Babnol was defensive now. “But you yourself said we didn’t understand the object…”
“I didn’t understand it. You didn’t. But others might. After we finish this voyage, we are returning to Capital City. There I was going to turn the object over to Novato. She and the other finest minds would examine it, and they, or the finest minds of the next generation, or of the generation after that, would have fathomed the object, would have understood the principles it employed.”
Toroca was now furious with himself. He could have sent the object back to Capital City with someone else instead of bringing it on this voyage, but he’d wanted to spend more time with it, and, most of all, he’d wanted to be there personally to see his mother’s face when he presented it to her. Such vanity! Such arrogance. He slapped his tail against the deck, and with words that were talon-sharp, took all that fury out on Babnol. “By the very claws of Lubal, herbivore, how could you do this?”
She looked at the wooden deck, splintering here and there where claws had dug into it. “I did it for you. I—I saw the way it obsessed you, the way it was drawing you in. It was like a whirlpool, Toroca, sucking the goodness out of you, sucking it into an empty, spiritless abyss.” She looked up. “I did it for you,” she said again.
“I see that you’re telling the truth, Babnol, but—” He sighed, a long, whispery exhalation, a whitish cloud of expelled air appearing around his muzzle. He tried again. “The whole point of the Geological Survey is to learn things. We cannot be afraid to look.”
“But some things are best left unknown,” she said.
“Nothing is best left unknown,” said Toroca. “Nothing. We’re trying to save our entire race! It’s only knowledge that will let us do that. We have to shed our superstitions and fears the way a snake sheds its skin. We can’t cower in the face of what we might discover. Look at Afsan! Others cowered and trembled at the sight of the Face of God, but he reasoned. Aboard this very boat, he reasoned it out! We cannot—we must not—do any less than what he did. We cannot be afraid, for if we are afraid, then we—all our people—will die.”
Babnol was trembling slightly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m very sorry.”
Toroca saw how upset she was, and how very afraid. He wanted to move closer, to comfort her, but knew that that would frighten her even more. Finally, softly, he said, “I know.”
She lifted her muzzle, tried to meet his eyes. “And what happens now?”
“When this Antarctic expedition is over, we will return briefly to Capital City for provisions and so that I can report to Novato. After that, we will go back to the shore of Fra’toolar.”
“But I thought we were finished there?”
“We were finished,” spat Toroca, but he immediately reigned in his tone. “We were. But now we have to go back and search and search and search until we find another artifact. And you, Babnol, here, with the sun burning above your head, you must now pledge your loyalty to the cause, your loyalty to the Geological Survey, your loyalty to me, or I will have no choice but to have you left behind in Capital City. I need you, Babnol, and I—I want you, to be part of my team. But there must be no repetition of this. We’re growing up fast, Babnol—as a race, I mean. We have to leave behind the fears of our childhood. Pledge your loyalty.”
She lifted her left hand, claws extended on her second and third finger, fingers four and five spread out, her thumb pressed against her palm: the ancient Lubalite salute of loyalty.
“I see,” said Toroca, his voice not bitter, “that you noticed more than just the object when you searched my quarters.” He nodded after a moment. “I accept your pledge of loyalty.” A pause. “Back to your knot-tying, Babnol, but while you do it, pray.”
“Pray?” she said.
He nodded. “Pray that the object was not one of a kind.”
Being cooped up on a ship was enough to make almost any Quintaglio edgy. Except on pilgrimage voyages, ships rarely sailed far from the coastline of Land, and they would put in to shore every few days so that those aboard could hunt.
The journey to the south polar cap had been a long one, with no stopovers. It was time to release the energy and emotions that had built up during the voyage. It was time for a hunt.
The divers were by far the most common lifeform on the cap, but they were by no means the only one. Several other creatures had been glimpsed through the far-seer. That was fortunate, for a diver was much too small to make a proper meal for one Quintaglio, let alone a hungry pack.
