Robert Sawyer - Fossil Hunter

Afsan nodded. “Do you know how much of the mirror is missing?”

“Well, if it were just squared off, not that much. But most household mirrors are twice as tall as they are long. I’d suspect there’s at least as much missing as we have here. The wooden frame was cut with a saw, but the glass was broken more roughly.”

“All we have to do, then, is find a person who remembers seeing someone carrying a mirror that day,” said Cadool. “Or better yet, half a mirror.”

“I wish it were that simple,” said Gathgol. “But we also found a leather drop-sheet in Haldan’s apartment. It’s creased and scored in such a way that it’s pretty clear that the mirror was wrapped in it when brought into the apartment. The sight of someone carrying something wrapped in dark leather is not at all uncommon, I’m afraid. I’d doubt if anyone would have noticed.”

“That is unfortunate,” said Afsan.

They were all silent for a time.

“Afsan,” said Gathgol at last, still sounding a bit uncomfortable with the short name.

“Yes?”

“Forgive me, but it seems the most likely method for finding the murderer is to figure out who would want to kill Haldan.”

“Indeed,” said Afsan. “But why would anyone kill another person?”

“You really don’t know, do you?” said Gathgol.

“No, I don’t.”

“There have been murders in the past,” said Gathgol. “They’re not common, not at all, but they do happen. And the killer always has a reason.”

“What sort of reason?”

“Well, in the old accounts, the reasons are usually pretty much the same. One kills another to possess something the other has, to prevent the other from revealing something the first one wants to remain secret, or out of fear.”

“Fear?”

“Yes,” said Gathgol. “One kills someone because one is afraid of that someone; afraid that that someone might kill or otherwise harm them.”

Afsan’s tail swished left and right. “Who could possibly fear my daughter?”

“Who indeed?” said Gathgol.

Two shore boats were lowered from the side of the Dasheter and rowed in toward the ice. One carried Delplas, Biltog, and giant Var-Keenir; the other, Babnol, Spalton, and Toroca. Although Toroca wasn’t actually going to take part in the hunt, he had decided to come along to observe whatever animal the others tracked down.

Between the first excursion onto the cap and this one, special anchors had been fashioned for the shore boats: metal hooks on long tethers that could be sunk into the ice. The ships were anchored and the six Quintaglios disembarked.

The temperature was about fourteen degrees below zero, according to Keenir. The snow covering the ice was hard and crisp. No one quite knew how snow was formed. It melted into what seemed to be ordinary water if you held it in your hands, but it was different in texture from the clear ice that underlay it, and, in places, it was loose enough to blow like powder in the air.

All six were wearing their stuffed leather jackets and snow pants, plus wide-soled shoes. Captain Keenir himself was going to lead the hunt. In the hunter’s sign language, each finger represented a different member of the team. So that he could communicate with his pack, Keenir took off his left mitten and tossed it into a shore boat, bobbing in the chilled gray water.

They’d waited until late afternoon before coming here. The sun was low enough that the glare of its light off the snow wasn’t quite blinding now.

Keenir gestured with his naked hand and the six of them began walking in from the shore. Where the ground was covered with snow, traction was reasonably good, although the going was slow because here their feet sank in. But where the ground was icy, walking was treacherous, and Toroca found his legs going out from underneath him on several occasions.

The white ground undulated—not so much so that one would refer to the terrain as having hills and valleys, but enough that whatever was up ahead was often invisible until they were almost upon it. The pack came across a hole in the ice, with perhaps a hundred divers languishing around it. The sight of the hole, with water visible through it, gave Toroca pause. There wasn’t solid ground beneath them, just a layer of ice that varied wildly in thickness from place to place. Here it was perhaps thick enough to support the weight of divers, but possibly not strong enough in all places to hold up adult Quintaglios. Although the air itself wasn’t devastatingly cold, the water was so icy as to be dangerous indeed. Two days before, Spalton had slipped when getting into a shore boat and fallen into the water. He’d turned white from head to tail; Toroca had thought he was going to die.

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—