Fossil Hunter

*6*

I get tired of spending time with my siblings. It’s strange, because I have no idea how I should react. With others, my territorial instinct seems to operate properly. I know, without thinking, when I should get out of someone’s way and when I can reasonably expect someone to yield to me. But with my brothers and sisters, it’s different. Sometimes I feel as though their presence, no matter how close, doesn’t bother me in the least. At other times, I find myself challenging their territory for no good reason at all. That they are exactly the same age as me—neither younger nor older, neither bigger nor smaller—makes all standard protocols based on age and size meaningless.

It’s confusing, so very confusing. I wish I knew how to behave.

It was an eerie place, a place of the dead.

Ancient cathedral, ancient cemetery, ancient calendar—the debates raged on among the academics. All that remained were ninety-four granite boulders, strewn—or so it seemed at first glance—across a field of tall grasses, a field that ended in a sheer drop, edged with crumbling marl, plummeting to the great world-spanning body of water far below.

But the boulders, as one could clearly see when their positions were plotted, were not strewn. They were arranged, laid out in geometric patterns, lines drawn between them forming hexagons and pentagons, triangles, and perfect squares.

Rockscape, it was called: a minor tourist attraction, a site that most first-time visitors to Capital City made sure to see, proof that long before the current city had been built, Quintaglios had inhabited this area. Some claimed the rocks represented sacrificial altars on which the earliest Lubalites had practiced their cannibalistic ways. That was an easy theory to believe. The wind sometimes shrieked across the field like the doleful wails of those offered up to placate a God who was making the land tremble.

Afsan often came here, straddling a particular boulder, the one the historians referred to as Sun/Swift-Runner/4 but that everyone else had come to call simply Afsan’s rock. This was his place, a place for quiet contemplation, introspection, and deep thought.

Afsan could find his way here as easily at night as in the day, but he never did so. Indeed, he rarely came out at all after sunset. It was unbearable for him. To know that the stars—the glorious, glorious stars—were arching overhead was too much. Of all the sights he would never see again, Afsan missed the night sky most.

The great landquake of kiloday 7110 had left much of Capital City in ruins. In its aftermath, most of the Lubalites had gone into hiding again. Officially, no record was kept of who had been identified as a member of that ancient sect, and even unofficially little concern was paid to it. Oh, there were those who called for retribution, but Dybo declared an amnesty. After all, when he made the public announcement that he agreed with Afsan that Larsk was a false prophet, he couldn’t very well penalize those who had refused to worship Larsk earlier. Jal-Tetex was permitted to remain on as imperial hunt leader, although she died eventually, in exactly the way she would have liked to—on the hunt. The lanky Pal-Cadool stayed in favor with the palace, although he was reassigned from being chief butcher to personal assistant to Afsan, a role he had unofficially held anyway since the blinded Afsan had been released from prison.

Afsan, whom some had called The One, the hunter foretold by Lubal, who would lead the Quintaglios on the greatest hunt of all.

Some still believed Afsan to be this—and, indeed, some took the exodus to be the hunt Lubal had spoken of. Others who had believed it once, had grown less and less convinced of it as time went by. Afsan, after all, had not hunted in kilodays. And others still, of course, had always scoffed at the suggestion that Afsan was The One.

Cadool did his best to make Afsan’s life comfortable. Afsan often sent Cadool to run errands or do things that he could not himself, and that meant that Afsan was often alone.

Alone, that is, except for Gork.

“It’ll help look after you,” Cadool had said. Afsan had been dubious. As a youngster with Pack Carno, he had kept pet lizards, but Gork was awfully big to be considered a pet. It was about half Afsan’s own size. Afsan had never seen such a creature before he had been blinded, so he really had only an approximate idea of what Gork looked like. Its hide was dark gray, like slate, according to Cadool, and it constantly tasted the air with a flicking bifurcated tongue. Gork was quite tame, and Afsan had petted it up and down its leathery hide. The reptile’s limbs sprawled out in a push-up posture. Its head was flat and elongated. Its tail was thick and flattened, and it worked from side to side as Gork walked.

Gork gladly wore a leather harness and led Afsan around, always choosing a safe path for its master, avoiding rocks and gutters and dung. Afsan found himself growing inordinately fond of the beast and ascribed to it all sorts of advanced qualities, including at least a rudimentary intelligence.

He was surprised that such pets weren’t more common. It was in some ways pleasant to spend time with another living, breathing creature that didn’t trigger the territorial instinct. Although Gork was cold-blooded, and therefore not very energetic, it was still fast enough as a guide for Afsan, given how slowly Afsan walked most of the time, nervous about tripping.

Afsan and Gork, alone, out among the ancient boulders, wind whipping over them, until—

“Eggling!” A deep and gravelly voice.

Afsan lifted his head up and turned his empty eye sockets toward the sound. It couldn’t be…

“Eggling!” the voice called again, closer now.

Afsan got up off his rock and began to walk toward the approaching visitor. “That’s a voice I haven’t heard in kilodays,” he said, surprise and warmth in his tone. “Var-Keenir is that you?”

“Aye.”