Delplas’s tail was swishing over the Dasheter’s deck in anticipation. “Ah, to hunt again,” said the surveyor. “At last! My claws have been itching for dekadays.” Each word appeared as a puff of white vapor. She turned to Toroca, who was leaning against the railing around the edge of the ship. “Surely you’ll join us on this hunt, Toroca. Even you must be ready for one now.”
Toroca looked down over the edge, watched tiny pieces of ice bumping together in the gray water. “No, thank you.”
“But it’s been ages! It’s high time for a hunt.”
“I wish you every success,” said Toroca, turning to face Delplas.
“We’ve known each other for kilodays,” said Delplas, “and still I don’t understand you.”
Toroca was thinking of Babnol. “Does one ever really understand another?”
Delplas shook her head. “You know what I mean.” She turned her muzzle to directly face Toroca. “You’ll kill an animal whose anatomy you’re curious about, but you hate to kill your own food.”
“I kill the specimens as painlessly as possible,” Toroca replied. “In the hunt, animals die in agony.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Delplas. “After all, your father is Afsan.”
“Yes.”
“The greatest hunter of all time.”
Toroca turned back to looking over the ship’s railing. “Afsan hasn’t hunted for—what?—sixteen kilodays,” he said softly.
“Well, of course,” replied Delplas, exasperated. “He’s blind.”
Toroca shrugged. “Even before that, he only hunted once or twice.”
“But what hunts! The biggest thunderbeast ever known. Aboard this very ship, that serpent, Kal-ta-goot! And even a fangjaw. They talk about his kills still.”
“Yes,” said Toroca. “Still.”
“He was The One: the hunter foretold by Lubal.”
“Perhaps.”
“By not hunting, you dishonor your father.”
Toroca swung around, leveling a steady gaze at Delplas. “Don’t talk to me about duty to my father. Duty to one’s parents is a subject about which you and everyone else know nothing.”
Toroca strode away, his feet, clad in insulated shoes, slapping the deck like thunderclaps. Delplas simply stood there, inner eyelids batting up and down.
Chapter 24
Musings of The Watcher
The Jijaki traveled along my star lanes.
Not only is this particular iteration of the universe unwelcoming of life, it’s also rigidly opposed to high-speed travel. I tried to predict what forms of interstellar voyaging would be possible for whatever lifeforms arose here. The kinds of nuclear reactions that occur in this universe seemed to hold possible answers. Still, carrying fuel over long distances is always a problem. It would be so much easier if the fuel could be collected along the way.
A ramjet could use an electromagnetic field to gather up interstellar hydrogen to be burned in a nuclear-fusion reactor. In theory, a ship so propelled could reach velocities near that of light, the speed cap in this creation. Unfortunately, for it to work one would need an average density of usable hydrogen particles about ten thousand times greater than what existed in normal space. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, the majority of the interstellar hydrogen in this universe was in the form of protium, an isotope that can undergo fusion only through a nuclear catalytic cycle within the core of stars.
However, having bound my being to the dark matter, I had some tr
ifling control over gravity. Over a period of millions of years, I attracted more hydrogen into corridors connecting the Crucible’s sun and the Jijaki sun, and between the Crucible’s sun and stars that I had selected as transplantation targets. I built up ribbons of suitable density. Along these paths, and these paths alone, would hydrogen-ramscoop fusion starships be able to travel.
A ramscoop needs to be very strong. The strength of the electromagnetic field used to attract the interstellar hydrogen would cause even a starship made of diamond to collapse, and the hull must be immune to erosion by interstellar dust grains. Ah, but once I’d spelled out the problems for them, my Jijaki proved clever, devising a blue material they called kiit that exceeded by a hundred times the strength of diamond. Kiit, which could be injection-molded like plastic until it crystallized, became a common building material.
