mouths. These miserable things— these airborne crumbs— were swarming all around Pteranodon, getting in his eyes, pecking at his wings, and it was all he could do to keep airborne.
As I mentioned, I was keeping one eye on Utahraptor as always, and to my surprise he suddenly turned away and ran up onto the north slope, with an eagerness that could be explained only by the availability of food. I followed him, naturally, but pulled up short. Something was wrong. The ground on the north slope was covered with a moving carpet that swarmed around Utahraptor's feet. Focusing my eyes, which frankly were not very good, I saw that this carpet actually consisted of thousands of tiny dinosaurs whose scales had grown very long and slender and numerous— in short, they were furry. I had been seeing these quadrupedal hors d'oeuvres dodging around under logs and rocks for the last few million years and always taken them for an especially ill-conceived mutation. But suddenly there were thousands of them, and this at a time when there were only four dinosaurs left in the whole world. And they seemed to be working together. They were so tiny that Utahraptor had no way to get them into his mouth, and whenever he stopped moving for an instant, they swarmed onto his legs and tail and nipped at his flesh. A plague of shrews. I was so confounded that I stopped in my tracks.
That was a mistake, for soon I felt a sensation in my legs and tail like millions of pinpricks. Turning around, I saw that the south slope was covered with ants, millions of them, and they had apparently decided to eat me. Meanwhile Ankylosaurus was bellowing and swinging his bony ball around without effect, for the ants were swarming on his body as well.
Well, before long the shrews and the ants and the birds started to run into each other and have skirmishes of their own, and so at that point they called a truce. The King of the Birds, the King of the Shrews, and the Queen of the Ants all got together on top of a rock to parley. In the meantime they left us dinosaurs alone, seeing that we were trapped in any case.
The situation struck me as unfair, so I approached the rock where these despicable micro-monarchs were chattering away, a mile a minute, and spoke: 'Yo! Aren't you going to invite the King of the Reptiles?'
They looked at me like I was crazy.
'Reptiles are obsolete,' said the King of the Shrews.
'Reptiles are just retarded birds,' said the King of the Birds, 'and so I am your King, thank you very much.'
There's only zero of you,' said the Queen of the Ants. In ant arithmetic, there are only two numbers: Zero, which means anything less than a million, and Some. 'You can't cooperate, so even if you were King, the title would be meaningless.'
'Besides,' said the King of the Shrews, 'the purpose of this summit conference is to decide which of our kingdoms shall eat which dinosaur, and we do not suppose that the King of the Dinosaurs, even if there were such a thing, would be able to participate constructively.' Mammals always talked this way to show off their oversize brains— which were basically the same as ours, but burdened with a lot of useless extra business on top— useless, I should say, but darn tasty.
'But there are three kingdoms and four dinosaurs,' I pointed out. Of course this was not true in ant arithmetic, so the Queen of the Ants immediately began to make a fuss. In the end I had to go over among the ants and crush them with my tail until I had killed a few million, which is the only way that you can get an ant to take you seriously.
'Surely three dinosaurs would be enough to give all of your subjects a square meal,' I said. 'May I suggest that the birds peck Pteranodon to the bone, the shrews tear Utahraptor limb from limb, and the ants feast on the corpse of Ankylosaurus?'
The three monarchs appeared to be considering this suggestion when Utahraptor sped up in a huff. 'Excuse me, Your Royal Highnesses, but who appointed this fellow king? I am just as qualified to be king as he.' In short order, Pteranodon and Ankylosaurus also laid claim to the throne. The King of the Shrews, the King of the Birds, and the Queen of the Ants told us all to shut up, and then conferred amongst themselves for a few minutes. Finally the King of the Shrews stepped forward. 'We have reached a decision,' he said. 'Three dinosaurs will be eaten, and one, the King of the Reptiles, will be spared; all that remains is for one of you to demonstrate that you are superior to the other three and deserve to wear the crown.'
