Fossil Hunter

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “Perhaps not.”

  “I know you are not.”

  “I have never made a claim either way.”

  “You know you are not.”

  Afsan made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “I don’t play up the suggestion, but if some support the exodus because they feel that it is the great hunt foretold by Lubal, I do nothing to dissuade them. Regardless, my children were a special case, made with full public knowledge. The deceit practiced by The Family was something quite different: an attempt to control all of Land. But the circumstances were reversed. The palace advisors deceived The Family, in an attempt to wrest control from Larsk’s descendants and vest it in themselves. You now have a chance to rectify that: to put an end to the deceit, to eliminate the advisors who have corrupted the government, to establish once and for all your right to lead.”

  “What you suggest is radical.”

  “This is not the first time I’ve made a radical suggestion.”

  “No, no, I suppose not.” Dybo leaned against one of the boulders, weary. “There is no other way?”

  “The only alternative is the one you’ve already mentioned. You could abdicate. Let Rodlox take over. It would mean the end of our people, though—the death of our race.”

  Dybo looked thoughtful. “I try to keep the welfare of all Quintaglios in mind, of course,” he said quickly, “but, um, what do you suppose would become of me if I did choose to abdicate?”

  “You’d be sent into exile, I’d imagine,” said Afsan. “There’s plenty of land on the southern shore of Edz’toolar where you could hunt and live and study in absolute peace.” A pause. “Or so High Priest Det-Yenalb once told me.”

  “What?”

  “Kilodays ago, when you had me held prisoner in the palace basement, Yenalb came to visit me. He offered me safe passage from the Capital, under his protection, if only I would disappear and never again speak my so-called heresies.”

  “I didn’t know about that. And you turned him down?”

  “Yes.”

  “This was before…?”

  “Before my eyes were put out? Yes.”

  “You turned down a safe way out?”

  “I had no choice. The world’s survival depended on making the people understand what I’d come to know.”

  “Yenalb’s offer must have tempted you.”

  “More than you know. But one must not shirk responsibilities, Dybo, especially if one is to lead.”

  “If I don’t answer Rodlox’s challenge, continued infighting will distract us from the task at hand.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I do answer the challenge, and Rodlox wins, he will cancel the exodus attempt.”

  “Yes.”

  “And our people will die.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I must not only accept the challenge, I must win it,” said Dybo. “I have no choice, do I?”

  Afsan turned his blind eyes on his friend. “That’s the funny thing about being a leader, Dybo: you rarely do.”

  Chapter 13

  Fra’toolar

  Babnol kept watching the horizon. The sun had long since risen from it and was now making its usual fast progress across the bowl of the purple sky. The waves were choppy, as always, and as gray as stone.

  Toroca came near her. “Looking for our ship?”

  Babnol nodded.

  “It could show up anytime today, or tomorrow for that matter.”

  “I know.”

  “But you’re anxious to leave this place?”

  “Since Pack Derrilo returned, it has been awfully crowded around here.”

  “It will be even more crowded aboard whatever ship they send for us.”

  “I suppose…but at least it will be a different crowd. That will help.”

  Toroca understood none of this, but nodded anyway. “The voyage should be quite exciting,” he said.

  Babnol scanned the horizon again. “I suppose. It depends—Look!”

  She pointed. Out where the sky met the waves there was something. “It’s a ship,” said Toroca, squinting.

  “Our ship,” said Babnol. She had the far-seer with her and brought it to her eye. “It’s a big one.”

  “The sails look red,” said Toroca.

  “Yes,” she said, squinting. “Four great red sails. And two hulls, connected by a joining piece, it looks like.”

  “May I see?” asked Toroca.

  Babnol handed him the brass tube.

  “I know that ship!” said Toroca. “Babnol, this is going to be a very interesting voyage indeed. We’re about to sail on a piece of history.”

  Var-Keenir anchored the mighty Dasheter offshore, and small landing boats were used to transfer Toroca, Babnol, and the rest of the surveyors on board.

