Fossil Hunter

*5*

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.”

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.

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.

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.

And occasionally bird fossils, such as the one in this sketch of Babnol’s, showed some kind of bizarre frayed body covering, like stiff fern leaves with inflexible spines. This was completely unlike the simple leathery hide or scales or plates of reptiles, and completely unlike the filaments of hair that insulated wingfingers.

Toroca and others guessed that birds might have flown, but no one knew for sure, for no living bird had ever been seen. They were known only from the fossil record.

Toroca studied the sketch minutely. Babnol was talented indeed.

The cliffs along the eastern shore of Fra’toolar were the tallest in all of Land. They rose up out of the great world-spanning body of water like giant brown walls, towering toward the purple sky. A thin beach ran between them and the churning waves. Scattered along the beach were ragged chucks of rock, pebbles, and fine sands.

The entire height of the cliff face was made of thin horizontal bands, almost as if the whole thing were some impossibly thick book, and each band represented a separate page seen edge on.

The bands were all brown or brownish-gray until near the top, where some white layers appeared. Wingfingers nested in crooks in the rocks, their reptilian heads poking out, their membranous wings covered with silky fur wrapped tightly against their bodies to protect against the chill wind. The only thing marring the neat horizontal banding of the rocks was the countless white streaks caused by their droppings. But these were washed away by the frequent storms, leaving the book of stone layers scrubbed clean for a short time.

Toroca and Babnol arrived on the beach shortly after noon. Overhead, the sun, tiny and white, was visible through the silvery clouds, but none of the thirteen moons was bright enough in the daytime to be visible through the haze.

Far up ahead, they could see two other Quintaglios, barely more than green knots against the long expanse of beach, the vast cliffs, and the churning gray waters.

Toroca cupped his hands to his muzzle and called out, “Ho!” There was no response, the wind whisking the word out over the waters. He shrugged, and they trudged on farther. Eventually, Toroca sang out again, and this time the distant figures did hear him. They turned around and waved. Toroca waved back and, although exhausted from five days of hiking, picked up his pace, trotting along to join his friends. Babnol followed alongside. She stopped about fifteen paces away from the others, an appropriate distance when approaching individuals one has not met before. Toroca, though, surged in as close as six paces from the nearest of them, a distance too close by anyone’s standards. Reflexively, the other Quintaglios backed up a couple of steps.

It was Delplas and Spalton, the madness of dagamant long forgotten, Spalton’s arm regenerating nicely. “Who’s this?” said Delplas. “Surely not Dak-Forgool?”

Toroca shook his head. “Forgool is dead. Wab-Babnol here has come to join us in his place. Babnol, meet two of the best surveyors in all of Land.” His voice was full of warmth. “This reprobate is Gan-Spalton. He has a sly sense of humor, so watch yourself when around him—and only listen to him in the light of day.”

Babnol bowed. “I cast a shadow in your presence, Gan-Spalton.”

Spalton looked as though he was going to make some comment, possibly about Babnol’s horn. But, perhaps catching the expression on Toroca’s face, he said nothing, and simply bowed deeply.

“And this is Bar-Delplas.”

“Greetings,” said Babnol.

“What?” said Delplas with a click of her teeth. “No shadow-casting?”

“I’m sorry,” said Babnol. “I cast a—”

Delplas held up her hand. “If you really want to cast something near me,” she said, “let it be a net. The waters are rough here, but the fishing is excellent nonetheless. Do you like fish, Babnol?”

“I’ve rarely had any; I’m from an inland Pack.”

“Well, then you’ve only had freshwater fish. Wait till you taste true River fish!”

Babnol dipped her head. “I’m looking forward to it.”

The four of them began to amble down the beach. “You’ll meet the other four surveyors later,” Toroca said to Babnol. Then he turned to face Delplas. “Babnol is an experienced fossil hunter,” said Toroca.

“Whom did you study under?” asked Delplas.

“I’m self-taught,” said Babnol, her head once again tilted up in that haughty way.

Delplas turned toward Toroca, her face a question.

“She’s not a trained geologist,” he said, “but she’s very experienced. And she’s eager to learn.”

Delplas considered for a moment, then: “Would that more of our people shared your passion for learning, Babnol.” She bowed deeply. “Welcome to the Geological Survey of Land.”

“I’m delighted to be a part of it,” Babnol replied warmly.

“You’ll be even more delighted when you see what wonders we’ve found,” said Toroca. He faced Spalton. “Still nothing below the Bookmark layer?”

“Nothing. We’ve taken thousands of samples, and still not a single find.”

“The Bookmark layer?” said Babnol.

“Come,” said Toroca. “We’ll show you.”

They hiked farther along the beach, a few wingfingers circling overhead, and a crab occasionally scuttling across their path. Streamers of waterweeds were strewn here and there along the sands. At last they came to a small encampment consisting of a cluster of eleven small tents made out of thunderbeast hide arranged in a loose circle. A semicircular wall of stones had been built to shield them from the wind.

“This is home, at least for the next few dekadays,” said Toroca. “After that, we’ll be heading to the south pole by sailing ship; we’ve recently requisitioned one for that journey. I don’t know which ship Novato will send, but I’m sure it will be a major vessel.”

Babnol nodded.

The cliffs rose up in front of them. Babnol hadn’t been aware that her tail had been swishing back and forth to generate heat until they got here, in the lee of the stone crescent, and it suddenly stopped moving. Out of the biting wind, it was actually fairly pleasant. The sun was even peeking out from behind the clouds now.

