Michael Swanwick - Bones of the Earth

Leyster laughed from sheer joy. “This is wonderful! You’ve made an incredible discovery.” He seized her hand and kissed it fervently. If it hadn’t been for young Turok, he would have picked her up and whirled her around in the air. “This is… it’s important!”

“Yes. I know,” Lai-tsz said complacently. Leyster understood that she was every bit as pleased as he was. She just didn’t like to show it.

For a time, they stared after the oneirosaurs determinedly eating their way up the valley, sharing the moment without speaking. The moon shone down hazily through a sky strewn with wisps of cloud. There would be rain in the morning, and re-growth would begin. When the lesser herbivores returned, there would be new food in plenty for them.

“It’s really quite marvelous,” Leyster said at last, “how everything fits together. The oneirosaurs level and fertilize the valley just at the right time to maximize growth. And then they move on, rather than staying and monopolizing the limited resources.”

“The herds should be returning soon.”

“Yes.”

“It’s funny, though, how the first animals to return from the migrations were the tyrannosaurs. Followed so closely by the oneirosaurs. It’s almost as if the one were leading the other.”

Leyster was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You don’t really believe that, though.”

“I don’t know. They both employ infrasound. It’s quite possible there’s interspecific as well as intraspecific communication going on. It’s something we really ought to look into.”

“How could we check? Could you build a device of some kind?”

“Oh, yeah, easily. We’ve got a couple of recorders, and all I’d have to do is speed up the playback to bring the ultrasonics up into audibility.”

“You’d have to take time away from trying to repair the time beacon, though.”

She threw him an odd look. “Oh, Richard,” she said, as if it were a negligible thing. “I thought you knew. I gave up on that a long time ago.”

To his amazement, he discovered that she was right. He knew she’d given up on their ever returning to their own time. He’d known it for months.

Finally, though, it was time to go home. They picked their way gingerly downslope and through the woods, guided by the fitful glimmer of one of their two remaining flashlights. Since Chuck had lost the third, two weeks ago, the flashlights had been put on the proscribed list of equipment that was never to leave the camp. But Lai-tsz’s condition superceded all rules. Leyster held the flashlight for her, walking half a step ahead and to the side, to make sure the way was safe.

“I miss Daljit and Jamal,” Lai-tsz said.

“They call every day.”

“It’s not the same.”

For the end of the rainy season, Daljit and Jamal had determined to go inland to meet the migrating herds partway home, make a count of their numbers, and possibly gain some insight into their behavior. They would have liked to follow the migrating herds out at the beginning of the season and back again in the spring, but everybody agreed there simply weren’t the resources yet to make that plan practical. So they’d compromised.

The Styx was tributary to the Eden River, which flowed through the Faraways (hardly mountains, but more than hills) at Water Gap. There, on an elevated spot above the migration trails Jamal and Daljit had set up their camp.

Two weeks they’d been waiting, while the herds didn’t come. There had been a flurry of excitement as the oneirosaurs passed through—fifty of them; they’d broken into smaller groups since—preceded by swift waves of tyrannosaurs. But since then, nothing.

The trees opened up onto Smoke Hollow. “Odd,” Leyster said. There was a light on in the long house. “People are still up?” They’d slipped away at sundown, explaining only that they’d be back late.

“Daljit and Jamal, remember? The evening satellite window opens late tonight. If they came up with something interesting this afternoon, this would be their first chance to share it.”

“You know, that satellite would be a lot more useful if it weren’t out of range so often. Why isn’t it in a geosynchrous orbit?”

“Well, two reasons, offhand. First, because it would take a lot more fuel to raise it to such a high orbit. Second, because a geosynchrous orbit is a lousy position for a mapping satellite.”

“There’s another thing. Why is a geosynchrous orbit so high? It would be a lot more convenient if it were lower.”

“Because it—oh, you’re teasing me!”

“It took you this long to figure that out?”

Mock-bickering, they entered the long house. Everyone squatted in a circle around Chuck, who was speaking on the phone.

Chuck looked up. His expression was uncharacteristically tense. “It’s Daljit,” he said. “Jamal’s been hurt.”

Luckily, Jamal’s injury was nothing worse than a broken leg. Unluckily, it left Daljit and him in no condition to return home without help. This at a time when their food supplies were running low and the migrating dinosaurs had flushed most of the small game from their immediate neighborhood.

After much discussion, it was decided that the largest rescue party they could manage was three people. After more discussion, it was agreed that those three should be Leyster, for his orienteering skill, Tamara, because she was the best hunter, and Chuck, because the other two wanted him.

“Why me?” Chuck asked cautiously. He’d been feeling a little insecure of late. Losing the flashlight had hit his self-esteem hard.

“Because you’ll keep our spirits up,” Tamara said. Leyster nodded gravely.

A small flush of pleasure spread over Chuck’s face.

In the morning, they packed their knapsacks, evenly dividing among them one poptent and three sleeping blankets, a coil of rope, knives, an axe, crocodile jerky and hadrosaur pemmican for food, a medicine kit, homebrew sun block and insect repellant, a Leica 8X20, a cell phone with solar recharger, map and compass, a friction lighter for starting fires, hooks and fishing line, a coil of snare wire, the butt end of a roll of duct tape in case anybody’s shoes started falling apart, sunglasses, rain gear and a change of clothing apiece, toothbrushes, a towel, two pens and a notebook, a pot for boiling water, and three water bottles. They went over the list three times to make sure they hadn’t left anything out, and then unfolded the map to plan their route.

“Originally, Daljit and Jamal traveled down to the mouth of the Styx, and then up the Eden River Valley,” Gillian said. “With the herds coming down the valley right now, that’s not advisable. You’re going to have cut cross-country.” She drew a straight line from Smoke Hollow to Water Gap with her finger. “That’s about twenty-five miles.”

“Piece of cake,” Chuck said.

“We ought to be able to do that,” Tamara said judiciously.

Leyster agreed. “How hard can it be?”

“It’s all up-and-down terrain, low hills, a few ridges. There ought to be streams, but since it’s mostly forested, the surveillance map doesn’t show them. The phone has a built-in positional system, so anytime the satellite’s above the horizon, you can locate yourself on the map.”

“Nobody here’s had a lot of experience in forested environments,” Nils said. “We’ve spent so much time in the river valley, we’ve gotten used to its ways. But the gods of the hills are not the gods of the valley. Keep that in mind, okay, guys?”

“No fear,” Leyster said. “Let’s go.”

Leyster took a compass reading from the top of Barren Ridge, and they started west-southwest. Each carried a spear in one hand and another tied to the back of their packs, all of them (except for Tamara’s Folly) with points of sharpened tyrannosaur ivory. In addition, Leyster carried the axe in a holster on his left hip. He was careful to keep the compass away from it.