A Bone From a Dry Sea

by Peter Dickinson

  Then he went back up to the little cliffs and started to measure and take notes. He looked round and smiled as she approached.

  ‘Just in time,’ he said. ‘Hold this end for me, will you? How are you bearing up?’

  ‘I’ve got a headache. Is it all right if you don’t photograph me with the shells?’

  ‘Tomorrow will do. No, Wishart will be here tomorrow. It’ll have to be Friday. Perhaps we’ll have . . .’

  He had been measuring while he spoke, but now he turned his head and stared at her. His voice changed.

  ‘Or will you have a headache on Friday too?’ he said.

  ‘It’s terribly hot. I’m not . . .’

  ‘Sam put you up to this.’

  ‘No. What . . . ?’

  She’d known he’d be angry, but still wasn’t ready for what happened. Not that he shouted, or even said anything for a bit. He just pushed his sun-glasses up on to his forehead and stared at her with his stony pale eyes, and it was like being hit by an invisible force, or like walking out of the shade of the awning into the African sun. He leaned slightly forward. She could see the whole round of each iris. He wanted her to flinch, to burst into tears perhaps, but it didn’t work out like that, though it easily might have. It was Mum, in a way, who came to her rescue. Vinny had never before felt so like her, so surely her daughter. Mum wasn’t afraid of anyone. She’d once got hold of the private number of the chairman of some firm which made power-stations and radar towers, as well as her washing machine, and had rung him up in the middle of a dinner party and made him listen while she told him exactly what she thought of his organization for making her wait in all day for a service engineer who didn’t come. Vinny felt just like that now. She was furious. Dr Hamiska had no right to do this to her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want my picture in the papers.’

  ‘Why on earth not. Unless Sam . . .’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with Dad. It’s because of my mother.’

  ‘Are you serious, Vinny? I explained in words a child should understand how vital it is that this find should have all the publicity we can manage. What on earth can your mother object to? Is it some kind of religious hang-up?’

  ‘No, of course not. But it’s private. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re sorry. Let me tell you, Vinny, that I have put myself out very considerably to accommodate your visit. It was ridiculous of Sam in the first place to suggest taking time off in the middle of a working season. As it was I had to arrange everyone’s schedules to allow you as much time with him as possible. And now when I make a straightforward and harmless request for your co-operation over something of real importance, you tell me first that you’ve got a headache and then that your mother wouldn’t like it.’

  He stared at her again and this time she found she had to look away.

  ‘You seemed to have no objection earlier,’ he said. ‘When I was talking about the arrangements for tomorrow. Well, here’s your father. Let’s see if he can make you see sense.’

  Vinny turned. Dad was trudging up the slope. Beyond him some of the others had stopped work and were watching. They were too far off to hear anything, but they could see. When Dr Hamiska erupted he let everyone know.

  ‘Perhaps you can tell me what this is about, Sam,’ he said. ‘Vinny has come to me with some story about her mother not wanting her photographed.’

  ‘You’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick,’ said Dad.

  ‘You’d better explain.’

  Dad blew out an unhappy breath and shook his head.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s a private matter between Vinny and her mother,’ he said.

  ‘I find that hard to accept.’

  ‘Do you imagine Vinny would say she didn’t want to be photographed, knowing you would like her to be, if she didn’t have a very good reason?’

  ‘If she has a reason she can tell me and I will treat it with full confidentiality. Do you suppose I have nothing better to do with my time than broadcast schoolgirl secrets to the world?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake . . . !’

  ‘I am trying to be reasonable, Sam. It seems to me that it is you and your daughter who are being unreasonable – in fact, deliberately obstructive, as you have tended to be all along.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘I am talking about the fact that for reasons I can only guess at you have done your best, both overtly and surreptitiously, to undermine and thwart the objects of this expedition.’

