Robert Sawyer - Fossil Hunter

She reversed the tube. “Spectacular!” She turned slowly through a half-circle. “That’s amazing!”

“You can sharpen the image by rotating the other part,” Toroca said.

“Wonderful,” breathed Babnol.

“Now, look at the cliff face.”

She turned back to the towering wall of layered downrock. “Hey! There’s—what did you say his name was?”

“If it’s the fellow in the blue sash, it’s Tralen.”

“Tralen, yes.”

“All right. Scan up the cliff face until you come to a layer of white rock. Not light brown, but actual white. You can’t miss it.”

“I don’t—wait a beat! There it is!”

“Right,” said Toroca. “That’s what we call the Bookmark layer. It’s white because it’s made of chalk. There are no chalk layers below it because there are no shells of aquatic animals below it.”

Babnol lowered the far-seer. “I don’t see the connection.”

“Chalk is made of fossilized shells,” said Delplas. “We often find beautiful shell pieces in chalk layers.”

“Oh. We have no chalk in Arj’toolar. Lots of limestone, though—which is also made from shells.”

Delplas nodded. “That’s right.”

“But here,” said Toroca, “there are no fossil shells below that first white layer.” He leaned forward. “In fact, there are no fossils of any kind beneath that first white layer.”

Babnol lifted the far-seer again, letting her circular view slide up and down the cliff face. “No fossils below,” she said slowly.

“But plenty above,” said Toroca. “There’s nothing gradual about it. Starting with that white layer, and in every subsequent layer, the rock is full of fossils.”

“Then the—what did you call it?—the Bookmark layer…”

Toroca nodded. “The Bookmark layer marks the point in our world’s history at which life was created. Drink in the sight, Babnol. You’re seeing the beginning of it all!”

I get tired of spending time with my siblings. It’s strange, because I have no idea how I should react. With others, my territorial instinct seems to operate properly. I know, without thinking, when I should get out of someone’s way and when I can reasonably expect someone to yield to me. But with my brothers and sisters, it’s different. Sometimes I feel as though their presence, no matter how close, doesn’t bother me in the least. At other times, I find myself challenging their territory for no good reason at all. That they are exactly the same age as me—neither younger nor older, neither bigger nor smaller—makes all standard protocols based on age and size meaningless.

It’s confusing, so very confusing. I wish I knew how to behave.

It was an eerie place, a place of the dead.

Ancient cathedral, ancient cemetery, ancient calendar—the debates raged on among the academics. All that remained were ninety-four granite boulders, strewn—or so it seemed at first glance—across a field of tall grasses, a field that ended in a sheer drop, edged with crumbling marl, plummeting to the great world-spanning body of water far below.

But the boulders, as one could clearly see when their positions were plotted, were not strewn. They were arranged , laid out in geometric patterns, lines drawn between them forming hexagons and pentagons, triangles, and perfect squares.

Rockscape, it was called: a minor tourist attraction, a site that most first-time visitors to Capital City made sure to see, proof that long before the current city had been built, Quintaglios had inhabited this area. Some claimed the rocks represented sacrificial altars on which the earliest Lubalites had practiced their cannibalistic ways. That was an easy theory to believe. The wind sometimes shrieked across the field like the doleful wails of those offered up to placate a God who was making the land tremble.

Afsan often came here, straddling a particular boulder, the one the historians referred to as Sun/Swift-Runner/4 but that everyone else had come to call simply Afsan’s rock. This was his place, a place for quiet contemplation, introspection, and deep thought.

Afsan could find his way here as easily at night as in the day, but he never did so. Indeed, he rarely came out at all after sunset. It was unbearable for him. To know that the stars—the glorious, glorious stars—were arching overhead was too much. Of all the sights he would never see again, Afsan missed the night sky most.

The great landquake of kiloday 7110 had left much of Capital City in ruins. In its aftermath, most of the Lubalites had gone into hiding again. Officially, no record was kept of who had been identified as a member of that ancient sect, and even unofficially little concern was paid to it. Oh, there were those who called for retribution, but Dybo declared an amnesty. After all, when he made the public announcement that he agreed with Afsan that Larsk was a false prophet, he couldn’t very well penalize those who had refused to worship Larsk earlier. Jal-Tetex was permitted to remain on as imperial hunt leader, although she died eventually, in exactly the way she would have liked to—on the hunt. The lanky Pal-Cadool stayed in favor with the palace, although he was reassigned from being chief butcher to personal assistant to Afsan, a role he had unofficially held anyway since the blinded Afsan had been released from prison.

Afsan, whom some had called The One, the hunter foretold by Lubal, who would lead the Quintaglios on the greatest hunt of all.

Some still believed Afsan to be this—and, indeed, some took the exodus to be the hunt Lubal had spoken of. Others who had believed it once, had grown less and less convinced of it as time went by. Afsan, after all, had not hunted in kilodays. And others still, of course, had always scoffed at the suggestion that Afsan was The One.

Cadool did his best to make Afsan’s life comfortable. Afsan often sent Cadool to run errands or do things that he could not himself, and that meant that Afsan was often alone.

Alone, that is, except for Gork.

“It’ll help look after you,” Cadool had said. Afsan had been dubious. As a youngster with Pack Carno, he had kept pet lizards, but Gork was awfully big to be considered a pet. It was about half Afsan’s own size. Afsan had never seen such a creature before he had been blinded, so he really had only an approximate idea of what Gork looked like. Its hide was dark gray, like slate, according to Cadool, and it constantly tasted the air with a flicking bifurcated tongue. Gork was quite tame, and Afsan had petted it up and down its leathery hide. The reptile’s limbs sprawled out in a push-up posture. Its head was flat and elongated. Its tail was thick and flattened, and it worked from side to side as Gork walked.

Gork gladly wore a leather harness and led Afsan around, always choosing a safe path for its master, avoiding rocks and gutters and dung. Afsan found himself growing inordinately fond of the beast and ascribed to it all sorts of advanced qualities, including at least a rudimentary intelligence.

He was surprised that such pets weren’t more common. It was in some ways pleasant to spend time with another living, breathing creature that didn’t trigger the territorial instinct. Although Gork was cold-blooded, and therefore not very energetic, it was still fast enough as a guide for Afsan, given how slowly Afsan walked most of the time, nervous about tripping.

Afsan and Gork, alone, out among the ancient boulders, wind whipping over them, until—

“Eggling!” A deep and gravelly voice.

Afsan lifted his head up and turned his empty eye sockets toward the sound. It couldn’t be…