Fossil Hunter

by Robert J. Sawyer

  The divers had apparently learned something from their previous encounter with Quintaglios. They immediately began slipping into the water—it apparently wasn’t too cold for them—their rounded silver bodies looking like drops of mercury running down a drain.

  The wind had a bite to it. They continued on. Toroca could see the irritation in Keenir’s movements, the impatience. There must be something worth killing, his body language seemed to scream. There must be.

  And then they suddenly came upon it in a small valley: a giant creature flopped on the ice. It was unlike anything Toroca had ever seen: three or four times the size of a middle-aged Quintaglio, with a great rounded torso covered in white fur. Short legs were splayed out behind it, and it had very long, almost delicate arms resting against its sides. Its rounded head, ending in a fleshy muzzle, was lying on the ice.

  The whistling wind was loud enough that the creature hadn’t heard them approach, and Toroca found his sense of smell all but gone in the frozen air, the membranes inside his nostrils seemingly deadened by the cold. Perhaps the creature had the same handicap, for it seemed completely oblivious to the hunters, even though it was downwind of them.

  In fact, for one brief moment, Toroca thought this was a corpse, but then, through the glare of reflected sunlight, he noticed its bone-colored torso expanding and contracting—quite rapidly, actually; a sure sign of an energetic, warm-blooded beast.

  Keenir raised his left hand, all fingers splayed, to get the team’s attention. He then used gestures to deploy the hunters in a line along the edge of a small ridge of ice: Babnol and Spalton to his left, Biltog and Delplas on his right. Toroca hung back, his eyes glued to the creature.

  Keenir made two rapid chops with his hand, signaling the attack. All five of the hunters sprang into action. The creature had apparently been asleep, for it was slow in reacting, but soon its head lifted from the ground, and eyelids peeled back to reveal two golden forward-facing orbs above the fleshy muzzle.

  The creature opened its mouth. There was something very unusual about its sharp teeth, but Toroca couldn’t quite make it out from this distance. Babnol lost her footing and fell backward onto the icy incline leading down to the creature. Her limbs were flailing about, desperately trying to halt her slide toward the animal. It would take the others, moving very slowly as they negotiated their way down the incline, much, much longer to reach the beast.

  Keenir sized up the situation in an instant and dived onto his belly, sliding headfirst down the icy grade. With a whoop, Spalton followed suit, and the three of them—giant Keenir, much younger Spalton, and the flailing Babnol—rushed toward the creature. Keenir, who had the muzzle guard on his snowsuit undone, opened his jaws wide. He clearly intended to arrive biting.

  But then the creature rose up on its short hind legs, its torso bigger than Keenir’s own barrel-chested frame, and then—

  The whole scene became a strobing display for Toroca as his nictitating membranes batted up and down in wonder—

  The creature’s long, gangly forearms were unfolding, first one long segment and then another, the pieces having been folded back upon themselves like the rulers Toroca had seen architects use that hinged together for compact storage—

  The long, narrow arms, almost insectile in their proportions, were now three times the length of the torso—

  Keenir and Babnol and Spalton were still sliding toward it, only ten or so paces separating them from it—

  The long arms swung down, in great sweeping movements, now touching the ground. At their tips where hands should have been were wide flat pads that seemed to sink only slightly into the snow—

  And then the beast rose up, up, up into the air, its feet lifting off the ground to dangle freely beneath its torso, as the multi-jointed arms carried it higher and higher.

  Keenir, heaviest of all the hunters, arrived first, skidding between the two articulated arms and continuing to slide along the ice past where the creature had been. The old mariner was flailing now, like Babnol, trying to halt his slide.

  Babnol slid in next, seemingly about to crash into one of the insectile limbs—limbs that looked so delicate, Toroca expected them to shatter like icicles upon the impact—when the creature simply lifted its arm up, out of Babnol’s path, balancing for a moment on a single lanky appendage, and she, too, skidded on, ending up in a heap with Keenir against a bank of snow.