Toroca gestured at the cliff, and Babnol let her eyes wander over its surface. She was startled to realize that way, way up the face, there were two Quintaglios, looking like tiny green spiders. “Those are two more members of our team,” said Toroca. “You’ll meet them later.”

“What are they doing?” said Babnol.

“Looking for fossils,” said Toroca.

“And is the looking good here?”

“Depends,” said Toroca, a mischievous tone in his voice. “I can tell you right now that Tralen—that’s the fellow higher up the cliff face—will find plenty, but Greeblo, the one lower down, will come up empty-handed.”

“I don’t understand,” said Babnol.

“Do you know what superposition is?” asked Spalton.

Babnol shook her head.

“My predecessor, Irb-Falpom, spent most of her life developing the theory of it,” said Toroca. “It seems intuitively obvious once it’s explained, but until Falpom, no one had understood it.” He gestured at the cliff. “You see the layers of rock?”

“Yes,” said Babnol.

“There are two main types of rock: uprock and downrock. Uprock is thrust up from the ground as lava. Basalt is an uprock.”

She nodded.

“But rain and wind and the pounding of waves cause uprock to crumble into dust. That dust is carried down to the bottom of rivers and lakes and gets compressed into downrocks, such as shale and sandstone.”

“All right.”

“Well, Falpom made the great leap: she realized that when you look at downrock layers, like the sandstone of these cliffs, the layers on the bottom are the oldest and the ones on the top are the youngest.”

“How can that be?” said Babnol. “I thought all rocks came from the second egg of creation.”

“That’s right, but they’ve changed in the time since that egg hatched. The way the rocks look today isn’t the way they were when the world was formed.”

She looked skeptical, but let him continue.

“It’s really very simple,” said Toroca. “I don’t know whether you’re a tidy person or not. I’m a bit of a slob myself, I’m sorry to say. My desk back in Capital City is covered with writing leathers and books. But I know if I’m looking for something I put on my desk recently, it will be near the top of the clutter, whereas something I set down dekadays ago will be near the bottom. It’s the same with rock layers.”

“All right,” said Babnol.

“Well, the rock layers we see here are the finest sequence in all of Land. The height of the cliffs from top to bottom represents an enormous span of kilodays, with the rock layers at the bottom representing truly ancient times.”

“Uh-huh.”

He pointed again. “You see that all the lower layers are brown or gray. If you look up, way, way up, almost nine-tenths of the way to the top, you’ll find the first layer that’s white. See it? Just a thin line?”

“Not really.”

“We’ll climb up tomorrow, and I’ll show you. The layer in question is still a good fifteen paces from the top, of course, this being a big cliff, but—ah!” Spalton had disappeared a few moments ago into one of the tents and had now emerged holding a brass tube with an ornate crest on one end. “Thank you, Spalton,” said Toroca, taking the object.

“A far-seer,” said Babnol, her voice full of wonder. “I’ve heard of them, but never seen one up close.”

“Not just any far-seer,” said Delplas, jerking her head at the instrument Toroca now held. “That’s the one Wab-Novato gave to Sal-Afsan the morning after Toroca was conceived.”

Toroca looked embarrassed. “It meant a great deal to my father,” he said, “but once he was blinded, he could no longer use it. He wanted it to still be employed in the search for knowledge, and gave it to me when I embarked on my first expedition as leader of the Geological Survey.” He proffered the device to Babnol.

She took it reverently, held the cool length in front of her with both hands, felt its weight, the weight of history. “Afsan’s far-seer…” she said with awe.

“Go ahead,” said Toroca. “Put it to your eye. Look at the cliff.”

She raised the tube. “Everything looks tiny!” she said.

Clicking of teeth from Spalton and Delplas. “That’s the wrong end,” said Toroca gently. “Try it the other way.”

She reversed the tube. “Spectacular!” She turned slowly through a half-circle. “That’s amazing!”

“You can sharpen the image by rotating the other part,” Toroca said.

“Wonderful,” breathed Babnol.

“Now, look at the cliff face.”

She turned back to the towering wall of layered downrock. “Hey! There’s—what did you say his name was?”

“If it’s the fellow in the blue sash, it’s Tralen.”

“Tralen, yes.”

“All right. Scan up the cliff face until you come to a layer of white rock. Not light brown, but actual white. You can’t miss it.”

“I don’t—wait a beat! There it is!”

“Right,” said Toroca. “That’s what we call the Bookmark layer. It’s white because it’s made of chalk. There are no chalk layers below it because there are no shells of aquatic animals below it.”

Babnol lowered the far-seer. “I don’t see the connection.”

“Chalk is made of fossilized shells,” said Delplas. “We often find beautiful shell pieces in chalk layers.”

“Oh. We have no chalk in Arj’toolar. Lots of limestone, though—which is also made from shells.”

Delplas nodded. “That’s right.”

“But here,” said Toroca, “there are no fossil shells below that first white layer.” He leaned forward. “In fact, there are no fossils of any kind beneath that first white layer.”

Babnol lifted the far-seer again, letting her circular view slide up and down the cliff face. “No fossils below,” she said slowly.

“But plenty above,” said Toroca. “There’s nothing gradual about it. Starting with that white layer, and in every subsequent layer, the rock is full of fossils.”

“Then the—what did you call it?—the Bookmark layer…”

Toroca nodded. “The Bookmark layer marks the point in our world’s history at which life was created. Drink in the sight, Babnol. You’re seeing the beginning of it all!”