  ‘I still can’t imagine what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Then I will give you instances. From the first you attempted to persuade your colleagues that we were on a wild-goose chase. You appeared to take your duties so casually that you suggested leaving us for a fortnight to take your daughter on safari. You surveyed this site and reported it of no special interest, and when I recently proposed taking another look at it you did your best to dissuade me. Then, as soon as I made a find of crucial importance, you suggested setting up a fly-camp here so that you could work at it unsupervised. You then proceeded to carry out your excavations, on so-called professional grounds, with such painstaking slowness that . . .’

  ‘That’s unfair!’ shouted Vinny. The cry had burst out of her. Dad glanced at her and shook his head. Dr Hamiska ignored her.

  ‘With my own ears,’ he said, ‘I heard you attempting to conceal from me that you had uncovered another hominid fossil. Even now, with your daughter’s help, you are attempting to see that our find is denied the publicity it needs for me to raise the funds to conduct a full-scale excavation of this site next year. Do you need me to point out what the pattern of your behaviour seems to add up to?’

  Dad shrugged and half turned away.

  ‘What conceivable motive . . . ?’ he began, and stopped.

  ‘I’m afraid your motive is perfectly obvious, Sam. I deeply regret it. But in the meanwhile you are suspended from all further work on this site. I want you to collect your own personal equipment and then not set foot inside the marker-posts. The same must apply to your daughter. You can pack up the fly-camp and return the jeep to the main camp. We will discuss your position after Wishart’s visit.’

  ‘It needn’t wait till then,’ said Dad. ‘I’m resigning now.’

  Dr Hamiska nodded indifferently and turned back to measuring the rock-strata. Vinny grabbed Dad’s arm as she felt herself swaying. He steadied her against his side.

  ‘I’ll be all right in a mo,’ she whispered. ‘Sorry. OK.’

  He kept his hand under her arm and helped her down the slope. She still felt sick, but the world felt steady and solid again. Everyone was watching. Dr Wessler was waiting by Dad’s trench.

  ‘Had a bit of a bust up, then?’ he said, smiling thin-lipped.

  ‘I’m off,’ said Dad. ‘Just come and check what I pack, will you? Tell him I’ll have my notes in order for someone to take over by tomorrow midday. Nikki, just watch Vinny pack up, will you? Look through her things. I want witnesses we’re not taking anything off the site. Thanks.’

  Vinny had very little to pack. As she straightened and hitched her satchel on to her shoulder she saw Dr Hamiska still at the cliff face, measuring and taking notes, deliberately ignoring the scene below.

  ‘Got what he wants,’ whispered Nikki. ‘Look how he’s standing.’

  ‘But he really needs Dad. Everyone says so.’

  ‘Not any more, maybe.’

  ‘Ready?’ called Dad. ‘How are you feeling? Let’s have your bag.’

  ‘I’m all right now.’

  They started down the hill.

  ‘Oh, Dad, I’m sorry,’ said Vinny, as soon as they were out of earshot of the others. ‘It was my fault, I shouldn’t have made a fuss.’

  ‘No it wasn’t. Though I don’t think he was planning for it to happen just yet, not until after tomorrow, but he saw his chance and took it.’

  ‘I don’t understand. And Nikki said he’d got what
he wanted.’

  ‘That’s about it. I hadn’t realized. I imagined he kept winding me up because he couldn’t help it.’

  ‘I still don’t understand. May Anna said you really needed each other. She said he found the fossils and you worked out what they meant and people believed you.’

  ‘That’s a way of putting it. Even now Joe knows I’m not going to try and persuade anyone that he hasn’t found what he has found. I will confirm that if the geological data work out he’s made what may be the most important early hominid find since Johansson discovered Lucy in 1974. With that he can be confident of raising funds for a full-scale expedition next year. He can pick his helpers, and that means that when it’s over he can have his name at the head of the papers describing the finds, without anyone else on the same footing. If he’d kept me on the team he’d pretty well have been forced to print my name alongside his.’

  ‘But that’s mean. That’s really mean!’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s the sort of thing that matters among many scientists. It doesn’t worry me. What does is that now he is going to start putting it around that I had spotted the importance of the site at an early stage and was trying to keep it quiet in the hope that he’d fail to raise the funds for another expedition, and I’d then be able to bring one out myself.’