Was I unfair to the Jijaki, paving roads only where I wanted them to go? I don’t think so. They wished to find other life, and I rolled out a pathway for them. They longed to travel to the stars, and I made that possible for them, with journeys lasting only a single one of their infinitesimal lifetimes.
The Crucible was a glorious world, green and blue, with stunning white clouds and vast oceans. At the time I plucked the ancestors of the Jijaki from here, all the land was concentrated into a single mass. Now it had broken up, and separate continents had begun to drift apart.
The dinosaurs had been around now for 130 million Crucible years. Unfortunately, their diversity had recently begun to decrease. Only about fifty or so genera were left. Among them were great bipedal carnivores, horned dinosaurs, a few types with armored carapaces, hadrosaurs with ornate headcrests and bills resembling those of aquatic birds, gracile types that resembled flightless birds, great four-footed beasts with endless tapering tails and endless tapering necks, and small crepuscular hunters with giant eyes and grasping hands.
In some ways it was fortunate that there were so few kinds of dinosaurs left. Gathering up a goodly sample of each type was not too difficult for my Jijaki. They also collected some of the great seagoing reptiles and the flying reptiles, too. And, of course, enough of the rest of the biota to keep the food chain intact.
A fleet of arks was dispatched from the Crucible to the target world. Some arks—those carrying basic anaerobic life, such as blue-green algae—went as fast as possible by ramship, and began preparing the new world. Others climbed out of the solar system, then locked their interiors into stasis and let me slowly nudge them across the starscape, tugging them on gentle leashes of dark matter, taking millennia to make the voyage. The Jijaki crews knew I was going to do this, knew that they would, in essence, be transported eons into the future. But the cult of my worship that began as soon as my first message had been received persisted to this day, and I had no lack of volunteers.
The target star was a young white giant—far younger than the Crucible’s own yellow sun. It was circled by eight planets. The three innermost and the two outermost were small, rocky bodies. The remaining three, Planets 4, 5, and 6, were similar to the largest planets in the Crucible’s own system, gas-giant worlds with many moons.
Planet 5 was striped with roiling bands of methane and ammonia, whirlpool storms of white cloud raging here and there. It was somewhat flattened by its rapid rotation, and its equator was dotted by a few black circles, the shadows cast by some of the fourteen moons that careened around it. This system’s mother star appeared as nothing more than a tiny intense disk at this distance.
Each of the giant planet’s fourteen moons had its own personality. One was shrouded in pink cloud. Another was cracked by deep fissures. A third had active volcanoes spewing sulfur into space. Another was just a ball of rock.
But the one that interested me was, then, the third moon. It was almost exactly the same size as the Crucible. Over ninety percent of its surface was covered by water, mostly liquid, but frozen into caps at either pole. Like the Crucible’s own single moon, this one was tidally locked so that the same side always faced the planet it orbited. There were two continents, both straddling the equator, and both located on the moon’s far side, so the gas-giant planet was never visible from them.
Not a perfect fit for my needs, you understand, but, in this sterile and bland universe, the best I had been able to find.
Before the arrival of the first ark, with the blue-green algae, the moon’s atmosphere was heavy in carbon dioxide and water vapor, with almost no free oxygen. The algae did its work, and subsequent arks created soil by blasting mountains from orbit, and transplanted mosses and lichens and mushrooms and trees and those newcomers to the Crucible’s botanic riches, flowering plants and the first proto-grasses. Eventually the air hummed with insects. Frogs, salamanders, lizards, snakes, and turtles were soon established. The world-spanning ocean teemed with plankton and seaweed and fish and ammonites.
It took only a few short years for these creatures to overrun the world, and, at last, the final arks began to arrive, bringing dinosaurs, pterosaurs, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and birds.
Their new world was ready for them, and the Jijaki began to let them loose.
