Fossil Hunter Page 3

  That had changed now.

  A newsrider brought word this morning.

  Len-Ganloor, a contemporary of his mother and the governor of Edz’toolar, harshest and most isolated of the provinces, had been killed. An accident on a ceremonial hunt, apparently. Ganloor and her senior advisors had gone after a shovelmouth—such an easy kill—but a hornface herd was panicked into a stampede by their arrival. Ganloor and the rest of her party were trampled to death.

  Ganloor’s apprentice, Rodlox, Dybo’s contemporary, was now governor of Edz’toolar.

  Rodlox. He’d met him not too long ago, the last time Ganloor had come through the Capital, but Dybo couldn’t really recall him at all. Just another of the endless parade of faces that went through his court. Of course, his name no longer would be just Rodlox, but rather now must be Dy-Rodlox, the long-established custom being that governors affirmed their loyalty to the Emperor by taking a praenomen derived from his name. Dybo would have to remember to send appropriate condolences about Len-Ganloor and congratulations about Dy-Rodlox to Edz’toolar.

  Rodlox was also twenty-eight kilodays old, the same as Dybo, so the newsrider had said. Dybo was no longer the only one of his generation to hold high office.

  And that made him feel older than he was. Old and weary. There was so much yet to do, and, it seemed, so little time.

  There was a saying attributed to the ancient philosopher Keladax: time crawls for a child, walks for an adolescent, and runs for an adult. Dybo thought, yes, there was much truth in that.

  Time was indeed running.

  But more important, time was running out.

  Dybo’s advisor, Afsan, had only a rough idea of how long it would be before the world disintegrated. His best guess had been perhaps three hundred kilodays. But since he’d made that prediction, some sixteen of those kilodays had already gone by.

  Still, thought Dybo, a good start had been made. Early on, he had appointed Wab-Novato, inventor of the far-seer, as director of the effort to find a way to get the Quintaglios off their doomed world before it broke apart. And Novato had immediately set to work.

  Dybo thought back to the day, long ago, when she had come to see him in his temporary ruling room, a vestibule in one of Capital City’s many temples. He had used it until the replacement for his old palace, leveled in one of the great landquakes, had been built.

  Novato was a few kilodays older than Dybo, with a mind as sharp as a hunter’s polished claw. Dybo had been surprised by the new sash she had worn that day, although now it had become famous throughout Land. The sash crossed from her left shoulder to her right hip, and consisted of two parallel strips of dyed leather, the lower one green, the upper black. Dybo had later learned that these colors symbolized the exodus project, representing the move from verdant Land into the darkness of the night sky.

  On that day, back in the temporary ruling room, Novato had begun by saying, “We need to take stock of our resources.”

  Dybo liked Novato a lot but often couldn’t see what she was getting at. “What?” he had replied.

  She leaned back on her tail. “We need a complete catalog of raw materials, a list of everything that we’ve got to work with.”

  Dybo spread his arms. “But I’ve already said that you may use anything anywhere on Land, if it will help the exodus project. You’ve got access to everything already.”

  Novato bowed deeply. “And I thank you for that, Your Luminance, but, forgive me, you are missing my point. I need to know exactly what’s out there: exactly what rocks and ore and crystals and types of wood and so on are available, where they are found, and how easy they will be to collect and use.”

  “You mean a—what is the word?—an inventory? Of all of Land?”

  “An inventory, yes, and a survey. There are so many parts that have never been really explored. Much of the southern region of Edz’toolar province remains unmapped. Most of the great plains of Mar’toolar are barren of life, but may be rich in metals. Some of the small islands in the Downriver Archipelago have never even been visited.”

  “But such a survey would take kilodays.”

  “Aye, it would. But we need that information.”

  “So you’ll know what rocks are available?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And who would be in charge of this survey?” asked Dybo.

  “I imagine there would be several teams,” said Novato, “but Irb-Falpom, the palace land surveyor, seems the right choice for leading the principal expedition.”

