I
PUNDU SINGUANG AND CHALK WERE WATCHING THE OCEAN, similar thoughts running through their minds though they were very different in appearance. The Centrosaurus was nearly fourteen feet from beak to tail, with a stocky, muscular body that weighed somewhere between four and five tons, depending on when he had last eaten. His huge skull swept back into an armored, bony frill lined with short spikes while a single massive horn thrust upward from just behind the horny beak. His personal name derived from his unusually pale appearance.
His human companion was shorter, slighter, darker of skin, and completely unarmored, though he did have a rather prominent nose. Together with a family of torosaurs they worked the farm, sharing proportionately in its bounty of rice and tropical fruit.
Presently they were standing atop a small hill, a tree-covered blip on an otherwise typically flat corner of the Northern Plains. Arms crossed over his sweat-streaked, bare chest, Pundu leaned back against the supportive sweep of Chalk’s frill. The farm spread out behind them. Nearby rose a cluster of neat thatch-roofed structures designed to accommodate humans, dinosaurs, farm equipment, and the twice-yearly harvest.
Before them stretched a brackish quilt of untamed reeds, palms, and finally mangrove swamp. Beyond lay a narrow beach of pure white sand, a wide lagoon, and at last the extensive reef that encircled all of Dinotopia. Leaping from a cobalt sea, deformed by powerful, unnavigable currents, ivory breakers shattered themselves against the unyielding coral shoulder.
The sky was a paler hue, its homogeneous blue marred only by a few patches of sooty cloud escaped from some unseen northern squall. Except along the line of breakers, where the sea warred with the accumulated skeletons of long-dead corals, all was tranquil and calm.
“It looks peaceful enough,” Pundu remarked to their visitor. At the sound of his voice Chalk also turned to regard the runner. “Are the weathercasters certain?”
The swift Gallimimus had come from the south only that morning. Twin saddlebag-satchels decorated with official seals and trailing bright blue and yellow streamers were strapped across the rose-tinted skin of her back. An ornamental hood topped by a flowering of shorter yellow streamers protected her face from wind and dust and covered most of her head while simultaneously signifying her status to any who saw or encountered her.
Though no translator was present, she was still able to recognize the uncertainty in the farmer’s voice. By way of reply she held out the official document, pinching it firmly between two of her claws. The warning was written both in human and dinosaur. Having already read it, Chalk continued to stare out to sea. Only humans felt the need to peruse the same words over and over, as if to assure themselves of their validity. Dinosaurs were far more accepting of reality.
There was no equivocation in the warning, which was clear and forthright. It stated that Dinotopia’s six-year weather cycle was coming to fruition, and that all the signs indicated that the culmination of this particular cycle should be particularly robust.
Like anyone whose family had long farmed the damp, hot lands of the Northern Plains, Pundu Singuang knew what that meant. So did Chalk. Raising one hand facing forward, Pundu touched his palm to that of the runner and nodded once. The Gallimimus returned the gesture, turned, and trotted down the gentle slope. With each stride, she covered twice as much ground as the best human sprinter could manage.
She paused only long enough to bid farewell to Pundu’s wife, Lahat, who was hanging out laundry in front of the bambooframed farmhouse. Their two children followed the runner as far as the dirt road, one of them riding atop Singlewhack’s back. Singlewhack was Chalk’s daughter. She was still young enough for her nose horn to be little more than a stub above her beak.
As they concluded their hopeless pursuit of the runner, the children’s laughter drifted up the hill. Pundu watched the now tiny bipedal form of the Gallimimus turn left on the road and accelerate, dust rising from beneath her flying, three-toed feet, her silken streamers stretched out behind her.
Pundu knew that the children, human and centrosaur alike, ought to be helping with the chores, but at that moment neither he nor Chalk was inclined to discipline them. Let them have their fun while they could. There would be hard work for all soon enough—harder work than they had yet known.
Again he turned to stare out to sea. The last several six-year cycles had been relatively benign. It had been some time since he had been forced to think of the ocean as a threat.