  It hadn’t been that long since Toroca had taken his pilgrimage aboard this ship. He had hoped that this voyage would go more easily than the last, but he found the ship’s rolling from side to side no less disconcerting than it had been on his trip to gaze upon the Face of God. And the stench! He knew the sources of each smell—wet wood and tree sap and salt and musty fabric—but they were no more welcoming than they’d been the last time. Likewise he was getting a headache from the constant barrage of sounds: slapping of waves, snapping of sails, groaning of wooden planks, footsteps on the deck above.

  On his previous voyage, Toroca had been one of fourteen pilgrims and therefore had had no special status. But this time out, he was the expedition leader. He could have claimed the grandest guest cabin aboard, but he opted instead for a small one on the port side of the topmost of the aft decks, the same cabin Afsan had used, seventeen kilodays ago, when he had embarked on his pilgrimage aboard the Dasheter.

  The door to the cabin was carved in an intricate relief of the original five hunters. The wood was dark with age and splitting in several places, but the carving was still stunning. Toroca had no trouble telling the five apart. That was Lubal running; Hoog with her mouth open, teeth exposed; Belbar leaping, claws unsheathed; Katoon bending over a carcass, picking it clean; and Mekt, the first bloodpriest, head tipped back, a Quintaglio hatchling sliding down her throat. Katoon and Lubal had their hands held in the Lubalite salute: claws out on their second and third fingers, the fourth and fifth splayed, the thumb held against the palm.

  Although it was not as ornate, Toroca was more impressed by the bronze plaque placed next to the door. It said, “In this cabin, 150 kilodays after Larsk made his first voyage to gaze upon the Face of God, Sal-Afsan, the astrologer who discovered the true nature of the Face, began his pilgrimage. It was in this room that he first realized that our world is a moon revolving around a giant planet.”

  The plaque wasn’t entirely accurate. Afsan hadn’t yet taken his praenomen syllable at the time he first sailed aboard the Dasheter, and he’d never held the position of astrologer, although he had been an apprentice in that profession back then.

  Toroca wondered if his father knew of this plaque, and, if so, what he felt about it. Afsan had always struck Toroca as modest.

  He pushed the door open and entered. The room was hot, its last occupant having left the leather curtain drawn back from the single porthole, letting the afternoon sun beat in. The floor, although sanded periodically, showed myriad claw tickmarks. As he settled in for the long voyage, Toroca wondered if any of them were Afsan’s own.

  On dry land, almost all adults slept on odd-nights. Toroca had often wondered about that: it seemed to make sense that one should sleep every night, not every other night. After all, flowers open and close each day, and small animals certainly slept every night (or every day, if they were nocturnal). But Quintaglios and many large animals did indeed sleep only on alternate nights. Actually, they would go to sleep at sunset on an odd-day, but usually not wake up until close to noon the following even-day, meaning each Quintaglio spent about a third of his adult life asleep.

  Toroca sometimes speculated about why God had designed it this way. It occurred to him,
although, of course, he never spoke such thoughts aloud, that it might have been more efficient to make the day longer, dispensing with the need for some to be called “even-days” and others to be called “odd-days.” If the day was twice its current length, and the night correspondingly longer, one could easily fall into the habit of simply always sleeping when it was dark and always being awake when it was light. Far be it from Toroca to criticize God, but that might have eliminated “liar’s night,” the term sometimes used for even-night, when most Quintaglios were awake but it was still dark, and therefore the color of one’s muzzle could not be easily seen. A different length of day would make a lot of sense…

  But aboard a ship, such as the Dasheter, the normal practice of everyone sleeping on odd-nights had to be modified anyway. Only half of the passengers and crew were to sleep on that night. Those in the other half were asked to readjust their rhythms and sleep instead on even-night. The point, of course, was to minimize the number of awake Quintaglios milling about, and thereby take the edge off the collective sense of territoriality.

