. “When we were first created in the factory/labs the humans taught it to us. It was part of our imprinting and training. We were supposed to sing it to the children and they used it in all the advertising. It’s a silly song. It’s not a very good song, but it’s simple and it’s one we all know.”

Bronte and Kara sang together: “Yar-wooo!”

A few more saurs joined in: “Yar-woo!”

And a few more: “Yar-wooo!”

Until all the saurs joined in. Ms. Leahy had started in with Bronte almost immediately. Dr. Margaret joined, then Tom—even Miss Wonderleigh (it didn’t take long to figure out even if one had never heard it before). Carolyn stepped out from behind the backhoe, reluctantly, but even she began to sing in a husky, off-key voice.

“Yar-wooo! Yar-woo! Yar-wooo! The dinosaurs love you!

“Yar-wooo! Yar-woo! Yar-wooo! The dinosaurs love you!”

After the song some of the saurs went back inside. A few more waited until the coffin was lowered into the grave before returning to the house. Some stalwarts—Doc and Preston among them—remained until Carolyn pushed all the dirt back into the hole she had dug only that morning.

“I remember now what I was thinking yesterday afternoon,” Doc said to Preston. “Before all this happened. It seems absurd now, and it drifted so quickly out of memory it can’t have any consequence.”

“What is it?” Preston stared at Carolyn, patting the dirt down carefully with the back of a shovel.

“It seemed to me, at the moment, that perhaps we weren’t mere accidents of nature. It’s possible that we are...inevitable.”

Preston stared at the mound of dirt before him. Carolyn took out a handkerchief and dabbed at her forehead, got into the backhoe and drove it to the trailer hitched to the back of the van.

Hubert turned around and headed inside. Big Sam the stegosaurus and the brown triceratops, Dr. David Norman, followed. He let the egglings ride on his back all the way into the house, with Kara and Bronte at his side.

“It’s a crazy notion,” Preston said, placing his forepaw on Doc’s back as he turned around. “But it’s a crazy world.”

That left Agnes, Sluggo, and Axel the last ones at the grave, staring at the dirt mound.

“I hope he liked the ceremony,” Sluggo said.

“How would he know?” Agnes’s voice wasn’t as sharp, or as loud, as usual. And yet her words were as hard as ever.

“Would have liked the ceremony, then.”

“I don’t want to leave him,” Axel said.

“He’ll be here.” Agnes looked away from the grave, out to the west. The sky was red, and pink, and a creamy sort of yellow. And above it was a blue that grew ever deeper and darker.

She also saw what might have been a light—a flicker of movement between the tree trunks. Maybe an animal. Maybe more idiot humans. The Reggiesystem would keep them out. She said nothing to the others.

“We’ll always be able to come here, so we can remember him,” Sluggo said to Axel. “We won’t really leave him and he won’t really leave us.”

“We better go in,” said Agnes. “It’s getting dark. Cold.”

No one moved.

“Axel, all that stuff you said in there.” Agnes was still looking at the sunset. “You know it’s total crap, don’t you? Time machines? You’re going to build a time machine? You know people have been talking about time machines for hundreds of years. You see any time machines lying around here? You think you can make a time machine?”

“I don’t know,” Axel said. “I want to make a time machine. A time ship!”

“Fine. Right. And that stuff about ‘time doesn’t die.’ Do you think that’s true? Where did you get such a stupid idea?”

“Geraldine said—”

“Geraldine! She was making fun of you! She makes fun of all of us! You’re going to believe someone who asks you if you’re stupid every single day?”

“She wasn’t making fun of me!” Axel shook his head. “Not this time! She said time doesn’t die, and the universe—”

“The universe is going to die too! The Earth is going to die, and the Moon and the Sun and the other planets too. The stars will burn out like candles, and there go your galaxies and everything else, including time!”

“If everything dies,” Axel said, “then we all die, and Dio won’t be so alone.”

“Dio is not alone! Axel, he’s not anything anymore! He was alive, now he’s gone, and that’s it! Finish! End of Story! And when the time comes it will be the same for all of us.”

“I think you’re wrong,” said Sluggo.

“What?” Agnes said, at full volume, with maybe even a little bit more.

“You’re wrong, or at least you’re not right. Not completely. Dio is still something. He’s everything he ever was. That doesn’t change because he’s dead.”

