Till now. Till the last five days. Since Gulp had brought us here. No, before that. Since Gulp had apologized for almost killing me. I'd known then, beyond any so-called rational doubt, but I hadn't taken it in. My taking-it-in faculty was fully occupied with the daily fact of Gulp's visits. And I was probably too used to not facing this with Lois, in case I was wrong. Or maybe in case I was right. Martian lichen or no Martian lichen — vervets with language or no vervets with language — philosophies of humanness and that Earth is a community, not a police state, or no philosophies of etc. — it was still too big, too strange, too far away from the way I was used to thinking. Too impossible. It wasn't just being underground with a cavern full of dragons that had freaked me out so badly, you know. At least the guys who found out about the lichen oil Mars, it was happening on Mars. This was happening here.
And now comes the show-stopper, the super jackpot question, the one if you get it right they don't just give you a huge ugly new house and an even huger uglier new car, you will also be expected to solve world hunger, kiss babies and walk on water, so think carefully before you answer: If dragons are intelligent like humans — or more like humans than like dogs or mynah birds or vervets — and just by the way, dragons are up to eighty feet long and can spout fire at will — why are dragons a dying race and humans dominate the planet in a sawing-of-the-tree-limb-you're-standing-on kind of way?
I still don't know the answer to why dragons are dying out, just to get that over with since it's usually the first thing that pro-dragon people ask me. (The anti-dragon people all still keep saying, How do you know they're intelligent?) I think I don't know because it isn't an answer like that there's something in the water that shouldn't be or isn't that should be, or like that. I don't think it's even the restriction of usable territory. They could've expanded a lot more than they have in Smokehill and while, no, okay, I don't know how intelligent they are (How intelligent are you? How intelligent am I? At what point does this become a dumb question?), I think they're quite intelligent enough to have been clandestine about it if they wanted to be. Okay, maybe they have been, and presently unknown underground mazes all over Smokehill are stuffed with dragons. But I don't believe it. (Or anyway not unless they've also bred a sheep that lives in the dark and eats rocks.)
Maybe their intelligence doesn't run that way. I think it probably doesn't. Because this is one of the things I think about dragons, when I try to think about the way they think: they didn't evolve to be paranoid the way we did. They didn't need to — They evolved to be huge and very difficult to kill. Yes, they're meat-eaters, so their prey wouldn't be too fond of them, but prey tends to survive by running away (and by breeding like crazy), not attacking. And most other predators a dragon can just laugh at. Or whatever they do. They do have a sense of humor. I think. Lois' sense of humor could be just from hanging around me too much, but I don't think so.
(I think there's humor in the way Gulp collapses when she's inviting me to walk up her shoulder and up [and up and up and UP] her neck and sit behind her head. You know how a dog you're scolding may suddenly go all limp, when what they're saying is "Yes, yes, you're right, I'm sorry, you're the boss"? If it's a dog, the next thing it does is roll over on its back and offer you its tummy, which isn't practical in a dragon, with the spine plates. But I think Gulp is having a little dragon joke that goes, "Walk on me, master, I am as dirt beneath your feet." And she means it about as much as the dog means it, who is watching you closely and is going to start wagging its tail the moment your face starts to smile.)
Anyway. The point is, dragons never learned to take threats to their existence seriously, and it's too late now.
I also think, by the way, that because they live so long — I'm pretty sure Bud remembers Old Pete — and don't waste energy being paranoid that their sense of time is a lot different from ours. I don't believe Bud kept us — me anyway — underground for five days to intimidate us — me — I think he thought we were just having a nice chat, trying to have a nice chat, here finally was the perfect opportunity for a nice chat, he was really interested in the chat, and it hadn't occurred to him till — maybe — he began to read/guess from all that "trees and sky and sunlight and despair" stuff in my head, that I wasn't finding it as interesting as he was, that I didn't have the attention span that he did. Maybe he was picking me up well enough to notice that my ability to make pictures in my head was starting to get worse, not better, and he figured I was getting like tired.
Meanwhile humans succeeded in the evolution game partly because they learned to be paranoid so successfully. To hit first before the other guy hits you. It worked with sabertooth tigers. Who's extinct? But who's bigger, meaner, faster, and has longer teeth? The tiger. Humans are so ft little things. The only weapon they have is their brains.
Dragons are going under because they don't understand how to fight back. Maybe they could have evolved to be able to fight back, a long time ago, if they or some of their genes realized it was going to be necessary some day. But it's too late now. Sure, they'll fry the occasional human who tries to murder them, but they don't get it about extermination or war. As soon as the Aussies really organized to get rid of them, they didn't have a chance.
Okay, okay, enough with the cheezy philosophy, you want me to get to the famous story about Bud and the helicopters, right? My great moment? My great moment, crap, I was just totally, totally lucky that the major in charge was brighter than some career military types and didn't automatically believe that you shoot first and ask questions later. Maybe the kind of gunnery you can carry on a helicopter is limited, and they didn't want to blow me up — but even that's lucky, that they didn't decide the possible death of one civilian would be just an unfortunate friendly fire incident — an acceptable loss in a battlefield situation.
Because outside Smokehill, by the time I disappeared, the anti-dragon lobby was lashing the populace into a frenzy, and the Searles had just about won. Congress was about to pass legislation to kill all of Smokehill's dragons because they were a danger to humanity — and Smokehill had THOUSANDS of them! And each and every one of them was TEN MILES LONG! — which is what had been going on back at the Institute while Gulp and Lois and I were getting acquainted, and why Dad had lately found himself under something a lot like house arrest. All because of one crummy stinking little poacher who thought he was going to look like a big guy by, what, bringing home a dragon's eye? Selling slices of her adrenals for enough money to buy Hawaii (as long as he did it fast enough)? And who happened to have parents who were millionaires (so what did he need more money for?) and would much rather blame the dragon than the fact that their son was an evil creep.
The irony is that it was my disappearance that almost gave the final victory to the Searles. It's so almost an almost that of all the almost moments I've told you about, that's probably the almostest of all.