  The other hunters had now made it to the bottom, sliding Spalton having managed to halt his headlong rush, and Biltog and Delplas still on their feet. They were all staring up at this snow beast, jaws hanging open not to attack, but rather in amazement.

  The creature’s dangling legs then reached out, grasping the long arms about halfway down their length, the legs forming little diagonal struts, the feet, ending in five prehensile toes, wrapping around the thin arms, and then—

  The creature began to walk, its short legs controlling the elongated arms, the arms acting like stilts, its strides giant, carrying it far away over the white, windswept landscape…

  Keenir, clearly indignant at having ended up in a snowbank, rose to his feet and began to run after the beast, his tail, wrapped in a tapered extension of his snowsuit, flying out behind him, his footfalls making kaflumping sounds, clouds of white powder rising in his wake.

  It took the others a few beats to react, but then they, too, took off after the rapidly receding arm-walker.

  The chase seemed hopeless. Quintaglios were used to running on hard ground or over rocks, not on yielding snow or slippery ice. Indeed, they soon came to a fissure in the ground. The creature—a stilt, Toroca had dubbed it in his mind—had no trouble stepping over it, but Keenir, his longer legs putting him by far in the lead over the other hunters, hadn’t seen it until he was almost upon it. He skidded, desperately trying to avoid slipping down it, to keep from breaking his neck on the hard blue ice far below, down in the crevice. That they no longer had to worry about the thinness of the ice was small consolation…

  Keenir was slipping, slipping, slipping, his tail and right leg already hanging over the precipice. The stilt had stopped running, and, realizing that it was now apparently safe, turned to watch Keenir with interest. The captain was still sliding forward, his shod feet finding no purchase.

  Toroca and the others had arrived now, but the ice on the perimeter of the crevice was too slippery to venture onto. All that was saving Keenir were the claws from his one ungloved hand, digging into the ice, white shavings piling up in trails behind them as he continued a slow, inexorable slide toward the opening.

  Toroca came up right beside Babnol. “Give me your hand,” he demanded, his words all but lost on the wind. She looked at him, not understanding. He reached out, seized her arm at the wrist, then, with a hand on her shoulder, pushed her to the ground, so that they were both lying in the snow. He then stretched toward Keenir.

  Babnol finally caught the idea and gestured wildly for Delplas to take her other hand. Toroca looked back at Delplas, just standing there, and for the thousandth time cursed the incredible territoriality of his brethren, the stupid instinct that kept them from reaching out to each other, even when a life was at stake…

  “Take Babnol’s hand, you vegetable!” he shouted, the insult snapping Delplas out of her stupor. She threw off her own mitten and grabbed Babnol’s hand firmly, then fell to the ice herself. Biltog and Spalton lined up behind her, at last completing the living chain.

  Toroca’s tail was close enough that Keenir could grab it, if the captain dared to lift his one naked hand off the ice, but that would have been suicide. Under sufficient stress, a tail would simply detach from the body, and Keenir, clutching the thing, would have sailed over the edge of the crevice to his death. Toroca spun his body around on the ice and reached out with his free arm. He was moving toward the old mariner at about the same rate as Keenir was slipping down toward the fissure. Babnol must have realized that, because, with a burst of strength, she pushed herself closer to the edge, dragg
ing the other four Quintaglios behind her.

  Close. Very close.

  Got him!

  Toroca’s hand clasped Keenir’s, and the six-person chain pulled itself back up away from the adamantine edge.

  The stilt on the other side of the fissure must have still thought it was safe, for it stood there, its torso high atop long, thin arms, looking down on the Quintaglios, who were now whooping with joy at the rescue of Keenir.

  But then Keenir saw that the fissure began only ten or so paces away from where he’d almost fallen down into it, and he took off again, running along its length until he could cross without difficulty to where the stilt was. The stilt realized it was in trouble again, and took off, its vast strides its ticket to safety—

  Except that another fissure split the ice some twenty paces farther along, and this one yawned far too wide for the stilt to cross it, even with its long arms.