“That doesn’t make him any less dead now!”

“I think it does. We remember him.”

“Until we die. Then that’s over. And who will remember us?”

“I don’t know,” said Sluggo. “Maybe it’s like what Doc said. We’re only looking at it in a small way—just how it affects us. But that’s not everything. Maybe what we all do makes up the universe, big as it is and as little as we are. We’re still part of it. We make it what it is, no matter when we’re alive, or when we die.”

Sluggo waited, but he heard no reply. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d said so many words without being interrupted. For a moment he was afraid that something might be wrong with Agnes.

He waited a little longer for her to tell him he was an idiot before he asked, “Does that make any sense?”

“No.” Agnes curled her tail around and clawed at the lawn with her spikes.

Out in the west, the red had dimmed to an ember color, surrounded by an undiluted indigo. The woods formed a ragged black outline below it.

“It makes so little sense it’s like making no sense at all,” Agnes said. “You’ve been chewing on some funny plants. You’re—you’re an idiot!”

Sluggo nodded, feeling strangely relieved. There were enough changes to contend with. Not having Agnes call him an idiot would have been one change too many.

“It’s not a stupid idea!” Axel said. “Time doesn’t die! Even if the universe stops, time doesn’t die!”

“Everything dies,” Agnes said with the weariness of someone repeating the same directions over and over again. “Like the sun going down now, and night comes. It’s that inevitable.”

“But at night you see the stars! And space! And the whole universe out there! You can’t see it in the daytime!”

“You won’t be seeing any stars when you’re dead.” Agnes turned away from them. “I’m not saying that it’s good or that I like it. It just is, okay? It’s better to know it than pretend it’s not true. I wish it wasn’t true, but it is. I’m sorry.”

“Agnes, what did you say?” asked Sluggo.

“What?”

“I thought you said you were sorry.”

“Yes. That’s what I said. Are you going deaf? I said I’m sorry! Now let’s get back in. It’s already dark.”

The three of them didn’t move. A chilly breeze started and grew stronger.

“You know,” Sluggo said to Axel, “maybe you don’t have to make a time machine. Maybe we’re the time machines.”

“Space and time!” Axel said. “Time and space!” He looked up at the early stars, now clearly visible. “The universe is—”

“We know!” Agnes groaned. “We know!” She took a few steps closer to the grave.

“Dio,” she said. “This is stupid. I know you can’t hear me. I have to say it. I want to see you again and I know I can’t and everything else is crap and I don’t care!”

She looked at Sluggo and barked, “Believe anything you want! I don’t care!”

She looked at Axel. “And you! Go ahead! Build your damn time machine! Jump into it and take yourself someplace where I’ll never have to listen to your insanity again! I don’t care!”

Sluggo heard what he thought was a sob after she said this and he pressed himself against her. He felt her trembling but she didn’t push him away.

“It’s getting colder.” Her voice was hoarse and even cracked a little. “Let’s go.”

She walked back to the house, Sluggo at her side. Axel tried to follow but kept staring up at the early stars, at once infinitely far and remarkably close, like lights stretched across a huge ceiling under which everything fit, and to move from one place to another under them really wasn’t like leaving at all.

“Maybe I can’t make a time ship. Maybe time dies too, like Agnes said. Maybe—”

“Come on!” Agnes shouted.

He hurried for the house again and stopped. He felt...someone.

Someone was behind him. He could almost hear the big feet against the grass. But when he stopped the sound of the footsteps stopped too.

Axel shut his eyes. “Dio?”

He didn’t hear an answer, but Dio never said much anyway. He imagined Dio, standing out here, alone, as if banished, wanting to be back inside with his friends and with the books.

Axel wanted to swing back around and see him, but he remembered the Orfy Guy and his wife—and how important it was not to look back.

“It’s okay, Dio.” Axel opened his eyes, but he looked at the house, the lights in the windows, Sluggo and Agnes on the porch steps, Tom in the doorway, waiting.

“It’s okay. I won’t look back! I promise!”

He understood, in his way, that he had taken on a serious responsibility. More important than the time ship. More important than the Exo-Cyborg. As long as he remembered not to turn back and look, Dio would be there, always, just as he felt him there now.

A big responsibility. But yes—yes! He could do it! He had to do it.

“Come on,” he said and headed for the house once more. “It’s almost time for supper!”