Chapter 25
The Temple of Lubal
The hunters of Capital City claimed to be the most efficient killers in all of Land. But they knew that wasn’t true. Not really. The most efficient killer in all of Land was the blackdeath. From snout to tip of its tail, the length of six middle-aged Quintaglios. Its hind legs which pounded the ground like pillars when it charged, were taller than the oldest adult. Each leg ended in a three-toed foot, with claws that would slice through the thickest hide the way a stone drops through water.
The head bulged with bunched jaw muscles—a blackdeath could chomp through iron bars. Its teeth were like the teeth of a Quintaglio, but magnified many times in size. The longest were a handspan from gum to tip, with serrated edges. Discarded ones were prized tools used by leather workers.
A blackdeath’s skin was indeed solid black, darker than the darkest night, accented only by the white flashes of claw and teeth and the deep bloody red of the inside of the mouth. The hide was pebbly and rough. A row of tiny projections ran down the monster’s back, right to the tip of the tail, giving its profile a ragged stair-step edge.
Its eyes were likewise black, like Quintaglio eyes, pools of ink amidst the dull ebony of the head, visible only in the way the sun glinted off them. The neck was dexterous, powerful. On the males, a coal-dark dewlap sack hung against the throat. Blackdeath breath was stomach-turning, acrid, like rotted meat.
If there was anything puny about a blackdeath, it was the forearms, tiny and delicate, with two small curving claws. The creature didn’t use them much. It killed with its teeth, tore flesh from bone with its mouth.
All in all, not the sort of creature one normally likes to run into. But this day, under imperial hunt leader Lub-Galpook, a large pack had departed Capital City specifically to hunt down a blackdeath. No neophytes were allowed on this expedition; Galpook had brought with her only the most experienced hunters. Galpook herself, daughter of Afsan, whom some still called The One, had much of the same skill on the hunt that had made her father so famous.
Blackdeaths were rare, and even more territorial than Quintaglios. Hundreds of days could go by without one being sighted anywhere near the Capital. Galpook had selected her team dekadays ago, and they had been training together regularly, waiting, waiting.
And then, finally, a merchant caravan had lumbered into town saying that they’d seen a blackdeath in the distance as they’d passed the ruins of the Temple of Lubal on the far side of the Ch’mar volcanoes.
Galpook assembled her team immediately. A creature the size of a blackdeath could travel many kilopaces in a day. Their best hope would be that the animal had eaten recently and would therefore be gorged and torpid after the kill. (Indeed, one of Galpook’s hunters had to drop out of the pack, for he himself was torpid following a large meal.)
The quickest way to get to the Temple o
f Lubal would be atop runningbeasts, but the pack had too much equipment to carry. Such a hunt had only rarely been mounted. Not only was it considered folly to go up against a blackdeath, but no Quintaglio could bring one down without the aid of tools, and the sacred scrolls banned both the eating of food that had been felled with implements and the killing of animals that were not going to be eaten—taken together, strictures that seemed to make blackdeath hunting an impossible proposition.
But today’s hunt was different. Galpook wanted to take a blackdeath alive.
The pack’s equipment was loaded onto long wagons, and these were pulled by bossnosed hornfaces. Hornface was a misnomer, really, since these four-footed creatures, although in all other ways resembling that class of animals, had no facial horns. Rather, they had a thick boss, a knob-like protuberance, on the ends of their snouts. Great shields of bone still protected their necks, and their sharp beaks could inflict nasty bites, but without horns there was no chance that they could kill the blackdeath. Galpook was more than willing to sacrifice a few domesticated beasts in order to bring down the mighty hunter. In fact, as her final task before departing, she had had to sacrifice a small shovelmouth.
The beast, a juvenile not much bigger than Galpook herself, was let out of the stockyards. It ambled out stupidly on all fours, then tipped back on its thick, flattened tail to sniff the air. On its head was a semicircular crest of bone. Its face was long and drawn-out, ending in a flat, toothless prow. The thing’s flatulence, like that of many herbivores, was constant, and the thick methane smell made Galpook woozy.
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