Fossil Hunter

*7*

Toroca had learned to fake the appropriate responses. It was expected behavior, and he had quickly discovered that life was so much easier if one responded as expected. He couldn’t remember the last time his claws had distended of their own accord, but, when the situation warranted, he could force them from their sheaths, force the tapered yellow-white points out into the light of day, force himself to look like a hunter, a killer.

But he was neither of those things. Oh, he had gone on his first ritual hunt—and had been amazed at the bloodiness of the affair, the viciousness of the others in his pack—for to be an adult who did not bear the hunter’s tattoo over his left earhole would mean he would be shunned by society, reduced to a life of begging.

He didn’t want that.

But he didn’t want to ever again taste blood that was still warm, either. One hunt had been enough.

Toroca had seen the abandoned stone buildings near the edge of the towering brown cliffs when they’d first arrived here, and his team hiked all the way up to them for shelter when storms made it impossible to camp out on the beach. Today, though, the weather was fine. Toroca and Babnol had simply come up to the old buildings to fetch the equipment they had stored there, as they prepared for the rendezvous with the sailing ship that would take them to the south pole.

The buildings were made out of stone blocks. Doubtless the walls had originally been straight, but over the kilodays landquakes or other forces had caused them to bulge here, to buckle there. Some of the walls had faint paintings on them, primitive in style, showing Quintaglios solely in profile, backs held halfway between horizontal and vertical, two arms dangling down, looking like they were mounted on the body one atop the other—the attempt at perspective was crude, and the “upper” arm was always in exactly the same position as the “lower” one. Tails were long and impossibly straight, and faces showed one black Quintaglio eye staring out from the side of the head, instead of facing forward. Toroca noted that the Quintaglios in the frescoes were wearing broad belts, but no sashes. He wondered how old the paintings were.

A guttural scream split the air.

Toroca and Babnol ran for the doorway of the building they’d been in, and came out into the light of day. Toroca scanned all around, looking for the source of the sound, but—

“There!” shouted Babnol.

Toroca wheeled. Off toward the north, a group of Quintaglio hunters had descended on a hornface. The four-footed beast had its head tipped low, the massive frill of bone at the back of its skull rising up like a shield, the two horns above the eyes thrusting out like lances, the shorter, slightly curved horn above the nose sticking proudly up.

The animal screamed again as a mid-sized Quintaglio female leapt onto its back and, holding on to the edge of the neck frill for balance, dug her jaws into the bunching muscles of the shoulder. The ground was now slick with blood.

The hunters made short work of the hornface. In a matter of moments, it was dead, the corpse teetering for a moment, then falling onto its left side with a great leathery slapping sound.

It was wise to wait until hunters were satiated before approaching them. Toroca and Babnol did just that, watching long muzzles scoop out great hunks of meat. A flock of wingfingers circled over the kill. They, too, were waiting. Once the hunters had begun to collapse onto their bellies, Toroca moved out of the doorway and ambled over to them. “Permission to enter your territory?” he called out.

An elderly female looked up. “Hahat dan,” she replied. “But, you are right—this is indeed our territory. What are you doing here?”

Toroca stopped well short of the site of the kill and bowed. “I am Kee-Toroca,” he said. “Leader of the Geological Survey of Land.”

The female gestured to her hunting partners. “Get up, friends. We have an imperial emissary amongst us.” The others staggered to their feet, then leaned back on their tails for balance. “I’m Fas-Jodor,” she said, “and these are the best hunters of Pack Derrilo.”

“Greetings,” said Toroca. He indicated Babnol. “This is Wab-Babnol, a trader in fossils.”

“You’ll have to collect old Jodor before you go,” said one of the hunters, and the others clicked teeth at the jest. Babnol nodded good-naturedly.

“Pack Derrilo is returning to this area,” said Jodor.

“This is part of your normal range?” said Toroca.

“It is, and of Packs Horbo and Quebelmo. Horbo vacated here about five kilodays ago, heading west along the bottom of the Cape of Mekt, then back up the west side. We’ve been working our way down the east side from the north.” Packs roamed, moving from place to place, lest an area be overhunted. It was not unusual for ancient settlements such as this one to play host to several Packs in rotation, with long periods of vacancy in between. “The hunting had gotten quite sparse by the time Pack Horbo cleared out,” said Jodor. “But, as you can see, things seem to have improved in the interim.” She slapped her belly.

Toroca nodded. It was normal ritual for a hunting party to precede the caravans with the rest of the Pack’s people and goods, and for the hunters to consecrate the ground with a traditional kill as a way of reclaiming the vacant territory.

“We’re just leaving ourselves,” said Toroca, “by sailing ship.”

“Surely you’ll stay until the rest of our Pack arrives,” said Jodor. “They’d like to see people from the Capital.”

“We’d enjoy that, but I’m afraid we’re on a tight schedule. We have a rendezvous to make on a specific date.”

Jodor nodded. “Unfortunate. But walk with me now, Toroca. There’s one more ritual I have to perform. Babnol, you can join us, or partake of some of the kill, whichever you prefer.”

Babnol looked at the hornface carcass. “Thank you, no. That particular kind is not to my taste. I’ll walk with you.”

Jodor began walking, and Babnol and Toroca, spread out in a line with five paces between each of them, followed.

“ ‘Geological Survey,’ ” said Jodor. “What’s that mean, exactly?”

“Geology is the study of the history and structure of our world,” said Toroca.

“Hmm,” said Jodor. “Seems a rather frivolous task, if you don’t mind me saying so. I thought all scientific efforts were being bent toward the exodus.”

