The dragons all heard them long before I did. Lois heard them too and when I was puzzled she sent me a picture of a wider-than-tall blob with something funny going on at the top and going gup gup gup which I didn't understand at all — although it was also yellow, and I've never seen a yellow helicopter — which may give you another tiny glimpse of how hard the learning process is, because a helicopter is something I know. (The dragon pictograph-with-non-sound for dragon doesn't look or sound anything like the human idea of a dragon either, even after you've plugged in, and it varies from dragon to dragon, like some of it's style, like some of them present Essential Dragon as wearing All Star high-tops and jeans, and some of them rhinestones and black velvet. Maybe Essential Helicopter is yellow?)

While I was still trying to figure it out, Zenobia and Gulp headed for the tunnel to the cavern. Gulp tried to take Lois, but she wouldn't go; she came and hid behind me. Hiding behind something the size of me away from something the size of Gulp is pretty funny, but Gulp would have realized that the only way she'd nab Lois was by force and I also think I picked up something between Bud and Gulp which I think was Bud saying, Let her stay. So Gulp and Zenobia left. And Lois and I . . . and Bud . . . stayed where we were.

I was already worried, before I heard the choppers too. Even when I can't pick up specifics I can sometimes pick up atmosphere — well, everybody (every human body) knows about that, it doesn't have to be something esoteric about dragons. You walk into a room where there's a perfectly ordinary conversation going on and your ears are telling you it's a perfectly ordinary conversation and the hairs on the back of your neck are telling you it isn't. There was some hairy atmosphere going on and not knowing was bad enough.

And then I heard it — whompwhompwhomp — and then I really panicked. I started shouting and waving my hands at Bud again — I got so crazy I actually grabbed one of the . . . the spiny wart-things on one of his front feet, like I could pull him toward the cavern door, like a dog on a lead. (I was pulling on a toe, you know, because that's what I could reach.) And for the second time since I'd met my first dragon I burst into tears, for reasons not too dissimilar from that first time, and if you want to despise me, feel free, I don't care. I didn't want to see another dead dragon. Another dragon stupidly killed by humans. And by then Bud was also my friend.

The choppers found us all right. Bud would be pretty hard to miss if you were even half looking. Most chopper flights don't see dragons only because dragons get out of the way as soon as they hear the chopper. I can imagine the guns trained on him and all that. But they saw me too, and they tried to get me out of the way first since I was (no doubt mysteriously) still alive. It was like something on a bad TV movie, the blast of the broadcast voice telling me to move slowly away from the dragon. It was almost funny. Like moving slowly away from something the size (and firepower) of a dragon meant anything.

I suppose really they were not being that stupid — they could always try to kill the other end of him, which was a long way away, but I was stubbornly sticking by the fire-breathing end, and remember that dragons can breathe a lot of fire after they're dead. I should say that Bud was now lying flat on the ground — he'd put his head down as soon as the choppers came into sight — the way Gulp had the day she met us, or when she was inviting us for transport — and all curled in on himself too, so maybe you couldn't see quite how many miles of him there were. Well, it makes perfectly good any-old-species sense, doesn't it? If you're trying to look non-threatening you try to look small and weak. It's just very hard to do effectively if you're a dragon (but proves they have, you know, imagination).

And I think they didn't realize just how big Bud is. Or maybe Major Handley involuntarily found himself wondering what the hell he was seeing — because I was jumping up and down beside Bud's nose screaming idiotic things like Don't shoot, Don't shoot! He's okay! We're all okay! Please don't shoot! Although how, exactly, even a bright human at the head of a deliberate show of military force (to impress the dragons?) figured out that I wasn't begging to be rescued I'm not sure. Maybe he didn't know either and — since I'd survived this long — was waiting for clarification. The "extermination" order for our dragons hadn't come yet — there was still room for doubt. Or negotiation.

I tried to talk to him about this, later. He just looked at me and shook his head. He's still a career military guy and I'm still a bleeding heart dipstick. I'll be sending him birthday cards for the rest of his life to thank him though.

Anyway. Lois was jumping up and down with me and shrieking — I think I've mentioned she had a very piercing shriek — and the poor major wouldn't have known about her. Even if he thought Bud was not making any moves because he was dead, Lois was obviously alive, and big enough to do damage if she had the inclination. She even looked enough like a dragon by then that you might even guess she was one.

There were three of them, but it was the major's helicopter that sank down a little lower as if for a better view. As I say, I think they didn't really get how big Bud was. But there was a sudden, gentle picture in my mind not unlike a nudge with an elbow, and I turned around and flung myself up Bud's shoulder a lot more enthusiastically than I'd ever climbed Gulp's. But then I was even more desperate that day than when she'd flown us away from the first helicopter coming after me.

I galloped up all that neck, half bent over, scrabbling at the spinal plates with my hands — remember that dragons are slippery — but I didn't perch on his neck. I climbed the rest of the war, on to his head. I could brace my feet against the nobbles and hold on to the smaller, less sharp-edged spikes. Lois, for once, remained where she was, although she stopped shrieking to peep at me, and there was a gust of something through my mind that I'm pretty sure was envy.

And Bud slowly uncurled. First he raised his head and neck, and then he stood up, and then he stood on his back legs and craned. And I found myself staring into the major's helicopter at a lot of platter-sized eyes and wide-open mouths, and shouting over the helicopter din, It's okay, see? He's okay. I'm okay. This is Bud. We can talk to each other. Sort of.

CHAPTER TEN

The rest of the story everybody knows. The whole world knows. They ran that first TV news shot with a thirty-second delay because they weren't sure they weren't going to find themselves running live footage of a brainless seventeen-year-old boy being made into dragon canapes during prime time. The Searles actually did us a favor about this. They pulled all the stops out to get us off the air after that first live broadcast, and the head of NYN got so pissed off that he said nothing would prevent him running it — and ran it at the top of every hour as a news update on every one of his 1,000,000 local stations all that day, just to spite the Searles. It's possible that what he was really pissed off about was the amount of money he'd been spending on having several of his camera guys at the Institute waiting for something to happen, but when Carol Domanski started transmitting what she was watching out of Major Handley's helicopter all was forgiven in a really big way. (You probably know Carol later got a Pulitzer for what she's done on dragons, but she's actually done it well, so good for Carol. And the Pulitzer committee.)

If you saw it that first time, you know that it looks pretty bad that's our fence tangling up the transmission — and the beginning is a big grainy blur. (The picture would cut in at the worst possible moment in terms of me looking like a deranged lunatic.) But they cleaned it all up later, so that the Searles couldn't get anywhere claiming it was faked. Not that they didn't try.