  And so at last, Keenir was upon it, followed moments later by Babnol and Delplas and Spalton and Biltog, while Toroca averted his eyes from the kill, from the snapping of jaws, from the slicking of the ice with dark red blood…

  But once the stilt was dead, Toroca bounded in toward it, the others scooping hunks of flesh, already stiffening in the cold, out of the corpse.

  Delplas paused, tilted her head back, and bolted down the flesh she’d torn free. Shouting to be heard above the whipping wind, she called to Toroca, “Can’t resist fresh meat after all, eh?”

  “I don’t want to eat it,” Toroca called back. “I want to look at the arms.”

  Keenir stopped bolting long enough to shout, “Not much meat on those, Toroca. After what you did, you’re entitled to the choicest hunks. Dig in!”

  But Toroca ignored him, and instead brought his scalpel out of a pocket on his snowsuit, and slit the stilt’s left arm along its entire length, exposing the bones within.

  It was not an arm. Or, at least, the actual arm ended at the first articulation point. The rest of the incredibly long walking appendage was made of four super-elongated finger bones.

  Toroca sagged down against the snow.

  Finger bones!

  He tried to crack one of the phalangeal bones open with his hands, but found he could not. At last he held the limb in place with his feet and pulled up with all his strength. The bone broke. It was mostly solid, but with a narrow hollow core that betrayed its origins, the central hollow packed with dense brown meat or marrow to give it further strength.

  And the head? That fleshy muzzle? Babnol was now splitting the beast’s skull open, looking for the hopefully tasty brain within. The muzzle was just an overlay on top of a horny sheath, and the teeth weren’t teeth at all, just the ragged edges of that sheath: a making-do with what was available by a creature that had come from toothless stock.

  Everyone reacted with surprise, and Keenir with delight, as Toroca, a look of disgust on his face, got up and dipped his muzzle into the thing’s torso, tearing out a small hunk of flesh.

  It tasted as he expected it would.

  Just like a wingfinger.

  Chapter 28

  Capital City

  The Emperor headed into the palace dining hall, passing through the public areas, nodding acknowledgment at the senior advisors present, and entered the private rear section.

  Much to his surprise, scrawny Afsan, no devotee of any dining establishment, was there.

  “Ho, Afsan,” said Dybo, lowering his weight onto a dayslab on the opposite side of the table. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You won’t think so when I tell you why I’m here,” said Afsan.

  “Oh?”

  At that moment, a butcher came in, wearing a red smock. She was carrying a silver platter on which rested the leg of a juvenile shovelmouth.

  Dybo looked up at her. “That’s enough for Afsan, I’d warrant, but you’d best slay an adult for me.”

  Afsan inhaled deeply and turned his blind eyes up at the butcher. “It’s as I requested?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied, sounding, to Dybo’s ear, somewhat nervous.

  “Then you are dismissed, Fetarb. You may spend the rest of the day in leisure activities.”

  She nodded quickly and scurried away.

  “Wait a beat,” said Dybo to Afsan. “What about me?”

  “This is for you.”

  “It’s hardly enough. And what will you eat?”

  “This is for me, too. We’re going to share it.”

  “Share this! It’s barely a snack.”

  “It’s more than enough for two, Dybo. From now on, until the battle, you will eat your meals with me, taking only as much as I do.”

  “I am the Emperor!”

  “You are also, old friend, quite fat. We’ll get you in shape for the battle yet, starting with putting you on a diet.”

  “You cannot give me orders,” said Dybo.

  Afsan spread his arms. “No, of course not. I am only an advisor. But I do strongly give you this advice. Eat less. You’ll need to be fleet of foot if you are to survive.”

  Dybo eyed the leg suspiciously. “It’s not very meaty.”

  “It will do just fine.”