  ‘He can’t. Won’t anyone say . . . ? Won’t Dr Wessler . . . ?’

  ‘Oh, Fred will stir the pot. He likes trouble. Right. You pack your stuff. We’ll leave the tent and bedding and so on . . .’

  It didn’t take long. Vinny was sorting out her drawing-kit when she found the shoulder-blade.

  ‘What shall I do about this, Dad? The H-bag is still up at the site.’

  ‘Oh Lord. I don’t know. I’m going to have to do a new note on it. Bring it along and we’ll give it to May Anna. She can get it . . . No, I’ll just leave it with the notes. That’ll do.’

  * * *

  Dad said nothing on the journey. Vinny could almost feel him thinking, the same exasperated ideas churning round and round in his head as he drove. She dozed a few seconds at a time, was woken by a jolt and dozed again. Then she must have slept longer because when she woke the angle of the sun had changed and they were driving along with hills on the left. They must be nearly there. She gazed around and saw a pale blue fleck far up the hillside.

  ‘There’s May Anna,’ she said.

  Dad slowed to look and braked. Vinny leaned out and waved. May Anna waved back and began to pick her way down. Dad gave a sigh of exasperation.

  ‘Can’t we go and meet her?’ said Vinny.

  ‘I want to get back. I’ve got a load of work to do, and I’d like to finish it and go while Joe is still busy with Wishart. We’ve got a major discovery, and I’m not having Joe tell people I mucked it up by going off in a huff leaving everything in a mess. On the other hand, as soon as he’s finished with Wishart, he’ll be wanting to pick it all over – just keep us hanging around to show he can.’

  Vinny could hear that these were excuses. Half-excuses, anyway. They might be true, but just now he didn’t want to talk to anyone, even May Anna.

  ‘You go on,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait for her. Can I tell her what’s happened? She’ll have to know.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Thanks.’

  He sounded relieved. As Vinny watched him go she realized it wasn’t a case of not even May Anna. It was especially not May Anna. He’d actually faced up to Dr Hamiska for Vinny’s sake, but then he couldn’t face telling his girl-friend about it. People are impossible to understand, she thought. They’re just what they are.

  It was late afternoon and still hot, but so much cooler than it had been out in the badlands that she decided to go and meet May Anna. It looked like an ordinary climb, with plenty of open spaces between the scrub, but the sun was in her eyes so that she couldn’t pick her path more than a few paces ahead. She found some kind of an animal track going in the right direction, but it ended in a wall of thorny bushes, and when she turned to pick her way round she saw, only a few paces in front of her, coiled on a shelf of warm rock, a large brown snake.

  She froze. It must have heard her about the same moment she’d seen it, and raised its head and hissed. They stared at each other. Vinny’s heart thumped for action but she seemed unable to move until the snake lowered its head and slid away quietly into the scrub.

  ‘Where are you?’ called May Anna.

  ‘Here, I can’t get any further.’

  ‘Go back down to the road. Meet you there.’

  Vinny pulled herself together. It was silly. The snake had been the only bit of wildlife she’d seen close up, and she ought to have been thrilled, not terrified. May Anna reached the road a few minutes after her.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘What are you doing, back now? Thought you were stopping out there.’

  ‘Dad’s resigned.’

  ‘Oh, my! How’d that happen?’

  Vinny started to explain. She thought she was in control but before she finished she began to cry. The stupid, childish sobs shook her, and she could feel her tears trickling through the layers of dust on her cheeks. May Anna crouched and put an arm round her shoulders.

  ‘Joe can be a real bastard,’ she said. ‘I guess Sam’s right – that’s what he’s been trying to make happen. It wasn’t your fault, Vinny.’

  ‘But I started it.’

  ‘And your dad backed you up.’

  ‘He didn’t have to. It wasn’t really important.’

  ‘I bet it was, too.’

