Robert Sawyer - Fossil Hunter

He paused again, phrasing what he was about to say in his mind. “But I am always in darkness. When I change from being awake to being asleep, there is no real sensory change, no shutting out. I—I need something else, some substitute for the drawing of eyelids over orbs, for changing from day to night. For me, every night that I do sleep, I do so thinking of you, Novato.”

Afsan’s voice was warm, but with a melancholy tinge to the words. “As I lie on my belly, wishing to sleep, I recall your face. Oh, I know it’s your face of sixteen kilodays ago, the one and only time I ever saw you, a younger, less interesting face than I’m sure you have now, but it’s you nonetheless.” He paused. “I can still describe it in detail, Novato. Other images I have trouble recalling, but not you, not your face, not the line of your muzzle, the shape of your eyes, the delicate curve of your earholes. It’s that face that calms me each night, that helps me let go of the burdens of the day, and, for just a little while, forget that I cannot see.”

He dipped his torso in a concessional bow. “You are special to me, Novato, more special than I can say, and that time we spent together, discovering truths both about ourselves and about the universe, was the happiest, indeed, the only truly happy, time of my life.”

He shook his head. “To hurt you is to hurt myself. It pains me to ask the question I have asked, but suspicion has fallen on you. It was not I who thought of you, and I tell you that I reacted with indignation, too, when your name was suggested. I came to you first, before any others, not because I see any possibility of you being the perpetrator, but because I couldn’t bear, even for a few days, that others might think you capable of such crimes. So I ask the question to exonerate you, and Cadool’s declarations about your reply—not to me, for I need no proof of your honesty, but to others—will clear you of suspicion for all time.”

Novato’s breath came out in a long, whispery sigh. “And you, Afsan? Surely if I’m suspected, so are you.”

“Doubtless this is true, although there are those who say a blind person couldn’t have killed in the way that was used. On the other hand, although no one has raised the point, I have not hunted for kilodays, and it is, after all, through the hunt that we supposedly purge our emotions of anger. Perhaps one such as myself, a great hunter in his youth but now no longer able to join in a pack, might indeed need another outlet for his hostility.”

“Then will you answer the same question, Cadool to be the witness to the answers for both of us?”

“I will. Gladly.”

“Very well. Ask your question again.”

“Did you, Wab-Novato, kill Haldan or Yabool?”

“No.”

“Do you have any knowledge of who did?”

“No.”

“Very well.”

“Aren’t you going to ask Cadool if my muzzle turned blue?”

“I know,” said Afsan, “that it did not.” A pause. “Now ask me.”

Novato’s tone was one of appeasement. “I’m sorry, Afsan, I didn’t mean to doubt you. You are very special to me as well.”

“You should ask the question, though. No one has yet.”

“I—”

“Consider it a favor.”

Novato swallowed. “Did you, Sal-Afsan, kill Yabool or Haldan?”

“I did not.”

There was silence for a time. Finally, Novato exhaled noisily. “Well,” she said warmly, “I’m glad that is over.”

“I wish it were,” said Afsan sadly. “I’m afraid I still have to ask that question of several other people I also care deeply about.”

The time had come for Babnol and Toroca to say goodbye. She wore a backpack made of thunderbeast hide that contained a few things she might need on her journey. Food wouldn’t be a problem, though. She would kill what she needed along the way.

The sun, white and fiercely bright, was crawling its way up from the horizon. Babnol bowed. “I’ll rendezvous with you at Fra’toolar in a hundred days or so,” she said.

Toroca said nothing at first. He watched a golden wingfinger move across the purple sky. Then: “Don’t go.”

“I have to.”

“No,” he said. “You don’t.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I’m…” Her voice trailed off.

“You’re changing,” supplied Toroca. “You’re coming into heat.”

She swung her muzzle to face him directly. “How do you know that?”

“Your age. Your manner.” Toroca shrugged amiably. “Your smell.”

Babnol’s muzzle tipped down. “Then you can understand why I must go.”

“No,” said Toroca. “I don’t.”

She looked off into the distance. “Regardless, the decision is mine. I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“Yes, you do, Babnol.” Toroca’s tone was gentle. “I’m your friend.”

At last Babnol nodded. “All right. Soon, as you say, I will feel the urge to call for a mate.”

“Very soon, I’d warrant,” said Toroca.

“Exactly. And I do not want to couple.”

Toroca’s inner eyelids fluttered. “But why not?”

Babnol spread her arms. “Look at me. Look at me . I’m ugly.” A pause. “Deformed.”

“I don’t know what—” But Toroca stopped when he felt the warming that meant his muzzle was flushing blue. He tried again. “I don’t consider you ugly.”

“I’m a freak,” said Babnol. “A freak of nature. This pastak nose horn.” The swear word was one rarely spoken.

“I find it…” Toroca sought the appropriate word. “…intriguing.”

Babnol lifted her muzzle again, and at last Toroca understood that the gesture was not one of haughty arrogance, but rather a subconscious desire to reduce the apparent size of the horn. “It has not been intriguing to go through life with this defect, Toroca.”

Toroca nodded. “Of course. I didn’t mean to minimize your experience.”

“You yourself told me once about the work that was done with lizard breeding,” she said. “It demonstrated the inheritance of characteristics.”

Toroca looked blank.

“Don’t you see? My offspring might indeed be similarly deformed. I can’t risk that. I have to go away, to be alone, until after the mating urge passes. Then I can safely return to the company of others for another full year—for eighteen kilodays.”

“One is never completely safe. My mother was only sixteen kilodays old—well shy of her first year—when she was moved to mate with Afsan.”

“The risk is minimal at other times. It’s monumental now.” She paused again, then, wistfully: “I must leave right away. Goodbye, Toroca.”

“No, wait,” he said.

She hesitated, and, for a moment, it seemed as though she really did not want to go.

“You’re not a freak,” said Toroca. “You’re special.”

“Special,” she repeated, as if trying the word on for size. But then she shook her head.

“Look,” he said, “you know about my theory of evolution. It’s not the things that make us the same that increase our survivability. It’s the differences, the things that make us unique.”

“I’ve listened to you more attentively than that,” said Babnol. “A novelty can be either good or bad. A difference is just as likely— more likely—to be a bad thing.”

“Any difference that lets an individual survive to breeding age is, by definition, beneficial, or, at the very least, neutral.” He adopted a teacher’s tone. “To artificially remove yourself from the breeding population is unnatural.”

“All of our selection is unnatural, Toroca. The bloodpriests do for us what nature can no longer do: select who should live and who should die. It’s only because all egglings have birthing horns that the bloodpriest of my Pack did not realize I was defective. I’m just compensating for the error of that selection process.”