  “But, Afsan, you are notorious for your thinness, for how little you eat. Couldn’t I match the consumption of, say, Pal-Cadool, or Det-Bogkash?”

  “They’re both much older than you. I’m your age, I’m the same height as you. Come, I’ve been generous. Even half of this is a much bigger meal than I normally take.”

  “But what if I feel hungry later?”

  “Perhaps you will. And you can eat as much as you like then.”

  “Ah, that’s better.”

  “So long as you hunt it down and kill it yourself. A healthy chase through tall grass will do you good.”

  “Afsan, you are a hard taskmaster.”

  “No,” said Afsan. “I’m simply your friend. And I want you to win.”

  Dybo grunted, then dipped his muzzle toward the meat.

  Dybo spent three daytenths every second odd-day at court, lying on the ruling slab, with his chief aides seated on katadu benches to his left and right. Any citizen could make an appointment to see Dybo, this being one of Dybo’s chief reforms, replacing the isolated and autocratic style of his mother and predecessor, Len-Lends.

  Sometimes people came to appeal rulings made by the legal system. Dybo, of course, could overturn any judgment, and he had a reputation as something of a softy. On other occasions, scholars and inventors would come, looking for imperial support. Here, Dybo was more pragmatic: if the proposal would aid the exodus, even peripherally, its sponsor usually walked away with a document bearing Dybo’s cartouche. Any other project had a tough time getting his interest, although occasionally he showered support on musicians, music having been the Emperor’s first love. Dybo required no direct tribute, never having been a materialist. However, those who brought toys for the children in the creche were often favored.

  Just now he was hearing the complaint of a young female who had traveled from Chu’toolar. She felt the profession selected for her was inappropriate. But the proceedings were interrupted by Withool, a junior page, bursting into the ruling room.

  Dybo knew his staff would not disturb him without good cause. He looked expectantly at Withool.

  “There’s been another one,” said the page. “Another murder.”

  “Where?” Dybo pushed off his ruling slab and stepped down from the pedestal.

  “Again, in an apartment complex, this time by the Pakta tannery.”

  “Who was the victim?”

  “Yabool, a mathematician and naturalist.”

  “Haldan’s brother,” said Dybo.

  “Haldan’s what?”

  “Brother,” said Dybo, irritated. “Male sibling.”

  “Oh. I thought—”

  “How did it happen?”

  “As before,” said Withool, “Yabool’s throat was slit, quite nastily, apparently by a broken mirror. Pieces of shattered mirror were found
all around the body.”

  “I see,” said Dybo.

  “Someone should tell the newsriders,” proffered one of Dybo’s aides.

  “Not yet.”

  “As you say, Your Luminance.”

  Dybo said, “There are others who should be informed directly. His supervisor, for instance.”

  “Of course,” said Withool. “I’ll attend to that.”

  “And his parents.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “His parents, Afsan and Novato.”

  “Oh, he’s one of those, was he?” said Withool. “Well, I’ll attend to that, too, Emperor.”

  “No. I’ll do it myself.”

  Withool bowed. “Surely the Emperor should be spared such a task.”

  “I said I’ll do it.” Dybo looked up at the statue of Lends standing on the far side of the room. “I’m the only one who understands what it’s like to lose a member of your…family.”

  The Dasheter

  The divers and stilts weren’t the only vertebrates down here at the bottom of the world. Toroca and Babnol managed to collect many specimens as the days went on.

  They were all different.

  But they all had one thing in common.

  They were all—every last one of them—based on the wingfinger body plan.

  It was even-night; the night Toroca was supposed to be awake. But it was far, far too cold to go on deck after dark. He sat in his cabin, lamp spluttering, going over his notes and the intricate sketches he’d made.

  Scooters had all but lost their wings. They shot around the ice surface, using their powerful hind feet to propel themselves.

  Shawls were tall and thin and stood like trees rooted in the ice, wrapping their bodies in cloaks made of their thick rubbery wings.