“Oh, this survey is indeed in support of getting us off this moon,” Toroca said. “I report directly to Wab-Novato, leader of that effort. Our goal is to find and catalog all the resources that Land—and indeed this entire world—has to offer. We have to know exactly what’s available to work with.”

“Ah,” said Jodor. “That makes sense. So you’re strictly looking for minerals—coal, metals, and the like.”

They were getting close to the edge of the cliff now. “Well, that’s the main task, but while we’re at it, we’re indulging our curiosity in other matters. I’m particularly interested in fossils myself.”

“Fossils?”

“Remains of ancient life. Stone bones and shells and such.”

“Oh, so that’s what Gatabor meant a moment ago,” said Jodor. “Funny guy.”

Before them was an ancient salabaja tree, its trunk as wide as Toroca was tall, its branches thick and gnarled, its dark brown bark massively corrugated. Jodor extended a claw and walked right up to the tree. She began to carve something into the bark, the movements of her finger digging out little pieces. There were several designs already carved into the tree’s trunk.

Toroca, hands on hips, looked out over the edge of the cliff. The tree was right on the lip; in fact, some of its roots were exposed at the edge. As far out as he could see, there was only choppy gray water, and yet, he knew, somewhere far, far to the south, there was the icy polar cap. Looking straight down, he almost succumbed to vertigo. The massive cliff face dropped away from him, curving out slightly, several chalk layers visible here, near the top, including the Bookmark layer, and then, continuing on, down, down to the beach far below, barren layer after layer of brown sandstone. On the beach, he could see Spalton and Tralen dismantling the tents—he could only tell who it was because those were the people he’d assigned that task to; the Quintaglios looked like nothing more than green specks from this dizzying height.

Toroca turned back to Jodor. Babnol was watching her intently. “What are you doing?” she said at last.

Jodor had almost finished a complex design in the bark. It was the same as one of the designs that were already present; in fact, looking more closely, Toroca saw that there were only three designs in total, but each one appeared in several different places.

“This is the emblem of my Pack,” said Jodor. “Upon returning to this area, I always make our symbol here, in this old salabaja, then mark the date. The other two are the emblems of Packs Horbo and Quebelmo.”

Toroca counted. There seemed to be about ten of each symbol. “You’ll have to find a new tree soon enough,” said Toroca absently. “This one’s almost over the edge.”

Jodor looked up. “It’s always been like that.”

“But the cliff face is eroding away…” said Toroca.

“Eroding?”

“Crumbling to sand. That’s what the beach is made of: sand that weathered out of the rocks of the cliff face.”

Jodor looked impressed. “Is that a fact?”

“So this tree must have been farther back from the edge originally,” said Babnol.

“Not that I can recall,” said Jodor.

“Oh, it’s a gradual process, to be sure,” said Toroca.

Jodor shook her head. “See that branch there? See the way it sticks out over the cliff face?”

Toroca nodded.

“When I was a youngster, that used to be the great stunt: climb up the tree, then crawl out along that branch, so that there was nothing except it between you and the sheer drop down to the beach.”

Toroca’s inner eyelids fluttered. “It was that close to the edge when you were a child?”

“Uh-huh. And I’ll save you the trouble of asking. Yes, I’m as old as I look. I hatched forty-seven kilodays ago.”

“And you’re sure that the branch stuck over the edge even when you were very young?”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” said Jodor, pleased to be dumbfounding the fellow from the big city. “In fact, my old creche master caught me crawling out onto that branch once. He gave me a stern talking-to, I’ll tell you, but then he had to admit that he’d done the same thing back when he’d been a boy. He was almost as old then as I am now, so that means it’s been right up at the edge for at least a hundred kilodays.”

“A hundred kilodays,” said Toroca. He held out an arm to steady himself against the massive, ancient tree trunk.

Babnol looked startled, too. “But the first sacred scroll says the world is only five thousand kilodays old. If a hundred kilodays can pass with next to no visible retreating of the cliff edge, Toroca, how long would it take to erode enough rock to make all the sand on that beach?”

Toroca looked back over the edge, as if some trick must be involved that proper scrutiny would reveal. “During our stay here, we dug very deep indeed on the beach,” he said. “We must have gone down ten paces, and the bottom of the sand was nowhere in sight.”

He looked again at the tree, gnarled, proud. “A hundred kilodays, and no visible progress.” He turned to Jodor. “A hundred kilodays is about two percent of the age of the world,” he said, “according to the scrolls.”

Jodor seemed unconcerned. She was just finishing chiseling today’s date into the bark beneath the emblem she’d carved. “So?”

“So if the erosion is that slow, it would take more than five thousand kilodays to accumulate that much sand.”

Jodor clicked her teeth. “I see the mistake you’re making,” she said. “The first sacred scroll was written over two thousand kilodays ago. That means there have been seven thousand, not five thousand, kilodays since the world was created.”

Toroca shook his head. “It’s not enough. It’s off by—by orders of magnitude.”

“What are ‘orders of magnitude’?” asked Jodor.

“Powers of ten. Seven thousand kilodays wouldn’t be enough. Tubers, seventy thousand kilodays wouldn’t be enough, either.”

Jodor still seemed to be unconcerned. “If this wasn’t stormy Fra’toolar, I’d say you’d been out in the sun too long, Toroca. We know the world is seven thousand kilodays old; therefore, whatever process you’re concerned about could not have taken longer than seven thousand kilodays to occur.”

Toroca dipped his head. “I’m sure you’re right,” he said. But then he swung around, looking out over the panorama visible from the top of the cliff, before Jodor could see his muzzle turn blue with the liar’s tint.