'Very well!' I said, and turned on Utahraptor, who began backing away from me, hissing and swiping the air with his giant claws. If I could dispatch Utahraptor with a frontal assault, Pteranodon would swoop down to steal some of the carrion, and I could ambush her then; having fortified myself by eating the other two, I might be strong enough to overcome Ankylosaurus.
'No, no, no!' screamed the King of the Shrews. 'This is just the kind of thing I was talking about when I said you reptiles were obsolete. It's not about who is the biggest and baddest anymore.'
'It's about cooperation, organization, regimentation,' said the Queen of the Ants.
'It's about brains,' said the King of the Shrews.
'It's about beauty, glory, dazzling flights of inspiration!' said the King of the Birds.
This precipitated another stridulent dispute among the two Kings and the Queen. Everyone got very short-tempered, and there probably would have been serious trouble if the tide had not come in and washed a few whale carcasses and dead elasmosaurs onto the beach. As you can imagine, we fell upon these gifts with abandon, and while I was eating my fill, I also managed to swallow innumerable birds, shrews, and ants who were feasting on the same pieces of meat as I.
After everyone had filled their bellies and calmed down somewhat, the Kings and the Queen resumed their discussions. Finally the King of the Shrews, who seemed to be the designated spokesmonarch, stepped forward again.
'We cannot come to an agreement as to which of you should be the King of the Reptiles, so each of our nations, Birds, Mammals, and Ants, will put each of you to a trial, and then we will gather again and put it to a vote. If the vote results in a tie, we will eat all four of you and bring the Kingdom of Reptiles to an end.'
We drew lots, and I was chosen to go among the ants for the first round of trials. I followed the Queen into the midst of her army, picking my way slowly until the Queen said, 'Step lively, lung-breather! Time is food! Don't worry about those ants beneath your feet— you can't possibly kill more than zero!' So from then on, I just walked normally, though my claws became slick with crushed ants. We traveled south for a day or two and then stopped on a stream bank. 'South of here is the territory of the King of the Cockroaches. Your first task is to bring me the head of the King.'
Looking across the river, I could see that the entire countryside was swarming with an infinite number of cockroaches, more than I could ever stomp; and even if I could stomp them all, there must be more below the ground, which was doubtless where the King lived.
I waded across the river and traveled through the Kingdom of the Cockroaches for three days until I crossed another river and entered into the Kingdom of the Bees. This place was greener than any I'd seen for a while, with many wildflowers, and bees swarmed everywhere taking nectar back to their nests, which were as big as houses.
This gave me an idea. I toppled several hollow trees filled with honey, dragged them back to the Kingdom of the Cockroaches, split them open, and made sticky honey trails leading down toward the ocean. The cockroaches followed the trails down to the water's edge, where the waves broke over their heads and drowned them. For three days I kept watch over the beach as the number of cockroaches dwindled, and finally on the third day the King of the Roaches emerged from his throne room to see where everyone had gone. I coaxed him onto a leaf and carried him back north across the river and into the Kingdom of the Ants, much to the amazement of the Queen.
Next I was put into the care of the King of the Birds. He and his chirping, chattering army led me up into the mountains, up above the snowline, and I was sure that I would freeze to death. But as we continued up, it suddenly became warmer, which I did not understand until I realized that we were approaching a live volcano. We finally stopped at the edge of a red-hot lava flow half a mile wide. In the center of the flow, a tall black rock stood out like an island in the middle of a river.
The King of the Birds plucked one golden feather from his tail and gave it to a soldier, who took it in his beak, flew over the lava, and left that feather on the very top of the black rock.
By the time that soldier flew back, he was half roasted from the heat radiating from the lava-and don't think my mouth didn't water! 'Your job,' said the King, 'is to bring me that feather.'
Now, this was clearly unfair, and I protested that the birds were obviously trying to favor Pteranodon. This kind of argument might have worked with ants or even shrews; but the King of the Birds would hear none of it. For