  Keenir couldn’t gather everyone together to announce who should sleep when, since bringing all those aboard out onto deck simultaneously would have fanned the flames of the very problem he was trying to avoid. Instead, a list was posted on the base of the leading foremast.

  Toroca waited patiently for the others to look at it, then he ambled over. He’d had no concerns about which group he might end up in. Indeed, part of him hoped he’d be assigned to the group that would have to change its habits. His father, Afsan, had been notorious for being awake when everyone else was asleep, and Toroca had often wondered what it would be like to alter one’s sleeping schedule.

  The list was written on leather in Keenir’s own bold style of glyphs and protected from the wind and rain by a thin sheet of glass. Standing at the base of the mast, the flapping of the great red sail above him was deafening. Toroca knew that when Afsan had taken his first voyage aboard the Dasheter, each of the sails had sported an emblem of Larsk, but this one now had a more politically neutral design: the cartouche of Vek-Inlee, famed explorer of the past.

  Toroca was listed as one of those who would sleep, as usual, on odd-night. Oh, well. But then his heart sank: Babnol had been put in the even-night column—

  His immediate thought was to object, to rush to Keenir and have him change the designation, but…but…but…

  But how could he? On what grounds?

  Toroca felt himself trembling slightly. Embarrassment?

  Why did he care when Babnol slept?

  Does she care when I sleep?

  No. Madness.

  But he enjoyed spending time with her.

  Enjoyed it.

  And more.

  More?

  Yes, there was more. He enjoyed it, he looked forward to it.

  He wanted to do it as much as possible.

  To be with her.

  To be with her.

  Such thoughts. Such strange thoughts for a Quintaglio.

  But not for me.

  He scurried away from the mast. For once, he really did want to be alone.

  Chapter 14

  The Dasheter

  The year was a unit of time little used, although since Afsan’s discovery that the world was the moon of a large planet, the concept at least now had a meaningful definition. A year was the time it took for the Face of God—the planet around which the Quintaglio moon orbited—to complete one of its own orbits about the sun.

  Astrologers had always been vaguely aware of the year, for that was the length of time it took for the pattern of constellations viewed at, say, the seventh daytenth, to cycle through a complete circle. But the year was such an impossibly long span that people paid little attention to it. The average Quintaglio would see only four years completed during his or her lifetime. Still, those who wished to be perceived as fashionable might now say, “It’s been years since I did thus and so,” whereas before the Afsanian revolution they would have remarked that it had been kilodays.

  Not that a year and a kiloday were anywhere close to being equal in length. A kiloday was one thousand days, but a year was—opinions varied—somewhere between 18,310 and 18,335 days.

  Still, there were subtle changes besides the constellations during the course of a year. The reproductive cycle of Quintaglios as well as some animals seemed to be tied to it. A female Quintaglio would normally be receptive for the first time eighteen kilodays—one year—after hatching, and become receptive again at an age of thirty-six kilodays and perhaps once more at fifty-four or fifty-five kilodays, producing, therefore, two or three clutches of eggs during her lifetime. A few females were constantly receptive, although, ironically, usually they were also barren. They tended to become hunt leaders.

  Hereditary rulers were always taken from the first clutch of eggs. Dybo had been one of Len-Lends’s first clutch; she had not lived long enough to lay another. Even if she had, the second round of egglings would have been accorded little status. Dybo was male and therefore had some say in when he reproduced. He had been expected to do so when he reached the age of eighteen kilodays, but now, at twenty-eight, had still not called for a mate.

  Even for females, the once-a-year mating cycle was only a loose correlation. They could be moved to estrus at different times, as, for instance, Wab-Novato had been, leading to her union with Afsan and the birth of Toroca and his siblings.

  No one knew for sure how many years the world had left, but it was thought to be no more than ten or twenty. Novato decided therefore that the Geological Survey—which, after all, was only a preliminary stage in the exodus project—must be completed in a single year. That was a substantial amount of time—Toroca would be twenty kilodays old by the time the survey was finished, and Novato would be well into middle age—but the world was a big place, and there really wasn’t much time in that schedule to spare.