It took many days with everyone working together to empty the house and barn. Everything that could be moved, from kitchen utensils to the big iron plow, was packed, piled, or stuffed onto the six-wheeled farm wagon. Lahat’s treasured set of shadow puppets, handed down in her family from generation to generation, was wrapped in rice paper and stowed carefully beneath the seat with the other fragile household goods.
Chalk grunted patiently at the youngsters, chivying them along, while the two huge torosaurs, ceratopsians like Chalk only bigger and with eye horns like a Triceratops, tried to make themselves comfortable in the wagon harness. Chalk and his mate would follow behind, pulling a second, smaller wagon piled high with farming implements.
They were good companions and good farmers, Pundu reflected as he watched his ceratopsian compatriots at work. He was lucky they had chosen to mingle their lives with his own. Human and dinosaur families alike benefited from the mutual cooperation. They worked together, lived together, often played and ate together.
And now, he reflected grimly, they would flee together.
In his desire to be on their way, Chalk was displaying an almost human impatience. Pundu’s mood lightened as he
watched his old friend. Just like a Centrosaurus-. always anxious to check out the fodder over the next hill. Chalk and his relatives liked the Northern Plains, where there was thick forage and good farmland in abundance.
That was why so many of the plains farmers had chosen to form working alliances with ceratopsians or stegosaurids. With a torosaur or Triceratops supplying willing muscle, plowing a field or raising a dam became feasible for a single family. For their part, the ceratopsians and stegosaurids were very fond of rice and bamboo, which humans raised with skill and in abundance.
He wondered how his neighbors, the Manuhiris and Tan-draputras, were progressing with their preparations to evacuate. It was a scene that was being repeated several hundred times all across the Northern Plains: families piling everything they owned, from the implements of everyday living to family heirlooms, onto wagons, swamp carts, and broad dinosaurian backs in preparation for flight.
Most would»head for Bent Root, Pundu knew, it being the nearest town of sufficient size to provide the necessary accommodations and assistance for an exodus of such size. Others would travel farther in search of less crowded quarters, to Treetown and even Cornucopia. The smaller towns in the foothills of the Backbone Mountains would take their share. All across the region, people and dinosaurs would pitch in to help the temporarily displaced. It was the Dino-topian way.
The most fortunate among the uprooted had relatives or close friends in the towns, but it wasn’t necessary. Any stranger would help another. You might need his help tomorrow.
The voice of his son interrupted his thoughts. “Father, come and help with this!” Selat and his sister Brukup were struggling to load the headboard from the front bedroom. The bed was one of Lahat’s delights because it had been carved and decorated by Pundu himself and two of his friends in the months before their wedding. It hurt to see it traveling in pieces, like so much lumber.
For the moment we are all displaced, he mused as he started forward. People and furniture alike.
Tneether thev eased the heavy piece of wood onto th
e wagon. Chalk helped with the last shove, careful to use the side of his mouth so that his nose horn wouldn’t damage the carving. Wiping sweat from his forehead, Pundu turned to gaze out across the paddies. Most of the rice and taro had already been harvested and sold. This was fortunate, because he knew that if the weathercasters were right, they would miss at least one planting, maybe two. There were mangoes and rambutan still to be gathered, but the runner from Sauropolis had been insistent about the departure window. The ripening fruit would have to ride out, unpicked, whatever the six-year cycle had in store for the farm.
Pundu shrugged. It could be worse. Without the work of the weathercasters there would be no warning, and then a man could lose more than a little fruit.
They could lose it all, he knew. Or they could return to find everything, even to the fruit hanging ripe on the trees, intact and unharmed. There had not been a truly bad six-year storm in his lifetime. But he knew the stories and the histories. Every six years precautions had to be taken. It was the law . .. not to mention common sense.
The evacuation, at least, held no surprises. He had been through it half a dozen times before. In the outside world, it was said, people tried to resist the forces of nature instead of bending with them. It was difficult to imagine. How could one do otherwise but than to bend with what might be coming at the end of the six-year cycle? The thought of attempting to resist such a thing flew in the face of all reason.