  “A kindly soul, and a keen mind. All right, Falpom it shall be.” And indeed, it was Falpom for fifteen kilodays, until she died of old age, and her young apprentice Toroca, one of Afsan and Novato’s children, took over. But, back on that long-ago day when he had first approved the Geological Survey, Dybo had commented, “But surely, Novato, you must realize that this survey will take ages to complete.”

  “I do,” she had said.

  “So, what, may I ask, will you be doing in the interim?”

  “Me?” Novato had replied, a look of utter seriousness on her face. “I’m going to learn how to fly.”

  Chapter 5

  Fra’toolar

  As Babnol and Toroca hiked along, heading south to join up with the Geological Survey team, Toroca quietly contemplated Babnol’s nose horn.

  All Quintaglio children were born with horns on their muzzles—birthing horns, they were called—to help them break out of their shells. But these were always lost within a few days of hatching. Babnol’s, for some reason, had not been. Instead, she’d retained the horn into adulthood. It wasn’t unattractive, just startling, a fluted cone of yellow-white bone projecting up. It must interfere with Babnol’s field of vision, Toroca thought, but then so did his own muzzle—one gets used to the parts of one’s face that block vision.

  Perhaps Babnol had tried to have it removed, and maybe it regenerated, just like other body parts. Complex structures such as eyes and organs couldn’t regenerate, but a simple bony growth like that might very well come back.

  It was funny, in a way. Although Toroca had never regenerated any body part, it had always been comforting to know that should he lose a finger or toe or piece of his tail, it would regrow. But how frustrating to have an outlandish protuberance coming out of one’s face and not even be able to hack it off. The thing would just keep coming back, time and again.

  Toroca would have thought that a facial horn would make Babnol look docile. After all, only hornfaces had such things, and they were dull-witted plant-eaters. But a horn on the muzzle of a carnivore had an entirely different effect. It made Babnol look formidable. And, indeed, the way she carried herself, with her muzzle often tipped up in a haughty fashion, gave her quite an air of power and authority.

  Toroca wondered what would cause a growth such as this horn. He’d heard of birth defects, but rarely saw them. The culling by the bloodpriest tended to eliminate those, but Babnol’s affliction was one that wouldn’t have been apparent at that time, since all egglings have a birthing horn.

  A birthing horn on an adult. How bizarre! Toroca’s mother, to, had told him that when she had lived with Pack Gelbo, she had worked in the same abandoned temple building that housed two young savants who had bred thousands upon thousands of little lizards, studying the inheritance of traits. They’d proven that offspring often have essentially the same characteristics as their parents. Although there was no way to determine who Babnol’s parents actually were, Toroca probably would have heard stories or gossip about other adults who had such a horn.

  But that meant—

  No, ridiculous.

  And yet…

  Could Babnol have a characteristic that wasn’t present in her parents? How could that be? A spontaneous appearance of some new quality, some novelty? What would give rise to such novelties?

  The hike was long, the terrain rocky. Babnol would come close to Toroca for a while, they’d talk a bit, then territoriality would get the better of her, and she’d fall
off to the rear or speed up to put some distance between her and him. Toroca usually looked forward to the times when she was willing to talk: it made the trip go more quickly. On one such occasion, though, she startled him with her boldness. “Forgive my impertinence for asking,” she said, “but it’s well-known that you are Afsan’s…”

  “Son,” said Toroca. “The word is ‘son.’”

  “Afsan’s son, yes. And Novato’s, too.”

  “That’s right.”

  Babnol looked fascinated. “I don’t mean to pry, but what’s it like, knowing your parents?”

  Toroca was a bit taken aback at this, but he was going to spend much time with Babnol, so he decided to answer her question. “It’s interesting. Strange. All things being equal, I think I’d prefer not to know who they are.”

  “Oh?” She seemed surprised. “I’ve spent some time idly wondering who my parents might have been. I’ve got the father narrowed down to three possibilities, I think, back in Pack Vando. The mother’s more elusive. I’m not obsessed with knowing, you understand. But I’d think it would be satisfying to know.”