  The sobs came under control. Vinny blew her nose and let May Anna clean her face for her. They walked back slowly towards the camp, with Vinny talking about what had happened in bits and pieces, as they came to her. May Anna clucked and muttered sympathy.

  ‘And Sam left you to tell me,’ she said sadly.

  ‘He wants to get his notes written up so we can leave tomorrow.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  At the camp May Anna went and kissed Dad and patted his shoulder. Vinny had stayed out of earshot, so she didn’t hear what they said, but it was only a few words. Then May Anna fetched drinks for all three, and she and Vinny went and watched the shadows stretch as the sun went down behind them. They didn’t talk much. May Anna was obviously shocked and depressed by the news, and didn’t pretend about it.

  ‘Can’t you come with us?’ said Vinny. ‘You’d cheer Dad up. Me too.’

  ‘And me, but I can’t, Vinny. I have to earn my own bread. Joe’s not a forgiver-and-forgetter. Either you’re for him or you’re agin him. And this is really exciting stuff here – if I’m in on it, that’s my career made. I want to come back next year. I’m sorry.’

  In the last light they heard the engine of the truck, then saw its dust-cloud, grey in the shadow of the hills and golden as it rose into the sunlight. As it neared, its horn began to sound a triumphant, sneering da-didi-da-da.

  ‘Bastard,’ muttered May Anna. ‘And he’ll be jolly Joe Hamiska too, all evening, I bet.’

  She was right.

  THEN

  THEY CROUCHED TOGETHER, too shocked to stir, moaning over their hurts, gazing at the terrifying change and then turning their heads away. Or they peered out to sea, in case another monster wave might be preparing. For a long while the upshot spray fell over them, like the finest of fine mist, but at last it thinned and blew away and the sun began to beat down full strength on the headland, forcing them to move. They crossed the crest and looked south to see the same weird ocean churning down the shore, familiar only in its broadest outline of headland beyond headland, but with all its detailed landmarks – outlying pillars, known cliffs, rock islets – changed and gone. In the end they made their way back down to the place where the bay had been, because they could see that at least they ought to be able to climb down there to nearer sea-level.

  The cataract which had been the backwash of the tsunami had diminished now into separate streams and falls, foaming down the tumbled rocks. In a crevice high up, Rawi found
a huge fish, as large as her own body, stranded there by the wave. They heaved it out and dragged it to a place where a fall tumbled on to a boulder and sent a continuous pleasant spray across a flat shelf beside it, and stayed there through the middle of the day, eating when they wanted, touching and stroking each other often, watching the dreadful swell slowly subside and restore itself to a steady pattern of waves, and gradually as they did so becoming used to the idea that they at least had survived, that the tribe was not gone, because they themselves were now the tribe, and that tomorrow would come.

  Towards evening they started to explore, visited the sea and found it weirdly cold with the in-mixing of waters heaved from the sunless deeps, scrambled about the rockfall, discovered enough stranded fish to feed the whole tribe many times over, and came to a place where a section of cliff had fallen away whole and become propped across two other pieces, making a kind of cave where they could sleep. There they spent a restless night, waking each other by the cries of nightmare, clutching together for comfort and then moaning themselves back to sleep.

  Li woke a little before dawn. She too had been re-dreaming the tsunami, but this time not with terror. The terror had come before, had been Greb. She had been alone on a shore and he had been advancing on her, his mane immense, like a black sun with his snarling face in the middle of it, and in her nightmare she’d cried to the dolphins, and the sea had simply risen round her at their bidding and swept Greb away, leaving her alone and safe on the beach. She had been waiting for the dolphins to return and dance with her, and woke with a pang of grief that they hadn’t come. Yes, she thought as she woke, that was what had happened. It was the dolphins who had sent the wave. They had done it to save her from Greb. Hadn’t she seen them racing in front of it, not, as she’d first thought, trying to escape it, but leading it on, showing it the way, having arranged for her to be safe on the headland? She didn’t know why so many of the others had had to die too, but she accepted it because the dolphins had thought it was necessary, and they were wiser than she was. Still, it made her feel strange.