They approached each other as closely as territoriality would allow. “I cast a shadow in your presence,” said Keenir.

Afsan clicked his teeth. “I’ll have to take your word for that. Keenir, it’s grand to hear your voice!”

“And it’s wonderful to see you, good thighbone,” said Keenir, his rough tones like pebbles chafing together. “You’re still a scrawny thing, though.”

“I don’t anticipate that changing,” said Afsan, with another clicking of teeth.

“Aye, it must be in your nature, since I’m sure that at Emperor Dybo’s table there’s always plenty of food.”

“That there is. Tell me how you’ve been.”

The old mariner’s words were so low they were difficult to make out over the wind, even for Afsan, whose hearing had grown very acute since the loss of his sight. “I’m fine,” said Keenir. “Oh, I begin to feel my age, and, except for my regenerated tail, my skin is showing a lot of mottling, but that’s to be expected.”

Indeed, thought Afsan, for Keenir had now outlived his creche-mate, Tak-Saleed, by some sixteen kilodays. “What brings you to the Capital?”

“The Dasheter.”

Afsan clicked his teeth politely. “Everyone’s a comedian. I mean, what business are you up to?”

“Word went out that a ship was needed for a major voyage. I’ve come to get the job.”

“You want to sail to the south pole?”

“Aye, why not? I’ve been close enough to see the ice before, but we never had the equipment for a landing. The Dasheter is still the finest ship in the world, eggling. It’s had a complete overhaul. And, if you’ll forgive an oldster a spot of immodesty, you won’t find a more experienced captain.”

“That much is certain. You know that it is my son Toroca who will be leading the Antarctic expedition?”

“No, I did not know that. But it’s even more fitting. His very first water voyage was aboard the Dasheter, when we brought Novato and your children to Capital City all those kilodays ago. And Toroca took his pilgrimage with me three or four kilodays ago.”

“We don’t call it a pilgrimage anymore.”

“Aye, but I’m set in my ways. Still, not having to bring along that bombastic priest, Bleen, does make the voyage more pleasant.”

Afsan actually thought that Bleen wasn’t a bad sort, as priests went. He said nothing, though.

“Where is Toroca now?” asked Keenir.

“According to his last report, he’s finishing up some studies on the eastern shore of Fra’toolar. He’s expecting a ship to rendezvous with his team there, near the tip of the Cape of Mekt.”

“Very good,” said Keenir. “Whom do I see about getting this job?”

“The sailing voyage is part of the Geological Survey of Land. That comes under the authority of Wab-Novato, director of the exodus.”

“Novato? I’m certain to get the job, then, I daresay.”

Afsan clicked his teeth. “No doubt,” and then, in a moment of sudden exuberance, he stepped closer to the old mariner. “By the very fangs of God, Keenir, it’s good to be with you again!”

At last, other intellects! At last, intelligent life native to this iteration of the universe.

It had arisen not on the Crucible, but rather on one of the worlds to which I had transplanted earlier lifeforms. I’d been right: body plans other than those that would have survived the initial weeding of natural selection on the Crucible had the potential for sentience.

They called themselves Jijaki collectively, and each individual was a Jijak.

A Jijak had five phosphorescent eyes, each on a short stalk, arranged in one row of three and a lower row of two. A long flexible trunk depended from the face just below the lower row of eyes. The trunk was made up of hundreds of hard rings held together by tough connective tissue. It ended in a pair of complex cup-shaped manipulators that faced each other. The manipulators could be brought together so that they made one large grasping claw, or they could be spread widely apart, exposing six small appendages within each cup.

The creature’s torso, made of fifteen disk-like segments, was held at a forty-five-degree angle. In a dissected creature, the disks could be seen to have complex spokes and buttresses running into their centers, these crosspieces making up the skeletal support for the internal organs. Each of the disks, except the first, had a triangular breathing hole on each side.

The surface of the disks had an opalescent sheen. When a Jijak was moving in the dark, little white sparks, caused by a muscular-chemical reaction, could be seen flashing in the connective tissue exposed as the disks separated.

About halfway down the underside of the torso there was an indentation containing a mouth-sphincter. The trunk was sufficiently long and flexible to easily move food there.

Wrapping around the rear of the torso was a horizontally held U-shaped brace from which six legs—three on each side—angled forward. Only the front pair of legs normally touched the ground. Each of the other two pairs was successively shorter and much less robust. They were used only in mating, in digging holes for depositing eggs, and in certain sporting activities.

I’m surprised at how body plans endure through vast spans of time. Although infinitely more complex and dozens of times bigger than their distant ancestors from the Crucible’s early seas, the basic architecture of a Jijak was much the same as that of the creature I had taken from there. Oh, that tiny being had been aquatic, instead of land-living; had compound instead of single-lens eyes, and its eyes were on the opposite side of the head from the trunk; it had had only a simple pincer at the trunk’s end; wing-like gills had projected from its body segments, and six paddle-like rudders, instead of articulated legs, made up its tail. But the fundamental architecture of these Jijaki was indeed obviously based on this ancient plan.

It was high time I introduced myself to them.