  “It’s…it’s not. Not really.”

  She turned her muzzle to face him. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, perhaps it would be different for you,” said Toroca. “Forgive me; this is going to sound callous. You see, my parents aren’t just any two people. They are Sal-Afsan and Wab-Novato, the one who discovered the nature of the world and the one who invented the far-seer and now leads the exodus. Great people, famous throughout Land.”

  “They are indeed.”

  “You know the old greeting, ‘I cast a shadow in your presence’?”

  “Sure.”

  “Afsan is blind; I doubt he’s aware of how luminous he is. I’m—I’m washed out, lost in his glare. And in my mother’s. People judge me differently. They know where I came from, and they expect great things from me. It’s…it’s a burden.”

  “Oh, I’m sure no one gives it any thought.”

  “You do, Babnol. You asked me what it was like knowing my parents. In fact, one could take that question two ways: what’s it like knowing who your parents are? Or what’s it like knowing Afsan and Novato? I do know them both, you know. Indeed, Novato is my overseer on this survey project. It’s not just in the eyes of strangers that I see the implied message that, oh, he’s Afsan and Novato’s child; he must do great things. I see it from them—from my mother and father. They expect much of me. It’s not like I have just duty to the Emperor and duty to my Pack and duty to my profession. It’s as though I have an additional duty to them, to live up to their expectations.”

  Babnol scratched the side of her neck. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “So you can see that it is a burden, this knowledge of one’s personal ancestors.”

  “But you will do great things…” began Babnol.

  Toroca grunted. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  Musings of The Watcher

  Life seemed to be taking hold on the Crucible. For an eternity, it was all unicellular. After that, small groupings of cells began to appear. And then a miracle happened, an explosion of complexity and diversity, with more than fifty different fundamental body plans appearing almost simultaneously. One had five eyes and a flexible trunk. Another had seven pairs of stilt legs and seven waving arms. A third had a central nervous cord running the length of its tube-like body. A fourth looked like two perpendicular hoops of segmented tissue joined together.

  I knew how evolution worked on this world. Only a handful of the forms would survive. This time my task was even harder, for I wanted to seed samples of all these forms on different worlds, hoping that on each one a different body plan would emerge triumphant.

  The bombardment of meteors that characterized the early days of this solar system had slowed to almost nothing by now. Even if it hadn’t, there’s no way such delicate creatures would survive being tossed into the firmament and then sailing unprotected through the cold of space for vast spans of time. No, I needed another approach.

  A planet’s gravity well is steep, but it’s not a real barrier. Although it took me thousands of Crucible years to do it, I extended corkscrew filaments of dark matter into the seas of the Crucible, and then set the filaments to spinning, drawing up into orbit water teeming with tiny lifeforms. Within the screws the water was kept warm, insulated by the dark matter itself, but when it popped out at the top into the vacuum of space, it flash-froze, sealing the life within into tumbling blocks of ice.

  Many of the asteroids that had orbits near that of the Crucible were really dead comets, covered with a dusty crust that prevented them from developing tails. I coated the ice arks in the same way and gave them gentle pushes, launching them on million-year-long journeys to other stars, where watery worlds awaited them.

  When they at last reached their destinations, their courses having been periodically adjusted by me with gentle gravitational tugs, the blocks were recaptured and slowly lowered on new dark-matter corkscrews into the alien, lifeless seas. The ice melted and the precious cargo within thawed out. Of course, most of the creatures had not survived the freezing, but some specimens did. Since there was as yet little genetic diversity amongst these lifeforms, I needed only a few survivors to make a viable breeding stock.

  In the time it had taken for this long journey, most of the fifty-odd body plans had become extinct on the Crucible, the initial shaking-out period there lasting even less time than I’d feared. But here, in alien seas, some of them had another chance at life.