  And because of that, Toroca hated how time-consuming this voyage would be. It was now understood that Land was an equatorial body, halfway between the world’s poles. The journey to the south pole, then, would be equivalent to sailing halfway around the world—the length of one leg of a pilgrimage voyage. And yet, to Toroca’s relief, the time passed reasonably quickly, for throughout this voyage, there were wonders to behold.

  “My God!” Toroca exclaimed to himself one morning, standing on the Dasheter’s foredeck.

  Keenir happened to be passing by. “What?” he said in his gravelly voice.

  “My breath,” said Toroca, his eyes wide. “I can see my breath!”

  Keenir clicked his teeth. “You’ve never been on a voyage to southern waters before, eh? Well, look at this.” The captain opened his mouth wide, gulped air, then moved his jaws together so that only a thin slit separated them. He exhaled, and a flat disk of whitish fog appeared around his muzzle.

  “That’s incredible.” Toroca mimicked Keenir’s trick. He blinked in surprised. “What causes it?”

  “The cold, lad. The air you breathe in is warmed in your lungs, so they tell me, then, when you expel it, it hits the cold air outside and condensation occurs. Just like fogging a piece of glass by breathing on it.”

  “It’s amazing.”

  Keenir ground his teeth in a chuckle. “You’ll get used to it.”

  Toroca puffed air out again, white fog dissipating rapidly.

  Some of Keenir’s crew had been with the Dasheter long enough to remember when the captain had been obsessed with having the lookout’s bucket, high atop the foremast, constantly occupied. He’d been mad to find Kal-ta-goot, the giant water reptile that had torn off his tail and scarred his face. But after Kal had been slain, Keenir had become less rigorous about having someone scanning the horizons. Now, though, with the Dasheter journeying ever southward, he insisted that the bucket always have an occupant.

  His prudence paid off. Shortly after they passed the two-thirds mark in their voyage, a shout went up from old Mar-Biltog, the officer doing the watch.
<
br />   Another officer scurried off to alert Keenir, running down the ramp that led to the lower decks. A moment later the captain thundered up onto the damp wooden planks. He glanced up at the lookout’s bucket to see which direction Biltog was indicating, then moved to the railing around the port leading edge of the ship’s fore hull. Keenir had his far-seer in hand, and he brought the brass tube to his eye.

  “That’s a huge one,” said Keenir softly. Then, shouting: “It’ll be breaking up, this far north. Watch for fragments!”

  Toroca, now wearing a light cloak—such a strange feeling for a nonpriest to have clothes on!—had come up on deck to see what all the shouting was about. He moved as close to Keenir as protocol would allow and looked out in the direction Keenir’s far-seer was pointed. There was indeed something there, brilliant in the sunlight, completely white. An island, perhaps? That would be fascinating! No islands were known this far from the mainland. “What is it?” Toroca asked.

  Keenir stepped close enough to Toroca to hand him the far-seer, then moved back to a more appropriate separation. “Have a look. It’s called an iceberg.”

  “An iceberg!” Toroca rotated the tube, bringing the object into focus for his younger eyes. “I’ve heard of them. Frozen water, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I never knew they could be so huge.”

  “That’s a small one, actually.”

  “It’s white,” said Toroca. “Water is clear.”

  “Not when frozen. And not when there’s that much of it. It’s white, or bluish-white.”

  “An iceberg. I’ve always wanted to see one of those. Captain, we must go closer!”

  “No. It’s a hazard to navigation. The part you’re seeing above the waves is only a tenth of the whole thing; most of it is submerged. These icebergs drift north and melt. And they don’t just grow smaller and smaller until they disappear. Hunks drop off. If we hit one, it could rip our hull open. We’ll give it wide clearance; treat it as if it were a member of The Family—just get out of its way.”

  “But I’d love to see so much ice up close.”