Turning from the fields, he let his gaze linger lovingly on his children and the supple form of Lahat. Noticing his stare, she smiled back as she drew her arm across her high forehead. Though they were acclimated to the heat and humidity of the Northern Plains, the hard work still made them sweat.
As he moved to help her with the pots and pans from the kitchen, he glanced again to his right, toward the sea. It was hidden from him now, concealed by trees and distance. That was why the weathercasters’ warning was so important. If the outcome was a bad one, there would be no time to see it coming. In that case, the conclusion of the cycle would bring death instead of renewal.
Out there the wind and the water were starting to stir.
Pundu fully intended to have his family and friends well upland in the event that the elements’ mood turned sour. Best not to nap next to the sea-god, he remembered his mother telling him, when he decides to walk in his sleep.
Bigfoot, the male torosaur, turned in his harness to snort at Pundu. “Yes, yes, I know we need to be going,” the farmer called back. The strapping ceratopsian was eager to be on his way. The sooner they arrived in Bent Root, the sooner he could slip out of the tack.
Pundu turned to take a last look at his house. If the sea-god only walked in his sleep, all would be unchanged when they returned from Bent Root. If he had a nightmare . . . well, the thatch was thinning and some of the bamboo was old and starting to splinter. A new house would not be such a bad thing.
Placing his palms together in front of his chest, Pundu faced the sea and bowed. The religion and culture of his family was a gentle, accepting one, ideal for a farmer. For a while his lips moved.*
Then there was nothing more to be done. Straightening, he mounted the wagon, reaching down to give Lahat a hand up. The children would ride gleefully behind, on the broad backs of Chalk and his mate. For his part, Pundu had grown old enough to desire a softer seat.
Gathering up the reins, he stood on the footrest and shouted, “Hai! Bigfoot, Browneyes! Time to go!” The torosaurs did not understand the words, but Pundu’s tone coupled with a gentle chuck of the reins was eloquent enough. Stout legs started forward, and the heavily laden wagon, creaking and groaning with its load, began to roll out of the farmyard on its six strong wooden wheels.
Behind him, Pundu heard his children echo his words. They were excited and unafraid. To them the displacement was an adventure.
Reaching the farm road, the torosaurs turned right, toward the shadowed line of the Backbone Mountains. No one looked back. Pundu and Lahat could not see over or around the heavily laden wagon, and no ceratopsian could see behind itself without turning its body.
Now that they were on their wav, he relaxed. There was no need to guide the torosaurs. They knew the way to Bent Root better than any human, being able to follow olfactory as well as visual signs. Flooded rice paddies and taro fields lined both sides of the road.
By midday they were part of a growing line of vehicles, humans, and dinosaurs, all creaking and groaning as they made their way toward the green foothills. They traveled on an elevated road fashioned of packed earth paved with cut stone, built centuries ago to allow access to the rich loam of the Northern Plains. Maintained by crews of humans and dinosaurs, it permitted year-round travel across a flat countryside that was frequently deluged by torrential rains. At such times, ordinary ground-level roads were reduced to impassable rivers of thick, gluey mud.
The gathering stream of humans, dinosaurs, wagons, and carts wound its way steadily southwestward. Though it represented a coming-together of all the inhabitants of the Northern Plains, the roadway was not overwhelmed. The transitory nature of life on the plains reduced its appeal. Despite the fertility of the soil, farming there did not promise an easy life, nor were there many families willing to gather up everything they owned and shuttle it back and forth every six years. Families also had to endure isolation from the excitement of cultural centers like Sauropolis and Waterfall City.
But there were rewards, Pundu reflected as he and his family jounced along in the steadily moving line. Beauty, tranquillity, the joy of watching things grow. He would not have traded it for any other life.