  A Quintaglio’s Diary

  I saw one of my brothers today. It always takes me aback slightly when I run into one of them. Everyone says we look alike, and that does seem to be true. There’s a resemblance, a similarity about the face, a likeness of build. It’s a bit like seeing oneself in a mirror, or reflected in still water.

  And yet, the resemblance goes beyond the merely physical, of that I’m sure. There was a moment today when I looked at my brother and could tell by the expression on his face that he was thinking the same thing I was. It was an irreverent thought, the kind one normally keeps private: Emperor Dy-Dybo happened to be walking by where the two of us were standing. He was wearing one of those ceremonial robes. I always thought they were dangerous—one’s feet could get tangled up in them. Indeed, just as he passed us, Dybo tripped. The robe billowed up around him and he looked like a fat wingfinger, too big to take off. I glanced over at my brother and saw a little bunching of his jaw muscles, a sure sign that, like me, he was making an effort to keep his teeth from clicking together. He tipped his muzzle toward me, and I knew, just as I’m sure he knew, that we were sharing the same thought.

  I’ve had that experience with other people before, too, of course, but never so often nor so intensely as when I’m with one of my siblings.

  It’s a very strange feeling. Indeed, one might even call it disconcerting.

  Fra’toolar

  Talking with Babnol about his parents had gotten Toroca thinking about the bloodpriests, and that brought back fears that he’d thought were long buried. Babnol and he still had two more days of hiking until they would join up with the survey team. They slept on high ground, under the dancing moons, the great sky river shimmering overhead. Babnol, a dozen paces away, was fast asleep; Toroca could hear the gentle hissing of her breathing. But Toroca himself could not sleep. He lay awake beneath the stars, thinking about the disciples of Mekt, the bloodpriest who swallowed hatchlings whole.

  Most Quintaglios gave the bloodpriests little thought, and their exact role in society was rarely spoken of out loud. But Toroca had become fascinated with them, had been driven to learn all he could about them, precisely because he and his brothers and sisters had not had to face them.

  Eight eggs to a clutch.

  Seven of every eight children devoured within a day or two of hatching, tiny bodies, still brilliant green or yellow, eyes barely opened, sliding down the gullet of a male priest
, a comparative giant, clad in purple robes.

  The egglings were doubtless horrified, their brief tenures in this life ending in screams of terror.

  Except it wouldn’t have gone that way for him. He was Toroca. Toroca who didn’t fear other people. Toroca who seemed to have no territorial instinct. Toroca who would have sat there, staring in awe, at the apparition of the priest, but who would not have run away.

  He would have been the first to have been devoured.

  During the long hike back to join his survey team, Toroca and Babnol stopped several times to rest. Babnol had few belongings with her, but one she did have was a sketchbook, containing studies in charcoal and graphite of many of the fossils she’d collected over the kilodays.

  “I’m always tempted to keep intriguing pieces for myself,” she said, “but my Pack needed many things, and the fossils were always popular in trading. Our sandstones are very, very fine: we get fossils showing all sorts of detail normally not visible.” She opened up the little book, its soft leather cover flopping over. “Anyway, I make sketches of the nicest ones before I put them out on the trading tables.” She thumbed the pages. “Here,” she said, passing the book across to him. “This is the nicest bird I ever found.”

  Birds. No one knew exactly what they were, since all that remained of them were their tiny, hollow bones preserved in rock. To the untrained eye, they seemed at first glance to be small carnivorous reptiles. But they had beaks and breastbone keels, characteristics associated with wingfingers—although wingfingers had no tails, and bird fossils usually did.

  But they couldn’t be wingfingers, these birds. A wingfinger’s wing was a membrane, supported along its leading edge by the vastly elongated fourth finger. Bird wings, however, were supported by a variety of bones, including the lower arm and the bones that would have comprised the second finger—none of a bird’s digits had claws, so it was thought that none of them actually emerged from the wing structure to be true fingers. Birds also lacked the wingfinger’s little backward-pointing lifter bone on the wrist, which supported a small leading membrane flap that connected to the torso at the base of the neck.