Turning in his seat, he offered a friendly wave to a farmer he recognized. Otera and his family lived farther down the coast, closer to Crackshell Point. There they fished the bountiful lagoon as well as farmed the land. They knew each other, as did all the residents of the Northern Plains, from periodic encounters at festivals and markets.
“Ho, friend Otera! How goes it?”
“It goes well enough,” the stout fisher-farmer replied. Otera was of Maori ancestry. His son was already heavier than Pundu, who came from far more diminutive physical stock. Oblivious to all the activity, four-year-old twins slept soundly in a hammock suspended between the great eye
horns of Quickpush, Otera’s mature female Triceratops. A male Stegosaurus led the way, his back plates strung with cord. Household goods were piled high between the triangular plates.
“What do you think of the weathercasters’ predictions?” Otera asked him. As the humans conversed, triceratops, stegosaurs, and torosaurs spoke in low rumbles, like a polite earthquake.
Pundu glanced north, toward the ocean. The convoy had climbed high enough now for the sea to appear as a distant dark blue stripe between earth and sky.
“Too early to tell, I think.”
“Perhaps the weathercasters are wrong. Perhaps this will be another moderate six-year storm.” Otera rubbed his forehead, which was decorated with intricate blue-black whorls and dots. The tattooing had been done by his uncle over a period of several years.
“Perhaps. One can only hope. It has happened so before.”
Otera’s wife, Teita, who was also a good deal bigger than Pundu, sniffed skeptically. “You men are deluding yourselves. The weathercasters are almost always right. Hoping a thing will not happen will not change that.”
“Hoping is not deluding, my love,” her husband reminded her. “Would you rather live in Sauropolis?”
“What,” she blurted back, “with all that noise and bustle? No, thank you! I would rather live by the sea. It is like any child. Most of the time it giggles and coos and is a blessing to you. You have to expect the occasional tantrum. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I feel the same.” Pundu relaxed against the back of the wagon seat. “The city is too busy for me. Where are you going?”
“To Cornucopia,” Otera replied. “It’s farther, but we have cousins there.”
Pundu nodded. Bigfoot and his mat
e edged toward the shoulder of the road. Since Otera’s group had farther to go, others courteously offered them the right-of-way on the narrow thoroughfare.
It wasn’t all ceratopsians and stegosaurids on the road. There were ankylosaurs and a fair number of duckbills as well. Ankylosaurs were excellent excavators while duckbills were particularly good at working both paddies and orchards. No sauropods, though. The true giants of Dinotopia were a bit too massive for farmwork. A Diplodocus might be fun to gambol on the beach with, but you wouldn’t want one mucking about in your taro patch.
City folk didn’t have to evacuate their homes every six years, Pundu knew, but they had other problems. That was the wonderful thing about Dinotopia: there was a region and lifestyle to suit everyone, human and dinosaur alike.
A larger, darker cloud had appeared in the sky. A harbinger of more to come? Pundu wondered. He nodded sagely to himself. It was always best to follow the advice of specialists outside one’s own area of expertise. He was glad their departure from the farm had gone so smoothly.
As the long line of humans, dinosaurs, and their goods climbed slowly and steadily out of the Northern Plains and into the foothills of the Backbones, Pundu Singuang found himself remembering the jovial Teita’s likening of the sea to an infant. Giggles and coos, laughter and tears, he told himself. Yes, that was as good a description of the ocean’s moods as any. It was only natural that in return for its bounty those who lived by its side should expect to have to put up with an occasional fit.
The only question now was, in its coming distress and upset, how loudly would it scream, and how hard would it kick?
II
will denison whistled piercingly. The gigantic, columnar leg paused in midstride and settled to the earth with a muffled thud. The brachiosaur’s neck dipped down and to one side as it searched for the source of the whistle.
Will had been partly concealed by a bush and the big sauropod had nearly overlooked him. Like all its kind, it had excellent hearing. According to the librarian Nallab it was an ancient development originally intended to allow them to detect the approach of marauding carnivores.
Dinotopia - Dinotopia Lost Page 1
